The bartender chuckled. It sounded like mud bubbling up from a hot pool.
‘You staying at the motel?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You meet Brenda?’
The question brought a burst of laughter from the group at the other end of the bar.
‘I don’t know. What does she look like?’
‘Old gal in the office. Glasses. Big, big woman.’
‘Yeah, I met her. She said you had pickles, but that I shouldn’t eat them.’
This brought more chuckles from the bartender, and more gales of laughter from the lovers.
‘Ayuh, pickles,’ said the bartender, and wiped a tear of mirth from his eyes. ‘That Brenda.’
With that, he left Dempsey to his drink. Dempsey couldn’t see any pickles. It troubled him only slightly. ‘Old Folks Boogie’ was followed by ‘Time Loves a Hero.’ The bartender talked to the group at the bar. They ordered more drinks, and he served them, even though they had plenty still left from the earlier rounds, his warning about the imminence of closure seemingly forgotten. They sent up another boilermaker to Dempsey, and he made the obligatory polite conversation with them by stretching his head around the pillar, but they could tell that he wanted to be left to himself, and they were having too good a time to resent him for it. ‘Mercenary Territory’ came on, and Lowell George sang about being qualmless and sinking, and the second boilermaker tasted bitter to Dempsey, although he had seen the shot being poured and knew that there was nothing wrong with it. He went to the restroom. When he came back, Ryan was standing at the bar. He was tense, and that tension had communicated itself to the rest of those present, because the level of conversation had dropped, and the woman was no longer as intimate with the men as she had been. Dempsey could see the shape of the gun beneath Ryan’s shirt. He didn’t know if the others had noticed it. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
‘Take a seat,’ said Dempsey. ‘I’ll buy you a drink.’ He called to the bartender. ‘We good for one more for my friend?’
The bartender glanced pointedly at his watch but didn’t refuse the order. Ryan pulled up a stool, but he didn’t look at Dempsey. He just stared straight ahead.
‘What are you doing?’ said Ryan.
‘What does it look like I’m doing? I’m having a drink.’
‘I woke up and you weren’t there.’
‘What are we, married?’
He sipped his drink, trying to look unconcerned, but his hand trembled.
‘You take your phones with you?’
‘No, I left them in the room. What’s it to you?’
The bartender arrived with another boilermaker, and Dempsey put a fifty on the bar and told him to buy everyone a round, and one for himself. The bartender just took the payment for Ryan’s drink and returned Dempsey’s change.
‘I’m closing the register now,’ he said.
‘We won’t be here long,’ said Dempsey.
‘Sometimes the cops come by,’ said the bartender, and Dempsey knew that he had seen Ryan’s gun.
‘I understand,’ said Dempsey. ‘Thanks for letting us know.’
The bartender drifted away.
Ryan didn’t mix the shot but drank it separately from the beer.
‘Did you use the phone here?’ he asked.
‘What’s wrong with you? What kind of question is that?’
Ryan’s back was ramrod straight. He still hadn’t looked at Dempsey.
‘I asked you a question. Did you use the phone?’
‘No, I didn’t use the phone. You want to check with the bartender? Why don’t you dust it for fingerprints? Jesus, Frankie, what’s the problem?’
Some of the pressure eased from Ryan, and Dempsey realized that Ryan wasn’t angry, he was scared. Dempsey could feel him trembling as he laid a hand on his arm and said, ‘Talk to me.’
‘I thought you’d run out on me,’ said Ryan. ‘I thought you’d sold us out.’
‘What? How could you think that? I’ve never given you cause to think that way.’
‘I heard you talking to Tommy. I didn’t hear all of it, just some of it. You were talking about a rat, and how Joey Tuna didn’t like having me around. It was like you didn’t trust me, like you didn’t think I was sound.’
How had their conversation carried so far? Dempsey wondered. How much had Ryan heard in recent times?
‘I know you’re sound, Frankie. You’ve always been a stand-up guy. I know we’ve had our differences, but I’ve never doubted you.’
‘I wasn’t the rat, Martin. I swear it.’
‘I never believed you were. Look, I don’t even know if there was a rat. I was just thinking out loud.’
Now Ryan turned to him. He was like a child, thought Dempsey, a child with a gun who dreamed of killing other children.
‘Can I ask you something, Martin, without you getting angry?’
‘Sure you can.’
‘And you can’t take it personal, and you can’t lie.’
‘I promise you, I won’t.’
‘Were you the one who talked to Oweny and Joey Tuna?’
The enormity of the question nearly floored Dempsey. He couldn’t even begin to conceive of how Ryan had found the balls to ask it. Ryan was asking him if he had ratted them out to Oweny and Joey. And if he said ‘Yes’, what then? Was Ryan going to pull out a gun and kill him? What was the kid thinking?
But Dempsey knew what Ryan was thinking. He knew because he was under the same pressures, and had made the same connections. By killing Joey, Tommy had killed them all. None of them would be allowed to walk away if they stuck together, but one of them might live a little longer if he sold them out to Oweny and the rest. All it would take was a phone call, and when the time came, and the motel doors were kicked in, and the guns roared and the blood flowed, they might remember that you were the guy who gave up Tommy Morris, and maybe they would stick to the deal they had promised you.
Maybe.
‘No, Frankie, I never talked to them. My mother’s gone, but I swear it on my father’s life, and on my own. I never gave them anything.’
Ryan looked deep into his eyes, then turned away again.
‘I believe you,’ he said. ‘I’d know if you were lying.’
Dempsey realized that he had been holding his glass too tightly, ready to use it on Ryan if it seemed that his fears were about to get the better of him.
‘I had to ask,’ said Ryan. Even though he thought Dempsey was an animal, Ryan knew that he represented the best hope of survival for Tommy and himself, because the men who were coming for them would be worse even than Dempsey. What mattered was only that Dempsey was sound.
‘Finish your drink,’ said Dempsey, and the two men sat together in silence until the lights dimmed, and the bar emptied, and the bartender disappeared, and there was only themselves and Lowell George singing ‘Willin’,’ all of them out on the road late, all of them waiting for a sign to move on.
The traffic was sparse when at last they left the bar. They paid it no heed, and so neither of them noticed the car parked in the shadows across the street, or the occupants of the vehicle: a couple in their twenties, the horse-faced woman in the driver’s seat no longer frightened and weeping as she had seemed in the Wanderer, her male companion beside her dressed in khakis and a polo shirt, not a single hair on his head out of place, each of them expressionlessly watching the progress of the two men.