Chapter 9: The Stranger in the Bar

The bartender grabbed the bottle and poured two more finger fulls for Jim. "This one's on the house." The bartender told Jim that he'd been working on the nights before the theft went down but that he didn't remember anything unusual. Jim asked him if he could tell him who else was in the bar on those nights. The bartender replied, "Pretty much everybody here." 

"Are people going to be upset if I start asking questions?"

The bartender shook his head, laughing again. "Not about the gorilla. People love talking about that fucking gorilla." 

Jim turned towards the room so that he could eyeball the bar's loyal patrons. The bar was dark, lit only by the dim light emanating from the juke box and the light hanging over the unused pool table in the corner. Jim wouldn't exactly call the place a dive but there was the subtle scent of despair hanging in the air. Jim imagined that most people didn't come to this bar on purpose. They would just sort of end up there and, once there, had trouble leaving. Despite the close looks he'd garnered when he first walked through the door, no one was paying attention to Jim any more. Now they either had their faces buried in their drinks or, if they were lucky, in the nape of someone else's neck. Jim, buzzed from the two scotches he'd downed, drew up his game plan. It was simple. He'd start with one end of the room and make his way across it one person at a time. He'd talk to everyone. You never knew who was going to know something. 

On his first pass, Jim spoke to about eight out of every ten people in the bar. He skipped the couples, not wanting to interrupt their shared moments. Jim didn't have any luck on the first pass. The people were nice enough but nobody knew anything, nobody remember anything strange happening on the days before the theft, nobody spoke to anyone who said anything suspicious. Last week was just like the week before that, which was just like the week before that. Still, Jim wasn't ready to quit just yet. Instead he headed over to a man and a woman that were getting more closely acquainted in one of the bar's darker corners. As he got closer, he could more clearly see the man and woman. The man was middle-aged, probably in his early forties. There was a half full martini glass in front of him. He was dressed smartly in a tailored black suit and no tie. He had his hand on the woman's knee and was leaning in, whispering something in her ear. He hadn't taken any notice of Jim. The woman, on the other hand, saw Jim coming. She stared at him as he approached them and then pretended to laugh at whatever the guy in the suit was saying to her. The laugh was fake. Jim knew it. The guy in the suit didn't notice. She was probably ten years younger than him and very attractive. She was thin, with auburn hair and a subtle but rehearsed smile. The skirt she was wearing did a bang up job of showing off her legs but her eyes looked old and tired. Jim didn't like to make assumptions about a person's profession. If you walk into a bar and start assuming that a girl that is only interested in a little company is on the clock, you're likely to get a slap in the face. She wasn't dressed like a working girl. She looked classy, classier than the bar she was hanging out in. But her eyes, Jim had seen eyes like that before.

"Excuse me," Jim said when he was only a few feet away from their table. 

"We're a little busy here pal," the man said, without looking at him, his eyes fixed everywhere on the woman but her face.

"This will only take a minute," Jim said. He'd have to be careful not to push his luck. He didn't want trouble from anyone, but the way the woman looked at him, he felt like she might have something to say.

The man turned to look at him. He looked Jim up and down, sizing him up. "What do you think, Sweatie, should we give this man a minute?"

"Depends what he's looking for," she joked joylessly, her eyes still locked on Jim's.

"The lady wants to know what you're looking for?" the man translated unnecessarily for Jim.

"I'm looking for the guys who stole the gorilla," Jim replied, staring only at the woman to see if he could read her reaction. There was none. Either she didn't know anything or she had a hell of a poker face. Jim wagered on the later.

The man started laughing out loud. When he was done laughing, he lifted his martini to his lips. "Good luck with that pal. What makes you think we know anything about the gorilla?"

"I don't suspect you do," Jim replied. "I'm just asking people who were here the few nights before she was stolen if they remember seeing or hearing anything," Jim paused for a second, searching for the right word, "out of the ordinary." As he said the words, the woman broke her gaze with Jim and looked down at the floor. 

"Can't help you buddy," the man replied. "How about you, babe?" 

