belonging here. I might be wearing jeans, but I still didn't come close to fitting in. Win, however, stuck out like a Twinkie at a health club.
Patrons-some wearing shoulder pads and thin leather ties and Terax in their hair-glared daggers at Win. It was how it always was. We know about the obvious prejudices and stereotypes and Win would be the last to ask for sympathy, but people saw him and hated him. We judge by looks-that's no surprise. People saw undeserved privilege in Win. They wanted to hurt him. It had been that way his whole life. Even I don't know the full story- Win's 'origin,' to use superhero lexicon-but one of those childhood beatings broke him. He didn't want to be afraid anymore. Not ever. So he used his finances and his natural gifts and spent years developing his skills. By the time we met in college, he was already a lethal weapon.
Win walked through the glares with a smile and a nod. The pub was old and run-down, and it looked almost fake, which only made it feel more authentic. The women were big and chesty with rat-nest hair. Many wore those off-one-shoulder Flashdance sweatshirts. One eyed Win. She had several missing teeth. There were little ribbons in her hair that seemed to add nothing, а la 'Starlight'-era Madonna, and her makeup looked as though it'd been applied with paintball pellets in a dark closet.
'Well, well,' she said to Win. 'Ain't you pretty?'
'Yes,' Win said. 'Yes, I am.'
The bartender nodded at us as we approached. He wore a FRANKIE SAY RELAX T-shirt.
'Two beers,' I said.
Win shook his head. 'He means two pints of lager.'
Again with the terminology.
I asked for Nigel Manderson. The bartender didn't blink. I knew this was useless. I turned and shouted out, 'Which one of you is Nigel Manderson?'
A man wearing a baroque ruffled white shirt with squared-off shoulders raised his glass. He looked like he'd just walked out of a Spandau Ballet video. 'Cheers, mate.'
The slurred voice came from down at the end of the bar. Manderson had his hands around his drink as though it were a baby bird that had fallen out of a nest and needed protection. His eyes were rheumy. He had one of those spider veins on his nose, though it looked as if someone had stepped on the spider and squashed it.
'Nice place,' I said.
'Ain't it just the maddest? It's a little rough diamond to remind me of the better times. So, now who the hell are you?'
I introduced myself and asked him if he recalled a fatal car accident from ten years ago. I mentioned Terese Collins. He interrupted me midway through.
'I don't remember,' he said.
'She was a famous anchorwoman. Her child died in the accident. She was seven years old.'
'I still don't remember.'
'Did you have a lot of cases where seven-year-old girls ended up dead?'
He turned on his stool to face me. 'You calling me a liar?'
I know his accent was legit, the real deal, but it sounded to my tin ear like Dick Van Dyke's in Mary Poppins. I half expected him to call me guv'nor.
I told him the intersection where the accident occurred and the make of her car. I heard a waa-waa sound and glanced to my left. Someone was playing a game of Space Invaders on an arcade machine.
'I'm retired,' he said.
I kept at him-patiently repeating all the details I knew. The TV screen was behind him, and I confess that I love the movie The Breakfast Club and it was a little distracting. I don't get why I love the movie. The casting had to be a joke-'a hard-core jock wrestler? How about muscle-free Emilio Estevez? A convincing tough school punk? How about Judd Nelson?' I mean, Judd Nelson. Who came in second place? It would be like, to maintain the Golden Girls analogy, remaking a Marilyn Monroe film with Bea Arthur. And yet Nelson and Estevez worked and the movie worked and I love it and I can say every line.
After a while Nigel Manderson said, 'Maybe I remember a little.'
He wasn't very convincing. He finished his drink and ordered another. He watched the bartender pour and scooped it up the second it touched the sticky wood in front of him.
I looked at Win. Win's face was as usual unreadable.
The woman with the paintball makeup-hard to say an age, could have been an easy fifty or a hard twenty-five, and I was counting on the latter-said to Win, 'I live near here.'
Win gave her the superior gaze that made people hate him. 'In that alley perhaps?'
'No,' she said with a big hearty laugh. Win was such a card. 'I have a basement flat.'
'Must be divine,' Win said in a voice richly marinated in sarcasm.
'Oh, it's nothing special,' Paintball said, not picking up on Win's tone. 'But it's got a bed.'
She pulled up on her pink 'n' purple leg warmers and winked at Win. 'A bed,' she repeated. In case he wasn't getting the drift.
'Sounds enchanting.'
'Want to see it?'
'Madam'-Win faced her full-'I would rather have my semen removed via a catheter.'
Another wink. 'That a fancy way of saying yes?'
I said to Manderson, 'Can you tell me about the accident?'
'Who the hell are you anyway?'
'A friend of the driver's.'
'That's a load of bull.'
'Why do you say that?'
He took another deep sip. Bananarama ended. Duran Duran's classic ballad 'Save a Prayer' came on. A hush fell over the bar. Someone turned down the lights as the clientele lifted lighters and started swaying as if they were at a concert.
Nigel held up his lighter too. 'I'm just supposed to take your word for it-that she sent you?'
He had a point.
'And even if you were, so what? That accident was… how long ago did you say?'
I had said it twice. He had heard it twice. 'Ten years ago.'
'What would she need to know now?'
I started to ask a follow-up question but he hushed me. The lights went lower. Everyone sang that we should not say a prayer right now, but for some reason we should save it till the morning after. The morning after what? They all rocked back and forth from drink and song with their lighters still raised, and I feared with all the big hair this had to be a major fire hazard. Most patrons, including Nigel Manderson, had tears in their eyes.
This was getting us nowhere. I decided to prod a bit. 'The accident didn't happen the way your report says.'
He barely glanced at me. 'So now you're saying I made a mistake?'
'No, I'm saying you lied and covered up the truth.'
That made him stop. He lowered the lighter. So did others. He looked around, nodding at friends, looking for support. That wasn't my concern. I kept my eyes on him. Win was already checking out the competition. He was armed, I knew. He didn't show me the weapon and I know that they are supposed to be hard to come by in the UK. But Win had at least one firearm on him.
I didn't think we'd need it.
'Piss off,' he said.
'If you lied about something, I'm going to find out what.'
'Ten years later? Good luck. Besides, I didn't have anything to do with the report. It had all pretty much been taken care of when I got there.'
'What's that supposed to mean?'
'I wasn't called first, pally.'
'Who was?'
He shook his head. 'You said Mrs. Collins sent you?'
Suddenly he remembers the name and that she was married. 'Yes.'
