The Clock Without Hands was one long, slender room full of neon and multicolored all-year Christmas lights. A TV played a black-and-white movie, and the jukebox boomed out soul music, and the whole place was thick and horrible with cigarette smoke. Two older gentlemen wearing suits sat at the bar, commanding it like they were captains on a ship. One wore a fedora over his gray hair and kept popping his knuckles. A few blond women smoked long cigarettes with lipstick marks on them. The bartender was a woman with huge red hair and bright blue eye makeup, and she kept laughing this high weird witchy cackle while she dished out drinks. A bent man in an army jacket slept at one of the coin casino machines in the back. The lights blinked and whirred all around him. A stuffed baby alligator sat on the bar, a pointed party hat stuck to his head. The left half of the bar was all booths, low-lit and easy to slink into. The one farthest to the back seemed empty.

“Let’s grab that before anybody spots us,” said Murphy.

“Too late,” I said. I felt every eye in the bar on us even though no one had spoken a word our way yet. We scuttled to the back booth, our heads hung low, trying our best to blend in.

“So what do we do now?” I said.

“Hush up,” said Murphy. “I’m thinking.”

I scanned the crowd for anyone who had been at Piggly Wiggly yesterday, but I didn’t recognize anyone. The bar was badly lit, and folks didn’t look the same in normal clothes as they did in their Sunday best. I mean, they carried themselves differently. Everyone in this bar looked like they had just escaped from somewhere awful they didn’t want to talk about. Which is to say, everyone in the bar looked like they had secrets. It was only a matter of time before the bartender discovered us and we got the boot.

Right then the bathroom door swung open, and out strode the squirrely-looking old guy from Piggly Wiggly, the one Grandma wouldn’t hardly talk to. He looked even worse tonight. His beard was all scraggly, and his splotchy red tie hung loose around his neck. He seemed to be well drunk and a little wobbly.

“What about that guy?” I said.

“Holy shit, he’s perfect,” said Murphy. “You can always count on a drunk to tell you everything you aren’t supposed to know. Hold up a minute, I’ll be right back.”

Murphy slid out of the booth and swooped over to the guy like she was a dutiful granddaughter leading her dotty old granddad back from his wandering. She herded him to the booth and sat him down across from us.