The Barkeep

by William Lashner

  “That’s why you’re such a popular gal among the rank and file,” said Scott.

  “Popularity is for prom queens,” said Mia. “Do you see a tiara on my head? They do what I tell them and we all get a stat. That’s the way it’s been from the beginning.”

  “Seeing you in action makes me so happy they transferred my ass to Missing Persons.”

  “I didn’t know you liked your new post so much,” said Mia.

  “It’s grand.”

  “Too bad, then. I’m getting you assigned to me for the next couple of weeks.”

  “Shit,” said Scott slowly.

  “It’s about time you saddled up again, you old fraud.”

  “What the hell’s flown up your butt, anyway?”

  “I think this guy was axed.”

  “You’re hallucinating.”

  “You’re probably right,” said Mia Dalton as she stared at the dead body of Timmy Flynn. But even as she said it, she didn’t believe it for a second. Flynn was murdered in the coldest of blood, and it had everything to do with Mackenzie Chase. This was the moment, this was a gift. One way or the other, this time, now, she was going to put all those doubts about the Chase case to rest. And sadly, she already sensed where it all would lead.

  Justin, Justin, Justin, she said to herself. What the hell have you done?

  7.

  LA BOMBA

  Zenzibar was an austere, windowless room on the bottom floor of a brownstone office building. You stepped down a half flight from street level, pulled opened the solid black door, and entered a classic izakaya, or Japanese pub, with a low wooden ceiling and a mural of koi on the scuffed walls. But when Marson bought the place, he added burgers and wings to the menu, Guinness on draft, a jukebox of classic rock, Monday Quizzo and Wednesday karaoke. With its original theme completely muddled, it had turned into your basic neighborhood dive, only with cleaner lines and backlit liquor shelves that made the bottles glow in all their unreal colors.

  Like every bar in the city, Zenzibar had waxed and waned in popularity over the years, but the latest wane had been long and deep. Zenzibar became known as overpriced and undersexed, the perfect lounge in which to be alone with your cocktail and your thoughts, and Marson spent nights rechecking the receipts and deciding which bills to pay. But then Justin Chase, attracted by the bar’s name more than anything else, had drifted in off the street and asked for a job. Zenzibar was still a neighborhood joint, but now it was a busy one. A few mentions in the papers, some choice reviews on a handful of popular blogs, and Justin behind the bar had brought in the hordes. Marson, barely cracking a smile, had immediately upped the drink prices. Each night he stationed himself at the far end of the bar, running checks and filling the waitstaff’s orders, while Justin worked the wood, serving a diverse crowd of hipsters and suits, posh girls, and college kids, and his own crop of regulars.

  “Where were you last night?” said Lee, sitting on her usual stool in the middle of the bar.

  “Something came up,” said Justin as he washed a stack of pints one by one.

  “We missed you,” she said. Lee, who drank Cosmos, was tall and way too glamorous for Zenzibar. Tonight the top of her dress dipped well below the start of her cleavage, which meant she had changed out of her business attire before stopping at the bar. She was either dolling up for her night of drinking or for Justin, and either way she was headed for regret. “Still, I hoped you might call. I waited up all night.”

  “You weren’t staying up for me, you have insomnia.”

  “True, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t have called.”

  “And then what?” said Justin.

  “Yes,” she said. “You’re right. What was I thinking?”

  “Lee?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that I’ve been so tired lately.”

  “You should go home and try to get some sleep.”

  “It’s the trying that’s making me so tired.”

  “I think it’s finally over,” said Larry, from the stool next to Lee. Larry, who drank draught Yuengling by the pint, was huge and bald, with tattoos up and down both arms and on his neck. He worked as a trainer at a gym on Twelfth Street, and would often frighten his clients into that extra rep, but his heart was as tender as his body was ripped. As far as Justin could tell, that was his problem right there, which meant that Justin had spent untold hours pretending to listen to Larry’s romantic predicaments. “The long distance finally killed it,” said Larry. “I mean, I’m kidding myself here, aren’t I?”

  Justin didn’t answer because Larry didn’t want an answer.

