I dropped to my knees by the desk and thrust my hand into the trash can. The gun metal was cool and oily. Fear and relief mixed and I pulled my hand away, left the gun where it was. I crawled on my knees to the beer cases, unstacked them and opened the bottom one. The money was there, untouched. I closed the box, stacked the other on top.
The file cabinet had been knocked over and the top of the safe lay open. I stared at it while I tried to think of why that was important. Then I remembered – my own money.
The safe was empty. The backpack was gone. The blue bank bag was gone. My $12,000 was gone.
I righted the chair and sat down. Real revulsion, real nausea washed over me. My stomach churned as I thought about it, about someone here, in my office, touching my things. Worm had told somebody. Fucking Worm had told somebody and they had come looking for their money. I lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, deep into my lungs.
I sat for a long time, thinking and smoking. Worm had told somebody and they had come looking for their money and hadn’t found it. A flash of anger as I realized that Worm had sold me out. I picked up my phone and called him.
“Worm, you stupid son of a bitch,” I hissed when it went to voice mail. “You told them I had the money, didn’t you? Well, it’s mine now, you sorry sack of shit.” I hit end and threw the phone down on my desk.
I lit another cigarette and thought some more. The panic and anger began to shrink and things started to seem better. Worm had told somebody, they had come looking for their money, and they hadn’t found it. They would assume Worm was lying.
I was off the hook.
I got the money out of the case of beer and spent about five minutes carefully counting out $12,000. I bundled this separate from the rest and stuck it all back in the box, then stacked the boxes again. I called Worm again and it went to voice mail again. Worm almost always let voice mail take his calls. I left another, calmer, message, explaining that my savings had been taken, that he was welcome to come get the difference, and that I didn’t really think he was a stupid sack of shit.
“Come get the money and the gun,” I said. “I’m done with all this.”
Then I called Mitchell.
“They must have jumped the fence, then pried open the back door,” Mitchell was explaining to Allen. Allen had his metal clipboard out. Mitchell had on a plaid, short-sleeved shirt and his damn black socks and white shoes and had a new spiral and the Pancho folder under his arm. We all drank coffee. Mitchell turned to me. “When was the last time you made a deposit?” he asked.
“Friday, I guess,” I said. “Friday afternoon.”
Mitchell turned back to Allen.
“So,” he said, counting on his fingers. “They got the drop from Friday, the drop from Saturday, and the money from the till.” He added it up and the total came to about $2,000. I made a mental note to subtract that amount from anything I returned to Worm. Allen turned to me.
“Anything else?” he asked.
I hesitated just a second. “Well,” I said. “The office is pretty trashed, but they didn’t take anything.”
“Let’s take a look,” Allen said. Mitchell marched us to the office.
We stood in the doorway as Allen scratching notes on his report.
“I didn’t know that safe was there,” Mitchell said. He was looking at me with a little hurt in his eyes. I pushed past him and sat down.
“We don’t use it,” I said. “It doesn’t lock. Never has.”
“Was there anything in it?” Allen asked.
I frowned and rubbed my nose.
“No,” I said.
Allen scratched his pen on his clipboard. He turned and sat down on the stack of beer cases. He crossed his ankles and tossed the clipboard onto the desk. Mitchell stood in the doorway with his arms folded across his chest.
“Have any idea who might have done this?” Allen asked, scratching at his neck with the palm of his hand.
I chewed on a knuckle and shook my head. What I was thinking was that I was free of this shit, that for the first time since Frank had walked in, I was clear of all of it. The breakin was reason enough for me to make Worm take his shit back. Worm would quit the dealing in my place. Fuck him. I’d be done with him, too. He sold me out to drug dealers and I could have been killed and now I didn’t have to put up with his stupid, shaky self any more. I got my quiet little bar back and the only price I had to pay was a new lock for the back door and a new bottle of Blanton’s.
“No,” I said. “No idea.”
Allen tugged at an earlobe, looked up at Mitchell.
“Mitchell seems to think the kid Frank had something to do with it,” he said.
“Frank?” I said.
“Maybe he was scoping out the place,” Mitchell said. “Seeing where we kept the money.”
“Huh,” I said.
“Mitchell tells me he’s the dealer you kicked out of here the other night,” Allen said.
“Yeah,” I said. “But he told me he quit dealing.”
“He told you,” Allen said.
“Look,” I said, leaning forward. “I know it’s stupid. But I felt sorry for the kid.”
Allen nodded, his palms on his knees. He scratched at an eyebrow.
“You know how to find him?” he asked.
