Todd Robinson - The Hard Bounce

Johnny Walker Blue wasn’t sold at The Cellar. Would have been like offering Kobe beef at Taco Bell. Junior just informed me that our little Ms. Reese had come with a police presence.

I didn’t have to look at the bar itself. From where I sat, I could see the entire room reflected in the long mirror running across the far wall. He blended in better than the prom queen across the table from me, but I knew immediately who Junior was talking about. He sat nursing a beer and stared straight ahead, all the while watching our table out of the corner of his eye. Big guy with a white beezer haircut and an old black nylon jacket on despite the heat, which told me he was packing. His air was “don’t fuck with.” Old-school tough.

“You got this covered?” Junior asked, tipping his head back toward the bar and the cop.

“Yeah.” I nodded. “You can head back downstairs. I got it up here.”

“You sure?” I knew he was only about a third concerned. The other two-thirds were curiosity and just plain nosiness.

“I got it,” I said, a little firmer.

Junior nodded and walked toward the front, giving the cop’s back a long lingering glare.

I checked the cop in the mirror one more time before I turned my full attention back to Ms. Reese. “So, do you own a bar?”

Her eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

“You said you wanted to hire us. We do bar and club security. That’s what people hire 4DC Security to do.”

“No, I don’t own a bar.”

“Club, then?”

“No.”

The game of twenty questions was wearing thin. “So assuming you haven’t mistaken us for a ballet troupe, what is your business with us, Ms. Reese?”

“Kelly,” she said.

“What?”

“Please, you can call me Kelly.”

Even that small offering sounded patronizing. She seemed to have been torn between disgust, condescension, and sheer horror since she walked in the place. It was all probably unintentional, but it was crawling under my skin like a fat tick.

“Okay, Kelly, what’s your business?”

“My employer would like to hire your services.”

“And just who might your employer be?” I said, popping down my bourbon.

“I’m not at liberty to divulge that at this time.”

“You’re not…” I laughed a little too loudly and glanced in the mirror. My outburst made a white beezered head turn at the bar.

Gotcha.

“Let me explain something to you, Kel. I don’t know whether you’ve seen too many spy movies or just have a hard-on for old noir, but I don’t work for phantoms, and this cloak and dagger bullshit you’re feeding me is going right up my ass. So you can cut the shit and talk to me straight or you can go piss up a rope.” I stood from the table, ready to walk. It was one part my shitballs of an afternoon and another part poorly repressed class rage. Either way, it felt good to let her have it.

Her voice shook a bit when she said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Malone. I’m just following my employer’s wishes at this time. I didn’t mean to get you angry.”

She looked much younger than my original assessment right then. On the table in front of her was a small pile of napkin bits. She’d been nervously ripping off pieces and rolling them into little balls. She wasn’t just being snobby. She was legitimately scared to be there. And of me.

Hot shame filled my chest. Kelly Reese made me feel like a bully. “Listen, I… I’m sorry,” I said. “You didn’t deserve that.”

“No need to apologize,” she said, but her eyes didn’t leave the table.

“I’m not having the best day, as I’m sure you can smell.”

She forced a tight smile. “You do smell awful.”

“Thanks. Ask anybody. Any other day and you’d be overpowered by my smoothly masculine musk.”

“No doubt.” The smile came a little less forced.

“Can we start from the top again? And this time straight?”

“I’m just here to find out whether or not you’re available for hire.”

“For what?”

“My employer’s daughter has been missing for a week and a half. He would like you to try to find her.”

I drained the last of my beer. “I don’t know who you or your employer has been talking to, but that’s not what we do. Like I said, we do club security and every now and then we’ll pick up a bail jumper for shits and giggles, but that’s it. Hell, more often than not, we know the guy we’re picking up. Missing persons usually go to cops like your friend at the bar.” I tipped my empty shot glass at the cop. The cop saw my gesture and closed his eyes, disgusted. I gave him a hearty wave.

Kelly Reese raised an eyebrow. “Well, with observational skills like that, you might be the right person for the job.”

“The flattery is certainly helping, but again-”

“However, my employer knows that going to the police could mean the situation leaking to the media. Unless it becomes absolutely necessary, he would like to avoid that.”

“And your police escort is here…” I trailed off, allowing her to fill in the blank.

“My friend at the bar is just here to keep an eye out.”

“For what? For me?”

“For anything.”

“I see,” I lied. I didn’t see shit yet. Although my ego deflated slightly that I didn’t warrant the singular attentions of her bodyguard. “But as I said, we really don’t do that sort of thing.”

“He’s just asking you to try.” She reached into her briefcase and pulled out a cream-colored envelope and slid it across the table. “Here’s a picture and a small retainer, should you choose to take our offer.”

I opened up the envelope and pulled a smaller envelope out. It was unsealed, and clearly held more than a month’s wages in bouncer gigs. I hoped my eyes didn’t do a cartoon bug-out. “Okay, then, we’ll give it a shot,” I said a bit too quickly. Money talks, brother. And in this case it sang a rock opera.

I pulled out the picture.

It was the girl with the dyed red hair.

I leapt up from the table, knocking over my chair, and ran to the door where she had just kissed me on the cheek less than two hours before. Junior saw my frenzy and ran over. “Yo! Where’s the fuego?”

I stuck the picture in his hand. “This girl was just here. Find her!”

No questions asked, he ran back down to the basement. I looked around the street in front of the club. Nothing. I ran back through the bar and out the back. A few kids were hanging out there in a cloud of acrid pot smoke and quickly hid their hands. No girl.

I let out that long and profane curse I was holding in.

I stormed back into the bar and over to Kelly. “All right! What the hell is going on? That kid was just here. Who is she?”

The cop decided he’d had enough of the silent partner routine. He quickly came over to the table. “What do you mean she was just here?”

“What the hell do you think it means, Chief Wiggum?” I smacked the back of my fingers across the envelope. “She was just here.”

Junior came in through the back. “Nothing. There’s a few band members and a couple of groupies downstairs, but not this one. Who is this?”

The cop said, “Where? Who was she with?”

“Who is this?” Junior asked again.

“I don’t know,” I said to them both.

“Then why the fuck am I looking for her?” Junior asked.

“Where was she?” The cop again.

“Hey!” I yelled at the cop. “Step off! Until you introduce yourself, you can blow me with the interrogation.” His face darkened, but he shut up for the moment. “Junior, go back downstairs. Show that picture to everyone down there and ask them if they know her, and if anybody does, where she went and who she was with.”

Junior threw his hands up and sighed. “Fine.”