by P. N. Elrod
“That’s . . . pretty goddamned amazing,” he said. “Thought you broke your back.”
“I think I did, too.”
“And this fixed it, just like that?” He motioned toward the crate.
“Pretty much.”
“How?”
Spread my hands. “I don’t know. It works, and I’m glad it does.”
“Doesn’t that bother your eyes?”
My whites always flushed deep red after feeding. A disturbing sight. “No, they’re fine.”
Now he lighted his smoke, watching me. I still felt shaky inside, but it was more mental than physical. All the same, I walked slow as I went around the room, testing, stretching, making sure everything was indeed working. The agony in my back was gone, as though I’d never been injured at all. My flesh was knitted up, better than new. Easy to understand Gordy’s view on this; I was pretty amazed myself.
Looked at the damage behind the bar. The glass shelves were so much deadly junk. Couldn’t tell which of the shards had laid open my throat, not that I really had to know. I wanted to leave the mess for Leon to deal with, but it would be too much trouble trying to explain about the blood. Cleanup could come later, though; I had other things on my mind.
“Where’d you get this?” I asked, motioning toward the crate.
“A doctor friend. He patches people up when I ask and keeps his mouth shut about it.”
“Didn’t he wonder why you wanted all the blood?”
“He’s paid not to be curious. What now?”
I glanced at him. An unlikely friend who had just saved my life. And nearly lost his own. “Now . . . I think it’s my turn to buy you a drink.”
HE took us to my house so I could change and phone Bobbi. I made no mention of what had happened, just apologized for not being able to drive her home tonight. She commented that I sounded funny, but I told her I was in a hurry to get somewhere. I didn’t like lying to her, but it seemed the best thing to do for the time being. Tomorrow I might be able to let her in on certain dark realities, but not now. I was still dealing with them myself.
I hung up from the kitchen wall phone and went through the dining room to the parlor. Along the way I got some bottles from Escott’s liquor cabinet and a glass, taking them in to Gordy, who was using up most of the couch. He wasn’t quite as pale as before, but still seemed in need of a restorative.
“What do you favor?” I asked, putting everything on the coffee table in front of him.
“Don’t matter. A triple. Neat.”
Escott only ever stocked the good stuff, but I was sure he wouldn’t mind. I picked Scotch and poured generously. It would take a minute or five to work on Gordy; I went upstairs and peeled out of my thoroughly ruined second-best suit. A quick rinse and toweling got the blood off me. I pulled on clothes and returned to my guest.
Gordy’s color had now fully returned, along with his usual deadpan face. That was a relief to see.
“Thanks,” I said, sitting across from him.
He knew what I was talking about. “No problem. Why’d you let it happen in the first place?”
“I didn’t ‘let it,’ things rolled at me too fast. I was trying to be careful with them, not cripple or kill anyone, then they hit me with the bar. After that I couldn’t do very damn much for myself.”
“I seen you take a lot of punishment and come back for more.”
Since Gordy had been the one dishing it out, he knew what he was talking about. “Yeah, but I guess a busted back is enough to slow even me down. Not to mention a cut throat.”
“Guess so. Probably should avoid those from now on.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
He’d worked halfway through his triple and put it down. “Shivvey thinks you’re dead, y’know.”
“I know. I been mulling it over and honestly don’t believe he meant things to go that far. He wanted me roughed up, not dead.”
“You defending him?”
“No, just that I see he lost his common sense along with his temper. He was wound like a clock thinking I’d been with Rita. In his right mind he’d have known better than to risk annoying you.”
“Too late for that. Even if he’d only roughed you up, I’d have still been annoyed. I give an order in this town, it should be respected. If it ain’t respected, then I gotta do something about it.”
“But I’m dead to him, not roughed up. He knows you’d have no way of finding who’d killed me.”
