David Alexander - Masters of Noir - Volume 2

The owner smiled a little. It would be interesting to see how the bartender handled this one. It was obvious that he was not their kind of customer. He wondered how long it would take the bartender to get rid of him.

The bartender stopped in front of the man in the field jacket and said: “Yes, sir?”

The customer, without looking up from the bar, said, a little thickly: “Bar whiskey and water.” He pulled a crumpled dollar bill from his pocket and wadded it onto the bar.

The drink was poured and the customer took it straight, washing it down with the water. He looked up, then, toward the bartender, but the bartender had walked away to the other end of the bar and was talking there with a regular customer. The man in the field jacket kept staring at him and drumming his fingers on the bar. Twice the bartender turned and saw the customer staring at him but politely, smilingly ignored him, even though it was obvious that the man wanted another drink. The owner smiled. The bartender was doing fine.

The first few seconds that the customer banged his glass on the bar for attention, the bartender continued to ignore him. Then he turned slowly and walked toward him. With his eyebrows arched disapprovingly, the bartender said softly: “You don’t have to do that. You’re disturbing the other customers.”

“Oh, I am?” The customer’s voice was too loud. There was a strange tightness, an almost clenched sound to it. His fixed gaze now centered straight onto the bartender’s eyes. “You’ve been ignoring me. What the hell am I, a bum or something, I can’t get served? This is a high class gardam place or something?”

The bartender pursed his lips. “Please, sir! I’m afraid I can’t serve you any more. You’ve had enough.”

“Enough?” The customer said. “What do you mean, enough? I’m not drunk. You pour me another drink. You hear me?”

The owner frowned. He couldn’t have this. This loud fellow was disturbing his regular people. He watched the bartender and the raucous customer while their eyes locked for a moment and he saw something he didn’t understand. The bartender flinched as though he’d been struck. He seemed to go pale. Too abruptly, he turned away from the customer and, with an agitated quickness, walked toward the owner at the end of the bar.

He glanced back nervously and saw the customer still sitting there, drumming his fingers on the bar and staring fixedly into the backbar mirror. The bartender said: “What do you want me to do? If you ask me, I think we’d better give him another one, pacify—”

The whole bar was silent now. All the regular customers were pointedly avoiding the man in the Army field jacket. The silence was almost chilling. The owner said:

“Don’t be absurd. Give in to him and you’ll have him sitting here the rest of the night, maybe getting more pugnacious after another drink. Don’t do anything. Just let him sit there. He’ll get bored. Ignore him. He’ll leave after awhile. I’ve been through this thousands of times. If he doesn’t, I’ll talk to him and get rid of him.”

The bartender licked his lips. He was sweating a little over the bridge of his nose. He said: “This man isn’t any ordinary drunk, sir. I don’t think we ought to fool with him, antagonize him.”

“What do you mean?” The owner was nettled at his judgement being questioned.

“There’s something wrong with him. He’s ready to flip. Believe me. I know this kind. I worked at a State Hospital for a year and a half. I’ve seen lots of ‘em like that and I’m tellin’ you, this one is just about to go.”

The owner raised on tiptoe and looked over the bartender’s shoulder. The customer was just sitting there, drumming his fingers and looking down at them.

“I think you’re being melodramatic,” the owner said. “But even if you’re not, all the more reason to get rid of him.”

Abruptly, the bartender said: “Excuse me. I’ve got to go to the john.” He pushed past the owner.

Up at the middle of the bar, the customer started banging his empty glass on the bar. The owner sighed. He walked up there, his round, intelligent face quietly composed. He put his hands flat on the bar in front of the customer, who didn’t look up but stopped banging his glass.

“Sir,” the owner said, very softly. “We appreciate your patronage and we’d love to have you come back some other time but right now we feel you’ve had your share. You look like a nice intelligent fellow. Surely you can understand my position. We’re just not allowed by law to serve anyone who has passed a certain point. Please be a nice chap and go home now and come back and see us some other time.”

The customer looked up at the owner. His dirty gray eyes fastened on the owner’s and the owner saw what the bartender had meant, but that odd glassiness, he knew, was because this man had taken too much to drink. He was really plastered, even though he could still sit and probably walk straight. It wasn’t an unfamiliar type of drunkenness.

A rather vacant smile formed on the customer’s peaked face, showing small, crooked, carious teeth. “Is that the way it is?”

The owner smiled back, nodding. He told himself this was the way to do it. Gentle but firm. It always worked. He wished the bartender was here to watch him in action. He felt the admiring glances of his regular people and could almost feel the easing up of tension in the place.

“Or is it just that you don’t like my looks?” The customer said. One hand, small, thin-fingered and dirty, gestured toward himself. The other one clenched the water glass so hard his knuckles showed white and the owner feared for a moment he might break the glass.

“Don’t be absurd, sir,” the owner said, gently and firmly. “A customer is a customer to us. And there’s nothing wrong with the way you look.”

“I see,” the customer said. His hand loosened from around the glass. “In that case, I believe I’ll have something to eat. There’s no law against serving me food, is there? Let me see a menu.” He still spoke thickly but it wasn’t the usual drunken kind of thickness, the owner observed. It was more as though his tongue was suddenly too big for his mouth.

The owner thought fast. He had to settle this once and for all. He had to get rid of this fellow, this drunken or crazy or whatever-he-was bum. The drinking question was apparently over. But he couldn’t have this one in his clean, quiet dining room, to disgust his regular dinner clientele. This wasn’t any one-arm joint.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the owner said. “We have a strict rule that gentlemen must wear a tie to be seated at a table here. A very strict rule. We couldn’t possibly make an exception.”

The customer looked startled. He put his hand to the neck of the dirty T-shirt he wore under the field jacket. He looked along the bar and then craned to look back in the dining room. The owner smiled. He had checked and made sure that everyone in the place was wearing a tie before he spoke. The customer’s eyes came back to his. They looked full of laughter, an almost childish, secret laughter.

“God damn,” he said. “Have to have a tie to eat here, huh? I’m too drunk to be served liquor and I can’t eat because I got no tie.”

The owner shrugged his soft shoulders. “I’m sorry, sir. That’s the way it is. You understand, of course.” He moved away, indicating that the conversation was obviously over. The man would leave now. The owner glanced in the backbar mirror and saw the customer, shaking his head, dazedly, slide off the stool and stand up. The owner told himself that it was so easy if you knew how. There was no need to have any trouble with the bums, the misfits, the lowlifes. You were just firm but gentle and that was it. Who was the owner of the place, anyhow? Who decided these things? In quietness and gentleness, there was strength.