I shook my head. “He’s supposed to come back tonight. To barback. I don’t have his number or anything, but I could probably get it.” I looked up at Mitchell, then back to Allen. “I guess he could have done it,” I said. I thought of the first night, of Frank trying to return the money to Jeremy. “But I don’t know. I just don’t think he would.”
Allen tapped his foot, puffed out his cheeks.
“Let’s do this,” he said. “Let’s see if he shows up today to work. It adds up to a couple thousand dollars. If he took it, he’s not coming back. If he doesn’t show up tonight, we’ll see if we can’t find him.” Allen looked to Mitchell for approval. Mitchell chewed on his lip and gave a half a nod. My phone rang. It was Worm. I hit ignore quickly and stuck the phone in my pocket. Allen was watching me.
“Let me ask you,” he said. “Do you really think it’s just a coincidence that your bar got broken into the day after this kid starts working here?”
“I don’t know,” I said, looking at my knees. Allen watched me, waiting for me to offer something else. When I stayed silent, he sighed, stood up and picked his clipboard up off the desk.
“Okay,” he said, stretching. “I’ll make my report. Let me know if anything else happens around here.” He patted Mitchell on the shoulder and slid past him and out the door. Mitchell stayed put.
“What?” I said when Mitchell didn’t leave. He gave me a long look, then shook his head.
“I guess we should take a look at the back door,” he said.
The door had been crowbarred open, the metal of the frame pulled away from the latch. Mitchell called a locksmith while I went inside and started setting up the bar. Then I remembered the call from Worm. I pulled out my phone, turned it on, and it beeped. Worm had left a message.
“Little John,” he said quietly. Then there was a long pause, long enough that I thought the connection had been lost. Then, finally, “I’m sorry, Little John.” I called him back, but his phone went straight to voice mail again.
“Well,” Mitchell said, coming back in from the patio. I stuck my phone back in my pocket. “I found a couple locksmiths that could fix the door, but there’s a really big surcharge for them to come out today or tomorrow. Because it’s the weekend and because of the hurricane.” He moved behind the bar and poured himself more coffee. He still had the spiral and the Pancho folder under his arm. “What one guy suggested was that we board up the door until Monday or Tuesday,” Mitch said. He sat down next to me. “I could go home and get my tools and some two-by-fours.”
“Okay,” I said. “But let’s not board it up until after hours, since it’s the fire exit. If you don’t mind measuring and cutting it now, I’ll come back up at closing tonight
and screw it shut.”
Mitchell said sure, then hesitated a moment before setting the Pancho folder and the notebook on the bar in front of me. He flipped the notebook open.
“This,” Mitchell said without looking up, “is a chart of everyone who could have taken the mask.”
“Now, Mitch?” I asked. “Really?”
Mitchell ignored me. He shuffled the notebook a little, pulled it closer to me so I could read it better. Frank’s name was at the top of the chart, followed by mine. “I’ve listed when they had the opportunity and how they could have gotten it out,” he said.
I stared at him, at the chart, then at him again.
“Am I really a suspect here?” I asked, tapping my name on the sheet. Mitchell looked up at me.
“I’m on there, too,” he said. His name was fourth, below Tracy. “I’m just trying to be thorough.”
I sat down next to him at the bar.
“Well, Mitch,” I said. “What do you think? Did you do it?”
Mitchell ignored me. “The only thing I can really conclude so far,” he said, “is that no one can be ruled out yet.”
“Mitchell, seriously,” I said. “Somebody just grabbed the thing and ran when we weren’t looking.”
He gave me a long look, then stabbed his finger at the page.
“That’s one of the possibilities,” he said.
“Jesus, Mitch,” I said. “How do you even know that the mask is real? How do you know somebody didn’t just buy it at the tourist market in Nuevo Laredo?”
“I’ve done a lot of research,” he said, lifting the notebook. But then he dropped the notebook back on the bar and turned and looked up at me. “Besides,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. The mask belongs here.”
“I can’t see how this mask is of any fucking importance right now.”
“We should at least try to get it back,” he said.
“You think like Tim Cole thinks? That Pancho protects the place?”
“No,” Mitchell said, looking at me like I was an idiot. “I think it belongs here and doing nothing is just stupid and lazy.” He stood up and starting organizing his papers. He may have wiped at his eyes.
“Go get your tools,” I said, trying to sound more annoyed than I felt. “I’ll look this over while you’re gone.”
Mitchell mumbled something like thanks and headed out the door.
