He hung up the phone and turned toward me. “Freddie’s got a long memory. He doesn’t much care for us. Especially you.”
“I don’t blame him.”
“But he’s gonna meet us at a bar down near city hall at two. He says it’ll at least get him out of the house.”
I watched as Murfin rose, went over to his suitcase, and started unpacking. The first thing he unpacked was a fifth of Early Times bourbon that he set up on the dresser. I got up and went into the bathroom and came back with two glasses. I poured some of the bourbon into each glass and then went back into the bathroom and ran some cold water into the drinks. It was a kind of ritual that Murfin and I had observed when we traveled together. He brought the bourbon and I mixed the drinks.
I came back into the room just in time to see Murfin take the final item from his suitcase. It was a .38 revolver with a snub nose. A belly gun.
“What’re you going to do with that?” I said.
“Put it under my shirts,” he said.
“That’s a good place,” I said. “Nobody’d ever think of looking there.”
“Last night,” he said as he tucked the pistol away underneath his shirts. “Last night I got to thinking. Two people who were sort of mixed up with trying to find out what’s happened to Arch Mix have got themselves killed. There was Max and then there was the Raines girl. I figured maybe if either one of them had had a gun, maybe they just wouldn’t have got themselves killed. So I decided I’d bring a gun along.”
“And put it away underneath your shirts where you can get to it real quick.”
“Maybe I’ll put it under my pillow tonight.”
“That’s a good place, too.”
“You don’t think I need it, huh?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “maybe you’re right. I think that Max and Sally probably got themselves killed because they knew what Chad meant. I think I do, too, now. So maybe I should carry a gun around.”
“You say you know what it means?”
“I think so.”
“What?”
“When Sally wrote down Chad, I don’t think she had time to finish. I think what she really wanted to write down was Chaddi Jugo.”
I watched Murfin. His eyes glittered for a moment and then he smiled one of his more terrible smiles. I could almost see his mind working it out and sorting it over, moving the pieces around to see whether they’d fit. From the expression on his face he seemed to think that they fitted perfectly.
“Jesus,” he said, still smiling as broadly and as nastily as I’d ever seen him smile, “it all goes together, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, “it all goes together.”
The name of the bar and grill that Freddie Koontz had agreed to meet us in was called The Feathered Nest and it was the kind of place that was used as a hangout by those who had reason to hang around city hall. At two o’clock in the afternoon I thought I could spot three off-duty cops, a couple of lawyers, a bail bondsman, one pale man who looked hung over enough to be a reporter, and a pair of rather pretty young women who seemed to be waiting for somebody to buy them a drink. I had the feeling that almost anybody might do.
It was a dimly lit place with a long bar. Opposite the bar was a row of high-backed wooden booths. The rest of the space was taken up by tables that were covered with the traditional red and white checked cloths. The waiters were elderly and morose-looking with seamed, dour faces that may have got that way because their feet hurt. They wore long, white aprons that almost reached their shoes.
One of them came back to the rear booth that Murfin and I had chosen, flicked his napkin at our table, and said, “We’re outa the lamb stew.”
“That’s too bad,” Murfin said. “We’ll just take a couple of draft beers.”
“You coulda told me that when you come in and I would’na had to walk all the way back here.”
“Maybe you oughta think about buying yourself a skate board.”
“You wanta hear a poem?” the old waiter said.
“Not especially.”
“It goes like this: two beers for two queers, a splittail bass for a country lass, and if that don’t rhyme you can kiss my ass. I don’t remember the rest of it, but the sentiment’s nice.”
He wandered off and Murfin said, “This place hasn’t changed in fifteen years. They keep these old guys on and encourage ’em to insult the customers because everybody seems to like it.”
“Atmosphere,” I said.
“Yeah,” Murfin said. “Atmosphere.”
I was sitting with my back to the entrance of the bar and couldn’t see Freddie Koontz when he came in. But Murfin spotted him and waved to let him know where we were.
When Koontz arrived at our booth he didn’t sit down for a moment or two but instead remained standing as he looked first at Murfin, then at me, then back at Murfin again. He didn’t much approve of what he saw.
“You’re getting fat,” he told Murfin. “Longmire here ain’t changed much though. He still looks like a East St. Louis pimp with a hard run of luck. That cocksucker moustache he’s got now don’t help none either.”
“It’s nice to see you, too, Freddie,” Murfin said.
“Move over,” Koontz said. “I don’t wanta sit next to Longmire on account of I don’t wanta catch something.”
“Your mother still in the whorehouse business, Freddie?” I said.
“Nah, she quit after she caught the clap off your old man.”
The insults were offered routinely and replied to in the same fashion, almost mechanically, without heat or rancor. It was simply what Freddie Koontz had long ago decided should be the proper form of address to go with robust male companionship. If you couldn’t match him insult for insult, you were probably a pansy or worse, although it was doubtful that Freddie could think of anything worse.
Koontz had been born on an Arkansas farm nearly fifty years ago and there was still something bucolic about the way he looked even after nearly thirty-five years in St. Louis. He had a big head topped with a shock of greying hair that hung down into his robin’s-egg blue eyes that were as innocent as evening prayer until he narrowed them so that they looked crafty and sly and maybe even mean. He had a large Roman nose, a wide, thin, sour mouth, and a heavy, jutting chin that made him look stubborn, which he was. He was also a big man, well over six feet tall, with thick, heavy, hairy wrists that stuck out from the sleeves of his expensive-looking grey leisure suit.
The old waiter came with our beers and grumbled when Koontz ordered one for himself. Koontz grumbled back at him, but he did it without any apparent pleasure. Instead, he kept peering around the back of the booth toward the bar. When his beer arrived he took a swallow of it, wiped his mouth with the back of a big hand, and turned to look at Murfin.
“Maybe you’d better tell me again what you and Longmire are up to.”
Murfin told him and when he was through Koontz looked at me and said, “How come they picked you?”
“They thought I knew Arch as well as anybody.”
He thought about that, nodded, and said, “You ain’t been farming ever since ’64, have you?”
“No.”
“Longmire turned himself into a hotshot campaign manager,” Murfin said. “I’m surprised you didn’t know.”
“Well, I ain’t exactly followed his career, but if I’d had to make a prediction back in ’64, I might’ve said he’d turn out to be a pretty good chicken thief. Or something like that.”
Murfin took a sip of his beer and said, “How’d you ever let yourself get dumped?”
“How?” Koontz said. He seemed to think about the question for a moment and to help him think he looked up at the ceiling. “I reckon I got blind-sided. After Arch disappeared, I reckon it was only a couple of days after that, well, I get a call from Gallops, who was already playing chief nigger. Gallops says he’s sending me out some help from Washington. I tell him I don’t need any help. He says he’s sending ’em out anyway. Well, we’re right in the middle of negotiations for a new contract. We’re not asking the city for much this time, just a touch here and there, and I’ve already sort of worked things out with the boys, if you know what I mean.”