Ilgar, the goblin owner, hated the place and hated the customers. In his lair in the back room, you might catch a glimpse of him, hear the clack and chatter of his adding machine, maybe a muttered curse when the ledgers didn’t add up to his satisfaction. He was rarely seen working the bar.
Because it’s my business to collect information, I knew a secret about Ilgar and his tavern, but I kept it to myself. He was in very serious negotiations with an outside food-and-drink conglomerate, the Smile Syndicate, that wanted to franchise the Goblin Tavern—a great relief for Ilgar, no doubt. The guys-in-ties were exploring the possibility of opening a chain of duplicate Goblin Taverns across the country, catering to curious humans who wanted a safe taste of the Unnatural Quarter, something like the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland, except with plenty of alcohol available.
Many humans are morbidly fascinated by the dark side of the city. Large, secure tour buses drive around the Quarter so that curiosity seekers can watch the monsters in their unnatural habitat. As part of the route, and the experience, the buses drop off the passengers for a drink at the Goblin Tavern, one of the highlights of the tour. Next year, the place was going to be a zoo, when the Worldwide Horror Convention was due to come to town.
Ilgar had a terrible time keeping bartenders and cocktail waitresses; he’d gone through three in one particularly bad week (two had quit, one hadn’t survived). That changed when he found Francine, a fiftyish human woman who’d seen it all, had dealt with tough customers throughout her life, and didn’t put up with any guff from rowdy unnaturals.
“I’ve waited on slobs, pigs, and jerks in human bars too,” she once told me. “Certain people turn into a*sholes when they’re drunk. Doesn’t matter whether they’re truck drivers or necromancers. I know how to spot ’em, and I know how to deal with ’em.”
And she did. Francine settled right in at the Tavern, got to know the regulars. You might not think a human bartender could relate to the problems of unnaturals, but Francine had been through three marriages, a bankruptcy, a house fire, a drug-addict kid, and persistent plantar warts that made her feet so sore that she hated to stand all day (although she had no choice). As a career bartender, she was well practiced in listening to the customers’ woes. She didn’t try to offer solutions, just poured another drink and knew when to pick up a round.
I entered the tavern as night fell and took my usual seat at the bar. Even before she came over, Francine grabbed a pint glass.
There are stages of being a regular customer at any establishment. First, as the bartender gets to know you, she’ll try to earn points by remembering you and your order. “Tap beer? Large?” Second, she goes to the next stage, asking the coy question, “You want the usual, Dan?” even though she knows what the answer will be. But we were past all that. As soon as Francine saw me, she pulled the beer without asking anything at all.
Yes, I come here that often.
My taste buds aren’t as sharp as before, and I always have a funny aftertaste in my mouth, so the brand of beer no longer matters to me. And liquor doesn’t affect me the same as it used to (Sheyenne might say that my thoughts are often fuzzy anyway). Even back in the old days, I never hung out at bars to get drunk, but for the social benefits. It’s part of my job, although I haven’t yet figured out a way to submit my tab as an expense that the IRS would allow. While death isn’t a sure thing anymore, taxes still are.
Since it wasn’t yet full dark, the Goblin Tavern remained fairly empty: a transition time, like changing shifts in a factory. The night crew began to rise up while the day lovers slunk back to their well-lit homes; others, not caring whether it was night or day, remained up for twenty-four hours.
Francine brought the beer. After only a cursory glance at my face, she said, “Looks like you had some work done.”
“Just a touch-up.” I self-consciously put a finger to the mortician’s putty that filled the hole in my forehead.
“Looks good.”
“I’d feel better if I knew who did it to me.”
Here at the tavern I hoped I might bump into someone or something useful for one or more of my open cases, the Jekyll divorce, the mummy emancipation case, Sheldon Fennerman’s missing vampire neighbors, the Straight Edge hate group, a black-market blood ring I had uncovered over at Basilisk . . . not to mention Sheyenne’s murder, or my own. It was like herding caffeinated cats to move all my active cases toward a resolution.
My mind liked to juggle the various puzzles at the same time. One piece might lead to another clue in a different case, then to another. Running a private investigation agency poses a mental-organization and time-management problem that’s rarely discussed in detective fiction. Life isn’t like a TV show, where the private eye works on one crime exclusively from start to finish, beat after beat after beat, until the whole case is neatly solved by the end of the episode. I have a lot of things going at once, at different paces.
Officer McGoohan came in and swung up onto the stool on my right. “Hey, Shamble.”
“Hey, McGoo. Fancy meeting you here.”
He looked around the tavern. “Nothing fancy about it.”
“Tough day?”
“Isn’t it always?”
Francine pulled McGoo his own beer and set it in front of him. He returned a quick nod of thanks and slurped the foam off the top. He and I have been meeting here regularly for years. The comfortable place is a vortex of normalcy in the chaotic Quarter, so long as you can ignore the more bizarre patrons.
McGoo sniffed, frowned at me, then got up and moved to the stool on my left—his other usual stool. “I love you, man, but I don’t love the aroma. I’m going to sit upwind.”
“Yeah, you’re a breath of fresh air yourself,” I said. He knew I didn’t smell any different from most people. It’s part of his schtick.
“Hey, Francine,” McGoo called across the bar, “how can you tell when you get a letter from a zombie?”
Francine rolled her eyes at him. “I don’t want to know.”
“It has a tongue attached to the stamp!”
We were supposed to groan. I fought back a smile. “Sorry, I’ve been having trouble moving my facial muscles lately.”
“Well, you are a dead guy, and you’re a private detective.” He elbowed me. “So I guess that makes you a stiff dick!”