Storytelling With Confidence

A Captive Audience, Episode 3.6

Without preamble, I turned and started walking back toward the Nightingale. I was juggling too much confusing information in my mind, and my empty stomach wasn't helping the matter. Inspector Stagger didn't seem to object, but instead fell into step beside me. He didn't feel any compulsive need to make conversation, which I appreciated.

When I reached the entrance to the Nightingale, I paused, with my hand on the doorknob, and took a deep breath. You never really know how jail time will affect your social life. Was I even still welcome in the tavern? Would they serve me, or ask me to leave? Would the other customers avoid me, or pepper me with questions? To make matters worse, I was about to enter with a uniformed inspector accompanying me. While the Nightingale was certainly no wretched hive of scum and villainy, I was sure that many of the other patrons occasionally participated in their own business of varying degrees of legality. Those patrons were probably going to assume that I was cooperating with law enforcement now and treat me with varying degrees of hostility. I bolstered up my courage, opened the door and walked inside.

The bartender looked up from the glassware that he was cleaning, and gave me a half-hearted wave. A few customers looked my way with minimal interest, but then returned to their food, drinks, and hushed conversations. Stagger and I meandered through the midday crowd and sat at an empty table. I looked around the room, but there weren't any suspicious glares directed at me, no savage accusations muttered around me. It seemed that everyone was content to ignore my incarceration and my newfound company. Without even asking in advance, the waitress brought us a couple of cold bacon sandwiches and glasses of warm brown ale.

Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your breakfast order.

For his part, Stagger seemed to enjoy the meal as much as I did, if not more. The bacon was thickly cut and the edges were crusted with crystals of brown sugar. It was lightly underdone, with a firm pink texture but leaving it deliciously greasy. The brown mustard was homemade by the tavern cook each year and contained tiny mustard seeds that often got stuck between the teeth. They stored the mustard in large jars down in the cellars for months on end, where in the musty darkness it developed its strong, spicy flavor, which was guaranteed to clear the sinuses. It was served cold on a sourdough baguette that was never more than a day old, crisp and flaky on the outside while the soft dough inside soaked up the bacon juice and excess mustard. A side dish of crispy pickle spears was placed between our sandwiches, and the fizzy, bitter brown ale washed down the food and ensured that every last one of our taste buds was engaged during the meal.

"Hot damn," said Stagger, after finishing the last dregs of his ale. "I can understand why you missed this place. I might have to make a weekly tradition out of this."

I frowned. It was a weekly tradition for me and Madigan. I motioned for the waitress to come over, and dropped a few coins in her hand to pay for the sandwiches. "Say, was Madigan in here last week for one of these?" I asked her.

"No, hon, he hasn't been around here at all lately," she answered me, with her natural demeanor of professional flirtatiousness. "But then again, where were you last week?" she asked me with a wink.

I winked right back at her. "What matters is that I'm back now, and I'm making up for lost time! Be a darling, bring us another couple of drinks?"

She sauntered off with our glasses to refill them with ale, and I turned back to Stagger. "Madigan wasn't here last week, and I haven't seen him since two weeks before that."
Stagger consulted his ever-present little notebook. "At a party, here at the Nightingale."

"Yes, exactly."

"And you often met here for drinks? But you don't know anything else about Madigan?"