Your Day In The Barrel

by Alan Furst

  “They work?”

  “A paper came out and said ‘Lie down and cry, .you’ve just been teargassed’.”

  “Shit. That kid was born high. When they grow up, these people better get outta the way.”

  “Yeah. Us too, maybe.”

  I call Lieberman, who’s with a client, but he tells me briefly that the man from California has gone back home and says thank you. And that Genelle’s name at the camp is Monica Goldblatt. Rochelle says I can use her phone and she and Villegas go off into the bedroom to give me and themselves some privacy. I dial the camp and the same lady answers.

  “Camp Ti-Ti-Ga-Wa.”

  “Hi, can I talk to Monica Goldblatt?”

  “Monica’s up on the south field right now, we’ll have to yell for her. Is this important?”

  “This is her uncle. Her father is ill and I need to talk to her.”

  “Okay, hang on,” and I hear her walk away from the phone and then yell “MO-NI-CA-GOOOOLD-BLATT. TE-LE-PHONE,” and I can hear the cry extending outward in other voices. About ten minutes pass and then Genelle picks up the phone panting. “Hello?” “Genelle, this is Roger.”

  “Hey man, how you doin’? I was wonderin’ what became of you.”

  “I’m okay. A lot of very bad shit went down, but it’s gonna be alright in another couple of days.”

  “Great. Jesus, get me out of here. I’m a goddamn volleyball counselor. I play volleyball all day.”

  “It’s pretty hot in New York right now.”

  “How you mean hot?”

  “Both ways.”

  “Hunh. But maybe in a couple of days?”

  “Yeah. Almost for sure.”

  “Robbie’s been askin’ about you.”

  “Really? How’s he doin’? I promised myself I’d buy him a dynamite electric train when all this is over.” “Robbie’s a good kid. Funny, four years old and he kinda digs electricity, takes bulbs apart if I don’t watch him.” Oh Jesus no, I think, another Grover Dill coming on. Like maybe I’m getting too old for this, maybe I’d better get out before the fucking kids push me out. “Well, we’ll go to Macy’s when you get back.”

  “He’ll like that.”

  “I was worried about you. They knew about that apartment, y’know. I stayed there for a while.”

  “You’re welcome to it. You been payin’ the rent.”

  “I don’t think I want to go back there. How would you feel about moving?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, I’ve thought about it. That block gets a little weird sometimes but the people are pretty good. They know I’m alone a lot of the time and they kinda take care of me.”

  “Whatever you think. I want to see you when you come down. I kind of miss you. Crazy isn’t it?”

  “Crazy world. I miss you too, man. I’ve been worried somebody was gonna do a great big number on you.” “They almost did. I ducked.”

  “That’s the big secret. When it comes at you, duck.” “I’m tryin’. Okay, you get back to the volleyball.” •

  “Call me when it’s okay. This ain’t my thing up here.”

  “Will do. G’by babe.”

  “G’by. Take care.”

  My little men are having some kind of party in there. They’re dancing and singing for some reason, like they’re tryin’ to break the lease. “Quiet down” I say. “I still got work to do.”

  I go to the bedroom and everything is quiet in there. “Hey Anthony, I got a sudden desire to go to Pennsylvania. Want to take a ride?” Some giggles and then “Okay. I’m gonna take a shower and Rochelle is gonna pack us up a lunch for the trip.” Jesus. This is getting like an outing club.

  In an hour we’re on our way again, still using the Nova. I’m tired of driving so Anthony drives. We’ve got the tape recorder and Anthony’s automatic, but we’ve left Grover Dill’s torture machine in Rochelle’s apartment. It starts to rain near the Jersey line and keeps up for three hours until we get to Webersburg. There are a whole flock of Byszkas in the book, but Ray, if I recall Roosevelt’s using that name right, lives out on Branch Hill Road. After asking at a gas station or two, we find Branch Hill Road. It’s a winding gravel track that snakes up over the mountain. We pass a good bit of Pennsylvania Appalachia on that road. Tin-roofed shacks with rusty refrigerators and junked cars on the front lawn. Villegas calls it the land of the six-toed people and that damn drizzle doesn’t make it any more attractive. We stop at every mailbox and check names; Swoonover, Cziczic, Plopp, Hamdrum, Glovny, and McMoona. Sounds like a firm of lawyers representing Martians. We go around a long curve through the woods and there on a well-cut lawn with woods all around it is a small cinder-block house painted dark green. There’s a three-year-old Plymouth with an American flag sticker on the bumper in the pre-fab carport. The mailbox is black with light-up letters on it reading “Raymond Byszka.” Anthony stops the car and we sit there with rain scudding down the windshield.^ Finally he asks, “You think I oughta do some Viet Nam type shit through those woods and around the back?”

