I wondered if it was the man who had threatened to put me in the river.
I went over to Armstrong's and took my usual table. The place was crowded for a Monday. Most of the faces were familiar. I had bourbon and coffee, and the third time around I caught a glimpse of a face that looked familiar in an unfamiliar way. On her next circuit of the tables, I crooked a finger at Trina. She came over to me with her eyebrows up, and the expression accented the feline cast to her features.
'Don't turn around,' I said. 'At the bar in front, right between Gordie and the guy in the denim jacket.'
'What about him?'
'Probably nothing. Not right away, but in a couple of minutes, why don't you walk past him and get a look at him?'
'And then what, Cap'n?'
'Then report back to Mission Control.'
'Aye-aye, sir.'
I kept my eyes facing toward the door but concentrated on what I could see of him at the periphery of my vision, and it wasn't my imagination. He did keep glancing my way. It was hard to gauge his height, because he was sitting down, but he looked almost tall enough to play basketball. He had an outdoor face and modishly long sand- colored hair. I couldn't make out his features very well—he was the length of the room away from me—but I got an impression of cool, competent toughness.
Trina drifted back with a drink I hadn't gotten around to ordering.
'Camouflage,' she said, setting it before me. 'I have given him the old once-over.
What did he do?'
'Nothing that I know of. Have you seen him before?'
'I don't think so. In fact, I'm sure I haven't, because I would remember him.'
'Why?'
'He tends to stand out in a crowd. You know who he looks like? The Marlboro man.'
'From the commercials? Didn't they use more than one guy?'
'Sure. He looks like all of them. You know, high rawhide boots and a wide-brimmed hat and smelling of horseshit, and the tattoo on his hand. He's not wearing boots or a hat, and he doesn't have the tattoo, but it's the same image.
Don't ask me if he smells of horseshit. I didn't get close enough to tell.'
'I wasn't going to ask.'
'What's the story?'
'I'm not sure there is one. I think I saw him a little while ago in Polly's.'
'Maybe he's making the rounds.'
'Uh-huh. Same rounds I'm making.'
'So?'
I shrugged. 'Probably nothing. Thanks for the surveillance work, away.'
'Do I get a badge?'
'And a decoder ring.'
'Neat,' she said.
I waited him out. He was definitely paying attention to me. I couldn't tell whether he knew I was taking an interest in him as well. I didn't want to look straight at him.
He could have tagged me from Polly's. I wasn't sure I'd seen him there, just felt I'd noticed him somewhere or other. If he'd picked me up at Polly's, then it wasn't hard to tie him to Beverly Ethridge; she could have set up the date in the first place in order to put a tag on me. But even if he had been at Polly's, that didn't prove anything; he could have picked me up earlier and tailed me there. I hadn't been making myself hard to find. Everybody knew where I lived, and I'd spent the whole day in the neighborhood.
It was probably around nine thirty when I noticed him, maybe closer to ten.
It was almost eleven when he packed it in and left. I had decided he was going to leave before I did, and I would have sat there until Billie closed the place if necessary. It didn't take that long, and I hadn't thought it would. The Marlboro man didn't look like the sort who enjoyed biding his time in aNinth Avenue gin mill, even as congenial a gin mill as Armstrong's. He was too active and western and outdoorsy, and by eleven o'clock he had mounted his horse and ridden off into the sunset.
A few minutes after he left, Trina came over and sat down across from me.
She was still on duty, so I couldn't buy her a drink. 'I have more to report,' she said. 'Billie has never seen him before. He hopes he never sees him again, he says, because he does not like to serve alcoholic beverages to men with eyes like that.'
'Eyes like what?'
'He did not go into detail. You could probably ask him. What else? Oh, yes.
He ordered beer. Two of them, in about as many hours. Wurzburger dark, if you care.'
'Not awfully.'
