The Embers Restaurant was in Moline, just off 52nd Avenue, near South Park Shopping Center and not far from the airport. A two-story, brown-shingled, rambling affair in the midst of its own little park, the Embers was perched along the Rock River like just another rustic, if oversize, cottage. I left the black, “like-new” Sunbird in a nearly empty lot (it was late afternoon-before the supper hour) and briefly wandered the pine-scattered grounds, noting a teepee and a totem pole, a white pagoda bird bath, a statue or two of a Catholic saint, stone benches, wooden picnic tables, and a bright red sleigh awaiting snow. Along the gray river, with a well-travelled overpass bridge looming at left, was a cluster of gazebos with red-canvas roofs; there was even a band shell. Here and there plaster animals, deer mostly, were poised in plaster perfection, to make you feel close to nature.
This was just the sort of oddball, cobbled-together joint that went over well with tourists and locals alike. As the former owner of the Welcome Inn, I felt at home.
An awning covered the lengthy astro-turfed walkway up to the entrance, which was the back door of the place really, and a narrow wood-paneled hallway, decorated with ducks-in-flight prints and various signs (“Casual dress required,” “Home of Aqua Ski Theater”), led to an unattended hat check area where I left my overcoat, with stairs to the right and a bar to the left.
I went into the bar, which opened out onto a dining room with a river view. The Embers interior was just as studiedly rustic and quaint as the grounds. The ceiling was low and open-beamed with slowly churning fans, and there were plants and ferns here and there, though a Yuppie joint this was not. The barroom walls were populated with stuffed animals-small ones, birds and fish mostly. If the Bates Motel had had a restaurant, this would have been it.
A youngish blond guy with glasses and a white shirt was working behind the bar. “We’ll be serving dinner in about half an hour,” he said.
“Fine. I’ll wait.”
“You can sit at the bar, or the hostess will be here in a moment and seat you.”
“Fine,” I said, noncommittally.
A couple of businessmen were sitting at the bar having drinks, munching peanuts. I noted several ashtrays cradling Embers matchbooks like those I’d found in the dark blue Buick.
I sat at a small round table near the big brick fireplace; a fire was going, and the warmth was all right with me. The afternoon had grown colder.
On the hearth was an aquarium, about two feet tall and four-and-a-half feet wide. In the tank swam a fish, silver, and a foot and a half long. He had a very sour expression. He would glide slowly to one end of his tank, make a swishing turn and glide to the other end of the tank, make a swishing turn and you get the idea. I supposed his life was no more meaningless than anybody else’s.
“He’s from the Amazon River,” somebody said.
I looked up. It was the blond bartender; he’d come over out of boredom or to take my order or something. He was perhaps twenty-five years old. The fish tank’s lights reflected in his glasses.
“Amazon River, huh,” I said.
“Notice the little goldfish down toward the bottom of the tank? They’re his supper.”
This fish tank sort of summed up everything anybody needed to know about life.
“I guess that makes him King Shit,” I said.
“Guess so,” the bartender said. “Till we come in some morning and he’s belly up. Can I get you anything?”
“Well, it won’t be fish.”
“I mean, from the bar. We aren’t serving dinner…”
“Till five, right. Just a Coke. Diet, with a twist of lemon.”
He nodded and went briskly back behind the bar. I got up and went and took the glass of Coke from him, to save him another trip. I sat two stools down from the businessmen and sipped my soda and said to the bartender, “This place been here a while?”
“Thirty-five years,” he said. “Original owners are still associated with the place.”
“Associated with it? You mean they don’t own it anymore?”
“No. They just manage it. Some flood damage a few years ago hit ’em hard, and a local businessman bought ’em out.” He made a clicking sound in his cheek and shook his head.
“Something wrong?”
“Well, I don’t know what’s going to happen now.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not from around here, obviously, but d’you see the papers today?”
“Sure.”
“That fella that was shot? Ja read about that?”
“I’m vaguely familiar with the story.”
“He owned this place.”
I fingered a book of matches in the ashtray. “No kidding. What sort of guy was he?”
“Okay,” he shrugged. “He wasn’t around all that much. This was just another investment, I’d guess. One of many.”
I lit a match, studied the flame.
“You want some cigarettes?” the bartender said.
I smiled, waved the match out. “No. I don’t smoke. It’s bad for you.”
“Here’s the hostess. She can seat you. We’ll be serving in about fifteen minutes.”
I turned and watched the hostess approach.
She was a very attractive blonde with dark blue eyes, in a light blue, wide white-belted turtleneck dress, menus tucked under her arm. She filled the dress out nicely, if not spectacularly, but what was most impressive was the white dazzling smile. That, and the fact that I knew her.
