Grade put his shoulder to the door to keep it shut. “There’s a free beer in it for you,” he said.
That worked. The guy grinned, suddenly loose and friendly, and took a step back, his hands up to prove he wasn’t going to push it.
“Hey,” he said. “Whatever you say, man. I can piss outside.”
He turned around, which involved more footwork than was necessary, and headed for the side door.
A woman perched on the stool at the bar, dark brown hair loose over her shoulders, waited for him to stagger outside, then shook her head.
“Hate to break it to you,” she said. There was something familiar about her, which wasn’t a surprise. Sweeny was a small town. Grade just couldn’t quite put his finger on how he knew her. “But he had a good idea of what was in there. It wasn’t exactly low-key. Guy goes into a bathroom and doesn’t come out for over an hour, you gotta hope he’s dead.”
The barman got a bottle of Common from under the bar and flicked the cap off. “In that bathroom?” he said. “I’dhope I was dead.”
The woman laughed as she stole the beer for a swig. Despite the roll of banter, her hand was shaking as she picked up the bottle. Her knee bounced in time with the tremor.
Grade ducked back into the restroom to drag the miniature yellow “Closed for Cleaning” A-board out of his kit bag. He shouldered the door back open and set it down outside with a clack.
“You want to work with someone taking a crap on your workstation?” he asked.
The woman laughed. “Just be grateful that Hadley didn’t have chili on the menu tonight,” she said as she braced her elbow on the bar. She winked at the barman. “God knows, Hadley is. Otherwise people might blame him for the dead man in there.”
The barman—Hadley—looked unamused as he peeled a toothpick and put it between his teeth.
“It’s not my chili,” he said. “I get it from a jar like God intended.”
“Just don’t let anyone in,” Grade said. “I need to go talk to Ezra.”
He nudged the A-board into place with his foot and started across the bar. He paused as something occurred to him and turned back around.
“Oh, and whoever took his shoes?” he said. “I need them back.”
The woman and Hadley traded looks quickly. Then the woman craned around to look down at Grade’s feet. “I don’t think they’d fit you.”
That got a snort of amusement from Hadley. Grade made an exasperated noise. He wasn’t in the mood.
“They’re evidence,” he said. “Get them back.”
The woman rolled her eyes at him and went back to her beer. The barman just shrugged. Grade left them to it as he stalked off to find Ezra.
It was a job, he reminded himself. Money in the pot. He’d done worse.
He just missed LA, where the restrooms were nicer and the criminals were professional. Unfortunately, it was hard to have a shoot-out over Zoom. So here Grade was. Back home, again.
Fucking pandemic.
§
Adam Ezra had his sleeve rolled up, bloody cuff tucked up to his elbow, and his hand braced on the desk. His arm was laid open in a long, ragged gash from his wrist all the way up to his elbow. Blood splattered over his paperwork in messy smears and blotches. The man from the restroom stood hip shot in the corner of the room as he poured two glasses of better whiskey than they served outside into tumblers.
“Just find the bastard,” Ezra snapped into the mobile he held in his other hand. “What was he thinking? This is going to cause a goddamn war—”
He stopped as he caught sight of Grade. “I’ll call you back. Just get on with it,” Ezra told whoever was on the other end of the call and hung up on them with a jab of his thumb against the touchscreen. He focused on Grade. “Who the fuck are you, and what do you want?”
Restroom man took a swig of whiskey straight from the bottle, gave the mouth a cursory wipe, and twisted the lid back onto it.
“Oh yeah,” he said as he turned around. “I meant to tell you he’d gotten here. This is the cleaner.”
He handed Ezra one of the tumblers and hooked his foot around the leg of a nearby chair to pull it over. Ezra sniffed the liquor and grimaced before he fixed his attention on Grade.
