The Pellegrino Bar wasn’t exactly a dump. The neighborhood was just good enough to keep it from getting a label like that. It was small, dark, clean, and smelled of beer, even when no one was drinking it. The dark windows were glowing with neon beer signs, one of which for Falstaff flickered in the first stages of death.
Early afternoon. One customer at the bar. None in the four booths to the right. Customer and barkeep looked over at me when I came in. The customer, short, round, and needing a shave, was about sixty. He was wearing a gray cap worn off to the side. He wasn’t trying to be rakish. He looked as if he were about to burp. Both of his plump hands went to the glass of beer in front of him as if he were afraid I was going to snatch it from him.
The bartender was a woman. She was huge, sad of face, and did not look particularly happy to see another customer come in. A voice on the radio said the British had crossed the Odon River after beating back nine Nazi attacks. The bartender changed the station. The Dorsey brothers’ band was halfway through
I went to the bar. The bartender moved slowly in front of me, hands on the bar. She was supposed to say, “What’ll it be?”
But she didn’t. She didn’t say anything. Just glowered at me.
“Pepsi, ice,” I said.
“And?” she asked.
“What makes you think there’s an ‘and’?”
“Three in the afternoon, weekday, you order a Pepsi,” she said.
“Maybe I just came for the quiet surroundings and friendly atmosphere,” I said. “Maybe I’m just thirsty.”
“And maybe I’m standing back here waiting for Hal Wallis to come in and discover me,” she said.
“Cunningham,” I said. “Telephone book says this is his office.”
“Back booth over there,” she said. “Paid five bucks a month to sit there a few hours a week and for me to take messages. I answer the phone ‘Pellegrino.’” If they asked for Cunningham, I let him know or took a message.”
“You’re using the past tense,” I said.
“Because he’s dead,” she said.
“Cops have been here, right?” I asked.
She just looked at me. “One nasty son-of-a-bitch,” was all she said.
“Red hair, bad skin,” I guessed.
“That’s the one.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Okay,” she said, leaning toward me over the bar. “Now I know what game we’re playing. I’ll get your Pepsi. You decide on the going rate for answers.”
She moved down the bar. The pudgy drunk held up his hand for service. She ignored him. He burped loudly. He almost lost his cap.
“You’re not a cop,” she said.
“I’m not a cop,” I agreed, reaching for the Pepsi. In spite of two cubes of ice, it was still warm.
“He left two wooden fruit crates full of stuff,” she said.
“Did the cop look through them?”
“He did.”
“He take them?”
“Nope.”
“I’d like to look through them.”
“Not a problem,” she said, smiling a smile I did not like, a smile that was about to cost Harry Blackstone some money.
“Ten bucks.”
“Forty,” she said.
“Thirty,” I countered.
“I’ve got no time for games,” she said.
I looked at the drunk who was about to fall off his stool. I could see that she had a lot to do. I opened my wallet and counted out forty dollars, all tens. She took them, tucked them into a pocket and said, “The Pepsi’s on me. Come on.”
She went to the end of the bar and pointed at the rear booth, Cunningham’s office. I sat in it with my Pepsi and faced the front door. The dark wooden table was a jumble of rings left by countless glasses and the burn marks of enough cigarettes to kill the population of Moscow, Idaho.
In less than a minute, she came from behind the bar with a crate in her hands. She placed it on the table in front of me and then went back for a second crate. Then she moved behind the bar again, leaving me looking at a full-color picture on the end of the crate of a smiling blonde with frizzy short hair and impossibly white teeth. The blonde was holding a glass of orange juice and above her head were the words, “Sun Drenched Direct From Florida.”
I spent the next hour drinking warm Pepsi, watching the drunk, exchanging glances of less-than-love with the bartender, and discovering something interesting among the letters, notes, candy wrappers, and bills that were the legacy of Robert Cunningham.
I discovered that Cunningham had lots of bills that didn’t look as if they had been paid. I also learned that he couldn’t spell. Examples included: instatution, sirvalence, proseed, cab fair, and naturul.
If there was anything worth taking, Cawelti had probably taken it. But I kept looking. I almost missed it. A scrap of paper torn out of a notebook. It was unwrinkled and might have fallen to the bottom of the pile when Cawelti was going through the contents of the boxes. Cunningham’s handwriting was as bad as his spelling, but I could make it out:
A Thousand and One Nights, Wild, Thursday at eight. Culumbia.
Cunningham had said “Wild on Thursday” to Gwen before he died. Tomorrow was Thursday. I had a pretty good idea of what it meant, but I didn’t have time now to check. I folded the sheet, put it in my wallet, finished my third Pepsi, made a trip to the gents’ and waved good-bye to the barkeep and the drunk, who smiled.
I had a tuxedo to put on, a party to go to, and a magician to protect.
Chapter 11
A number of items are placed on the table. No limit to the number of items. You work with an accomplice who goes to the corner and covers his or her eyes or even goes in another room. The victim points to an object on the table. The accomplice returns. The magician points to each object saying nothing and pointing in the same way. The accomplice correctly identifies the object as the one selected when the magician points to it. Solution: Be sure there are objects of a number of colors, including black. Point to a black item as you go around only if the next item is the correct one. If the victim has chosen a black item, it makes no difference, just so the accomplice knows that the chosen object will be pointed to after the first item the magician points to.
“You look elegant,” Anita said, stepping back.
We were in her apartment, and I was standing in front of her full-length mirror.
She was either blind or being kind.
The stiff in the mirror looked like the uncomfortable bodyguard for a mobster. The tux was black and pressed. The black bow tie had been tied perfectly by Anita. My shoes were shined. My hair was brushed back and glistening with Vitalis. It was my face that gave me away. It was the middle-aged face of an ex-boxer who had taken at least eight or ten too many blows to the face. I had never been a boxer, but I had lost more than my share of battles. My
