“You look like you’ve had a rough night, son. What can I get for you?”
My gaze shifted to the empty counter, and I spotted the weathered face of the barkeep. The man was polishing a glass with a filthy rag and staring at me in something that only vaguely approached “interest.” I met his gaze and realized this was a dude that’d seen some shit over the years–aka, someone you don’t want to piss off.
Seriously. I was practically standing on death’s doorstep with hypothermia, my clothes looked like they’d been run over by an entire freeway’s worth of traffic, and the snot and tears from my ugly crying had mixed with the blood from my broken nose to form an unpleasant goop congealing over my face. And yet this fifty-something bartender was looking at me like I was only the sixth most interesting thing he’d seen that day.
Fuck it, I thought. I may look and feel like hammered shit, but if the guy running this joint is going to gloss over it and offer me a drink, then who am I to turn it down? It’s not like I have anywhere to be.
“Kettle One and tonic.” I rasped, finally beginning to shiver again as the warmth began to thaw me out and drag my sorry ass back toward the land of the definitely living. “Lemon. Not lime,” I added, before stamping my shoes off one more time, then trudging over to take a seat in one of the ripped vinyl-covered stools lining the front of the bar.
“You got it.”
With his attention focused on making my drink, I took a moment to size the man up. Lightly tanned skin despite the depths of winter hinted at Latino roots, but I supposed there could have been something else mixed in there. His intelligent dark eyes were flanked by more than their fair share of wrinkles, belying decades of mirth. And yet, something buried in the guy’s gaze told me it’d been quite some time since he’d had reason to laugh.
“Nice place you got here,” I said, drawing a snort from the old man.
“It isn’t pretty, but it’s home,” he replied, looking up at me. “I’m Bob.”
I nodded absentmindedly as he finished garnishing my drink with a lime, then set it on the scuffed and pitted-yet-surprisingly-shiny bar top and slid the drink over. It stopped perfectly positioned in front of me, and I fought back the urge to point out that I’d specifically asked for lemon, not lime.
They fucking never get that right…
I eyed the man, trying to judge how receptive the crusty old bastard would be to swapping in a lemon wedge. I suspected he’d be fine with it—it was an honest mistake, after all. Just as I opened my mouth to bring it up, though, the old jukebox skipped and abruptly went silent.
Every head in the joint instantly snapped toward the beat up reminder of a bygone era, and the air practically crackled with a heavy tension.
“Fuck,” one of the locals hissed under his breath from a nearby table.
My brow furrowed as I looked around. A sense of something like dread inexplicably welled up in my chest, and the sudden, intense urge to bolt for the door hit me like a truck. It was probably just a combination of everything that’d happened at the party, coupled with the cold finally sinking its claws into my psyche. I shook my head in an attempt to clear the cobwebs, then pushed my stool back and stood up.
“I’ll get it,” I said to the room, inclining my head toward the malfunctioning jukebox. From what I could see, the damn thing had honest-to-god vinyl records inside of it, and I suspected it’d probably just gotten stuck or something. I figured a solid smack to the side might free things up, but when I turned to walk over there, I found my way blocked by the cat.
The animal’s piercing gaze rooted me in place, and it shook its head slowly.
I blinked a few times, convinced I was either imagining it or had actually passed out from hypothermia out in the street, and this was all just some bizarre fever dream in the moments before my death—one last gasp by a brain starved of oxygen.
“I think it’s time for you to leave, son,” Bob said in a tone that left no room for argument. “Drink’s on me, tonight.”
I turned and stared at the old man, dumbfounded by, well, whatever the hell was going on. All I got in return, however, was a glare that could’ve cut steel.
“Uh. Y-yeah. Fine,” I stammered. “Whatever.”
Even though the old man had said the drink was comp’d, I still reached for my wallet reflexively. I figured at the very least I could throw a couple bucks on the bar as a tip, and maybe I’d be allowed to leave without getting murdered by whoever the hell these people were.
That was about the time I remembered my wallet was still in my coat pocket… My coat, which was all the way back at the Rattlesnake Club, on a hanger at the coat check. Giving up on the idea of a tip, I decided to just get the hell out and go track down my phone, which I’d stupidly not had the presence of mind to pick up before following the damn cat in here. By this point, all I wanted to do was get an Uber and go home.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I turned toward the door, but my path was once again blocked by the cat. It was almost like the damn thing teleported from one place to another. The animal squinted at me, looking me up and down as if measuring my worth. Then it turned to look at the old barkeep.
One of Bob’s graying eyebrows cocked up towards his hairline, and something unseen passed between the two of them, as if they’d just had a mental conversation in the space between heartbeats.
“You’re sure?” Bob questioned the cat.
