Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 138, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 821 & 822, September/October 2011

When I Drink Alone by Jonathon King

Jonathan King was a journalist for more than two decades before he shut himself away in a cabin in North Carolina to write his first novel, the Edgar-winning The Blue Edge of Midnight. The book, which introduced P.I. Max Freeman, is set in the Everglades, a place the author knows and loves. In the years since his first appearance on the crime-fiction scene, Mr. King, a former police reporter, has produced five more books in the Freeman series and two stand-alones; but he’s never before appeared in EQMM.

He knew when it started. It was right after that song began on the juke, the one with the growly-voiced guy saying: “Yeah, everybody funny, now you funny too.”

That’s when he gripped the car key in his right hand and stuck the pointed end up into the wood under the bar and scored the letter F. The mahogany was soft under there. He could feel the key bite in without applying too much pressure. He kept his other hand wrapped around the bottle of Coors Light, drinking straight from the neck, a sip after each letter he scratched into the surface under the bar until he could feel the sentence form.

First I quit my job.

He kept his eyes up, watching the bartender’s ass when she walked down to the other end. When she turned around, he’d avert his gaze to the mirror in the back of the room, or to the glass fronts of the cabinets where the expensive booze was kept. When she came to ask if he needed another beer he looked directly into her eyes and said, “Yes. Please.” It took until the third round for him to etch in the second sentence.

But don’t tell the wife.

After the fourth beer he put cash next to the empty bottle and left. The bartender called out, “Thank you!” to his back as he made the door. He didn’t bother to turn around.

Emily just shrugged when the new guy walked out without a word. Probably never see him again, she thought as she went to the end of the bar to dump his empty Coors bottle and pick up his money. Too bad. Guy left a twenty on a ten-dollar tab. She made change out of the register and dropped the tip in her bucket.

You watch ’em come and watch ’em go, she thought and went back with a rag to wipe up the moisture left from the guy’s bottle. He was actually the kind of customer she liked: Polite. Quiet. Didn’t get drunk. Didn’t leer at your boobs, and paid in cash. What more could you want? Still, something about the guy. The way he looked straight into your eyes, no avoidance, no real smile, but simple and real, a guy with nothing to hide. Emily had been working at Kim’s Alley for nearly six years and had been a bartender in a dozen places before. You get to read people doing this job. But that guy was one she couldn’t quite categorize. Something about him. Interesting eyes, but not the kind you fall for. They were a pale green color that seemed to absorb everything but reflect nothing. She’d seen eyes like that on boat captains and sailors, like they were always staring out at the horizon.

But, they come and they go. She didn’t think about him again until the following week, another slow Wednesday afternoon and there he was again, near the end of the long rectangular bar, but this time sort of on the corner instead of against the wall. She asked him if he wanted a Coors Light. She was good at remembering drinks. But he asked for a lager instead. She popped him a Yuengling and walked away.

Gotta get his wife to go on a cruise, he thought, sipping at the Yuengling, the thickness of it tasting better in his throat than that watered-down light. He’d quit his job at the county administrative building last week just like he’d planned. Hell with them, he thought. After fifteen years of working there they were again talking about cutbacks and two-percent pay raises and requiring employees to fork over more for health coverage. To hell with them and to hell with her. His wife didn’t know what he did there day after day anyway. All she did was nag him about being in a dead end position and ask why he didn’t take some of those continuing-education classes and move into the private side and make some real money. Yeah, real money. Well, he’d make some real money all right. Just you wait and see, baby. Real money comin’ my way.

After the third lager, he started with the scratching again under the bar.

Be nice to her. Talk vacation. Talk cruise.

