“So you’re telling me you never heard of a guy named Christy Roach? No one by that name’s ever hung out in here before?”

Cairo Mary scratched the tattoo, a hooked dagger dripping bright red blood, on her beefy right forearm. “Never heard of him, Bukowski. Says he hangs out here?”

Bukowski nodded and considered his mug of beer. “The guy’s tryin’ to shake down a client of mine on an insurance fraud; my guess is that Christy Roach — if that’s his real name — is an insurance company insider.”

Cairo Mary wiped the bar top with a checkered blue and white cloth, rubbing small circles into the aged wood. “Your client? You a P.I. now, Bukowski?”

“Just putting a few extra cans of food into the cat.” He chugged the beer in one thirsty swallow and hoisted the empty into Mary’s waiting hands; she moved to the beer tap as the front door of Shanghai Red’s was thrown open and a man stood looming in the entrance, backlit by harsh sunlight, as if waiting for an introduction before proceeding any further. He was six-feet tall, Bukowski noted, ugly as sin with a bad case of acne scarring on his punch-drunk face.

“Well, I’ll be goddamned and go to hell. Get your ass over here!” Cairo Mary bellowed to the man lurking in the doorway. “I never thought this day would happen.”

The man muttered an inaudible response and lurched across the floor, pouring himself onto the empty bar stool next to Bukowski. Cairo Mary reached for a bottle of red wine. “Bukowski,” she said, “I want you to meet Charles Bukowski. We call him Hank.”

Hank Bukowski turned his head slowly and with great effort, as if his neck had been sprained, and focused his bleary eyes on Bukowski. “No shit?”

“No shit. And no relation too, I’m sure.” Bukowski sipped his beer and stared a hole into Mary’s tattoo.

“Bukowski here is a writer and a poet too, Hank,” Cairo Mary eagerly offered as she began polishing wine glasses.

“Isn’t everyone?” Hank muttered. “What’ve you written, kid? Anything I would know?”

Bukowski swallowed his Pabst and beckoned Mary for a refill. “Mostly small press stuff. Poetry, a few novels.”

“Just like you, Hank,” Mary chirped. “Tell Hank the name of your first book, Bukowski.” 

“Mail Room.”

“No shit?”

“Wouldn’t lie about that. And I followed that up with another book for Black Bird Press –”

“Wait a minute,” Hank interjected drunkenly, precariously swaying on his stool. “You mean to tell me that you wrote a book about your mail room experiences for an outfit called Black Bird Press?”

Cairo Mary leaped forward like an anxious game show contestant with the winning answer. “And Hank here wrote a book called Post Office for Black Sparrow Press. Isn’t that so fucking bizarre? Tell him about your second book, Bukowski.”

Bukowski shrugged his shoulders. “It was just about growing up here in L.A. It was called Liverwurst on Pumpernickel. No one can seem to get what the title means.”

Hank scratched his stomach and belched. Cairo Mary lifted her face to daylight as the front door opened once more. She jumped back two steps as if in a game of hopscotch and brought trembling fingertips to her lips. “Jesus Christ,” she whispered. “Raymond Carver … oh, this is not gonna be good.”

Carver’s haggard growl boomed in the bar. “I’m tired, I’m thirsty, and I just drove all the way from Washington state. But before I take a drink to cure what ails me, I just want to know one thing … which one of you assholes is Bukowski?”

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