She recognized me immediately, too. “Why, Mr. Ryan. Hello again.”
I climbed off the bar stool. “How many jobs do you have, Ms. Jordan?”
“Make it Angela and I’ll make it Jack. Deal?”
“Deal.”
“And it’s two jobs. Fulltime at Best Buy, and weekends here. I’m a single, working parent.”
“How many kids?”
“Two. Both girls. One in second grade, another in sixth. Where would you like to sit? The upstairs dining room doesn’t open till six, but you can eat out here in the bar, by the fire, if you like, or.. ”
“Out where I can have a river view.”
“Fine.”
And I followed her through the dining room proper, past prints of riverboats and your occasional cigar store Indian, out onto a sort of sun porch, a glassed-in greenhouse-like area with plenty of plants and more rustic knicknacks.
I sat down and said, “Why don’t you join me for a few minutes? Nobody’s here yet.”
She smiled, glanced behind her. “I shouldn’t.”
“Have a seat. After all, the boss is dead.”
She tipped her head, viewed me through narrowed eyes. “How do you know that?”
“I read the papers. Sit down, please.”
“That wasn’t a very nice thing to say.”
“If the fella was a friend of yours, I apologize. I was just trying to get your attention.”
She smirked wryly. “Well, you got it.” And she sat across from me, on the edge of her chair, ready to get up at a moment’s notice, casting an occasional eye through the dining room into the bar area, watching for customers. A few wait- resses, in black skirts and white blouses, were milling around.
“Really, that was a thoughtless thing to say,” I said, and shook my head.
“That’s okay.” She leaned forward. “He was a sonof-a-bitch, anyway.”
I smiled. “Really?”
She raised a hand and squeezed the air, palm up. “Handsy. You know.”
“That’s illegal. Sexual harassment.”
“Tell me about it.”
“How’s your other boss in that department?”
“Lonny? He’s very sweet to me. We’re just friends.”
“You say that like maybe he wishes you were more.”
“Well…” She smiled a little, a modest smile, showing just a touch of dazzling white. “Maybe he does. Frankly, I got both these jobs because of who I am.”
“Who are you?”
“Maybe I should say who I was. This is embarrassing. I hardly know you.”
“I’m the guy who bought a car from you today.”
“And don’t think I don’t appreciate it. The commission will help pay Jenny’s orthodontics bill. Her father sure won’t.”
“No alimony? No child support?”
“He’s way behind. The courts are slow. What can I say? But I have him to thank for my two jobs, in a way. That’s what I started to say. Lonny Best is a good friend of Bob’s, my husband, ex-husband. I think he… Lonny always… well, a woman knows.”
“When one of her husband’s friends has the hots for her, you mean.”
She laughed shortly and shook her head. “Do you always say exactly what’s on your mind?”
“No. The world isn’t ready for that just yet.”
Her smile turned arch. “Is that right?”
“That’s right. So Lonny Best feels sorry for the sorry financial condition his pal Bob has put you in.”
“Something like that. We have something else in common, too.” She glanced out at the bar; no customers yet.
“What’s that?”
“Well… boy, this is a little much to get into. Why do you want to know this?”
“I like you.”
Wry little smirk. “Oh, yeah?”
“I bought a car from you, didn’t I?”
“You’re milkin’ that for all it’s worth, aren’t you?”
“Wringing it dry. But I like to get to know a woman, if I’m attracted to her.”
“You seem to say most of what’s on your mind.”
“What else do you and Lonny Best have in common? It’s not stamp collecting.”
“It’s not stamp collecting,” she admitted. “Lonny and Bob and I met… this sounds stupid. At a political rally.”
“A political rally.”
“Yes, I was there because this actor from a soap opera… this sounds really stupid… this actor was speaking. On behalf of the candidate. I just wanted to see this actor, get his autograph. I didn’t care two cents about politics either way.”
“When was this?”
“Roughly ten years ago. Anyway, I met Bob and was, well, attracted to him right off the bat; thought he was real interesting. He was kind of a… well, a man’s man. He’d been to Vietnam, he was in something called Air America, too.”
A mercenary.
“He didn’t look all that rugged, but he had a way about him. He seemed… dangerous. He was working for Victor Werner, on his ‘personal staff,’ at the time. What that amounted to was, well, he was a bodyguard. Carried a gun. I found that exciting. It sounds stupid, and immature, but I’m older and wiser now.”
“What was he doing at this political rally? And don’t tell me he was there to get the soap opera star’s autograph, too.”
“He’d been hired as security, another bodyguard stint really, but was told to blend in with the crowd. Only he ended up getting caught up in it, too.”
“Caught up in it?”
