Black Cherry Blues

by James Lee Burke

  I returned to the kitchen and thought I heard somebody between the houses again. I looked out the screen door, but the backyard was empty and the repairman was nowhere in sight. Then two doves settled on the telephone wire, and I glanced at the pole for the first time. The lowest iron climbing spikes were set in the wood some fifteen feet above the ground so children could not get up on the pole.

  That’s it, I thought. He didn’t have climbing spurs strapped onto his boots and ankles, and he didn’t wear a safety belt. I went back into the hallway and picked up the telephone receiver. It was dead.

  I took the .45 out of the drawer of the nightstand next to my bed. It felt cold and heavy in my hand. I pulled back the receiver, eased a hollow-point round into the chamber, and reset the hammer. It was quiet outside, and the bushes next to the bedroom windows made deep shadows on the screens. I went to the front door just as the handbill carrier was stepping up on the porch. I stuck the .45 inside the back of my trousers and went outside.

  “Listen, go to the little grocery on the corner, dial the operator, and ask for the police,” I said. “All you have to say is ‘Assault in progress at 778 Front Street.’ Can you do that for me, podna?”

  “What?” He was middle-aged, but his stiff, straw-colored hair sticking out from under his cap and his clear blue eyes gave him a childlike appearance.

  “I’ve got some trouble here. I need some help. I’ll give you five dollars after the cops get here. Look, just tell the operator you need the cops out here and give them this number—” I pointed to the tin numerals on the screen door. Then I took out my pocketknife, pried the set of attached numbers loose from the wood, and handed it to him. “Just read the numbers into the phone. Seven-seventy-eight Front Street. Then say ‘Emergency.’ Okay, podna?”

  “What’s going on?” His face looked confused and frightened.

  “I’ll fill you in later.”

  “Just dial O?” A drop of sweat ran out of his cloth cap.

  “You got it.”

  He started off the porch, the heavy canvas sacks swinging from his sides.

  “Leave your sacks here. Okay?” I said.

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll be right back with the cops.”

  He headed down the street, the metal house numbers in his hand. I watched him go inside the little yellow-brick grocery store on the corner, then I headed around the side of the house, through the shrubs and shadows toward the backyard. I could see my telephone box, partly obscured by hedge under the bathroom window, and I was sure that the wires on it had been cut; but before I could look I saw the repairman walk across the sunny lawn toward my back door.

  I moved quickly up to the edge of the house, the .45 in my right hand. I could feel the moisture in my palm against the thin slick of oil on the metal. The wind was cool between the houses and smelled of damp earth and old brick. The repairman pushed his yellow hard hat up on his forehead, rested his hand on the leather pouch of his tool bag, and started to knock on the screen door. Surprise time, motherfucker, I thought, cocked the .45, stepped out into the yard, and pointed it at him with both hands.

  “Right there! Hands behind your head, down on your knees!” I shouted.

  “What?” His face went white with shock. He stared incredulously at the automatic.

  “Do it! Now!”

  I saw his right hand flutter on his tool pouch.

  “You’re an inch from the next world, bubba,” I said.

  “All right, man! What the hell is this? All right! All right! I’m not arguing.” He knelt on the wood steps and laced his fingers behind his neck. His hard hat slipped down over his eyes. His arms looked thick and red in the sunlight, and I could see the taut whiteness of his chest where the sleeves of his denim shirt were cut off. He was breathing loudly.

  “You got me mixed up with somebody else,” he said.

  “Where’s your truck?”

  “Down the street. In the fucking alley.”

  “Because you’re shy about parking it on the street. With your left hand unstrap your tool belt, let it drop, then put your hand behind your head again.”

  “Look, call my company. You got the wrong guy.”

  “Take off the belt.”

  His hand worked the buckle loose, and the heavy pouch clattered to the step. I rattled the tools loose out on the concrete pad—pliers, blade and Phillips screwdrivers, wire cutters, an ice pick with a small cork on the tip. I held the ice pick up to the corner of his vision.

  “You want to explain this?” I asked.

