Free Live Free

“Of course. He’ll be warm under there, and anyway, we won’t be inside long. Besides, you can come out and look at him if you’re worried. I’ll give you the keys so you can run the engine a little.”

A blue neon sign blinked overhead: FLYING CARPET. One thousand feet above it, a big jet was coming in with its landing lights blazing and its windows shining.

It looks like a whole city, Barnes thought. Like the flying saucer in that movie.

He handed Robin out and closed her door as softly as he had closed his own. There were cars enough in the lot to show the Flying Carpet was doing business. He and Robin walked across the ice and the hard, black asphalt together.

Inside, it seemed a bar like any other. Robin found them a table near the little stage. There was a Reserved sign on it, but she handed it to a waiter, who took it without protest. The stage was dark, making the whole bar very dark.

“You phoned a reservation?” Barnes asked.

Robin shook her head. “They don’t take them. I come here a lot.”

“The sign said reserved.”

“For the owner and his friends. I’m a friend.”

“I see.” Barnes realized with some surprise that he was jealous.

“No, you don’t. Buck knows a hundred women. I’m one of the hundred. If he comes around, I’ll massage the back of his neck and rub his shoulders with the jugs, that’s all.”

“Bullshit!”

The waiter had reappeared; he said, “Yes, sir. Bullshot. Pink lady, Miss Valor?”

“What’s the new one you told me about, Jack? A screwdriver. I’ll try it. Ozzie, don’t be mad. Let me tell you something funny Jack saw one time. A crowd was sitting around in a bar—not this place, another one—listening to some guy with a guitar, and after a while one woman stands up and kind of staggers over to the bartender and says, ‘You got a screwdriver?”’

Three white musicians and two black ones were settling into the positions on stage: piano, drums, bass, saxophone, and vibraharp. The whites looked too young to be very good.

“So the bartender made her a screwdriver,” Robin said.

It was “Sophisticated Lady,” booming and whirling, filling the room with music somehow palely green, music like a perfumed green chiffon scarf, a swirling green chiffon skirt. The waiter brought their drinks; Barnes sipped and listened.

When it was over, Robin said, “Good, huh?”

“No mikes? No speakers?”

She shrugged. “This isn’t Symphony Hall, and they’re not recording.”

Barnes nodded.

“You know what it made me feel like?” Robin asked. “Delaguerra. Did you ever read that?”

Barnes shook his head. “Who’s Delaguerra?”

“A tough cop, a long time ago in a story called ‘Spanish Blood.’ A thirties story. Delaguerra said, ‘I never shot a deer in my life. Police work hasn’t made me that tough.”’ Robin grinned at him. “I guess I thought about that because I told you I was half Spanish, out in the car. That was why I read the story, back when I was just a kid—because of the title.”

Barnes grinned back. “I’m surprised you didn’t order a margarita.”

“Spanish, not Mex. Half Spanish and half devil. You know what they say about Spanish women? ‘A lady in the street, an angel in church, and the devil in bed.’ I don’t go to church.”

“I don’t either, but I wish you did so I could take you.”

“Our family swore never to go back until there was another Borgia Pope. How do you feel about strippers, Ozzie?”

“I’m not usually close enough to feel.”

“I can fix that.”

“What?”

“I said I can fix it. I’m a friend of Buck’s, remember? Watch my purse.”

She pushed it across the tiny table, drained her screwdriver, and vanished into the darkness. The band was beginning a new number, “Now’s the Time.” Barnes opened her purse and got out a fresh cigar and a folder of matches, letting the purse remain open on the table while he lit the cigar. In the flare of the match, he could see that the little automatic was gone. He recalled its bright chrome, the black grips showing a horse with an arrow in its mouth. A lighter like the one he had bluffed Proudy with? She had made a joke of it in the car, and it seemed too early to ask her about it.

She’s gone to the john, he thought. My God, what a jerk I am! She has to pee, and she’s afraid somebody will jump her in there. It happens all the time to women, and what the hell, in a place like this …

Then he remembered he had seen her compact in the purse. When women went to the john, in his experience, they always took their compacts.

“Now’s the Time” sang itself to sleep. The sax player propped his instrument against the piano, got a mike from a stand at one side of the stage, switched it on, tapped it half humorously with a fingernail, and said, “Now then,