Binge Killer

by Chris Bauer

  Maurice Prudhomme, 1928–1962

  I headed back out to the van to make sure my belongings were secure and to bring Tess up to the room. Fungo would come up later. He needed more time in his crate now that we were stationary.

  Maurice Prudhomme. Dead at age thirty-four. An icebreaker for my next contact with Mr. Andy Prudhomme, B&B proprietor.

  7

  A new alias for Randall: Howard Isaacs. His suggestion for Mr. Nap Napoli, a fortyish Tiparillo-chomping greaser used-car dealer, was a straight-up trade, the 1986 Buick Electra sitting front and center on his car lot for a classic cherry 1961 Chevy Impala convertible that, unfortunately, sat broken down eight miles away and just off the road, not far from Glacier Pothole State Park in Rancor. Randall had called for a cab then had it drop him off at Nap’s dealership.

  “Breathtaking,” Randall-alias-Howard offered to the greaser, for this tourist to see a hole, the park’s glacially formed pothole, that large, that deep, up close, visible for seventy-five feet or so into its mouth because it was a bright day. Beyond that, dark and creepy. Who knew what was at the bottom, Randall blathered to Nap.

  Too much info, or info Nap already knew, Nap’s nod told him.

  Sure was, Randall knew. All part of the con.

  “So, Nap, is there any way we could maybe complete some of the paperwork here, grab the keys and some temp tags, then take the Buick out for a spin to see my trade? If you like what you see and you can get the car started, we can finish everything up right there. I could follow you back to make sure it doesn’t give you any trouble. The car title’s in the glove box. I know, I know, I shouldn’t keep the title with the car. Old habits die hard, Nap, yes they do...”

  “Look, Mr. Isaacs—”

  Nap studied this white-haired, friendly grandfather-type, was debating the proposal, was close, just wasn’t quite there.

  “Howard. Call me Howard,” Randall said, flashing another gosh-golly, harmless old-guy smile.

  “I, ah, suppose a vintage Chevy on my showroom floor wouldn’t be a bad thing. You seem like a nice guy. You are a nice guy, right, Howard?”

  “Last time I checked, Nap,” Randall said, adding a chuckle. “A nice guy looking for a good new home for a great classic car. So can we make this work?”

  Nap Napoli’s gaze was piercing; he was still deciding. Then, “Fine. Why not. It’s not like I get a shot at owning a sixty-one Impala every day. Let me grab some paperwork, we can fill out some things here, then we can drive your new car out for a look at your trade.”

  Here they were, off to the side of a two-lane road adjacent to another two-lane road leading to the state park with its heralded pothole. Tall trees, leafy canopy, heavy underbrush that served as a shoulder all made the area darker, even at midday. Nearly nonexistent traffic. Randall smiled internally when Nap had trouble containing himself, the dealer’s eyes flashing excitement at his first glimpse of the Impala.

  The Impala’s hood up, Nap reseated the distributor cap. The car started; the 409 engine purred. The only thing still needing Nap’s inspection was the trunk. Nap leaned under the trunk lid, came out with the tire iron, gave it the once-over.

  “What’s this, Howard?” Nap said, eyeing some smudging on one end of the lug wrench. It was brownish-red and sticky.

  “Hmm. I dunno, Nap.” Randall extended a beckoning hand. “Here, let me have a look at it.”

  8

  Tess and Fungo were squared away in my room. Time to do some reconnaissance on the bike. First stop, Thunder Wonderland Lanes.

  The alley’s flashing road sign was trying way too hard, the size of a drive-in theater screen, said look here, look at me, don’t pay attention to all those dead coal miners and abandoned holes and strip mines dotting the countryside. On the marquis, a continuous loop of sequentially lit bowling balls scattered pins that crisscrossed and turned into a big red X then erupted into Double Bubble pink and Wrigley’s Spearmint green fireworks. The pins regrouped and readied themselves for the next sequence. How fucking dandy. I removed my helmet, shook out my pixie haircut, and headed inside the building.

