Chapter Seven
Even though McGoo and I spent a lot of time together, we weren’t sick of each other’s company—not yet. Traditionally, or some might say habitually, we met for a beer or two after work. As a private investigator, I’ve got no time clock to punch, and as a beat cop McGoo worked odd shifts. The Goblin Tavern stayed open twenty-four hours and was a ready watering hole whenever we wanted to kick back and talk. Neither of us had anyplace better to go.
The Tavern wasn’t an upscale establishment, but rather a comfortable spot where you could just be yourself, whether natural or unnatural. It had a gleaming wooden bar polished by customer elbows, a selection of multicolored high-end and low-end liquors, potions, and other concoctions made to serve all types of patrons.
I went in early so I’d have time to get ready for the humanitarian awards banquet later in the evening. After having a rough day of his own, McGoo was already on his usual stool, which he claimed was upwind of me, even though I gave off no whiff of decay. “Shamble, you look like death warmed over.”
“I take that as a compliment.” I took my usual stool beside him. “And you look as sour as always.”
We would have had the same banter even if I wasn’t undead. McGoo and I had been friends since college, and it was a mark of his character that he still treated me basically the same, dead or alive.
I called to the bartender. “Hey Francine, how about a beer here?” She was busy at the far end of the bar refilling a large jar with pickled eyeballs.
Even though I’m a zombie, I drink to keep up appearances, to give me a sense of normalcy. I like the feel of a cold beer in my hand, the suds in my mouth, the cool taste going down, although I no longer get a buzz regardless of how much I consumed. Some zombies suffered adverse reactions when alcohol interacted with certain embalming fluid formulas. They complained of headaches, or their skin turned odd shades of green or gray. Fortunately, I didn’t suffer from allergies; I just didn’t feel the pleasant effects anymore.
I looked past the bar to the back office, which was dark, the door closed. “Has there been an Ilgar sighting tonight?”
“I haven’t seen Ilgar in two weeks,” McGoo said. “After he sold the Tavern, he couldn’t get out of this place fast enough.”
Ilgar, the original goblin owner, was an unlikely candidate to own a bar, since he didn’t like customers, and a successful business generally requires customers. Ilgar used to sit in the back office with his adding machine, running the accounts, ordering blood and liquor supplies, working crossword puzzles—Hell, I didn’t know what he did in there all the time. He rarely came out to chat up his patrons behind the bar—a good thing, since Ilgar was a dreary fellow who complained about the business at every opportunity. It was an open secret that he’d been trying to find a buyer for the Goblin Tavern for years, though he pursued the sale only half-heartedly, as he did most things. Recently, however, an amazingly sweet deal had fallen into his lap.
In all my years in the Quarter, I had never seen Ilgar with so much as a faint smile, but on the day he announced the sale of the business he was grinning so widely that his rubbery face stretched back to expose rows of pointed teeth. “Drinks are on the house—for a period of five minutes only. I am retiring and glad to get rid of this albatross around my neck.”
The fifteen customers in the Goblin Tavern had applauded politely, some with more enthusiasm than others. Ilgar thought we were congratulating him; most, though, were happy at the prospect of a less-dreary owner. And everyone was glad for the free drinks.
“Some big corporation called the Smile Syndicate bought the Tavern. They plan to make it a destination place in the Quarter, a regular stop for tour buses. They might even turn it into a nationwide chain. There may be Goblin Taverns everywhere.” Ilgar managed to squash his own joy. “And good riddance to all of it!”
He had gone back into his office and begun clacking on the adding machine keys. Exactly five minutes from the time he’d announced the free drinks, he came out and cut them off.
Now that we’d talked with Max the necromancer that afternoon, I realized that the Smile Syndicate’s acquisition of the Goblin Tavern was perfectly in line with their chain of Kreepsakes gift shops: expanding their presence in the Quarter, mainstreaming the monster business. Robin probably saw it as celebrating monster diversity, but something about it didn’t sit well with me.
Francine still had her back to me, head bowed as if she were staring at the pickled eyeballs that looked back up at her. “Don’t forget about my beer, Francine,” I called and turned back to McGoo. “I can only stay for one tonight. I have to get freshened up for a big charity banquet Robin and I are attending.”
“Freshened up?” McGoo said with a sniff. “You need a lot of freshening.”
“Ha ha.”
“What’s the big occasion?”
“Awards dinner for the Monster Legal Defense Workers. Mrs. Saldana thinks we might find benefactors for those golems we just freed. Irwyn Goodfellow himself is going to be there.”
I looked up, furrowing my brow. Francine was usually more attentive than this, and the Tavern wasn’t even busy. She was the best and most longstanding bartender the Goblin Tavern had ever had—a hard-bitten human in her late fifties, though chain smoking and a couple of divorces had added at least ten years to her appearance. She was well liked among the regulars. She chatted with unnaturals, listened to their problems, sympathized with their sob stories, and ladled out advice from her personal store of experiences. Since Francine had made enough of her own bad choices, she liked to say, “I made a lot of mistakes, so you don’t have to.”
McGoo had finished half of his beer by the time Francine finally turned to me. She hadn’t been filling the pickled eyeball jar at all—she was crying. “Sorry, Dan. I’ll be with you in a minute.” She wiped her eyes, picked up a mug, and went over to the tap. “The usual?”
I had seen Francine pissed off at unruly customers, and she had no tolerance for rudeness, but I’d never imagined her to be an emotional basket case. “What’s wrong, Francine?”
“Just not having a good day,” she said with a loud sniffle.
McGoo was also concerned. “Francine, we’ve been coming in here for years. When was the last time you had a good day?”
“Not like this. I should have seen it coming.” She handed me my beer, and some of it sloshed onto the coaster. “Got my pink slip today. The new owners are letting me go.”
“What?” I said. “The Tavern won’t be the same without you.”
“Tell that to the Smile Syndicate. They’ve decided that I don’t fit their new company profile, that I’m too old and too human to match their demographic.” She snorted. “They even had the nerve to be cutesy—they called it their ‘demongraphic.’”
I thought of the conglomerate wanting to open similar “fun with monsters” taverns around the country, featuring fake cobwebs, wait staff dressed up as cartoon vampires or werewolves, cheesy items on the menu that made puns on traditional favorites. It would be nauseating.
And one-of-a-kind Francine, with her salty sense of humor and acerbic advice, would never fit in an amusement-park version of the Goblin Tavern.
“New management is advertizing for replacements, and they quite clearly say no humans need apply.” She faced me, placed her hands on her breasts and pushed them up. “I can pad these, if that’s what they want.”
“I don’t think that’s what they want.”
She sniffed again and composed herself as three more regulars plodded in. Francine had a lot of regulars, and once word got around, I doubted any of them would be happy.
“Beer’s on the house tonight for my old friends,” she said to us. “If the new owners don’t like it, I’ve got a few unnatural suggestions for them.”
After that, McGoo and I had little to say to each other, both disturbed by the news. The beer was free, and my taste buds were generally deadened, but even so it tasted bitter.