Live Bait Read Online Free Page B

a casual crowd in there when I arrived at seven the next evening, most of them truckers or mechanics from the transport company down the block. They looked tired and dirty but were yukking it up before going home. I did the routine thing, holding up two fingers to the waiter and dropping a fin on the table. He dropped my two glasses of draft and three-eighty in change, I slid him a quarter and he stuck it in his tips pocket, all without a word.
    I'd brought the evening paper with me and I folded it open at the racing page. The trots were being run at Greenwood racetrack just down the road and I figured Millrace patrons would be horseplayers and the paper would make good camouflage.
    The names and data made no sense to me but I sat and looked them over and chewed a toothpick while my head played with the idea of who Tony might be. From the description I'd got, he figured to be a loan shark. Probably he had a circuit on race nights. First he would hit the Millrace and a couple of other bars where the hopefuls were gathered, dreaming of the big win. Then he'd go down to the track to lounge around in his suit with the crucifix gleaming while a stream of contacts brought more hopefuls to him. The only thing that didn't fit in was why he was hiring muscle for construction site sabotage.
    The easy connection to make is to talk about The Mob, and it exists in Toronto, just like any other city, but most of the Italians in town are good people. They work like dogs and went crazy the day Italy won the Soccer World Cup, but aside from that they spend all their time at home making wine and turning their tiny gardens into showplaces. Maybe Tony was an import from Buffalo, that's where most of the heavies in this region hang out.
    After a while the guard changed in the room. The workies went home and were replaced by gray-faced older men who had been back to their rented rooms and washed and changed and eaten TV dinners and were looking for beer and company while they watched whatever crud came in over the big TV at the end of the bar. As the tables filled, one of them came and sat opposite me, going through the same ritual I'd performed then sitting staring dead ahead, smoking Export cigarettes. He looked as if he was replaying his day, giving himself all the zingers he hadn't delivered when the foreman chewed him out for being too long in the john.
    It was quarter to eight before Tony arrived. There was no mistaking him. He was the way Hudson had described him, thirtyish, five-ten, running to pudge, wearing a pale summer suit. His crucifix had company tonight, a gold shark's tooth and a medallion on a gold chain that could have held an anchor.
    He sauntered in, cracked a joke with the waiter who laughed fit to bust, then turned away stone-faced to serve his next table. Tony went to a corner table. A couple of guys were already there but they took their beers and moved, leaving him the space. He sat down with his back to the wall and cocked one leg over a vacant chair. The waiter hurried over with a Perrier and twist. That surprised me. You can get anything in a beer parlor these days but Perrier in this end of town is a rarity. It seemed Tony was a big wheel in the Millrace.
    He threw a blue five dollar bill on the table and waved the waiter away. The guy bowed and disappeared the bill into his tips pocket. Tony lit himself a cigarette from a soft pack, an American brand, and sat surveying his empire. Half a minute later another man came in, heavy-set and surly. He sat halfway down the room where he could watch Tony, ordered a single beer but didn't touch it. I assumed he did the collecting on Tony's delinquent debts and spent the rest of his time making sure some disenchanted borrower didn't try to take an empty beer bottle up alongside his boss's head.
    I watched for a while, over my paper. Men came to Tony, stood and talked and were waved away to the other guy who did tricks with a wallet. Then they left, confident that some horse was