Chapter Nineteen
Nineteen
Across the road, the stranger in the gangster suit watched as Luke came running out of The Whiskey with a concerned look on his face.
The stranger’s eyes narrowed to slits.
He recognized Luke from earlier. He was the guy who had come out to talk to Mary – the same guy who Mary had locked arms with before walking back into the bar.
The stranger straightened up his body and watched as Luke looked to one side then the other, clearly searching for someone.
That can’t be good, the stranger thought, walking out of the shadows and up to the edge of the curb.
Luke got on his tiptoes, searching further down the street.
Is he looking for Mary? the stranger asked himself.
Instinctively, he too began searching the crowd of streetwalkers, but he hadn’t seen Mary walk out of the bar.
Since she and the guy across the road had walked back into The Whiskey Bent Saloon arm-in-arm, he had kept a close watch on that door.
Mary had not walked out of it – at least not through the front door.
‘Fuck!’ The word came out through gritted teeth.
The stranger’s eyes searched the Broadway a little more urgently.
No Mary anywhere.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck… back door,’ the man said, as he rushed across the Broadway in a stop-and-start motion, to avoid being hit by oncoming traffic, but he didn’t rush towards The Whiskey Bent Saloon – he ran towards the side street to its right, which he knew would allow him to get to the back alley, directly behind that particular row of bars and restaurants.
It took him just a few seconds to reach it.
From that end of the alleyway, The Whiskey was the third building along. The back alley was badly lit, and the air was saturated with the smell of stale alcohol and of food gone bad.
No sign of Mary anywhere.
He ran past two large food dumpsters, and just as he was getting to the third back door on his left, it was pushed open by a tall Hispanic-looking man, wearing a waterproof apron and carrying a large bag full of food waste.
The Hispanic man paused as he saw the stranger slow down to a walking pace.
He certainly didn’t look like any of the regular food scavengers.
‘Hi there,’ the stranger said, catching his breath. ‘You work at The Whiskey Bent Saloon?’ He spoke with a clear Texan drawl.
The kitchen porter swung the food bag into one of the large dumpsters before turning to face the stranger.
‘That’s right.’
‘Did you, by any chance,’ the stranger asked, gesticulating while he spoke, ‘happen to see a woman… about my height… short black hair… blue jeans… dark jacket… black cowboy boots… leave through that back door not so long ago?’
The porter stared back at the stranger with more than just a question in his eyes.
‘I was just in there with a friend,’ the stranger tried to explain.
‘And unfortunately, she had one too many. You know how it goes sometimes, right? Towards the end, I don’t think that she was feeling too well.
She went into the bathroom a few minutes ago and simply disappeared. I can’t find her anywhere.’
‘Um-hum.’ The porter didn’t look like he was buying any of it.
‘So, I thought that maybe,’ gangster-suit man continued, ‘in her drunken state, she came out of the bathroom and used the wrong door.’
‘This is the kitchen door, ese,’ the porter explained. ‘Not a back exit. No one has left through here.’
‘Umm… are you sure?’
The porter’s look could’ve started a fire on wet grass.
‘Is there a back door to this bar, then?’
The porter shook his head. ‘There’s a fire exit door that drops you back on the Broadway, but that door is alarmed, and the alarm hasn’t gone off.’
‘And no one came through the kitchen?’
The porter wiped his hands on his apron. ‘Nope.’
Gangster-suit man held the porter’s stare for a second before reaching for his wallet.
‘How positive are you about that?’ He pulled out two twenty-dollar bills.
This time, it was the porter who hesitated. ‘Umm… well… quite positive.’
Gangster-suit man nodded slowly, understanding the bargain. ‘I see.’ He took out another twenty-dollar bill. ‘How about now?’
The porter motioned gangster-suit man to hand him the sixty dollars.
He did, but didn’t let go of the money, holding the bills at one end, while the porter grabbed them at the other.
‘She left about a minute before you got here,’ the porter said. ‘You really just missed her.’
‘Do you know which way she went?’
The porter pulled harder on the money.
Gangster-suit man finally let go of it.
‘I don’t know, ese,’ the porter replied, taking the money and placing it in his back pocket.
‘She just opened the door and she was gone. I didn’t come out with her.
But I ain’t joking when I said that you just missed her.
So, if you came from that way…’ His head tilted right, in the direction that gangster-suit man had surfaced, ‘and you didn’t see her, then she probably went the other way. ’ His head jerked left.
‘Thank you.’ Gangster-suit man nodded at the porter before taking off like a rocket down the alleyway. As he finally reached the street at the other end of it, he looked right then left. He couldn’t see Mary anywhere.
The man took a second, pondering his options.
If he turned left, the street would take him back to The Broadway, dropping him right at the opposite end of the same block where The Whiskey was located.
He doubted that if Mary was trying to get away from him – which he was pretty certain that she was – she would’ve tracked back to The Broadway.
Too risky. So, using logic, she must’ve turned right, but he was standing right on 4th Avenue North, which was a very long avenue, intersected by a multitude of different streets.
Mary could’ve easily turned off on any of them and simply disappeared.
Gangster-suit man breathed out in frustration. Turning right and running down the avenue would be a pointless exercise. There was no way that he’d be able to find her now.
‘Fuck!’ he said as he reached for his cellphone and pressed ‘redial’ on the last number he had called.
The call was answered after the second ring.
‘I’ve lost her,’ he said, looking down at his shiny shoes.
There was a long, slow exhale… a second later, the line went dead.