All last week he’d been getting up at the same time every morning, dressed in his usual work clothes, out the door. But he never went close to the office and his wife didn’t know the difference. He went to the downtown library. Did some Internet research. Went to Kim’s. As long as he did the mouthwash thing in the car before he pulled into the driveway, she wasn’t any wiser. He wasn’t worried about her finding out he was drinking his lunch. He knew how to handle his booze. He wasn’t like the two guys at Kim’s who’d sat down on the stools beside him today. Now those were a couple of drunks. One of them was telling the joke about the English guy who was bragging about a pub where you buy one beer and get another one free.

“Then the German dude says, ‘Oh yeah? I know a place you buy one and they give you two for free,’ ” says the guy telling the joke. The other one is slightly smiling, letting him go with it.

“Finally the Irishman says, ‘That ain’t nothin’, I know a place where you buy one and they give you three free ones and then take you out in the alley and you get laid.’ ”

The buddy, the bartender, and everyone within earshot waits for the punch line. “‘What? That happened to you?’ ‘No,’ the Irish guy says, ‘but it happened to my sister.’ ”

Yeah, hilarious, he thought. Yuk it up, fellas. Heard that one ten years ago, no, twenty. He’d been going into bars since he was a kid. Same old clap on the shoulder, same old How you doin’? Same old response: Good, how you doin’? Even if they had the worst freaking day of their lives, they’d greet each other the same way. That’s the way in these places. He took a long pull off the bottle. Drained it. Ordered another.

He’d actually met his wife in a bar lo so many years ago. She was a lot of fun back then. She’d hit the white wine, he was still drinking the piss-yellow beer. They’d have some laughs. She always looked sexy in the dimmer light. They got married. That was the end of the bar nights. Responsibilities. Payments. Time with the relatives. No place for the evening buzzes now. He’d been overusing that mantra for a while now. She was sick of his bitching and he was too.

So he’d made up his mind. And he’d use all of her complaining to his advantage. He’d be the attentive guy now. Be in a good mood. Talk her into going on a cruise. “Hey, we deserve to treat ourselves.” They’d go on one of those five-day jaunts to the Caribbean. He’d have that guy Johnny get him the specs on the cruise liner’s security cameras. He’d give him some excuse like the county doing an assessment of the dockside surveillance when the ships were in Port Everglades. Where were the ship’s cameras focused? Where were the holes and blind spots? Make it seem like a land-based concern. He drained another bottle of lager and again dug into the wood above his knees with the key, forming the letters one at a time.

Check cameras. Set a date.

Emily watched the guy a little closer this time. He was a listener, one of those who comes in and eavesdrops on the people around him but never strikes up a conversation. She noticed that he smirked a little when James and Jake told that old sister-in-the-alley joke. It was an oldie and even those guys knew it, but the repetition of old bar jokes is part of the ambience of a place. Kim’s has been around, the jokes have been around, the regulars have been around. The worn-out tales are like an old soft blanket, tattered and used but familiar and comfortable. She figured this guy wasn’t meant to be a regular, but he kept showing up, maybe she ought to draw him out a little.

“Hi... good to see you again,” she said, bringing him another lager before he asked and putting out her hand, palm down, fingers limp, like she did with some of the more interesting newcomers. “I’m Emily.”

The guy set his empty down and took her offered hand lightly, only sort of pressing her knuckles between his own thumb and forefinger. He wore a simple wedding band.

“Pleasure,” he said, again looking her straight in the eyes, not flirting really, but really looking, kind of like the way you want a man to pay attention to your eyes when you talk to him instead of your cleavage. But the gaze made her, what? Not really uncomfortable, but a little unsure. The fact that he didn’t offer his own name in response made her wary. Did he want to be friendly or not?

“Kinda slow today,” the guy finally said, going for the new beer with his left hand. She noticed things like that, right-handedness or lefties. She looked around.

“Yeah, a little, I guess,” she said, even though it was the same thin crowd as usual. “But it’s nice to have the regulars.”

“So they say,” the guy responded and tipped his bottle to her like he was saying so long. Emily took the hint and walked down to the other end. Okay, she thought, friendly but not a chatterer, she could deal with that. She served the guy six beers total before he again got up and left, car keys in his right hand and a big tip under his last bottle.

