"Try the Bayside," she suggested.
"Yeah, I could. Why?"
"Because that's where he hung out."
"So why don't you go down there and squeeze the money out of him yourself?"
"Because he isn't there anymore, and I couldn't make him pay up even if he was. Besides, I don't think that's a decent place for a single mother, do you?"
The Bayside is a north-end drinking hole and hotel. Management had a strict policy to rent rooms by the week or month, but some of the tenants were known to sublet by the hour. There were lots of single mothers there.

Even just opening up, the room smelled of stale beer and staler humanity. The walls were painted light green waist to ceiling. The bottom was caked with cracked green tiles. There was a travel picture of some tropical paradise taped to the longest wall, one corner torn and curling. Closer to the stage were two black and white photos of country-western entertainers, with bluish squares between, where other pictures had once protected the original colour from years of tobacco smoke. The subjects may have decided this room unsuited to their likeness. More likely, they had fallen victim to the hotel's other form of entertainment: throwing empties. I decided to cut my losses, and turned toward the exit. Instead, I bumped into a mountain. It was hard to figure how anyone that big could slide up beside without me knowing, but there he was six and a half feet and probably three hundred pounds. His hair and beard were close cropped, red. He wore a dark green shirt and green polyester pants woven in a hound's tooth pattern. Barely visible eyebrows were creased together in a way that might have been comical were the face not backed by massive hunched shoulders and pressed so closely into mine.
"You a friend of Eddy Boyle's?" he asked and I began to regret my slight connection with Melanie's husband.
"What's it to you?"
"If you're his friend, I got a message you can pass along," and he raised a scarred red brick of a fist. It seemed unlikely he intended to jot a quick note.
I backed up to put space between us and bumped into something solid. That didn't seem right. I was in the middle of the bar, the wall a good ten feet away. Turning, I saw the same big man behind me. Damn. How'd he do that? "One of you should be more than enough," I told the slab before me.
"That's my big brother, Alvin," he answered, his voice squeaking like bedsprings dragged over concrete. They could have been twins, right down to the green socks and brown, tassel loafers.
"That's enough boys, he's just been lookin' for Boyle the same as you." The manager was back, more concerned with preserving his furniture than my health. "This is the Kelsey Twins, Alvin and Teddy," he told me. The Kelsey on my left turned his creased brow on the bartender. "Sorry. Theodore. Real name's Kralchuk. Not actually twins either. They're in the wrestles. Kelsey's just a stage name, like. Treat 'em square, they're OK guys." Then he spoke to the brothers. "You know the rules. Got a problem, take it outside."
Two faces widened in broken smiles. "We got no problem, Jake. You know us. We just heard him say Eddy and thought he might know something," one Kelsey said. The other put his arm over my shoulder. "Maybe we should throw in together. Help each other out. Waddya say, guy?" His arm felt like a room sized carpet, rolled up and thrown across my back.
"Depends. What do you want with him?"
"He owes us money," said one. The older one, I think. "A lot of money," said the other, again with the bunched up brows. He could have been having trouble with the arithmetic, or maybe someone had been giving him instructions on how to look angry. It was starting to look a bit put on. You never know what they'll pick up in the wrestles. "Why you want him?"
"It's his wife wants him. I'm hired help. Apparently he's won the lottery."
"Yeah. The New York State Lottery. He was our friend." First one spoke, then the other. "Only he didn't do sharesies." Then the first one again. "He owes us half." His lip stuck out a little and his eyes watered. I hoped he wouldn't embarrass us all by dropping a tear.
"And you haven't heard from him since," I said.
"Just this post card," and big brother, Alvin pulled a wrinkled picture from his hip pocket. Only a few days old and already worn. They'd probably showed it to everyone in the bar at least twice, each time with a telling of their sad story. It wasn't really a post card. The front was a picture of Eddy Boyle, raising them a toast with a mug of beer. It was a close shot, him in short sleeves, left elbow on a white table top: "look at me in my new life." I flipped the card over. On the back was the Kelsey/Kralchuk address and a stamp from some country that didn't use English.
"Have you checked it out?" I asked.
"How? He's in Greece, I think. Look at the stamp."
"Maybe." I flipped it back over and pointed with my little finger. "Look at this boat, what's written on the stern. Something 'Angel' and the smaller letters below, 'alo'. He might be on the move, or he could have given the card to a traveler to mail for him. That shouldn't be hard. In marinas, there must almost always be somebody on the go."
"So?"
"So we don't go chasing off to Europe until we've eliminated the local possibilities. 'Angel' is English. That'll be the boat's name. What's below, in smaller letters, is usually the home port. What city do you know that ends in 'a-l-o'?"
They looked at each other and again broke into gap-toothed smiles. "Buffalo!" they blurted in perfect harmony. I nodded. "You're good," one said, Theodore, I think. "A real professional," the other nodded, with the pride of ownership. "Good thing for us we found you." "Let's go." They each had an arm around me now. We headed out the door. I can't honestly recall that my feet touched the floor.