Callahan's Place 07 - Callahan's Legacy (v5.0) Read Online Free PDF

to raid the cigar box for another thirty-three singles, treat yourself to eleven more drinks, then go get eleven singles from the box, add ’em to the dollar you still had left over from your original hundred and have four more snorts for a nightcap, then take four singles, have one more for the road, and walk out with a buck in your pants.   Plus whatever leftover hundred dollar bills you don’t have time to burn by closing, if any.   This is just theoretical, of course: I wouldn’t sell a man forty-nine glasses of water .   And I’d cut you off once you were down to cab-fare: I don’t let anyone leave here drunk with their car keys.   But it comes down to, three bucks a drink, a dollar back if you return your empty.”
    He was staring at the cigar box, sitting there unattended at the end of the bar, singles spilling over its sides.   “What keeps anyone from filching a fistful of those on their way out?” he asked.
    I shrugged again.   “Honesty?   Integrity?   Self respect?   Enlightened self-interest?”
    He grinned delightedly.   His grin was almost manic, his gaze intense.   “I’m beginning to like this place.   You don’t find many bars with a flat rate—much less a Free Lunch of dollar bills.   But look here: if I let you break that yard…well, let’s say I’ll have three or four drinks, tops: that leaves me with eighty-eight—and possibly ninety-two—singles to dispose of.”   He gestured to his open guitar case.   “As you can imagine, I expect to be somewhat arm-weary by the time I’ve emptied this thing.   Another ninety-four missiles might just be the straw that broke the camel’s wrist.”
    “I see your problem,” I agreed.   “After you’ve burned a guitar-case full of hundreds, how much fun can there be in burning singles?”
    He smiled.   I wish I saw guys in their fifties smile that big more often.   “How about this?   Why don’t I just give you a hundred, and we’ll call it an advance payment on my tab?”   He looked around the room.   Don and Ev were holding a crowd with pornographic smoke rings, the Lucky Duck was trouncing Slippery Joe Maser at darts by flipping them over his shoulder, and the cluricaune was dancing a jig upside down on the (new) rafters while Fast Eddie played the C-Note…pardon me, the C-Jam Blues on his beat-up old upright.   “I think I’m going to be doing a lot of drinking in here: you people are crazy as a basketball bat.”
    “Yeah, we’re weird as a snake’s suspenders, all right,” I agreed.   “Welcome to Mary’s Place.   I’m Jake Stonebender.”
    “Rogers is my name,” he said.
    I hesitated.   “Ordinarily I don’t ask a man’s first name if he doesn’t offer it to me…but in your case I think I’m going to make an exception.   No offense, but I just don’t think I can call you ‘Mister Rogers’ with a straight face for any length of time.”
    He sighed.   “I quite understand your problem.   But it isn’t going to get any better when I give you my first name.”
    “Try me.”   I made up my mind not to laugh, whatever he said next.
    “My parents, for reasons which have always seemed to me inadequate, elected to name me for my Uncle Buckingham.”
    I managed to keep my face deadpan, with great effort, but a nasal sound like an snore played backwards soon escaped from me despite my best attempts to suppress it.
    “No, go ahead,” he said understandingly.   “You’ll hurt yourself.”
    I gave up and released a large bolus of laughter.   He waited it out; I tried my best to keep it short but it just kept coming and coming.
    I mean, it was beyond perfect.   It would have been a funny name anywhere—but here it had added impact.   Buck Rogers had walked into Mary’s Place.   Hell, we should have been expecting him!   And the first thing he’d done was to start rogering bucks.
    I finally got it under control and stuck out my hand.   “Buck, I apologize.   See, you don’t know it