May 5. The long black dress. Wear purple shirt.

He’d done some more research. Found out that there were these kind of formal evening “Dining Experiences” on the cruise line he’d selected. He had a tux deep in his closet that he hadn’t worn since some county business affair up in Tallahassee years ago. He could see himself back then, wearing that stupid monkey suit, getting the group picture, his balding head shining like a beacon, the white shirt glowing just as bright. But he wasn’t going to be wearing white. He’d have to find that purple shirt, the one she’d once said was so much “cooler” than the traditional white. Cool. When the hell did that word come back? Stuff was “cool” back in high school. Shit. Back in high school he and his best friend Bobby were hanging out on the warm hood of his mom’s Ford Custom 500 in the parking lot of the old Kroger’s, lying back sharing a bottle of his dad’s whiskey, biting back the tears every time they took a hit off the neck and trying not to cough so the other guy wouldn’t think you were some kind of a pussy and this drinking shit was all new to you.

The memory of it was good, though. The taste of it he could remember. They say your sense of smell takes you back to things. Hell, he was always one for taste buds instead. He got the bartender’s attention and she came down with that attentive, wide-eyed look of hers. He ordered a shot of Jameson, straight up. She turned and took a bottle off the back shelves, found a stubby thick glass, not just one of those thimble-like shot glasses, poured it near full, and gave him a little smile, just a crinkle of the eyes.

“Switching up on me again, eh?” she said, friendly like.

Just toasting a memory, he’d replied. He knew he was stretching it. A smart guy wouldn’t be making any comments to the bartender. A smart guy wouldn’t be doing anything to make himself stand out. He’d just be one of those unknown types the newspapers always quote the neighbors saying “Nice guy. Quiet. Always said hello. Never any trouble” about. But that was usually a description of the guy after the arrest, and he wasn’t going to be arrested. He wasn’t going to get caught.

He sipped at the whiskey, set the glass in front of him, and looked into the auburn liquid. He’d picked the date and had broken the news of the cruise to his wife and she’d been, what, elated? Christ, it was like he’d offered her a million bucks and a house on the Hillsboro Mile. Yeah, he’d said, let’s get away. Just you and me. We’ll have a little fun. Relax. Maybe go dancing (she’d been bitching about never going dancing for like a zillion years). You could take that long black dress you wore at your company’s award thing.

Christ, she’d actually gone up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. Shit. The long black dress was perfect. It would blend in with the shadows late at night on the ship. The lights on the side deck wouldn’t catch it. When she went overboard, her pasty white legs wouldn’t be so quick to glow even if the surveillance cameras did catch something falling along the hull. Along with her dark hair, they’d never pick her up in the dark water and he’d wear that damn purple shirt with his tux, nothing white to gain attention on the deck. He sipped again at the whiskey, considered a refill while he continued scratching his plan into the bar below.

“Just toasting a memory.”

Hey, Emily thought, the guy actually is human. First of all, he was now hitting the whiskey. Second, he gave up an entire sentence this time and it was a little personal. She was about to answer, something like: Yeah? Hope it’s a good one. But the guy’s eyes were gone from hers by that time and she figured he was doing his private thing again. She’d seen a lot of guys, women too, who came in and stayed to themselves. Depressed? Maybe. Lonely? Possible. Just looking for a place to chill before going home to the wife and kids? That too. There were as many characters in a bar as there were walking around outside one. Hell, on a good Saturday night in here she’d have a novelist at one end of the bar talking to the tattoo artist from next-door. At the other end there’d be a Florida Power & Light lineman and a Scottish carpenter buying a lawyer shots while in the middle a married woman was having a hell of a discussion with her husband’s girlfriend. She’d seen it all. But damn, she couldn’t peg this guy. What, it’d been a couple of months now? And she’d watched him go from kind of apprehensive in the corner sipping lights to the point now where he was smack in the middle of the bar banging Jameson with ale chasers. And he was leaving a little bit later each time. Yet, he never looked drunk and he kept up the big tips. Yeah, he was looking a little more haggard each time, the shirt not quite as stiff and starched, the hair a little longer on the sides and not as carefully combed, a little more pouch under the eyes. And that irritating habit of never putting both elbows up on the bar. What was that all about? It reminded her of her brother, who always took everything their mom taught them about manners to heart. “Don’t put your elbows on the table!” But who didn’t do that in a bar? Then, he drank with his left hand but held his keys in his right when he was walking out. Okay, she did have this obsession with hands. And she knew the guy wasn’t doing something obscene with himself under the bar. She knew that type. She’d have him out on his ass in a minute if he were that kind.

