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I saw the sign as I turned off Highway 100. It brought a smile to my face. Rocco’s Pub is like many neighborhood bars, it provides comfort for those who frequent it on a regular basis and I have frequented it about as regularly as anyone can.
It’s like home. Over the years, it has provided more comfort to me than Dr. Lundgren’s couch. I don’t think the doctor would understand that even if I tried to explain it to her. But then again she is a therapist…
I have to admit, I looked pretty good when I walked in the Pub. I was wearing a gray suit and a dark gray snap-brim fedora. I wasn’t wearing a tie, I don’t own one, and I was still in need of a shave. I didn’t trust putting a blade close to my neck this morning because my hands shook like a cat shitting on a sheet of ice.
My light gray Dan Post cowboy boots were buffed and looking fine. I was sporting my belt buckle for being the first runner-up for all around cowboy on the state of Texas’ pro rodeo circuit in 1937. That and a dime gets me a cup of coffee at Rocco’s.
My .38 caliber Colt Belly gun was tucked snugly in its rig under my left arm. Lorraine left me with a smile on my face that I smugly wore as I strolled through the door. I needed something to keep my mind off my troubles and I knew getting to work and finding out more about Candi Kane’s murder would help with that. It seems that murder and mayhem always help get me out of any funk I might be in at the time.
I glanced around. Rocco was in the middle of telling one of his jokes.
“One Saturday afternoon, this guy was sitting in his lawn chair, drinking beer and watching his wife mow the lawn. The neighbor lady from across the street was so outraged at this that she came over and shouted at him, 'You should be hung.’ He calmly replied, 'I am. That's why she cuts the grass.’”
There were four guys and a young woman sitting at the bar sipping drinks and they all broke out in laughter. I sat down next to them. I knew them all, Sam Galbraith was a flyboy with a reputation for shooting down more seagulls than Jap Zeros during his time in the South Pacific in World War II, flying off the aircraft carrier, USS Enterprise. He looked pretty serene and calm, a neat trick to pull off since he has been married three times before. Allen Dupont was a former goat herder, and horse breeder now raising chickens on a large poultry farm off Burleigh Road in East Brookfield. We met Dupont in Colorado when we were buying bucking stock for the local rodeos in the midwest. He is a distant relative and black sheep of the Dupont family, who made part of their fortune compounding chemicals; he moved to Wisconsin when he married Sam’s sister, Gertrude.
Then there is Ralph Mills, a land developer from Menomonee Falls, who will marry any woman who is still breathing if she is crazy enough to say ‘I do.’ If he sees a patch of green anywhere, he will build something on it. The last guy sitting at the bar was a surprise. William Bennett, whose stage name is Raja, which means King in Hindu he used to perform at Rocco’s about a year ago before he got a job at the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas. He was still wearing his signature lime green pants, pink shirt and yellow sports coat that he wore while singing renditions of Frank Sinatra’s favorite hits every weekend here at Rocco’s. He resembled a giant ice cream cone. I would hate to see what he has hanging in his closet. With him was his singing partner, a blonde