The Guilty - Jason Pinter [45]
Come off your high horse, Johnny. I had a life before we met."
"I know you had a life. I know there were probably other
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Jason Pinter
guys," I said. "I just don't want to know about them, hear
about them, or think that they exist. I'd rather believe you
wore a chastity belt your first twenty-five years, and the only
guys you liked were flamingly gay men who wore big bushy
mustaches and called you 'girlfriend' in an ironic manner."
She laughed. "Now who's kidding who? Just think,
though, if you can react like that to me just insinuating I've
liked other guys, imagine how I feel that a girl you actually
had a relationship with is begging for your jock at 3:00 a.m."
"She's not... Okay, you have a point."
"I usually do."
"Okay, I promise to talk to Mya. Now I have to get to work,
time's wasting. I need to find out where this gun came from.
First I need to talk to Jack."
I opened the phone, dialed O'Donnell's direct line. He
picked up on the first ring.
"Hello?"
"Jack, it's Henry. You busy?"
"I was going to have my shoes shined, and hope a stray
bullet didn't find my old ass."
"Listen, can you meet me at O'Grady's restaurant in
twenty minutes?"
"You want me to leave the office to meet you somewhere,
you'd better give me a reason, and it better not be that you're
in the mood for an undercooked hamburger."
"No, but I might have a hell of a scoop on the Paradis
murders, and I need some help."
"Are you stupid, kid? Half the Gazette goes to O'Grady's
for lunch. Meet me at McPhee's pub in twenty, at least we
can talk in private. Besides, it's the only bar in a ten-block
radius that charges less than five bucks a beer. What's the
occasion for this midday imbibing?"
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"I need you to use the archives and run a search for me,
then bring whatever you can find."
"A search for what?"
"Guns," I said. "I need to know what museums and collections carry authentic Winchester rifles, model 1873."
"The gun that won the West," Jack said, a sense of romance
in his voice. "John Wayne would be proud. What does this
have to do with the murders?"
"I'll tell you then," I said. "But I think this killer is more
than just a fan of history--I think he's trying to re-create the
bloodiest parts."
21
I walked into McPhee's pub. And immediately decided that
I never wanted to go back again. McPhee's was the kind of
dive bar you were happy to get into in college despite your
crummy fake ID, where the bouncer weighed upward of six
hundred pounds and was covered in tattoos that looked like
they'd been painted on by an epileptic spider monkey. Where
the bartender served beer whose advertisements settled for
round men in green hats because they couldn't afford buxom
women in bikinis. Where the decibel level never rose above
"angry grumble."
Yep, this was Jack O'Donnell's kind of bar.
I walked past several booths that contained paper menus
stuck under dirty glass. The walls were lined with flickering
neon beer signs, the owners apparently making a statement
(that statement being "we don't pay our electric bill").
I found Jack O'Donnell in the very back of the bar, sitting
alone in a dimly lit booth. He was sipping a brown liquid
which, by the fill line, had been an inch higher before I arrived.
"Having a midday nip?" I asked.
"It's eleven in the morning. Either you don't get much
sleep or you have no concept of what midday means."
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"Actually I was just trying to make a bad joke."
"Bad jokes don't get funny just because you admit they're
bad." Jack took another sip. A waitress came by, her hair
done up in one of those fishing nets that all the classy ladies
were wearing. She was also chewing gum. I could have sworn
chewing gum while serving food had been outlawed alongside smoking and trans fat, but I stayed silent.
"Can I getcha?"
"Coors," I said.
"Bottle or draft?"
I looked at Jack's drink. Noticed an unidentifiable speck
on the rim.
"Definitely a bottle." She smacked her gum and left.
"Probably the safe choice," Jack said.
"I've been known to make a few."