Oh well, all kinds, right? But she was already guessing that he was going to take a seat a little farther down the bar next Wednesday when he came in and she was betting that he’d order the shots first. Guy was turning into a boozer and didn’t even know it.

“A double, please,” he said, not knowing why the words seemed to feel so good in his mouth as he let them flow over the bar. The time, as they say, was nigh. He was feeling confident. He’d planned it all out. Had been extraordinarily thorough, not to mention careful. And all was going to plan. The bartender poured him the double of whiskey and asked if he also wanted the Yuengling back.

“No, thanks,” he said and then detected a bit of a smile on the girl’s face, like she’d just won a bet or something.

“What?” he said, trying to match her smile.

“Oh, nothing. Just good to see you again.”

“Right,” he said, tipping the glass to the girl before swallowing the entire thing in one gulp. “Another, please.”

Today was the twenty-seventh. The cruise ship left in three days out of Port Everglades for Cancun. He owed himself a celebration. He dug the key into the wood above his lap.

Over the rail midnight. Insurance $$$.

Hah. His wife was actually getting giddy at home over this freaking cruise, he thought. Bragging to her friends. Buying a new swimsuit. Packing every damn outdoorsy thing she ever owned. And nagging at him, of course, over what he was going to take.

“You’re not just going to lie around and read all the time, are you?”

No, no. Not at all.

“We’re going ashore to shop and ride horses on the beach and maybe get those kinds of braids by the island girls that make your hair all kinky, right?”

I don’t have any hair.

“And dance, right? You said we were going to dance the night away.”

You’ll be dancing on air, honey.

He took a sip of the second double; the whiskey didn’t burn anymore, just went down sweet and smooth. Oh, we’ll dance all right. She never could hold her liquor. He’d keep filling her wineglass all night. Get her so drunk she’d be stumbling. Hell, he’d make sure people saw her stumbling. Then he’d get her to go out for some air, right at the place he’d scoped out on the lido deck, just beyond mid-ship where that cowling stuck out and obstructed the portside camera. Maybe she’d feel a little sick, or he’d convince her she was. He’d get her to lean over the railing a little. Then, woop! Over she goes. He was so much taller than her, so much more athletic. It’d be a cinch. He ordered another.

She was clueless, he thought. When he was home he just kept on smiling, nodding his head, agreeing with everything. He’d already checked out the life-insurance policy. He wasn’t so stupid as to try and raise the coverage. Idiots who want to bump off their wives do stupid shit like that and he was no dummy. And he wasn’t greedy, either. They’d had a hundred-thousand-dollar policy on each other since they’d been married. She had another policy that she got through her work. Then he would be the beneficiary of the 401(k) that she’d built up at her office for the last fifteen years. Hell, he might walk away with four hundred thousand. That’d go a ways in the Keys. He could find a little place down there now that the real estate market had gone in the shitter and all those Northeast rich bastards were having to dump their winter places in the sun. Then he’d sit back, drink some, listen to the surf roll in, one bourbon, one scotch, one beer.

