Beware the Solitary Drinker Read Online Free PDF Page B

before. He didn’t seem to like me very much.
    â€œEveryone lies to me,” said Detective Sergeant Sheehan.
    â€œYou haven’t heard anything yet,” I warned him. “Wait till you talk to Oscar.”
    â€œShe was in the bar that night.”
    I nodded.
    â€œWho was she with?”
    â€œNo one.”
    â€œWho did she leave with?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œYes you do; she came over to say goodbye before she left with the band. Who’d you leave with?”
    â€œThat’s personal.”
    â€œDid you see her after she left the bar?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œDid you call her?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œDid you go to her apartment?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œDid she come to your apartment?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œDid you look for her?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWho did she spend time with besides you?” Sheehan didn’t smile or change his expression, which suggested he was already looking ahead to something and losing interest in me. Still, he questioned relentlessly, and I felt like a fraud.
    â€œI’m going to find answers.” Sheehan pulled himself up taller, seeming to take up most of my small foyer. “I’m going to know everyone who was in the bar and where they went after the bar closed. I’ll know your personal business, too. I don’t understand why you think it’s cool to protect a murderer.”
    â€œBartender’s code. We only care whether they’re good tippers.”
    When Sheehan left, I tried to figure out for myself what I was doing. I acted out of habit. Not helping the cops was something I’d learned growing up in Flatbush when the FBI crashed through the neighborhood telling everyone my father was a traitor.
    When I arrived at work that night, Saturday night, I found Oscar at his corner of the bar with Sergeant Sheehan. Oscar spoke with a Spanish accent, had black hair, thick black eyebrows, and a pug’s face. He told enormous lies and was impressed by financial successes like doctors and lawyers, and especially business men, some of whom, remembering him from the West End Bar during their college days, stopped by once in a while to say hello. He didn’t mind gangsters but hated drug dealers, blacks, and cops. With Sheehan he was having trouble. I could tell by his gestures and the workings of his face muscles that he was telling bigger and bigger lies to get out of the lie he’d just been caught in. Oscar was talking about a lieutenant he thought he knew, while trying to ascertain if Sheehan was on the take so he might arrange something to keep his joint out of the murder case, so he wouldn’t lose his liquor license.
    If you carry yourself the right way as a bartender, after a while people forget you’re there no matter what kind of secrets they’re talking about.
    â€œI don’t care about your club,” Sheehan said. “I just want one guy.”
    â€œI know, I know,” said Oscar. “Me, too.”
    â€œLook, Oscar. I’m not on the take. I’m not after your joint. I just want the perpetrator.”
    Oscar wasn’t so much unwilling to tell the truth—he just didn’t recognize it. He refused to conform his view of things to someone else’s idea of reality.
    â€œThe first time she was ever here,” Oscar said, his thick eyebrows bobbing enthusiastically.
    â€œShe was a regular, almost every night,” Sheehan said.
    â€œShe came in but never hung around.” The eyebrows stopped.
    â€œShe was a friend of the bartender.”
    â€œHe never paid attention to her.” The eyebrows crept down over his eyelids.
    â€œShe used to live with him.”
    â€œHe never let on.” Oscar’s eyes squinted closed.
    When Sheehan left, Oscar leaned over the bar. “You got to tell the truth,” Oscar said. “Tell him everything you know, or he’ll have the place closed. He’s a big man in the