  “Wasps build nests inside the boxes sometimes. I use it to clean out the corners.”

  “Drop your wallet behind you.”

  His fingers went into his back pocket, jerked the wallet loose, and let it fall. I squatted down, the .45 pointed at the center of his back, picked up the wallet, moved back on the grass, and shook everything out. The back of his neck was red and hot-looking in the bright air, and his shirt was peppered with sweat marks. I fingered through the dollar bills, ID cards, photographs, and scraps of paper at my feet, and gradually became more and more uncomfortable. He had a Montana driver’s license with his picture on it, a social security card with the same name on it, a local Elks membership card, and two tickets to a U.S. West Communications employees dance.

  I let out my breath.

  “Where did you say your truck was?” I asked.

  “Down the alley.”

  “Let’s take a look,” I said, getting to my feet. “No, you walk ahead of me.”

  He stayed in front of me, as I had told him, but by this time I had eased down the hammer on the .45 and had let it hang loose at my side. We walked past the garage into the alley. Parked at the end of the alley, hard against somebody’s toolshed in the shade of a maple tree, was his company truck. I stuck the pistol in my back pocket. His face was livid with anger, and he closed and unclosed his fists at his sides.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “You’re sorry? You sonofabitch, I ought to knock your fucking teeth down your throat.”

  “You got a right to. You probably won’t understand this, but somebody is trying to do me and maybe a little girl a lot of harm. I thought you were that guy.”

  “Yeah? Well, you ought to call the cops, then. I tell you, buddy, I feel like ripping your ass.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  “That’s all you got to say? You don’t blame me?”

  “You want a free shot?”

  There was an intense, measured look in his eye. Then the moment passed. He pointed his finger at me.

  “You can tell the cops about it. They’ll be out to see you. I guarantee it,” he said. Then he walked to the back steps, put his tools back in his leather pouch, and replaced all the articles in his wallet. He didn’t bother to look at me as he recrossed the lawn toward the alley and his parked truck. My face felt round and tight in the wind.

  Two uniformed cops were there ten minutes later. I didn’t try to explain my troubles with Sally Dio; instead, I simply told them that I was an ex–police officer, that the DEA had warned me that an attempt might be made on my life, that they could call Dan Nygurski in Great Falls to confirm my story, and that I had made a serious mistake for which I wanted to apologize. They were irritated and even vaguely contemptuous, but the telephone man had not filed charges against me, he had only phoned in a report, and I knew that it wasn’t going anywhere and that all I had to do was avoid provoking them.

  “I just didn’t act very smart. I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Where is the gun?” the older of the two cops said. He was big and bareheaded and wore pilot’s sunglasses.

  “In the house.”

  “I suggest you leave it there. I also suggest you call us the next time you think somebody’s trying to hurt you.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll do that. Actually I tried. Didn’t the handbill man call you all?”

  “The what?”

  “A guy who puts handbills on front doors. I sent him to the grocery
to call you when I thought my line was cut.” I realized that I was getting back into the story again when I should let it drop.

  “I don’t know anything about it. Believe me, I hope I don’t hear any more reports from this address. Are we fairly straight on that?”

  “Yes, sir, you’re quite clear.”

  They left, and I tried to reorder my morning. When the squad car had pulled up out front, some of the neighbors had come out on the porches. I determined that I was not going to be a curiosity who would hide in his house, so I put on my running shorts and an old pair of boat shoes and began pulling weeds in the front flower bed. The sun was warm on my back, and the clover among the rye grass in the yard was full of small bees. The willow trees out on the river were bent in the breeze. After a few minutes a man’s shadow fell across my face and shoulders.

  “The phone was broke. I had to go up on Broadway,” the man said. His clear blue eyes looked down at me from under his cap.

  “Oh, yeah, how you doing?” I said. “Look, I’m sorry to send you running off like that. It was sort of a misfire.”

  “I saw the cops leave from the corner. So I had me a soda. Everything worked out all right, huh?”

  “Yeah, and I owe, you five bucks. Right?”

  “Well, that’s what you said. But you don’t have to, though. It was three blocks before I found a phone.”