Yeah, he knew it would take awhile to get paid off. They’d do one of those search and rescue operations, looking for her. You see it in the newspapers all the time down here. But they never find them. And she can’t swim a damn stroke anyway. Yeah, there’d be some kind of investigation. He’d have to play the frantic, shocked, and then grieving husband for a while, but big deal. Hah. He’d been grieving over marrying her for years now. This was his chance at the life he really wanted. Be the hell by himself, finally. Be happy, on his own.

He aimed the point of his key up into the wood and etched a final soliloquy:

The End.

He signaled the girl for another double. She raised an eyebrow. He raised his glass for a toast. A toast to himself.

Goddamn. He’d stiffed her, Emily thought.

The guy came in like always, same time, same rumpled look as he’d been carrying for the last couple of months. This time, though, as she could have predicted by his weird, methodical movement, he sat at the final end of the bar. In all her years, she’d never seen a customer move from one end of the bar to the other like this guy. Most regulars sit in their regular spot. That’s the way it’s done if you’re a regular. But this guy, like clockwork, moved a stool over every time. At first she thought he was just trying to get closer to the middle, where she did most of her work. Maybe it was his quiet way of breaking the ice. Maybe it was a compliment. But she dismissed that after a while. He wasn’t the kind for compliments and she’d pretty much figured he had no flirtatious intentions with her or any of the women customers who came and went. This guy had his own agenda, whatever the hell it was. She’d given up trying to figure it out. All she knew for sure was that he was getting deeper and deeper into the bottle and she was starting to worry about over-serving him. But shit, the guy could still walk a straight line, never started blabbing, never told his troubles over the transom like so many others. He just sat there, now gulping whiskey, with that kind of dreamy look on his face like he was writing a book or something in his head.

But this time he stiffed her. Okay, it happens. Sometimes even the best customers walk out and forget. Hell, sometimes they forget to pay completely. She lets it go. They’ll be back. She’ll carefully remind them the next time they come in. They’ll apologize and double the tip. In a neighborhood bar like this it’s only the strangers you have to worry about walking out on the tab.

But there was something different about the guy this time. Today he was kind of smiling. He’d only shown a glimpse of that in the past, the quick grin that said that he wasn’t just a morose guy. She always felt bad about those guys, the ones who just came in and stared into the mirrors or at the bottles behind her like they had nothing to live for but the liquor in front of them. No, she never had that impression of the guy. And today he was actually smiling, maybe at some inside joke. Maybe he got a job, found a girlfriend. Maybe he was celebrating something. When he ordered the third double within the first thirty minutes, she kind of gave him that silent look she saved for the guys who were hitting a little too hard and that was meant to relay the warning: Slow down, fella. But when she poured the last one he raised the glass to her and tipped it toward her as if to a toast and the next time she turned around he was gone. He’d left just enough money to cover the Jameson’s, but stiffed her on the tip. She just shook her head, wiped up the bar, and thought, Bon voyage, buddy.

Emily looked up when the new guy came in. He walked down to the end of the bar, kind of slow, taking the whole place in a little, and then stood near the corner, not like he wanted a drink, more like he wanted to ask her something. Cigaret machine? Yeah, down the hallway behind you. Men’s room? Yeah, same way. Change for the parking meter? Sure. That was her first thought. Her second was: Cop.

The guy was wearing a suit jacket. She could count on one hand how many times a guy in a jacket came in. His haircut was short and conservative, but he was wearing a tight-cut door-knocker goatee, the kind of beard and moustache that guys wear to disguise a weak jawline or thin lips. She asked a regular customer if he wanted a refill. She moved a couple of glasses. She checked the beers she’d put in the ice. She took her time walking down to the new guy, kind of dreading the inevitable. He was probably a drug detective. She’d seen them in here before, looking for someone or something. Information. Free information. That was her guess, and she wasn’t far off.

“Hi,” she finally said, putting on her smile and sliding a coaster down in front of the guy even though she already knew it was a useless gesture. “What can I get you?”

“Hi,” he said, his lips together even when he made an attempt at a smile.

