Page 29 of Bad Intentions

That was my whistleblower. He hung up right away.

When calls like this happened, there wasn't much time for chitchat, unless you wanted the Liquor Control Board to storm in and slap the hefty fines on you for having underage drinkers in your bar.

I took a deep breath and whistled as loudly as I could, the echo of it going through the bar, heads turning.

“All the chickens out!" I shouted. I pulled the lever of the antique fire gong on the wall, my ears instantly ringing. “All! Chickens! Out!”

No need to repeat it. Everyone knew the drill.

In a second, beers were chugged. In another, over a dozen people scrambled out of my bar.

Sure, serving to minors was a crime, but those days were different. Small town, grueling life. We knew everyone. The local cops back then didn’t give DUIs. They made you call someone you knew to take you home. Most cops knew either your parents or siblings.

Besides, the boys had just left a ten-hour shift at a factory. If they were old enough to have workers’ comp, they deserved a cold one. Things like this don’t fly these days, but back then? Well, back then, we made our own rules. They were about to temporarily change, with the county fair starting next week and too many outsiders in town. Next week, we would card everyone. But not tonight.

The young man at the counter didn’t move, his eyes on me, a mocking little curve to his lips.

I picked up the receiver and dialed The Old Rooster, Donna's bar a couple of miles away by the truck stop.

"Chickens out, " I said when she picked up.

I hung up and dialed O’Malley’s in the next town, said the same thing.

We had to do what we had to do. That's how we ran the area back in the day. We’d rather keep an eye on the young ones drinking at our bars and save them from trouble than lock them out and let them get plastered who knows where and do god knows what.

I scanned the bar, making sure anyone I knew who wasn’t supposed to be here had gone. I picked up my tumbler, shook a couple of ice cubes into my mouth, and crushed them between my teeth, feeling the soothing cool.

"Breaking the law?" the young man asked in a voice that, coming from anyone else, would hardly make me blink.

But his did. So did his cold gaze.

For a second, I thought he was a decoy, or the liquor man himself and I was too late. I studied him slowly, crushing the last piece of ice between my teeth.

"Need to see your driver’s license, young man," I said, though he looked like he was in his mid-twenties, but you just never knew.

“Now you do?”

His comeback made my nerves flare up just a tad. Nuh-uh, he wasn’t a usual bar dust bunny. He was going to be a problem. I sensed it right then and there.

He obliged, tossed his license on the bar counter.

Derek Sickler. New Jersey. Twenty-four, if you believed the document.

Well, now.

I set his driver’s license back on the counter and slowly pushed it back toward him, summoning all my inner politeness.

"Visiting or passing through?" I asked. Always good to know. We were two miles from the highway and the truck stop, so occasional drifters were no surprise. The Old Rooster by the truck stop was a hot spot though, attracting the traveling crowd.

The man gave me a sweetie-pie smile that I’m pretty sure worked well on young women. He was handsome, no doubt about it. He knew it too. Those dimples transformed his face in the most charming way. But there was a coldness to him, in the sharpness of his features, the predatory sparkle in his eyes that cut right through me.

“That depends,” he said, taking a slow sip of his whiskey, his dark hawk-like eyes on me above the rim of his glass. “Depends on whether you have enough of the good stuff, for one.” He toasted to me in the air and set the drink down.

I should’ve dumped that Jim Beam right then and there. For many years afterward, I wished that I’d let Dougie talk to the man that night. Let him start a fight. Let him show the newcomer he wasn’t welcome and make him run.

But I didn’t. Didn’t say a word.

I peeled my eyes off the punk and went about serving others. Only a minute later, I heard him talk to Birdie, who melted like sugar at his words, like many others soon would. She wasn’t supposed to touch liquor, but she was too eager to serve him—this was his effect on most women. I knew that type well.