Time Travelers Strictly Cash (22 page)

Callahan and Fast Eddie were just pulling into the lot when I got there, and it wasn’t until I saw the amp, mixer and speakers in the bed of the truck that I remembered it was Fireside Fillmore Night, the night Eddie and I jam for Callahan’s patrons. I’ve never tapped out on a gig before, but I didn’t feel much like playing or singing, so I told them so, and how come. Callahan nodded and produced a flask from the glove-box, but Eddie began offloadińg the equipment anyhow-it looked like rain. While Callahan and I shared an afternoon swallow, Eddie staggered to the door with my big Fender Bassmaster, set it down, unlocked the door, hoisted the amp again, took two steps into the bar and dropped the Fender on his feet.

Curiously, I was more puzzled than dismayed-because I was certain that Eddie had screamed a split-second before the amp mashed his toes, rather than after.

He instinctively tried to cradle both wounded feet in his hands, but this left him none to hop on, so he sat suddenly down, raising dust from his jeans. But he wasted no time on getting up or even on swearing-almost ashe hit he was well…moving backwards, without using hands or feet. Lort of levitating horizontally, the way Haipo used to do when he wanted to break Groucho up in the middle of a routine, propelling himself across the stage with his hams alone. Eddie backed into the truck at high speed, his head bouncing off the fuselage, and he sat there a moment, still cradling his injured dogs, face pale.

Callahan and I exchanged a glance, and the big barkeep shrugged. “That’s Eddie for you,” he said; and I nodded judicious agreement.

Fast Eddie stared vaguely up at us, and his eyes clicked into focus. All things considered, his expression was remŕrkable: mild indignation.

“Mechanical orangutan,” he complained, and fell over sideways, out cold.

Callahan sighed and nodded philosophically. “Probably shat rivets all over the floor,” he grumbled, and picked Eddie up under one beefy arm, heading for the door.

I got there first. I know in my bones that anything can happen at Callahan’s, and the Passing of the Mailbox had used up all the adrenalin I had in Stock-but I’d never seen a mechanical orangutan.

But I was not prepared for what I saw. As I cleared the doorway, a tall demon with pronounced horns came at me fast out of the gloom. Callahan and Eddie and I went down in a heap, with me on top, and it knocked the breath back into Eddie. He said only one word, but it killed three butterflies and yellowjacket. We sorted ourselves out and Eddie glared at me accusingly.

“Demon,” I explained, and backed away from the open door.

Callahan nodded again. “Monkey demon. Probably lookin’ for Richard Fgrina-he usta drink here.” He dusted himself off and lumbered into the bar, receding red hair disarrayed but otherwise undisheveled. Somehow I knew he planned to buy the demon a drink.

He cleared the doorway, slapped the lights on with his big left hand, and stopped dead in his tracks. I was prepared for anything-I thought-but the two things he did then astounded me.

The first thing he did was to burst into laughter, and a good-sized whoop thereof: if the shutters hadn’t been closed I’m certain dust would’ve come boiling out the windows. One way to drive off a demon, I decided dizzily, and then he did the second thing. He reached into his back pocket, produced a comb and, still looking straight ahead, put the part back into his hair. (Doc Webster once said of Mike’s hair that the part is the whole.)

Then he turned back to me and Eddie, still laughing, and waved us to enter.

“It’s okay, boys,” he assured us. “It’s only a mirror.”

Only a mirror!?!

At any other bar in the world, the “only” might have been accurate-barroom mirrors are traditional. But Callahan follows his own eccentric traditions. Where most bars have a mirror, he has a blank wall on which are scribbled thirty years’ worth of one-liners, twisted graffiti and pithy thayings. “Does a skinny ballerina wear a one-one?” They range from allegedly humorous to dead serious (“Shared pain is lessened; shared joy increased.”) and included at least the punchline of every Punday Evening-winning stinker ever perpetrated. Callahan says he’d rather encourage folk-wisdom than narcissism. So I refused to be reassured.

I eased up to the door and peered past Callahan. Sure enough, with the lights on, it was evident that there was now an enormous mirror behind the bar, installed in the traditional manner behind the rows of firewater and the cashbox. Only if I squinted at the rolled ends of my ten-gallon hat could I make them look like horns, now, but my mind’s eye could see much more clearly how Eddie might have mistaken a Fender with his face on top for a robot orangutang. A part of me wanted very much to laugh very hard, but most of me was too busy being flabbergasted.

