In a Spider's Web -- a Jimmy Soldier Riley short story (Soldier Mysteries)

by Michael Lister

  A perky brunette in a blue polka-dotted dress plopped down on the stool next to me.

  “What’ll you have?” the bartender asked her.

  “Gin Collins,” she said.

  As he moved off to fix her drink, she pulled a pack of Lucky Strikes out of her small purse, placed one between her lips, and leaned toward me.

  I dug in my pocket with my left hand, came out with my Zippo, reached across myself, and lit her cigarette.

  She tried to avoid my entire right side, but continually glanced down at my folded coat sleeve, as if expecting the arm to grow back at any moment.

  When the bartender put her drink down in front of her, he looked at me. I nodded, and he walked away.

  The girl took a sip of her drink, then turned toward me.

  “I’m Betty,” she said.

  “I’m not interested,” I said.

  She huffed, then stormed away, taking her drink with her, and I noticed that the music coming from the jukebox had changed from dance tunes to sad, slow songs. I looked into the mirror and between the caramel-colored whiskey bottles saw Lauren—why do I keep doing that?—I mean Angel, leaning on the Wurlitzer, feeding coins in and pressing buttons.

  Over her left shoulder in the back room, only one of the men shooting pool remained, a short, compact, middle-aged man made mostly of muscle with jet black hair, and it was obvious he and Wainwright were having words—no doubt over Angel.

  As the exchange grew more heated, I turned around on my stool to watch.

  Wainwright shoved the small, middle-aged man backward and he fell into Angel and the jukebox. When he righted himself, he came up with a small revolver.

  Angel screamed.

  Wainwright ran.

  I jumped off my stool and headed in their direction.

  As Wainwright ran toward the door, the dancers ducking and scattering, the compact man took aim, but just before he fired, Angel hit his arm and the stray round hit the mirror behind the bar.

  Forgetting Wainwright, the middle-aged gunsel turned his attention toward Angel. As he raised his arm to backhand her, I grabbed him by the wrist with the only hand I had, spun him toward me, let go of his wrist, and punched him in the face. As he reached to cover his bleeding nose, I grabbed the gun and, holding it by the barrel, began to pistol whip him with it.

  Far more rage than was warranted by the situation spewed out of me, and before long his face was bleeding profusely from cuts and tears in his skin.

  Before I lost my arm I was right-handed, and as hard as I had worked at it, using my left still felt awkward and unnatural. I doubted I was doing as much damage to the small man’s face as I appeared to be.

  “Stop it,” Angel yelled. “You’re gonna kill him.”

  She grabbed my arm and I raised the gun to strike her, before I realized what I was doing and stopped myself.

  While my attention was on her, the small man, hands covering his face, ran out of the bar.

  “You okay, soldier?” Angel asked.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Sure,” she said, nodding toward the gun. “Put that away and let me buy you a drink.”

  I dropped the blood-spattered revolver into my coat pocket and stumbled over to the bar, the few remaining patrons applauding as I did.

  The bartender placed a shot of whiskey in front of me and I knocked it back fast, and then another.

  “You saved my life,” Angel said.

  I laughed. “Now don’t get carried away.”

  “Well, at least prolonged it a little. You can’t do what I did to him and live to tell about it. That’s just the way Mickey is. He’s got more pride than—

  “That was Mickey Adams?” I asked. “Your husband?”

  “Yeah. Well, until tonight, I guess. Now you’re stuck with me—at least until Mickey kills us.”

  As I turned back toward the bar in search of another shot or six of whiskey, my insides turned to ice as I saw myself and Angel in the center of the fracture the bullet made in the mirror, which, with its network of tiny, jagged fissures, looked amazingly like a spider’s web.

  I had a room at the Cove Hotel at Wilson Avenue and Cherry Street. It was a two-story Spanish-style hotel, surrounded by an Edenic landscaping of trees and flowers, with a dock and dive platform out in the bay. My room, which I could not have afforded otherwise, was part of my pay for being house detective.

