Last Call Lounge (16 page)

Ruby held the smile on her face a second longer than she felt it.  Her gaze drifted off, like the question was about a different life.

“Oh, that,” she said.  Her fingers wrapped around the stem of her glass and spun it slowly.  “That was nothing.  Just stupid, really.”  She sighed and slumped forward, just slightly.  “I had been talking to my aunt.  Just remembering things.  About Houston.  About you.”  Her eyes came up to mine.  “I happened to mention the name of the bar.  I guess I’d never said it before.  Or she had never paid attention.  Whatever.”  She looked over at the bar and her hand came to her chin.    “When I said the name of the bar, my aunt almost jumped.  She said she thought my mother might have worked here, back then,” she said.  “It’s been so long and I still don’t know anything, so I guess was a bit rash.  I booked a flight right then, not thinking about the hurricane or anything.” She flicked her hand.  ”I was hoping to talk to Big John,” she said.  “I didn’t really think about what I was flying into.  I just thought maybe Big John could tell me something about her,” she said.

At first I tried not to think it.  Then I tried not to look at Ruby, to look at her face.  I tried to, but I couldn’t look away.  The rock-emerald eyes.  The hair like lava.  The beer tasted like metal in my mouth.  Water dripped in the sink.  I shut my eyes tight.

“What was your mother’s name?” I asked.

Ruby’s voice brightened.

“Katherine,” she said.

Everything was heavy.  Everything spun.  I lifted my hand to my mouth.  My eyes were still shut tight.

“Oh, God,” I said.  “Oh, Ruby.”

I forced my eyes open.  But before I saw her face, her eyes, before I could say anything to her, I saw Oscar.  He was standing in the open doorway.  He was holding a gun.

SEVENTEEN

Oscar was wearing stiff blue jeans and a white t-shirt.  The hand holding the gun hung by his side.

Ruby turned to see why I was staring, but she didn’t know who Oscar was.  She turned back to me with a half-smile across her dark lips.

Tracy saw Oscar and she looked ready to run.  Her hands gripped the edge of the bar by the gate.  Frank was staring, open-mouthed.  Tim Cole might have recognized Oscar but he was far too drunk.  Other than the six of us, the bar was empty.

“Hey, John,” Oscar said, raising the gun in greeting.  “I guess you and me got some shit to talk about.”

“Oscar,” I said.  The air conditioning was cold on my back and neck.  Frank was standing next to me now, clenching and unclenching his fists.  “Let’s talk in my office,” I said to Oscar.

Ruby and Tracy both looked confused at this.

Oscar stepped inside.  The door groaned shut behind him.

“I got two things I wanna show you first,” he said. He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a small blue cell phone. “See this?” he said, waving it at me. “I got this from your friend Worm. It's got your number. It's got your wife's number. It's got a lot of information about you.”  He stuck the phone back in his pocket. Tracy was slowly trying to make her way to the end of the bar.  “You left some messages for your buddy Worm,” Oscar said. “I think you have something that belongs to me.”

Oscar held the gun up.

“And you see this?” He waved it like he had waved the cell phone. “I had to borrow this because your friend Worm took mine.  And he used it to fucking shoot my friend,” Oscar said.

Tracy froze. Ruby seemed to be panting. Even Tim Cole was alert now.

“Oscar,” I said again. I held my hands out in front of me. “Let's talk in my office.”

The old wood of the front door groaned as it pulled over the metal threshold. I knew what the sound was the instant I heard it. I turned my head just in time to see Mitchell closing the door. He had opened the door, seen the gun, and closed it again.

“Who the fuck was that?” Oscar yelled. He pointed the gun at me.

“I don't know,” I said. I thrust my hands out in front of me, waving at him to stop. He glared at me over the gun, then turned and took two steps towards Ruby.

“Oscar, please.” I said.

He cocked his head, considering me.

“Who the fuck was it?” he said. Then he reached out and grabbed Ruby's arm and pulled her to her feet.

And Ruby panicked.

She screamed, her awful horror movie scream, and pulled her arm free. I yelled, just a guttural howl.

