As I hope you’re starting to see by now, I have a tough job. And I get nervous sometimes. I mean that I really get panicked and anxious, and one of those times was when I couldn’t find Perkins. I went to his room, but he wasn’t there. I looked around the corridor and couldn’t find him. I went to the production office at the end of the hall—it’s a room we took over just to do typing and production reports and stuff—and the secretary said he wasn’t there, and she hadn’t seen him. I went down to the lobby. He wasn’t there. The desk hadn’t seen him.
By now, I was really shook-up. If I lost track of Perkins, Mann would be all over me, and it wouldn’t be pleasant. I knew how extremelynotpleasant it would be. Firing squads are more fun than getting it from an asshole like Mann, publicly yelling at you and calling you an incompetent bastard. Which is what I knew he would do.
In desperation, I went to the bar—which was deserted, it being just about one in the afternoon—and there he was, cool and collected, talking to the bartender.
Ben was the bartender. Ben knew everybody on the crew and everybody knew him. Good old Ben. Arizona, as you may know, is a dry state, and you can’t buy liquor at any supermarket at midnight like in California. Good old Ben was damned important to us all.
Ben was so important that we’d gotten him a couple of days’ work as an extra, which tickled him, although he took it very coolly, as if it was his due. He was a craggy old guy of fifty or so, with a very weather-beaten face. When I walked in, he was saying, “Sure, I know them all. I see they’re taken care of, you know what I mean.”
“Of course,” Perkins said. “You have bottled liquor?”
“Well, I can manage things,” Ben said, “you know what I mean.”
“I suppose with all these people staying at the hotel, you have a lot of requests for bottles.”
“Well, not so much as you might think,” Ben said. “Truth is, most of these people go pretty straight—early to bed and early to rise, you know what I mean. Couple of them like their firewater.”
“Clete Williams...”
“Clete Williams is a nice man, hell of a nice man. Tends to be a bourbon or vodka man. One hell of a nice man.”
“And that writer...”
“McDougall. Terrible what happened to him. Now he liked his firewater, you know what I mean. He was a straight J&B man—wouldn’t touch anything else. Now, Mr. Williams, he likes any brand, but Mr. McDougall, he was straight J&B all the way. Put it away pretty fair, you know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean,” Perkins said. “Did anybody else drink J&B?”
“Well, most people don’t say specifically. Only Mr. McDougall had a specific thing for J&B. I ordered him up a case.”
“Now, you remember that night he died...”
“Do I remember. That was one night I’ll never forget. First Mr. Williams gets into a fight with Mr. McDougall. That’s enough. Then we had five cowboys come in the place just before closing, I mean around one a.m., and they begin to carouse, and I thought they were going to bust the place up. I was real worried, you know what I mean.”
“Did anybody ask for a bottle of J&B that night?” Perkins asked.
“That night?” Ben shook his head. “No, not as I recall, but I was pretty worried about that bunch of cowboys.”
“I was wondering if anybody came down for a bottle late, maybe around closing.”
“Closing? It’s hard to recall. Those five cowboys had my attention start to finish...”
“Did Mr. Mann come down?”
“Sure!” Ben snapped his fingers. “Almost forgot. He surely did come down, just around closing, and he wanted a bottle of J&B. He was in a state. He has a short temper, Mr. Mann does, and it was plenty short that night. I remember asking him if this was for Mr. McDougall, and he said never mind who the heck it was for, you know, real abrupt and mean. And I say all I got is quarts, is that okay—I ordered the case of quarts because Mr. McDougall wanted quarts; it was for him—and he says, he doesn’t care, just give him the bottle. So I give him the bottle and he gives me ten dollars and says to keep the blanking blank change.” Ben shook his head. “Clean forgot that.”
“Did you see Mr. Mann again that night?”
“Nope.”
“Did you see anybody again that night?”
“Nope. Got those five cowboys out and closed up tight.”
“Thank you very much,” Perkins said.
“Now how about that drink?”
“Beer, please,” Perkins said.
