Tim considered for a long time before he answered. “For right now, go back to work. Don’t stress over this. Stress is bad for your health. Let me see what I can do. I may have been off the force for a long time, but ex-cops have some pull that most civilians don’t. I’ll get back to you.”
He glanced at his watch. He didn’t say, Here’s your hat; what’s your hurry, but I got the message and left. When I got back to the Roundhouse, the parking lot was full and so was the bar. The white-haired, blue-plate special folks, sporting their walkers and canes, were wandering into the dining room. That was the other thing I didn’t like about selling the place. Any hotel that might replace it—full of polished granite floors and stylish modern furniture—wouldn’t be the same kind of comfortable gathering place this one had become for that particular demographic. The new establishment on the block might be slick and cool and hip, but it wouldn’t do what the Roundhouse did—remind people of places back home.
I went upstairs, showered, changed into clean clothes, and came back downstairs to the bar to lend a hand. Some of the golfers, a little the worse for wear several hours later, were still there. I told Amanda to collect their car keys and make sure they called cabs before they left. That’s when it hit me—all the earlier talk about pay phones. Shandrow hadn’t gone down the hall to spend time looking at the Roundhouse Railers’ trophy case. He had been in search of the bar’s pay phone. I went down the corridor and looked at it myself. I’d had them install it low enough on the wall so it’s wheelchair accessible. I stared at it for a long time, but the phone wasn’t talking, at least not to me.
Grandma Hudson always claimed work was the best medicine. “It’s good for what ails you,” she advised me when I came dragging into Phoenix. She must have known how close I was to the abyss. She had insisted that I see a doctor for a checkup, and had seen to it that the doctor prescribed some antidepressants for me as well. Between the two medications—daily doses of hard work and the prescription drugs—I had gradually pulled out of my funk.
That night, the hard work part did the trick again. The Friday night crowd, larger than usual, was more than I had staffed for, and I helped pinch-hit in the bar. Right around midnight a guy I’d never seen before sauntered into the bar and ordered a St. Pauli Girl, N/A—nonalcoholic—the drink of choice for some of those folks who no longer care to imbibe the hard stuff. The new arrival had the nose of a heavy drinker, and the familiar way he settled his hulking figure on the bar stool told me he had spent plenty of time in bars.
“You Butch?” he asked when I brought him back his change.
“You got me,” I answered. “Who are you?”
“Pop told me to look for a bald guy with a mustache,” he said. “Had to be you.”
“Pop?” I asked.
“Tim O’Malley. My father-in-law—used-to-be father-in law.”
There was a hint of regret in that last phrase. I couldn’t tell if the regret came from losing his wife or from losing Tim O’Malley as part of his family.
“Name’s Charles,” he told me. “Charles Rickover. Charlie to my friends. Me and Amy have been divorced for about ten years now. I still stay in touch with Pop, though. He’s a good guy.”
I remembered being introduced to Tim’s daughter Amy at Minnie O’Malley’s funeral. If I’d been told her last name back then, I didn’t recall what it was.
“Yes,” I agreed. “He is a good guy.”
“I used to be a cop,” Charles went on. “Put in my twenty. My career came to an abrupt end about the time Amy left me. Turned out she hit forty and decided she liked women more than men. That was tough on the old ego. I spent some time drowning my sorrows, if you know what I mean.”
Wondering where all this was going, I nodded. Had Tim sent Charles by so we could cry on one another’s shoulders about the women who had done us wrong? If that was the case, I wasn’t exactly in a mood for commiserating.
I had started to walk away when Charles reached into his pocket and pulled out one of those little business card holders. He extracted a card and then lay it on the bar in front of me. When I didn’t reach for it right away, he added. “Go ahead. Pick it up. It won’t bite.”
In the dim light of the bar, I had to pull out a pair of reading glasses to make it out: CHARLES RICKOVER. PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS. The only other line on the card was a phone number with a 602 prefix. There was nothing else printed there—no address, city, or state, but 602 indicated the business was located somewhere in the Phoenix metropolitan area.
“Pop says he thinks you’re being framed for murder and that maybe you could use my help.”
I know a little about private eyes—enough to know they don’t come cheap. I wasn’t of a mind to be bamboozled into hiring one.