“You’re hurt,” she said to Rudd.

“No, it’s Osmond,” Rudd said, placing his hand on the man again and shaking gently. “I think he’s dead.”

With that they heard a muffled crunch as the bottle Osmond had drunk himself to death with and was lying on finally gave way to Rudd’s gentle nudging. The dead man’s huge chest lowered a bit, as if in final exhale.

A single gunshot cracked from the front of Tony’s. Outside. After the Hollywood ping of a ricochet they all heard the shattering collapse of one of the two bottles of J&B that Fenton had placed in the sink behind the bar.

“Well that sure didn’t sound like Malinowa Raspberry Cordial Austrian Liqueur!” lilted Langston, and then he began snoring.

Day1

Rudd sauntered into Tony’s at about 3:30 P.M. He hoped that nobody would notice he was wearing a backup; then he hoped that somebody might. Maybe that waitress, Jill was her name. After all, most women, despite what they said, viewed a gun like a dick only better. Point was that it wouldn’t do for Rudd, the great believer, proponent, and prophet of enduring Civil Obedience to be perceived as paying any attention to scattered media reports of a small situation—which was probably well in hand by now anyway—brewing at an obscure intersection in some godforsaken minority section of the city. Best just put a torch to the whole block and be done with it, and in fact that’s exactly what Rudd knew would happen before it was allowed to get out of hand.

All the same there had been other little problems in other little cities over the last few years and some of those had become big problems requiring bigger problem solvers and inconveniencing the community-at-large for a day or two. Lessons had been learned, to be sure. Still, it smelled like a two-gun day, and most men he knew routinely carried backups every day. Likely nobody’d even heard anything; it was a minor joke at the club an hour ago between him and Fenton.

That was his last drink, and Rudd could feel it was long past time for his next. He’d invited Fenton, who had never been to Tony’s, ostensibly to meet a few of the guys, none of whom Rudd much cared for, but really to impress him with the caliber of bar he was a regular in. They were coming in separate cars, Fenton wanting to squeeze in nine holes and Rudd wanting to get a discreet start on the evening’s drinking so that when his friend walked in he could say of his fourth scotch something like: What timing! I was just about to order a second.

Tony’s was as usual for this hour on whatever day it was. There was Miles, shitfaced, catching Rudd’s eye. “Hey!” he said, “Heard about the riot?”

A man named Osmond, corpulent and known only modestly to Rudd, took the opportunity to shoot him a nonetheless familiar glance somehow apropos of Miles’s remark. Rudd took a stool on the corner of the L, between the two men. There was no one else seated at the bar.

The bartender, standing near but not chatting with Jill, the waitress and only woman in Tony’s at that moment, strode from the far end of the bar and spun a napkin into place. “How are you, Rudd,” he said, extending his hand, rhetorically.

“Jesse James,” said Rudd, though this man’s name was neither. He liked this trick for certain types, bartender types and mailman types, whose names he knew but felt inexplicably uncomfortable using. Rudd felt that calling these people something absurd would make it seem as if he were beyond the point of mere familiarity with them while keeping his hands clean at the same time. Everything I say sounds stupid, he thought very deeply and privately as he silently half-pointed in the direction of the J&B. His way of asking for the usual.

But the bartender was already on it. “Me too,” said Osmond, who always drank vodka martinis as far as Rudd could tell. Miles preferred Cutty Sark scotch but usually drank something silly. Today his drink was up and black as coal.

“You and your riots,” said Rudd derisively but with a smile. The bartender, exceedingly quick as ever, had the two drinks ready and dropped them into place, Osmond’s first after picking up his empty with the same hand. Okay, thought Rudd, he was closer.

“It’s all he can talk about,” said Osmond. “All afternoon.” He belched matter-of-factly.

“What was that?” Miles wanted to know.