I tell you, that day-shift guy, he sloshes my profit margin onto the floor and I mop it up…”
I raised my arm. “I better bandage this.”
I found the first-aid kit in Ollie’s cramped office. There was a desk, with scatterings of papers, an ancient, grinding PC Ollie had never quite mastered (I’d had to help him do searches on the web and also recover a lost spreadsheet), and a safe. The safe would not be difficult to crack; it had a keypad and, considering Ollie’s general loathing of technology, I suspected the pass code would be a simple one to guess.
Arm tightly bandaged, and dressed to work, I went back out to the bar. Mila was gone, bills tucked under her glass. She was an excellent tipper.
“She completes me,” Ollie said. “Damn. I like her but there’s no hope.”
“Where’s she from?”
“Everywhere.”
If Howell wanted to have me followed by someone other than his normal teams, or wanted to insert someone into my life, he might pick a person like Mila. Or if the Money Czar was coming after me, he might send someone like her.
But. But she had a history with Ollie. Unless Ollie was lying about that, and was in Howell’s pay. Hello, madness. You see how your mind starts to twist: you suspect everyone. I went back to wiping down the bar, trying to blank my mind.
“Hey, I got this for you.” Ollie pushed a thick book at me. I looked at the cover. A bartender’s guide. I opened it to the end to see how many pages it was: 508. Very comprehensive.
“Preparation is key so you don’t mix drinks wrong and waste liquor,” Ollie said. “Take it home.”
“I will never make most of these drinks.”
“You strike me as a guy who likes to be prepared.” Ollie was right.
The week inched past. Dave with his Budweiser, Meg with her pinot grigio, the Alton brothers with their pints of Guinness every Friday night; they’d watch the pour you did as though you were splitting a diamond. I worked, I ran, and Howell’s two shadows followed me everywhere I went. At night I lay in bed and I flicked through the five-hundred-page bartender’s guide. It relaxed my mind to consider the thousands of cocktails crafted by humanity; each a perfect little mix of what was at hand to produce a desired result. That was the pattern of thinking I needed to solve my own problem. What elements, mixed together in what order, to create a sublime result.
How to get a gun, how to get documentation to get overseas, how to escape Howell’s constant watch.
11
DURING THE NEXT WEEK, Ollie fired a bartender he didn’t like, hired a new one so he’d have a fresh face to bitch about. August only showed up twice, watched part of a basketball game, didn’t have much to say to me. I felt he was trying to summon the courage to broach a topic but didn’t know how to start.
Then there was the lovely Mila. She came in for four more nights, discussed world politics with Ollie and asked me about my parkour runs and nothing else. But I felt her watching me as I worked, as though taking my measure. Ollie’s mother in New Jersey got sick and he had me manage the bar for two days; one night I lifted prints off the safe’s keypad, found prints on only four keys. Same four numbers as the bar’s street address. I tested the code; the safe opened. Inside was a cash bag, a Glock with three rounds of ammo, and Ollie’s passport, used once three years ago to visit Ireland. I left everything where it was, cleaned off the keypad, and felt relief I could get to a gun when I needed one. Because I thought the time had come to move. Howell’s followers had been a bit lazy, not coming up on me when the bicyclist hit me. They were slacking or Howell was loosening the leash on me. They’d convinced themselves that I was willing to sit still. That was the key to escape.
Now I knew where I could steal a gun. But I had no passport. And I needed to get back to Europe. Lucy’s trail started there.
But I didn’t know where I could obtain fake documentation in New York. Passports now have digital watermarks and subtle chips, and they can’t be forged as easily as they used to be. You need someone who can acquire the special paper used in the passports—usually