Snitch World Read Online Free PDF Page A

somewhere, I’m sure,” the old man said, somewhat frostily.
    “My point exactly,” Klinger replied pointedly.
    “But the bartender,” the old man persevered, “who is annoyed that his musical evening is turning into a therapy session run by a drunk, tells the young lady that her friend is cut off until he takes the trouble to do what he’s being paid to do, which is sing and play the songs for which he’s famous and which changed the world for the better back when we was all hippies.”
    “Speak for yourself,” Klinger advised him tartly.
    “I am,” said the old man. “So, naturally, she waits. By and by …” The old man snapped his fingers. They didn’t quite snap, so he snapped them a second time. “Our guitarist does it again.”
    “He reaches over—.”
    “—and makes as if to pinch up the shot glass.”
    ”But the shot glass isn’t there.”
    “He doesn’t turn a hair.”
    “I’ll bet he twitched internally.”
    “Actually, the twitch was quite visible.”
    “Didn’t he look over at the second stool, just the least glance, to make sure he hadn’t missed?”
    “Nope. He knew it wasn’t there. So, he draped the unemployed hand on the neck of his guitar and went back to his story.”
    “This sounds excruciating,” Klinger said.
    “It was that,” the old man agreed, “but it was raining too hard to leave gracefully.”
    “So …”
    “So, by and by, he does it again.”
    “He reaches over—.”
    “—And makes as if to pinch up the shot glass between thumb and middle finger.”
    “Which still isn’t there.”
    “Which he had forgotten.”
    “Or was expecting to arrive at any moment.”
    “Either way, we had to watch him repeat this performance three or four times before somebody finally yelled out for him to shut up and play us a tune. That’s when it got pathetic.”
    “It’s been sounding pathetic to me for some time.”
    “‘I can’t,’ the guitarist told us, and he clasped his picking hand to his throat. ‘I’m parched.’”
    Klinger had no snappy retort for this.
    “A silence descended on the whole room,” the old man said. “There was fifteen or twenty people packed in there, not counting a pool table, but at that moment you could hear a burrito going round and round in the microwave behind the bar.”
    “Pretty quiet,” Klinger allowed.
    “The bartender relented and the girl delivered our guitarist his shot. He made a point of downing it in one go. Then he set the empty down, dead center on the stool, and proceeded to play and sing the prettiest, saddest, loneliest ballad you ever heard. He wrote it, too. And he buzzed not a string, forgot not a lyric. He even yodeled at the end. Real plaintive.”
    Klinger and the old man weren’t the only people in the present-tense barroom, but now a silence descended over this one, too.
    “It was enough to tear your heart out. Two or three women in the crowd started cryin’. I’m not makin’ this up. When he finished, the damn bartender bought a round on the house.”
    “If I pulled a stunt like that,” the present-tense bartender declared, “I’d be out on the street with the rest of you bums.”
    “But we’d be brothers,” the old man suggested.
    “Until the time came for the next drink,” the bartender suggested.
    “All of about fifteen minutes,” the old man agreed. “Brotherhood is volatile,” Klinger observed, thinking the while of Chainbang’s attempt to cheat him out of his cut. “Say,” Klinger said aloud, “anybody seen today’s
Chronicle
?”
    “There’s one right here,” the bartender said, handing one over the bar. “No Sports Section.”
    “Organized sports pave the road to fascism,” the old man said.
    Klinger frowned. “Haven’t I read that somewhere?” The old man looked at Klinger, then shook his head. “I seriously fucking doubt it.”
    Klinger quickly perused the Metro section. He found no mention of a liquor store clerk getting himself killed inthe course of a