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“My eyes are open, Bud.”
He spun around and looked at me. “You think so, don’t you? You think you’re tough enough, got all the moves and know all the tricks. You think you’re ready for this, but let me tell you something, sonny boy. You’re not this tough. You’re not ready for this.”
“Maybe I’m not, Bud. Maybe nobody is. Is that your decision?”
He looked at me hard, just looked. Then he slumped back onto the bar, leaning on one elbow. “How much money you got, Billy?” he finally asked me.
“How much do you need?”
He turned and looked at me with a little bit of anger on his face. “I don’t need a thing. But I have a friend I want you to meet, and he needs money or he won’t talk.” He gave me a very small smile. “His name is Otoniel. He used to think he was a hard case.”
“What does he think now?”
Bud shook his head. “He doesn’t think at all. Something scared the shit out of him.”
“The Black Freighter?”
He shrugged. “Oto was m
aking a lot of dough recently, too much for a normal run. Then he started getting nightmares. Got the shakes so bad he had to stay on shore. Now he drinks so he can sleep. And this was a guy who liked to hurt people.”
“He was working on the Black Freighter?”
Bud shook his head. He didn’t mean no, he just meant the question was out of place. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?” He turned back to the bar, cradling his drink. “Be here tomorrow night. Bring him maybe a hundred bucks.” He sipped. “Don’t come too late or he’ll be passed out already.”
Chapter Seventeen
“What else did he say? He must have said something else.”
Nicky was frantic, practically clawing at me for details. I had refused to say anything in the bar, except, “Let’s go.” Nicky and Anna were so intimidated by the place that they had followed quietly.
But Nicky has always been one of those terrier-like people, filled with frenzied energy clawing to get out. And when we got to the car, he couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Come on, mate, this is inhuman! What’d he say? Where are we going? Give it up, there’s a boy!”
“I know you’re upset,” I told him calmly. “All that work on your South African accent, and you didn’t get to use it.”
“It’s a grayte eksent, too,” he said, shifting slightly from his usual super-charged Australian.
“What is now happening? Are you giving out?” Anna said, speaking for the first time since we’d gone into the place.
“Giving up, love,” Nicky corrected her. “Can’t be, lookit ’im, he’s too happy-lookin’. So what’s up? Come on, eh? Who was that man?”
“His name was Bud,” I said, taking some pity on him, but not too much. I started the car. Nicky scrabbled at the seat belt, too excited to fasten it.
“Oh, well, we know his name, great, problem solved,” Nicky moaned. He finally snapped his seat belt shut. “For the love of God, what the bloody fucking hell did you and Bud talk about?”
“Bud knows somebody who maybe can tell us something,” I said. “For a price. We’re supposed to meet him here tomorrow night.”
“How much is price?” Anna asked.
“He thought $100 would do it.”
“This is very much money for maybe,” she said. “Does he tell the truth, or does he want money only?”
“I won’t know until I talk to him,” I said. I filled them in on the details; the tough sailor named Otoniel who made too much money and now was drinking too much.
“I got the idea from Bud that something scared the hell out of this guy. And I think the fact that it scares Oto scares the hell out of Bud.”
