Riders Down by John McEvoy Read Free Book Online Page B

nothing to do with Greta’s death—there was no way he could have allowed her to live, and ruin him—but was over his stupid misperception. He vowed to never again find himself in a situation he could not completely control.
    Deep in thought, Bledsoe made three complete tours of Capitol Square as he pondered his plight. Make a million dollars in a year? For him, now, it was truly all or nothing at all. He knew he’d find a way.
    Glancing up at the electronic clock on a bank across State Street, Bledsoe smiled. He realized he still had time to make his three o’clock class, an elective in the physical education department that he’d really begun to enjoy. He felt better already. He quickened his pace.

Chapter Six
    Later that same September afternoon in Madison, anticipation was running high at Doherty’s Den, a popular saloon on University Avenue. Seated at the long mahogany bar were a couple of dozen people, mostly men, mostly students, a few townspeople sprinkled among them, all eagerly awaiting the start of Mystery Hour, during which all drinks were sold at half-price.
    Many eyes were on the three television sets spaced above the back bar showing, respectively, a Cubs-Cards baseball game, an “ESPN Classic” program on Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers, and “Celebrity Poker.” The audio had been turned off on all three sets, but the volume on the battered old radio at the end of the bar was on high. The radio carried a Milwaukee sports talk show, which today had its usual contingent of contributors: mostly lifelong bachelors, or divorced men, living in the basements of their widowed mothers’ homes, all with passionate opinions on matters so slight as to hardly qualify as trivia. Two waitresses hustled food baskets from the kitchen to the worn wooden booths lining the walls of the long room. The pool table was in use, the aged pinball machine silent.
    By definition, the start of Mystery Hour varied from afternoon to afternoon. It might be 1:47 or 3:21 or 5:05 or some other time, depending on the whim of the bar’s owner, a mischievous import from County Meath, Ireland, named Tim Doherty. The result of this marketing practice was a clientele that tended to nurse their drinks until bargain time arrived, then began tossing them down in torrents. Many of these customers stayed on long after Mystery Hour was over, continuing to drink and spend, which was the whole idea. Doherty referred to this busy sixty-minute period as his “liquid loss leader.” He signaled its beginning by loudly ringing a battered cowbell he said he’d brought over with him from “the ould sod.”
    At 4:59, just two minutes into that day’s Mystery Hour, the front door of Doherty’s Den banged open. A wide-necked, broad-shouldered man, five feet eleven, two hundred and twenty pounds, stopped just inside the threshold. With his large shaved head and steel-framed glasses, Claude Bledsoe’s appearance was enough to cause a momentary hush, especially among people toward the front who could see that he was carrying an archery bow. Reaching over his shoulder, Bledsoe extracted an arrow from the quiver on his back. He carefully aimed it, then released the bow string. The arrow zoomed over the heads of the bar patrons before burying itself in the center of the dart board on the back wall some fifty feet away. Bull’s-eye.
    “Jesus Christ!” yelped one of the students, ducking down and covering his head with his hands, in the process knocking off his Packers ball hat.
    “Nope,” smiled Doherty, toweling off the moist surface on which the young man had spilled his glass of Old Style, “it’s Claude Bledsoe. I guess he’s taking archery this semester.”
    The archer hung his equipment on a coat hook before taking a seat on one of the stools at the end of the bar. Doherty drew a pint of Bass Ale and brought it to him. “Hello, Claude,” he said. “How’re they hanging?”
    “Loose and ready, Tim. And you?”
    Doherty said, “Fine,