The light outside was as gloomy as the bleakness inside, and the clouds were bunched as black and tight as my mood. Rain slapped my windshield, making good the sky’s promise. Wind gusts smacked the side of the car. I thought about heading home, but decided on thoroughness instead. If I found Rudnow it wouldn’t take long to get what I wanted; I was in no mood for play.

I found a street that looked like it went somewhere and followed it straight downtown. Or what passed for downtown. Small rundown hardware, sundries stores, and convenience markets lined both sides of the street. Toward the end of the road a faded green sign marked the municipal parking lot before the wharf. The weather had emptied the streets, but I had doubts whether the sun would have made much difference. From where I parked the car you could see the harbor that lost the bet. The desolation reminded me of the billboard just outside Seattle during the early Seventies: WILL THE LAST ONE TO LEAVE PLEASE TURN OUT THE LIGHTS. Mrs. Starring hadn’t lied; around here the lights had been out a long time.

I saw Warren’s Tavern about a half block back, so I pulled my jacket around me and trotted through the escalating rain and wind to the door. As dark as it was outside it still took a couple of moments for my eyes to adjust, though I could smell the universal stench of every working class bar: alcohol, bad breath, traces of urine, and the clammy sweat of forbidden lust and barely controlled violence. Ammonia and urinal deodorant just added to the mix.

By the smell of it Warren didn’t use much ammonia.

I walked over to the bartender. About a half a dozen men sat around the large oval bar with enough distance between them to make hollering a must. No one seemed inclined to raise his voice. They showed none of the reputed smalltown curiosity when a stranger walked into their midst. No one even bothered to look up.

I leaned over the bar and tried to catch the bartender’s attention. He saw me but didn’t seem too impressed. When he finally arrived I ordered a Miller and gulped at it to dilute the ghost of a forlorn Mrs. Starring alone at her table braced for her husband’s appearance. I put the glass down and signaled again. This time the man looked annoyed as he lumbered over. I thought the neatly folded ten-spot under the glass might lift his mood.

“I’m looking for Toby Rudnow.” I expected some negotiation, but all he did was take the money and nod toward the booths in the back. I saw only one head so I grabbed my bottle and headed that way. I passed the booth, swung around, then slid onto the bench across from a praying mantis wearing a peacoat. His long skinny face was covered with the remains of a lost war with acne. His hands had a slight tremor as he grabbed his drink in surprise.

“What is this? Who are you?” He started to pull his slouched body upright.

“Stay still.” The menace in my voice froze him. “I know who you are and I know you sell dope. I don’t want to know who you sell it to, or who you buy it from. I only want to know what you sell.”

A cunning smile crept across his ugly face. “Fuck you. Buy your shit somewhere else.”

I grabbed his hand and twisted it onto the table. “I wasn’t clear, I guess. You are going to tell me what you sell.”

I dug my fingers into the cartilage and twisted a little more. Seeing his tiny close-set eyes still trying to figure an angle, despite the pain, enraged me. I had to bite my own lip to keep from breaking his wrist. I leaned forward and, with my free hand, opened my jacket and showed him my gun.

“We can talk now where I probably won’t shoot you, or we can talk later where I probably will. There’s nothing in the middle, moonface.”

The tears brought on by my grip wiped the defiance off his face. He was back to looking like who he was: an overage grifter who’d probably never been out of Perth Amboy. I let go of his hand. He pulled it and the rest of his body way back into the corner of the booth. Maybe he thought he was out of reach.

“Who are you?” he asked plaintively.

“None of your fucking business. Now, what do you sell?”

“I don’t sell anything. Someone was bullshitting you.”

“Have it your way.” I hooked my leg around his and yanked. Caught by surprise, he slid lower in the booth. His head was only a couple inches higher than the table and I reached over, grabbed his hair, and cracked his chin hard on the solid wood table top. For a moment he was too astonished to respond but I could see him getting ready to yelp so, as much as it disgusted me, I leaned forward and covered his bleeding mouth with my other hand. I stayed like that until he began to choke on his blood. I let go of his hair and put a finger to my lips. He nodded and looked frightened enough for me to believe him. I let go of his mouth and while he gasped for air, I poured beer over my hand and wiped it on his coat.

