The Geographer's Library

Jon Fasman
green-checked flannel shirt, untucked over sagging blue jeans, and was serving
shots and beers to a pair of skinny, sleepy-looking guys at the bar.
“Sorry?”
“Membership car’. This a private club. Members only.” The last time I
had heard that, a gold-toothed Albanian had threatened to kill me. And when
did dingy bars in New England backwaters become so exclusive?
“I never noticed this place before. I used to live a few blocks over, and—”
“This ain’t a student bar. Not for you here. This the Portuguese Men’s
Club. You Portuguese man?”
“I’m not.”
“Well, there you go. Some other bar for you. This my place here.”
I nodded curtly, and he did the same. Then one of the skinny guys walked
over and shut the door.
i crossed downtown on foot in about thirty minutes and reached the
police station at around two. Two pudgy beat cops were dragging a man in
cuffs up the stairs when I arrived. The guy kept listing to his right and mumbling,
while the policemen carried on a normal conversation about their
wives: they looked like a percent sign slowly rising up the stairs.
I asked the desk sergeant where I could find Joe Jadid.
“Ain’t on till four. You need to leave a message with me?”
“He told me to meet him here a little early. Any chance he’s in yet?”
He huffed mightily, stood up, and leaned over the desk toward me. I
stepped back and caught a faint stink of whiskey coming off him. He pointed
to a glass-fronted door at the end of the hallway. “See that door there? Interview
Room One. Jadid likes to sit in there and read the papers when nobody
else is using it. He ain’t there, you go up one flight and ask for Detective
Gomes. He’ll help you.”
“Thanks.” He nodded and sat back down, puffing out again as he did it,
his belly jiggling and settling pouchily back onto his thighs.
I knocked tentatively on the door of the interview room. A deep voice
told me to come in, and I did. Sitting at one end of a long metal table was a
beefy, olive-skinned man with short, curly black hair and crow-black eyes. He
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