Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time by M.P. Wright Page A

tings, Hurps?”
    He looked up from his newspaper, lifting his line of sight over his glasses to get a better look at who was speaking to him in his dimly lit, cavernous bar. He took a moment to recognise me.
    “Hey, JT, everyting’s good, real good. You ain’t looking too bright at the minute. What you been doing to git a cracked-up face like you got?”
    “Fell like a fool on that damn ice out in the street, Hurps. It hurt my pride more than my head,” I lied.
    “What you drinking, brother?” Hurps asked me.
    “A shot o’ that Red Heart rum would go down real nice, Hurps. Thanks, man.”
    Hurps called across the dark teak counter to a skinny white barmaid. Her dyed blonde hair was cut short into her neck and she wore too much eyeliner, which made her look like a circus clown.
    “Shirley, git this man a double Red Heart on me,” he snapped at the clown.
    She fetched over the bottle and poured a large measure of rum into a small glass with all the finesse of a bricklayer mixing wet concrete. It overflowed and spilt onto the bar.
    “Jesus, girl. Why don’t you give the floor a fuckin’ drink while you at it!”
    She took a rag from underneath the bar and wiped up the overspill, then pushed the glass across the bar towards me. She looked at Hurps and flashed him an insincere smirk as an apology for the mess she’d caused.
    Hurps shook his big head from side to side in dismay. “Fuckin’ woman. She makes my ass itch. More damn trouble than she’s worth. I only keep the skanky bitch on cos I been screwing her mama.” He laughed to himself. “You here on your own, JT?” he asked.
    “No. I’m with Vic. He’s sat over there in one o’ your booths.”
    “Goddamn, no. Not that big muthafuckin’ cousin o’ yours. You tell him to keep his fists in his fuckin’ pockets while he’s in here. I don’t need him treading pig shit all over my club. Last time he came in, he t’rew some poor bastard over this bar. I can do without his kinda crap at my age. You hear me?”
    “He’s cool, Hurps. I’ll keep my eye on him. You got my word.”
    Hurps stared back at me with a look on his face that didn’t express a great deal of confidence in my assurances to him. Vic had enjoyed watching Hurps getting irate at me and got up from where he was sitting and swaggered over to the two of us, laughing as he walked.
    “Hey, Hurps . . . You lookin’ good, man. Where you been stuffin’ that worthless old prick o’ yours this week, brother? That damn ting ought to a dropped off by now and crawled up your ass to git a rest from all that pumping you been doin’.”
    Hurps ignored Vic. He slid off his stool and turned to me, pointing his finger at my face as he began to walk away towards a door behind the bar with a sign on it that read “Staff Only”. As he walked, he shouted over the music, “Just tell him he needs keep his gorilla fists off of my customers, you hear?”
    Vic and I watched Hurps mumbling to himself as he strode around the bar and left through the staff exit out to his office. The sharp pain across my shoulder intensified as we both burst out laughing.
    I picked my drink off of the bar and called over to clown girl, who was half-heartedly polishing the bar with her dirty rag.
    “Hey, Shirley. You know a working woman by the name o’ Jocelyn Charles?”
    “Nearly everybody who comes in here knows Jocelyn. I suggest you stay well clear of her unless you want your cock to drop off.”
    “I’ll sure bear that in mind. So you expecting her in tonight?” I pried.
    “If she can’t find somebody to pay for her cunny, I’d say she’ll be in before midnight.”
    “Can you drop me a nod if she comes in?” I pushed a one-pound note across the bar to her. She covered it with the palm of her hand and slipped it into her apron pocket.
    “Yeah, I can do that.” She smiled at me and continued listlessly rubbing away at the teak surface that was Hurps’ pride and joy.
    We sat back at the booth. I folded