The Day I Died

by Lawrence Lariar

  He had worked for many years in New York and knew the management game thoroughly, coming out of a prosperous Harlem nighterie to Florida because of ill-health. He had graduated from a New York college and had an art degree. He had set out to be a professional singer and made the grade into Europe on a tour with a small jazz band. But an accident killed his voice, and with it, his ambitions for success on the stage. He had a keen interest in all things political and loved to discuss and argue with Ellen, who handled him with an affection that Coyle admired. Coyle regarded Dick Christman as an ally in the battle to set Ellen’s business affairs in order. Dick labored mightily for her. It was gratifying to Coyle that she paid no mind to the sharp-tongued townspeople who had tried to change her mind about Dick Christman because he was black. There were those who resented his easy good nature, his quick wit and his complete lack of all the humble gestures and mannerisms they had come to expect from his race. Ellen had told them all to go to hell.

  At midnight, they always sat alone at the bar. Dick mixed the rum drink that Ellen had perfected and shared a round with them.

  “This drink should be famous,” Coyle said. “What do you think, Dick?”

  “I’ve told Ellen the same, and often,” Dick said. “It’s a rare thing, a rum drink with so much appeal.”

  “Flatterers,” Ellen said.

  Coyle sipped the drink and held the glass high. “The best in the state of Florida, Ellen. I still think you should feature it in some way.”

  “Won’t that give the place sort of a barroom reputation?”

  “Anything wrong with that?”

  “Not if it gets the customers to walk in,” Dick Christman laughed. “We can use a gross of them every day, Ellen, We certainly could.”

  “It would bring them here in droves,” Coyle said. “Why don’t you do something about it?”

  “You,” said Ellen, “are the big idea man.”

  “I was thinking that you could serve a small free drink to every customer. You need new food customers, and there’s nothing like a free gift to snare fresh people. You don’t lose them once you get them, do you?”

  “I think Tom’s got something,” Dick Christman said thoughtfully. “We have steady customers, Ellen. Trouble is, we just don’t have enough of them to keep the business at a high level of operation. Our food is the best on the road, from here all the way into Miami Beach. Why don’t you experiment? Give Tom’s idea a trial.”

  “Why don’t I?” Ellen laughed.

  “Tomorrow morning,” Coyle said, “I’m going to put an ad in a few papers around here. Let’s give it a whirl, Ellen.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  They drank to it and Dick Christman closed the place and walked off toward the town. They sat on the veranda and talked about the idea. But the time came when Coyle saddened and grew moody. What was he building? Why was he struggling? He was brightening with a new and inspiring purpose. He wanted a place in the days to come, alongside Ellen. And when he thought carefully about that place, his mind went dead and black under the impact of his bargain with Masterson. Then he wanted to break away from her, out of her arms, mumbling hasty excuses. But tonight there was magic in the sky and the veranda held them and she sensed his inner discomfort and would not let him go from her too quickly.

  “You’re running away from me the way you did a few nights ago,” Ellen said. “The night you brought the boat back to the dock so fast, remember?”

  How could he ever forget? It was much the same, the mood, the hour, the atmosphere. They were drifting on the bay, the night a black and empty cave around them. But there was much warmth on the deck, because of the same kind of talk: the things he could do for her, the ways he could help her. He had caught himself them in the same fretful mood. He had realized that all promises and plans were silly and stale, that the menace of Masterson must always come to ruin his hours with her, to carry him away from her. And when he brought the boat around and headed for shore, revving the motor so that it spluttered and shouted in the stillness of the night, how could he explain that he was striving in vain to blot out the image of Masterson alongside him?

  “I was thinking that maybe I’d better prepare the ad for the papers tomorrow, Ellen,” he said.

  “Let’s talk about it now.”

  “I don’t want to keep you up too late. You’re a working gal, and I’ve taken a lot of your time,” Coyle said.

  “Maybe I like it that way.”

  “What about Doug Folger?”

