Vie looked at me without expression for a moment and back at the kid. The other three guys at the table had stood and were looking half ready to come to Long Hair's aid.
'Look at something,' I said to the kid.
'Look at how you're standing. Then look at how he's standing. You see? All you need is a bull's-eye painted on your face. Look at him. See how he's balanced? He looks like he's still leaning on the bar, but see where his hands are? It's the difference between amateurs and professionals. And if you're going to be a tough guy it's a difference you better learn.'
The kid looked at me hard for a minute as if he were trying to focus. He'd been half gassed even before Vie hit him. And, probably, on his best days, he wasn't a thinker.
'You a tough guy?' he said finally. But there was no bite to it.
He was just talking to talk.
'But oh so gentle,' I said.
'Go sit down.'
'Either you guys want to arm wrestle me?' the kid said.
The bartender snorted. Vic's expression didn't change.
'Guy with arms like you? I wouldn't have a chance,' he said.
'Goddamned better believe it,' the kid said.
'Any one of you want to try me, I'll put your arm flat fucking down.'
'I believe you would,' I said.
'Appreciate it if you'd go over and calm your buddies down,' Vie said.
'Keep them in line for me, if you would.'
'Yeah, sure,' the kid said and began to move away from the bar.
'You change your mind on the arm wrestling, anytime. You unnerstand. Anytime you wanna try me… flat fucking on the bar…'
His voice trailed off into some sort of mumble and then silence as he went back to his table, and told his buddies how he'd outfaced Vie over arm wrestling.
'Arm wrestling,' Vie said softly.
'Arm fucking wrestling.'
'So tell me about Phony Tony,' I said.
The bartender moved down the bar to open four Bud long necks for one of the waitresses.
'Always flashed a lotta dough,' Vie said.
'Always come on to the waitresses. Flirt with them, tip them big. But no touching, which was good. I didn't want to have to throw Julius Ventura's son-in-law out on his keister.'
'But you would,' I said.
Vie shrugged.
'Have to, he touches the girls.'
'But he didn't,' I said.
'No. He was pretty much no trouble. Always acted like he was dangerous, let everybody know who his father- in-law was. But he never caused no trouble.'
'Was he dangerous?'
Vie smiled softly.
'The arm wrestler would clean his clock,' Vie said.
'Used to bet on stuff. Be a basketball game on the tube, say. He'd bet who'd score the next basket. What the score would be in one minute, whether a guy would make both free throws, who'd commit the next foul. Crazy! Bet with anyone, guy next to him at the bar, the waitress.' Vie pointed with his chin at the bartender.
'He'd bet Keno whether the next beer order would be Bud or Heineken.'
The room had filled some as people got off work. And the waitresses were hustling beer and bowls of Spanish peanuts to the tables. Four or five guys were at the bar. Most of the customers were men, but there was one table with three women at it. All three were smoking.
'He date any of the waitresses?'
'Yeah, Dixie. She's the one with the red hair, down here, just picking up.'
'Mind if I talk with her?'
'No. I'd just soon you talked in the back room though. People won't think she's standing around gabbing while they're waiting for their drink.'
He gestured around the corner of the bar toward a black door with an opaque frosted glass window in it. There was a hole in the door frame where a doorknob used to be. I pushed it open and was in a storeroom piled high with cases of beer and cases of empties.
There was an old school teachery-looking desk shoved into an open space on one wall under a small window