  “I could be wrong, very wrong, but I think the way here is to knock at the door.”

  So we walk up the gravel path and knock at the door, Anthony to my left with the gun sort of down by the side of his pants. Byszka opens the door. He is wearing a blue bathrobe over pajamas and felt carpet slippers. The entire right side of his head is swathed in bandages.

  “Well, sonofabitch, look what the cat dragged in,” he says. He doesn’t look very rangy or high-cheekboned now, as he moves into the hall light. In fact his face is very puffy and discolored yellow all along the right side. “We’re just here to talk man, but,” and Villegas waves the automatic “you see how things are. Let’s all just be cool.”

  “Sure Tony, I see you got a great big automatic there. C’mon in the talkin’ room.” The living room is bigger inside than the outside of the house led us to expect. It’s got new linoleum on the floor and a beat-up couch and several rocking chairs. On one side of the couch is a small refrigerator with a wooden lamp on it that looks like it got made in a high-school shop class somewhere. Byszka opens the refrigerator and says, “Beer, fellas?”

  “Sure,” I say, and he passes out small bottles of Rolling Rock. “Well,” he says, “I been expecting you. I just had that feeling. Before we start playing poker here I just want you to know,” and he gives me a good solid cop look in the eyes, “that I done lost my ear when you popped me with that truck. Went through the windshield and tore the sucker right off. I can still hear through that hole there, but if and when I get back to bein’ a cop, I’m gonna be a one-eared cop. So let’s just include that in this little negotiation.”

  “Look,” says Villegas, “maybe it’s a game to you, my friend, but this guy here, had he not been a half-righteous guy, might have blown me away with your little game. So this ain’t no game to me.”

  “Okay, okay, now let’s just stay relaxed and talk this over and see where we come out.”

  “Number one,” I say, “we spent a very interesting evening with your brother-in-law last night.”

  “And what’d you think of my pussy little red-head of a brother-in-law, the secret agent?”

  “That he ain’t no secret agent and you knew it.”

  “I did indeed. Yes I did.”

  “But you made him tell us his name.”

  “Well, I figured you might get around to checking that. After all, anybody can say they’re a CIA agent, and from what I understand, there’s a number of folks goin’ around doin’ just that. So I figured when you got back to New York you might just call down to Langley, Virginia, and ask them if a fella named Ed Roosevelt worked there. And they would have told you yes he did and that’s all they would have told you. ’Cause that’s what they told me when I phoned ’em about ten minutes after my little sister brought that wimp home and said she was gettin’ married. Later, I found out otherwise.”

  “How?”

  “My sister told me. She met a lady at the laundromat whose husband works for the
Agency, and that lady mentioned all the dee-lishus meals that old Red was servin’ up and how her hubby was gettin’ a little lard-assed from it. Little sister never let on, of course, ’cause she knew she had him by the nuts for fair. Sis is one tough little lady; she comes from around here but she wouldn’t marry none of the local guys. Can’t say as I blame her. Hell, she’s got that house, around thirty-two five I’d say, the kids, the dog, the fridge that defrosts itself. She’s in paradise and she knows it. So her husband gets his rocks off bein’ a superspy, it don’t hurt her any. She keeps tellin’ him to be careful and shit like that. You wouldn’t believe the creeps like to nuzzle up to law enforcement types.”

  “Sonofabitch,” says Villegas.

  “How’d you find me, man?”

