Dirty Words - [20]

Andy's known me since I was a kid, used to do gigs with my old man back in the days before the Alzheimer's took hold of my Pop. Most of the time, I do the freelance gigs today, family business and all, but sometimes Andy picks up a job or two here or there for some extra scratch.

I had to go with my Plan B bar and walked up to Dino's on 11th street. Dino's was a throwback bar, back to a time when keeping nodding junkies off the floor was considered hoity-toity on Avenue A. Most East Village bars nowadays seemed content working a faux blue-collar poser bullshit line. It isn't my scene; I hate Pabst Blue Ribbon and fedoras on wormy trust-fund babies.

Jeez, you'd think I didn't like pretty much anybody in the town any more.

I pretty much don't…

Josh, the bartender, jumped when the door banged shut behind me. He was chewing furiously on an unlit cigarette, looking like somebody had his nuts in a George Foreman grill. I glanced around. There was one couple sitting by the jukebox and a drunk old-timer swaying to the music over his beer. Unless Janelle, Josh's rumored pit-bull excuse for a wife was in the can, there was nothing that I could see that should have had the man so riled. Besides, Josh was six-two, sleeved in tattoos, and had been behind the sticks for twenty years. In almost any bar crisis, Josh was still the scariest man in the room.

Although I have heard that Janelle is scarier.

"What's got your panties twisted?" I asked, sitting in my regular seat in the far corner, facing the door.

"Hey, T.C. You seen Brian?"

"Brian who?" I helped myself to a bar napkin and daubed the sober-sweats off my brow.

"I don't know his last name. Black hair, always in a suit?"

"Not ringing a bell."

"Always makin' quick trips to the bathroom?" Josh raised his eyebrows and rubbed a finger under his nose in an unmistakable gesture.

"So what you're saying is, I don't want to know the guy."

"Probably don't." He took a deep breath.

"You know I don't."

Josh held his hands up, palms out. "Hey, I don't judge."

"Yes you do. That's precisely what you do."

"Whatever." Josh waved away my offense as he lit the cigarette and walked out the door for his tobacco constitutional.

Except the schmuck hadn't even poured me a goddamn drink yet.

I waited impatiently. In the meantime, I took another bar napkin and smoothed it out on the bar in front of me, hoping that when he returned he'd notice the conspicuous void on the mahogany.

Josh finally got back to his job, slightly more relaxed for the nicotine, and immediately tore back into the story. "So, this fucker, he was here all last night drinking heavy. Keeps making those trips to the bathroom and coming out fresh as a daisy." Josh popped another cigarette between his lips. If he stepped out for another smoke, I was going to knock him out and pour the whiskey myself.

"And?" I smoothed the napkin over with my fingers. Josh didn't notice. Not that I didn't want to hear his story, but c'mon. Priorities here.

"At closing time, either the blow was bad, or he'd hit the wall, but I gotta peel him off the bar." The wet filter between Josh's teeth split from his nervous gnawing. Josh made a face, pulling the white filaments off his tongue. "He comes back a couple hours ago in the same clothes as yesterday, coked off his nut again, just yelling and knocking over glasses. You believe that shit? On a fucking Sunday?"

I didn't know what it being Sunday had to do with anything in particular, but I said, "Go on…"

"I don't need this horseshit on a Sunday," he said, less to me than to the Vengeful Gods of All Things Bartending.

"What'd you do?"

"I go to grab him. You know what the sonofabitch does?"

I sighed, crumpled up my poor lonely bar napkin. Looked like my bad day had every intention of teetotalling my sad and dry spirit. "I do not."

"He pulls a knife. Says he's cutting anybody who touches him."

That made my ears prick up. In the years since New York went the way of the 1%, you don't hear so many stories take that kind of turn like they did daily in the bad old days.

For the record, to old-school cats like Josh and me, those were the good old days.

That said, I had an idea where the story was going. Josh keeps a Bernie Williams-Edition Louisville Slugger behind the bar for just such emergencies. "Will he live?"

Josh threw his hands up. "I didn't do nothing. He's an accountant for the fuckin' mob."

…uhhhhhh…

Okay, now.

And I'd thought I'd heard them all.

Every Bridge and Tunnel half-wit with a lick of Italian in his blood pulled that card at some point or another. Half the time, they weren't even Italian anymore. There's what's left of the Irish mob, the Chinatown Tongs and the Russians in Queens who were giving the Westies a run for the title of most psychotic crew in New York history. Hell, I'd even come across a few Japanese cats missing their pinkie fingers hovering around the karaoke bars in Little Korea.

Regardless, anybody who couldn't earn their own, said they're connected.

Or work for the mob.

Or grew up with yadda, yadda, blah-fucking-blah.