Page 41 of A Week Away

“Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid.”

“Don’t ask stupid questions.”

We sat there quietly for a few minutes. Then I asked, “What about your mother’s sisters? Should we talk to them?”

“My Aunt Josette works at an Italian bakery on McNichols.”

I had no idea where that was, but it sounded like it might be far away. I reached into my jeans pocket and took out the slip of paper Suzie had given me with Dickie Potter’s number on it.

“Find a pay phone.”

“You could ask Carla if we could?—”

“We don’t want them to know what we’re doing, do we?”

“But… Okay.”

It took five minutes to find a pay phone at a gas station. Using my calling card, I called the number and spoke to Dickie’s belligerent wife who told me he was, as usual, at The Corktown Social Club, and that if I saw him I should tell him to ‘go fuck himself.’ Then I called 411 and got the address.

The Corktown Social Club was located in an old wooden building sitting on a corner with its name painted on the side in shamrock green. The second floor had some nice windows and looked like there might be an apartment or two up there. Cass parked across the street, and said, “I’m coming in with you.”

“You’re seventeen.”

“I’m not going to order a drink, okay?”

“You think he’ll tell me more or less with you sitting there?”

He struggled with that. I could tell he was trying to find a way to say we’d learn more, but before he could I got out of the car and ran over to the bar.

Inside, the bar was furnished like a VFW hall with banquet-style chairs and tables. The coolers behind the bar were covered in sports stickers. A TV sat on a shelf in the corner up by the ceiling. A ceiling that was painted over pressed-tin, suggesting a more elegant past.

There were about eight men sitting at the bar, only one of them was under sixty. I walked over to the guy. He was in his early forties, bald and thick around the middle. There was a flush in his cheeks that suggested he spent a lot of time in bars.

“Dickie Potter?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m a friend of Cass Reilly’s.”

“You’re a friend of a kid? What is he now, twelve?”

“Seventeen? He’s asked me to look into his father’s disappearance.”

“So, what? You’re like a private detective for the Hardy boys?”

Rude, but I decided to ignore it. “Yeah, pretty much. Can you tell me about your friendship with Dominick Reilly?”

The bartender came over. I ordered a draft just to be polite and threw a few bucks on the bar. I ordered a refill for Dickie and a shot of whatever he liked. He liked Bushmills.

When he was all set up he said, “Dominick and I went to school together. For most of it. His family moved to Roseville when we were fourteen, fifteen. Somewhere in there. But we kept up, you know. My family moved out that way in nineteen seventy.”

“But you moved back?”

“Kind of. I have a house in Roseville, but I bought one down here a couple years back. Didn’t cost anything. Now I’m fixing it up.”

I couldn’t see how that required sitting in a bar, but I didn’t say anything.

“Are you into cars?” I prompted. “The way Dominick was?”