She nodded, sighed, smiled sadly. “Preston Freed. He put both Bob and me under his spell. Bob’s still under it. That’s the problem.”
“Preston Freed,” I said, reflectively. “He’s supposed to be a lunatic-fringe right-winger, isn’t he?”
“He most certainly is,” she said, and now her smile was tinged with self-disgust. “But you’re talking to a real sucker for a persuasive line-or at least somebody who used to be a sucker for that kind of thing. I used to be a ‘born-again’ Christian-got saved over the TV when I was still in high school. I was into that heavy, which is how I met my first husband-a wimp and a weasel who ran off with a born-again bitch-and…” She shook her head again, not smiling. “Never again. Never again.”
“Never again what?”
“Will I fall for some guy just because we belong to the same goddamn club. That’s what these things are, you know.”
“These things?”
“Ah, born-again anything. Preston Freed, his Democratic Action party, it’s a club. No-it’s a cult. Freed is a great speaker… hypnotic. He’s got these light blue eyes, this terrific smile.”
She said this smiling her own terrific smile. She could, under different circumstances, a lifetime or two ago, have made me join her cult, no questions asked.
“But Freed hasn’t appeared in public much,” I said.
“Not in recent years,” she said. She laughed humorlessly. “He thinks the Russians want to kill him, and the Mafia… I think he’s as self-deluded as his followers.”
“If he’s such a recluse, how does he control these followers?”
“Well, he goes on retreats with party members and staffers and such. And he’s got that weekly cable TV show.”
“TV show? I don’t know anything about that.”
“Oh, sure-it’s a weekly half-hour show that he buys time for on all these cable channels. It’s a ‘news’ show-only it’s his version of the news-like pointing out which members of the President’s cabinet are Soviet agents. He sells ‘subscriptions’ to his monthly magazine, Freedom News, and memberships to the party.”
“Expensive?”
“The subscriptions are five hundred dollars a year. Party memberships are a thousand.”
“Jesus. And people send in money?”
“Every day. I used to work for him; part of his secretarial staff at first, then helped produce the TV show. I was privy to this stuff-saw the envelopes with the cash.”
“He’s pocketing it?”
“Oh, sure, but he does plow a lot of it back into his campaign. He means it when he says he wants to be president. It’s just… well.. look, I’ve said enough. We’ve got way off the track here.”
“No, I find this interesting. What soured you on Freed?”
Matter-of-fact facial shrug. “He’s a hypocrite. He preaches against drugs, but he has a cocaine habit that puts Hollywood to shame. He rants and raves about the ‘permissive society’ and then sleeps with every female follower he can lay his paws on. And that’s plenty of ’em.”
I looked at her hard. “He tried to lay paws on you, too.”
“Yes, he did. And I don’t mean he was just ‘handsy,’ either. It was… much more serious than that. And when I told Bob…” She swallowed, shook her head. “This… this is too personal.”
“Bob didn’t care.”
Eyebrow shrug. “Bob didn’t believe me. I walked out. On Bob, and on that fucker Freed.” She stared at the tablecloth.
“Where does Lonny Best fit in?”
“He was a loyal Freed supporter, too, once upon a time. But he got disgusted about a year ago and dropped out. Freed’s excesses, personal and political, finally got to Lonny.”
“So he sympathized with your situation and gave you a job.”
She nodded. “That about sums it up, I guess.”
“Is the same true of Werner?”
“Pretty much. He stopped by Best Buy one day-just a few months ago-to talk to Lonny about something. Then he came out on the lot and talked to me, asked how I was doing. I said making ends meet, and he asked me if I was interested in moonlighting here, on the weekends. I said sure.”
“Nice of him.”
“He had his hand on my hip when he asked, so I knew what I might be up against. But he wasn’t around here much. Actually, tonight was his night. Saturday night, I mean. He and his wife would have dinner. Even with her along, though, he’d manage to cop a feel.”
“At least you don’t have to put up with that anymore.”
“Hey. Please. I didn’t wish the guy dead.”
“Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean you have to start thinking nice thoughts about him.”
“Yeah,” she said, indignantly. “What do I have to feel guilty about? I didn’t kill him.”
“Me either,” I said, and smiled.
That made her laugh.
“You’re a character. Whoops, I finally got customers.”
“How late do you work tonight?”
She stood. “We serve till ten.”
“Can I stop by for you?”
“I have my own car.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Excuse me,” she said, and went and tended to her customers.
A waitress came by and I ordered the barbecued ribs.
I was just finishing up when Angela stopped by the table and dropped a cocktail napkin before me.
“See you at ten,” she’d written.
It was just a little after five now. That should give me time to do what I needed to do.