Free Bitter Truth by William Lashner

seriously whether Caroline Shaw might have been right about her sister’s death and it wasn’t just that McDeiss had doubts that got me to wondering. There was money at stake here, huge pots of money, enough to twist the soul of anyone who got too close. Money has its own gravitational pull, stronger than anything Newton imagined, and what it drew, along with fast cars and slim-hipped women, was the worst of anyone who fell within its orbit. Just the amount of money involved was enough to get me thinking, and what I was thinking, suddenly, was of Caroline Shaw and that manipulative little smile of hers. And there was something else too, something that cut its way through the heat of the Kung Pao and slid into the lower depths of my consciousness. Just at that moment I couldn’t shake the strange suspicion that somehow a part of all that Reddman money could rightfully belong to me.
    McDeiss had told me I should talk to the boyfriend, this Grimes fellow, and so I would. I could picture him now, handsome, suave, a fortune-hunting rogue in the grandest tradition, who had plucked Jacqueline out of a crowd and was ready to grab his piece of her inheritance. He must be a bitter boy, this Grimes, bitter at the chance for wealth that had been snatched right out of his pocket. I liked the bitter boys, I knew what made them tick, admired their drive, their passions. I had been a bitter boy once myself, before my own calamitous failures transformed my bitterness into something weaker and more pathetic, into deep-seated cynicism and a desperate desire to flee. But though I was no longer bitter, I still knew its language and could still play the part. I figured I’d have no trouble getting Grimes to spill his guts to me, bitter boy to bitter boy.

8

    I SAT DOWN AT the bar of the Irish Pub with a weary sigh and ordered a beer. As the bartender drew a pint from the keg I reached into my wallet and dropped two twenties onto the bar. I drank the beer while the bartender was still at the register making my change, drank it like I was suffering a profound thirst. I slapped the glass onto the bar and waved to the bartender for another. Generally I didn’t drink much anymore because of my drinking problem. The problem was that when I drank too much I threw up. But that night I had already spent hours searching and asking questions and looking here and there, and now that I had found what I was looking for I was determined to do some drinking.
    “You ever feel like the whole world is fixed against you?” I said to the bartender when he brought my second beer.
    It was a busy night at the Irish Pub and the bartender didn’t have time to listen. He gave a little laugh and moved on.
    “You don’t need to tell me,” said the fellow sitting next to me, the remnants of a scotch in his hand.
    “Every time I get close,” I said, “the bastards yank it away like it was one of those joke dollar bills tied to a string.”
    “You don’t need to tell me,” said the man. With a quick tilt of his wrist he drank the last of his scotch.
    The Irish Pub was a young bar, women dressed in jeans and high heels, men in Polo shirts, boys and girls together, meeting one another, shouting lies in each other’s ears. On weekends there was a line outside, but this wasn’t a weekend and I wasn’t there to find a date and neither, I could tell, was the man next to me. He was tall and dark, in a gaudily bright short-sleeve shirt and tan pants. His features were all of movie-star strength and quality, his nose was straight and thin, his chin jutting, his eyes deep and black, but the package went together with a peculiar weakness. He should have been the handsomest man in the world, but he wasn’t. And the bartender refilled his glass without even asking.
    “What’s your line?” I asked, while still looking straight ahead, the way strangers at a bar talk to one another.
    “I’m a dentist,” he said.
    I turned my head, looked him up and down, and turned it