  Forty bowling lanes on the left. On the right against the wall was a huge room full of video poker and dollar slots. In the room next to it, a plush toy crane, kids’ video games and three Skee-Ball lanes. A shoe and cashier counter was middle of the alley on right, a springlike deodorizing scent lingering on the surface. Farther down, the counter became a full-service bar with café tables in front. A carpeted kiddie play area was deep right, far end.

  Red flag. A children’s play area this close to an exit, even if the exit was alarmed, was just plain nuts. It made no difference that this Pollyanna of a hamlet was on a safest-towns-in-America list. They were tempting fate with this arrangement. This wasn’t Mayberry.

  Soon as the guy behind the counter saw me in my leather pants and coat he moved toward the alcohol-dispensing part of the counter. On his way there he shoved a pair of multicolor bowling shoes onto a shelf below the counter.

  “What can I get you?”

  I checked the red stitching above the pocket of his white shirt, something that could have passed for a barber’s smock. I did a double take on the name: Floyd. Christ, right out of TV Land’s central casting.

  Cashier, bartender, bowling-shoe guy, Mayberry namesake; Floyd here was multitalented. Mustachioed, not tall, maybe five-eight, maybe late fifties, but was maybe nothing else like Mayberry’s Floyd the Barber because he was maybe really chunky. Over his shoulder was a chalkboard menu bolted into the wall. The menu items were hand printed, the letters all straight-edged at the bottom.

  If you’re also the cook, Floyd, you’d better be washing your hands. A lot.

  I copped a feel from my fuzzy dog keychain because I felt the need.

  “Bacon cheeseburger,” I told him. “No pink, with fried onions if you have them, plus onion rings, and a draught Guinness.”

  Floyd grunted. I didn’t know what the grunt meant, but he grabbed a wide-mouth glass, shuffled down the end of the bar, got busy drawing my brew.

  The wait for a Guinness was worth it if the bartender drew it right. Room temperature glass, forty-five-degree tilt. So far, so good, Floyd. Floyd left the bar, entered the kitchen while the draught settled, returned to finish it off with a fill to just above the rim. The foam drooled down one side like in a beer commercial. Floyd seemed like an observant, capable guy who actually had his shit together. I’d be able to talk to him.

  I leaned against the bar, sipped the Guinness and waited for my food.

  Bastard. Not a Guinness. A deep black beer with a tan head, but it weren’t no Guinness. I called to Floyd. “Bro. ’Sup with this shit?” I held up my glass.

  “Around here, you ask for a Guinness, you get a Yuengling Porter. You don’t want it, don’t pay for it.” Another grunt. He folded his arms, finished with, “bro.”

  Floyd didn’t budge.

  Fine. Free beer.

  I got a few raised eyebrows from the lady bowlers. It was the leather, my aging body still looking okay in it. I was occasionally good for a lingering look or two, women included, but aside from Floyd and one other guy munching nuts and sipping a can of Mountain Dew a few bar stools away, there were no men in sight. All women, all older, all bowling, and most of them festooned in silky team bowling shirts that ran the Crayola gamut. None of the looks I got from them was a smile. I let this fact settle.

  “Helen will have your food up in a minute,” Floyd said. “Don’t mind the poor reception. We’ve had a few out-of-towners drop in today. Some with badges.” He stared, his smug face looking for a reaction.

  First, I was happy about the division of labor between Floyd the bowling shoe guy and Helen the fry cook. And second, fuck you, Floyd, you’ll get a reaction when I’m ready to give you a reaction. I ignored him, sipped my beer and watched the bowlers. He got tired of waiting, headed toward the shoe counter. I slapped a print of a mug shot on the bar loud enough that he had no choice but to retrace his steps.
I slid the eight-by-ten over.

  “You seen this guy?”

  Floyd gave a good show of studying the picture. “The guys who badged us had the same mug shot with them. Can’t say that we have.”

  “‘We’…?” I asked, not following.

  His chin rose, pointing it in the direction of the swinging doors to the kitchen. “Me and Helen, the cook.”

  Fine. “These guys—their badges said they were what? Cops? Feds? What?”

  Floyd hesitated. It was a simple fill-in-the-blanks, Floyd. They badged you. There weren’t that many law enforcement agencies to choose from.

  I needed to hustle him up. “Look, short of you telling me it was Fresh Prince and Tommy Lee Jones, I promise I won’t be scared.”

