Running from the Dead by Mike Knowles

Author:Mike Knowles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2020-06-01T16:00:00+00:00

23

The bar Willy chose was on a side street within walking distance of the casino. It was a place for career drinkers who moonlighted as professional gamblers. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, and they mixed drinking with casino shop talk. Jones listened to conversations about hot tables and which machines were paying out while he waited for his drink at the bar.

“You pick up hustling cards when you were inside?”

Willy took his eyes off the poker game playing on a television mounted above the bar. The question lifted his brow and made deep lines in his forehead. “Irene told you about that? She hates talking about that.”

“Not her. Your poker buddies told me that you spent some time away.”

Willy shrugged.

“They also said you were a cheat.”

Willy smiled.

“They ever say they caught me cheating?”

“Nope.”

Willy checked the TV again. “Then I guess I wasn’t cheating.” Willy took his eyes off the poker game when the bartender came back with their drinks.

“Here’s your whiskey, Willy. On the rocks, like you like it.”

The bartender was in her fifties, but the dim bar lighting tried its best to shave some time off.

She put Jones’ water down and leaned over a little farther than necessary to slide Willy’s drink in front of him.

“Donna, you might be the only friend I got in this town.”

Donna rolled two mascara shrouded eyes, but the grin on her face said she liked the line. She leaned in closer and touched a bruise that had already started to swell under Willy’s eye. She looked at Jones with none of the warmth she gave the older man. “This one giving you trouble?”

Willy laughed. “Other way round, darlin’. Who do you think busted up his nose?”

Donna surveyed the damage on Jones’ face and then rubbed the old con’s forearm. “Willy, you are something else.”

Jones said, “I gave him the mouse.”

One eyebrow raised and did a hell of an impression of a middle finger. “You’re a real tough guy, pal.”

Donna leaned toward Willy again and talked him into some ice wrapped up in a bar towel for his eye. She didn’t offer Jones a thing.

When the bartender walked away, Willy said, “I’m not going back.”

“Fair enough. I never told Irene I would bring you back. I only agreed to find you.”

“How much is she paying you?”

Jones looked at his nose in mirror behind the bar. It would likely need to be set. “Not enough.”

“Bullshit. How much?”

Jones told him.

Willy shook his head. “For that much, you should have to drag me back.”

“You know the moral ground you are standing on would be a lot higher if you didn’t run away and cause this whole mess.”

“I’m still her father. I look out for her no matter what.”

Jones put his phone on the bar. “You can look out for her by calling her.”

Willy slid the phone away with the side of his glass.

“She’s worried sick about you.”

“It ain’t worry, kid,” Willy said. He took a drink and gave himself a moment to let it linger on his tongue before he swallowed.

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