He matched her coaster with a business card, putting it down on the bar like they were playing cards. She picked it up but looked into the guy’s face instead of at the printing, knowing he was going to tell her what it said anyway.

“Mitch Healy,” he said as an introduction. “I’m an insurance investigator for Northwest Mutual Life.”

He stopped after delivering the line. Emily didn’t respond. She did this often with customers who made statements to her that weren’t real questions and as such, didn’t require an answer as far as she was concerned. Ask a question, I’ll give you an answer. Make a statement, what’s to answer? Some people thought it rude, she considered it cutting to the chase.

“Yeah?” she said, offering nothing.

The guy looked at her for a blank second.

“Okay, uh,” he said, reaching inside his jacket and coming out with a photo, giving up on the bedside manner. “Have you ever seen this guy in here?”

Emily took the photo, looked at the face, and recognized the green eyes that absorbed but never reflected light. It had been a couple of months. Shots of Jameson with Yuengling chasers. Stiffed her the last time she saw him. She figured at the time he was gone forever. Again, she wasn’t far off.

“Yeah, but not for a while,” she said, nothing to hide. It wasn’t like she knew a damned thing about the guy, legal or illegal. “Why? What’d he do?”

I mean, this guy did introduce himself as a life-insurance investigator. She wasn’t too stupid to put one and one together. Life insurance meant somebody was dead, right?

“Well, we’re not sure,” Healy said. “We are, uh, looking into him as a matter of routine, something we do.”

Emily looked at the photo again, like she ever needed a photo to recall a customer. She thought back on the last time she saw him. He’d been smiling.

“He came in here, usually on a Wednesday afternoon. But I didn’t even know his name. He was just a customer for a few months and then disappeared,” she said.

The investigator nodded.

“Ever talk to him about anything? Kind of work he did? Family problems? You know, the kind of things people tell bartenders?”

Oh, the kind of things people tell bartenders, she thought. Right, Mr. Investigator, like you would know the kind of things people tell bartenders. Sure, you’ve seen the movie with the drunk who sits at the tap and does the woe-is-me schtick to his friendly bartender. Spills his guts ’cause no one else will listen to him.

“Wow. Those kinds of things?” she said and then waited, like she was remembering. “No,” she finally said as flat as she could make her voice.

Healy was stoic, choosing not to react to her sarcasm.

“Okay,” he said, deciding to try again. “Do you recall this guy ever saying anything about his wife? Did he say anything about going on vacation with his wife? Did he ever talk to anyone else here? Did he have any friends here that he might have confided in? Was he a boozer? Did he get sloppy drunk and fall off the stool?”

Emily stood looking at the guy for a second and then heard her name being called from the other end of the bar.

“All in the form of questions,” Healy said, giving it back to her.

She raised a finger to the investigator with a wait-one-second gesture. Healy did another once-over of the bar, the glass cabinets, the mirrors, the aged wooden bar itself, trying to assess the place. When Emily came back she looked him in the eyes and said:

“No.

“No.

“Not that I know of.

“No.

“Yes.

“And no.”

She knew she was being tough on the guy, but what the hell. It’s the kind of thing you bartenders did, right?

Healy smiled a little, without parting his lips. He then reached into his jacket and came out with his wallet, slipped a hundred-dollar bill out and put it on the bar.

Emily looked at the bill for a few seconds, shrugged, and then started in. She told him the mystery man started coming in several months ago, at first sitting in the exact place Healy was standing now. Every Wednesday he’d show up. Every week drinking a little more heavily. He never introduced himself, never talked to anyone, and never gave her a hard time. He was polite, always had clean clothes on, and drank with his left hand.

“His left hand?” Healy said.

“Yeah, I remember stuff like that,” Emily said. “He was wearing a wedding ring, but it was his right hand that he kept below the bar, which is the opposite of a lot of guys who come in here. Sometimes they keep the ring out of sight.”

