CONCOURSE (Bill Smith/Lydia Chin) by S.J. Rozan Read Free Book Online Page B

I want to ask you about, now that I’ve spent some time at that place. Can you meet me for dinner at Shorty’s?”
    “Yeah, sure. When?”
    I looked at the clock in the bakery window. It was four-thirty. I might be an hour at Ehring’s, another half hour getting home. “Eight?” I asked. That would give me two hours at home, and I wanted that.
    “Okay,” Bobby said. Then, “Kid? You sure you’re all right?”
    “I’m fine, Bobby. I’ll see you later.”
    We hung up. I gave the phone another quarter, punched in Lydia’s number. It was answered on the second ring, but it was answered by a machine.
    “You have reached the offices of Chin Investigative Services,” it told me. “There’s no one available to take your call right now, but if you leave a message we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.” Then it told me again, in Chinese.
    “It’s me,” I said, after the beep. “Are you there?” I waited a few seconds but she didn’t pick up. “Okay, listen. I’m having dinner with Bobby Moran at Shorty’s at eight. Can you meet us there?” I was out of things to say, so I just said, “See you later,” and hung up. Feeling slightly cheated, I crossed the street to Ehring’s.
    There weren’t many people in Ehring’s, but it was the kind of place that could never look empty. The heavy, paneled door brought me into the end of a long, narrow room, where the bar ran down the left side, leaving no space for tables on the right. Beyond the bar was a room where booths lined both walls and an aisle ran between; to the left of that was a dining room.
    The walls were dark-paneled wood, and every inch was hungwith framed photographs, ancient fraternal banners, and menus from testimonial dinners given in 1923. There were shelves of decorated beer steins and oversized pilsners, hunting horns on pegs, and a string of Christmas lights above the bar. The whole place was watched over by trophy heads: three deer, a moose, a wolf, a civet cat. One of the deer had Christmas lights for eyes.
    I sat at the bar under the suspicious eyes of the trophies and the regulars. The bar stool was leather, worn soft with the years. Down at the far end, the red-cheeked, round-shouldered bartender was talking to two men who looked like they were spending their retirement here. In time he wandered over, dropped a coaster on the bar, asked affably, “What can I get you?”
    “Beer,” I said. “Bud.”
    As he pulled the handle and my beer foamed into the mug, he asked, “How about some ice for that eye?”
    That was my opening to tell my story, draw the regulars into talk, buy a round and get bought one, begin not to be a stranger here. But I was tired, and I was here for a different reason.
    “Too late for that.” I dropped four bucks on the bar, didn’t pick up the change when he brought it back. “I’m meeting a guy here. I don’t know him, but he said to ask at the bar. Hank Lindfors.”
    “Why didn’t you say so? He’s here.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, toward the back room. “You’re Smith? You’re early. He said to look for you around five.”
    “Thanks.” I took my beer and headed down the narrow room to the booths in the back.
    Only three were occupied, only one by an obvious cop. He had the lined cop face and the walrus cop mustache and the hard, guarded cop eyes. He was a big man, broad, his age hard to tell. He could have been younger than I was, not much over thirty; or older than I, pushing fifty. His weathered face and thick dark hair would swear to either story. He sat facing the door, one arm flung along the low back of the booth. His expression didn’t change as he watched me walk toward him, and his big hands were still, but I knew that deceptive cop quiet, too. I knew that if he thought he had to, he could drop me fast.
    “Lindfors?” I said, standing above him. “I’m Smith.”
    He nodded; he knew some things, too. He gestured with hisglass at the green leather bench across from