  I was able to get Angel a room for the night, but neither of us were ready for bed—too much booze and adrenaline in our veins—so we strolled the walking path around the hotel.

  “I’m sorry I got you mixed up in this,” she said. “I wish you’d’ve let him hit me.”

  “He had a gun,” I said.

  “I don’t think he would have shot me.”

  “What’re you doing with a guy like Mickey?”

  “It’s a long, sad story of youthful stupidity. I was a kid. He was charming. I didn’t see the real Mickey for many years. By then it was too late. You don’t leave a man like Mickey.”

  The path was illuminated by small lights inside metal and glass housings. We were the only ones using it. Flood lamps lit the underside of pine, magnolia, and oak trees, a breeze blowing in off the bay gently swaying the Spanish moss draped over their branches.

  “Tell me your story, soldier.”

  I shook my head. “It’s like a million others. Not worth hearing.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I already know it. A woman who’s willing to look can tell a lot about a man.”

  “I don’t think I want to hear any opinions you’ve already formed about me.”

  “Well you should, soldier. ’Cause they’re mostly good.”

  “I told you not to call me that.”

  “But that’s what you are,” she said. “I know you didn’t fight in the war, but it shouldn’t bother you when people assume you did. You’re a good, decent man.”

  “Maybe compared to Mickey.”

  Though the dive platform was dark, I could make out two figures pressing against each other on the end of the dock. With all the rooms readily available, I wondered why the couple was hiding out here. Were they having an affair? Was the girl underage, the man a Negro or a Jew?

  “You’re also woman-haunted,” she said.

  “Actually,” I said, “I’m impervious to women.”

  She laughed. “Maybe to all but one.”

  For a moment I thought she meant herself.

  “Who’s Lauren?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “You’ve called me Lauren three times tonight.”

  “I have? Sorry. Just a girl you remind me of.”

  “Well, if you ever want to see her again, do me a favor and leave town. I’ll sort things out with Mickey.”

  “I thought you said he’d kill you.”

  “This isn’t your fight,” she said.

  “The hell it ain’t,” I said.

  She shook her head, her eyes intently focused on me. “See? I told you. You are a soldier.”

  “I need to meet with your client,” I said.

  I was having breakfast the next morning with Truman Weller at the Lighthouse Café after calling the number on the card he gave me and asking him to meet me.

  “I’m afraid that’s quite impossible, sir,” he said. “He’ll kill you on sight.”

  “Not if you explain the misunderstanding and tell him I need to talk to him.”

  “Out of the question,” he said, with the wave of his fat hand and the shake of his huge head.

  “Why’s that?”

  “I warned you, sir,” he said. “I did. I told you what sort of man you were dealing with.”

  “Yeah, you just failed to mention that Mrs. Adams was meeting him last night or what he looked like.”

  “You had but to ask for any information you needed to do your job,” he said.

  I nodded. He was right. It was my fault, an amateur mistake, and I had to fix it before Ray got back to town—and make s
ure he never knew anything about it. Wanting the case the way I did, I had lied to Mickey’s attorney. I knew when Ray would be back, and it was a lot sooner than I led him to believe. Ray would return that night.

  “I should’ve asked you,” I said. “I was so anxious to take the case, I acted like a sap.”

  The Lighthouse Café was located on the lower end of Harrison, and looked like a large milk bottle. It was midmorning. Everyone with real jobs had eaten several hours earlier and rushed off to work. The place was now filled with well-to-do women, too old or too well-to-do to help with the war effort, some business men in seersucker suits, and a few out of work men with no place to go, who sat nursing seemingly bottomless cups of coffee.

  “Sir, I am facing the very real possibility that Mickey will blame the incident on me,” he said. “If he does, I will lose far more than my only client.”

  Before Weller on the table was a series of empty plates of varying sizes. In the time I had one cup of coffee, he had two full breakfasts, wiping the plates clean with slices of toast before eating them.

