The Delta Star Read Free Page B

“Which means there’d probably be a crusade on the part of the super chief himself to close down this little house of misery and send you packing to Sun City, where you oughtta be at your age with all the money you got stuffed in your mattress.”
    While the detective massaged his aching eyes and felt the vodka headache coming on, Leery chewed on that one. Sun City? Limping around a freaking golf course with all the other geezers? Not making any more money? Spending twenty-four hours a day with his wife Lizzy? Jesus Christ!
    “Hans! Pull yourself together, goddamnit!” Leery suddenly yelled. “Get that freaking animal off the pool table! Achtung, Ludwig! Achtung ! ” Leery yelled.
    And while Leery ran into the poolroom trying to roust the unconscious Rottweiler, with no help from Ludwig’s partner, who was putting his best move on the groupie with fat-handles (who was so drunk she thought Hans was The Bad Czech, which was like comparing a dinghy to a battleship) the detective reached over the bar and poured himself half a tumbler of vodka. On the house. Which would have given Leery a heart attack had he seen it.
    Rumpled Ronald looked at his watch and said, “Twelve-oh-five, Mario. I’m forty-seven hours and fifty-five minutes from owning my own pink slip!”
    “Congratulations,” the detective said. “You oughtta take that pension and go to Sun City with Leery. Bound to be lots of misery in a retirement community. Arthritis. Strokes. Cancer. Real need for a joint like this.”
    “Hope it don’t rain,” Rumpled Ronald said. “Looked like rain a while ago. What if it rains and I get killed in a traffic accident on wet streets? Wouldn’t that be something? Forty-seven hours away. Jesus! You seen a weather report?” And the rumpled cop ran to the window looking for lightning flashes. Seeing none, he returned to his stool and tossed back a double shot of bourbon.
    Then the detective started tuning in the various conversations at the bar. It meant that his loneliness was getting scary. He usually just mumbled and nodded at anything that was said so as not to offend the speaker on the next stool who was usually too drunk to give a shit anyway.
    A fat cop with red hair suddenly got maudlin and tearfully announced, “My wife’s screwing a nigger! Can you believe it?”
    Which caused Cecil Higgins, a grizzled black beat cop, to say, “You shouldn’ta married a nigger.”
    “No offense, Cecil,” the maudlin cop said. “I didn’t see you there in the dark.”
    “Next time I’ll click my eyeballs so’s you can see me,” Cecil Higgins said. Then he turned to the detective and said, “Better call the A. A. hotline, Mario. That sucker ain’t gonna make it two blocks, he’s drivin. Sucker’s too drunk to walk, even.”
    The detective’s eyes started to ache even more. Was it the smog? Or the ever present smoke in Leery’s Saloon? The ache seemed to originate behind the eyes. He took down half the tumbler of vodka, sighed several times and massaged his temples. Then he saw The Gooned-out Vice Cop.
    The vice cop was staring at his own reflection in Leery’s broken bar mirror, recently shattered by The Bad Czech, who after reading a particularly disturbing editorial in the Los Angeles Times folded up the newspaper and threw it across the saloon, turning the pub mirror into a spider web. Some said it was the most remarkable feat of strength ever seen in Leery’s Saloon. Others said it just attested to the weight of the Times, which contained more ads than a Sears catalogue.
    The vice cop looked at himself among the webbed cracks, and his image was fractured. The eyes didn’t line up. Part of his soft blond beard was growing from where his forehead should be. The vice cop turned his head from time to time, seeming fascinated with the way the fractured image of himself moved illusively through the shards and shadows. He moved his delicate face ever so slightly. He had large black pupils. Eyes like bullet