  “An excellent young man,” Ellen laughed. “Shall we talk about him?”

  “He’s a good egg,” Coyle said. “He’s good for you, Ellen.”

  “Now you sound like the family doctor. I’m allergic to eggs, Tom, didn’t you know?”

  It would be easy to forget, to change; to move into happiness with her. But tonight he needed solitude again, a chance to think things through and make up his mind about the immediate future. Kissing her and walking away was not easy. Ellen wanted him. And out of their mutual longing, Coyle lingered for a little while and managed to convince her that his mood was changed. He could play-act at being the carefree lover. He was unaware that she recognized his disturbance and wanted to help him, to hold him until he could right himself, until he could talk away some of his restlessness.

  He left her, feeling a sudden lift of his depression, much of the old emptiness altered because of her. What was the hope? Coyle got into his car and drove slowly toward Miami Beach, his eyes straight ahead on the long black road, seeing nothing but the occasional bright blur of approaching headlights, his mind lost in speculation, aware of the days left to him and counting them off and finding the sum a frightening thing—down the long black road for three more weeks and then …

  CHAPTER 20

  Halfway to Miami Beach the road snaked close to the shore and rimmed the sand, so that the sound of the breakers came to Coyle as a gentle hiss and sigh, a line of wavering gray-white foam out there. He found a cutoff on hard dirt, a small indenture for parking a few cars near the ocean. He turned the convertible into the place and killed the motor and just sat there, smoking a cigarette and looking out at the sea and the stars.

  Far out on the rollers somebody piloted a small yacht into the wind and there was the sound of quick laughter, only an echo of merriment, and then the sucking and blowing of an accordion in a flutter of noise that made no sense at all. Coyle watched the boat edge off into the distances, behind a high dune that blocked the sea from his view. He closed his eyes and flipped away his cigarette. His mind relaxed. Behind him, on the long black road, an occasional car roared by, bound for Miami Beach.

  Coyle heard nothing. He was unaware of the gentle roll of tires on the dirt behind him. A door clicked shut and when Coyle moved to face the sudden sound, there were two men standing alongside his convertible, one on either side.

  “All right.” The man on his right was a black shape. “Out, Buster.”

  Against the sky, Coyle could see nothing of the man’s face, nor did the voice carry any familiar overtones.

  “Come again?” Coyle said.

  “Out,” the man said.

  Coyle felt the gun on his neck, under the line of his jaw. It only touched him. No pressure at all. No movement. But the hand that held this gun did not tremble. On the other side of the car, the other man, the shorter of the two, coughed violently and spat and then was silent. Coyle got out slowly, wondering whether this was another in the series of early morning holdups he had read about recently. He was not afraid.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “Over there,” the man said. “In that dump.”

  There was a shack on the beach, a few hundred feet away, a zany silhouette against the starlit sky, an abandoned hut that leaned at a foolish angle, as though somebody had started to push it over and then stopped and left it that way. They crossed the hard
dirt and started through the sand. Walking was difficult. The gun was prodding Coyle in the back now and he could hear the two of them breathing behind him. Coyle slowed; this kind of walking always sent the needles stabbing up and down his bad leg. The pain angered him and tightened him so that he had to stop and turn.

  And he said: “What’s the routine, boys?”

  “Keep moving,” the tall one said.

  “You’re knocking me out,” Coyle said angrily. “I can’t walk fast through sand. I’ve got a bum leg.”

  “Then crawl, why don’t you?”

  “Suppose I tell you to go to hell?”

  “Not such a good idea.” The gun was lifted now and the nose of it stabbed at Coyle’s neck, deep and hard, so that he cried out in pain. When Coyle shouted, the little one came up alongside him and showed him another gun, jabbing him in the back and chuckling in an insane way. “Do you walk nice, or do we slug you and carry you?”

  “I’ll walk,” Coyle said.

