Callahan's Place 07 - Callahan's Legacy (v5.0) (5 page)

He was staring at the cigar box, sitting there unattended at the end of the bar, singles spilling over its sides.
 
“What keeps anyone from filching a fistful of those on their way out?” he asked.

I shrugged again.
 
“Honesty?
 
Integrity?
 
Self respect?
 
Enlightened self-interest?”

He grinned delightedly.
 
His grin was almost manic, his gaze intense.
 
“I’m beginning to like this place.
 
You don’t find many bars with a flat rate—much less a Free Lunch of dollar bills.
 
But look here: if I let you break that yard…well, let’s say I’ll have three or four drinks, tops: that leaves me with eighty-eight—and possibly ninety-two—singles to dispose of.”
 
He gestured to his open guitar case.
 
“As you can imagine, I expect to be somewhat arm-weary by the time I’ve emptied this thing.
 
Another ninety-four missiles might just be the straw that broke the camel’s wrist.”

“I see your problem,” I agreed.
 
“After you’ve burned a guitar-case full of hundreds, how much fun can there be in burning singles?”

He smiled.
 
I wish I saw guys in their fifties smile that big more often.
 
“How about this?
 
Why don’t I just give you a hundred, and we’ll call it an advance payment on my tab?”
 
He looked around the room.
 
Don and Ev were holding a crowd with pornographic smoke rings, the Lucky Duck was trouncing Slippery Joe Maser at darts by flipping them over his shoulder, and the cluricaune was dancing a jig upside down on the (new) rafters while Fast Eddie played the C-Note…pardon me, the C-Jam Blues on his beat-up old upright.
 
“I think I’m going to be doing a lot of drinking in here: you people are crazy as a basketball bat.”

“Yeah, we’re weird as a snake’s suspenders, all right,” I agreed.
 
“Welcome to Mary’s Place.
 
I’m Jake Stonebender.”

“Rogers is my name,” he said.

I hesitated.
 
“Ordinarily I don’t ask a man’s first name if he doesn’t offer it to me…but in your case I think I’m going to make an exception.
 
No offense, but I just don’t think I can call you ‘Mister Rogers’ with a straight face for any length of time.”

He sighed.
 
“I quite understand your problem.
 
But it isn’t going to get any better when I give you my first name.”

“Try me.”
 
I made up my mind not to laugh, whatever he said next.

“My parents, for reasons which have always seemed to me inadequate, elected to name me for my Uncle Buckingham.”

I managed to keep my face deadpan, with great effort, but a nasal sound like an snore played backwards soon escaped from me despite my best attempts to suppress it.

“No, go ahead,” he said understandingly.
 
“You’ll hurt yourself.”

I gave up and released a large bolus of laughter.
 
He waited it out; I tried my best to keep it short but it just kept coming and coming.

I mean, it was beyond perfect.
 
It would have been a funny name anywhere—but here it had added impact.
 
Buck Rogers had walked into Mary’s Place.
 
Hell, we should have been expecting him!
 
And the first thing he’d done was to start rogering bucks.

I finally got it under control and stuck out my hand.
 
“Buck, I apologize.
 
See, you don’t know it yet, but you were born to find this place.
 
That’s why I couldn’t help laughing.
 
It’s not your name, so much as the
appropriateness
of it.
 
I’ve actually heard much worse names.”

“Name two,” he challenged me.

“Well, I know of a guy in Yaphank named Bang who actually named his daughter Betty.
 
Swear to God.
 
And a friend of mine, a sci-fi movie buff named Ted Leahy, got himself married to a fellow fan, an Asian-American feminist named Susan Hu, and of course they both really idolized George Lucas, so—”

His face was pale.
 
“Oh God, no.
 
Tell me they didn’t—”

“Afraid so,” I said sadly.
 
“Mr. and Mrs. Leahy-Hu named their firstborn son ‘Yoda.’
 
Lad’s about three years old now, and he’s already learned to fight.
 
Dirty.”

Buck shuddered.
 
“You win,” he said.
 
“Betty and Yoda have me beat by a mile.
 
Suddenly I need a drink.
 
So what do you say?
 
Will you let me open up a line of credit with one of these bills?”

I shook my head.
 
“Your money’s no good here.
 
As you seem to feel yourself.
 
I’m having too much fun to charge you for it.
 
Name your poison.”

“You did speak of Irish coffee?”

“We call it ‘God’s Blessing’ here.
 
Sugar in yours?”

“Please.
 
One standard glop.”

I turned, adjusted the settings on The Machine, took a mug from the rack and set it down upright on the conveyor belt.
 
The mug slid away into The Machine, small sounds began, pleasant smells occurred, and in less than a minute the mug emerged at the far end wearing a cap of whipped cream.
 
I placed it before him.

He had watched the entire procedure carefully.
 
“That’s some machine,” he said respectfully.

“The only one in the world,” I agreed, “more’s the pity.
 
Drink up—it ain’t much good cold.
 
Well, not
as
much good.”

He lifted it and took a careful sip.
 
The instant he did his face changed.
 
He had been under some well-controlled strain; now he began for the first time to truly relax, and seemed pleasantly surprised that nothing bad happened when he did.
 
“The coffee is Celebes Kalossi…” he said slowly.

I nodded.
 
“Lately it’s considered more polite to call it ‘Sulawezi,’ though.”

“…but what
is
that
whiskey
?
 
It’s like Bushmill’s Black Bush, only better…”
 
He shook his head.
 
“…only that’s impossible.”

I nodded again.
 
“Ain’t it?
 
They call it ‘Bushmill’s 1608’—in honor of the year Mr. Bushmill started distilling.
 
