Walter Mosley_Leonid McGill_01 by The Long Fall

Formica bar, just a tourist stopping for a quick beer. The pale bartender was bald like I am, but taller. He wore a shirt with thick red stripes on white, strapped over by dark-green suspenders. There was an old Pabst Blue Ribbon name tag pinned to one strap. The tattered badge read, “Hi, I’m Jake.”
    Jake didn’t like me.
    “Whatever you got on tap,” I said.
    The bartender, who was about my age too, smirked and turned his back. As he moved away down the soggy corridor behind the bar I decided that, even if he did serve me, I would not drink.
    But I didn’t have to worry. I wasn’t going to receive service in 1953 Albany. Jake moved down the bar, stopping at a customer who was sitting at the far end. They shared a few words, glanced in my direction, and then laughed.
    In some ways the objective of the private detective is similar to that of the beat cop. You have an aim—the end of your shift—but there are many distractions along the way. You have to live completely in every moment, because if you get beyond yourself something will certainly blindside you and leave you face down in the street.
    I wanted to save Roger Brown, which meant locating, and maybe dislocating something on, Ambrose Thurman. But before I could do any of that I had to get through Oddfellows. I considered walking around the room, asking if anyone had seen the face on the fake business card. But I rejected that approach. A room full of half-drunk men who wouldn’t like you in the best of circumstances could easily ramp themselves up into a frenzy.
    I decided that this was a dead end and that I should move on.
    I had been in the pub for no more than three minutes.
    Just as I was about to turn a tall and hale redhead stood up from a table in the corner. He was young, maybe twenty-five, and had the look of a kid who had just taken a dare. He smiled broadly and walked in my direction, so I put off my exit for one minute more.
    “Hey,” the young man said, grinning and friendly. He was handsome like a fifties TV child star who had grown up losing nothing of the boyish charm that got him through.
    “S’happenin’?” I replied, deciding to be who he thought I was.
    “What you doin’ here?” he said, still showing teeth. It was almost as if there was no threat in the room at all. Almost.
    “S’posed to meet a guy.”
    “What guy?”
    I took Ambrose Thurman’s card from my jacket pocket and handed it to him. His fingers were pale and thick. The nails had some dirt under them, which made me like the person he might have been.
    He studied the photo and name.
    “Know him?” I asked.
    He handed the card back to me.
    “What’s yer name?” was his reply.
    “Bill. What’s yours?”
    “Jonah.”
    “Like with the whale?”
    The kid smiled. We might have gotten along in other circumstances . . . on some far-flung planet. He glanced around, as if the eyes on us were about him.
    “Maybe we should talk outside,” he suggested.
    I nodded and turned toward the door.
    “Out back,” he said. “Come on, this way.”
    Jonah moved toward a short hallway at the far end of the bar. After a moment’s hesitation I followed.
    Being a boxer, even just an amateur like me, can make a man reckless. I’ve stood in the ring, sparring with heavyweights, and held my own. But that was many years before, and there was more rust than iron in my joints of late. Still, I had the confidence of a man Jonah’s age.
    When I caught up to him he was opening the back door. He went through first and I paused to make sure there was no one coming up behind us. As I passed the threshold Jonah sucker-punched me with a right hook that had some smarts to it. The blow sent me crashing into a herd of aluminum trash cans. I was down, but the only thing that hurt was my sense of smell. Garbage had been festering on that dark alley floor for decades.
    Jonah was wearing serious motorcycle boots. I could see the steel-shod heel of one as he tried to stomp my face with it.
    A good