9

AUGUST HOLDWINE DRAINED the trace of whisky from the glass in front of him, centered the glass back on the napkin on the oaken bar, and studied me. “I’m not here to spy on you,” he said. “In case I need to state the obvious.”

“I know,” I said. “Howell has people to follow me and make sure I look both ways before I cross the street. They have a van and I think they call their moms three times a day. You want another?”

“No. I have to work tomorrow.” But he didn’t stand up to rise. August was a big guy, about six-six, old college muscle that hadn’t morphed all the way into fat but was considering the option. He had blondish hair and apple cheeks and heavy muscles under the shirt. He said, “Uh, maybe I shouldn’t say anything about work.”

“I’m not bothered that you still have a job and I’m serving drinks,” I said. “Bartending is honorable.”

“I think I would rather be serving drinks. Less stress.”

“Want to trade?”

August and I had gone through training together at the Company, me straight from Harvard, him fresh from the University of Minnesota. He was my opposite: a farm boy who’d spent most of his life in one place, on land that had been in his family for seven generations. I couldn’t imagine such stability. He had a broad, open face, the kind decent people trusted, and a gravelly baritone voice. He worked stateside, in a satellite office in Manhattan. He’d landed me the bartending job at Ollie’s. The Company manufactured a résumé for me, as a bartender who’d worked at decent joints in Chicago and New Orleans. I hadn’t lost my bartending skills from working through college, and I liked being back with the glasses and the taps: I could be around people but the bar separated us. I was grateful. None of my other friends in the Company had bothered to call or express condolences. I was tainted. Like Howell said, conventional wisdom dictates the spouse always knows treason is under the roof. So I was beyond hope, as Howell put it, suspect, irreparably damaged goods. Except to August. But that was fine; August was the perfect friend to sit with in a bar. You could talk to him about your darkest secret and know he wouldn’t judge you, or you could be silent with him and just watch sports and never share a thought. Either was cool with August.

I wanted to trust August. But I couldn’t. Either he was under orders to be Howell’s tool or he wasn’t, and if he knew anything he would get in trouble once I put my plan into motion.

“So. Early morning tomorrow,” he said. “I should go.”

“You got cows to milk?” I enjoyed teasing him about his farming past.

He didn’t stand up from the bar.

“Do you want another drink?” I waited.

He looked up at me with his watery blue eyes. “What are you doing, Sam?”

“Pouring beer, mostly.” I glanced down the bar: no other customers. It was a Monday night, always the slowest at Ollie’s. Odd, because Mondays sucked so bad that you’d think most people would want a drink to wash the beginning of the week out of their mouths.

“You’re very quiet.”

“I don’t have a lot to say, August.”

“I don’t know what you were told, but not everyone at the Company believes you turned. Most of your friends are still your friends.”

“Most? That warms the heart.”

He shrugged. He meant well, but I guess he just didn’t know what to say. Thousands upon thousands of people work for the Company; the traitors in its history are very, very few, and rightly unforgiven.

“And yet there’s no crowd here tonight, what with my many friends.” I wiped down the already clean bar.

August picked up his glass and set it down when he remembered it was empty.

“Are you being brave in staying my friend, August, or are you just doing your job?” I’d intended not to push the subject but my patience was thinning.

“I’m not here because anyone told me to be. Howell said you were cleared but you couldn’t go back to work, not yet.”

“I’m a lure to draw out whoever took Lucy. The idea being that I wasn’t supposed to survive the explosion and she messed up that plan.”

August said, “I know all that. Be bait, then. But don’t think you’re alone. You’re not.”

“We stirred up a pot, August, the office in London. On this Money Czar guy, on a bunch of criminal networks. If you could help me… find out if there’s been any new evidence come to light on who was behind the bombing.”

“Sam, I can’t. I don’t have that clearance.”

“But you could access the files…”

He held up a hand. “I cannot. End of discussion. Let them investigate. Be glad they’ve cleared your name.”

“If they have.”

He cleared his throat. “You have to consider the possibility Lucy set you up.”

“For three years? No.”

“Maybe she wasn’t dirty three years ago. Maybe she turned much more recently.”

It’s very Twilight Zone to have a talk with your oldest friend from work that revolves around the theme my wife is not a traitor. “Because pregnant women are notable for wanting to put themselves at risk of arrest and imprisonment.”

August turned the glass in his hands. “I’m just saying.”

“Then why save me?” I couldn’t let the argument go.

“Don’t be an idiot, Sam. You’re alive, the sole survivor, the Company focuses on you. Not her. You’re in their grip. It gave her a chance to run.”

“I can’t think that.”

“Because you’re being a good husband?”

I stared into his watery blue eyes. “Because if she was dirty, she still lived with me for three years, and she knows that if she betrayed me and killed our friends and I’m alive to come after her, I will. So if she was dirty, she’d want me dead.” I kept my voice steady and calm.

“So all this energy, and you’re still sitting here in Brooklyn?”

“If I run, they grab me and I’m back in a jail cell.”

“Unless you’re smart about how you run.”

“August. I just got out of a Company prison. I’m not risking a return ticket. We are not having this conversation.”

August put his money on the table and said, “Don’t worry about the change.”

“Okay.” I watched him leave. It’s awkward to tip a friend and I didn’t want him to, but I slid the change into the tip jar. I got back to work, which involved making a pot of decaf for Ollie and serving a group of wannabe artists who came in five minutes later for a round of Pabst Blue Ribbon beers.

Most people at Ollie’s Bar drank beer and wine. But at least six times a day I made vodka martinis; five times a day I poured whisky; and now and then I made a margarita on the rocks. There wasn’t a frozen margarita machine; it wasn’t that kind of bar. Usually a couple of early customers at the lunchtime opening wanted Bloody Marys, and I made them extra spicy and got bigger tips. I made drinks and kept quiet and gained back weight I’d lost and slept a lot. August came and drank during my evening shifts. A few questions to my fellow barkeeps told me that he didn’t come in on my days off. I felt myself getting stronger but I was only running very basic parkour, vaults onto railings and low walls, because I was too out of practice and I didn’t want to risk an injury. I pretended not to notice the surveillance Howell had put on me. Three rookies, two on foot, one in a van, were nearly constant whenever I left the bar or my apartment. They were testing me, seeing what I might do, how close to their orders I would stay.

Or, conversely, waiting for someone to kill me.