Chapter 8

The Rusty Gate was a terrible name for a bar.

It had just enough of that deliberately offbeat tone to make you think they were going for the fake

English pub effect.

But when you open the door, it was a plain old vanilla dive bar.

Ted and I had selected it because it was far enough from one police plaza to not be full

of off-duty cops, but close enough to one police plaza that there wasn't a problem for a cop to be in

there. In fact, I got the feeling it wouldn't have been a problem for anybody at all to be in there

from Adolf Hitler to the road company of guys and dolls. They could use the business.

This was a bit of a problem.

If you actually wanted to have a conversation with someone that you didn't necessarily want the entire world to know about,

there was such a thing as having too much privacy.

There were only three other guys in the rusty gate, one sitting quietly at the bar who looked like he came with the place,

two others playing darts near the back.

This meant the waitress was bored and looking for conversation, and the owner was keen to

have her be as friendly as possible in order to encourage repeat business, which left Ted

and I feeling obligated to discuss the weather, and sports, and local government, and a wide

range of other subjects in which I was passionately disinterested at the moment.

Somewhere after the arrival of beer number three, things finally quieted down.

The girl decided to pay a little attention to the darts game,

the owner remembered he had glasses to wash,

and Ted and I were able to have the conversation we meant to have in the first place.

...