AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His green eyes widened a moment, looked boldly at me from under the brim of the black fedora, then narrowed and crinkled again. He began drying glasses with a towel, his face turned at an oblique angle.
"It wasn't bad. I was outdoors a lot, lots of fresh air, gave me a chance to get in shape. I like farm work. I grew up on one," he said. "Hey, have another 7-Up. You're impressive, man. A sharp guy like you should have a 7-Up on the house."
"You drink it for me," I said, and picked up my glass and walked to the back of the bar. I watched him light a cigarette, smoke only a few puffs off it, then flip it angrily through the front door onto the tourist-filled sidewalk.
She came in a half hour later, dressed in sandals, blue jeans low on her hips, and a tank top that exposed her flat, tanned stomach. Unlike most of the strippers, she wore her black hair cut short, like a 1940 schoolgirl's. And in spite of all the booze, coke, and speed that went into her body, she was still good to look at.
"Wow, they put the first team back on the street," she said, and smiled. "How you doing, Streak? I'd heard you were remarried and back on the bayou, selling worms and all that jazz."
"That's right. I'm just a tourist now."
"You really hung it up for good, huh? That must take guts, I mean just to boogie on out of it one day and do something weird like sell worms to people. What'd you say, 'Sayonara, crime-stoppers, keep your guns in your pants'?"
"Something like that."
"Hey, Jerry, does it look like we got AIDS down here? It's glug-glug time for mommy."
"I'm trying to find out something about a guy," I said.
"I'm not exactly an information center, Streak. Didn't you ever want to touch up that white spot in your hair? You've got the blackest hair I've ever seen in a man, except for that white patch." She touched the side of my head with her fingers.
"This guy had a green and red snake tattooed on his chest. I think he probably came in here."
"They pay to see me take off my clothes. It's not the other way around. Unless you mean something else."
"I'm talking about a big, dark guy with a head the size of a watermelon. The tattoo was just above the nipple. If you saw it, you wouldn't forget it."
"Why's that?" She lit a cigarette and kept her eyes on the vodka collins that Jerry was mixing for her down the bar.
"There was a tattoo artist in Bring-Cash Alley in Saigon who used the same dark green and red ink. His work was famous in the Orient. He was in Hong Kong for years. British sailors all over the world have his work on them."
"Why would I get to see it?"
"Listen, Robin, I was always your friend. I never judged what you did. Cut the bullshit."
"Oh, that's what it is, huh?" She took the collins glass from Jerry's hand and drank from it. Her mouth looked wet and red and cold when she set the glass down. "I don't do the other stuff anymore. I don't have to. I work this place six months, then I have two gigs in Fort Lauderdale for the winter. Ask yo
ur pals in vice."
"They're not my pals. They hung me out to dry. When I was suspended I found out what real solitude was all about."
"I wish you had come around. I could have really gone for you, Dave."
"Maybe I wish I had."
"Come on, I can see you hooked up with a broad that whips out her jugs every night for a roomful of middle-aged titty-babies. Hey, Jerry, can you take it out of slow motion?"
He took away her glass and refilled it with vodka and mix, but didn't bother to put fresh ice or an orange slice in it.
"You're always a class guy," she said to him.
"What can I say, it's a gift," he said, and went back down the bar and began loading beer bottles in the cooler. He turned his face from side to side each time he placed a bottle in the cooler in case one of them should explode.
"I gotta get out of this place. It gets crazier all the time," she said. "If you think his burner's turned off, you ought to meet his mom. She owns this dump and the souvenir shop next door. She's got hair like a Roto-Rooter brush, you know, the kind they run through sewer pipes. Except she thinks she's an opera star. She wears muumuu dresses and glass jewelry hanging all over her, and in the morning she puts a boom-box on the bar and she and him scrub out the toilets and sing opera together like somebody stuck them in the butt with a hayfork."
"Robin, I know this tattooed man was in here. I really need you to help me."
She flicked her cigarette ashes into the ashtray and didn't answer.
