If you ever get to drinking beer in your favorite saloon and meet a scared little guy who wants to buy you the joint, supply you with fur coats and dolls and run you for Congress—listen well! That is, if you really want the joint, the fur coats, the dolls and a seat in Congress. Just ask Mike Murphy . . . .

For more than thirty years, bartender Mike Murphy watches the same customer arrive at exactly the same time each weekday, order a single beer, and quietly disappear. Rabelais Pettis seems destined to live an ordinary life, working the same drafting job while tinkering with inventions that never appear to work. Then one evening everything changes. The timid regular walks through the door with complete confidence, spends money as though it has no limit, and insists the impossible has finally...