Suicide Squeeze

1 Conner Samson bounced a check for a dollar draft in Salty's Saloon and decided it was time to get serious about looking for work. Sid, the eternally bald and surly bartender, set the draft beer at Conner's elbow and handed him the phone from behind the bar. Sid took Conner's check and frowned at it before crumpling it into a tight wad and tossing it over his shoulder. He wiped the length of the bar with an old rag, muttering in his amiable cranky way. "Thanks, Sid." "Yeah, yeah." Conner looked up again at the TV hanging over the bar to see if the nightmare were true. Maybe the whole thing had been a bad hallucination. The score: Atlanta 6, St. Louis 7, and Chip Carey telling everyone about the outfielder's error, which had cost Conner five hundred bucks. Hell. Salty's saloon was old and dark and filled with quiet regulars who wanted to watch sports, nurse drinks, and be left alone. Conner's kind of place. Salty's had been through a few transformations, a disco, a Chinese takeout place, a pool hall. A wooden cricket bat still hung on the wall from the brief period Salty's had masqueraded as an English pub. Conner liked the current incarnation. Neon beer signs, a jukebox nobody played, a TV with a ball game always on, and cheap suds. And Sid. A crusty, retired Marine, but a good guy who knew the names and life stories of all his regulars. Sid glanced at the television, shook his head. "You got the worst luck of anybody I've ever known." He was still shaking his head as he stacked clean glasses behind the bar. Conner drank his beer and looked at the phone. He didn't want to make the calls yet, so he stalled, paged through the Wall Street Journal. DesertTech was up three points. A friend of a pal of a guy somebody knew had suggested the stock a week ago. Conner kept tabs. The stock was going up and up. That would have been great, except Conner hadn't bought any. He'd been trying to put some bets together, get a stake so he could buy a hundred shares. Then the stupid fucking Atlanta Braves . . . "I guess you ain't a millionaire yet," Sid said. "Would I be in this dump if I were a millionaire?" "Yeah, I sorta think you would," Sid said. "My sister owns an alpaca farm in California. Says it's the latest thing." "No animals." "They always need guys on the offshore oil rigs." "I want my money to work for me. Not the other way around." "Yeah, but it takes money to make money." "That's clever," Conner said. "I'm going write that down." "Oh, blow it out your ass." Conner couldn't stall anymore. He dialed Harvey Sterling at Sterling's Bail Bonds. Harvey sometimes paid well whenever he sent one of his guys to chase down a skip. Conner didn't consider himself a tough guy or anything like that, but he was tall and had some shoulders, and sometimes just the sight of a big guy standing there would keep somebody from running or putting up a fight. Harvey didn't have any work for him. Conner left his number in case anything changed. Next, Conner dialed Ed Odeski at Gulf Coast Collections. He really didn't want to, but repossessing cars for Odeski was usually worth a couple of bucks. Last time, Conner had to hot-wire a Jaguar. The delinquent owner had caught him in the middle of the job. He hit Conner, and it hurt a lot. Conner hit him back a few times, but it didn't seem to bother the guy. They went on like thGischler, Victor is the author of 'Suicide Squeeze', published 2005 under ISBN 9780385337250 and ISBN 0385337256.