Read Death in North Beach for Free Online Page B

eight-ball.
    The North Beach he and Carly saw at noon wasn’t the same as North Beach at night. Bars and restaurants, closed during the day, were open and busy. Neon glowing in the darkness gave the whole area a sense of mystery and adventure.
    While the old, respected and authentic bars on Columbus – Tosca, Specs and Vesuvio – offered both locals and tourists pleasant spaces for friends to meet and talk, much of the action was on the oldest street in the city, Grant Avenue. Grant, which began near the upscale shopping district of Union Square, turned into the main tourist street of Chinatown, and eventually, as it crossed Broadway and Columbus, into the real heartbeat of the Italian village.
    And it was in an alley off Grant that Alighieri’s was inconspicuously located. The sign was small and blue. People who didn’t know it was there would likely not find it. The result was that this was a special crowd, generally people who knew each other, and their guests. Being there meant, in a way, you had been vetted as a genuine San Franciscan, if not a genuine San Francisco character.
    Inside, Alighieri’s was a long, narrow room, with a long bar. There was enough space for a row of booths to line the wall opposite the bar. Conspicuously missing was a pool table and jukebox. Tony Vale’s mellow voice rose slightly above the chatter.
    The bar was half full. Customers there had come solo. The evidence was that a stool or two separated the half dozen men at the bar. Maybe half the booths were occupied as well, with couples or threesomes. The low-backed stools were upholstered in black leather, the same leather that covered the seats in the booths. The tabletops were shiny black. The one he could see clearly was cracked. Halfway down the bar room, there was a break in the pattern of booths and a large poster hung on the wall. It was a large, old, framed illustration of a red devil and a bottle of booze. Lang could make out the words ‘ Anis Infernal ’.
    The room was dark, the conversation low. From what Lang could see, the customers, mostly men, were middle-aged or older. They wore dark clothes, sported either beards or long hair or both. It was pretty clear none of them had day jobs in the financial district.
    Lang looked around for someone who would fit the description of a Filipino artist and poet. No one. He looked at his watch. Nine. Lang found a stool that wouldn’t disturb the protocol of keeping at least a stool away from the next guy and sat.
    â€˜Peroni,’ Lang said, when the bartender came up. Seemed fitting to order an Italian beer. The bartender took no note. His look was neither welcoming nor discouraging.
    â€˜How’s Mr Alighieri?’ Lang asked when the beer arrived.
    â€˜Dead,’ the bartender said.
    â€˜Sorry to hear that,’ Lang said.
    â€˜About seven hundred years.’
    â€˜Has it been that long?’ Lang asked. ‘Time goes by so quickly.’ He’d hoped he could get beyond the bartender’s complete indifference, tap into a sense of humor. Not even a smile. That would make questions later a little more difficult.
    Behind the bar was a wall of liquor bottles, the shelves interrupted in the middle by another large poster, this one showing a lithe and sly-looking green devil holding a bottle of spirits.
    We’ve got a theme here, Lang thought. Drink and go to hell. Or, as he thought more about it, maybe they serve drinks in hell. He liked the idea.
    Sumaoang appeared in that sudden way that Lang’s cat Buddha appeared – one second nowhere to be seen, the next right beside him.
    He was a slender man, short, fit, looking to be fifty maybe, though probably older. Jeans, a worn silk sport jacket over a dark shirt. Big eyes, soul patch just below his lower lip. A smile on his face.
    â€˜Noah?’
    â€˜Yeah. You picked me right out.’
    â€˜I know everybody else,’ he said, slipping on to the stool beside