"I see strange things every day," she replied and took a constitution-hardening swig of her drink. The man laughed. Jim knew not to push it. He wasn't a cop any more. He couldn't make people talk, even when they had something to say. He thanked the couple and walked back to the bar where he ordered another scotch. Then he waited.

It was two more drinks and another forty minutes before the guy finally got up to use the bathroom. When he did, Jim walked back towards the dark corner. The woman wasn't surprised to see him. "Your friend's going to be back in a minute." Jim kept his voice as friendly as possible. "I don't want to interfere with your business but I was hoping you might be able to tell me what you know before he gets out."

"It's nothing," she responded.

"No," Jim replied. "I've been here for three hours and what I've got is nothing. I don't care if what you want to tell me is a hunch, a guess. I don't care if you saw it in your tea leaves. But I know you want to tell me something."

"Well, he didn't say anything about no gorillas," the woman said. The air of confidence that she was wearing for the guy in the suit was gone. Without it, the woman looked vulnerable.  

"Who is 'he'?" Jim asked

"Well, there was a guy in here last week-two days before the gorilla was stolen. I didn't make anything of it because, well, I've got no reason to. But you're just asking if we saw anything weird, right?"

"Yeah," Jim replied.

"Well this guy was weird."

"How so?"

"Well, it started out all normal like. He came into the bar, had a few drinks and we start talking. At first it was fine. He was nice. He seemed like a nice, normal guy. I thought he might want some company. But the more he had to drink the stranger he got." Jim nodded to show her that he was listening. "First, he starts telling me how he could make me a queen. I thought it was just a line but when I laughed, he got all serious. He's like, 'I can save you,'" she deepened her voice to try to make it sound more like a man's. "So I try to lighten up the mood again by telling him that I'm beyond saving. I think I'm still flirting, you know. So he says to me, totally seriously, 'Nobody is beyond saving. There's only fire and death and chance,'" she enunciated each word just as he must have. Jim tried to picture the scene in his head. "So he's really starting to creep the shit out of me. And then he asks me if I believe in God." She reached for her drink and took a sip. "And that's too much for me, so I tell him that he's creeping me out and that I'm going to leave and I get up and start walking away. I thought that'd be it, but as I walk away he says to me, 'You'll be sorry. I could have saved you.'"

Jim knew he only had a few more seconds before the lady's date returned. "What did he look like?"

"He was a regular looking guy. Regular height, grayish hair. It's dark in here you know, so sometimes it's hard to tell. He wasn't fat or thin or bald. He looked normal. I think that's what freaked me out so much, the fact that he looked so normal." Jim didn't know what to make of the story. There really wasn't anything to it. A crazy guy at bar really wasn't a lead. But something in his gut told him differently.

"So you left?"

"The bar? No." The woman waved her hand at him. "This is my fucking bar. He's the stranger. If anybody was going to leave, it was going to be him. I just avoided him after that."

"Did you see him again before he left?"

"Well," the woman said, "that's the thing. He comes up to me again right before he leaves," the woman paused and started digging through her purse "and he hands me this card." She found what she had been rifling through her purse for and handed it to Jim. It was the business card of a fortune teller. Jim looked at the address. It was in New York City. "Then he says to me, 'My fortune teller told me I'd find her here.' Only now he sounds kind of sad. So I ask him, 'Find who?' And he looks at me with these sad blue eyes and says, 'My Eve' and he walks out of the bar."

"And that's it?" Jim asked.

The woman shrugged as if she didn't know what to say. "I told you he never mentioned no gorillas."

"Can I keep this?" Jim asked, holding the psychic's card in his hand.

"Be my guest," the woman replied. "God knows I don't want it any more. I don't even know why I kept it this long."

"Thank you," Jim said. He looked up just in time to see the woman's date exiting the men's room so he slinked back off into the shadows to avoid being seen. He walked back to the bar to settle his tab. Then he looked down at the card he was holding in his hand again. Madam Huldah, it read at the top in an intricate type face that looked like calligraphy. Jim didn't exactly recognize the address on the card but knew about where it was. It was in downtown Manhattan, just off Houston Street. He hadn't been to New York in years. The card advertised $10 for a palm reading, $20 for a tarot card reading and $50 for the crystal ball. Jim paid the bartender and left.