The Hundredth Man by Jack Kerley Page A

ID. May I ask what you wanted at eleven thirty-seven in the evening?”
    I boiled my intentions down to essentials. “I wanted to apologize for the other day. I spoke out of turn. You’re the prosecutor, you call the shots. And my remark about you shoveling down was rude and uncalled for.”
    She pursed her lips and raised a slender eyebrow. It made her look almost pretty.
    â€œIt took you two days to come to that conclusion?”
    I shook my head. “No. It took me a half-hour to come to the conclusion and two days to find the courage to call.”
    Was that a hint of a smile? The footprint of a hint? I wasn’t being hand-on-Bible honest, but wasn’t about to mention overhearing the scene in Clair’s office; it swerved a little too close to eavesdropping.
    I said, “My offer stands, Doctor. Would you care to have dinner? Nothing fancy, I’m thinking quiet and simple. We could grab a sandwich and watch the sun drop into the water.”
    She said, “ . . . No.”
    But she said it a beat past a hard-and-fast no, the no of dead ends, slammed doors, and fallen bridges. I knew this no. It was the nopeople used when asked, You sure you don’t want more gravy on those taters? It was a yes in disguise. Or maybe a maybe.
    I said, “Please. It means a lot to me.”
    Her mouth started to say no again. The next no would have had time to set, and be irrevocable. I held up my palms to cut her off. “Just think about it,” I said. “I’ll drop by later this afternoon.”
    This time I was the one who spun and retreated.
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    The man at the end of the bar sobbed into his hands and no one paid the slightest attention. A mirrored ball in the ceiling threw spinning diamonds of cut light over men slow-dancing to a torchy Bette Midler ballad. Though it wasn’t quite five, the dark bar was filling with the Friday crowd, adding to the others who’d skulked here since the door opened. A fat man with cow eyes gave me a once-over and licked his lips. I sent him a wink and a glimpse of shoulder holster. He disappeared like smoke in a hurricane.
    Squill’s “deployment plan” meant putting Harry and me on the shoe-leather trail, aiming us at gay bars around town. Harry’d taken his own list and gone a-hunting. Though the bars had been checked once, we were retracing with Deschamps’s photo.
    Canvassing bars is easy on TV, where one bartender works around the clock and knows every client down to shoe size. In reality even a modest bar might have a half-dozen regular barkeeps, plus part-timers on call. Even if you sat all the employees in one room and showed them the photos, it’d still be a crapshoot. My dictum for the experience in six words: memories are faulty and people lie.
    The bartender was a guy with cartoonishly huge muscles and a penchant for black leather: cap, vest, belt, chaps. His sideburns looked like black leather pasted in front of his ears. He wasn’t a tall guy, five ten or so, but nail a chrome grille to his chest and he’d have been a Kenworth. His skin looked oiled under the black vest, the better to define the pecs, I guessed. I flashed the shield and set the photos on the bar.
    â€œSeen either of these gentlemen?” I asked the Steroid King.
    â€œNo,” he said.
    â€œYou didn’t look at the pictures.”
    â€œTrue.” He pumped his fists to make the muscles in his forearms jump; they looked like steaks wrestling beneath his skin. He gave me bunker-slit eyes and said, “Good-bye.”
    I pointed to a corner booth where several men vamped and giggled. “Look over there, Meat. I’ll bet each one’s carrying something. Smoke, Ecstasy, acid . . . I’ll walk over and check them out. They’ll mask fear with belligerence. I’ll become frightened for my safety and call for backup. Cops will rush in, the place will clear out. What will that do to your