“Not right away,” he admitted. “But I got a lot of sources. If you’d been scragged and stayed scragged, I’d have used ’em. Sooner or later one of ’em would have come through. One of his boys would talk. I know ’em. He picked a bunch like himself; they hire on for the money, especially Gris. Flash enough green under their noses, and I’d get all I need about what they done to you. Shivvey’d know that, and he’s gonna take off before then. Might be halfway to Havana by now.”
“Maybe not. I got a good reason for him to stay in town. You heard about the cops taking Nevis in for questioning?”
“I heard. They raided the Ace from rafters to basement tonight. Took it apart down to the carpet tacks.”
And Gordy wondered why I didn’t want gambling at Lady Crymsyn. “I thought it’d just been closed.”
“Closed but busted apart. It’ll take weeks for Nevis to put it back together. Maybe never if the DA pins your Jane Poe murder on him.”
“Okay,” I said. “Try this on: Shivvey’s boss is busy with the cops, so he uses it as a legitimate excuse to pay his goons to get lost indefinitely. Nothing for them to do with the club closed, after all. Besides, they’ll want to get away after what they think they did to me tonight. They know you’ll be sore with them. Once his boys have disappeared, he won’t have to worry about you questioning or bribing them to talk. He’s gonna feel pretty safe since there’s not much to connect me to him so far as you’d be concerned.”
“He’d be stupid to stay.”
“His coming to my club in the first place was stupid. Anyway, he’s got a reason.”
“Which is?”
“I think Shivvey’s got his eye on running the Ace himself. During our talk I hit home on him with that one. With Nevis out of his way, the Ace is up for grabs. Even busted apart, he can fix it back quick enough to being a hell of a moneymaker.”
Gordy digested that one with a frown. “He might just try it.”
“You’ve met him, haven’t you? Does he strike you as being a shark when the odds are in his favor?”
Gordy nodded.
“So where will Shivvey be tonight? He’ll have thought all this through by now and be moving his men out already. My guess is they’ll be eager to go.”
“Gimme a minute. I’ll make some calls.” He heaved off the couch and went to the kitchen.
I resisted the urge to follow. There was no need, anyway, since I could hear him well enough. I leaned wearily back in my overstuffed chair, put my feet on the coffee table, and wished I could finish off the drink he’d left.
The blood I’d taken in had saved my life, healing everything, but though it could give me the same kind of initial jolt as the Scotch, the soporific aftermath wasn’t there. At times like this, while the tremors of a narrowly missed mortality were still quivering under my skin, I really regretted not being able to get thoroughly crocked to the gills.
Gordy returned and resumed his seat, resumed sipping from his glass. “Nothing on Shivvey, but I found Gris. Think you can sweat him to find the others?”
I briefly showed my teeth. “Watch me.”
HE drove us to a small men-only hotel leaning close enough to some railroad tracks to punch passenger tickets for the slower trains. Gris lived here when he wasn’t beating up bartenders for fun and vampires for a living. We didn’t bother trying the hotel but took stairs down to the pool hall in the basement. According to Gordy’s source, the manager of the joint, Gris was packed and waiting there for a ride.
You could swim in the thick
air with its sweat stink, stale beer, and staler smoke. The lighting was bad except for the shaded bulbs hung above the tables. They illumined only the stained green felt, making the rest of the room all the more shadowed. I could see well enough, but Gordy would be hampered. What I saw wasn’t encouraging: a lot of tough mugs with nothing better to do with themselves but give us a hostile eyeballing. Some shot a quick sly glance and looked away; others seemed on the edge of throwing a challenge, and the rest didn’t give a damn.
Gordy was big enough not to have to worry about collecting trouble. He was also not unknown. I saw recognition for him in a few faces, and the news traveled around the room in the time it took for us to cross to the bar. Every man in the joint was a mind reader when it came to survival. A few stared hard at me. I was in dockyard clothes with my collar high, a cloth hat pulled low, and dark glasses: anonymous muscle for Gordy.
