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Praise for Message In A Bullet
Excerpt from Message In A Bullet
Bucks is a bar tucked away on the corner of Seventy-Third and Warner. Not such a bad area of town if you don’t care about where you find yourself after dark. Tattoo joint on one side, a Korean kid who looks about thirteen with a design fetish for dragons and motorcycles and the yin-yang thing. On the other side is a store about ten feet wide by fifty feet long called The Bodega, owned by a guy from Newark named Rocky. He’s four-foot nothing, shaped like a fire hydrant under a porkpie hat. Rocky will talk your ears off, but he sells those little sausage and cheese nibs you can’t find anywhere else. Phil is crazy for them, so sometimes it’s worth the risk of losing an ear, popping in right before Rocky gets out the hook, pulls down the bars and closes up for the night.
Next to The Bodega is Sandwich Heaven, which makes the worst Philly cheesesteak this side of everywhere, including heaven. Sliced tire tread drowning in melted basketball shoe leather, and the bread is usually gummy and wet like it’s nervous about the meat.
Down the street is a strip club. Prancers. I’ve been inside the place once, years ago, looking for a witness and expecting to find reindeer onstage doing the cancan. I found neither.
Bucks is nothing fancy. A long bar that curves in front of a smoky-mirrored wall that gives the pyramid of bottles some illusory depth. Some round tables, every one of them with at least one short leg. A jukebox in the corner that has never worked. Two dart boards. Three booths in the back near a short greenish hallway to the bathrooms. The place is dark and quiet most nights. There’s a television up in the corner, but it’s never more than a light show. Bucks couldn’t care less about the big game. It isn’t a sports bar. It’s a place to buy a drink and think things over. Remember.
I knew Buck way back. My first time I asked him about the name. Bucks. He asked if I was regular police or the grammar police. Wasn’t about him, he said. It was all about the money. He’d pointed to the ceiling, which was papered with bills. Not monopoly bills. Real bills, all signed with a red Sharpie. Mostly American singles, but you can make your way around the world if you really care to. Buck said he’d charge me extra for an apostrophe if I wanted one. Otherwise, five drinks would get one of my dollars on the ceiling.
I’ve got more of my money above this bar than in my retirement account. My savings plan started when Bucks ran out of ceiling.
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