“Beg pardon?” he said finally. Then it came to him: Carolyn. “You’re kidding, right?”
She took a drag off her cigarette. The coal flared, casting an orange glow over a half dozen greasy shot glasses and a small pile of chicken bones. “Nope. I’m completely serious.”
The AMI juke whirred. A moment later the opening thunder of Benny Goodman’s “Sing, Sing, Sing” boomed out across the bar like the war drums of some savage lost tribe. All of a sudden Steve’s heart was thudding in his chest.
“OK. Fine. You’re not kidding. So, what you’re talking about is a pretty serious felony.”
She said nothing. She only looked at him.
He scrambled for something clever to say. But what came out was “I’m a plumber.”
“You weren’t always.”
Steve stared at her. That was true, but there was no way in the world she could have known it. He’d had nightmares about this sort of conversation. Trying to camouflage his horror, he grabbed the last wing off the plate and dipped it in bleu cheese, but stopped short of actually eating it. The wings there did not mess around. The smell of vinegar and pepper drifted up to him like a warning. “I can’t,” he said. “I’ve gotta get home and feed Petey.”
“Who?”
“My dog. Petey. He’s a cocker sp—”
She shook her head. “That can wait.”
Change the subject. “How do you like this place?” he said, grinning and desperate.
“Quite a lot, actually,” she said, fingering the magazine Steve had been reading. “What’s it called again?”
“Warwick Hall. It used to be an actual speakeasy, back in the twenties. Cath—the lady who runs the place—inherited it from her grandfather, along with some old photos of how it used to look. She’s a big jazz fan, so when she retired she restored it and opened it as a private club.”
“Right.” Carolyn sipped her beer, then looked around at the framed posters—Lonnie Johnson, Roy Eldridge holding his trumpet, an ad for a Theatrical Clam Bake on October 3 and 4, 1920-something. “It’s different.”
“It is that.” Steve shook out a cigarette and offered her the pack. As she took it, he noticed that although the nails of her right hand were unpainted and gnawed away almost to the quick, the ones on her left were long and manicured, lacquered red. Weird. He lit their cigarettes off a single match. “I started coming here because it was the only bar around you can still smoke in, but it grew on me.”
“Why don’t I give you a minute to chew on the idea,” Carolyn said. “I know I sprang it on you out of the blue. Where’s the ladies’ room?”
“No need to think it over. The answer is no. Ladies’ is back that way.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ve never been in there, but on the urinals in the men’s room you have to pull a brass chain to flush. It took me a minute to figure that out.” He paused. “Who are you, exactly?”
“I told you,” Carolyn said. “I’m a librarian.”
“OK.” At first, the way she looked—Christmas sweater, complete with reindeer, over Spandex bicycle shorts, red rubber galoshes with 1980s leg warmers—made him think she was schizophrenic. Now he doubted that was it.
OK, he thought, not schizophrenic. What, then? Carolyn wasn’t unduly burdened with good grooming, but neither was she unattractive. He got the impression that she was also very smart. About an hour and a half earlier she’d sauntered up with a couple of beers, introduced herself, and asked if she could sit down. Steve, a bachelor with no attachments other than his dog, had said sure. They talked for a while. She peppered him with questions and answered his own questions vaguely. All the while she studied him with dark-brown eyes.
Steve had kinda-sorta gathered the impression that she worked at the university, maybe as some sort of linguist? She spoke French to Cath, and surprised another regular, Eddie Hu, by being fluent in Chinese. Librarian kind of fits too, though. He imagined her, frizzy-haired, surrounded by teetering stacks of books, muttering into a stained mug of staff lounge coffee as she schemed her burglary. He grinned and shook his head. No way. He ordered another pitcher.
The beer beat Carolyn back to the table by a good couple of minutes. Steve poured himself another glass. As he drank, he decided to change his diagnosis from schizophrenic to “doesn’t give a fuck about clothes.” A lot of people claimed not to give a fuck about clothes, but those who actually didn’t were rare. Not entirely unheard-of, though.
A guy Steve had gone to high school with, Bob-something, spent two years on a South Pacific island as part of some weirdly successful drug-running scheme. When he got back he was rich as hell—two Ferraris, for chrissakes—but he would wear any old thing. Bob, he remembered, had once—
“I’m back,” she said. “Sorry.” She had a pretty smile.
“Hope you’re up for another round,” he said, nodding at the pitcher.
“Sure.”
He poured for her. “If you don’t mind me saying so, this is weird.”
“How do you mean?”
“The librarians I know are into, like, I dunno, tea and cozy mysteries, not breaking and entering.”
“Yeah, well. This is a different kind of library.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to need a bit more in the way of explanation.” As soon as the question was out of his mouth he regretted it. You’re not actually considering this, are you? He took a quick spiritual inventory. No. I’m not. He was curious though.
“I’ve got a problem,” Carolyn said. “My sister said you might have the sort of experience required to solve it.”
“Like, what sort of experience are we talking about?”
“Residential locks—nothing special—and a Lorex alarm.”
“That’s it?” His mind went out to the toolbox in the back of his truck. He had his plumbing tools, sure—torch, solder, pipe cutter, wrench—but there were other things as well. Wire cutters, crowbar, a multimeter, a small metal ruler that he could use to—No. He clamped down on the thought, but it was too late. Something inside him had come awake and was beginning to stir.
“That’s it,” she said. “Easy-peasy.”
“Who’s your sister?”
“Her name’s Rachel. You wouldn’t know her.”
He thought about it. “You’re right. I don’t recall meeting anyone by that name.” She certainly wasn’t part of the small—very small—circle of people who knew about his former career. “So, how does this Rachel person know so much about me?”
“I’m honestly not clear on it myself. But she’s very good at finding things out.”
“And what, exactly, did she find out about me?”
Carolyn lit another cigarette and blew twin columns of smoke out of her nostrils. “She said you’ve got a knack for mechanical things and an outlaw streak. And that you’ve committed over a hundred burglaries. A hundred and twelve, I think she said.”
That was true, if almost ten years out of date. Suddenly his stomach was in knots. The things he had done and, worse, the things he hadn’t done back then were always circling, never far from his thoughts. At her words they landed, tore into him. “I’d like you to go now,” he said quietly. “Please.”