It was absurd, but somehow I knew that something bigger was going on here than just a crazy bartender who thought he could talk to animals.
The cat turned its gaze back to me and looked directly into my eyes for a moment. Despite everything I’ve gone through in my 34 years on this Earth, I’ve never felt more naked than in that moment. Those golden eyes bore right through my own, then continued to look deep into the core of my being. Goosebumps broke out over my skin, but I simply couldn’t look away.
Then, the moment passed, and the cat looked back over at the barkeep. It nodded firmly, then poofed its tail up and spun around, giving me a great view of its butthole while it wandered off into the shadows.
I looked at the old man with so many questions written on my face.
Bob sighed resignedly. “Well, sit down then, son.” He motioned for me to retake my seat, then reached under the counter and brought up a fistful of shot glasses.
It was like the old barkeep’s words had a physical weight to them, pushing me back toward my seat. I found myself utterly unable to resist the compulsion to obey, and I slid wordlessly back onto my barstool. My heart thudded in my chest, and I couldn’t help the feeling that I was about to be let in on some profound secret—the kind of thing that shakes one’s understanding of the world to its very core.
As the old man began pouring shots of some unidentified brown liquid from an unlabeled bottle, he said, “Let me tell you a story…”—he paused, glancing up meaningfully—“Del.”
I froze. He’d said my name like he’d known me for ages. Come to think of it, I hadn’t even given him my name, had I? I looked at the old guy, my brow furrowing as he finished pouring the shots and set them at the front edge of the bar.
“Yes. I know who you are, Delfino Bertalucci,” Bob said, reaching down and grabbing another glass from the rack and pulling the disgusting towel from his shoulder. He idly began polishing the glass again as he said, “I want to tell you a story about a man named Sal. He was a bootlegger back in the twenties; part of the family—the Sicilians, mind you—and very good at what he did.”
A lump of cold steel rose in my throat and my heart hammered even harder at the inside of my ribcage. I knew this story. He was talking about my great-great-grandfather’s brother, Salvadore Bertalucci—The Hammer, they’d called him.
My family had more than a few ties to organized crime—hell, up until the late seventies, my family was the organized crime around here. I had some distant relatives who everyone was certain knew what really happened to Hoffa, but I’d learned at a young age that you don’t ask about it. Then, about forty years ago, my grandmother had forced my pops to go legit and build a business supporting the auto industry. You know how that story ended.
“Rumor had it old Sal got whacked by the Purples back in ’27, but they never found the body, so nobody could prove anything, one way or another,” Bob continued. “But The Hammer wasn’t killed over some booze by the Purple Gang. He wasn’t killed by a human, at all.”
An overwhelming sense of dread came over me, like a black hole opening up deep in my gut. The way the old guy had said human…
Bob paused his polishing and looked up at me through hooded eyes. “There are things in this world that normal people aren’t meant to know, Del.” He glanced over to where one of the regulars had just stepped up to grab a shot from the bar and nodded solemnly to the man. “The question I have for you, now,” he said, turning back to me as the others all lined up and silently took a shot, “is do you want to know what really happened to your Uncle Sal? Think before you answer, because what’s on the other side is more dangerous than you could possibly imagine. It’s immensely rewarding, to be sure, but you might not even live long enough to reap those rewards.”
There was a small part of my mind that was convinced the old barkeep was laying a whopper on me, just for his personal amusement. Maybe this was some sort of dive bar ritual hazing that one had to pass through in order to be considered one of “the guys.”
But I didn’t really believe that.
I stared at the man, an icy fist gripping my heart, and every instinct screaming at me to bolt for the door. I knew I wouldn’t, though. The air in the place had taken on an unearthly silence, and I couldn’t help but feel like some sort of malevolent power was radiating out from the ancient jukebox in the back, aimed straight at me.
There was something going on in that old bar—something unnatural. From the half-dozen faces intently studying me over the rims of their glasses to the middle-aged bartender that claimed to know one of my ancestors from a century ago, the place was an enigma.
And I needed to know its secrets.
I felt more alive in that moment than I had in years, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that my life would have meaning again, if only I said yes. Maybe, just maybe, whatever the old barkeep had to offer could help me start down the road to redemption; a road that could lead me back to my girls.
I grabbed onto that last thought like a drowning man clinging to a lifeline.
“Ok, Bob,” I said, voice hoarse and barely above a whisper. I reached one shaking hand out, picked up my drink, and downed half of it in a single swig. “I’m in.”
The old barkeep smiled, then he reached under the counter and pulled out a round disk about the size of a fifty-cent piece. To my eye, it looked almost like a challenge coin. He reached forward and set it deliberately on the counter before me, then turned his gaze to the jukebox.
“Let me tell you another story, Del…”