“Now, asshole, right now. What did you and Starring sell?”

He blanched whiter than he already was when he heard Starring’s name. He stopped breathing heavily and pulled a dirty handkerchief out of his pants, wiping at the blood. I regretted using his coat to wipe my hand. I started to get ready to hit him again when he finally got wise and slumped in his seat.

“We sold dope, man.”

“What kind of dope?”

He whispered, “Grass, mostly grass.”

“What else?”

“Sometimes hash. But hash is hard to get.”

He was holding something back. “You sold more than that, didn’t you? You sold coke, and crack, and horse and if you don’t tell me that truth real quick, I might kill you here.” I half-meant it. When he saw me put my hand inside my jacket he bought the other half.

“No, no, we didn’t sell that. I wanted to, but Joe wouldn’t go for it. He said the risk was too big, that we couldn’t get high enough up the food chain. I wanted to, Mister, but I swear, he wouldn’t let us.”

“Then what are you holding back, Rudnow? You didn’t just sell grass.”

He looked away as if he hoped that when he looked back I’d be gone. I wasn’t.

“Every once in a while we would do a job on a drugstore. He’d take the cash, I’d take the goods. He said it kept me off his back.” Rudnow poked inside his mouth with his finger. “Jesus man, you messed up my teeth.”

I kept looking ugly. “You did this shit in Perth Amboy?”

“No way. We’d cork our faces and hands and wear masks and drive to Newark. Hell, we didn’t even need to do that. You rob a drugstore in Newark, everybody figures it’s gotta be a junkie spade.”

He was proud of their ingenuity. I had underestimated him. He had been outside Perth Amboy. If you can call Newark outside of anywhere.

“You do this often?”

“Every few months. We were good at it.” His greasy pride made me sick, though his information pleased me. Now that he’d begun, he enjoyed talking. I knew if I let him continue I would hit him again. I lifted my hand to signal him quiet and watched him cringe. I held my position longer than necessary, and let the silence sit there ominously.

“Who did the actual entry work?”

His eyes tightened and his tongue ran lightly over his lips as he checked the bleeding.

“Don’t lie to me now.”

“Joe got us in, Mister.” He didn’t know whether to be relieved or ashamed. “He was good at it.”

I stood. “I’d watch your back, Sonny, if I were you.” He nodded while I almost laughed out loud. The encounter was straight Grade B, but I got what I came for no matter how ridiculous the style. I was finished with this slimeball. Next stop home.

But first a storm. It had gone from bad to worse while I’d been in the tavern. The sewers were backed up and the wind was pushing the rain with cutting force. I sloshed back to the car and sat dripping as I watched the harbor’s water roil, and white-tipped peaks on an angry, hostile ocean.

I thought about returning to the motel to wait it out, but the idea felt more claustrophobic than driving through the gray sheet of wet. I checked the map and plotted my way to 95. The Pike was bumperto-bumper with the shoulder of the road under water. I was clammy with sweat from the amount of concentration needed to drive safely.

Route 95 was better. Instead of 15 mph I could do 30. Visibility improved and, although the storm continued, conditions were good enough to think about things other than driving.

It took me ‘til New Haven to weave the information into a tapestry that made sense. Although I still couldn’t get the dates to fit, I understood what triggered the burglaries, but specific conclusions were fainter than an unremembered dream. No matter how I turned it over, I couldn’t figure Clifford, or why Starring was dead. From where I sat, this was some serious overkill.

It was almost midnight when I finally pulled into the alley behind my building, bone tired. I thought about rushing up the stairs and collecting the records, but I figured everyone to be asleep. Driving and thinking had left me numb and needing a long hot shower. Everything else could wait until the morning. Including me.

In bed I thought about how much I had wanted to hurt Rudnow. Between the street of cottages and the bar, too much of my own early life had been jolted loose. I felt guilty about picking on the little prick, and resolved to keep better control. My resolve lasted until I fell asleep and saw myself slamming Rudnow’s head into the table and felt myself laugh out loud. Then it wasn’t just Rudnow. A cast of familiar characters all had their chance to chin the table.

The next morning I felt fresh and eager. Curious to learn, if I could, why Starring was dead.