  “Why would I even want another chance to have my heart ripped out? I’m ready to move on, finally. I mean it’s been six months without a word.”

  “That is a long time,” said Justin, trying to be helpful and realizing his mistake right away.

  “You think so?” said Larry, his face suddenly suffused with hope. “Really? Because Quentin said he needed a break. Do you think six months is a long enough break? Should I give him a call?”

  “Hey, Justin,” said a kid stepping up to the wood with a book-sized package wrapped in brown paper, “could you hold this behind the bar for me?”

  “No,” said Justin.

  “Dude, come on. I don’t want to have to be lugging it around while I mingle, know what I mean?”

  “The coatrack’s next to the men’s room.”

  “But then I’d have to keep my eye on it.”

  “You care if you lose it?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Well, I don’t. But if I take it from you, suddenly I’m the one who has to keep his eye on it. What’s in it anyway?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “Then it will be safe enough on the rack.”

  “Dude.”

  “It’s a rule. Nothing behind the bar. So what are you having?”

  “A bottle of Rock.”

  “Coming up.”

  “What do you recommend to put me to sleep?” said Lee.

  “Warm milk?” said Justin.

  “How about another Cosmo instead?”

  “But I know he’s thinking about me,” said Larry. “Because I’m thinking about him. Pittsburgh might be three hundred miles away, but the emotions are flying back and forth through the ether.”

  “Is that the way it works?” said Lee.

  “Sure, why not?”

  “Because it seems to me that the more I think about them, the less they think about me.”

  “That’s because you’re too good-looking,” said Larry.

  “What does that have to do with it?”

  “The most beautiful are the most forgettable, that’s just the way it is. Now Quentin is just ugly enough to be memorable. And I know he still cares, because I can feel it. I know he still loves me, he just doesn’t know how to tell me.”

  “Buy him a fucking cell phone,” said Lee.

  “Hey guys, what’s shaking?” said Cody, bellying up to the bar in a loose bowling shirt. He was short and wiry, with an unkempt Afro and the nervous face of a ferret, always glancing side to side, whether for predators or prey it was hard to tell. A manila envelope in his hand, he took the stool on the other side of Larry. Cody, who liked his drinks sweet, was an operator of sorts, although of exactly what sort was hard to tell. He was on a first-name basis with staid corporate lawyers and gold-toothed North Philly bookies, and it wasn’t clear if he flirted with the line or just ignored it completely. The only certain thing was that he was a very bad gambler.

  “You look cheery,” said Lee.

  “I caught a piece of information today that I intend to parlay into mucho dinero, my amigos. When I stepped out the door this morning, I was wondering how I was going to pay the rent, and now I’m thinking of booking a cruise.”

  “Where to?” said Lee.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking Paraguay. Don’t know anything about the place, but I like the sound of it. Paraguay.”

 
“That would be a hell of a cruise,” said Justin. “What are you having, Cody?”

  “Surprise me. Something new and cruisy, fresh and fruity.”

  “Have you met Larry?” said Lee.

  “Hold this back there, would you?” said Cody, sliding the envelope to Justin.

  Without saying a word, Justin smoothly snatched the envelope and dropped it into a drawer. Then he started preparing Cody his drink.

  Justin’s following as a barkeep was surprisingly loyal. Whenever Justin changed jobs, and he changed jobs often, applying his philosophy of drift to all facets of his life, his following followed. There wouldn’t be any announcement on the Internet or a flyer posted on a tree. One day Justin would be there behind the bar, mixing drinks and raising his eyebrow in feigned interest while the pub owner smiled contentedly at his suddenly burgeoning business, and the next night he’d be gone. And then, a few weeks later, word would get out that Justin had reappeared, and slowly much of the crowd from the first bar would slip over to the second.

  It wasn’t that Justin prepared brilliant drinks that no one else could match. His drinks were solid, yes, and his repertoire wide—Justin could whip up a Sazerac or a New-Fashioned as tasty as any in the city—but there were dozens of inventive mixologists plying their trade in the city who used artisanal spirits, house-made bitters, and complex recipes to craft exquisite jewellike drinks that Justin didn’t care to try to match. And it wasn’t that Justin was a brilliant conversationalist who befriended his customers. Justin made it clear to all that as a professional bartender he was decidedly not your friend. Instead there was a core group that followed him from place to place, almost as a sport. And once this group switched, so did many others, a popular pub crawl taking place in slow motion. And at the head of Justin’s core group were Cody and Larry and Lee.

