I hadn't been in the Mousetrap since the late 70s, but the bar girls till wore the same fishnet hose, one-piece black cocktail swimsuits, and velvet mouse ears. Hell, they looked like the same waitresses for that matter. The original idea had been to design a bar based on the Playboy Clubs, but the ladies would be mice instead of bunnies. The clientele also tended to be less sophisticated than one might expect, consisting mainly of bikers and workers from the Algiers meatpacking plant. A line of video game machines lined the wall where the bandstand used to be, and all the sound came from a jukebox in the corner. But I wasn't really interested in all that. I was on a mission.

The dreadlocked black kid tending bar was busy chatting up a breasty blond waitress, and walked over at last with a questioning look. "Four Roses neat," I said. "Man," he said, "we don't sell Four Roses." I grinned back at him and said "yeah, I could see the place has gone downhill. Give me a vodka tonic." He brought the drink and I asked "Wade here?" He looked at me blankly for a moment, then called "Wade! Somebody to see you!" and he went back to the blonde.

The heavyset man emerged from the passage behind the bar. It had been a long time, but it was Wade Palmer alright. The red hair, once shoulder length, had vanished from the top of his freckled head, and the tattered remnant had been tied behind his neck in a scraggly pony tale. His face was jowelly and bearded now, but the eyes still glinted in the way Wade always had, like a street dog looking for a fight. He looked around, his eyes moving past me, unrecognizing, then returning. I sipped my vodka tonic as he said "what can I do for you?"

"Hungry," I said. "They told me you got the best oyster po'boy in town." He frowned, then said "Tony, tell Francine to drop an oyster po'boy." He lit a Lucky Strike, flipping the match into the trash. I had reached into my pocket and found the object from the alley, and I was toying with it. It was like a flat, thin, concave coin. I glanced down at it quickly, just long enough to read the word Special!, and I put it back in my pocket. A slow look of enlightenment crept across Palmer's face, and he said "been a coon's age, Madison."

I bummed a short off him and he sat down. "Thought you were on the West Coast," he said. "Yeah, mostly," I answered. "See Phil much anymore, Wade?" I thought he flinched a little before he said "not much. He don't come to Algiers much any more." Then he said "you guys were friends, yeah?"

The black kid appeared with the po'boy and slid it onto the bar in front of me. I picked it up in both hands, the aroma of fried seafood and spice curling all around my face. "Wait," said Wade, "Man, you can tell you don't live in New Orleans. You got to have this." And he set a large bottle of red liquid on the bar. "Most popular condiment in every bar and restaurant in Louisiana. It'll be on grocery shelves by Fall." I opened the cap and inhaled a delicious peppery odor. I looked at the label. Martell's Sauce it said. But what really caught my eye was the little silver medallion that hung from a fine chain around the bottle neck.

Special!, it read.