The bartender realized he’d been cleaning the same glass for several minutes, ever since the emergency signal came from the cube. Someone broke a rack with a loud crash.
“Hey!” He spun around. “You show some respect?”
It was Leroy, a tall white guy, dealer. “I’m payin’ for this table by the hour. You show me some respect.” He lined up an easy shot and hit hard with a lot of draw, whack-thump, and the cue ball glided back to its starting place. “She was the worst president we ever had. So somebody finally punched her fuckin’ ticket. What took so long, is what I wonder.”
“You a hard fuckin’ case, Leroy. She was a nice lady.”
“Nice lookin’,” said a short fat man at the bar. “I wouldn’t go no farther than that. People in Washington didn’t think much of her.”
“You think much of them?”
A woman in a sparkly silver shift, blue eyes and black skin like the bartender’s, smoothed a hundred-dollar bill on the bar. “I’d like a whiskey, Miguel.” She put another bill on top. “And anybody else who wants one.”
“When did you start drinkin’, Connie?”
“Just now. A little ice?”
Leroy came up, emptied his glass, and put it on the bar. “I’ll have one for her vaporized ass.”
“Somebody gonna vaporize your ass someday, Leroy,” Connie said. “You ought to get in some other business. The people you run with.”
He pointed up at the cube, which was back to Cool Moon Davis. “Not as dangerous as those guys.” Miguel poured four glasses, one for himself, and slid them over. “Or the frogs, if it’s them that did it.”
“That would be crazy,” Miguel said. “The French don’t want us in the war.”
“So the damn Germans.”
“Doesn’t have to be a foreigner,” Connie said. “People in this room who’d do it if the price was right.”
“Ooh-woo.” Leroy sipped the neat liquor. “My ears are burning.”
“It’s a hell of a thing,” the short man said. “No matter who gets it. It’s not American.”
“Is now,” Connie said. She looked back at the cube as it switched back to the Walter Reed hospital room.