"What's your pleasure?" the big red-head asked.
Phil felt Carstairs' gun dig his ribs. He tried to wet his lips.
"Mr. Brimstine, I want my green cat," he croaked.
Moe Brimstine wrinkled his forehead. "That made with creme de menthe, chartreuse, or green fire?"
"I mean my live green cat," Phil told him.
"We don't serve drunks here," Brimstine said evenly. "Your friend's had one too many. What would you ladies and gentlemen care for?"
Mary Akeley opened her handbag and laid the Moe Brimstine doll on the counter before her. She looked at it thoughtfully for a moment and with deliberate finickiness took off its tiny dark glasses. Its eyes were piggy. She smiled. She replaced the glasses and fished out of her handbag a hatpin, a pair of scissors, a small knife, a little pair of pliers, a sample size flame-pack, a tiny iron with insulated handle, and a white crusted black bottle, and lined them up in a neat row.
"This isn't a powder room, lady," Brimstine said. "Order your drinks."
Phil couldn't help but be impressed by the big man's composure, and then without warning he felt a gust of terror that he knew at once had nothing to do with guns behind him and could hardly stem from the childish paraphernalia for black magic Mary Akeley had set out.
He could tell that the gust had hit Moe Brimstine too, for the big man dropped the towel and backed up against the shelves of bottles behind him.