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It was after ten o’clock in the evening when the trio walked through the front door into the smoky interior of the Lap Dog Bar and Emporium in Newport. The building dated back to the fifties when (according to a plaque on the wall near the front door) it had been a beatnik coffee house. There were pot lights between the wooden beams across the ceiling.
Dark-stained, round, wooden tables were scattered haphazardly across the room. Over the tables hung low-slung metal lamps with low-watt bulbs in them, adding to the already noir ambiance. Opposite the booths, along the other wall, was an oak bar with a mirror behind it that ran the length of the wall.
A silver-haired female bartender stood behind the bar with a cigarette dangling from her dry lips. From her gray pallor and yellowed fin
