Dead Man Docking - Mary Daheim [76]
“This is trickier than I thought,” she said to Renie.
“Yes,” Renie agreed. “And only one space open on Flakey’s other side. Now what?”
Judith was still staring. “I’d forgotten—all the barstool legs are made out of baseball bats.”
Renie smiled. “So they are. Well?”
“We sit,” Judith said, leading the way. “There’s an open table not that far from where Flakey and Biff are having a quaff. Let’s wait and see what happens.”
“What happens,” Renie grumbled, “is that we’re going to have to order drinks. I’m afraid we’ll pickle our livers before this trip is over.”
“We can nurse the drinks,” Judith said, breathing in the aroma from the nearby steam table where cooks prepared huge hot beef and turkey sandwiches. “Now I am getting hungry.” But unlike Renie, Judith could ignore her hunger pangs. “How long has it been since we picked up guys in bars?”
Renie made a face. “I don’t think I ever did. I was always too busy mopping myself up. Besides,” she went on with a sideways glance at the bar, “one of our marks is leaving.”
“Biff,” Judith said under her breath. “I’ll bet he got the call to meet Rick St. George. In fact, I wonder why Biff isn’t at the scene of the crime already?”
“Maybe he’s come and gone,” Renie suggested. “We left the store well over an hour ago. It’s going on two o’clock.”
A waitress came to take the cousins’ orders. Judith asked for a scotch rocks; Renie requested a Henry Weinhard root beer. “Make that a float, if you can,” Renie added. “With hard ice cream.”
Acting as if it were an afterthought, Judith held up a hand and smiled at the waitress. “Would you buy the man in the raincoat at the bar a drink on me? Thank you.”
The waitress was young, but not naive. Still, she hesitated a split second, looking at Judith and then glancing toward the bar. “Sure,” she said, and moved off.
Their own beverages arrived first. A moment later, Flakey Smythe shifted his lanky frame around on the bar stool. Judith didn’t try to be discreet. The bartender had obviously fingered her as the “seductress.” If Flakey was disappointed because she wasn’t a nubile young love goddess, he didn’t show it. His cynical demeanor indicated that he took his pleasures where he found them, and was damned grateful to get any at all.
Fresh drink in hand, Flakey removed his sweat-stained fedora hat and clumsily got off the stool. “Hi, ladies, new in town?”
Renie, who looked as if she wanted to crawl under the table and hide, clamped her lips shut.
“Just…visiting,” Judith replied, surprised when her voice cracked between words. “Have a seat.”
Flakey sat. His brown eyes were bloodshot, the lines in his long face were deep, and his nose had probably not always been so red or so bulbous. Still, there was something astute about his gaze, like the blurred lens of an old Speed-Graphic camera that could still record if not always keep focus. Flakey seemed to be taking Judith’s measure, including her mental as well as her physical assets. She guessed he could be anywhere between forty and sixty-five.
“You look familiar,” he said, holding his glass in a grip that indicated he was afraid somebody might take it away. “You sure you don’t live around here?”
“Of course.” Judith tried to remember how to smile coquettishly. She was also trying to figure out if it wouldn’t be easier to level with Flakey. “You write for one of the papers, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” He squinted at Judith. “So?”
“I read your story today.” Judith would’ve taken the newspaper out of her purse, but she couldn’t reach it without imperiling her artificial hip. Some siren, she thought. I don’t need a drink, I need a Percocet and a nap. “It must be thrilling to write about murder among the rich and famous.”
Flakey shrugged. “It’s a job.”
“You must be very good at it. Tell me”—Judith simpered, forcing herself to lean closer while trying to ignore the noises Renie was making with the straw in the root-beer float—“do you ever try to figure out whodunit?”
The shrewd, if bloodshot, eyes