school get out, I’d run and play in the water. Sometimes when I do I see a fish and tink to myself, ‘there go a fish.’ Simple as dat, mon. Plain as day, no?”
“But what did you mean about Sandy?”
“Delroy mean what he say. I say here come your woman, then it mean here come your woman.”
I thought I saw a twinkle in Delroy’s eyes. “But you said my woman.”
“Uh huh. Dat’s true.”
“Is there something I should know, Delroy?”
“Yeah, mon. There sure is. Maybe I draw you a map. You and that one,” he tipped his head toward Sandy, “you were meant to be together. It’s simple. Plain as day. Just like the fish, no?” Delroy made a swimming motion in the air with his hand and grinned at me the whole time.
When I glanced over at the table in back I saw Sandy watching me and Delroy. I thought about going over and joining her and the guys, but then someone else walked in the front door and I discovered my evening was far from over.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
In the dim light of the bar I couldn’t immediately tell who it was, but it didn’t take long before I recognized his familiar stride. It had been years since we’d last seen each other, or so I thought at the time. Our house band was playing a tune unfamiliar to me and the bass drum thumped through my chest until it was no longer a drum beat, but an explosion from over a decade ago when our HUMVEE was stopped in the sand and I was out in the dark with only my. 45 and a pair of faulty night vision goggles in territory unknown to a young Lieutenant from the heartland who was being ordered to kill on sight, no questions asked. One of my men, Murton Wheeler, had asked to stop the vehicle so he could relieve himself, and when he did not come back, I went looking for him. I found him about thirty yards from the HUMVEE, sipping on a flask filled with whiskey while simultaneously urinating on the body of a dead Iraqi Republican Guard. When the armor piercing round hit our vehicle, the explosion knocked us both to the ground and the smell of phosphorus hung in the air as the three remaining men inside the troop carrier burned to death before they could escape the twisted wreckage. It was the second time in my life I had almost burned to death. Those thoughts hung in front of my vision until I heard his voice, pulling me back.
“Hey, Jonesy, you alright?” he said. “Hey man, how about a double Jack with a beer back?”
I blinked the vision away and looked at the man in front of me. Murton Wheeler stood at the bar and waited for me to speak or pour him his drink. I took a glass from the shelf under the bar and filled it with tap water and set it on a coaster in front of where he stood and said, “This is on the house. You won’t be drinking here, Murt. Not tonight. Probably not ever. Are we clear on that, soldier?”
He sipped the water, his eyes never leaving mine, then set the glass gently on the bar. “It was a long time ago, Jonesy.”
“Not long enough, Murt. Heard you were in Westville. Assault or something like that, wasn’t it?”
He ignored my question as the jab it was and instead looked back over his shoulder at the front door. When he spoke again, his voice was soft but his eyes were rimmed in anger. “Look, Loot, I’ve got some information you should have. I give you what I think you ought to know, and I’m outta here, Jack.”
“You’re taking liberties you do not have when you call me Loot. Everyone calls me Jonesy. You can call me Sir, or Detective Jones. Are we clear on that?”
Murton snapped to attention, saluted and said, “Yes, Sir.”
I wanted to drop him where he stood, but instead I lowered my voice and said, “Knock that shit off. “What exactly is it you want, Murton?”
But before he could answer, the front door opened again and two men walked in together and scanned the bar, obviously looking for someone. It was by chance I’m sure, but they made a mistake when they looked at the tables and booths before they looked at the bar, and that gave Murton the time he needed as he reached for his glass and lobbed it overhand toward the opposite wall. As a diversion, it was very effective. The glass arched through the air end over end like a poorly punted football and before it landed he placed both hands along the brass railing in front of the bar, swung his legs up and vaulted over the top like a gymnast mounting a pommel horse. When the two men turned toward the sound of the glass shattering against the wall, Murton looked at me, winked and said, “Gotta boogie, Jones man. These boys are a little upset with me right about now. I left your tip under the coaster. Keep your powder dry.” He then picked up a cardboard case of empty beer bottles from the floor in front of the freezer and placed it on his shoulder, blocking the view of his face and walked toward the back of the bar and through the doorway that leads to the kitchen.
If it was a mistake for the men to not look toward the bar when they first entered, my mistake was that I stood completely still and watched Murton walk away. Everyone else in the bar was reacting to the broken glass except me and it didn’t take long before the men realized what had happened. By not reacting to Murton’s diversion I stood out in the crowd in such a way that I may as well have held a neon sign with a flashing arrow that said ‘He went that way.’
It would have been easy for me to turn away and let the two men who were following Murton Wheeler chase him through the doorway and out the back. No, that is not quite right. It should have been easy, but as I get older I’ve come to appreciate the fact that nothing is quite as simple as it may seem. The repressed anger I’ve carried with me toward Murton for the last decade is not only because three of my men died during a battle that should never have been waged, it also comes from the fact had he not gotten out that night, I would not have either. The simple truth is, I owed Murton my life. The three men who died that night are simply the vig I pay on a loan which until now I felt unwilling or even unable to repay.
Make no mistake, the interest I’ve paid over the years was disclosed to me long ago. The analogy is not my own. When I told all this to my therapist, he explained to me that I was acting out against myself as an emotional predatory lender and if I didn’t begin to repay some of the principle by forgiving Murton by forgiving myself, I would be burdened with an emotional debt I might very well carry to an early grave. It took ten sessions to get to that point, and in the end I told him I thought he was full of shit and never went back. But when I saw Murton walk back into my life through the front door of my bar and then almost immediately out the back I began to wonder if perhaps my old therapist may have been right and maybe this might be the time to try and balance the books.
The two men gazed at me for a fraction before they started toward the back. I moved along the length of the bar with my hideaway. 25 caliber semi-auto in my left hand, behind my back and out of sight. It was then that I recognized that they were the same two men who had escorted me back to Samuel Pate’s office earlier today. I held up my right hand as a signal for the two men to stop and said, “Sorry fellas, employees only past this point.”
The three of us stood there like we were having a management meeting, or perhaps like I was simply speaking to a couple of regular customers. “That guy that just left out the back. We need to talk to him.” His accent sounded east Texas, something I hadn’t noticed earlier in the day.
The shorter of the two tried to sidestep me and squeeze past into the kitchen, but I matched his maneuver and kept him in his place. “The band’s really cranking it out tonight, aren’t they?” I said. “I guess you didn’t hear me before. Employees only past this point.”
One of the advantages of owning a bar if you are a police officer is at any given time, the odds are in your favor that at least some small percentage of your patrons are going to be off-duty cops. In addition to my crew, there were about ten other cops in the bar as well. The commotion caused by Murton tossing his glass against the far wall as a diversion had subsided, but I noticed Rosencrantz and Donatti watching me, and when they saw me look their way and then back at the two men trying to get by me, they separated and walked up behind the men from different directions. I slipped my gun into my back pocket and crossed my arms in front of my chest. It was now three on two. Rosencrantz stepped up close behind the two men and said, “How’s it going, Jonesy? Think we could get another pitcher over at our table?”
I looked at him and said, “Right away, Rosie. These guys were just leaving, but they’re having a little trouble distinguishing the front from the back. Help them out, will you?”
The two men turned and looked at Rosencrantz and Donatti, and then back at me. I let them get the last word, which you learn is often the wise thing to do if you work in a bar. “Tell Wheeler to get in touch next time you
