Matt Joyson scarcely heard him. The bracing draughts of Kentucky Nectar which he had absorbed were quieting his jangled nerves without impairing his mental processes. And something, something on the instinctive levels of his mind, now that the first blackout curtain of panic began to lift, was irking his consciousness with jagged little edges. He began to wish he had made a less precipitate withdrawal.
“It was too neat,” he muttered foggily. “Too pat.”
His eyes were murky with unformed suspicion.
Tod Kermein tried to console him.
“You’re always seeing somebody under the bed, Matt.”
“Once, there was,” Joyson reminded him. “Remember that go with the college president in Dallas?”
Kermein grimaced.
From the juke box at one end of the room seeped the voice of a scat singer who longed for some Shoo Fly Pie. At one of the low tables a pretty girl, like the melody, did some mild rhythmic writhing. The bartender, a jovial gent in a toupee, set a fresh drink in front of an aging debutante at the far end of the bar.
“I can’t nail it down,” Joyson said. “Something smells, and I don’t know what it is.”
“Because the guy’s wife gets there the same time we do? You heard her. She’s been followin’ the old jerk a long time, she nabs him. at exactly the right minute, which is just our time, too. Bad luck, that’s all. One chance in a million.”