  “Aw shit Jim, or whatever the hell your name is, I was a goddamn good cop until somebody laid it on me. That’s what the whole Supreme Court hassle is all about. A good cop smells, man. He don’t need no warrant. He just looks at a bunch of people and one of them is doin’ some kind of shit. He just knows, don’t ask me how it works, it just does. So one day about six months ago this great big motor home comes through on a county road. I was drivin’ home from work in my civvies, in my Plymouth, and I took a look at this vehicle and my head said ‘Dealer.’ I don’t know why. So I followed. It wasn’t hard on Route Eighty, about five hours of drivin’, and you took me right to some place down in the Village, in a kind of slum neighborhood. I had a feeling you and the girl’d be back. I didn’t need you just then, I’d booked about four grand-theft autos that month, couple assaults, a hunting lodge break-in. See, a cop has got to produce every month, so sometimes he’ll save a little something, something he knows is going on, until he needs it, maybe the chief is ridin’ his ass or he’s up for promotion and he needs that little extra shove. Now I didn’t know you was dealin’, but what the hell is a trailer-camper guy and his old lady and kid doin’ goin’ home to a neighborhood like that? So the next time I saw you, about three months later, I followed you again, and you took me to Villegas, who we kinda had an eye on anyhow.”

  “Kinda” snorts Villegas. “You had more than an eye on me, man.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll get to that. So about a week ago Red calls me shittin’ peachpits he’s so nervous. Do I know where you live? So I give him the one address I have. I assume he tried to send someone after you, and bein’ Red, fucked it up or you wouldn’t be here.” “You’re close. How did he know about the Ohio number?”

  “What?”

  “That number in Ohio he gave me to call after I did the thing. I was using that number too. It’s a litde old lady, you call her and give her a message and she calls someone you told her about before. Somehow, she’s got her telephone cooked so that calls don’t trace back to her.”

  “Well damn it son, who gave you the number? ’Cause Red found that number on somebody’s desk down where he works a few months ago and went and talked to that little lady. Hell, that’s a CIA accomodation phone unless I’m wrong.”

  I know who gave me the number. Tom Lieberman. And he told me that he got it from some freaky kid he knows. It’s that fucking Grover Dill again.

  “You look like you seein’ stars.”

  “It’s the competition. It doesn’t know it’s the competition yet, but that don’t matter.”

  “Hey Byszka,” says Villegas, sitting back and drinking some beer, “why’d you want to kill me?”

  “Now that’s the sixty-four-dollar question and that’s where we get to playin’ poker.”

  “Good. What’s the stakes?” L ask.

  “One motor home, a Winnebago I believe. And 50,000 bucks, and 30 kilos of marri-wanna.”

  “Okay, what do you want?”

  “I mainly want peace and quiet. Now you could lose me my job, that is unless you’re plannin’ to kill me cold right here, and my hunch is you don’t either of you have the stomach to do that. Shit, you already took off my ear. Ain’t that enough? Not that I’m so hot about my job right now. Seventy-eight hundred dollars a year and medical ain’t that much to get along on, and me and some fellows up on the mountain have been thinkin’ about opening up a Mexican food franchise down by the college. We got our eye on a piece of property right now.”

  Villegas and I turn simultaneously and look at each other. All the paranoia, all the bullshit, all the stuff we do to keep out of the way of them, comes down to a fast-food taco place? Villegas starts to laugh.

  “Oh yeah, I know, to you college boys that sounds just mother dumb, but I didn’t go to no college like y’all and Red, so I got to take care of my own business.”

  “It ain’t that,” I say, “we thought you were, like, a political cop.”

  “The Minutemen? Nah. I’m too independent. They’re all a bunch of fuckin’ thieves, left, right and center, near as I can see. Nope, just peace and quiet is what I want. You get a lot of civil liberties lawyers in here and start screaming conspiracy to commit murder by a police officer and the papers get here and we got us just a whole big mess. I don’t go to jail, but I don’t stay in this county either. And I happen to like it right here, though today I couldn’t say why.” We follow his eyes out to where the rain is still falling hard, blurring the forest around the house.

