The Good Old Stuff Read Online Free PDF Page A

desk announced that summer rates were in effect. The lobby walls were rough tan plaster. At the head of a short wide staircase was a mural of lumpy, coffee-colored, semi-naked women grinding corn and holding infants.
    A black man was slowly sweeping the tile floor of the lobby. A girl behind the desk was carrying on a monosyllabic phone conversation. The place had a quietness, a hint of informality, that suggested it would be more pleasant now than during the height of the winter tourist season.
    The bar lounge opened off the lobby. The west wall was entirely glass, facing the beach glare. A curtain had been drawn across the glass. It was sufficiently opaque to cut the glare, subdue the light in the room. Sand gritted underfoot as Darrigan walked to the bar. Three lean women in bathing suits sat at one table, complete with beach bags, tall drinks, and that special porcelainized facial expression of the middle forties trying, with monied success, to look like middle thirties.
    Two heavy men in white suits hunched over a corner table, florid faces eight inches apart, muttering at each other. A young couple sat at the bar. They had a honeymoon flavor about them.Darrigan sat down at the end of the bar, around the corner, and decided on a rum collins. The bartender was brisk, young, dark, and he mixed a good drink.
    When he brought the change, Darrigan said, “Say, have they found that guy who wandered away and left his car here the other night?”
    “I don’t think so, sir,” the bartender said with no show of interest.
    “Were you on duty the night he came in?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Regular customer?”
    The bartender didn’t answer.
    Darrigan quickly leafed through a half dozen possible approaches. He selected one that seemed suited to the bartender’s look of quick intelligence and smiled ingratiatingly. “They ought to make all cops take a sort of internship behind a bar. That’s where you learn what makes people tick.”
    The slight wariness faded. “That’s no joke.”
    “Teddy!” one of the three lean women called. “Another round, please.”
    “Coming right up, Mrs. Jerrold,” Teddy said.
    Darrigan waited with monumental patience. He had planted a seed, and he wanted to see if it would take root. He stared down at his drink, watching Teddy out of the corner of his eye. After the drinks had been taken to the three women, Teddy drifted slowly back toward Darrigan. Darrigan waited for Teddy to say the first word.
    “I think that Davisson will show up.”
    Darrigan shrugged. “That’s hard to say.” It put the burden of proof on Teddy.
    Teddy became confidential. “Like you said, sir, you see a lot when you’re behind a bar. You learn to size them up. Now, you take that Davisson. I don’t think he ever came in here before. I didn’t make any connection until they showed me the picture. Then I remembered him. In the off season, you get time to size people up. He came in alone. I’d say he’d had a couple already. Husky old guy. Looked like money. Looked smart, too. That kind, they like service. He came in about eight thirty. A local guy. I could tell. I don’t know how. You canalways tell them from the tourists. One martini, he wants. Very dry. He gets it very dry. He asks me where he can phone. I told him about the phone in the lobby. He finished half his cocktail, then phoned. When he came back he looked satisfied about the phone call. A little more relaxed. You know what I mean. He sat right on that stool there, and one of the regulars, a Mrs. Kathy Marrick, is sitting alone at that table over there. That Davisson, he turns on the stool and starts giving Mrs. Marrick the eye. Not that you can blame him. She is something to look at. He orders another martini. I figure out the pitch then. That Davisson, he went and called his wife and then he was settling down to an evening of wolfing around. Some of those older guys, they give us more trouble than the college kids. And he had that look, you know