Royal Flush (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 6) Read Online Free Page B

They’re boots. Some of the women wear leather miniskirts. Some of them don’t, though. Jeans. The men wear jeans or camouflage pants. Gee, I can’t remember anything specific. A lot of them look pretty tacky.”
    “So you won’t be there tonight?”
    “No. Artie’s taking the family out for dinner.”
    “Good. Keep away.”
    “You don’t even have to say it. I don’t want to be around those people. They scare me.”
    “They should. Another thing, Deeanne— how old is Royal?”
    “Twenty.”
    “Isn’t he a little old for you?”
    “I’m almost eighteen.”
    Wow. That old. “And the crowd that hangs out at this bar— are they all young?” And underage?
    “Oh. Well, mostly, I guess. There were some older people too, though, I think.”
    She clearly hadn’t paid much attention, and I was concerned about the age factor, along with a dozen other things. Would I look out of place? Were all the men twenty years old?
    My qualifications for this job could have been better.
    I couldn’t do anything about my birth date or my ancestry, but I could do a couple of things to change my looks for a walk on the far-right side.
    The hair. Curly, but for general master-race purposes, light enough, especially with the threads of gray. Blue eyes from my Riga
bubbe.
Very non-Semitic nose, also courtesy of Bubbe Fanny. But I didn’t want these weirdos to know what I really looked like. I had to change something and I didn’t have time to grow a toothbrush mustache.
    I picked up the phone and punched in the number for Hairfax.
    “Betty, this is Jake. I’m desperate. You’ve got to squeeze me in this afternoon.”
    “Sure, hon. Need a cut?”
    “I want it bleached and straightened.”
    A second of silence, followed by laughter. “You’re kidding, right?”
    “No.”
    Betty still thought I was putting her on. “I watched the news this morning, Jake. They didn’t say anything about hell freezing over.”
    “Please?”
    “Come on in at three. But stop and see your therapist first.”
    If I had one, I might consider it.
    Okay. Now for the outfit. I looked in my closet. Jeans, no problem. Crammed into the back of a T-shirt drawer I found a black muscle shirt that qualified as tacky, I guessed. It didn’t smell too good and it was wrinkled.
    Shoes. I figured running shoes weren’t right. I did, however, have a pair of cowboy boots I’d worn twice. Black with some really ugly stitching in red. I didn’t have a leather jacket, but there was the old denim job I’d had since the Seventies.
    I put it all together, took a good long look in the mirror, gave up, and went shopping.

– 3 –
    The night was unusually warm, even for September, and the door to Thor’s Bar and Grill stood open. The hard heartbeat of heavy metal pulsed into the street. I walked in like I belonged.
    The wooden floor was gray with age and deeply embedded dirt. Decades of traffic had worn a hollow in the floorboards along the bar, a shallow cup carved by the feet of generations of drinkers. The bar itself was a thrown-together pile of cheap paneling and Formica, the dozen or so stools a scratched collection of red plastic seats and crippled legs. The air smelled of stale beer and old grease. Off to one side was a grill, where the cook, a scrawny, sweating skinhead kid who looked too young to be there, was frying burgers. He wore a clean white apron over his jeans, and his black suspenders looked new. He yanked a dripping basket of fries out of the well and dumped them on a couple of plates.
    I had a little trouble picking Royal out of the crowd. I’d met him only once, and although I generally remember faces, hairless people in skin-drag tend to look a lot alike. Then I spotted him, sitting at the bar waiting for me.
    He didn’t recognize me at first either. I had to walk right up to him and poke him in the swastika before he reacted. After a blank first look, his eyes widened. Staring, he took it all in, beginning with the straight platinum