Inside was a gloomy cavern reeking of spilled beer and burned popcorn. A haze of cigarette smoke—illegal since Denver’s ban on public smoking—obscured the air, and most of the light came from a television screen mounted in a corner behind the bar; the TV emitted a steady stream of shouts and organ music from a baseball game. The only other sounds were the crack of slamming balls from a pool table and an occasional slurred shout from one of the players.
I stood in the entryway until my eyes adjusted. Five middle-aged and elderly men sat at the farthest end of the bar from the door, their shoulders hunched, their hands wrapped around their drinks. Professionals in the drinking game, they gave off the desolate air of having long ago pulled off the highway of life, then found themselves stranded when their off-ramp led here. Two of them watched the television. The other three appeared to watch nothing but the approach of death. None of them glanced at me.
In the back, a pair of twenty-something toughs in leather vests played pool, their faces festering under long, greasy hair and a junkyard of piercings. They didn’t fit in—but maybe they figured any port in a storm. The man bending over the table had his back turned, giving me an eyeful of his skull-head boxers. The one waiting his turn sent his gaze flickering over me; the look put me in mind of a dying bulb of questionable wattage. He said something to the other man, who glanced over his shoulder at me. They brayed like a pair of donkeys until their eyes lit on Clyde. Then they went back to their game.
I touched Clyde’s head. Better than having my own SWAT team.
The only real motion in the place came from a woman who looked to be on the far side of sixty with a dusty blond ponytail, heavy eyeliner, and a black T-shirt pulled over a denim blouse. The T-shirt had a picture of a green alien and the words CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE 3RD KIND. She moved slowly around the room wiping tables and collecting empty glasses. She carried a set of empties behind the bar, grabbed a fresh towel, then made her way toward me, wiping down the bar as she came. I slid between two bar stools and gave her a smile—two women in a place that reeked of dying testosterone. Clyde kept an eye on the patrons.
“Not that I want to turn away a customer,” the woman said, “but you sure you’re in the right place, sugar?”
“I’m looking for a man named Fred Zolner. I heard he hangs out here.”
She puffed her long bangs out of her eyes. “I don’t know any Fred, but if you’re looking for Bull, he took off last night. Headed up to Cheyenne to spend a few days with his daughter. Left me shorthanded, the bastard.”
“He works here?”
“It pays for his beer and most of his whiskey tab. He was supposed to be on tonight, when we actually get some business.” She yawned. “Sorry. Every night’s a long one. And every day I ask myself why I went into this business. Now I gotta find someone to cover Bull or work his shifts by myself.”
“It’s important I talk to him. You have a number for his daughter?”
She shook her head. But I caught something guarded in her eyes. I braced my arms on the bar and said, “If he wasn’t really going to visit his daughter, you know where else he might go?”
“Now why would he lie about visiting his daughter?”
“He doesn’t have one.”
“Hm.” She got busy wiping down the counter in front of me, forcing me to lift my arms. I noticed a leftover clear plastic sticker on her T-shirt indicating it was size L. “Well, it don’t surprise me much, Bull lying. Sometimes him and the truth don’t see eye to eye.”
“He’s lied to you?”
“Honey.” Her voice carried the weight of centuries. “He’s a man.”
“I see.” I offered my hand. “I’m Sydney, by the way.”
She shook it. “Delia. Nice to make yours.”
“So, Delia, you know where he hangs out when he’s not here?”
“Inside a bottle, I suspect. Far as I know, the man does three things: drinks, sleeps most of it off, then pisses out what’s left.” She pointed at the DPC logo on my uniform. “That’s one logo I recognize. We see a lot of that in here. You a railroad cop like Bull?”
“Special Agent Parnell. Bull worked with my father years ago.”
“That so? A lady cop. ’Bout time.” She screwed up her lips, thinking. “Parnell. You Jake Parnell’s girl?”
The walls of the bar seemed to draw a breath and close in. The memory of my father and the fact he had walked out when I was little wasn’t a door I’d expected anyone to open. I’d spent years working to push his memory into a crevice deep enough he couldn’t crawl out. And here he was, smack out of nowhere.
I touched Clyde and managed a nod.
“Don’t say a word, sugar,” Delia said. “I can see it on your face. Jake seemed like an all right sort to me. More a talker than a drinker. Usually in here just to see his friends get home safe. But I know he took off and left you and that beautiful wife of his. You must have been, what, six or seven?”
“Eight.” Eight and skinny and scrape-kneed and generally happy and then all of a sudden broken-hearted with a hurt that was like having the world crack open.
Exactly, I realized in that moment, the same age as Lucy.
Delia patted my arm. “What’s your mom’s name?”
I didn’t correct her tense. “Isabel.”
“That’s right. Isabel. She always made the rest of us jealous with her movie star glamour. You look a lot like her.” A wan smile. “But I expect you know that. How is she?”
“She passed away.”
“Oh, I’m—”
“No, it’s okay. It was years ago.” I pushed away from the bar. “I need to get going.”
“Wait. If you’re looking for Bull, maybe Ronny knows something.” She turned in the direction of the men hunched at the end of the bar. “Hey, Ronny. Ronny! Got another railroad cop here.”
One of the men who was staring down death blinked and stirred, like a robot coming to life after someone flipped a switch. His head creaked in my direction and soupy eyes took in my face and then my breasts. They stayed on my breasts.
“A girl cop?” he said.
Delia flicked the bar rag in his direction. “Stop it, you old lech. She’s a lady. Not that you’d know one if she bit you on the ass. You know where Bull is?”
The head creaked left, then right. “Ain’t he here?”
Delia rolled her eyes. “Forget it, Ronny. Go back to your drink.”
But Clyde and I moved down the bar to the old man.
“Where’d you work?” I asked him as I reached inside my pocket for the crossing number.
“Forty-seven years with the CWP,” he said. “Now here I sit, drinking up my pension like those tramps I used to chase. What do they call that?”
Irony, I wanted to say.
“If I had a man with a pension,” Delia said, “and I wish to God I did, I sure wouldn’t let him piss it away in here.”
I set the paper on the bar in front of Ronny. 025615P. “This number mean anything to you?”
He squinted. “I win the goddamn lottery?” He began patting his pockets.
“No, sir. It’s a crossing ID. I’m trying to find where it’s located.”
“I lost my ticket.” His hands were slapping at his pockets now. “Can’t find my damn ticket.”
Delia had followed me down. Now she grabbed one of his flailing hands and held it tight. “Ronny, Ronny, it’s all right. No winners this week. Maybe next week.”