  They stumbled ahead and reached the rotted porch of the shack, the boards singing and wailing under the weight of the three of them. There was a smell of dead fish under the porch roof, rot and garbage and general neglect. The two men stood their ground and allowed Coyle a small moment for reviving himself. Coyle found that he could measure them more accurately here because they were simple silhouettes now, clearly etched against the sky. Was it important to know that one of them wore a Panama, tilted at a rakish angle? Would he be able to identify them later? He was feeling much too calm and cocky, almost looking forward to the moment when he would hand over his wallet and let them take the fifty dollars or so he had with him tonight. They would expect more, certainly. Somebody at the Carrillon must have tipped them off about him, pointing him out as a Northern bigshot, loaded with dough. They would expect a big haul, certainly, and the humor in the situation would blossom from the moment when they began to count out their meager take. Coyle, too, began to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” The big one moved in.

  “You want my wallet?” Coyle asked.

  “A big joke, man,” said the smaller one. “Tell him what we want.”

  They both moved forward on the rotted planks; the big one insisted on squeezing his gun against Coyle’s neck.

  “We want to hear you talk,” he said slowly. “About Masterson.”

  “Masterson?” Something snapped in Coyle’s mind, all the humor lost to him now. The mention of Masterson had its expected effect upon him. He found himself flattened against the wall now, his hands balled into fists, the perspiration already hot all over his chest and his forehead. “I don’t get it, boys,” he said.

  “We’ll wait. You’ll catch on after a while.”

  “But I don’t know Masterson. Who is he?”

  “You got a bad memory.” The rasping, whispering voice of the smaller man coughed it out. There was a laugh at the end of the line. “An awful bad memory, Buster.”

  “Maybe he wants us to remind him,” the tall one said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Coyle insisted.

  It was as mad as something out of the movies, the gun high up on his cheek, close to his eye, so that he could smell the metallic stench of it and the animal odor of the big man’s hands, pressing the automatic hard, so that it really hurt. He slapped at the gun in a desperate gesture, overcome by panic now, hoping for a chance to make a break. He ducked and was dropping to his knees when the big man stepped in and caught him with his hand, a hard slap that took the wind out of him. Coyle grabbed wildly, but he clutched nothing. There were two strong hands pulling him to his feet and holding him against the boards with an insane strength. And when he straightened, he was slapped again.

  “Ask him nice,” the big man said.

  “Masterson,” said the other one. “Tell us about him.”

  “Go to hell,” Coyle said.

  “A tough boy.”

  “Inside,” said the other one, jabbing Coyle with the gun again. “Let’s just step inside where I can break your lousy jaw.”

  Coyle moved forward. Inside, the tiny cabin stank of the same smell, but here the odor was almost alive. The stink set up a paroxysm of coughing from the smaller man, who hacked and rasped and spat his discomfort. The room was a pocket of ebony, a sightless void. Against the open door, the sky seemed almost pale, so light that Coyle could see the figure of the smaller man bent double as he coughed. Coyle could not see the big one. But the gun reminded him that he was close by.

  “Once more,” said the big man. “Because if you don’t start spilling, you’re going to get it for real. Either you talk or we take you for a ride, Buster. There’s a spot on Biscayne Bay where they tell me the water’s maybe a hundred feet deep. You could drop things there and nobody’d ever find them. You could wrap a live man up in a bundle and dump him in that water. Once they did it to a guy from upstate. I’ll tell you a secret—they never found that guy, not even a little piece of him.”

  Coyle suddenly pulled back and away, ducking as he stepped, knowing that there was a chance to get beyond them if he could throw the big one off balance. He had calculated his strategy on the basis of the smaller man’s battle with his coughing, still hacking and spluttering on the right side of the doorway. Coyle braced and threw himself at the figure of the short man, finding his mark and hurling his adversary against the wall, the breath exploding out of the little man. Then he was rolling on the rickety porch and somebody grabbed his legs and held him. He slid off the rotted planks and down onto the sand. He had the quick satisfaction of feeling his foot reach the big man’s groin and hearing him growl out in pain and shock. Coyle kicked him again and again. But the little one came down on Coyle and the weight of him flattened Coyle, his head down in the sand, so that his mouth filled with it and he spat out. Then the moment of darkness came when they were mauling him and dragging him back toward the shack, roughing him up and pulling at him savagely. Coyle fought hard. He was desperate now, hitting out, kicking out, reaching for them and swinging blindly. They were at the edge of the porch when the sand went suddenly bright around them. They dropped him.