  “A deal’s a deal, partner. Come inside. I’ll get my wallet.”

  I opened the screen and walked ahead of him. He caught the screen with his elbow rather than his hand when he came in.

  “Could I have a glass of water?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  We went into the kitchen, and as I took a jelly glass out of the cabinet I saw him slip both hands into his back pockets and smile. I filled the glass from the tap and thought how his smile reminded me of lips painted on an Easter egg. He was still smiling when I turned around and he raised the slapjack and came across my forehead with it. It was black and flat and weighted at the end with lead, and I felt it knock into bone and rake across my eye and nose, then I was falling free into a red-black place deep under the basement floor, with a jelly glass that tumbled in slow motion beside me.

  I woke as though I were rising from a dark, wet bubble into light, except my arms were locked behind my head, I couldn’t breathe or cry out, and I was drowning. Water cascaded over my face and ran down my nostrils and over the adhesive tape clamped across my mouth. I gagged and choked down in my throat and fought to get air into my lungs and felt the handcuffs bite into my wrists and the chain clank against the drainpipe under the sink. Then I saw the handbill man squatting on his haunches next to me, an empty iced tea pitcher in his hand, a curious expression on his face as though he were watching an animal at the zoo. His eyes were sky blue and laced with tiny threads of white light. He wadded up a ball of paper towels in his hand and blotted my face dry, then widened my eyes with his fingers as an ophthalmologist might. By his foot was one of his handbill sacks.

  “You’re doing all right. Rest easy and I’ll explain the gig to you,” he said. He took an Instamatic camera from his bag, focused on my face and the upper half of my body, his mouth askew with concentration, and flashed it twice in my eyes. My head throbbed. He dropped the camera back in his bag.

  “I got to take a piss. I’ll be right back,” he said.

  I heard him urinate loudly in the toilet. He flushed it, then walked back into the kitchen and knelt beside me.

  “The guy wants before-after shots,” he said. “So I give him before-after shots. He’s paying for it, right? But that don’t mean I have to do everything else he wants. It’s still my gig. Hell, it’s both our gig. I don’t think you’re a bad dude, you just got in the wrong guy’s face. So I’m going to cut you all the slack I can.”

  He looked steadily into my face. His eyes were vacuous, as clear and devoid of meaning as light itself.

  “You don’t understand, do you?” he asked. “Look, you piss a guy off bad, you make him look like shit in front of people, you keep turning dials on him, you show him up a punk in front of his gash so they ain’t interested in his Dream-sicle anymore, he’s going to stay up nights thinking about you.”

  His eyes were serene, almost kind, as though it had all been explained in a way that should be acceptable to even the most obtuse.

  “You’re a little thick, aren’t you?” he said. “Look, you’re supposed to go in pieces, left lung, then cock in the mouth. But I say fuck that. At least not while the guy knows it. Nobody tells me how to do my work, man. Hey, this maybe isn’t much comfort to you, but it could be a lot worse. Believe me.”

  He put his left palm flat on my chest, almost as if he were reassuring or comforting me or feeling for my heartbeat as a lover might, and reached behind him into the canvas sack with his right hand. The knife was a foreign imitation of the Marine Corps K-Bar, with a stainless steel blade, sawteeth on the top, a black aluminum handle with a bubble compass inserted in the butt. I remembered seeing them advertised for six dollars in the Times-Picayune Sunday magazine.

  The back door was shut, the yellow linoleum floor glistened with sunlight from the window, water ran from my hair and drenched shirt like ants on my skin, my own breathing sounded like air being forced through sand. His hand moved down my sternum over my stomach, toward my loins, and he shifted his weight on his knees, cupped the knife palm up in his right hand, and moved his eyes slowly over my face. I clanged the handcuff chain against the drainpipe, tried to twist away from him, then jerked my knees up in front of my stomach as a child might, my voice strangling in my throat.

  He took his hand away from my body and looked at me patiently.

  “Come on, man. Trust me on this one,” he said.

