Angel With a Bullet Read Online Free PDF

shotgun.”
    â€œAh, the Hemingway solution. Grim.”
    â€œYou have no idea.”
    I pick up the lime wedge, squeeze its juice into the shot glass, and watch the tequila turn cloudy.
    â€œFrank there?” Bill asks.
    I nod and take a small sip of tequila.
    Bill waits, his hands continually busy drying glasses or refilling marquee bottles from bar-brand gallon jugs.
    â€œYou think there’s something wrong with me, Bill?” I ask after another sip.
    â€œLet me think.” His voice is the steady rumble of a subway train. “It’s one in the morning; you’re alone in a dingy bar, drinking tequila and courting advice from a mug so ugly he would give your mother palpitations.” He pauses. “Nah, you’re doing just fine.”
    â€œThanks,” I say dryly. “You’re a sweetheart.”
    Bill grins. “Don’t let that out, I have a reputation to uphold.”
    â€œYou too, huh?”
    Bill walks to the far side of the bar to serve his only other patrons, two arguing retirees with matching ill-fitting dentures who look like they can barely afford to split a beer between them.
    From my stool, I have a clear view of the entire room. Eight feet to my left is the lone washroom that breaks every health regulation in the book and makes me determined to learn levitation; two feet to my right is the bricked-up doorway that once led to a boardinghouse of ill-repute above; and sixteen feet directly behind me is a steel door complete with Prohibition-era peephole that, contrary to fire regulations, is the only way in or out if you don’t know about the trapdoor behind the bar that leads to a dank cellar and a maze of forgotten tunnels that are said to cover most of the block. If you put thirty people in the room, it’s five too many.
    Frank usually sits to my left and, as a house courtesy, the wooden stool to my right is reserved for Al Capone, the dead Chicago mobster.
    According to local legend, Capone was known to be a regular of the speakeasy whenever he ventured west on business. The bar had a waitress back then whom Bill claims was Capone’s one true love. When she mysteriously disappeared one day, Capone made a decree that no one was to be hired to replace her. And to this day, no one has.
    To be fair though, with the way cops and reporters tip, it wouldn’t be a job anyone would clamor for either.
    After Capone was convicted of tax evasion, he requested to serve his time in Alcatraz, where (Bill claims) he would sit in his cell, look across the water, and dream about this place and his missing sweetheart. Of course, Bill also claims Capone still visits regularly, which is why the stool is reserved.
    Personally, I have yet to meet the man’s ghost, but it’ll be a hell of a story when I do.
    The door swings open behind me and I hear Frank’s heavy feet slap the concrete floor. I glance in the mirror behind the bar to see his usual bravado lost between hunched shoulders and a slouched back. He slides onto the stool beside me and runs thick fingers through thinning hair.
    Bill pours a tall mug of O’Doul’s Amber—a dealcoholized draft made by Anheuser-Busch with a caramel color, malt taste, and thin head—and slides it to him. Frank sighs with pleasure as he takes a long, slow pull.
    â€œTo the blue,” Frank says, lifting his glass to the ceiling.
    â€œMay the good Lord watch our backs,” answer the two old-
timers.
    Frank nods at Bill to pour two fresh mugs of draught and deliver them to the far side of the bar.
    _____
    Frank stopped drinkingregular beer two weeks after his wife died. The fortnight in between was a time he’s only talked about once, and for some reason, I was the one he trusted to tell it to.
    Despite rumors that the public outpouring garnered by my story saved Frank’s career, I didn’t pull any punches. Frank was falling down drunk the night his wife was murdered. That’s a