The Black Sea nestled itself between an old cannery and a vacant warehouse near the docks where all the buildings were brick and ancient. I walked in the rain and after four failed attempts to light a cigarette I was there.
I stepped inside and tried for a fifth time. I won.
The bald, brown-vested bartender across the small room gave me a couple of shifty eyes as I closed the door and the rest of the place followed suit. There couldn’t have been more than fifteen damp patrons split between the tables, bar stools, and dart board on the east wall – mostly dock workers and river rats with hints of feminine presence here and there.
“Scotch, if you’ve got it.” I told the mustached man behind the bar, walking over to it and reaching for my hat.
“We don’t.” the little man replied.
I put a smoke in my mouth and started flicking the brim of my hat to scare the water off.
“Well then, I’ll have a lemonade.” I said through lips pursed around a cigarette.
My fourteen blue-collar fans dropped eaves. I fished around in my coat pocket and pulled out a small, flat bottle of rye.
“Oh, nevermind,” I exhaled two lungfuls of Virginia ash and smiled. “I brought my own.”
The bartender put an empty glass on the table without saying a word, and with the same sullen expression that had been stamped on his thin face since I came in. Our audience all seemed to lose interest and returned to whatever it was they were in the middle of doing before I came and made such a spectacle by opening the door and doing absolutely nothing unusual.
I uncapped the bottle and poured an inch into the glass. My friend the bartender leaned against the counter opposite the bar and watched, slowly polishing a glass with a dirty towel that was at one point in time, white.
“I’m looking for Anton Dzubic.” I told him after a sip. His quiet little face and ears perked up. “He was a friend of Sergei Keric’s,” I continued, “who has recently taken something of a leave of absence.”
The little man moved closer to the bar and set the clean glass down in front of me. I sat down on a stool.
“You are an American, no?”
I nodded.
“Then what do you want with Anton Dzubic?”
I ground my spent cigarette into an ashtray and struck a match to start another.
“Well,” I paused and drew in, “I’m looking for Keric.” And with that, my small following of urchins and barrel rollers regained their interest in our conversation.
“Why?” he asked halfway under his breath.
“Because Nezir Keric asked me to.” I replied somewhat matter-of-factly.
With his elbows now on the bar, he sighed what I thought to be a sigh of understanding accompanied by what I thought was a brief nod of coherence.
“Anton Dzubic is my son. I am Lazlo Dzubic.”
I hit something, maybe not pay dirt and certainly not gold – but something.
“Well, I’d very much like to speak with your son, Mr. Dzubic.” I said, then emptied the glass.
“Come back in two hours. I will take you to him.”
It sounded reasonable.
“Alright.”
He reached under the bar and came up with a bottle, poured its contents into my glass and the newly polished one, for himself.
We drank.
It was scotch.
