“A lie doesn’t sound all that bad right now. How long will you keep McKenzie in the coma?”
“We might bring him out as early as tomorrow. Two, three days at the most. I’ll have a better answer for you in the morning.”
“In the morning?”
“Nina, we need to stop meeting like this.”
It’s what Lilly always said when the two women came together over one of my medical emergencies. Usually, the remark would make them both smile but Nina’s inner voice was screaming. She didn’t promise. If she’s so sure McKenzie will be fine, why won’t she promise?
I have no idea what Lilly was thinking.
Herzog opened the door to RT’s Basement and Chopper wheeled himself inside. Herzog never pushed Chopper’s wheelchair. He tried it once when he first came to work for him. Chopper didn’t like it and told him so in no uncertain terms.
A kind of hush settled over the club as they made their way to the bar. This was not unusual. The sight of happy-go-lucky Chopper in his chair and large and dangerous-seeming Herzog hovering near him often made people stop and go, “Hmm.”
The bartender stood waiting for them. He didn’t say “Welcome to RT’s” or “What’ll you have?” or anything friendly like that. He just waited.
“You RT?” Chopper asked, using the nickname Richard Thomas preferred, knowing that was more likely to garner cooperation than insulting the man.
The bartender nodded.
“My friends call me Chopper. This here is Herzog. What are you drinking, Herzy?”
“Got any Booker’s?”
“Herzog.” RT said the name in a low tone of voice as if he had heard it before and was impressed.
“Huh?” Herzog said.
“Booker’s is a little high-end for us,” RT said.
“Michter’s? Barrell? Maker’s Mark? Knob Creek?”
The bartender kept shaking his head.
“Jim Beam?”
RT answered by taking a bottle off the shelf behind him and pouring a couple of fingers into a squat glass. He didn’t quote a price.
Herzog sipped the bourbon.
“What can I get you?” RT asked.
“I hear you’ve had some excitement t’night,” Chopper said in reply.
“What of it?”
“Man who was shot named McKenzie.”
RT waited for Chopper to finish his thought.
“Man is a friend of ours.”
RT glanced at Herzog as if he couldn’t believe it. Herzog kept sipping his drink.
“I already talked to the police,” RT said.
“I ain’t the fuckin’ po-lice,” Chopper said.
RT looked at Herzog some more.
“Me neither,” Herzog said.
“What can you tell us?” Chopper asked.
“Whaddya want to know?” RT asked.
“What was he doing here?”
“Fuck should I know? White man walks into my place wearing an expensive sports jacket, I’m supposed t’ ask him questions?”
“You remember him?”
“Yeah, I remember him. Cuz of the jacket. I have my share of white customers, ’cept they don’t usually dress as nice. Well, sometimes when I get an act that has crossover appeal. ’Cept it’s Tuesday and we don’t have music on Tuesdays.”
Chopper took a moment to glance around at the tables and booths and at the few customers drinking at the bar with them. There were more white customers than they expected in an African-American joint and a lot of them looked as if they had driven in from the suburbs, men and women both dressed in polo shirts and khakis.
“When did he arrive?” Chopper asked.
“Who?”
“What we talking about, the white man, McKenzie.”
“Eight,” the bartender said. “Couple minutes before.”
“What he do?”
“It’s a bar. He ordered a drink. Whaddya think?”
Herzog dropped his empty glass. The sound of it bouncing off the bar was loud enough to make the bartender flinch. After he recovered, he asked if Herzog wanted a refill. Herzog said he did. RT gathered up Herzog’s glass, put it away, and pulled out a fresh one. While he poured more Jim Beam, he said “Your friend asked for a Summit Extra Pale Ale.”
“Bet you don’t pour that, either,” Herzog said.
“He settled for a Budweiser.”
“Then what?” Chopper asked.
“Then he drank his beer.”
“And?”
“I think he was waiting for someone.”
“Who?”
“He didn’t say.”
“How do you know he was waiting for someone?”
“He kept checking his watch. And his phone. Kept glancing at the door.”
“But he didn’t say who he was waiting for?”
“We’re not brothers from another mother, ’kay? It’s not like we were having a conversation.”
“He went outside,” Chopper said.
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“I dunno. Eight fifteen? Eight twenty?”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why’d he leave?”
“T’ see if his friend was waitin’ outside instead of inside? Fuck should I know?”
“Did he settle his tab first?” Chopper asked.
“He paid when I served him. A ten. Told me t’ keep the change.”
“So he wasn’t planning on hanging around when his friend arrived.”
“I don’t know what he was planning.”
“Did you watch him head for the door?”
“No, why would I?” RT asked.
“Did you see who shot him?”
“I didn’t see nothin’ like I told them cops, first the guy and then the skirt.”
“Skirt?” Herzog asked.
“Woman cop,” RT said.
“You call women ‘skirts’?”
“Gotta be careful what you say these days. Them hashtag MeToo bitches eat you alive.”
“Yeah, I can see how callin’ ’em skirts be much better.”
“What did you see?” Chopper asked.
“Nothin’,” RT said. “Ain’t no lie. Didn’t even know what happened till a customer told me like I said to them cops.”
“What can you tell us that you didn’t tell them cops?”
The bartender watched Herzog as he swirled what was left of the bourbon in his glass.
“Fuck,” he said.
Dr. Linder allowed Nina, Bobby, and Shelby to visit me, if you call standing in a corridor and looking through the sliding glass walls into the recovery room visiting. I was propped at a forty-five-degree angle on a bed. There was a tube in my nose to draw out stomach contents and another in my mouth to help me breathe and a line that was feeding me intravenously and a catheter going to my bladder and cables attached to a monitor where wavy red, green, and blue lines and ever-changing numbers kept track of my vital signs.
“He’s looked better,” Bobby said.
“The week after I first met him,” Nina said, “God, only five days after he tailed that suspect into
