‘You do know your bars,’ said the bartender. He stroked the worn top affectionately. This one and the mirror and old John Ford up there,’ he said, wiggling a thumb over his shoulder toward the one-eyed bison’s head, ‘came here from one of the finest saloons in the U.S.’
‘Is that a fact,’ said Hatcher.
‘Old Skoohanie was a Texas cowboy -· and one lucky Irishman. One night he wandered into a gambler’s tent in Abilene — when Abilene wasn’t much more than a passing thought — and runs forty bucks to six thousand. Ends up owning the tent, the tables, the bank, the whole megilah. That was the beginning of the Galway Roost.’ He stopped long enough to draw himself half a glass of beer.
‘Which doesn’t explain how it got here,’ said Hatcher.
‘There was this mealy-mouthed little sapenpaw name of Edgar Skoohanie in my outfit in Nam who was always bragging about this bar of his,’ the bartender went on. ‘So I told him if he ever wanted to sell out, let me know. Sure enough, one day I get a call and the voice on the other end of the hook says, “This is Edgar Skoohanie, remember me?” Like anybody with an IQ of more than ten would forget a name like Edgar Skoohanie, right, and I says sure and he says things aren’t going well for the oh Roost and he’s gonna change it into a disco! A fucking
The bartender never spoke in terms of American money, he talked of bahts, one baht being about five cents American; of purples, which were five-hundred baht notes, or browns, which were ten bahts, or greens, which were twenty, or reds, which were a hundred. He paused again, this time to draw Hatcher another beer, then said, ‘What else was there to do but open up the Longhorn?’
‘Bet a good story goes with the bullet hole in that mirror,’ said Hatcher.
‘Not as interesting as the one that goes with that voice of yours,’ the bartender answered.
‘Talked when I should have listened,’ Hatcher growled.
The barkeep responded with a barracks-room laugh. Two gold teeth gleamed from the side of his mouth. A full carat’s worth of diamond twinkled from the center of one of them.
‘I do like a man who can joke about his mistakes,’ he said, sticking out a hand big enough to crush a basketball. ‘Name’s Sweets Wilkie, I own the place.’
‘Hatch,’ Hatcher answered.
As Wilkie and Hatcher talked, two Thai girls entered from a door at the rear. They were beautiful young girls with long black hair that cascaded down their backs almost to their waists. They were dressed in cowgirl miniskirts, cobra-skin cowboy boots and fake pinto pony vests, their budlike breasts holding the vests at bay. Neither of them could have been more than fifteen. They hit Sweets Wilkie from both sides, giggling and wrapping their arms around him and kissing him on both cheeks.
‘This is Jasmine, we call her Jazz, and this is Orchid,’ Wilkie said, obviously enjoying the attention. ‘We been married about a year now.’
‘You and Orchid?’ Hatcher asked. Wilkie looked surprised and said, ‘Hell, both of ‘em.’
‘Both of them!’
‘Been married and divorced six times since I been here and I’m yet to lay out one baht for alimony. I figure this time I’ll double up — maybe I’ll get a little luckier.’
His glittering grin lit up the darkened bar. He swatted the girls on their ample derrieres and they moved on down the bar.
‘Welcome to Tombstone,’ the blond man suddenly mumbled, nodding as though he were about to fall asleep, and continuing to stare into his drink.
‘Meet Johnny Prophett, the official poet laureate of Tombstone,’ Wilkie said.
‘My pleasure,’ said Hatcher.
Prophett looked over his nose at Hatcher, smiled wanly, and held out in Hatcher’s general direction a hand that was cold and lifeless.
‘How many Americans live in Bangkok?’ Hatcher asked.
Prophett stood up unsteadily hopping two or three steps on his right foot. His eyes were beginning to water and he shrugged his shoulders and scratched his arms, and Hatcher realized, seeing him on his feet, that Prophett was rail-thin, almost emaciated. Prophett held his arms out at his sides like an evangelist on a roll. ‘Four, maybe five hundred,’ he said. ‘In all shapes and sizes. Engineers, salesmen, tennis bums, stock racketeers, gamblers, walking wounded, cynics, miscreants, displaced persons, anti-socials. You name it, we are it.’
Wilkie said casually, ‘Just a bunch of relocated Yanks.’
‘God’s fucked up, man,’ Prophett meandered. ‘Supposed to be dead on the far side of the river. Bloody boatman hasn’t figured out what happened. Even a poet has a hard time making any sense outa that one.’
‘Right,’ Wilkie agreed and Hatcher nodded, although neither of them knew what Prophett was talking about. ‘Johnny’s doing a book,’ he said by way of explanation and winked.
‘Bombay and tonic,’ Hatcher said to Wilkie.
Wilkie took the glass, put in a handful of ice cubes, and filled it with soda water.
As Prophett rambled on, a man came from behind the beads, shaking his hands as though they were cramped. He was a bizarre sight a husky man pushing six feet, walking with a little strut, his shoulders rocking back and forth. He wore jeans and a white sleeveless T-shirt. The skull imprinted on the front had a rose in its bony teeth and
