Velocity

asked.
    “Probably not, but who knows.”
    “Maybe you should fire him.”
    Jackie raised his eyebrows. “And then he turns out to be one of those guys you see on TV news? He comes in here with an ax?”
    “Anyway,” Billy said, “it doesn’t sound right. You don’t really believe it yourself.”
    “Yeah, I do. Celia goes to Mass three mornings a week.”
    “Jackie, you joke around with Steve. You’re relaxed with him.”
    “I’m always a little watchful.”
    “I never noticed it.”
    “Well, I am. But I don’t want to be unfair to him.”
    “Unfair?”
    “He’s a good bartender, does his job.” A shamefaced expression overcame Jackie O’Hara. His plump cheeks reddened. “I shouldn’t have been talking about him like this. It was just all those cherry stems. That ticked me off a little.”
    “Twenty cherries,” Billy said. “What can they cost?”
    “It’s not about the money. It’s that trick with his tongue—it’s semi-obscene.”
    “I never heard anyone complain about it. A lot of the women customers particularly like to watch him do it.”
    “And the gays,” Jackie said. “I don’t want this being a singles bar, either gay or straight. I want this to be a family bar.”
    “Is there such a thing as a family bar?”
    “Absolutely.” Jackie looked hurt. In spite of its generic name, the tavern wasn’t a dive. “We offer kid portions of French fries and onion rings, don’t we?”
    Before Billy could reply, the first customer of the day came through the door. It was 11:04. The guy wanted brunch: a Bloody Mary with a celery stick.
    Jackie and Billy tended bar together through the lunchtime traffic, and Jackie served food to the tables as Ben plated it from the grill.
    They were busier than usual because Tuesday was chili day, but they still didn’t need a first-shift waitress. A third of the customers had lunch in a glass, and another third were satisfied with peanuts or with sausages from the brine jar on the bar, or with free pretzels.
    Mixing drinks and pouring beers, Billy Wiles was troubled by a persistent image in his mind’s eye: Steve Zillis chopping a mannequin to pieces, chopping, chopping.
    As his shift wore on, and as no one brought word of a gunshot schoolteacher or a bludgeoned elderly philanthropist, Billy’s nerves quieted. In sleepy Vineyard Hills, in peaceful Napa Valley, news of a brutal murder would travel fast. The note must have been a prank.
    After a slow afternoon, Ivy Elgin arrived for work at four o’clock, and at her heels thirsty men followed in such a state that they would have wagged their tails if they’d had them.
    “Anything dead today?” Billy asked her, and found himself wincing at the question.
    “A praying mantis on my back porch, right at my doorstep,” Ivy said.
    “What do you think that means?”
    “What prays has died.”
    “I don’t follow.”
    “I’m still trying to figure it.”
    Shirley Trueblood arrived at five o’clock, matronly in a pale-yellow uniform with white lapels and cuffs.
    After her came Ramon Padillo, who sniffed the aroma of chili and grumbled, “Needs a pinch of cumin.”
    When Steve Zillis breezed in at six, smelling of a verbena-scented aftershave and wintermint mouthwash, he said, “How’re they hangin’, Kemosabe?”
    “Did you call me last night?” Billy asked.
    “Who, me? Why would I?”
    “I don’t know. I got a call, a bad connection, but I thought maybe it was you.”
    “Did you call me back?”
    “No. I could hardly hear the voice. I just had a hunch it might be you.”
    Selecting three plump olives from the condiment tray, Steve said, “Anyway, I was out last night with a friend.”
    “You get off work at two o’clock in the morning and then you go out?”
    Steve grinned and winked. “There was a moon, and I’m a dog.” He pronounced it dawg.
    “If I got off at two A.M., I’d be straight to bed.”
    “No offense, pilgrim, but you don’t exactly ring the bell on the zing meter.”
    “What’s that mean?”
    Steve shrugged, then began to juggle the slippery olives with impressive dexterity. “People wonder why a good-lookin’ guy like you lives like an old maid.”
    Surveying the customers, Billy said, “What people?”
    “Lots of people.” Steve caught the first olive in his mouth, the second, the third, and chewed vigorously to applause from the barstool gallery.
    During the last hour of his shift, Billy was markedly more observant of Steve Zillis than usual. Yet he