He stepped up to the bar and muttered at the man there, who muttered a reply. Gordy trundled toward the back with me following.
A drunk too far gone to know better put himself in front of me. “Hey, four-eyes, think yer some kinda movie star? Why’nt you—”
I threw a backhand into his belly, my version of a gentle swat. While he was doubled over gasping, I added a push that staggered him into four other guys standing by a table. None of them liked it much, but all declined to make an issue of it. Hard to tell if it was because they knew Gordy or if they could see I was in a bone-crunching mood. Didn’t matter to me. I continued on in his wake, not breaking stride.
He went through a door. Storeroom, no frills. Another door. Another room. Boxes, a card table, mismatched chairs, bad light, two suitcases, and a highly startled Gris just rising from one of the chairs.
“Gordy? Lissen, I don’t want no—JesusGod!”
This last was aimed in my direction. Gordy had moved aside, and I’d stepped in, taking off the glasses. While I don’t enjoy scaring people, for Gris I could make an exception. He was flat-footed only an instant, though. In the next he’d drawn his gun, but I was on him by then and wrested it away, handing it off to Gordy.
Gris didn’t bother to pause for more astonishment. A fight to him was as natural as breathing, so he laid into me. It didn’t last long. I put a fist just under his breastbone, driving out all the air, then hauled him around, slamming him facedown over the table. End of discussion.
I gave him a moment so he could remember how to breathe again, then bent his arms up and put on a light pressure. He grunted. More pressure and he cried out. If I went far enough, he’d have double dislocations. I held him just on the edge of disaster and let him think about it, then leaned close to his ear.
“You hear me, you piece of shit?” I asked.
“Y-yuh.”
“You understand what I can do to you?”
“Uhn.” An affirmative tone.
“You know why I’m here?”
“Uhn.”
“Then you start talking. Don’t leave anything out, or I’ll knot you like a pretzel.”
“Bu-uhh . . .”
“No buts. You’re not getting paid enough to go through this. Am I right?”
He made a sort of groaning sound of resignation. Exactly what I wanted.
The next five minutes were highly informative.
Gris was waiting for a ride to the train station, where he would board the first one heading out to Atlanta. Shivvey Coker was fixing up a job for him somewhere in Florida, muscle at a betting parlor. Same thing for the other men who had participated in my—well, I couldn’t call it murder since the attempt thankfully failed. They were to stay clear of Chicago until Coker told them it was safe, then return if they felt like it.
“He’s not worried you’ll talk?” I asked.
“We talk and we hang ourselves,” Gris pointed out, somewhat thin of voice. He was in a lot of pain. I made sure of that. “But you’re all right. How can—I saw you—how come you’re—”
“Never mind. Where are the others?”
“But—”
“Any of them worth you losing an arm over?” I twisted the limb in question.
Apparently not, to judge by the squeal he made.
He gave up their names and location without more fuss. Coker was going to find them a car, provide a bonus of traveling money, and they weren’t to stop until they reached Miami. Gris would have gone with them but opted to buy a seat on the train, thinking it would be faster and more comfortable.
When we had everything from him that mattered, I released my hold and pulled him from the table. A spin and shove, and he fell into one of the chairs. He seemed a lot smaller now than when we’d come in. He was a lot more scared.
Gordy, who was better at looming than anyone else I knew, did just that, his big shadow covering Gris. I crouched to be eye level with him.
“You know who that is?” I asked, pointing up at Gordy.
Mute, Gris nodded, rubbing one shoulder.
“You know who I am?”
Nod.
“You ever see either of us again, you are dead. You ever talk about this or what happened at my club tonight, you are dead. You know the kind of connections he’s got?”
Nod.
“You say a word, you even think a word about tonight, and he will find out, and then I will find you. When I do, I will finish ripping your arms off and ram them down your throat. You got that clear?”
Nod. He was definitely on my side for this. But I couldn’t trust him to stay there. Not without a little help.