  “What do you suggest I do?” I asked.

  He leaned in, lowered his voice, and said, “Be prepared. Carry a gun. You know what’s coming. Your only chance is to be ready.”

  “You’re advising me to kill your client?”

  His eyes widened as if caught in an embarrassing act. He shook his head. “But if you mean to keep the girl.”

  “Keep her?”

  “Protect her,” he said. “Keep her safe.”

  That’s not what he had meant, and I knew it. Maybe it was his fear of Mickey, but he seemed to be unraveling.

  “To be candid, sir, I like you,” he said. “And I adore Mrs. Adams. I must also admit that our interests are quite aligned in this matter. I’m speaking out of fear as much as anything else.”

  Over Weller’s large hump of a right shoulder, I watched as Mickey Adams walked in with Coleman Burke and sat at a table near the door. Mickey’s face was bruised and puffy with a few cuts, but I hadn’t done nearly the damage I thought I had.

  I slid my chair to the right and ducked down a little so that Weller’s mass would shield me from Mickey’s view.

  “What is it?”

  “Sit very still,” I said. “Mickey just walked in with Coleman Burke.”

  His eyes grew wide and panic filled the suddenly pale and perspiring skin of his fleshy face. “Who is Coleman Burke?”

  “You don’t know?” I asked.

  He shook his head, his jowls flapping beneath his chin like the loose skin of a Bordeaux bulldog.

  I looked back over at Burke. He was a small, thin man with a boyish face who always wore a trench coat and nearly never showed emotion.

  “Hired gun,” I said. “Most expensive this side of Miami—and well worth it. He’s never been around when you were meeting with your client?”

  He gave me the shake again.

  We were silent a moment, and I could see large beads of sweat popping out above his lip and on his forehead. As if too afraid to move, he didn’t withdraw his silk handkerchief and dab at the perspiration.

  “Do you have a gun?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  The slightest sense of relief lighted on his face.

  “Just wish I had it with me,” I said.

  Alarm filled his face again. “What are you going to do?”

  “Go over and talk to him,” I said. “Will you make the introductions?”

  Again, the shake of his head, the swinging of his jowls.

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t, sir,” he said. “I wish I could, but I can’t. I’m truly sorry. Best of luck to you.”

  Grabbing his cane and pushing himself up with it and the table, he turned as quickly as was possible for him and walked toward the front door, leaving behind his hat and the check.

  As he walked by, Mickey looked up at him, his face showing nothing. Neither man spoke, and Weller didn’t even look in Mickey’s direction. As if just casually observing a man mildly interesting because of his elephantine size, Mickey quickly returned his attention to his menu.

  After dropping a little of Mickey’s retainer on the table, I headed over toward him, Burke spotting me before I was even a few feet away from my table. Turning toward me in his seat for a better angle, he slipped his hand inside his coat pocket, and I could see the barrel of a gun pressing against the fabric.

  I raised my hands as I approached the table. Burke looked at Mickey. Mickey shook his head.

  Burke nodded, but continued to point the gun at me from within his coat pocket.

  “Burke,” I said, nodding to him.

  “Jimmy,” he said, and nodded back.

  “Where’s my wife?” Mickey asked when I reached the table.

  “Somewhere safe,” I said.

  He shook his head. “No such place,” he said, adding as if an afterthought, “for either of you.”

  I looked at Burke. “You know if anything happens to me, Ray’s gonna square it.”

  He tried to shrug, but he had tensed up at the mention of Ray’s name, and couldn’t quite pull it off.

  “I’d like to work this out,” I said to Mickey. “Without the use of Burke’s considerable skills. All I was trying to do was what you hired me for.”

  His expression changed from one of restrained anger to furrowed brow confusion.

  “If your attorney had just told me what you looked like . . .” I said. “I was just trying to protect your wife.”

  “For me?” he asked, genuine surprise in his voice.

  “Yeah.”

  “From me?”

