Page 4 of Dodge

“No, no, no.” A voice from behind.

She cut her eyes to the mirror, past the bottles of low- to mid-brand booze. It was as neglected as the windows. She saw the big man who’d spoken. A bouncer.

Marlowe turned, leaving the patron at the bar to gloom over his whiskey, and the bartender to soap and swizzle and rack. There was nothing else to clean. It may have been near lunchtime but none of the patrons were eating lunch.

She looked over who’d approached and thought: lumberjack. He was big, six one or so, and two hundred ten or twenty. He was in black jeans, flecked with dots of yellow—pollen time in the region. His black boots were scuffed. And the lumberjack impression was inevitable, as he was wearing an honest-to-God red-and-black plaid flannel shirt. He had a broad, creased face and his teeth were smoker stained.

Marlowe looked behind him at the table where he’d been sitting, along with two slighter men, one in dress slacks and a shirt, the other in jeans and a hoodie. They, like everyone else here, were white. And any coloration to the skin came from bottles, not the sun. She’d noted the beverages of choice. For a tap room, Hogan’s apparently sold a lot more hard liquor than draft beer.

Before he could speak again, she asked, “Who are you?” Belligerent. A quality she could toss but usually had no desire to.

“A manager.”

He stood close, just inside that circle of comfort we can’t define in terms of inches but all recognize. She didn’t step back but just looked up into his face. Bourbon overcame his cloying aftershave, but just barely.

His brown eyes did the Scan: her dark-red and brunette ponytailed hair, her pale forehead, on which was a three-inch scar, her black leather jacket, which was unzipped, her white tee, dotted with a few faint stains, blue jeans and black ankle boots that might have come from the same Chinese cobbling factory as his.

His eyes returned, a brief hiccup, to her chest. Given her build, men’s gazes often lingered. Constant Marlowe had spent thirty-two years on this busy earth. There were many, many other things worth getting riled about.

And here, beneath the Hanes tee, was the most unappealing of Nike sports bras. Who could figure?

“I’m looking for this man.” She displayed the picture. He glanced but gave no reaction.

“Better you leave.”

“I paid for a drink. Or tried to.”

“Nup, better you leave, Little Lady.”

No worries about this either. She called men “dicks” and “pricks” and “assholes” about as often as someone lobbed a corresponding phrase her way.

She clicked an exasperated tongue and walked to the other occupied table—two paunchy, gray-complected men—and held out the phone for them in one hand. The fifty, which she’d picked up from the bar, was in the other. “Can you tell me if you’ve seen—”

“No.” Lumberjack had followed and now gripped her arm.

He didn’t say the B word or the C word, insults that were as meaningless to her as the sentence, “Have a nice day.”

But he touched.

That made a difference.

Like a striking snake, she ripped her arm away, slammed her elbow into his forearm and knocked it back. He winced and blinked in surprise. The audience stirred.

“Rudy,” the bartender said. “Just, no. Don’t—”

Lumberjack Rudy’s palm shot out. “Yo, dog. Quiet.” He stepped back and stared down at her. A cold smile blossomed.

“That’s not going to do, Little Lady. Out you go.” His powerful fist encircled her biceps once more and this time he turned and shifted his weight to deflect or stop incoming elbows. He started to guide her out the door.

This stopped fast when her Smith & Wesson Bodyguard .380 appeared, jammed under his chin. She carried it in a battered leather holster, held taut between the Walmart jeans and the silver Victoria’s Secret briefs.

“Oh, shit.”

Gasps from the patrons.

“No,” she said calmly.

He released her arm and stepped back, lifting his palms. “Just go your way. All good.”

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