I pulled a ten out of my wallet and handed it over. As she walked back down the bar to the cash register, my neighbor leaned over to me. “It’s getting close to the end of the month,” he confided in a beery-breathed whisper. “Angie’s real good about carrying me an’ Willy till our checks catch up with us the first of the month, if you know what I mean.”
So Angie wasn’t above running a tab. The practice was most likely illegal, but it was something the two guys at the end of the bar really appreciated.
“You from around here?” I asked.
The man’s loud burst of laughter was punctuated by an equally loud belch. “You hear that, Willy?” he demanded, clapping his buddy on the shoulder.
“Hear what?” Willy asked.
“This fella wants to know if we’re from around here.”
Willy grinned at that, and they both laughed uproariously. Since they thought my question utterly hilarious, I took that to mean they were natives.
Angie returned with my change and laid it on the polished surface of the bar. “Are these guys bothering you?” she asked, giving my two bar mates a searing look.
“No,” I said. “Not at all.”
She raised a warning finger. “You and Willy behave yourselves, Arch,” she said. “You bother any of the other customers and you two are out of here.”
“Yes, ma’am,” a seriously chastened Archie replied. “We’ll be good.”
“Wha’d she say?” Willy asked.
“We got to behave,” Archie shouted.
“Right,” Willy agreed, raising his glass. “Absolutely.”
It seemed unlikely that I would glean any useful information from this pair of doddering old drunks, so I turned hopefully toward my neighbors on the other side. No luck there. The person next to me – someone I had actually thought to be a guy – turned out to be a leather-booted, leather-jacketed babe whose face was almost as well- tanned as the cowhide she wore on the rest of her body. When I glanced in her direction, the man next to her glowered back at me in the mirror. Resigned, I returned to Archie.
“Who owns this place?” I asked.
Archie frowned. “Why’d you want to know?”
I shrugged. “Maybe I’m thinking about making some investments around town,” I offered. “Maybe I’d like to buy it.”
“No way!” Archie glowered. “The Blue Moon’s not for sale.”
“Wha’d he say?” Willy asked. The man must have been stone- deaf. As far as I could tell, that was his only line.
“If you know it’s not for sale, you must be the owner then,” I remarked casually.
“Angie and her husband own it,” Archie allowed, nodding toward the shapely blonde. “Bought it off Bobo Jenkins a couple of months ago, and it’s a good thing, too. Bobo was tired of running it. Can’t blame him there. Workin’ too hard’s not good for you. ‘Sides, I hear he’s thinking about running for mayor. You ask me, he’d do a helluva job. If I ever get a chance, you can bet I’ll vote for him, too.
“Bobo might’ve just closed up the place and walked away. Locked the door and throwed away the key. Lucky for us, Angie come along and saved our bacon. She and that husband of hers offered to buy it off him, and he sold, just like that. The place runs a little irregular now. You can’t always count on it being open.”
“Does Angie’s husband work here, too?” I asked.
Archie sipped his beer and shook his head. “Hacker’s an odd duck. He’s a Brit and a bird-watcher besides. Does something with birds. I’m not sure what. So when he goes out into the boonies to do whatever it is he does, Angie sometimes shuts the place down and goes with him. Who can blame her? They’re newlyweds, after all. Why shouldn’t she? But that’s mostly during the week. Weekends the place is open regular, like it should be.
“It’s like I told my good friend Willy here. So what if we can’t always count on the hours? It’s better than having no Blue Moon at all. Me and Willy’ve been coming here for what, forty years now? I’d hate like hell to see it shut down and boarded up.”
“What?” Willy asked.
“Never mind,” Archie told him. “Just drink your beer. The man’s deaf as a post, you see,” Archie explained unnecessarily to me. “Too many years of working with dynamite in the mines. You ever been in a mine?”
“No,” I said. “I never have.”
“They’ve got theirselves a underground tour over across the way, in case you’re interested,” he suggested. “Takes you right back into the mountain.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I said.
What I really wanted was information about Bobo Jenkins. If I could manage to prime Archie’s pump, I guessed he’d turn out to be a veritable fountain of information, some of which might be useful.
“I hear there’s been some trouble around town the last few days,” I suggested innocently.
Archie took a sip of beer and then slammed his glass onto the bar, splashing beer in every direction. “Boy howdy!” he exclaimed. “If that ain’t the truth! Poor old Bobo. Me and Willy’ve knowed that man for years and years, ever since he come to town and bought this joint. In all that time, he wasn’t never sweet on anybody before that Shelley Baxter woman showed up. They just seemed to click, know what I mean?
“Not that I’m prejudiced or nothing,” he continued, “but I like it when whites stay with whites, blacks stay with blacks, and Mexicans stay with Mexicans. That’s how God Almighty meant for things to work. But there weren’t hardly no black women in town for Bobo to hook up with, so he was sort of a lone wolf. Then she turned up and put a smile on his face.”
If Archie wasn’t prejudiced, then Willy wasn’t deaf, either. I kept my mouth shut and let him talk.
“But now Bobo’s girlfriend, this Shelley, up and died at her place down in Naco. That’s Naco, Arizona, not Naco, Sonora, you see. So what do the cops do? This morning they haul poor ol’ Bobo’s ass into the sheriff’s office for questioning. Like they think maybe he did it. Like maybe he’s responsible for what happened to her. I was telling Angie a little while ago, it’s all so much BS. I didn’t use that word, of course, not in front of the lady. But between you and I, that’s what it is. All bullshit – and knee-deep, too.
“Bobo Jenkins may be what they call a African-American, and strong as a mule, but he’s definitely not the violent type. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Willy and me, we’ve seen him break up some pretty bad fights in this place over the years. Bobo’s so big he could scare shit out of you by just lookin’ at you crooked, but I never saw him hurt nobody – not even when they were raising hell and really deserved it.”
Once Archie got started talking, there was no turning him off, but I was no longer paying attention. I was thinking about a closed-mouthed lady sheriff named Joanna Brady, damn her anyway! All the while she was playing coy with me, her detectives were questioning a suspect. That’s all right. The next time I saw her, I planned to ask her straight out what her investigators had learned in their interview with Bobo Jenkins. And I intended for “next time” to be soon. Now, if at all possible.
Angie had left my change lying on the bar, and so had I. Now I left a dollar tip and pushed the remainder over to Archie.
“Take this,” I said. “You and Willy have one on me. It’ll help tide you over until next month’s checks arrive.”
Archie looked at the money gratefully, as though he’d just won a lotto jackpot. He gave me a heartfelt grin. “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks a lot.”
For a change Willy didn’t bother asking what had been said. He’d seen the money pass along the bar and had figured out on his own what that meant.
“Thanks, fella,” he mumbled, once again raising a glass that still had a few modest dregs of beer in it. “You’re a gentleman,” he said. “A gentleman and a scholar.”
WHEN A DRY-EYED JENNY EMERGED from Dr. Ross’s back office, she was carrying Sadie’s blanket and collar. “Ready?” she asked.
“Which car do you want to ride in?” Butch asked.
“I’ll go with Mom,” Jenny said.
Butch nodded. “You two go on, then,” he said. “I’ll stay here to settle up with Dr. Ross.”
