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I don’t get out much during the day. I sleep late. No one calls private investigators before lunch anyway.
I put up my collar as I step out into the afternoon sun. Pull the brim of my hat down over my eyes.
The sun’s dipped below the New York skyline by the time I step up to Trollieti’s favourite watering hole. It’s an expensive place. Guy like me’ll stick out like a hooker at Mass. But I don’t need to fit in to get information.
It just helps.
I tug at the brim of my hat and nod a greeting to the bouncer. I know a bouncer when I see one. The black bow tie and three-piece suit don’t fool anyone.
He looks me up and down like I’m something the shih tzu found under the porch. A few bills grease the gears of progress.
His look says it all. Any trouble and I’m out on my ear – and I’ll find it harder than turning down a drink to get back in there.
I find a seat at the bar and caught the barman’s eye. He’s a man in his 40s, someone who’d seen the world, didn’t like what it had to offer and decided to make the best of it. Not the sort of man you find very often, but it’s an outlook on life that apparently did him well. There’re worse places in New York to spend most of your day than an upmarket bar in Manhattan.
He comes over and wipes his cloth across the bar in front of me, just for the look of the thing.
“So. Detective?”
“Private Eye.”
He nods. “We were due another one of your type. It’s information you’re after, is it?”
“And a drink. Make it a scotch. Single malt.”
He pours me a glass of something I probably can’t afford. One sip and I’ve changed my mind. I’ve got bills in my pocket enough for scotch this good. I’d damn well go into debt for scotch this good.
The barman dries a beer mug and arches a greying eyebrow. “It’ll be the information you want, now, I take it.”
I nod slowly and take another sip. “Smooth,” I say.
“Only the best,” he replies. Modest. I guess you would be.
“You get many people in here, Mr…?”
“You can call me Gerry, investigator. Yeah, we do okay. It’s never too busy, but our regulars are pretty big spenders, for the most part.”
I look around at the bar’s inhabitants. “I’ll bet.” A man at the end of the bar, drinking for what can only be a lost job or a broken heart. The other barman, young guy, is doing his duty as Agony Aunt, Priest and Mother all rolled into one. A few empty tables behind me, then some larger ones, and booths, up a short flight of stairs. A couple of men in suits talk quietly over a bottle of red. Three younger men entertain a booth full of giggling blondes.
I turn my attention back to my new friend, the single malt scotch. I’ll never be able to taste the bottle in my bottom drawer again without thinking of this. It’s spoilt me for any other scotch.
“Say, Gerry. You know a man named Trollieti?”
He nods, as if he’s been waiting for me to bring him up since I walked through the door. He probably has.
“He was a regular. Of course, you know that already, or you wouldn’t be here.”
I empty my glass and push it across the bar with my fingers. Gerry refills it as he talks. Commendable guy, this Gerry.
“Can’t tell you much – he wasn’t much of a talker.”
“His friends make sure you kept your mouth shut, Gerry?” Scotch slides down my throat like pure liquid sin.
“You don’t run a popular bar like this for long without learning a few tricks – such as when to hold your tongue.” Gerry starts polishing another glass but his eyes are on me. Matter of fact. “If you’re considering offering to rough me up, friend, I can tell you now you don’t hold as many fears for me as the friends of one Nick Trollieti.”
I nod. Fair enough. If I was in his place I’d be telling me the same thing.
“Nothing you can give me at all, Gerry?” I take a mouthful of scotch. “You know his wife? Victoria. Blonde, thin. Pretty thing. Has a spine.”
He shakes his head. “Now, a lot of men come in here with a lot of women. They don’t often bring their wives, I have to tell ya.”
No surprises there. “Any women you did see him with?”
Gerry pauses, cloth suddenly stationary on the rim of that glass.
“There were a few,” he says, starting up again.
“Oh? Anyone you remember in particular?”
He’s edgy. There’s something important here. A woman? It wouldn’t be the first time a man came to a sticky end because he stuck himself up someone he shouldn’t have.
I finish my scotch and swirl my ice cubes around in the bottom of the glass. The papers haven’t released cause of death yet; the autopsy hasn’t come back with a result. Still, the wife was certain it was murder. I am, too. I can feel it in my gut.
If the cause of death wasn’t clear as day it can’t have been anything messy. That leaves… poisoning. Drugs. Suffocation.
If the men Trollieti dealt with wanted to kill him they’d do it with a gun. Women are more likely to poison. Drug overdose… The wife didn’t mention if he took drugs. I’ll have to ask her. Anyone, Victoria included, could have filled a syringe for him with a stronger dose than he was used to.
And if he was sleeping around, a jilted wife might decide to take things into her own hands. There are a thousand places a wife can put poison, from breakfast to underwear, toothbrush to scotch.
I push my glass aside and wave a negative when Gerry picks up the bottle.
“I’ve lost my appetite for drink all of a sudden, Gerry.”
“Suit yourself,” he shrugs. “Didn’t lose its flavour, I hope?”
“Murder makes a lot of things tasteless, Gerry.”
“Even scotch? That’s a damn shame.”
“Don’t worry, it won’t last long.” Part of me wants to push back my stool and leave but there’s more I can learn here. Even sitting here with a glass pretending to drink myself stupid will give me a lot to observe.
“I take it Trollieti never mentioned his Missus, huh Gerry?”
“Nope. Seen her in the papers, though, a few times. Pretty thing.”
Pretty. Yeah. “She strike you as the jealous type?”
He sets down the glass and wipes his cloth across the bar. “She strikes me as the intelligent type,” he says. “Always talkin’ about this or that charity. I’d say she was well aware her husband went elsewhere for a little fun now and then. It comes with the territory.”
“You think she’d take matters into her own hands? Say, if he got particularly attached to one of these women.”
“Her?” His mouth contorts as he thinks this over. “Well, I don’t know her, of course. I can only make a guess based on what I’ve seen other gals do. And the smart ones, they don’t tend to do anything permanent so long as their husbands still come home at the end of the day more often than they don’t.”
“Hmm. And I suppose you’re not going to tell me where Trollieti ended up at the end of every day?”
Gerry just smiles.
“Alright.” I push my glass across the bar. “Not more of the same. Give me something a lot cheaper. I’m not going to appreciate the good stuff.” I can’t afford much more of the good stuff.
“As you like, investigator.”
He fills my glass with something I don’t recognise and I slip him a bill across the bar. “I’ll be in the corner,” I say, gesturing with a toss of my head towards a dark corner of the bar, opposite the shady men and their whispered conversation. “Keep ‘em coming. I’ll be here a while.”