Frank Howard gaped at him, amazed. “Have you ever done it?”
“What? Bitten off someone’s nose? Nah. Just the threat’s enough to make them behave.”
“You get many hard cases here?” Frank asked.
“Nah. This is a class place. We have trouble maybe once a week. No more than that.”
“How do you do that trick?” Tony asked.
“Biting the glass? There’s a little secret to it. But it’s not really hard to learn.”
The band broke into Bob Seeger’s Still the Same as if they were a bunch of juvenile delinquents breaking into a nice house with the intention of trashing it.
“Ever cut yourself?” Tony shouted to Otto.
“Every once in a while. Not often. And I’ve never cut my tongue. The sign of someone who can do the stunt well is the condition of his tongue,” Otto said. “My tongue has never been cut.”
“But you have injured yourself.”
“Sure. My lips a few times. Not often.”
“But that only makes the trick more effective,” the blonde said. “You should see him when he cuts himself. Otto stands there in front of the jerk who’s been causing all the trouble, and he just pretends like he doesn’t know he’s hurt himself. He lets the blood run.” Her green eyes shone with delight and with a hard little spark of animal passion that made Tony squirm uneasily on his barstool. “He stands there with bloody teeth and with the blood oozing down into his beard, and he warns the guy to stop making a ruckus. You wouldn’t believe how fast they settle down.”
“I believe,” Tony said. He felt queasy.
Frank Howard shook his head and said, “Well….”
“Yeah,” Tony said, unable to find words of his own.
Frank said, “Okay … let’s get back to Bobby Valdez.” He tapped the mug shots that were lying on the bar.
“Oh. Well, like I told you, he hasn’t been in for at least a month.”
“That night, after he got angry with you, after you settled him down with the glass trick, did he stick around for a drink?”
“I served him a couple.”
“So you saw his ID.”
“Yeah.”
“What was it–driver’s license?”
“Yeah. He was thirty, for God’s sake. He looked like he was in maybe eleventh grade, a high school junior, maybe at most a senior, but he was thirty.”
Frank said, “Do you remember what the name was on the driver’s license?”
Otto fingered his shark’s tooth necklace. “Name? You already know his name.”
“What I’m wondering,” Frank said, “is whether or not he showed you a phony driver’s license.”
“His picture was on it,” Otto said.
“That doesn’t mean it was genuine.”
“But you can’t change pictures on a California license. Doesn’t the card self-destruct or something if you mess around with it?”
“I’m saying the whole card might be a fake.”
“Forged credentials,” Otto said, intrigued. “Forged credentials….” Clearly, he had watched a couple of hundred old espionage movies on television. “What is this, some sort of spy thing?”
“I think we’ve gotten turned around here,” Frank said impatiently.
“Huh?”
“We’re supposed to be the ones asking questions,” Frank said. “You just answer them. Understand?”
The bartender was one of those people who reacted quickly, strongly, and negatively to a pushy cop. His dark face closed up. His eyes went blank.
Aware that they were about to lose Otto while he still might have something important to tell them, Tony put a hand on Frank’s shoulder, squeezed gently. “You don’t want him to start munching on a glass, do you?”
“I’d like to see it again,” the blonde said, grinning.
“You’d rather do it your way?” Frank asked Tony.
“Sure.”
“Go ahead.”
Tony smiled at Otto. “Look, you’re curious, and so are we. Doesn’t hurt a thing if we satisfy your curiosity, so long as you satisfy ours.”
Otto opened up again. “That’s the way I see it, too.”
“Okay,” Tony said.
“Okay. So what’s this Bobby Valdez done that makes you want him so bad?”
“Parole violations,” Tony said.
“And assault,” Frank said grudgingly.
“And rape,” Tony said.
“Hey,” Otto said, “didn’t you guys say you were with the homicide squad?”
The band finished Still the Same with a clatter-bang-boom of sound not unlike the derailment of a speeding freight train. Then there were a few minutes of peace while the lead singer made unamusing small talk with the ringside customers who sat in clouds of smoke that, Tony felt sure, had come partly from cigarettes and partly from burning eardrums. The musicians pretended to tune their instruments.