Chapter 8: Jim Has a Drink

Despite everything that he'd seen and everything that the zookeeper shown him, Jim knew that he hadn't learned anything during his trip to the zoo that he could use. Even if the zookeeper wasn't as crazy as he sounded and there was some sort of global conspiracy at play, that didn't change Jim's job. Jim was hired to find one gorilla and he intended to go about his business the way he always had. Jim only knew one way to do his job. He'd had success in the past. That's why his client hired him. But here he was, four days into the job with no leads. So Jim did what he'd been doing since his days on the police force. When he had no place else to go, Jim hit the bars. 

Jim believed, truly believed, that most criminals wanted to get caught. If they didn't want to get caught, they wouldn't. It wasn't that hard. Jim wasn't some sort of amateur psychologist. He didn't think too hard about why they wanted to get caught. The why wasn't important to him. All that was important was that they dropped clues. They dropped clues and they talked. Most cases that Jim worked on came to their ultimate conclusions because the person he was looking for couldn't keep his mouth shut. All Jim had to do was talk to enough people and he would eventually talk to the guy who talked to the guy who talked to person he was looking for. Then, it was just a matter of connecting the dots. And where did people go to talk? Jim figured there were two places. Jim knew that he'd have a tough time getting a priest to tell him anything, so Jim hit the bars. He mapped every bar within a five-mile radius of the San Diego Zoo, waited until evening and then went to work. On this job Jim figured that, even if he didn't find any leads, he could at least expense some of his drinking.

Jim took his time. He knew that he had to be methodical. He had to melt into the scene at each bar. He had to get to know the bartenders. He had to get to know the regulars. He'd go up to the bartender first. If he was looking for a person, he'd usually carry their picture in his pocket so that he could show it to the bartender. He thought about doing it on this case too; walk into the bar, go up to the bartender, pull out the picture and ask, "Have you seen this gorilla?" Instead, Jim chose to keep it simple. He'd walk up to the bar and let the bartender know that he was a private detective and that he'd been hired to find the stolen gorilla. Everybody in San Diego would know what he was talking about. It was that type of story. Jim didn't expect the bartenders to know anything. Crooks rarely talked to the bartenders. They usually talked to the other people in the bar. All Jim wanted to know from the bartender was who the regulars were-who was there on the nights before the heist. He wanted to know that and who, if anyone, wouldn't be offended if he started asking them questions. Jim decided a long time ago that he wasn't going to put himself in danger for his job. That's why he quit the force. That was one of the reasons anyway.

Jim planned on hitting four bars a night. He had a list of twenty bars he wanted to check out. There were more bars than that in the five-mile radius but Jim crossed the trendy places off his list. He was pretty sure that the guy he was looking for wouldn't hang out at the trendy places. First, other than the thing he stole, there was nothing flashy about his crime. Second, those places made Jim uncomfortable. He liked his bars dark with their air thick with the smell of alcohol. He needed to find a bar that was quiet enough for someone to feel comfortable divulging their secrets. The first two nights were a bust. Jim had two or three beers at each bar and went home drunk both nights-drunk and empty handed. Nobody had seen anything unusual on the night leading up to the gorilla abduction. Nobody could remember seeing any strangers on those nights. But people loved to talk about the missing gorilla. Everybody had a theory. He heard the Hexican theory a few times. The most common theory was that the gorilla was going to be sold to people for food, like it was some sort of delicacy. In that theory, the ethnicity of the buyers changed depending on who was doing the talking. The black guys said that it was the Koreans who wanted to eat the gorilla. The white guys said it was Africans. The Latinos said it was rich white folk, bored of their expensive sushi and caviar. None of it mattered to Jim because none of it helped. Jim had been down this road before. He knew that the key was persistence. The odds were that the person he was looking for was from out of town. That meant they probably only went to one bar. In that one bar, they probably only spoke to one or two people. Jim just had to find one of those people. The first two nights were write-offs. On the third night, Jim's luck began to change.

The bar where Jim finally got lucky was an unassuming place. It was small and dark. There was country music playing on the jukebox when Jim walked in. It was a place where people could think while they drank or drink enough to forget about thinking. There were a lot of army folks in other bars, men wearing their uniforms with pride. That wasn't the case here. A couple of the guys looked like military types but, if they were, they were the older one, the more disillusioned one-and they were wearing civilian clothes. As soon as Jim walked in, everyone looked at him. That was a good sign. They were all sizing up the stranger. If Jim was lucky, they did that every night. He walked up to the bar.

"What can I get you?" the bartender asked. Jim, feeling that this bar was different than the other bars, ordered a Scotch instead of the usual beer. "What kind?" the bartender asked.

"Single malt," Jim replied. "One that'll burn my throat." The bartender nodded and turned to retrieve a bottle. He poured two finger fulls of the whiskey into a glass. 

"That'll be five bucks," the bartender said. 

"Five bucks to poison my body and heal my soul," Jim said. He sipped the drink. It did its job. Jim put a ten dollar bill on the table. "Keep the change." The bartender took the ten off the bar and began to walk away. No small talk, not even with the generous tip. That's the type of bar it was. Jim didn't call the bartender back. He sat, finished his drink and looked around. The music changed from one country song to the next. Jim figured there were about thirty people in the bar, maybe ten of them women. Then there were the dark corners that Jim couldn't see. If Jim were going to commit a crime, this was the type of place that might even get him to loosen his tongue. Jim finished his drink and the bartender came back to ask him if he needed a refill.

"Yeah," Jim said, "but I have a few questions for you first."

The bartender looked him up and down. "You don't look like a cop," the bartender said.

"I did once," Jim replied. "I'm not a cop. I'm a private detective."

"We pride ourselves here on our discretion," the bartender said, trying to cut off the conversation before any questions were asked.

"I'm not looking for any cheaters, closet cases, drunks or addicts," Jim replied. "Your regulars are safe with me. I'm looking for the guy who stole the gorilla." 

The bartender laughed. "You'll need another scotch then."