Midnight come again by Dana Stabenow Read Free Book Online Page A

vigor.

    There was a black-and-white cartoon by Wiley blown up big and tacked to the wall behind the bar. "Bert's Bid For a Utopian Society," read the caption. The drawing showed an irascible-looking old fart hunched over a cane, sitting next to a sign which read, everybody shut up and DO things MY way! "Bert's" had been altered to read

    "Bernie's."

    The cartoon was right next to the sign which read, free throws win ball games. Bemie coached the high school basketball teams, men's and women's, and the shop class had made the sign a class project the first time they took the Class C state championship. It was two feet square, made of three-quarter inch plywood, the lettering burned neatly into the wood, with a glossy varnished finish. The occasion of the sign's presentation was the only time Jim could remember Bernie allowing anybody underage in the Roadhouse, as the sign had been escorted by all forty-two members of Niniltna High School.

    Jim raised his glass in a silent toast. Bernie, like Bobby, had burrowed so deep into the Park that both men had become part of the fabric of it, as solid as the Quilak Mountains, as essential as the salmon in the Kanuyaq. Unlike himself, the deus ex machina who flew in for a day and flew out the next, no responsibilities except for those delineated by statute, and god forbid no emotional ties beyond a lusty romp between the thighs of a series of willing Park wenches. It was a life he had crafted for himself with care, it suited him exactly, he had never wanted any other.
    Unsettled by the trend of his thoughts, Jim said abruptly, "Have you seen her, Bernie?"

    "Who?" Bernie said, frowning down at a stubborn spot on the bar.

    "My great-aunt Fanny. Kate Shugak, asshole. You seen her lately?"

    Bernie scrubbed harder at the spot. "Nope."

    "When was the last time you did see her?"

    Bernie stopped scrubbing and stared at the ceiling for inspiration.

    "Gosh, I don't know. When was that?"

    "Bernie." Something in Jim's voice made the bartender meet his eyes, albeit reluctantly. "It's important. When was the last time you saw her?"
    Bernie looked around. The nearest people were a couple of tourists necking at a table near the door. If he read the signs right, they'd be asking to rent one of the cabins out back in the next five minutes. They were dressed in a yuppie version of safari chic; jackets by Banana Republic, jeans by Eddie Bauer, boots by L.L. Bean. Bernie mentally raised his room rates twenty percent for the night.

    Two old men were shooting pool and arguing over every shot, and that was it for this last Saturday in June, typical for the beginning of fishing season, a time of year the trooper in Jim loved because people were making money on the water instead of spending it in bars. Far fewer calls to domestic disputes during the summertime, and domestic disputes were the calls dreaded most by any law enforcement official. Jim had often wondered if it would be possible to keep men and women separated year round, with time off for good behavior, and conjugal visits, of course. It would make his job so much easier.

    Either that or prohibit the manufacture, sale and consumption of alcohol entirely, which hadn't worked real well the last time the country had tried it. And wasn't working real well, come to think of it, in those Alaskan Bush communities that had chosen to go damp or dry during the last ten years. Mostly because they wouldn't stay damp or dry, in spite of an eighty percent drop in alcohol-related crimes such as drunk driving, robbery, sexual assault and murder when they did. He remembered the last bootlegger to inhabit the Park, and his removal, vividly. The Kate Shugak Extraction Method was quick, he'd give it that.
    As well as effective. And longlasting. There hadn't been a bootlegger within a hundred miles of Niniltna since.

    "She was in here in March," Bernie said, and Jim snapped to attention.

    "I don't know when she came, I don't know when she left. We were busy as