Abducted in the Keys by Matthew Rief

Author:Matthew Rief [Rief, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Exotic Latitudes Press
Published: 2019-12-21T05:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-ONE

Somehow, the place looked even worse on the inside. Even “rustic, neglected dive bar” was too glamorous a description.

It was like in those old western movies when the mysterious out-of-towner steps into the local bar. All eyes gravitated toward me as I quickly scanned the room.

The place reeked of mold and sweaty clothes. An old TV in the corner displayed the static image of a soccer game, while a radio in the opposite corner played Spanish music. There was a pool table that had more craters on its green felt surface than the moon, and a wooden dartboard that looked like it had been pummeled by a shotgun for half an hour. It was dark inside, the few lightbulbs that did work flickering and dying out.

I counted ten people in all, including the old waitress and the fat guy behind the bar. Most of the patrons were seated at tables playing poker in the space between empty beer bottles. None of them were Duke.

There was a door beside the bar, and another one across the room. There was also an old staircase that looked like it didn’t get much traffic.

With no visual on my target, I decided to wait, figuring he’d gone into the head to relieve himself before blowing his black market profits on booze and whatever else this guy spent his money on.

A new hat, maybe.

I chuckled.

More than a few pairs of questioning eyes stared in my direction as I navigated across the room and leaned against the bar.

“I’ll take a rum, neat,” I said when the bartender’s eyes met mine.

He paused a moment. After a brief skeptical look, he shrugged, finished wiping down a glass with a rag, then turned and went to work. The counter was scratched, chipped, and faded to hell. The whole place looked like a relic of a time long gone by.

I glanced around the room again. Not as many people were looking at me, but I caught the occasional side glance over the shoulder or around a hand of cards. I was a stranger. An outsider in their little world. Most of them could’ve been normal ship crew, not even associated with the crime syndicate. But they sure gave off the criminal vibe.

The fat bartender turned around and set my drink in front of me. No napkin first.

Why bother?

He watched intently as I grabbed the glass.

I was sure by his smile that he’d given me his strongest stuff. Well over the typical eighty proof. He was trying to find out what I was made of.

Pressing the glass to my lips, I tilted my head back, then dumped the contents down the hatch in one long pull. The alcohol burned as it flowed down my throat.

Easily over a hundred proof.

I set the glass back on the counter. It wasn’t half bad.

The fat guy paused only long enough to see my reaction, then said, “Another?”

I smiled at his obvious disappointment, then nodded.

“There are fifty bars between here and downtown,” he said as he turned around to fix me up round two.

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