The Langley Case: A Nathan Roeder Mystery

Drinking and Thinking

Once I had everything copied, I stopped by at one of the access points to Town and found a mailbox. The original diary I sent back to Theresa. The original disc I sent to myself. That at least cut down on one of the people who would want me dead. Maybe the others wouldn’t be smart enough to think I’d made a copy. Or maybe they would, and would go after the disc I sent myself. They might think that was the only copy.

I felt bad, trying to outthink someone when I didn’t even know for sure who they were. It made me want to get a drink.

“Want to get a drink, Max?”

“You sure that’s a good idea?” He asked. “Don’t we have kind of an early day tomorrow?”

“I’m buying.”

“Great. I know a place.” He stopped and turned full towards me. “Unless you mind seeing something naked, now that you’ve seen Felicia with her clothes on.”

“What does that mean?”

“I know she’s the one you want to see the skin of,” he said. “I can see it in your eyes.”

“In my eyes?”

“In the way you practically fuck her with them every time she moves.”

“You’re undressing her too, Max.”

He shrugged, then turned back to driving. “Yeah, but I do that to everyone.”

We sat at the bar. I had my back to the dancing. Max sat next to me, facing the other way. I wasn’t ignoring things. I just wanted to see more. There was a mirror behind the bar, so I could see everything he could. I just got to ignore it if I wanted to. And I did.

“What’s up, pal?” The bartender hadn’t been by much since I’d ordered a full bottle of whiskey and a glass, then turned and asked Max if he wanted anything.

“Too much is up, not enough is down,” I said.

He nodded, like he had any idea what I was talking about. “Is it a woman?” he asked.

“Why would you think that?”

He smiled. “It’s always women, buddy,” he said. “Who else comes to a bar like this and doesn’t look at the naked girls than a man who’s got women troubles?”

“Good point.”

“So tell me about her.”

“Which one?”

He whistled. “That kind of problem, huh?” He shrugged, picked up a glass that didn’t need cleaning, and started cleaning it. I don’t know if he’d picked up on my motif or if he was a Noirist too. I guess it didn’t much matter. “Okay then. Tell me about the first one.”

I let out the kind of laugh you let out just before jumping into a story. “I knew she was bad news as soon as I saw her,” I said. “But I’ve never been much for the touching family dramas.”

He didn’t say anything. That was just fine. “The dame walked in with that attitude. You know the one: I could keep you or drop you, promote you or fire you. Doesn’t make a difference to me.”

“I know the type,” he said.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Max asked, over his shoulder. “I thought we were trying to figure out—”

I held up a hand. “I’m getting to that,” I said. “The point is, she walked in and she offered me a whole lot of money to find something out for her. To find out if something was true.”

“What?”

I waved my hand. “Doesn’t matter what,” I said. “The point is, she wanted me to find out it wasn’t true; didn’t care if it was or not. You know the type.”

The bartender nodded like he did.

“But before I can make any real progress, I get people sticking guns in my face left and right.”

“Sounds like a rough day.”

“That’s just the half of it. It gets worse when I meet the other dame. She lives out here, among the down and dirty. Only she’s a rose growing out of a pile of shit.”

Max laughed. “Told you,” he said.

I ignored him. Or at least, pretended to. “Now I’ve got more than just people sticking guns at my face. Now I’ve got to go stick guns at theirs, all to protect some chick I hardly know. You dig?”

The bartender nodded.

“But even after I get her out of her little hole, I’ve got no place to stash her. Soon as I go home, I’m right back to my first set of problems, back to the first set of guns pointing at me. Trouble is, those guns are held in hands I don’t know, faces I’m not sure I’ve seen. Once I get the second dame out of her hole, I’ll have nowhere to hide from the first one, or from the people she knows. The whole Sprawl’ll be closed to me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Nothing?”

“I could let my rose wilt and die, I suppose.” I tossed back a healthy amount of whiskey and poured myself another glass with the smooth practice of someone who—well, the smooth practice I’ve taken the time to get smooth and practiced. “But that’s not much choice. So I’ve got to kill them all.”

“Who?”

I shrugged. “Whoever it takes.”

The bartender put down his glass. “You want another one?” he asked, pointing at the bottle.

By the time Max and I actually started talking strategy and thinking, I was on bottle number two, working towards three. I think he was drinking beer. I wasn’t paying attention. “Where did you leave the satchel?” He asked.

“In The Albino’s booth. Think that’ll work?”

“Jesus. He’s going to be pissed at you.”

“If we don’t just kill him.”

Max laughed. “Nathan, you can’t kill The Albino.”

“Sure I can,” I said. “I’ve got a gun. I’ve killed people before.”

“That’s not what I mean,” he said. “It’s a bad idea to kill The Albino.”

“Why?”

“The three of them, they hold the Sprawl together.” I don’t think Max was as drunk as he pretended to be. “You kill one, and it’s total panic until someone takes his place.”

“Whatever.” I was not pretending to be sober. Nor was I. “If he gets in the way, I’m going to kill him.

“You’ve really fallen for that chick, you know that?”

“I can’t let it continue. All those hookers, stuck in that life, no chance of anything different.”

“Some of them don’t mind, Nathan.”

“Then you take them with you.”

“You’re going to get me killed, you know that?”

I shrugged. I didn’t know how true it was. “I’ll avenge you.”

“Small good it’ll do me,” he said. “You better not be getting me killed, Nathan.”

“I make no promises Max.”

“Then I’m not going.”

I looked at him. “Oh, come on. You know you want to go.”

“Why? So I can get killed?”

“You want me to promise you won’t get killed? We’re staging a raid, a two man war.”

“One,” Max said. “But it doesn’t have to be this way, Nathan. There are other options.”

“Like what?”

“Maybe you don’t need to kill everyone to get Felicia out. Maybe you just need to distract people so she can get herself out. Or maybe you just need to find something The Albino wants more than Felicia.”

“Like what? We don’t have that kind of time, Max.”

“Then you’ll be all by yourself, Nathan.”