Enid was heading across the dirt lot for the saloon-style doors. Two husky men in leather chaps and black bandannas poured out into the lot before she arrived. Their thick, somewhat flabby arms were loaded with tats. Both sported paunches and the prerequisite beard. Bikers.
They greeted Enid warmly with handshakes and hugs. She kissed one on the cheek and disappeared inside. Simon debated waiting for her to come back out — this place clearly wasn’t his usual hangout — but that seemed like a waste of time. He turned off his car and started for the swinging doors.
When he pushed them open, he somehow expected that the music would stop and everyone would turn and stare at the interloper. But no one did. There was also no music playing. A television old enough for rabbit ears showed a baseball game. The bar was odd. Too wide in spots, space enough for a dance maybe, but Simon doubted that there’d been one recently. There was a jukebox in the right corner, but it was unplugged. The floor beneath him was mostly dirt, the same as the parking lot.
Enid Corval took a seat at the bar. Considering it was only eleven a.m., business seemed pretty brisk. There were maybe ten people scattered amongst the thirty or so stools, equally spaced apart, no one right next to anyone else, like men’s urinals in a public bathroom. They all huddled over their drink, eyes down in protective, don’t-converse-with-me mode. A group of bikers on the right played pool on a table with ugly rips in the green fabric.
There were cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon everywhere.
Simon sported a dress shirt, tie, and black loafers — he had, after all, been heading to a memorial service — while half the guys in here wore cotton gym tanks with no sleeves, a look no man over forty should ever try, no matter how well built. And these guys weren’t well built.
Hats off to them, Simon thought, for not caring.
He took a stool two away from Enid. She didn’t look up from her drink or glance his way. On the other side of him a guy wearing a porkpie hat was bouncing his head up and down as though to music but no music was playing and he wasn’t wearing earphones. A rainbow of rusted license plates took up most of the back wall — probably plates representing all fifty states, but Simon wasn’t really up for checking. There were neon signs for Miller High Life and Schlitz. An oddly ornate chandelier hung from the ceiling. This place, like the inn, was all dark wood, but that was the only similarity, like this was the poorest of poor cousins of the inn’s rich dark wood.
“What’ll you have?”
The barmaid’s hair was the color and texture of the hay on that hayride and done in a quasi mullet that reminded Simon of an ’80s hockey player. She was either a hard forty-five or a soft sixty-five, and there was little question she had seen it all at least twice.
“What kind of beer do you have?” he asked.
“We have Pabst. And Pabst.”
“You choose for me.”
Enid still had her eye on her drink, not so much as glancing in his direction, when she said, “You’re Paige’s dad.”
“Wiley tell you?”
She shook her head, still not looking at him. “He didn’t say a word. Why did you come today?”
“To pay my respects.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Yeah, it is. But I am sorry for your loss.”
She didn’t react to or acknowledge that. “So why are you here?”
“My daughter is missing.”
The barmaid opened the can and plopped it in front of him.
Enid finally turned her head toward him. “Since when?”
“Since Aaron’s murder.”
“That’s can’t be a coincidence.”
“I agree.”
“Your daughter probably killed him and ran.”
Just like that. No emotion in her voice.
“Would it matter,” Simon said, “if I said I don’t think that’s the case?”
Enid made a maybe-yes, maybe-no gesture. “You gamble at all?”
“No.”
“Yeah, but you’re some big stockbroker or something, right?”
“I do financial advising.”
“Yeah, whatever. You still play the odds, right? Try to figure out what’s safe and what’s risky, all that?”
Simon nodded.
“So you know what the two most likely possibilities are, don’t you?”
“Tell me.”
“One, your daughter killed Aaron and is on the run.”
“And two?”
“Whoever killed Aaron took or killed her too.” Enid Corval took a sip of her drink. “Come to think of it, Possibility Two is much more likely.”
“What makes you say that?” Simon asked.
“Junkies aren’t great at not leaving clues or eluding the police.”
“So you don’t think she killed him?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Let’s assume you’re right,” Simon said, trying to stay methodical here, detached. “Why would someone take Paige?”
“No clue. Hate to say this, but odds are, she’s dead.” She took another sip. “I’m still not sure why you’re here.”
“I’m hoping you know something.”
“I haven’t seen Aaron in months.”
“Do you recognize this guy?”
Simon handed her his phone. Elena Ramirez had texted him a photograph of her client’s missing son, Henry Thorpe.
“Who is he?”
“His name is Henry Thorpe. He’s from Chicago.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know him. Why?”
“He may be connected into this.”
“Into this how?”
“I don’t have a clue. It’s why I’m here. He’s missing.”
“Like Paige?”
“I guess.”
“Can’t help you, I’m afraid.”
A scowling biker with a shaved head pulled out the stool between them so he could lean on the bar. Simon noticed the black iron-cross tattoo and maybe a half swastika sticking out from under his shirt sleeve. The biker noticed him noticing and stared him hard in the eye. Simon stared back and felt the red start to rise.
“What are you looking at?” Biker Boy said.
Simon did not blink or move.
“I asked you—”
Enid said, “He’s with me.”
“Hey, Enid, I didn’t mean—”
“And you’re interrupting a private conversation.”
“I, I mean, how was I supposed to know?”
Biker Boy sounded scared.
“I was just getting some beers, Enid.”
“That’s fine. Gladys will bring them over to you. You wait over by the pool table.”
And with that, Biker Boy was gone.
“Enid,” Simon said.
“Yeah?”
“What is this place?”
“Private club.”
“Yours?”
“You here to ask about your daughter or about me?”
“I’m just trying to figure this all out.”
“What out?”
“Do you mind telling me about Aaron?”
“What about him?”
“I don’t know. Anything. Everything.”
“Can’t much see the purpose.”
“There are threads here,” he said, the words sounding weird coming from his mouth even to him. “Connections. I don’t know what they are, but I feel like I’m missing something. So I’m asking questions and plowing ahead and hoping.”
She frowned. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“My wife was shot yesterday,” Simon said.
Enid looked a question at him.
“She’s alive but... We were looking for Paige. Where they lived. Where Aaron was killed.”
He told her the story, taking chugs of the Pabst as he went along. Simon couldn’t remember the last time he drank a cold beer this early in the day, but today, in this place, it felt right. Simon glanced around the room as he spoke. Biker Boy wasn’t the only one with white supremacist tattoos. A number of guys had swastikas, and yeah he was outnumbered and he had bigger fish to fry at the moment, but this was America now, his country, this crap just out in the open and accepted, and he could feel his blood boil despite it all.