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"Ready when you are, Val."
"Hello the house," Valentine called. "May we come in?" The brilliant sunshine made every crack in the repaired section of wall a black stripe. There were bullet holes in the door frame and around the windows.
"You a warrant-man?" a crackly woman's voice called back.
"No," Valentine said.
"Then you're not welcome here. Be off."
"We're looking for a warrant-man, actually." Valentine heard movement inside, chairs being pushed back from tables, perhaps.
"Who?"
"Hoffman Price."
"Then come in, friend," the voice said.
It smelled like vomit in the big, welcoming room. It took Valentine's eyes a second to adjust. He instinctively stepped out of the door, and Duvalier followed him in.
A mountain of a woman, gray-haired and with a washed-out red halter top, sat on a stool at one end of a chipped bar with an electric fan blowing on the back of her neck, talking to a bearded man wearing what looked like a bathrobe. Valentine looked around what was evidently a bar. Sandbags were piled around the door and windows, and circled the entire bar at least to waist height. The floor was thick with grit, the ceiling with spiderwebs. The furnishings appeared to have been pulled out of boats and cars. Two men in leather and denim and linked chain sat at a far table, biker boots stretched out in opposite directions toward each other like the tails of a yin and yang symbol.
"Good afternoon, Black and Red," the woman with the crackly voice said, horrifying Valentine with her teeth. "I'm Greta. What can I get you?"
Duvalier was examining the wallpaper, to which was glued an assortment of wanted posters, from cheaply printed ten by twenties to full-color photos to what looked like fax paper.
"What does the house recommend?" Valentine asked.
"I like him," Greta said to the man in the bathrobe, then turned back to Valentine. "Polite goes a long way with me. I do a real mint julep."
"You're kidding," Valentine said.
"I shit you not, Black," she said.
He looked at Duvalier and she shrugged. "Two then."
"Being strangers, please put the guns on top of the sandbags there. Take a seat," Greta advised.
They disarmed themselves, but sat next to their weapons.
Greta got up from her stool, revealing a .45 automatic lying on the bar. She tucked it into a leather back-waistband holster and waddled off to a door at the back, next to the far end of the bar.
"You two got someone you're looking to bring in?" the man in the bathrobe asked.
Valentine shrugged. "You're not Price, are you?"
"He ain't allowed in here."
Valentine wondered at that. "Then I'd rather not discuss it."
"Just asking, Black," the man said. "I wouldn't jump your claim. I'm retired, like." He shifted in his seat and revealed a conspicuous lack of underwear.
"Peekaboo," Duvalier said, rolling her eyes at Valentine. He heard a grinding noise from the doorway.
Greta returned with two tall, thin glasses, the outsides slick with moisture. Valentine looked at the drinks as she set them down.
"Ice!" Duvalier exclaimed, putting both hands around the glass.
"Only ice machine for fifty miles," Greta said.
