They arrived a little before ten o'clock in the morning. He was happy to see the street was still intact.
Spivak's Tap was halfway down the ranks from cocktail lounge to dive. They parked in front, and got out, the sun hot on their backs despite the cool air, and Nadya said, "More signs."
"What's this thing you've got for signs?" Reasons asked.
"I have nothing for signs, but there are so many," she said. "Most people here, most men, have signs on their shirts. Why do you need so many signs?"
Reasons said, "Beats the hell out of me."
Lucas looked up at the front of the bar. "This guy-his name is Spivak?"
Reasons had called the owner the night before, and told him that they were coming, but not the purpose of the visit. He said, "Right. Anthony Spivak."
Nadya asked, "He will have a toilet here, yes?" and Lucas said, "Yes," and they followed Reasons inside.
Spivak's was an unembarrassed beer joint, with clunky plank floors, a long mahogany bar, jars of pickled eggs and pigs' feet, two dozen booths with high backs upholstered in red leatherette, an area near a jukebox where you could dance, if you were so inclined, a couple of stuffed muskies, and an old, six-foot-long painting of a plump pink nude woman behind the bar, holding a strategically placed white ostrich feather. Lucas remembered both the painting and the feather.
Spivak was sitting at the end of the bar with a spiral notebook, a calculator, and a beer. He was a broad, short man, with a square pink face, square yellow teeth, and white hair growing out of his head, ears, and nose. He had a fat nose that looked as though it had been broken a couple of times. A blond woman with tired eyes stood behind the bar, taking glasses out of a stainless-steel sink, wiping them dry with a bar towel. Two guys in ball caps and plaid shirts sat in one of the booths, talking over their beers.
When they walked in, Spivak looked up, closed the spiral notebook, and asked, "Are you the folks from Duluth?"
"Yeah." Reasons nodded. He introduced Lucas and Nadya. Lucas raised a hand and Nadya nodded.
"Come on in the back," Spivak said. They followed him past the rest rooms, which had signs that said setters and pointers, and which had to be explained to Nadya, who then disappeared into Setters; and then into the back, where four long tables were scattered among sixteen chairs in a party room. They took a table and Spivak cleared some chairs and said, "Could I get you something-on the house?"
"Ah, no, thanks," Reasons said. "We needed to talk to you about something that happened up here last week, but we've got to wait until Nadya gets back."
"She's got an accent," Spivak said, as they settled in at the table. "Where she from?"
"Russia."
"Russia." The corners of his mouth turned down as his eyebrows went up. "Huh. She's not a cop?"
"Yeah, she is," said Lucas. "She's part of this whole… We'll tell you about it in a minute." He looked around: "I used to come here as a kid-it hasn't changed much. Did the can always say Setters and Pointers?"
Spivak said, "A long time ago, it used to say Bucks and Does, but then in the seventies, some Indian guys said 'Bucks' was racist, so my dad changed it."
"But bucks means… deer bucks, right?"
"Well, yeah, but, you know, it was the seventies, Jane Fonda, all that," Spivak said. "And we used to get quite a few guys from Nett Lake in here drinking, they worked in the mines…"
"Nett Lake is an Indian reservation," Reasons told Lucas, who said, "I know."
Spivak asked Lucas, "You used to come in here?"
"Yeah, playing hockey. We were always going around looking for beer afterwards."
"You probably got a few here," Spivak said. "Dad always thought that if you were old enough to skate, a little beer wouldn't hurt you. When was this?"
"Late seventies."
Spivak nodded. "I would've missed you-I was the sixties. Things were different back then… So are the Wild gonna do anything this year?"
They talked hockey for a couple of minutes, until Nadya came back, and when she was seated, Reasons said to Spivak, using his formal cop explanatory voice, "About fifteen days ago, a Russian guy came in here and apparently got together with some people at a meeting here in your bar. We'd like to know what you remember about that."
Spivak frowned. "A Russian? I don't remember a Russian specifically."
"He was a tough-looking guy in a leather jacket, heavy five-o'clock shadow, big square head like a milk carton," Lucas said. "Looked like a mean sonofabitch."
"You were sure he was here?" Spivak asked uncertainly.
"We got an American Express card receipt from here," Reasons said. "For a hundred and forty-five dollars."
"Ohhh…" Spivak's eyebrows went up again, but his eyes slid away. "Yeah. Okay. In fact, they were sitting right here. There must have been five or six guys. I didn't know the guy was Russian, though."
"What'd they do?"
Spivak shrugged: "Drank. Talked. In English, not Russian. What I remember was, when they were finished, they all tossed some money in a pot and the one guy, he must've been your Russian, collected the money, and then paid with his Amex. I mean, I was thinking it was sort of a scam, somebody would get stuck with an expense account when all the guys paid for themselves."
"We need specifics," Lucas said. "Did you know any of them?"
"No. Didn't know a single one." He frowned. "That's a little unusual. This is mostly a town joint. But it happens. We get tourists, whatever. Fishermen on their way north to Canada, sometimes they meet up here."
"They were Americans," Nadya said.
"Yeah, I guess. They spoke English. They looked like they were from around here."
"Were they talking about their families, or their business, or what?" Lucas asked.
"I don't know, I didn't pay any attention. Let me think." He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and tipped his head back. After a moment, he opened his eyes and said, slowly, "Okay. When I was in here, most of the time it was the Russian guy and another guy who were doing the talking. The guy in the leather jacket. The other guy was like a big lumberjack-looking guy, plaid shirt, big shoulders, red hair. The other guys, I don't know-they looked like guys. One of them had a Green Bay hat."
"What is this?" Nadya asked Lucas.
"Sports team hat," Lucas said, watching Spivak, his eyes, listening to his voice. Spivak was lying to them for some reason.
They pressed him, but the barkeep gave them nothing more. The people at the meeting were, he said, "just a bunch of guys. Didn't disturb anybody, didn't get drunk, came, drank, paid, and left. I wish I had more of them like that."
Lucas asked, "Who all was working that night. Could we get a list?"
"Well, I guess. I'd have to go back and look," he said reluctantly. "We don't use everybody every night…"
He checked his time cards and put together a list of phone numbers and addresses, and as he did, said, "You guys scared the shit out of me. I thought you were up here, I mean, I thought somebody had done something in the bar, that I didn't know about. You know, raped somebody out back in the parking lot, or felt somebody up in the rest room. I thought I was gonna get sued."
They left him standing at the end of the bar next to his calculator and spiral notebook, and headed out.
"Well, that was weird," Lucas said, as they stood blinking in the sunshine.
"I think we are not through with Mr. Spivak," Nadya said, looking up at him.
"You guys, uh…" Reasons smiled, turned his hands palms up. "I missed something, right?"
"Unless he asked you while I was in the Setters," Nadya said. To Lucas: "Did he ask you what the Russian had done?"
Lucas shook his head. "No. He never did."
"Maybe he was, em, reticent," Nadya said. "But I think not."