Cold Rain by Craig Smith

were no lights on, but I went up on the porch and knocked anyway. Getting no answer, I went back to the truck and drove to The Slipper.
    ‘I can’t go in there,’ Walt told me. ‘I just remembered. They eighty-sixed me a couple of weeks ago.’
    ‘What happened?’
    Walt laughed. ‘I have no idea!’
    ‘What does Buddy drive?’
    Walt didn’t know what it was called, but he knew what it looked like and saw it parked on the street as I circled the block. It was an old Mercury Marquis, what Tubs called a rich man’s Ford.
    ‘You okay here?’ I asked.
    Walt freshened up his drink, though the ice was nearly gone. ‘Get some ice while you’re in there, will you?’
    I told him I would.
     
    THE GLASS SLIPPER had been around longer than Cinderella, so long in fact that nobody bothered with the Glass anymore, even though the sign still showed an anatomically enhanced outline of Cinderella slipping her foot into a slipper with the help of a kneeling prince. I was under the impression the place had changed owners a few times over the years, but I was quite sure nothing else had changed, including most of the dancers.
    A girl in a G-string walked across the room while the doorman took a couple of bucks from me. All things considered, the cover seemed a bit steep. Once past the entrance, I checked the room for Denise. She wasn’t there, but I spotted Buddy Elder playing pool a split-second before he noticed me. He held his cue stick up threateningly as I walked toward him.
    I didn’t care for the gesture and grabbed the thing with both hands. I swung him around like a rag-doll, letting him think I wanted to rip it out of his hands.
    When he was moving pretty fast, I simply released my grip. Buddy tripped over a chair and fell back against the wall. His head smacked prettily into the plaster, and he slid down to a seated position. Two men grabbed me from behind. I wrestled free of their hold because they weren’t even in Buddy’s league, and I was just about to get back to Buddy when the doorman stormed into me.
    The doorman outweighed me by a hundred pounds.
    This turned out to be a good thing, because he simply lifted me up and walked me toward the door with my arms pinned at my side. There was no kindness in this, though I had some hope up to the point that he threw me across the sidewalk.
    I had enough presence of mind or beer ingested to roll instead of skid, but it didn’t do me much good, because he came out after me. He didn’t take much of a swing, but his meaty fist got buried in my gut.
    After that he walked me back to the building, where he slammed me face-first into the wall. He patted me down, then swung me around and took a long look at my face. ‘You come back in there again and I’ll really hurt you.’
    I think the fact that he wasn’t even breathing hard bothered me the most. I nodded my head to let him see that I understood. And I did. As soon as I could breathe again, I fully intended to go back to Buddy Elder’s apartment and wait for him to show up there.
    I had done a lot better with Buddy.
    I didn’t get the chance though. I was still working on breathing when three men came outside. I had the impression Buddy was one of them, but I wasn’t sure at first. The Slipper faced a fairly busy street. When they took me away from the building I thought they just might throw me into the traffic. Instead, they took me to the side of the building and back into the shadows. I ended up on the ground without much trouble on their part. The first kick was the worst. It landed just under my ribs and paralyzed me. I heard a voice over me. ‘Look at me.’ I expect he repeated himself a few times before I could actually focus enough to do as he asked. I looked up. I could see nothing but a mass of shadow where his face should be. ‘You come after me again, Dave, and I’m going to have to kill you.’ It was Buddy Elder’s voice, nicely punctuated with a kick in the face. His friends kicked my thighs