Page 45 of Rest In Pink

It was all a clusterfuck because of the fucks clustered around the town, so I was surly when I went in the back door of the bar to check on Jill. The back part, which was used for parties or overflow, was empty. There was a surprisingly small crowd in the bar for a Saturday. Maybe six locals. And Jill was behind the bar, all alone.

“Hey, Vince.”

The small crowd was subdued. Even Jill seemed down. “What’s wrong? Where’s Gabe?”

Jill indicated the non-crowd with a nod of her head. “I told him and Dani to go home. Business isn’t good. Been off the last couple of weeks.” She shook her head. “I can’t keep doing that, they need the money, too, but . . .”

I’d felt a malaise fall over Burney for a while, and this was a clear example.

“It was the bikers,” I said. “People will come back.”

Jill shook her head. “It’s not just that. It’s like the last two decades since the factory closed have finally caught up to us. I thought the construction on the new development would have helped, and it did for a while. But they changed, they’re not hiring locals anymore; most workers there now are from Cincy. They go home on the weekend, so the money goes with them, and business around here is just . . . stopping. It’s killing Burney. And that asshole Thacker’s posts aren’t helping. You should have knocked him down. Or let Cash finish him off.”

“Cash was finished before he got started,” I said.

Jill laughed. “I’m glad you busted his lip. He needed that.”

“I’d like to know where Thacker is getting all his stuff. Because what I do know about what he’s writing, it’s pretty much all true. And I have a feeling he knows a lot more that he hasn’t written yet.”

“Sign up for the book when it comes out,” Jill said.

“Have you?”

“Hell, no. I’ve heard enough shit over the years behind this bar. And at the rate this place is going, I won’t have the money.”

“He’s all over the place but he keeps coming back to Cash and the Blues. You knew Cleve Blue, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t know him, know him,” Jill said. “He was too high and mighty to come here when my dad was running it. Plus, he wasn’t very popular once he shut down the factory. He stayed out of sight.”

“And why mention Mickey Pitts?” I asked. “Jim has enough on his plate. I knew his dad was in jail, but did Thacker have to broadcast it?”

Jill shook her head. “Mickey was bad to the bone. Him and his crew.”

“His crew?”

“Mickey ran the Iron Wolves chapter out of Cincy.”

That rang a small alarm bell. “What did Mickey get sent up for?”

“Drugs. The Wolves were into a lot of illegal stuff. Still are. Drugs. Guns. Truck hijackings. Mickey pistol-whipped one driver so bad he was willing to talk. He fingered Mickey, then backed off but George stuck with it.”

“George arrested him?”

Jill nodded. “Pretty ballsy too, because the Wolves were known to go after witnesses. But he caught Mickey dead to rights with a bunch of cocaine. More than enough to send him away. Best thing that could have happened for Jimmy Pitts.”

“Jim,” I absently said, having forced myself to use that name after telling him to.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Jill smiled. “I heard you got him a job at the senior center. That was nice. And Will is having him work off the tires he fronted him. Wait a minute.” Jill walked off to serve some drinks.

Sometimes I thought I should just sit here and get all my intel about the town from Jill.

When Jill came back, I moved to another issue plaguing me. “Have you gotten an offer on the bar from Cash?”

“Yeah. Dad considered it,” Jill admitted. “It’s more than he thought he’d ever get for it. Problem is, it’s contingent on that ferry project happening. Which isn’t, so far.”

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