  “Well, somebody’s got to open the bidding,” I say, “but let me see if I got the stakes right. We promise to keep shut up, I get my motor home and money and grass back. How do you know we’ll keep our word?” “Oh, you will, I think. I got some nice long-range photos of you dealing grass to some hippies up around Lewisburg. You can see the bricks and pills and stuff. It’s not enough to put somebody in jail, but a grand jury might tie you up in court for one hell of a long time. Come to that, if you was to welch on me, there’s folks right here on this road that would shoot you down for five hundred bucks if they thought you was hurtin’ me. I think it’ll stay cool.”

  “What does Villegas get?”

  “Shit, he’s got his life. What more does he want?” “Someone wanted me killed,” says Anthony, “if I’m gonna sleep nights I got to know who it is.”

  “Well, that’s gonna cost you a little more.”

  Villegas and I look at each other. On the one hand, he’s only got my hard-earned to deal with. On the other, we’ve been together in this for what seems like a hell of a long time. We’re friends. He spreads his hands apart, ’cause he knows everything going on in my head. He says, “Forget it, man, I’m goin’ back to Texas. This ain’t the only college in the country. I can transfer credits. You keep the bread, it took you blood and sweat to put that together.”

  “Anthony, I’d like to do that. But you know I can’t do that. Not after we came this far. You’re gonna owe me that money, but you can pay it back to other people instead of me. You can do it in free legal service or give it to charity or something. But you got to pay it back, somehow, some time. I ain’t ever gonna ask you about it again.” I turn to Byszka, who’s smiling and opening up a new can of Rolling Rock. “You people stick together,” he says, “now that I admire.”

  “What’s the price and what do we get?”

  “The price is eighteen five which happens to be just what I need to buy the property that restaurant is gonna sit on. My friends got the start-up money and bucks for the franchise people. And what you’re gonna get for that is a name. If anybody ever asks me, and I don’t care who they are, I never told you. But you boys are smart enough to figure it out for yourselves if you got this far.”

  “Okay, you got the eighteen five.”

  “About three months ago, the county police chief decides he’s gonna retire. So everybody on the force starts to scramble real hard. One day this man calls me out to his home, which is incredible right there, and says: ‘Ray, I got some big plans, but these plans ain’t worth owlshit unless you can do me a favor; you do me this favor and you’re gonna be the next county chief. And I ask what the favor is, and he says get Villegas out of the way. Out. E-lim-in-ate is the word he used.”

&n
bsp; “So who is he?”

  “Mr. Lavem M. Stoller. One of our most foremost local citizens. Probably the foremost.”

  I look at Villegas. His mouth is tight and his eyes are pure black hate. He spits it out: “Queen Green Bean.” “That is kee-rect,” says Byszka. “Maybe you saw that new plant bein’ built out by the cutoff. Biggest goddamn cannery I ever saw. Well, Mr. Stoller owns about three-thousand acres of green beans out here. Used to sell ’em to other canning companies but no more. ’Bout a month ago this big billboard goes up, real purty little blonde girl with green eyes, and over her head it says Queen Green Bean big as life. I’m sure you know the rest.”

  “Simon Legree,” says Anthony. “Employs half the Chicano labor in the valley. Don’t want a new union contract.” He points his index finger to his head and says “bang.”

  “Now listen up fellas. That Winnebago is sittin’ about one hundred feet up the road from here behind a hunting camp. It’s the first left. The grass is still in there. As for the money,” he opens the refrigerator and pulls out a wax paper package, “there was actually $51,600 in your stash. So I owe you $33,100.” And he counts it out, gets up, and tosses it in my lap.

  “Byszka, what were you doin’ in the road that day?” “Well. I had Tony’s home phone tapped. When you called him and made your meeting place, I headed on out there to see what went on. That place in the woods is where they always met their dealers. I had it figured that you’d do the job and run like hell. Maybe go to Europe or something, figurin’ the CIA was hot on your ass. But I also had an idea that you might do just what you did, say yes and then try to screw around with us. It’s hard to tell with you people, one week you’re actin’ like country kin, and there’s no stronger tie than that, and next week you’re burnin’ each other right and left. I wasn’t sure which way you’d jump. So I figured you were both up there by the time I got there, and I was meaning to arrive last, take a little walk and see what went on.”

  “Everybody tried to get there last,” said Villegas. “Guess I won.”