But it was Tracy who ran.

Tracy shoved herself off the bar and ran down the hallway, ran full speed to the back door and pushed on the emergency exit bar. There was a metal clunk as she pushed the bar, but the door didn't move. I had screwed it shut from the outside. Tracy pushed the bar, again and again, but the door didn't move. She gave it one last punch, then she turned around and shook her head.

“Fuck” she said.

Oscar chuckled.

“Uh oh,” he said. Then he shot her.

The gunshot was an explosion, so loud in the small room of the bar that I can't really remember hearing it. Tracy fell back against the door, her eyes still on me. She looked puzzled, her brows were furrowed. She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Then she fell to the floor.

Oscar turned to me, a smile on his face. He, too, opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say anything, Frank let out a strangled yell and charged. Frank threw himself on top of Oscar, wrapped him in a sloppy football tackle. They fell to the ground, crashed into the row of bar stools. The gun bounced on the floor and slid under a stool. Oscar got his arms to Frank's chest and pushed hard, but Frank held on and they rolled away from the bar. Oscar pushed again and Frank fell back off him.

Oscar shoved himself to his feet and turned towards the gun. When he bent to pick it up, Frank jumped on his back and they fell almost to the front door. I ran to Tracy. Her eyes were darting around the room. She was gasping, trying over and over again to pull air into her lungs.  Blood poured out of her chest, over her jeans and onto the concrete. Her hands were pushed against the floor. I put my hand on her shoulder. She turned, her eyes fixed on me. Her face was contorted with pain and confusion.

“Tracy,” I said. I took her bloody hand in mine, but she had no strength to grip. I heard the yowl of a police siren and looked up. Oscar had heard it, too. Frank was still on Oscar's back. Oscar elbowed him in the face hard, once, twice, and Frank fell. Oscar scrambled on his hands and knees, holding the gun and practically falling out the front door.

“Tracy,” I said, turning back to her. But she was gone.

Frank's broken nose was broken again. The paramedics packed it to stop the bleeding and gave him and ice pack to hold on it. They couldn't set it, they said, until the swelling went down. His eyes were already turning blue then black.

Ruby stood next to me, behind the bar. She held her arm around me, rested her head on my shoulder, as they put Tracy on a stretcher and covered her with a blanket.

Allen was off duty, but came in when Mitchell called him. They sat together at the end of the bar, drinking coffee that Mitchell had made.

Mitchell had called 911. He ran to his car and sat in the dark and waited for the police. When Oscar ran out, just before the squad car arrived, he slouched down and hid in the shadows. Oscar had jumped into a blue Jeep Grand Cherokee that was parked right next to Tracy’s Dodge.

Tim Cole sat by himself at the bar. After the police took his statement, he started to cry. Mitchell got him a cup of coffee and Tim moved to the booth to sit by himself.

There were several cops, a TABC officer, a photographer. The photographer took pictures of everything, over and over again. The front door, the back door. He went outside to take pictures of the barricaded door.

“Do you know what he was doing here?” a detective asked me. He had a metal clipboard, like Allen's. He was a tall guy with a round chest and a small head.

“No,” I said.

Something grew in me, right then, while they were asking questions and taking pictures and picking Tracy up off the floor. Something sunk deep inside my chest. This was my fault, of course. There was no escaping that. That thought pulled through my mind, pulled itself into a deep spot inside me, I shut down and shut down. The more they asked, the more I fell into this idea.

“Did he ask for anything?  Did he say why he came in?”

“No,” I said. The feeling that was growing in me was hate. Not just hate for Oscar, not just hate for myself, but also hate for the cop with his clipboard, for the photographer, for Allen. And the hate gave me something. I could do something. I could act.

“He said he had your phone number, your ex-wife's phone number. Do you know of any reason why he would want that information?”

“No,” I said. The cop was getting frustrated. He turned to look at Allen. Allen just shook his head. I didn't give a shit.

“Do you have any other information that might help us catch the man who just murdered your friend?” he asked, tapping his pen on the edge of his clipboard.