  A shadow went across the glass window in the back door, then the handle turned and Clete came through the door as though he were bursting through barrel slats, flinging the door back against the wall, knocking a chair across the linoleum, his .38 revolver aimed straight out at the handbill man’s face. He looked ridiculous in his old red and white Budweiser shorts, T-shirt, blue windbreaker, crushed porkpie hat, loafers without socks, and nylon shoulder holster twisted across one nipple.

  “What’s happening, Charlie?” he said, his face electric with anticipation. “Throw away the shank or I blow your shit all over Streak’s wallpaper.”

  The handbill man’s vacuous blue eyes never changed expression. The white threads of light in them were as bright as if some wonderful promise were at hand. He set the knife on the floor and grinned at nothing, resting comfortably on one knee, his right forearm draped across his thigh.

  “Charlie almost got away from me,” Clete said. “Sal told me he took his rental back to Missoula and caught a flight last night. Except Charlie’s been getting some nook up on the lake and his punch told me she’s supposed to meet him at the airport tonight. I thought you were a pro, Charlie. You ought to keep your hammer in your pants when you’re working. Roll over on your stomach and put your hands behind your neck.”

  Clete knelt behind him and shook him down, patting his pockets, feeling inside his thighs.

  “Where’s the key to the cuffs?” Clete said.

  The handbill man’s face was flat against the floor, pointed at me. His eyes were bright with light.

  “Hey, you got problems with your hearing?” Clete said, and kicked him with the point of his loafer in the rib cage.

  Still, the handbill man didn’t say anything. His breath went out of his lungs, and he breathed with his mouth open like a fish out of water. Clete started to kick him again, then his eyes went to the top of the kitchen table. He slid the knife across the linoleum with his foot and picked up the handcuff key from the table. He knelt beside me and unlocked one of my wrists. I started to raise up, but before I could he snapped the loose cuff around the drainpipe.

  “Sorry, Streak, not just yet,” he said. “Get the tape off your mouth and dangle loose a minute while we talk to Charlie here.” He
picked up the canvas sack by the bottom and shook it out on the floor. The Instamatic, a roll of pipe tape, and a .22 revolver clattered on the linoleum among the scatter of handbills. “Sal wanted some pictures for his scrapbook, huh? And it looks like we got a Ruger with a magnum cylinder. Streak, we’re looking at your genuine, all-American psychopath here. I got a friend at Vegas PD to pull Charlie’s sheet for me.”

  I had the tape worked loose from my mouth now. I sat up as best I could under the lip of the sink and pinched the skin around my mouth. It was stiff and dead to the touch. I could feel a swollen ridge through my hairline and down my forehead.

  “What are you doing, Clete?” I said. My words sounded strange and outside of myself.

  “Meet Charlie Dodds. Vegas says he’s been tied to five syndicate hits they know about, and maybe he iced a guy on the yard at Quentin. His finest hour was whacking out a federal witness, though. The guy’s fourteen-year-old daughter walked in on it, so Charlie took her out, too.”

  “Give me the key,” I said.

  “Be mellow, Dave.” He had put the .22 in one of the big pockets of his Budweiser shorts. He started to lean over the man on the floor.

  “Call the locals, Clete.”

  He straightened up and looked at me as he would at a lunatic.

  “You think you or I can keep this guy in jail? What’s the matter with you?” he said. “He’d be out on bond in three hours, even if these hicks would file charges. No matter how you cut it, he’d be back doing lines with the cornholers before the five o’clock news. I’ll tell you something else, too, Dave. The mortician told me a tear was sealed inside Darlene’s eye, he couldn’t clean it out. You know what she must have gone through before she died?”

  His jaw flexed, the skin of his face tightened, the scar that ran through his eyebrow and across his nose reddened, and he kicked the man on the floor hard in the rectum. He kicked him in the same place again, then leaned over him and whipped the barrel of the .38 across the back of his head. Then he said “Fuck” as though an insatiable rage had released itself in him, put his revolver in his other deep pocket, hoisted the man to his feet by his belt, as if he were made of rags and sticks, threw him against the wall and drove his huge fist into his face.