Page 78 of Lone Wolf

“Yeah, baby,” Brianna said. “Your father makes a lot of promises.”

Sofia tearfully filled in Evan. Andre called her at eight o’clock every night without fail. It was half past already and he hadn’t rung and was not answering his phone.

“And he always picks up when it’s me.”

“He wants to, baby,” Brianna said. “It’s not about you—”

“It is about me.”

“—it’s the alcohol. It’s what it does to him.” Bri’s words had the practiced cadence of a mantra, and Evan could tell she’d spoken them a time or twenty. “What he lets it do to him.”

The thump of footsteps stomping away, and then a door slammed.

The tires of the Dodge Neon thrummed along the freeway. He passed a Solventry box truck, the smiley-face daisy grinning at him cheerily from a side panel.

“Where does he go when he falls off the wagon?” Evan asked.

“Thought it was none of your business,” Brianna said. “’Member?”

The worst case hit like ice in his gut—the fear that just as he’d wound forward into the mission, it in turn was winding its way into him. “Where do you think he is?”

“Now you give a shit all of a sudden?”

Evan felt his teeth grind. “You called me.”

“No. Sofia did.”

“Then help me help her.”

In the pause, he could hear Brianna breathing.

“Who’s On First,” she said. “A bar, not the joke. Guess where it’s at?”

And then she hung up.

Who’s On 1st was the arithmetic mean of every dive bar Evan had ever seen. Speakeasy door of distressed wood. Faded brick chipped at the edges and pocked with burns from stubbed-out cigarettes. Alley with standing water in the back. Red and yellow neon glow of a Budweiser sign barely penetrating obsidian-black windows.

Four freeways squared this particular box of East L.A., the corner building floating on First Street at the edge of the Chinese Cemetery. Evan entered to the inevitable Bob Seger song on the inevitable jukebox, the inevitable loners sitting at the bar sipping from timeless brown bottles. Foosball table with broken strikers, dartboard missing chunks of foam, concrete floor tacky against his soles. Emergency door in the back carved with phone numbers and slander, crash bar–equipped for ease of expelling troublemakers. The whole place was a bit larger than a Winnebago and just as opulent.

Evan snapshotted the interior in a single click, a pent-up breath releasing with relief.

There Andre was at the end of the bar, perched sloppily on a stool.

Booze had misaligned his body, hips one way, shoulders the other, torso Slinkying to balance his head. The seats around him had cleared, and the regulars, replicants with denim jackets and chapped faces, seemed plenty happy to give him space.

Evan’s relief at spotting Andre quickly gave way to disdain. Andre was a sloppy drunk, and the fact that he was safe only heightened the inconvenience of his idiocy.

Evan walked over to him, his boots knocking the floor. The closer he got the more he drew the focus of the denizens. As he slid into the adjacent stool, the bartender said, “Your pal’s on his last strike. Threw a shot glass at the mirror.” He nodded toward a dent in the wall. “His aim’s no better’n his comportment. One more hiccup, the boys are ready to put him in finishing school.”

“Just do your job and pour, Jimmy,” Andre said.

“That’s the last of it for tonight, Andre,” a thick-necked man to Evan’s side said. Inexplicably he wore dark Ray-Bans with gold rims, perhaps in anticipation of a solar flare. A rectangular scar at the base of his skull confirmed the provenance of the haphazard sowing of hair plugs filling out his scalp. Aggravated and vain made him a threat for escalation. “I didn’t come here to watch you whine.”

“Look what I have for you, Nando.” Andre wagged his middle finger at the guy.

Evan slapped his hand down. “The hell you doing?”

“Me?” Andre leaned in at Evan, his breath rank with rum. “You’re in my bar.”