“No,” I said.

He scratched some notes on his report, then stuck his pen in his shirt pocket.

“Thanks very much,” he said. “You've been very helpful.”  He moved to the bar and put his hand on Allen's shoulder. Then Allen stood up and shook hands with Mitchell. The photographer packed his equipment bag and then he and the cop and Allen left without a word to me. The TABC officer approached me. You could tell he was TABC – he was wearing a shirt and tie instead of a uniform, his handgun in a holster on his belt. He had a lopsided mustache and square glasses that he squinted through.

“Mr. Ayers?” he said. “I'm Officer Curtis with the TABC.”  He held out his bulky hand and I shook it. “Could I speak to you for a minute?”

We took a seat at the cocktail table near the pool table. Curtis set a small spiral notebook between us, rested a pen on top of it.

“Mr. Ayers,” he said. “I just wanted to let you know where things stand, as far as the TABC is concerned.”

“Okay.”

He tapped a finger on the spiral notebook. The muscles of his face moved, not a tic, exactly, but a little pull at the corner of his mouth.

“Other than the incident with serving a minor last spring, your record here is very good,” he said. “Allen told me your father ran a pretty tight ship.”

“I guess he did,” I said. “Yeah.”

He folded his hands in front of his mouth for a moment, then put them down on the table. The corner of his mouth curled again and his eyelid pressed down, just a little.

“We have some discretion in cases like this,” he said. “We can cancel or suspend your liquor license if we feel like you contributed to the situation. But if we think you did what you could to stop it from happening, we can recommend that you stay open.”

“Okay,” I said again.

“I don't see any immediate risk to letting you open back up, so right now I'm not going to recommend that your license be suspended or canceled,” he said. “Since Allen seems to know a lot about you and the bar, I'm gonna get together with him in the next couple days and get his take on everything. See what he says before I make any final decisions.”

Then he may have given me a little wink.

“Maybe you ought to talk to Allen,” he said. He may have given me a little grin. He held his bulky hand out for me and I shook it again.

“I'm very sorry for your loss,” he said. “We'll be in touch.”

When the front door closed behind him, Mitchell stood up and loped over to the table where I was sitting.

“Allen gave me the number of a clean-up service,” he said, looking at the floor between us. “They'll be here in about an hour. I can let them in.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Go home, Little John,” he said.

“I will.” 

As I walked past the booth, Tim Cole grabbed my arm. He looked up at me. His eyes were rimmed red, his skin was gray. He held on tight to my arm.

“It's my fault,” he said. “It's all my fault.”

“What are you talking about?” I said.

He stared at me, with his mouth open.

“It's my fault,” he said again. He put his face in his hands and began to sob, sobs that shook his whole body. “I took Pancho. I took Pancho.”  I looked over at Mitchell, but he was talking to Frank and hadn't heard. I sat down across from Tim.

“It's okay,” I said.

“I took him, I took him,” he said. He took a sip of his coffee, sucked it in through his teeth. “Everything was going to shit for me. I just thought I could use some luck.”  He started crying again, tears pouring in constant streams over his cheeks. “I took him and then everything went to shit here, too,” he said. “It's my fault.”

I rested my eyes on my palms. I felt an anger for Tim that I was too tired to carry.

“Look,” I said wearily. “Your life was going to shit because you drink too much. It's not about luck.”

“I know, I know,” he said. “I know. But I wanted to change something. I was trying to change something and I didn't know what to do. So I took the mask and now Tracy’s dead.”  I rubbed my palm across my face.

“It's not your fault, Tim,” I said, pushing myself up from the table. “It's just a mask.”

“I'll bring it back,” he said. “I'll bring it back.” 

I left him there, crying by himself.

There was a light rain as Ruby, Frank and I walked out to my truck, just a mist, really, that covered everything. The pavement, the hood of my truck. My arms were covered in dew by the time I swiveled into the driver's seat. As I turned out of the parking lot, a police cruiser and tow truck pulled in. They had come to tow Tracy’s car away.