CHRIST, DEREK WAS getting sick of bars. Such a concept would have seemed downright absurd to him a few weeks ago. Bars were his natural habitat, a biosphere of wood and glass and neon where the flora fermented in kegs and the fauna danced and screwed and scurried from happy hour to closing time, where the alphas wore studs in their noses or tattoos on their necks or polo shirts with popped collars and the omegas always bought the next round. Derek fit in neat as a puzzle piece, a keystone species holding the barmaids and bouncers aloft, an apex predator with .45 calibre claws. Derek revelled in their hominess, the ebb and flow of faces as he moved from one to the next, the niches and specials and quirks. But gradually he’d begun to realise that once you pare away the ornamentation and inebriation that rendered in them a shine bright as polished jewellery, bars were pretty much just boxes filled with booze and shitty lighting. The folks who danced in and out of view weren’t lively characters in some hip play. They were just a bunch of drunk and horny losers looking to kill time. And what was Derek but the drunkest, horniest loser of them all? Yet he kept going to them throughout his protracted epiphany—first out of habit, then out of denial, and finally out of spite. He was damned if he’d cower from the likes of Ballaro, and drinking at home felt a little too much like hiding.
But if sitting in the back corner of a dive bar wasn’t hiding, what the fuck was it, exactly?
Derek found his thoughts circling this bitter gyre more and more often, kicking against the current in a vain attempt to keep from drowning. He thought often of striking back at the Ballaros, carving space for himself in Niagara’s meaty interior, but his imaginings lacked the iterated precision of true planning. They existed rather as operatic fantasies, grandiose and unworkable, a tizzy of gunfire and pyrotechnics. Derek had worked his trade long enough to know the gunslinger model never paid off for long. The meatheads who thought otherwise ignored a simple fact: somewhere in a magazine was a bullet with your name on it. The trick was to keep something solid between it and you.
The asshole hadn’t even given Derek a chance to explain himself. That was what really got him. You have a cordial working relationship with someone for ten years, mutual respect on both sides, and at the first sniff of trouble a couple guys show up at your motel room at two in the goddamn morning. No discussion, no explanations, just a metal slug and a dip in the river. How’s that for loyalty? How’s that for mutual respect?
Brooding into his glass, Derek didn’t see the man until he was at his table, hand resting on the backrest of the chair opposite him. A bulky silver ring circled his third finger. Derek’s first thought was mafia, but the man was otherwise unadorned save for a wedding band, and his rumpled overcoat and off-the-rack khakis screamed cop.
The man pulled out the chair and slid neatly into it. He leaned forward, elbows propped on the table. Derek pinned him at mid-thirties, six foot, a slender one-eighty, soft features but eyes like chips of flint. Shitty cops—and most cops, in Derek’s experience, ranked among their number—came in two flavours: pencil-necked desk jockeys and knucklehead sadists. Derek didn’t think this guy fell in either camp. He got a similar feeling for the woman who took the seat to his right. A uniformed officer, she was late thirties, heavyset but carrying it fairly well, her skin that rich West African ebony that almost seemed to glow under certain light. Derek could make her as a beat cop by the badge, but the guy remained a mystery.
“You Derek McCulloch?” he asked.
“I say no, will you leave me alone and go bother another table?”
“I dunno. You’re welcome to give it a try.”
Derek swirled his beer. Islets of foam orbited the rim, leaving streaks along the edge of the glass. “What are you, narco or something? I’m not holding, haven’t done any of that shit since high school.”
“I don’t particularly care if your colon’s packed with forty pounds of China white, Derek. That’s not my deal.”
“No?” Derek sipped his beer with a satisfied smacking sound. “What’s your deal, then?”
“Why don’t we go and talk about it someplace more private?”
“You arresting me? What’s your probable cause? I got a whole bar full of people here saw you come up to me. I haven’t been starting any shit, and you know it.”
“That’s how it has to be, huh?” The guy looked at the lady cop, shaking his head at the sorry state of things. The lady gave a what-are-you-gonna-do shrug, building an easy pantomime between them. These two had history together, then. Policing or a con game, it amounted to the same thing from opposite angles, and Derek had run enough scams to know that sort of rapport couldn’t be purchased prefab; you had to grow it from sweat and dirt.
The guy stood up, smoothing out the lapels of his jacket. The lady followed suit, shimmying her legs out from under the table.
“One thing, though, before we go,” he said, leaning down until his mouth was level with Derek’s ear, very conspiratorial. His face eclipsed the right half of the room, swallowing Derek’s field of vision. Derek caught a bitter whiff of coffee on his breath. “You got a permit for that?”
The man’s hand shot out on “permit,” quick but calm, and wormed into the cavity between Derek’s shirt and his jacket. Cold weight drew across Derek’s ribs, and the man’s hand withdrew holding a pearl-handled revolver. He set it on the table, the barrel pointing to a spot just to Derek’s left. The bore winked its dark eye at him.
“Oops,” said the woman. It was the first time she’d spoken. Her voice was gentler than Derek expected, almost musical. The man waved to a passing waitress, who eyed the gun uneasily as she approached but didn’t say anything. The man took out his wallet and flashed a badge at her.
“We’ll take the cheque, please,” he said.