I mean, anything can happen in Callahan’s Place-granted. But the Place itself is supposed to be immutable, unchanging, at least in my mind. “What the hell is that doing there?” I yelped.

A man can live his whole life long without ever being granted a straightline like that. callahan blinked and answered at once, “Oh, just reflecting awhile, I guess.”

Eddie and I, of course, briefly lost the power of speech, but the little piano man managed to express an opinion of sorts-and, behind the bar, his spitting image did likewise.

We examined the thing together. It was held in place by four clamps that resisted our every attempt to pry them loose-Callahan bent two pry bars all to hell in the attempt. The graffiti seemed unharmed beneath the mirror, as far as we could see, but we could not uncover them. There was no clue as to who might have installed the thing, or why.

“Must have been done overnight,” Callahan said. “It sure wasn’t here when I left.”

We kicked it around for awhile, but even a quart of Tullamore Dew failed to shed any light on the mystery. But it did kill most of the afternoon, and finally Callahan glanced up at the Counterclock over the door and tabled the subject. “Sooner or later some joker’ll come ‘round with a bill for it,” he predicted, “and we’ll use him to pry it off the wall with.” And he busied himself opening up cases of glasses, barely in time. The regulars began showing up, and the glasses started hitting the fireplace. The more inventive the theory offered for the mirror’s appearance, the more glasses hit the fireplace. Almost, I suspected Callahan of arranging the novelty himself in secret: for it tripled his average take and generated some fearsomely bad jokes. Nobody even missed my guitar or Eddie’s piano.

Because of the commotion the mirror caused, I nearly failed to notice the newcomer. But on account of the mirror itself, I could hardly help it.

I became at least peripherally aware of any unfamiliar face in Callahan’s Place. But when this guy appeared four seats down from me, next to Tommy Janssen, I heard him tell Callahan that “Dr. Webster said to say he sent me,” so I knew he belonged some way or other. I glanced, saw no urgent-need otpain in his face; and put him out of my mind. Things happen in their own good time at Callahan’s.

And as I started to turn back to Long-Drink McOonnigle, I did the first and Only triple-take of my life.

In the mirror, the chair next to Tommy was empty.

By this point in the day, my adrenals were not only out of stock, they were running out of room to file the back orders. SO I can’t claim any credit for the fact that I kept my composure. But I converted the triple-take into a headshake so smoothly that Long-Drink offered to connect me with a chiropractor and bought me a “neck-unstiffener” besides. When Callahan delivered it, I caught his eye and winked. One eyebrow rose a quizzical half-inch, and I nodded to the mirror, thanking Long-Drink effusively (and sincerely) the while. Pokerfaced, Callahan turned back to the mirror, stood stock-still for a second, and then went back to his duties, no more chalant than ever. But as his reflection nodded imperceptibly at mine, I noticed him take a couple cloves of garlic out from under the bar and place them unobtrusively by the cashbox. As long as the guy doesn’t order a Bloody Mary, I thought, and wondered if any of the firewood came to a point.

By unspoken mutual consent, Mike and I restricted ourselves to watching the stranger as the night wore on. He didn’t look much like my notion of a vampire; I’d have taken him for a Democrat. He was of medium height and weight, with few distinguishing features: nO long pointed canines, no pointed ears-just a small keloid scar on his left cheek. And yet somehow there was a…a lopsidedness to him, an indefinable feeling of wrongness that nothing appeared to justify. His hair was parted on the right, like a Jack Kirby character, but that wasn’t it. When I saw where he kept his wallet I thought I had it: he was lefthanded. One of the determined ones who even has his jacket cut so the inside pocket is on the right-for from that place he soon removed a quart-sized flask and offered it to Tommy Janssen saying something I couldn’t hear.

Callahan clouded up-does a hooker welcome amateur talent?-and began to descend on the stranger like the wolves upon the centerfold. But before he got there Tommy had thanked the guy and taken a hit, and as Callahan was opening his mouth Tommy suddenly let out a rebel yell that shattered all conversation.

“W-A-A-A-A-A~HOO!”

Everybody turned to see, and the only sound was the lapping flames in the fireplace. Tommy’s face was exalted. The stranger smiled a strangely lopsided smile and offered the flask to the nearest man, Fast Eddie. Eddie glanced from the flask to the stranger to the transfigured Tommy and took a suspicious snort from it.

