Free Fire - C. J. Box [65]
“Nate,” Joe asked, “where are we going?”
“Employee housing,” Nate said.
“But where specifically?”
“The bar.”
The zephyr employee bar was hidden in the center of a long barracks-like building that fronted the dark employee dormitories.Steam hissed from a dimly lit laundry facility in one part of the building, and Joe caught a glimpse of several employeesinside folding linen sheets. There were no neon beer signs to mark the bar and no cars outside, just a window leakinglow light through a curtain and two middle-aged women smoking cigarettes on either side of the door. The women stubbed out their smokes as Joe and Nate approached, and started walking heavily toward the dormitories. Joe followed Nate inside.
The place was rough and crude, Joe thought, with the feel of a secret frat house drinking room. It was paneled with cheap laminate, and small bare lightbulbs hung from wires behind the bar. A crooked and stained pool table glowed under a pool of light, battered cues lying on it in a V. An entire wall was covered with curling yellowed Polaroids of Zephyr employees who had graced the place. Two tables were occupied with young employeeswho had been there for most of the night—it was obvious by the collection of empty drinking glasses and pitchers—and only two men were at the bar, one standing and glaring at them with a hand on the counter as if to hold himself back from attacking,the other slumped forward and asleep with his face nestled in his arms.
“Nate Romanowski!” the standing man boomed. “You’re back!”
“I said I would be,” Nate said.
The bartender, who was washing glasses in a sink behind the bar, looked up and nodded to Nate and Joe.
“Joe,” Nate said, “meet Dr. Keaton, or, as he’s known around here, Doomsayer.”
Joe extended his hand. Keaton was slim, tall, unshaven, and jumpy, with deep-set eyes and a sharp face like an ax blade. He looked to be in his sixties. He had stooped shoulders and a malleablemouth that twitched to its own crackling rhythm. Just beingnext to him made Joe tense up.
“Welcome to hell on earth,” Keaton said, and cackled.
“Don’t mind him,” the bartender said to Joe, “he always says that. What can I get you two?”
Joe shot a glance at Nate, who ordered a pitcher of beer for the three of them.
“Is your partner going to join us?” Nate asked, nodding towardthe man next to Keaton, who appeared to have passed out.
“He’s sleeping it off,” Keaton said. “He hit it a little hard earlier this evening, but when he awakes I’m sure he’ll join right in again. We are both disciples of the Louis Jordan song ‘What’s the Use of Getting Sober (When You’re Gonna Get Drunk Again).’ ”
Joe noticed the cadence of Keaton’s phrasing: effete, affected.Educated. It played against his tramplike appearance.
The pitcher appeared. “Drink up,” Keaton said, grabbing it before Nate could and pouring it into the glasses, “for tomorrow we die.”
“That’s why they call you Doomsayer, huh?” Joe said.
Keaton glared at Nate. “Who is this man, exactly?”
Nate said, “Friend of mine. He’s up here investigating the Zone of Death murders.”
Joe wondered why Nate blurted it out like that.
“Ah,” Keaton said, turning his eyes to Joe and studying him from a new angle by listing his head to the side. “Another one up here to try and solve the great mystery . . .” He said it with condescension that dripped.
“The amount of time and angst that has gone into this puzzle,” Keaton said, sighing, “trying to figure out why the shabby lawyer killed the insolent Minnesotans. It amazes me.”
“Why is that?” Joe asked, taking a sip.
Keaton shook his head. “Because it’s indicative of a tired mind-set. It’s nothing more than mental jerking off: puffed-up officials trying to make order out of random acts when all around them their world is about to explode—but they just don’t know it, or care. It’s like trying to find the fly shit in the pepper. I mean, who cares?”
Joe had no idea how to respond, and he was angry with Nate for