  “I didn’t know it was you,” I said.

  “Is it possible that your brain was injured in the incident that cost you your arm?” he asked.

  “I’ll finish the case for free. I’ll do what you hired me to do and then you’ll never see me again.”

  He shook his head slowly, his face filled with incomprehension.

  “If you bring my wife back to me today, I’ll make it quick, but if we have to come get her, I’m gonna let Burke take his time with you.”

  “What are you gonna do?” Angel asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Probably die a slow, unpleasant death.”

  She had been waiting for me, worried, and had wrapped me up in a long embrace when I walked through the door. Even with mussed hair and last night’s clothes, she was stunning and smelled like happiness, like Lauren.

  Good thing I was impervious to women.

  We were back in my room at the Cove Hotel, doors locked, curtains closed.

  As we held each other, I continued to think about what Mickey had said and how he had acted. On the way back to my room, I had tried to figure out the angles of the players involved. No one was acting quite as I would have expected. Why was Weller so eager to help me? Why would he encourage me to kill his client and keep his wife? And why would he not even look at Mickey? Why did Mickey seem so out of it, so confused by everything that was going on? The only player’s motive I knew for certain besides my own was Burke’s. He was a professional hired to do a job.

  We weren’t kissing or caressing, but I could feel myself responding to the touch and smell of her, which let me know that if I were ever close to Lauren again I couldn’t count on my body not to betray me.

  “Have you been cheating on your husband?”

  “What?” she asked in surprise. “No.”

  “Why would your husband think you were?” I asked.

  “He wouldn’t,” she said. “He knows better. He knows—”

  She stopped abruptly.

  “What is it?”

  She shook her head.

  “If he knows you’re not cheating on him, why would he hire me?”

  She hesitated a moment, then said, “He’s crazy. Sick. Insane with jealousy. He knows I’m too afraid of him to do anything, yet he’s so paranoid—”

  She pulled away from me and began to cry.

  “H
e’s going to kill us,” she said, “and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Can your partner help us?”

  I shook my head.

  “Aren’t you scared?” she asked. “Don’t you care?”

  “I might be starting to.”

  “Do you have a gun?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Any good with it?”

  “Lot better when I had my right arm, but even then, no match for Burke.”

  She nodded and began to cry harder.

  A possible scenario to explain why everyone was acting as they were popped into my mind and I began to explore it. I worked it over like a heavy bag, trying to knock holes in it, but couldn’t find any.

  “Call Mickey and set up a meeting,” I said.

  “Are you gonna—”

  I leaned in and kissed her. “I’m gonna take care of everything.”

  After she called Mickey, I dialed the number on Weller’s card again.

  “I need to see you,” I said when he answered. “Can I stop by your office?”

  “Give me a few minutes and I’ll meet you,” he said.

  “I don’t mind coming by. Where’s your office? There’s no address on your card. Just the number.”

  “I don’t really have an office fit for the public,” he said. “I’m afraid Mr. Adams has been my only client so long that I’ve let everything else go. Should I make it out of this alive, I will have to regain order and attempt to attract new clients.”

  “I don’t mind what your office looks like.”

  “Of course you don’t, my good man,” he said, “but I shall come to you.”

  I knew Weller had arrived at my office long before I saw him. Familiar sounds announced his arrival, the slow movements, creaking joints, and the protests of my stairs.

  He opened the door, once again filling its frame and gasping for breath. Reaching to remove his Stetson, he froze as he saw all the faces in my office staring at him.

  “Pardon me,” he said. “I’ve come at a bad time.”

  He turned to leave, but had yet to make any progress when Mickey Adams said, “Close the door and sit down.”

  He did as he was told, but it took a while.

  When Weller sat, he was the only person in the room who was. I was standing behind my desk, open window behind me. To my left and not far away, Angel stood, attempting to control her trembling hands by tightly gripping her purse. To my right and toward the center of the room, Mickey Adams stood, Coleman Burke beside him.