My footsteps echoed on the pavement that cold night in early March. Huddled in my old bomber jacket, I dodged the mini skating rinks that had once been puddles on the cracked pavement. Preoccupied. By the creepy thing I’d experienced only minutes earlier. By thoughts of a new job. Of the fifty bucks I’d just won playing pool at the little watering hole near my apartment. Five months of unemployment had cleaned me out. I was on a roll and determined not to let anything spoil it.
Then two imposing figures stepped out of the darkness, demanded money. I gave them what I had. It wasn’t enough. One of them grabbed me, decided to teach me a lesson.
Not if I could help it. I yanked my arm back, kicked one of them in the balls—and paid for it.
Backlit by a streetlamp, I saw the baseball bat come at me, slam into my forearm, delivering a compound fracture that sent skyrockets of pain to obliterate my senses.
Couldn’t think, too stunned to move as the bat slammed into my shoulder, knocking me to my knees.
The bat came at me from the left, crashed into my temple, sent me sprawling. My vision doubled as I raised my head and the bat walloped me again.
“My cousin’s dead.”
The voice brought me out of my reverie, or rather the nightmare memory that claimed me at inopportune moments.
Tom Link’s bottom lip quivered and he looked away. Heavyset, with a barroom bouncer’s countenance, I hadn’t expected him to reveal any trace of what I was sure he would call weakness.
My fingers tightened around the cold pilsner glass as something flashed through my mind’s eyes: The image of a sparkling red, woman’s high-heeled shoe.
I tilted the glass to my lips to take a gulp of beer. Bursts of insight—if that’s what they are—bring with them a certain creep factor, something I doubted I’d ever get used to.
I concentrated on breathing evenly as I sipped my beer and waited for Tom to continue. It isn’t often a bartender confides to a customer. I know. Years before I’d spent time on that side of the counter, listening to the stories of lonely men—and women—who had no other confidants.
Tom wasn’t just a bartender at the little neighborhood sports bar that teetered on the verge of going under—he was also the owner of The Whole Nine Yards. I’d been patronizing the unassuming place for the past couple of months, getting the feel of it, a part of me hoping I could one day be a part of it.
I’d heard about but hadn’t known the murdered man—Walt Kaplan. He’d opened the bar early in the day, whereas I’d never been there before eight p.m.
“How can I help?” I asked.
Tom’s gaze shifted to take in a group of regulars crowded around the large-screen TV bolted to the wall, before turning back to me. “You said you used to be an investigator—”
“Before I got my head caved in,” I said, referring to the mugging I’d suffered some three months before. I’d read about Walt’s murder in the paper, but Tom probably knew more about it than the news had reported. “What happened?”
Lips pursed, Tom ran a damp linen cloth over the old scarred oak bar. “Walt worked here part-time. He left here on Saturday afternoon and never came back.” His worried brown eyes met mine. “Your name’s Resnick. We’re landsman, Jeff. Would you be willing to look into it? I’ll pay you.”
We weren’t “landsman.” I was a lapsed Catholic, not Jewish, but now wasn’t the time to dispute that. Besides, the idea intrigued me. I’d been hanging out at the little neighborhood tavern with the idea of eventually asking Tom for a part-time job, and now he was offering an employment opportunity far different than what I’d anticipated.
“What about the cops? Don’t you trust them?”
“I’ve been robbed four times in the last twelve years. Did they ever catch the guys? No.”