I spent the rest of the day slinking around with my mental tail between my legs. I hadn’t been so thoroughly rebuked since I was eight and Aunt Gin caught me smoking an experimental Viceroy cigarette. In this case, I was so heavily invested in Mickey’s concerns, I couldn’t afford to have my access to his life curtailed. I’d hoped clearing myself with Aldo in the matter of the phone call would net me information about the current status of his investigation. Instead, it was clear that his trust was so seriously eroded he’d never tell me a thing.
I used the early evening hours to pick my way through a plate of Rosie’s stuffed beef rolls. She was pushing vese porkolt, which (translated from Hungarian) turned out to be heart and kidney stew. Remorseful as I felt, I was prepared to eat my own innards, but my stomach rebelled at the notion of vital piggie organs simmered with caraway seeds. I spent the hours after supper tending to my desk at home, atoning for my sins with lots of busywork. When all else fails, cleaning house is the perfect antidote to most of life’s ills.
I waited until close to midnight to return to the Honky-Tonk. I wore the same outfit I’d worn the night before since it was previously smoked on and required laundering anyway. I’d have to hang Mickey’s leather jacket on the line for days. This was now Friday night and, if memory still served me, the place would be packed with feverish weekend celebrants. Driving by, I could see the parking lot was jammed. I cruised the surrounding blocks and finally squeezed into a space just as a Ford convertible was pulling out. I walked the block and a half through the darkened Colgate neighborhood. This was an area that had once been devoted solely to single-family homes. Now a full third had been converted to small businesses: an upholsterer, an auto repair shop, and a beauty salon. There were no sidewalks along the street so I kept to the middle of the road and then cut through the small employee parking lot at the rear exit.
I circled the building to the entrance, where the line of people awaiting admittance seemed to be singles and couples in roughly equal numbers. I gave the bouncer my driver’s license and watched him run it through his scanning device. I paid the five-dollar cover charge and received the inked benediction on the back of my right hand.
As I moved through the front room, I was forced to run the gauntlet of chain smokers standing four deep at the bar, shifty-eyed guys trying to look a lot hipper than they actually were. The music coming from the other room was live that night. I couldn’t see the band, but the melody (or its equivalent) pounded, the beat distorted through the speakers to a tribal throb. The lyrics were indecipherable but probably consisted of sophomoric sentiments laid out in awkward rhyming couplets. The band sounded local, playing all their own tunes, if this one was any indication. I’ve picked up similar performances on local cable channels, shows that air at A.M. as a special torture to the occasional insomniac like me.
I was already wishing I’d stayed at home. I’d have turned and fled if not for the fact that Mickey’d been here himself six consecutive Fridays. I couldn’t imagine what he’d been doing. Maybe counting drinks, calculating Tim’s profits, and thus computing his gross. Maybe Tim had cried poor, claiming he wasn’t making sufficient money to repay the loan. If Tim’s bartender happened to have his hand in the till, this could well be true. Bartenders have their little methods, and an experienced investigator, sitting at the bar, can simultaneously chat with other patrons and do an eyeball audit. If the bartender was skimming, it would have been in Mickey’s best interests to spot the practice and blow the whistle on him. It was equally possible Mickey’s presence was generated by another motive, a woman, for instance, or the need to escape his financial woes in L.A. Then, too, a heavy drinker doesn’t really need an excuse to hit a bar anywhere.
I did the usual visual survey. All the tables were full, the booths bulging with customers packed four to a bench. The portion of the dance floor I could see from where I stood was so dense with moving bodies there was scarcely any room to spare. There was no sign of Tim, but I did see the black-haired waitress, inching through the mob in front of me. She held her tray aloft, balancing empty glasses above the reach of jostling patrons. She wore a black leather vest over nothing at all, her arms long and bare, the V of the garment exposing as much as it concealed. The dyed black of her hair was a harsh contrast to the milky pallor of her skin. A dark slash of lipstick made her mouth look grim. She leaned toward the bartender, calling her order over the generalized din.
There’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed when I’m driving on the highway. If you turn and look at other drivers, they’ll turn and look at you. Maybe the instinct is a holdover from more primitive days when being the object of scrutiny might mean you were in peril of being killed and consumed. Here, it happened again. Soon after I spotted her, she turned instinctively and caught my gaze. Her eyes dropped to Mickey’s leather jacket. I shifted my attention, but not before I saw her expression undergo a change.
Thereafter, I was careful to avoid her, and I focused instead on what was going on nearby. I kept picking up an intermittent whiff of marijuana, though I couldn’t trace the source. I started watching people’s hands, since dopers seldom hold a joint the way they’d hold an ordinary cigarette. The average smoker tucks a cigarette in the V formed between the index and middle fingers, bringing the cigarette to the lips with the palm of the hand open. A doper with a joint makes an 0-ring with the thumb and index finger, the doobie at the center, the three remaining fingers fanned out so the palm forms a shelter around the burning joint. Whether the intent is to shield the dope from the wind or from public view, I’ve never been able to determine. My own dope-smoking days are long since past, but the ceremonial aspects seem consistent to this day. I’ve seen a doper ask for a joint by simply forming that 0 and pressing it to his lips, a gesture that signals, Shall we smoke a little cannabis, my dear?
I began to circle the bar, moving casually from table to table until I spotted the fellow with a joint between his lips. He was sitting alone in a booth on the far side of the room, close to the corridor that led to the telephones and rest rooms. He was in his mid-thirties, vaguely familiar with his long, lean face. He was a type I’d found appealing when I was twenty: silent, brooding, and slightly dangerous. His eyes were light and close-set. He sported a mustache and goatee, both contributing to the look of borderline scruffiness. He wore a loose khaki-colored jacket and a black watch cap. A fringe of light hair extended well below his collar. He carried himself with a certain worldliness, something in the hunch of his shoulders and the mild knowing smile that flitted across his face.
Tim Littenberg emerged from the back corridor and paused in the doorway while he adjusted his cuffs. The two of them, the joint smoker and the bar owner, ignored each other with a casualness that seemed phony from my perspective. Their behavior reminded me of those occasions when illicit lovers run across each other in a social setting. Under the watchful eyes of their respective spouses, they’ll make a point of avoiding contact, thus trumpeting their innocence, or so they think. The only problem is the aura of heightened awareness that underlies the act. Anyone who knows either can detect the charade. Between the man in the booth and Tim Littenberg there was an unmis takable air of self-consciousness. Both seemed to be watching the black-haired waitress, who seemed equally conscious of them.
Within minutes, she’d circled and arrived at the booth. Tim moved away without looking at her. The guy with the joint leaned forward on his elbows. He reached out and put a hand on her hip. He motioned for her to sit. She slid into the bench across from him with her tray between them as though the empty glasses might remind him she had other things to do. He took her free hand and began to talk earnestly. I couldn’t see her face, but from where I stood she didn’t seem relaxed or receptive to his message.
“You know that guy. a voice said into my right ear.