  “So what about tonight?” said Lee.

  Justin thought about it as he rubbed the rim of a cocktail glass with a lime before dipping the rim onto a small plate of sugar, leaving a narrow white band.

  He had spent much of the morning on the tatami mats, recovering from the trauma of Birdie Grackle, with his mantra and his book. Be not terrified. Be not awed. Know it to be the embodiment of thine own intellect. After a day of meditation, he had reduced Birdie Grackle to a meaningless mote floating in the depths of his consciousness. And Justin had come up with a simple explanation for the turtle: it was a fake. The missing piece of turtle jewelry had been mentioned in the media reports of the murder. It wasn’t much of a trick to get such a brooch made and aged especially for Birdie’s little con. Hell if Justin could tell if it was the original; he hadn’t really looked at the thing in the fifteen years after he bought it in that antique store on Pine Street. For his own venal reasons, Birdie Grackle had been trying to rope Justin into stepping into the past, but Justin was going to have none of it. He wasn’t seeking remembrance and reconciliation, he wasn’t seeking to revisit the traumas of his youth when he was still ruled by the illusion of ambition. Instead he was taking the only true path this world allowed, to lose himself and his petty troubles in the enormity of the void. And he had found that one of the best places to lose himself was in Lee’s bed.

  “Tonight sounds good,” he said to her as he sliced into the back of another wedge of lime and perched it on the tip of the glass like a half-moon.

  When he looked up and saw the brightness of Lee’s smile and the expectation in her eyes, he had doubts. There was an inequality to their relationship that he didn’t like, but still, it wasn’t like he hadn’t been clear about where they stood.

  “So where were you last night, Justin?” said Larry. “Hot date?”

  Lee looked at Larry and then back at Justin.

  “Sort of,” said Justin as he took out his tin, added two long splashes of juice, first orange and then pineapple. “If a geriatric basket case with false teeth counts.”

  Into the shaker went a hot shot of tequila and a splash of Cointreau. Justin dumped in some ice, capped the lid, lifted the tin to a precise angle, and went at it. He didn’t dance when he shook his drinks, or spin the shaker like a six-shooter, or in any way make a spectacle of himself. Plenty of bartenders tried to put on a show; Justin was simply preparing a drink. After enough time had passed to mix and cool and create the perfect light froth, he unscrewed the top and, using it as a strainer for the ice, filled the glass with the pale-orange cocktail.

  “That almost looks good enough to drink,” said Cody.

  “It’s not done,” said Justin as he grabbed a bottle of grenadine he had made in his kitchen and put in two quick dashes that wound their way like bright red scarves down to the bottom of the glass.

  “Psychedelic,” said Larry as Justin slid it forward.

  “La Bomba,” said Justin.

  Cody picked up the glass by the stem, his pinky out for effect, and took a sip. “Not half-bad.”

  “Maybe I’ll have one, too, instead of the Cosmo,” said Lee. “It looks so festive and it suddenly fits my mood.”

  “Coming right up,” said Justin.

  As he was finishing Lee’s drink, he caught sight of a ghost entering the front door. He blinked at the ghost until it resolved into the figure of a middle-aged man with a blond flattop, and Justin’s throat closed in on him with panic. The panic was a surprise, and a disappointment, seeing as it was the second time in two nights that his emotions had risen unbidden to throttle his neck. But you couldn’t say that the panic was unwarranted, seeing that the last time Justin had seen this selfsame man, four and a half years ago, the man had threatened to shoot a hole through Justin’s forehead. And he’d had a gun in his hand to back up the threat.

  “Here you go,” said Justin distractedly, watching the man step up to the bar even as Justin pushed the drink toward Lee. “Enjoy.”

  Lee followed Justin’s worried gaze. “Do you know him?”

