CHAPTER THREE: I Wouldn’t Kill for Booze
Blair woke up with a start. Once he realized he wasn’t near Matt’s Pizzeria anymore, he felt so relieved.
It was startling to discover, however, that he was no longer along the main drag where he’d first started napping, but was rather ten blocks over. He examined his hands, but the dirt on them told him nothing. That could’ve come from anywhere. His suit jacket lay on the ground beside him.
Fighting to get on his feet, his pounding head foreshadowed trouble ahead. Something was stuck to the bottom of his shoe, so he lifted his foot and then scraped it off with his finger. It was too dirty to be easily recognized, but when he smelled it, he knew what it was.
It was pizza dough.
“Hey, Sheepskin!” Horace called as he crossed the street on his bicycle. The bike was a rusty, old girl’s two-wheeler which rattled like crazy but took him wherever he wanted to go. “What the hell you doin’? I’ve been lookin’ all over for you.”
“Man, I don’t know. I just don’t know,” was all Blair could say.
“You don’t know what?”
“What the hell happened last night. I don’t know if I’m coming or going.”
“Well, you better not go again befo’ you pay me back,” Horace said, coasting over to Blair and then hopping off the middleweight. The rear tire was definitely in need of air, but Horace got away with it because street living and chain-smoking had made him a very thin man. As usual, the chain fell off as he stopped, so he bent over the top tube to put it back on. A businessman passing by watched the two of them vigilantly, placing a hand over the wallet in his pocket.
Blair looked confused. “What are you talking about, Horace?”
“That fifth a whiskey you owe me,” he said, wiping the chain grease from his hands and then propping the bicycle up on its kickstand. “If I’da tried to take it back lass night, you woulda bit my hand off. Yeah, I was ’fraid of you then, but you don’t look like more than I can handle now.” Horace reached out, wiggling his fingers impatiently. “So come on and pay up.”
Blair handed him what was left of the Five O’Clock gin in his hand. Horace looked at the bottle as if it were the punch line to some sort of joke. “I said whiskey, not gin.”
“I only have gin.”
Horace looked at him suspiciously. “How was you able to get it? ’Cause of Johnny?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Dammit, Sheepskin! I thought we was friends! Now how could you go a-wheelin’ ’n a-dealin’ for serious money without bringin’ me in on it?”
“Don’t get bent out of shape,” Blair said. “I told you that I don’t even remember how I got it. I’m only glad that I did.”
“How much you got left?”
“Chump change. I wish I had enough left to tie one on again tonight.”
“You may not want to,” Horace said. “Not with them bodies they found on Baker Street lass night.”
“What bodies?” Blair asked, riveted by the news. One-seventeen Baker Street was the address of Matt’s Pizza Parlor.
“I don’t know how I can be clearer than that,” Horace said, glancing down skeptically at the bottle of gin Blair had given him. “Two people got beat to death. A man and a woman.”
“A man?”
“And a woman,” Horace repeated. “A high-class woman, too. She’d be a dentist just like you.”
“What was her name?”
“How in hell should I know? I buy newspapers to use for toilet tissue, not to read!”
“What time?” Blair asked.
“What time, what?”
A taxi zoomed past them honking its horn, so Blair took Horace by the arm and pulled him away from the curb so that he could hear him better. “What time were they murdered?” Blair asked.
Horace sighed. “Now how should I know that? I didn’t kill ’em.”
“When did they find the bodies?”
“Early, I guess. Still dark.” Horace thought, rubbing his shrapnel-scarred chin with an equally battered hand. “Maybe four or five this morning.”
Blair must have looked odd, because Horace considered him suspiciously.
“You didn’t kill ’em, did you?”
“Me? You’re asking me if I committed murder?”
Horace nodded, watching Blair closely.
“Of course I didn’t kill anybody.”
“Sometimes a man’ll do most anything for a stiff drink.”
“I wouldn’t kill for booze.”
“Famous lass words.”
“Last? Come on, Horace. Stop talking crazy.”
“You the one askin’ questions, acting peculiar,” Horace said, standing back to give Blair a better look. “You coulda seen something while you was cleaning up the yard at Matt’s.”
“I didn’t go by Matt’s.”
“You didn’t? Well, somebody did. That place is as clean as my ass used to be.” Horace grinned. “But I can understand you not wantin’ to own up to the cleanin’, what with two bodies dropped almost on the front step.”
“Lay off,” Blair said, afraid of the implications of what had happened last night and confused about the parts he’d forgotten.
“If you did see somethin’, you best tell the law. A man who’d kill decent people like them right in the middle of the street wouldn’t think twice about killin’ a bum like you.” Horace took the bottle of gin and shoved it against Blair’s stomach. “Now get me some damn whiskey, like I told you.”
Blair took the bottle back and watched as Horace got on his bike again and peddled off down the street. A discarded Popsicle stick at Blair’s feet was bonded to the walkway by what was left of the dried, sugar-flavored ice around it. Ants were swarming the delicacy like a wave of black oil engulfing a gray sea.
Bending down and picking up his suit jacket, Blair noticed something sticking out of one of the pockets. He was surprised to find an unopened pair of white crew socks. Blair shook his head with a frown; finding money the night before had been far more exciting.