Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/769056
56 • S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S dirty shirt. "He can't be quick as a bullet. We'd let him come out with the bar as a backdrop and I'd blow his soddin' head off." "Clancy wouldn't care for that," said Bucky, tossing off his rye. And anyway, Riordan, you'd probably blow my soddin' leg off." Riordan bridled, his red face going purple as the others chuckled. "For thirty years I was the best pistol shot in my precinct," he growled. "From the Bowery to Fort Apache, from Harlem to Sheepshead Bay, I could do it. Bucko me lad." "A sawbuck says you miss," piped Schultheiss, the crippled ex-elevator jockey. He slapped a ten-spot on the bar. The sailors chimed in, laying singles and fives on the pile, arguing odds and laying off one another's bets. Bucky peeled a twenty from the inside of his roll of expense money for the upcoming safari and smoothed it atop the pile. "Half the pot goes to Clancy, to fix the bullet hole," he said. "And the cops. All right, Clance?" The bartender walked to the door, looked up and down the street, then pulled the shades. "We can say it was a holdup man," he said. "Shhhh," said Bucky, pulling up his pants legs. "He likes the quiet." The other drunks staggered off away from the bar. Riordan drew lived in his legs, migrating from one to the other in a slow, tingly crawl occasionally punctuated by a stab of pain, like a hot needle run through his veins. Toward evening, it would often emerge from his skin for a look around. But usually, toward evening, Bucky was halfway in the bag, too slow with drink to catch it. Thus the pursuit of the Guinea worm had fallen to his drinking buddies, who found it an amusing game. Unfortunately, most of them were slower than Bucky. Retired cops, laid-off stevedores, sailors on leave, cab drivers, just plain bums— they had been drinking since nine in the morning when Clancy's opened. Clancy, a tall, cadaverous, big-knuckled man with a slab of patent-leather hair across his pale forehead, never drank, but even he could not catch the Guinea worm and had long ago given up trying. "Maybe he's waiting to get back to Africa," Bucky said, ordering another shot to go with his beer. "I'll be over there by the weekend. Maybe he'll come out and go away. Go get himself a girlfriend." "Yes," said Clancy from behind the bar. "I suppose you'd call a female of the species a Guiness worm." "I still say you should let me try this," said Riordan, the veinous ex-cop. He patted the .38 Police Special in the quick-draw clip at his hip. The butt of the gun peeked out from under a roll of fat in a "I still say you should let me try this," said Riordan, the veinous ex-cop. He patted the .38 Police Special in the quick-draw clip at his hip. The butt of the gun peeked out from under a roll of fat in a dirty shirt. "He can't be quick as a bullet. We'd let him come out with the bar as a backdrop and I'd blow his soddin' head off."