showed me some teeth. “Got me a new soldier boy, Nicky.”
“Why don’t you take off, then, take a hot bath, get ready. I’ll close up.”
She smiled and straightened her posture. “You mean it?”
“Go on, get out of here.”
Mai untied her tip apron dexterously and tossed it behind the register. She kissed me on the cheek, yelled good-bye into the kitchen, and skipped out the front door. I followed her, locked up, and walked back in.
I slid an old wave mix-Squeeze, Graham Parker, and Costello-into the o-intotape deck. I listened to that while I finished restocking the cooler. When I was done I wiped down the bar, drained the sinks, and laid the green bar netting out in the service area to dry. I put most of the cash in a metal box and placed it underneath the floorboards, and left the register drawer open with a few ones and a five in the till. Then I grabbed an empty shot glass, the bottle of Grand-Dad off the call shelf, and a fresh Bud, and set them all up on the bar next to a clean ashtray. I placed the deck of Camels and a pack of matches beside the ashtray, had a seat, and settled in.
Darnell came out of the kitchen an hour later, tucking the tails of his beige shirt into his work pants as he walked. He stood next to me, leaned one foot on the rail, and unwound his long arms, resting them on the bar. I finished my fourth shot of bourbon and poured another to the lip of the glass.
“Private party?” Darnell said.
“Uh-uh.”
“Mind if I hang?”
I gestured toward the empty stool to my right. “Have a seat.”
Darnell sat and picked up my bottle of beer. He looked at the label, studied it, and placed the bottle back with the shot glass. I cupped my hand around both, a low, even tone encircling my head, entering my ears.
Darnell said, “You look pretty far away, man.”
“I guess I am.”
“Trouble with the ladies?”
I concentrated, looking at myself in the bar mirror. I had been thinking about Jackie at the beginning of the night, and then Billy Goodrich. But afterward my thoughts had gone much further back, long before the day I had met Billy on the bench in Sligo Creek Park. More skeletons, come to life.
“No,” I said. “I was thinking about this Greek boy I knew way back. A kid named Dimitri.”
“Never heard you mention him.”
“He’s been gone,” I said, “a long time.” I had a drink of bourbon, rolled it around the glass, and followed it with another swallow. I chased that with beer and rested the bottle on the bar, keeping my fingers on the neck. Costello’s beautiful country import, “Shoes without Heels,” flowed through the speakers.
Darnell said, “Talk about it, man.”
I looked into my shot glass. “I met this kid Dimitri, playing basketball in the church league, when I was seventeen. He was from Highlandtown-Greektown-up in Baltimore. We came from different places, but our friendship clicked for some reason, real fast. We started hanging out together, I’d drive up to Baltimore to see him, he’d take the bus to D.C. This kid was tough, big shoulders, but he had this smile… He had a lot of life, you know what I’m saying?” Darnell nodded, watching my eyes in the mirror. “That summer, we used to crank up J. Geils’s Bloodshot, dance out front of his row house, the tape deck set up right on his stoop. So when Geils came to the Baltimore Civic Center, you know we were the first ones with tickets, the first o, the fines at the show.” I paused. “Dimitri was wearing this hat that night, sort of like a Panama hat, but gangster style. And J. Geils came on-this was the Ladies Invited tour, they opened with the first track off the LP, ‘The Lady Makes Demands’-and turned the place out.” I poured another inch of Grand-Dad into the shot glass, downed it, and exhaled. The glass left a ring of water on the mahogany bar. “Somehow I lost Dimitri in the crowd. But later, from my seat above, I recognized him by his hat, pushing his way up to the front of the stage. That show was bumpin’, man.” I paused, picturing the crowd, girls in halter tops, a cloud of marijuana hovering in the arena. “Anyway, when Dimitri finally came back to the seats, he wasn’t wearing the hat-when I asked him where it was, he said he had handed it to Peter Wolf, on the stage. I told him he was full of shit, and Dimitri didn’t argue about it-that wasn’t his style. He just smiled.”
Darnell said, “What happened to that boy?”
I moved my face around with my hand and pushed hair away from my eyes. “A couple weeks later he got into a car with a couple of Polish boys from the neighborhood. He didn’t know the car was stolen. They were driving down the Patterson Parkway, and a cop made the car, and the driver tried to outrun the cop. He flipped it doing seventy. Dimitri went through the windshield. He was in a coma for a week, and then he died. The boys who stole the car walked away with scratches.”
Darnell said, “You don’t need to be thinkin’ about that tonight, Nick.”
“Listen”-I smiled and shook my head-“that’s not the end of the story. Six months later I pick up an issue of Creem magazine, off the newsstand. Inside, there’s a story on the J. Geils Band, and on the facing page there’s a photograph of Peter Wolf. He’s wearing Dimitri’s hat, Darnell. And the caption underneath says, ‘Lead singer Peter Wolf wears a hat given to him by a fan at a Baltimore concert.’”
“That must’ve tripped you out.”
I had a sip of bourbon, put it down, and drank deeply of the beer. “Dimitri went out like a fuckin’ champ.”
Darnell frowned. “You don’t believe that, Nick.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. “Dimitri checked out at the top of his game. The way everybody should.” I lit a cigarette, blew smoke over the bar, and let it settle. “He never had to watch himself get old in the mirror. He never had to hold a fucking gun on his friends.”
Darnell looked at the drink in front of me and straight back in my eyes. “Man, you’re the one that’s wrong. That shit you’re drinkin, it’s got you all twisted up inside.” He put a hand to my arm. “I’ll tell you what that boy never got to do. He never got to walk his woman down the aisle. He never got to hold his baby up to the sky. He never got a chance to taste the good or the bad. You better see that, man. If you don’t, you’re lost.”
I reached for my drink. Darnell pushed the glass away, out of my reach.
“I’m all right,” I said.
“I’m drivin’ you home.”
“Let me sit here for a little bit.”
“I’m drivin’ you home,” Darnell said. “Come on.”
I steadied myself, my hand on the bar. “I’m all right.”
“Let’s go, man.”
I focused on Darnell’s eyes. “You lock the place up. Okay?”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said, getting under my arm.
We walked together to the front door. A cool blue light burned behind us in the room, and smoke rose off the ashtray on the bar.
I stood in the shower and slept on my feet. The water temperature fell, and when it did, the coolness of it woke me. I exited the stall, dried off, combed out my hair, and dressed in a black sweatshirt and jeans. My cat followed me into the kitchen, circling my feet as I brewed a cup of coffee.
I took the coffee out into the living room and had a seat on the couch, resting the cup on the couch’s arm. I sat there and drank the coffee, stroking the cat on my lap. I did that for a while, and then the phone rang. The cat jumped off as I picked the phone up from the floor and placed it in my lap. I put the receiver to my ear.
“Hello.”
“Stefanos?” It was a woman’s voice, unidentifiable but familiar.
“Yes.”
“You never called me.”
“Who is this?”
“A fan,” she said.
I thought about that, and I remembered the note. Then I thought some more about the voice. “How’s it going?” I said.
“It’s goin’ good. Why didn’t you call?”
“I’m not the aggressive type.”
“You got aggressive pretty quick on the William Henry case.”