  Another stare from him, him not liking me now, but he answered anyway. “FBI. They were FBI.”

  There. That wasn’t so hard. Except this surprised me. Then again, maybe it shouldn’t have. This would, however, require a phone call.

  The food arrived. Helen was a rock star in a black T-shirt, fitted and with long sleeves, with a silhouetted headshot of Jeff Bridges’s The Dude in white on it. Or maybe it was Jesus. Festooned with neck ink, a rave-blue hair rinse, and a safety-pinned face, she was trim, with no thickness around the middle like you’d expect on a fry cook at a bowling alley, and midthirties, my guess. Helen slid the plate over to me, tucked the greasy check underneath it, and repositioned a squeeze bottle of Heinz so I couldn’t miss it. Her parting glance at me said eat your shit and get out.

  She left a second lunch plate for the bar-leaning customer nursing the Mountain Dew. Young guy. UPS uniform, summer brown. He bit into a ketchupy onion ring, pulled it back to get a better look at it, exaggerated a grimace. An Academy Award performance. He tossed the half-eaten onion ring onto his plate.

  “These are awful, Helen,” he said. Helen was on her way back to the kitchen, kept walking. “Taste worse than Ore-Ida. Ketchup ain’t helping worth a shit. No marinade today?”

  I looked at my onion rings. Hand-battered in so much beer I could smell it. And big. I took a bite; excellent. The UPS guy’s onion rings looked like orangey mini donuts with burn spots from a bake sheet.

  “We’ve been through this, Carl,” she said, then pushed her way through the swinging doors. She finished with a raised voice from the kitchen: “You’re in recovery.”

  “Yeah, well, they suck,” he said, the suck loud enough to impress her even at this distance. He followed it up with more raised-voice griping at his absent target, a cord in his neck popping while he delivered it. “And I ain’t paying for them neither. Ain’t paying for none of it. It all tastes awful. But I’ll tell you what I will pay for.” Carl leaned over for a look into the kitchen at Helen, through the swinging doors now settling. “Yessir, I’ll pay for some of that.”

  Floyd’s interest in me evaporated, but he didn’t get a chance to move. Helen burst through the doors, marched past Floyd, pulled Carl close with a fist full of UPS shirt, and cold-cocked him in the face with a straight right, knocking him off the stool. She winged the paper plate of ketchup-drenched orangey onion rings at his head, followed up with the burger plate to his chest. “Get the fuck out, Carl. Now, before I call your supervisor.”

  Carl picked himself up, kept his distance. She glared at him, daring him to protest. He cursed under his breath on his way out.

  Helen to Floyd, on her way back: “Use FedEx from now on.”

  The doors to the grill area swung closed behind her. “So tell me,” Floyd said, his beaming face blanking out again, “badge-wise, what are you?”

  I handed him a business card. “No badge. Just a friend of a friend, asked to perform a public service.” The card announced my name, my state trooper rank at retirement, what I now did for a living, and my contact info. “Keep the mug shot,” I told him. “If this guy shows up, give me a call.” I dropped two tens on the bar for my food and beer, then I dropped a third, making a production out of it. Then I decided to show some manners. “Please.”

  Floyd wandered to the other end of the counter to hand out a pair of women’s size tens. One of the bills I gave him went into the register, a second into a tip jar. He tamped the third ten into a slit atop what looked like an old miner’s helmet. A donation to the Maurice Fund, or so said the black indelible marker scrawled along the baby-blue helmet’s rim.

  Outside the bowling alley, I cranked up more recon time on the bike. I drove up some trails, over hills and around curves, and down the few major roads that led to scattered neighborhoods and a number of large properties. I didn’t get lucky.

  Nice small town. Some lunchtime drama in the bowling alley, sure, but not my business.

  Coming up on two o’clock. I needed to call this off and head back for a dog walk, maybe take a break with some of Mr. Andy Prudhomme’s tea and sweets on the B&B porch before I came back out for another round of surveillance.

  Things got done, the bail jumpers and other bad guys all got caught based on my schedule, no one else’s. I was in the bounty business for the thrill, not the money. Mom’s stock market portfolio gave me the luxury, relegating my state trooper pension to a rounding error. For some folks, that could come across as too laid back. I didn’t give a shit.

