He glanced away from the shelves of bottles and studied the other side of the store. There was a rack of tattered magazines, their covers featuring naked women or motorcycles or naked women on motorcycles. A locked case held cans of what Gus could only assume was chewing tobacco, although it had never occurred to him that there could be so many brands of something no one he’d met had ever used. Against the wall were bare shelves littered with a few items that might once have been intended to be eaten-packaged snack cakes, their pink marshmallow and coconut shells turning brown and shriveling with age to reveal the permanently moist chocolate crumb underneath; cardboard tubes reportedly filled with chips made from “at least thirty-two percent real potato”; a cloudy plastic bucket containing soggy sticks of jerked something. There was nothing here that Morton could possibly have wanted to allow into his immaculate penthouse, even as an identification marker.

Gus turned back to the owner, who was still staring directly at him. “You ready to buy something?”

“Sure,” Gus said. “Let me have…” Desperately he scanned the shelves behind the old man. There wasn’t a hint of what he was supposed to purchase, just row after row of filthy bottles.

Then he saw something. A glint of light. It came from one of the upper shelves. Gus peered up and saw that there was one bottle that wasn’t dirty at all. It looked like it had just been placed there. “I’ll have that bottle of Glen Graggenlogan,” he said, hoping he was reading the label correctly from this distance.

The old man stared at him for a moment, then gave Gus an almost imperceptible wink. “Think you can handle it, junior?” he said.

Was this some kind of test, or was the old man really trying to warn him away for his own good? Gus couldn’t tell. “Is there something I should know?”

The shopkeeper didn’t answer, just kept staring. There wasn’t going to be any help coming from him. “Just give me the bottle,” Gus said.