“YOU really enjoyed that,” Gordy commented as he drove us away from the hotel.
“The last part gave me a headache.” I had enjoyed it. Maybe too much. The scent of Gris’s fear had been sweet.
“And he ain’t coming back ever?”
“Probably not. My evil-eye whammy will eventually wear off, but it lasts longer when it goes along with the normal wishes of the person I talk to. That’s why I made a point of first scaring the hell out of him before putting him under.”
“Looked more like you were disjointing him.”
“Logic and reason never work as well as direct pain when it comes to certain kinds of persuasion.”
“You shoulda killed him. Just to be sure.”
“You could be right.”
“I know I am. He helped kill you. Almost. If you weren’t the way you are, that would have been it.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“Suppose he gets too rough with some poor schmuck who can’t bounce back like you did?”
Gordy had hit a big weak spot in my admittedly flexible principles. “I’ve got no answer for that. I just know I can’t make him the poor schmuck that I get too rough with. Done that before. Don’t like it much.”
He gave a small shrug. “To each his own. You gonna do the same with these other guys?”
“Yeah. Have to be one at a time. Need you to cover them while I’m busy.”
“No problem. But just to let you know . . . any of’em gets outta line . . .” He opened his hand palm-up in a throwing-away gesture. “That’s all she wrote.”
“Just like that?”
“I’m a patient man,” he said. “But I am not patient with disrespecters. What Shivvey and his mugs did to you was disrespectful to us both. To you because it was uncalled for, to me because he knew better.”
I could see where this was leading for Coker, and it would likely involve a long walk and a short pier. Not that I harbored any friendship for him, but I wasn’t easy about anyone getting rubbed out just for being stupid.
On the other hand, I could have honest-to-God died tonight. No second chances.
I gave a small shrug. “To each his own, then.”
He grunted. It worried me that there was a decided tone of approval in it.
OUR destination was a closed barbershop. The block it was in must have been built right after the big fire, having the look of haste and cheap materials. For the first decade it might have been inoffensive, but five more put it long
past the point of decay and in need of a decent burial. The darkened shop was squashed into the middle, an afterthought with a crooked pole and a cracked front window. Gris’s friends were waiting there for Coker to come by with a car. With any luck, I could take care of them, then bushwhack Coker when he walked in.
That is, if he hadn’t already been and gone.
I tried the door just enough to determine it to be unlocked. Good, they hadn’t left yet.
“There’s a bell inside,” I told Gordy, “Lemme go first.”
He stood back to give me space, but I didn’t need any; I just vanished and slipped in under the threshold. He said something that didn’t sound too happy. Well, I had warned him.
Within, I went solid and listened. All was quiet. Maybe they were to be found in a basement like Gris. I lifted the bell out of the way. Gordy came in and shut the door softly behind him. He threw me a questioning look, touched a hand to his ear. I shook my head.
By common consent, since I was more bulletproof, I led the way toward the back. Gordy nearly missed a step, staring as I passed a mirror. Jeez, he should have been used to that by now. The joint was cramped: a simple one-chair operation and none too clean. Unswept hair skittered underfoot, and the air smelled of bay rum, mint, wax, and old cigar smoke. All was quiet. No sign of Gris’s friends. If he’d steered us wrong, I’d go back and finish the pretzel job I’d begun on his arms.
The door at the rear was partway open, and light showed through. Again, I went first. A dim, dusty room, with furnishings. I went in and stopped. Took an involuntary breath and picked up the bloodsmell along with the stink of cordite and, oddly, burned meat.
“Not good,” said Gordy, looking over my shoulder.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “I guess Shivvey wanted to save himself some travel expenses.”
Two men had guns in their hands. I pointed; he nodded.
“Cops are supposed to think the game went bad and they shot each other,” he said.
“That won’t hold.”
“You’d be surprised what’ll hold in this town. Let’s go. Wipe down anything you touched.” He already had a white silk handkerchief in his mitt and was moving out.
