The Bar Watcher (9 page)

Bob gave a little smile, almost as if he were embarrassed.

“Yeah, you're right,” he said. “His name's Mario, and I didn't mention it the other night because I'm still kind of ambivalent about it. As you know, I've been really hesitant about even dating again, and especially another Latino, but…” He sighed. “We'll just play it by ear and see what happens.”
Time for a subject change
, I thought.

“I wanted to ask if you know a guy named Richie Smith.”

“I'm-too-fucking-hot-for-my-own-good Richie, you mean. Yeah, everybody knows Richie. Another arrogant prick—he and Comstock have a lot in common on that score. If he was only a tenth as nice on the inside is he is on the outside, he'd be a lot better off.”

“I take it you haven't heard—he's dead.”

Bob looked only mildly surprised.

“No shit? Too bad they couldn't have done a brain transplant and given his body to somebody who could really appreciate it. What happened? Drug overdose?”

“No,” I said. “Carbon monoxide poisoning. Apparently, he passed out in his garage before he had a chance to turn the motor off.”

I told him about my peripheral encounter with Richie at Glitter, and that I was meeting Jared to find out more about what actually happened on the dance floor.

“Interesting,” Bob said. “But from what I know of Richie, I don't imagine that incident was a first. He had a foul mouth and an even fouler temper. And while I'd never wish for anyone to be dead, with both Comstock and Richie gone, the community's better off by two.”

There was a knock on the door, and Jimmy popped his head in long enough to say, “Jared's here, Dick.”

“Thanks, Jimmy.” I got out of my chair and put it back against the wall. “I'll let you get back to work now,” I said to Bob. “Want to have dinner later this week?”

“Sure. How about Friday?”

“Great,” I said, reaching to open the door. “And if you don't think it's too early to start introducing him to your friends, why don't you bring Mario? I'd like to meet him.”

“I might do that,” he said. “I'll call you.”

As I left the office, I had to sidestep a handtruck stacked with empty beer cases. Jared was at the bar, getting Jimmy's signature on a delivery form. I moved up behind him and grabbed him by the ass with one hand.

Jared didn't even turn around.

“You'd better be somebody I know, or have your checkbook handy,” he said. He picked up the signed form and turned around.

“How goes it, Dick?” he asked, smiling.

“Fine as frog's hair. You about ready to get off work?”

He nodded. “Yeah, but tonight's class night, so I've got just enough time to get home, grab something to eat and head out for school. I do want to tell you what I've found out about that incident at Glitter.” He moved around me to the handtruck. “Walk me out, and I'll tell you while I'm working.”

“Sure,” I said and went ahead of him to push the back door open.

“Well,” he said when we were outside, “Richie was apparently pretty high, and he was out on the dance floor with a drink in his hand—which is against the club's rules, but he was Richie Smith so rules didn't apply to him.” He slid open a panel on the side of the truck and began to put the empty cases in. “You know how crowded the floor was,” he continued. “So, this older guy bumps into him—totally by accident, of course—and sloshes Richie's drink all over him.

“The guy apologized, but Richie went off like a rocket, as always. Started screaming at the guy, calling him a decrepit, worthless old faggot who didn't belong there, and that he should go back to the old folks home where he came from and do everybody a favor and die—stuff like that. The guy was really taken aback, of course, and tried to leave, but Richie followed him, screaming the whole way, trying to make the guy feel like dirt.

“I guess Richie must have left the club right after we did. I didn't hear what happened to the older guy, but I sure feel sorry for him.”

Closing the side door, Jared moved around to the back of the truck to put the cart on its rack, and I followed. Suddenly, he looked at me, and said, “You don't think Richie's death was an accident, do you?”

I shrugged. “I honestly don't know, Jared,” I said, and while most of me meant it…

*

I spent the remainder of the week trying to find information that might be of some assistance. I finally managed to contact all the guys who had been in Rage the night of Comstock's murder, including the three employees other than Troy. Nothing. I talked again with Glen O'Banyon to see if he could tell me anything further about Comstock, and whether he might have had enemies with grudges severe enough to lead to murder. As I suspected, Comstock had very few friends, but enough people whose feelings ranged from mild dislike to sincerely hating his guts to fill several phone books. Still, nothing that rang bells.

No word from Jared, which I assumed to mean he had heard nothing of interest on his rounds.

Bob called Thursday to set up a time for our dinner the next night, and said that Mario would be joining us. He was a bartender at Venture but had asked for Friday night off just, Bob said, so he could meet me. I was duly flattered, but I suspected Mario's main reason was just to spend some time with Bob.

We agreed to meet at Napoleon, a small new restaurant in a former private home on the edge of The Central. The clientele was predominantly gay, and the food was reported to be excellent. Bob had made reservations for 8:30.

*

I arrived at Napoleon at 8:14 and was lucky enough to find a parking place within walking distance. I recognized the place immediately—it was a small bungalow modeled on the Seven Dwarfs' house in
Snow White
that had fascinated me for years. It had somehow been spared the fate of its neighbors, which had been bulldozed and demolished as the area made the transition from residential to commercial.

The place still maintained the comfortable atmosphere of a home—what had been the living room was now a small, nicely appointed bar with a low ceiling and a working fireplace. I sat on one of the six stools at the bar and ordered an Old Fashioned, which had just arrived when Bob and Mario came in.

Mario was taller than Ramón, several years older, and could be described as more handsome than cute, as Ramón had been, but there were many physical similarities, and I wondered if Bob was consciously aware of it.

