was still an ugly gash. I walked over and pulled out the chair beside him.
He looked at me enough to say, 'Beat it.'
'You Mel Hooker?'
'Who wants to know?' His voice had a nasty drunken snarl to it.
'How'd you like to get the other side of your face opened up, feller?'
He dropped his glass like it was shot out of his hand and tried to get up off his chair. I shoved him back without any trouble. 'Stay put, Mel. I want to talk to you.'
His breathing was noisy. 'I don't wanna talk to you,' he said.
'Tough stuff, Mel. You'll talk if I tell you to. It's about a friend of yours. He's dead. His name was William Decker.'
The flesh around the scar seemed to get whiter. Something changed in his eyes and he half twisted his head. One of the guys at the shuffleboard was taking a long time to make his play. Mel unfolded himself and nodded to an empty table over in the corner.
'Over... here. Make it quick.'
I got up and went back to the bar for a pair of drinks and brought them back to the table. When Mel took his, his hand wasn't too steady. I let him take half of it down in one gulp before I asked, 'Who'd he owe dough to, Mel?'
He almost dropped this glass, too. In time, he recovered it and set it down very deliberately and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 'You a cop?'
'I'm a private investigator.'
'You're gonna be a dead investigator if you don't get the hell outa here.'
'I asked you a question.'
His tongue flicked out and whipped over his lips. 'Get this, I don't know nothing about nothing. Bill was a friend of mine but his business was his own. Now lemme alone.'
'He needed three grand, Mel. He borrowed it from somebody. He didn't get it around home so he must have got it someplace around here.'
'You're nuts.'
'You're a hell of a friend,' I said, 'one hell of a friend.'
Hooker dropped his head and stared at his hands. When he looked up his mouth was drawn back tight. His voice came out barely a whisper. 'Listen, Mac, you better quit asking questions. Bill was my friend and I'd help him if I could, but he's dead and that's that. You see this scar I got? I'd sooner have that than be dead. Now blow and lemme alone.'
He wouldn't look back at me when he left. He staggered out to the bar and through the mob around it until he reached the door, then disappeared up the stairs. I polished my drink off and waved the waiter over with another. He gave me a frozen look and snatched the buck out of my hand.
The place got too damn quiet. The weights weren't slamming on the shuffleboard and everybody at the bar seemed to have taken a sudden interest in the television set over the bar. I sat there and waited for my change, but I had the drink gone without seeing it.
This I liked. This I was waiting for because the stupid bastards should have known better. My God, did I look like some flunkey from the sticks or did the wise boys lose their memories too?
I pushed the glass back and got up. I found the men's room in the back by the smell and did what I had to do and started to wash my hands. That's how long they gave me.
The guy in the double-breasted suit in the doorway spoke out of the corner of his mouth to somebody behind him. His little pig eyes looked like he was getting ready to enjoy himself. 'He's a big one, ain't he?'
'Yeah.' The other guy stepped in and seemed to fill up the doorway.
The little guy's hand came out of his pocket with a sap about a foot long and he swung it against his knee waiting to see if I was going to puke or start bawling. The big guy took his time about slipping on the knucks. Outside the volume on the television went up so loud it blasted its way all the way back there.
I dropped the paper towel and backed off until my shoulders were up against the doors of the pot. The little guy was leering. His mouth worked until the spit rolled down his chin and his shoulder started to draw back the sap. His pal closed in on the side, only his eyes showing that there might be some human intelligence behind that stupid expression.
The goddamn bastards played right into my hands. They thought they had me nice and cold and just as they were set to carve me into a raw mess of skin I dragged out the .45 and let them look down the hole so they could see where sudden death came from.
It was the only kind of talk they knew. The little guy stared too long. He should have been watching my face. I snapped the side of the rod across his jaw and laid the flesh open to the bone. He dropped the sap and staggered into the big boy with a scream starting to come up out of his throat only to get it cut off in the middle as I pounded his teeth back into his mouth with the end of the barrel. The big guy tried to shove him out of the way. He got so mad he came right at me with his head down and I took my own damn time about kicking him in the face. He smashed into the door and lay there bubbling. So I kicked him again and he stopped bubbling. I pulled the knucks off his hand then went over and picked up the sap. The punk was vomiting on the floor, trying to claw his way under the sink. For laughs I gave him a taste of his own sap on the back of his hand and felt the bones go into splinters. He wasn't going to be using any tools for a long time.
They moved aside and let me get in to the bar. They moved aside so far you'd think I was contaminated. The bartender looked at me and his thick lips rubbed together. I dropped the knucks and the sap on the bar and waved the bartender over with my forefinger. 'I got some change coming,' I said.
He turned around and rang up a no sale on the register and handed me fifty-five cents.