As I get the story, the progression goes like this: ‘plain’ Bushmill’s is of course ambrosia, the water of life itself; the Black Bush, which they’ve only just started selling outside of Ireland, is that ambrosia mixed with some that’s been in the cask a dozen years.
 
But the1608, presently available only on the Emerald Isle, is
just
the twelve-year-old stuff.
 
Beyond describing, isn’t it?
 
Long-Drink McGonnigle over there smuggled a case back with him from a vacation in An Uaimh, his family’s ancestral home.
 
It just seemed perfect for the occasion somehow.”

He was already three-quarters of the way through, sipping slowly but repeatedly.
 
“Almost a pity,” he said between sips, “to mix it,” sip, “even with coffee,” sip, “even coffee like this.”
 
He was done.
 
He paused to savor the sensations he was experiencing, then smiled broadly, set the mug down and said, “Would your hospitality extend to another, Jake?’

But I had already started it working, the moment I saw his reaction to that first taste; in moments it was ready.
 
I put another mug on the belt for myself, and brought his to him.
 
“Here you go.”

He had gone back to making money airplanes, but he paused again to drink half of his second cup.
 
“Better get back to work,” he said, setting it down.
 
“I’ve got a lot of it ahead of me, and the night is middle-aged.”

“I’d be glad to give you a hand,” I offered.

He thought about it.
 
“Sure.
 
Jump in, Jake.”

So I fetched my own coffee, took a second packet out of the case, busted it open and began my own aeronautical assembly line, on the opposite side of the case from where he was working.
 

It was distinctly pleasant work, I soon found.
 
There is something fundamentally satisfying about folding a hundred dollar bill into a paper airplane and then sailing it gracefully into a large fire.
 
(I no longer doubted the bills’ authenticity in the slightest; they
felt
and
smelled
like real money.)
 
I wondered why I’d never tried it before.
 
I had the wild thought that perhaps I had stumbled onto a great secret, that maybe this was why some people bothered to become rich; I’d always wondered about that.
 
If you had more money than you could possibly spend, why then you could do this whenever you felt like it.

“I was wishing I could ask you why you were doing this, Buck,” I said after a few minutes.
 
“But I think I understand now.
 
The pleasure is worth the expense.
 
This is
fun
.”

“That it is,” he agreed dreamily, pausing in his work to sip his Blessing.
 
“The best part, I can’t get over how nobody’s paying the slightest bit of attention to us.
 
I like your customers, Jake.
 
But hey—why
couldn’t
you ask?”

“Because it would’ve been a snoopy question,” I said.
 
“You see that wiry little guy at the piano, Fast Eddie?
 
Anybody asks a snoopy question in here, Eddie has orders to eighty-six ’em—and he ain’t gentle about it.”

“Even you?”

“Even himself.
 
House rule.”

He looked Eddie over, and shrugged.
 
“Man sure plays good.
 
Plays like he’s got three hands.”

“That he does.”

“Well, I’d hate to fight with a three-handed man.
 
Especially one that talented.
 
Why don’t I just take you off the hook and volunteer the information?”

“Up to you,” I said.

“I can put it in three words.
 
Spain and Portugal.”

I frowned.
 
“Spain and—?”

“Didn’t you ever wonder about them?
 
Spain and Portugal used to rule the world, you know.
 
The whole damn planet: the Pope drew a line on a map of it one day, and gave half to Spain and the other half to Portugal.”

“Sure,” I agreed.
 
“That’s why they speak Portuguese in Brazil.”

“And what the hell happened?
 
Third-rate powers at best, today, both of ’em.
 
The two of them together couldn’t take France in a fair fight, and just about
anybody
can take France.
 
How could they fall so far so fast—did you ever wonder?”

“I dunno; I guess like Rome before them and England after them.”

He shook his head vigorously.
 
“Totally different thing.
 
What destroyed Spain and Portugal was treasure—the shipload after shipload of gold they took from the New World.
 
They really did, you know, and not all of it ended up on the ocean floor.
 
They thought they were in hog heaven; the poor saps must have thought they were importing wealth by the ton.”

I must have looked puzzled.
 
“Weren’t they?”

“
No
.
 
They were importing
money
.
 
Gold is not wealth.
 
Potatoes is wealth.
 
Corn is wealth.
 
Potable water is wealth.
 
Gold is just money.”

I began to get it.
 
“Oh, my—”

“Right.
 
All of a sudden there was much too much money around, and very little more real wealth than there’d been the day before.
 
Too much money chasing a fixed amount of goods.
 
Their currency inflated; their prices rose; their balance of trade went all to hell; and finally their economies collapsed, so totally that centuries later they’re still trying to dig out from under the rubble.
 
The only real wealth to be had in the New World was real estate—but what little wasn’t taken away from them, they had to let go at fire-sale prices.”

“Wow.”
 
It was an ironic notion.
 
Death by money.

“That’s why I’m doing this,” he said, launching another bill toward the fire.
 
“Our own economy’s in the toilet for much the same reasons: we’ve got too many dollars chasing too few potatoes.”

“And a vice-president who can’t spell either one,” I couldn’t resist adding.
 
(This was in 1988.)
 
“So you mean you’re—”

“—doing my civic duty as I see it.
 
If you’ll forgive a dreadful pun, the bucks stop here.
 
The damned stupid government is trying to cure the deficit by printing money: I’m opposing them.
 
I’m tightening the money supply, one tiny notch.
 
For the same reason you mentioned why your customers don’t swipe singles out of that box down there: enlightened self-interest.
 
I figure it’s better to be broke in a healthy economy than rich in a dying one.”