Healy loosened up a little now that the hundred had established a relationship.

“My information was that Mr. Sharper was right-handed. But you’re saying that’s the hand he kept in his lap?” he said, raising an eyebrow, wrinkling his nose a bit, jiggling his arm a little, mocking like he was a bit disgusted, and pretending to step back a little from the edge of the bar.

“No. If he was whacking off, somebody would have noticed,” Emily said, letting an authentic grin play on her face. Okay, Mr. Investigator isn’t that uptight. Just doing his job, right?

“So Sharper was the guy’s name?” she said.

“Yeah. Simon Sharper,” Healy said, now obviously looking at the bar. “And you say he sat here all the time?”

“Well, that was another weird thing about the guy,” Emily said. “It was like he moved every time he came in. He started there and then, like, moved down a stool or two every time. After a while he was all the way down to the other end where my regulars usually sit.”

Healy followed the bartender’s hand as she pointed out Mr. Sharper’s progression.

“Huh,” he said, puzzling the information in his head.

“So,” Emily said. “What did the guy do?”

“Oh,” Healy looked up, like the question had surprised him. “Uh, well, we’re not sure, you know. I’m from the insurance company. He either fell overboard or committed suicide. One or the other. That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

“No shit?” Emily said, hitching her hip up onto the edge of the cooler, half sitting, like she was going to get a story. “He was the one in the newspaper? The one they said they caught on the ship’s video going overboard but never found the body?”

Healy nodded. “Crew members said he’d been drinking heavily in the ballroom all night. His wife too. The wife says they’d gone out on the deck and she was busy puking over the side when he somehow bent over to help her and accidentally went over. At least that’s the way they’re playing it, an accident. Which means my company pays off the insurance policy to the wife.”

Emily was shaking her head, thinking about the guy, bringing his face back into focus from her memory.

“You don’t think he was drunk? That’s why you’re here?”

“No. No. There wasn’t much doubt he was drunk,” Healy said. “The wife said he’d been drinking heavily for months but had been trying to keep it from her. She knew he’d quit his job also, but she hadn’t let on. She said she figured it was some kind of midlife thing, but she claims no way was he suicidal.”

Emily put an elbow on the bar. “They always think they can hide it,” she said, but not directly to Healy, more out to the world.

“The crew in the ballroom said he’d been hitting the whiskey pretty hard all night. The band conductor even got pissed because he kept asking him to play that Bob Seger tune — you know, with that line ‘When I drink alone I prefer to be by myself.’ ”

Emily smiled this time. “Yeah, we’ve got that one on the jukebox.”

The investigator nodded and smiled back.

“Well,” he said, reaching out and taking the photo back off the bar and putting it back into his jacket, “that’s probably the way it’ll end up. Guy got drunk, fell overboard, we pay off to the wife and take the cruise line to task for over-serving him or whatever. Let the attorneys figure that out. I’m no lawyer.”

Someone from the other end of the bar called Emily’s name. Before she turned she put her hand on the hundred-dollar bill and pushed it back toward the investigator.

“I was just messing with you,” she said. “Take your money.”

“No, really,” Healy said. “You were very helpful. You keep it.” He put his palms up, like he was refusing it.

Emily pushed the bill farther.

“Really,” she said. “I’d feel bad taking it.”

The investigator smiled and stepped back. She gave the hundred another push and as she turned the bill fluttered over the edge. She saw the guy go for it, miss, and then have to bend over to fetch it from under the bar. After she’d popped a beer for another customer she looked back and saw Healy coming up from under the bar with an odd look on his face, his eyes a little wide with surprise. The investigator then disappeared again and Emily could only see his hand, his left hand, working its way along the lip of the bar, moving as he shuffled along in a crouch, pushing the empty stools away as he worked his way down. She’d seen a lot in bars, but never this. Finally the guy came up, a fascinated look on his face and a smile that showed all of his teeth this time.

“Do you have a flashlight back there?”