I got up to greet them, and Bob made the introductions. Mario's handshake was strong and warm, and his smile seemed sincere and natural. I was favorably impressed. Bob ordered drinks for himself and Mario then excused himself to let the maître d' know we had arrived. The drinks arrived before he returned, so Mario paid for them; and we moved to a group of chairs in front of the fireplace.

“This may be one of the oldest clichés in the book,” Mario said as we set our drinks on the small table between each set of chairs, “but I've heard a lot about you from Bob. You're pretty special to him.”

“The feeling's mutual, believe me,” I said. “And I'm really happy that he met you. It was about time.”

Mario smiled, a little sadly. “Yes. Bob doesn't talk much about…some things…but I know what you mean.” Just then Bob rejoined us.

“Table's ready,” he said.

Mario handed him his drink, and we followed him to where the maître d' waited, menus in hand.

The main dining room was still relatively small, maybe eight tables in all, probably made by combining what had once been the dining room and one or two bedrooms. Nice, subdued lighting, lots of paneling, attractive individually lit pictures on the walls, crisp white tablecloths with red napkins and place settings. Our waiter stopped by to introduce himself and announce the specials then said he'd come back when we were ready to order, leaving us to finish our drinks at leisure. He and Mario had met, Bob explained, when he paid a typical bar-owner courtesy call to Venture, where Mario had been tending bar for nearly a year. The next night, Mario had come by Ramón's.

“Purely by chance, I'm sure,” I said, and Mario gave me a wicked grin.

“Not exactly,” he said.

The conversation got around to Comstock's murder and my whole involvement in the case, although I still didn't mention O'Banyon's role, and my mild frustration with not really being able to find out anything substantial.

“Did Jared tell you anything about Richie?” Bob asked, and the talk shifted to Richie's death and my inability to fully accept the coincidence scenario.

“That's kind of odd,” Mario said. “Did you see yesterday's paper about the two guys who drove off the cliff coming down from the Hilltop?”

The Hilltop was a nice but slightly remote gay club located on the edge of the chain of bluffs running along the east side of the river. The shortest way up and down was McAlester Road, which wound precariously from Riverside at the bottom of the bluff to Cortez at the top, where the Hilltop was located. It was a general rule that if you were drinking, you didn't take McAlester down.

“Yeah,” I said, “I saw that, but don't remember the article saying anything about the Hilltop. Though, now that you mention it, it did happen on McAlester Road. Did you know them?”

“Yeah,” Mario said. “They were regulars at Venture until I eighty-sixed them the same night they got killed.”

“Why were they eighty-sixed?” Bob asked.

“Because I couldn't put up with their shit any more—they really crossed the line.”

“How so?” I asked, curious. In the back of my mind, a little voice was saying
Uh-oh!

“These were two old queens—and I use that term deliberately—who always hung out together. Not lovers—I don't think they could have managed to put up even with one another on a steady basis.

“But there's fun bitchy and there's mean bitchy. These two were mean,
mean
bitchy. They'd sit there at the bar and get drunk and rip everybody to shreds—quietly, and to each other, so they wouldn't get punched out, I'm sure. I tried to ignore them as much as possible, but they really pissed me off. Still, I never said anything because they were paying customers.

“But Wednesday night they were there, and Billy came in.” He looked at both Bob and me. “You know Billy, don't you? Goes around to the bars selling flowers?”

Bob and I nodded. Billy was sort of a fixture in the bars along Arnwood and in The Central. A sweet, innocent guy, pretty severely mentally disabled, but he managed to support himself and his mother by selling flowers in the bars and clubs. The clientele of a lot of the places Billy had on his route aren't exactly flower-type guys, but everybody likes him. And since his pride would never allow him to take money from anyone unless they got a flower in return, a lot of guys who never bought flowers bought flowers.

“Well, it was pretty busy for a Wednesday,” Mario continued, “and Billy came in and went around asking people if they wanted to buy a flower. I bought a couple, as always, and so did some of the others. Then he came up to the two queens at the bar, and they tore into him like a tiger after a lamb. They asked him if he was working his way through college, or if he'd written any good books lately, and then they'd look at one another and laugh at how clever they were. It wasn't clever; it was cruel, vicious shit.

“Several of the other customers were getting really pissed. I told the queens to knock it off, but they kept it up. Poor Billy didn't fully understand what they were doing, thank God, but even he knew they were making fun of him, and he stood there, not knowing what he should do. All he wanted was to sell his flowers.”

I could see Mario's anger building as he talked, and I found myself getting angry by proxy. He stopped talking for a moment, as if to calm himself down, then continued.

“Then one of those fucking fruits took a quarter from the bar and threw it on the floor at Billy's feet. ‘Here's a tip for you, Einstein,' he said, and that did it.” Mario's eyes narrowed. “I had to hold up my hand to keep a couple of the other customers from moving in on them, and I told those fucking faggots to get the hell out of my bar, and that if they ever dared show their faces there again, I personally would come out from behind the bar and kick the shit out of both of them.

“They stormed out in a huff, and that was that. I told Billy not to pay any attention to people like them, and bought every flower he had out of my tip jar.”

Bob and I were both impressed, and I think we both decided then and there that Mario was definitely a keeper.

“Apparently,” Mario went on, not being privy to our thoughts, “they went up to the Hilltop, got even more smashed than they already were, then were drunk enough or stupid enough to try to take McAlester and lost control of the car on the way down. I guess what goes around really does come around.”

Are you starting to see a pattern here?
I asked myself, but before I could answer, the waiter came by to see if we were ready to order. We were.

*