I cleared my throat.
He said, “Yeah?” through the plastic and kept looking at the watch, turning it over with nicotined fingers and working his lips as if preparing to spit. The window was scratched and cloudy and outfitted with a ticket-taker remote speaker that he hadn’t switched on. The store had soft, wooden floors and stank of WD-40, sulfur matches, and body odor. A sign over the gun display said NO LOONIES.
“I’m looking for Roddy Rodriguez next door,” I said. “Have some work for him to do on a retaining wall.”
He put the watch down and picked up another.
“Excuse me,” I said.
“Got something to buy or sell?”
“No, I was just wondering if you knew when Rodriguez was-” He turned his back on me and walked away. Through the Plexiglas I saw an old desk full of papers and other timepieces. A semiautomatic pistol served as a paperweight. He scratched his butt and held the watch up to a fluorescent bulb.
l left and walked over to the bar two doors down. The green board was rubbed to raw timber in spots and the front door was unmarked. A sun-shaped neon sign said, SUNNY’S SUN VALLEY. A single window below it was filled with a Budweiser sign.
I walked in, expecting darkness, billiard clicks, and a cowboy jukebox.
Instead, I got bright lights, ZZ Top going on about a Mexican whore, and a nearly empty room not much larger than my kitchen.
15 AL) L, U V t II/ No pool table-no tables of any kind. just a long, pressedwood bar with a black vinyl bumper and matching stools, some of them patched with duct tape.
Up against the facing wall were a cigarette machine and a pocket comb dispenser. The floor was grubby concrete.
The man working the bar was thirtyish, fair, balding, stubbled. He wore tinted eyeglasses and one of his ears was double pierced, hosting a tiny gold stud and a white metal hoop. He had on a soiled white apron over a black T-shirt, and his chest was flabby. His arms were soft looking, too, white and tattooed. He wasn’t doing much when I came in, and he continued along those lines. Two men sat at the bar, far from each other. More tattoos. They didn’t move either. It looked like a poster for National Brain Death Week.
I took a stool between the men and ordered a beer.
“Draft or bottle?”
“Draft.”
The bartender took a long time to fill a mug, and as I waited I snuck glances at my companions. Both wore billed caps, T-shirts, jeans, and work shoes. One was skinny, the other muscular. Their hands were dirty. They smoked and drank and had tired faces.
My beer came and I took a swallow. Not much head and not great, but not as bad as I’d expected.
“Any idea when Roddy’ll be back?” I said.
“Who?” said the bartender.
“Rodriguez-the masonry guy next door. He’s supposed to be doing a retaining wall for me and he didn’t show up.”
He shrugged.
“Place is closed,” I said.
No answer. sit.”
“Great,” I said. “Guy’s got my goddamned depo The bartender began soaking glasses in a gray plastic tub.
I drank some more.
ZZ gave way to a disc jockey’s voice, hawking car insurance for people with bad driving records. Then a series of commercials for ambulance-chasing lawyers polluted the air some more.
“When’s the last time you’ve seen him around?” I said.
The bartender turned around. “Who?”
“Rodriguez.”
Shrug.
“Has his place been closed for a while?”
Another shrug. He returned to soaking.
“Great,” I said.
He looked over his shoulder. “He never comes in here, I got nothing to do with him, okay?”
“Not much of a drinker?”
Shrug.
“Fucking asshole,” said the man on my right.
The skinny one. Sallow and pimpled, barely above drinking age. His cigarette was dead in the ashtray. One of his index fingers played with the ashes.
I said, “Who? Rodriguez?”
He gave a depressed nod. “Fucking greaser don’t pay.”
“You worked for him?”
“Fucking A, digging his fucking ditches. Then the roach coach comes by for lunch and I wanna advance so’s to get a burrito. He says sorry, amigo, not till payday. So I’m adios, amigo, man.”