Night Diver by Elizabeth Lowell

Author:Elizabeth Lowell [Lowell, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062132826
Publisher: William Morrow
Published: 2014-04-07T14:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

AS HOURS WENT by and Kate visited dive hangout after dive bar after dive café, including a strip club, she began to admit that she was wasting her time. The later the afternoon, the more divers filtered in from various jobs, and the more they drank. The last bar had been peppered with drunks who were way too proud of and anxious to demonstrate body parts she had zero interest in hearing about, much less seeing. Bartenders and bouncers had become her new best friends.

No one had seen Mingo recently.

No one wanted to dive for Moon Rose Limited.

Everyone had heard bad things about the Golden Bough.

Kate looked at the circles she had drawn on the map. Most had been crossed out. She glanced around an area that probably looked a lot better at night and decided she would try one more place before she went to the cottage and washed the smell of smoke out of her hair and clothes; the enduring mystery of divers was how many of them smoked.

She looked around carefully, choosing where to go. There were always more bars to check, but once the sun went down, a woman alone in some of those bars would be assumed to be looking for more than alcohol. In the end, she selected a bar that was on the wrong side of the line between seedy and disreputable. But it was the closest bar on the map and daylight was wasting.

The sign above the place said MCNAMARA’S TAVERN and was decorated with a weathered painting of a red-haired, bushy-bearded, and thoroughly dissolute mariner, head tilted back in laughter. The wind had increased to the point that it rocked the sign on its chains, making it shimmy and swing, lending an air of drunken revelry to what was otherwise an outright shabby, no-tourists-wanted divers’ dive.

I’ll bet Grandpa used to drink in places like this. Probably still does when he’s ashore. Larry, too.

Not that either had helped her to compile her list of dive hangouts. She had done that the hard way, one bartender or waitress at a time, asking after Mingo and divers looking for work, and settling for the names of other dive hangouts.

A man who looked like he had posed for the McNamara’s sign in his youth—and had been a friend of henna ever since—stood at the till, waiting for something to happen.

Must be the infamous McNamara, she decided.

Since he looked about as friendly as razor wire, she glanced toward the bar. Another man, younger and much fitter, was tending bar. His mixed heritage resulted in cinnamon skin and wildly curly, red-streaked brown hair. He smiled and chatted up patrons, poured refills, and nixed a request from a man who was wobbling on the bar stool.

“Slow down, Javier,” he said easily, pouring tonic with lime for the man, no gin. “If your lover come back to you tonight, you have nothing left.” A wink and a sympathetic smile. “Man want to be ready for his lover, yes?”

Javier

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