Before my eyes, Eddie’s forest of wrinkles began smoothing out one by one. The face revealed was undeniably human.

It smiled.

Long-Drink McGonnigle could contain himself no longer. Snagging an empty glass, he shouldered past me and held it out to the stranger, who smiled benevolently and poured an inch of amber fluid. Drink raised it dubiously to his nostrils, which flared; at once he flung the stuff into his mouth.

His eyes closed. Wax began to drip out of his ears. He screamed. Then he extended a tongue like the one on an old cork boot and began to lick the bottom and sides of the glass.

Callahan cleared his throat.

The stranger nodded, and held out the flask.

Callahan held it like a live grenade, and inspected Tommy, Eddie and Long-Drink. All three were still paralyzed, smiling oddly. He shrugged and drank.

“Say,” he said. “That tastes like the Four-Eye Monongahela.”

A gasp went up.

The stranger smiled again. “Exactly what I thought, the first time I had anything like it.”

“Where’d you get it?” Callahan inquired eagerly.

“Liquor store.”

“What is it?” the barkeep burst out incredulously.

“King Kong,” the stranger said.

“King Kong?” Callahan exclaimed.

“What’s that, Mike?” I asked. “I don’t know it.”

“I only had it once,” Callahan said. “Years ago. It was gimme by some fellers who was camped out in a Long Island Railroad yard. One swallow convinced me not to go on the bum after all.” He looked down at the flask he still held. “It is the backwards of this stuff.”

“I assure you,” said the stranger, “that that is King Kong. I bought it in a standard liquor store, transferred it to a flask and brought it here straightaway, unadulterated, just as it came out of the bottle. Nothing has been added or removed.”

“Impossible,” Callahan said flatly.

“Truth.”

“But this stuff tastes good. In fact, ‘good’ ain’t even the word. I never had none o’ the true Four-Eye, but a feller that had told me if I ever did, I’d know it. And this stuff fits that description.”

“De gustibus non es disputandum,” the stranger observed. “The point is, I’ve got four quarts of this stuff out in the car, and I’m willing to trade ‘em.”

“How much?” Tommy, Fast Eddie and Long-Drink chorused, shOwing their first signs of life.

“Oh, not for money,” the stranger demurred. “I’ll swap even, for five quarts of your worst whiskey.”

“Huh?” “Huh?” “Huh?”

“What’s the catch?” Callahan asked.

“No catch. You line up five quarts of whiskey-and I demand pure rotgut, I’ll match them with five quarts of my King Kong…precisely like this one,” he added hastily; “sample them all if you wish. When you’re satisfied, we all go home happy. Think of me as a masochist.”

“It helps,” Callahan admitted. “All right, bring on your sauce.”

The guy excused himself and headed for the parking lot, and an excited buzz went round the room. “Whaddya think, Mike?” “Think it’s really the Four-Eye?” “What was it like, Eddie?”

The last-named groped for adequate words. “Dat incestuous child is de best oral-genital-contacting booze I ever drank,” Eddie said approximately.

“I dunno from Four-Eye,” said Long-Drink reverently, “but it’s for me.”

Tommy only eyed the flask. His face was wistful.

The stranger returned with the additional four quarts, and beheaded all four flasks. “Sample up,” he said, and a stampede nearly began. Callahan filled his great lungs and bellowed, and all motion ceased at once.

“I will sample the hooch”, he said flatly.

Amid a growing hush, he bent to each flask and sniffed. Then he placed his tongue over the end of one, inverted it, and put it down again.

“Yep.”

He repeated the procedure with the second.

“Yep.”

The third.

“Yep.”

The fourth.

His face split in a huge grin. “Yes sir.”

Pandemonium broke loose, a hubbub of chatter and speculation that sounded like a riot about to happen. The roar built like a cresting tsunami, and then was overridden by an enormnous bellow from Callahan.

“If we can have some order in here”, he roared, “there’ll be drinks on the house for as long as this stuff holds out.”

Sustained standing ovation.

When it had died down, the big Irishman turned to the stranger. “I don’t believe I got your handle,” he said.

“Bob Trevor,” is what I thought he said.

“Bob,” Callahan said, “I am Mike Callahan and I believe I owe you some nosepaint. What’s your pleasure?”

“Oh,” Trevor said judiciously, “I guess Tiger Breath’d do just fine.”