  Mr. Linkletter, wherever he was, best behave himself for the time being.

  9

  Ursula and Andy’s mother, Charlotte, embroidered their crazy quilts on the B&B’s side porch, providing finishing touches for gifts to this year’s Rancor Summer Camp middle-schoolers. The oldest members of the Piece-Makers Quilting Club sipped their drinks in between their stitching. Next to the TV, the liquor cabinet’s doors were open, its bottles vibrant with pick-me-no-pick-me colors and labels, clamoring for renewed attention.

  In concept, crazy quilts were abstract arrangements with asymmetrical fabric pieces randomly shaped and sized. Not quite true of Charlotte’s offering. Most of her patches were circular, overt representations of bowling balls in fluorescent silks, satins, and velvets, in pinks, greens, yellows, and blues, complete with embroidered finger holes. One and only one round patch was glossy coal black, and next to it, one and only one round patch was flaming red, the color of Charlotte’s hair. Her artistic signature. These two side-by-side patches, Andy knew, were as sentimental for his mother as two hearts with an arrow carved into a backyard elm.

  Ursula picked up the TV remote, changed the channel to CNN. Coincident to the channel change, Andy made a visit to the porch. He topped off Ursula’s martini from a pitcher sitting atop the cabinet and he dropped a few additional fiber-fortified Triscuits onto a plate within reach of the women. Charlotte’s manhattan needed no similar assistance.

  “Ursula,” Charlotte said.

  “Yes, dear?”

  “How did you do that?”

  “Do what, Charlie?”

  “Use the clicker to get another drink?”

  Charlotte had been oblivious to Andy’s entrance, was also oblivious to his presence behind her. At eighty-one Charlotte remained an incredibly smart woman, but dementia had been making inroads. So far the disease was more inconvenient than invasive, with her needing only occasional reminders of names, dates, places, and times. Andy hung around a moment to see how Ursula responded to the bizarre question from her lifelong friend.

  Ursula held up the TV remote for Charlotte’s inspection and offered a straight-faced explanation. “New technology, Charlie. A single remote for TV, DVR, stereo, and liquor cabinet. Press this button right here and voila, more booze. What won’t they think of next, right, love?”

  Humor was how the two best friends handled her occasional dementia lapses. Charlotte’s parry would typically be an off-color two-word retort, but today she showed no recognition, having already moved on, unfazed. She lifted her quilt in both hands and held it aloft in triumph. “All done,” she said, her face aglow.

  While her mental sharpness had suffered, her hand dexterity and muscle memory had not. Her hands always knew their way, in
bowling, quilting, and as a board-certified surgeon, her fingers as nimble as ever and entirely capable of the intricate stitching needed for the quilting masterpieces she produced. The women started today’s session with only one finishing touch needed for each of their individual quilts, their embroidered message SAFE AND SOUND, which every quilt received. Andy and Ursula admired Charlotte’s handiwork, her quilt raised next to her perky, proud face, the message in a silky gold thread.

  “Nicely done, Ma,” a proud Andy said.

  Their smiles dissolved. Over her mother’s shoulder on the TV, a reporter standing outside a kid’s pizza restaurant delivered a sobering, breaking news story.

  “That’s Scranton,” Ursula said. She remained expressionless, her eyes fixed on the screen.

  A young girl’s body had been found stuffed into a toilet at the Cheesus H. Christmas pizza restaurant. There for her ninth birthday celebration, per the report, she was discovered missing only after the police arrived to break up a brawl inside the restaurant.

  The reporter: “The restaurant serves beer and wine to its adult customers. The police believe alcohol contributed to an argument that turned into a melee with multiple participants. The little girl’s disappearance went unnoticed until police arrived. Authorities are now reviewing interior and exterior video for leads.”

  The story, dramatic, frightening, and nearby, had them rapt. Ursula, eyeing Andy’s tight-faced interest, went for levity. “I’ve been to that restaurant,” she said. “its policy is a two-beer maximum per customer, but they don’t enforce it well. One time I saw a man passed out in the plastic ball pit with his kids.”