  “Not really,” said Justin. “He’s just my brother.”

  8.

  BLOODY URINE

  Frank was older than Justin remembered, and heavier, jowlier, but that might have said more about the remembering than about any deterioration on Frank’s part. In Justin’s mind, his older brother remained the high-school hero who seemed to know the secrets to everything—to life, love, scoring touchdowns, scoring the best marijuana, everything important—rather than the tired middle-aged man who was now leaning on the bar.

  Justin wondered if Frank had maybe unwittingly stumbled in simply for a drink, but no, he turned to Justin and stared without a smile.

  Justin grabbed the bar rag for protection and headed over, wiping the bar as if wiping out the past.

  “So you’ve returned,” said Frank, his voice surprisingly soft. In Justin’s memory, there was always a load of bluster in Frank, inherited directly from their father, like the blue of Frank’s eyes and the pug of his nose.

  “I’m like the herpes virus, I always come back,” said Justin. “What can I get you to drink?”

  Frank surveyed the bottles behind Justin as if he were choosing a new car. “Wine maybe?”

  “Wine? Such a sophisticate you’ve become.”

  “Cindy took me out to Napa last year.”

  “I told you that woman would ruin you. We have a shitty red, a shitty white, or a shitty rosé, although you would think the vineyard would come up with better names. Maybe something like Cheap and Nasty, or Bloody Urine.”

  “Bloody Urine sounds good.”

  “Coming right up.” As he poured the blush into a long-stemmed glass, he said, “How did you find me?”

  “Jarmusch saw you in here a couple weeks ago.”

  “I thought that was him, but the son of a bitch didn’t say hello and then he stiffed me on the tip.”

  “Jarmusch always was an asshole. When did you get back in town?”

  “About half a year ago. I tried a few other places, the desert, the coast, but it all seemed the same. I’ve been working at staring down my demons, and this seemed to be the pl
ace to do it.”

  “And now here I am. So how’d you end up tending bar?”

  Justin rubbed a spill of condensation off the counter. “I picked it up in Reno.”

  “I wasn’t asking about your STD.”

  “That I picked up in Big Sur.”

  Frank leaned both elbows on the bar, took a sip of the wine, winced. “Bloody Urine fits.” He took a bigger gulp. “You are such an asshole.”

  “I know.”

  “You should have called.”

  “The last time we got together you threatened to shoot me.”

  “That was just a little misunderstanding.”

  “You were pointing a revolver at my face.”

  “Okay, maybe I was. But I’ve been working through my anger, working through the way I’ve always felt about you. Did you know that when Mom told me she was having another baby, I broke out into tears?”

  “If she had told me I was being born, I would have broken out into tears myself.”

  “I guess I resented you from the first, and that colored everything after. And it didn’t help that you were the perfect little boy, the honor-roll kid, Mom’s favorite. And then there you were banging that Carla Jane, who I had a crush on.”

  “Carla Jane DeAngelo. I wonder what happened to her. Maybe I should give her a call.”

  “She married Jarmusch.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “But I’ve realized now that most of the problems with us were my fault. Not all of them, of course—you were an insufferable little bastard—but still. And, believe it or not, I’ve missed you.”

  “You must have a hell of a therapist.”

  “It’s not a therapist,” said Frank. “It’s Dad.”

  The reference to Justin’s father hit Justin like a mud ball to the jaw. He turned his head away from his brother as if from the blow.

  “I visit him every week,” said Frank. “We talk. He’s been really helpful. And he wants you to know he forgives you.”

  “I don’t need his forgiveness.”

  “And yet he still has given it to you as a gift.”

  “Tell the bastard he can have it back.”

  Justin took his rag and went to the far end of the bar and let the orders wash over him. He poured a beer with too much head, made a Belvedere Dry Martini that was supposed to be a Grey Goose Dirty, and botched a Long Island Tea when he grabbed all the wrong bottles and topped it off with tonic. When he broke a glass in the ice well, he stopped himself, took a step back, took a deep breath. Usually the work was like a cleansing stream, but somehow having his brother at the other end of the bar mucked everything.