Free Memory (Hard Case Crime) by Donald E. Westlake

with pockmarked streets and grimy houses and squat black fireplugs. Most of the sidewalks away from downtown were squares of slate, jutting up at crazy angles, pushed up by gnarled tree roots from underneath. Some of the sidewalks looked like something in a carnival Fun House, but without the bright paint they would have worn in the carnival.
    Cole walked along, wondering how girls could roller skate in this place. He was going nowhere in particular, just walking, having forgotten the emotion that had sent him out here in the first place. He looked at the old cars parked by the high curbs, and the house porches bunched together in rows, and the dirty-looking trees that partially shielded all the streetlights, and he walked up and down over the uneven sidewalks, and from time to time through a living room window he would see somebody asleep in front of the television set. It was around one o’clock; the television would only be showing blue snow.
    At one corner he looked to his right and saw the dim glow of red neon. He went that way because he’d seen nothing but houses for blocks, and at the next corner there was a bar called Cole’s Tavern. Cole looked at the name on the window, surrounded by the red neon spelling out beer names, and he felt terrified. He clutched his left wrist with his right hand, feeling where the watch had been. Looking at the name of the tavern, he felt such a terrible loneliness and loss that for a minute he was rooted there, unable to move, and the flesh of his face seemed to shrink, drawing his face into a grimace like an Oriental ogre mask.
    He turned away, seeking darkness away from the soft red glare, and behind him a voice called out, “Hey! Paul, hey!”
    He looked over his shoulder, thinking nevertheless it must be some other Paul they meant, though the street was deserted—but he didn’t know anyone here—and then feeling a sudden urge of hope, that by some miracle it was one of the people he knew from New York, for some incomprehensible reason present in Jeffords—and then he saw it was Little Jack Flynn, leaning out from the doorway of the tavern and waving at him.
    “Hey! Come on in.”
    Cole turned all the way around and started back, mumbling something about how late it was. Little Jack Flynn said, “I saw you through the window, why didn’t you come in? Come on in.” When Cole got to the doorway, Little Jack clapped him on the shoulder. “Have a beer, Paul. Come on.”
    Little Jack Flynn was the smallest man on the crew, with a hard and wiry body, and a cheerful ugly face. His forehead was low, his ears large, and his black hair a thick unruly mess. He told dirty jokes constantly during work, and kept up a perpetual mock battle with Black Jack Flynn, his homonym, the crew’s biggest man. They would spar together during break, Little Jack ducking and weaving and jabbing and calling out bloodthirsty threats while Black Jack shuffled like a bear, grinning and holding him off with big hands.
    Cole allowed Little Jack to bring him into the tavern, and he immediately recognized, among the half dozen or so faces at the bar, two other members of the crew, Buddy and Ralph, neither of whose last names he knew or could remember. Little Jack was shouting, “Look who’s here!” and Buddy and Ralph were smiling at him in a friendly way, and he found himself smiling back.
    The tavern was a large square room, with the bar across the rear wall. There were dim leatherette-and-formica booths on the left wall, and the other walls were lined by machinery; a shuffleboard along the front, below the window, and to the right a bowling machine, a cigarette machine, and a jukebox. Practically all of the light in the room seemed to come from these bright machines, and the mechanical beer and liquor signs on the backbar.
    “Another round!” called Little Jack, and Cole found himself pressed against the bar, Little Jack on his left, Buddy and Ralph on his right. The bartender was a huge bullnecked