Page 47

The tension went out of Cress then. I could see in the mirror behind her that her clients were losing interest in me. America was changing at a snail’s pace in a high wind, but until that gastropod mollusk reached its destination I had a .45 in my pocket and eyes on all four corners at once.

Cress served the sweet rum drink and I savored it.

I was reading an iPad version of the story of Joan of Arc, looking up now and then to see the denizens of an old way of life bring their world back for a night.

There was an old-fashioned jukebox that hadn’t had its contents swapped out for thirty years…Brandy was a fine girl and she’d have made a good wife but his woman was the sea.

Maybe two hours later a man said, “Hey, mister.” He’d installed himself on the barstool to the right before I looked up.

“Yeah?”

“Do I know you?” His skin was wizened and burned brown from oceangoing sunlight. The eyes might have had a color other than brown, but he squinted.

I smiled and turned Joan off.

“Why do you ask?” I replied.

“Never seen you here before, but you look familiar.”

“You’d remember if you knew me.”

“You that bad?”

“I’m just a sucker for real grog is all, my friend.”

“Now we’re friends?” he asked. Sitting up straight he was still a small man.

Two hours and all I knew was that Joan was a pivotal event in the culmination of the Hundred Years’ War. She had saved France and been betrayed by the king she’d crowned. They said she was a virgin, but I reserved judgment.

I’d already decided that Angles and Dangles was a bust when the runt sailor had drunk enough to try to pick a fight. Two hours wasted with sixty seconds of value tacked on to the end.

I raised my hand to get Cress’s attention, intending to pay my bill and leave. But then the door opened and Little Exeter walked in.

“Yes, Mr. Thor?” Cress asked while I watched the little rat wade through the crowd to a far table.

I looked at Pop’s barmaid lover and said, “Give my friend a triple of whatever he’s drinkin’.”

“Johnny, are you beggin’ drinks again?”

“Hell, no,” my newest best friend proclaimed. “Make that rye, Cressy.”

“We were talkin’ sea stories,” I lied. “He’s a good guy. You can bring me another grog too.”

It was almost two in the morning when three unsteady patrons staggered out of Angles and Dangles.

I’d left the bar just short of an hour earlier and set myself in the shadows of a doorway across the street.

Little Exeter was among the staggery crew. They parted company half a block away.

I followed my quarry for three blocks, sticking to the opposite side of the street, keeping my distance.

The streets were dark and lifeless except for rats running around the edges and a window light here and there. One heavily bearded homeless man pushed his overflowing shopping cart down the middle of the street proudly; one of the last humans in the world who had survived the holocaust of humanity.

Little Exeter was reeling, teetering, and stumbling, but now and then he’d stop and perform a near-perfect dance step that revealed a completely different man from the one I’d stalked a decade before.

I didn’t care.

When I was sure there was no one around I moved quickly, coming up and knocking him senseless with a fist bolstered by a roll of nickels.