W is for Wasted (Kinsey Millhone 23)

“You have a plan?”

“I’m hoping I can talk Pete’s wife into letting us have a look at his accounts. Meanwhile, what’s on your plate?”

“I have to get the Mustang over to the service station. Some asshole drove a roofing nail into my sidewall tire,” I said. “What about you?”

“I thought I’d pay Con Dolan a visit and see what he knows. Maybe the cops have a suspect in sight, or one already in jail. If so, I’ll quit worrying the job was in any way linked to his departure from the planet Earth.”

“You know where Con lives?”

“I do and it shouldn’t take me long. After that, if you’re free, I’ll treat you to dinner at Emile’s.”

“Sounds good. You want me to check with Henry?”

“We’ll save that for another occasion.”

“How long will you be here?”

“Don’t know yet,” he said.

After breakfast, we reclaimed our respective vehicles from the parking valet and then he set off for Con Dolan’s house while I continued on to the nearest gas station, where I dropped off my tire. The service bays were closed, but the two mechanics would be in Monday morning, and the fellow manning the pumps said he’d have one of them get on it first thing. He’d call when the tire had been fixed and was ready to be picked up. In the interim, the spare tire, while not optimal, was sufficient to get me around.

That issue out of the way, the job I assigned myself was to round up Dandy and Pearl, who by all accounts were using Felix’s precarious medical state as one more excuse to misbehave. I was reasonably certain the sports bar where they played darts on weekends was one called the Dugout I’d seen on Milagro, a block and a half past the minimart where I’d bought the three packs of cigarettes a lifetime ago.

I found street parking around the corner from the Dugout and hoofed my way back. A judiciously placed waste container had done double duty as a trash can and as a barf receptacle for a patron who’d almost managed to reach it.

The place was open, of course. Ten in the morning on a Sunday was the same as church to some folks. As this was the Pacific time zone, football games being broadcast from the Midwest and the East Coast would soon be underway. The bar itself looked like every other sports bar you’ve ever seen. Booths, free-standing tables and chairs, six big-screen television sets mounted at intervals, each tuned to a different sporting event. The bar itself extended the length of the room on the left-hand side, with stools lined up smartly, most of them occupied. A second room was furnished with foosball tables and pool tables. I caught a glimpse at the rear of a series of dartboards, but no one was throwing at that hour. Twelve men at the bar turned to look at me as I walked in and then went back to their drinks.

The bartender ambled in my direction. He was a middle-aged man, short and stocky, wearing chinos and a vintage jersey of some vague hockey-like sort. He placed a cocktail napkin on the bar in front of me. I said, “I’m looking for Pearl.”

“Too late. Her and Dandy came in yesterday, kicking up a fuss. Now they’re eighty-sixed.”

Being eighty-sixed was the drunkard’s equivalent of being barred for life, though most bar owners would eventually relent.

“You know where they went?”

“Shape they were in, it wasn’t Harbor House. Curfew’s at seven. Last I saw ’em it was two A.M.”

“They were here all that time?”

“They went out for a while and then came back in. Spreading the joy, I guess.”

“What kind of trouble did they make?”

Mockingly, he put a hand to his chin. He twiddled his fingers and looked skyward, as though trying to remember and calculate. “Well, let’s see. Second time they showed up, they started knocking back shots. Dandy’s not a maudlin drunk like she is, but he gets in everyone’s face. He’s a guy who wants to engage in long, rambling chats. Folks don’t want to deal with that. The two of ’em tried throwing darts but neither one could see straight. Pearl fell over backward and busted up a chair and then he weighed in and broke a second one for good luck. She got sick and then he fell down. I should have called the cops at that point, but I got too big a heart.”

“I heard they were on a bender.”

“I can testify to that. Here’s the deal: I like Pearl. I wish her the best and I mean that. Who knows what put me where I am and put her on the street? Call it the Fickle Finger of Fate, but she’s wanking on about how everything’s so unfair. I got no patience for that. Like I said to her, I didn’t invent the game and I didn’t make the rules. Maybe it all stinks and I’m sorry as hell, but I got a bar to run.”