  There was a car up there in the parking lot, its headlights on. They began to run, diagonally away from the shack and up toward the road. Coyle got to his knees and slipped and slid after them. He heard the dull roar of their car from up there. And then somebody was helping him to his feet.

  It was Nick Bruck …

  CHAPTER 21

  After a few minutes Coyle brushed himself off and limped back to the parking area and waited for his head to clear, smoking a cigarette and not saying a word to Bruck. Nick’s car was still humming in the background and he walked to it and shut off the ignition and sat in Coyle’s convertible. He had turned off his headlights and they were together in the gloom. Only the dashboard glowed feebly. The clock stood at 2:47.

  Coyle said: “You’re up late, Bruck. Lucky for me you’re an expert leech.”

  “A what?”

  “A tail,” Coyle said.

  “Well,” Bruck chuckled, “I get around. I kind of thought it was your car, Coyle. Yellow and all. Not many yellow convertibles around.”

  “I guess I owe you thanks,” Coyle said. “Those boys meant business. They were anxious to break my head.”

  “Jesus, what for?”

  “A good question. I didn’t recognize them, I didn’t see them at all, really. How about you?”

  “They ducked out of the lights,” Bruck said with something resembling regret. “I couldn’t get a look at them on account of I wanted to see how you were doing. You all right?”

  “I’ll survive.”

  “They take you?”

  “They weren’t interested in my money,” Coyle said.

  “That,” said Bruck, “I don’t get.”

  “They were making a survey. They were asking me funny questio
ns about Masterson.”

  There was a pause and Bruck adjusted his big body so that he could take another cigarette out of his inside pocket. He busied himself with the lighting of it and Coyle watched him in the brief flicker of the flame.

  “Now that’s a new angle,” Bruck said. “What in hell would they be doing that for, I wonder?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Me? How would I know?”

  “Just a theory,” Coyle said. “If you could identify them, maybe I’d be able to understand what it was they wanted. The big one was about your size and he wore a Panama hat. The little one was quite short and he had a voice like Gravel Gertie, a man with a bad throat. He whispered. You know him?”

  “Gravel Gertie?” Bruck’s face was no longer a simple silhouette. There was a car roaring along the highway and the headlights were strong and bathed Bruck’s face with a sudden brightness. And he was smiling.

  “There used to be a hood by the name of Luke Moran, a Chicago hood, he was. Spoke like that.”

  “Where is Moran now?”

  “He could be down here. I heard talk about it.”

  “He’d be working for somebody?”

  “Luke Moran? He could be working for anybody, anybody at all. This is a character who does stuff for a quick buck.”

  “He wouldn’t be working for Masterson?” Coyle asked.

  Bruck’s laughter rose up and swelled higher than the hiss and pounding of the surf. He found Coyle’s remark really humorous. “Luke work for Masterson?” he roared, bending double under the impact of the incongruity. “That’s a real belly laugh, Coyle.”

  “Who else?” Coyle asked angrily. “Barney Diaz?”

  “Diaz, maybe, but not Masterson.”

  “Luke Moran knows Diaz?”

  “It could be.”

  “Never mind the theories,” Coyle said tightly. “Why don’t you break down and give it to me straight, Bruck?”

  Bruck took his time reaching a decision. The light from the dashboard did revealed his big hands playing with a small gold ornament; a coin of some sort, or a button. He rolled it in his fingers, manipulating the gold piece with a monotonous rhythm, finger to finger and then around and all over again. Coyle stared at the coin until the movement stopped.