I finished setting up the bar, filling the ice bin, restocking the bevnaps and straws. The easy routine of it added to the feeling I was having, a feeling of comfort and reassurance. Later, after work, I’d call Worm, give him the money and the gun and be done with all of it in time for dinner with Ruby. I felt like whistling.
Redmond came in and sat at the far end of the bar. I opened a Lone Star and put it in front of him. He smiled his empty smile. I turned on the TV and found a baseball game, then poured a cup of coffee and sat down next to him.
These were my favorite times at the bar, the Saturday afternoons, and even the breakin didn’t do much to dampen my mood. These were the hours when I could enjoy the bar as a place, not a business, not a hassle. I could play the jukebox, run my hands on the worn wood of tables, feel the creak of the wide pine floorboards. It was when I would feel closest to Dad. Not just because these were his things, but because it was when I felt the most like him. Without any effort on my part, my habits were like his habits had been. When the cleaning and the other little projects were done, I would sit at the end of the bar, sipping coffee, like he had, joking with the customers. I imagined that, at those moments, maybe I kind of looked like him. The sun poured in through the front windows. The windows were clean.
Twenty minutes later, Mitchell came back, carry a large tool box and two boards. He set them down near the back door, then marched back out the front door. When he came back in, he was carrying a stack of papers. He put them on the bar in front of me.
It was a flyer. “Missing” was in large type at the top, above a color picture of the mask. Then below, it read “Reward!” Anyone with information was asked to please contact the bar management. I held it in one hand.
“I made it on my computer,” Mitchell said.
“What’s the reward?” I asked.
“Whatever you can afford,” he said.
I put the flyer back on top of Mitchell’s stack.
“God damnit, Mitch,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “Don’t you understand? I was just fucking robbed. Do you really expect me to spend money trying to get back an ugly hunk of plaster?”
Mitchell stood, arms folded across his belly. I tried to wait him out, but he stood, silent.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll put up the fucking reward. Just give me a while to figure out what I can afford.” Mitchell didn’t move. “I was just robbed,” I said again, but that didn’t budge him. “And I don’t make any money on this Saturday shift, you know,” I said.
Finally he nodded, picked up his papers, and loped to the end of the bar.
The streets were busy with activity that seemed random. I’d asked Mitchell to watch the bar while I ran to the bank for change for the till. A line of cars was snaked around the middle school. I turned down a side street, one of those streets cluttered by its own randomness – graffiti-tagged street signs, fences strapped with cheap lattice.
Half of the buildings on the street were old houses that had long ago been converted into space for businesses, the kind of businesses that get pushed off busier and more popular streets. Accountants, thrift stores, frame shops. The doors of these businesses screeched open and slammed shut as people hurried to finish straggling errands before they evacuated. A yellow and blue bungalow at the corner housed a psychic/card reader; its gravel parking lot out front was full.
The line at the bank drive-through was long. The ATM was out of cash, so I parked and went in to the lobby. There were four tellers working and the line of waiting customers wound through the rope maze. People were chattering, talking to each other about their evacuation plans, their past hurricanes. I kept my head down and was left alone.
“We’re out of twenties,” the clerk said when I handed her my withdrawal slip. She was a motherly-round woman with dark skin and chocolate eyes. “Is it okay if I give you ones and fives?”
“That’s fine,” I said. “That’s what I need anyway.”
“Why?” she asked as her fingers clacked over her computer keyboard.
“I run a bar,” I said. “We need the change.”
Her fingers stopped.
“You’re going to be open?” she asked, turning her eyes to me.
“Yeah,” I said. “We never close.”
“But what about your employees?”
“I’m not making them stay,” I said. “They can leave if they want to.”
“You’re in charge. Something like that is your decision,” she said, her voice thick with disapproval. She held the envelope with my change in her hand.
I glared as best I could.
“I just need my money, please,” I said.
She slid the change across the counter and gave me a shake of her head.
“You need to take responsibility for your decisions,” she said.
I stopped at the grocery store on the way back, not because I needed anything, but because I wasn’t ready yet to be back at the bar and to deal with the break in. It was a chain store, normally big and clean and air-conditioned. But panic had set in. Shopping carts were abandoned across the parking lot. Inside, the floors were dirty and the aisles scattered with trash. Half the shelves were empty. People had moved on to hoarding the things they could find to substitute for those they needed. Shoppers waiting in line with carts full of cranberry juice and paper towels. The lines weaved back into the aisle. I watched for a moment, from just inside the front door, then went back out and drove to the bar.
Frank was sitting outside when I pulled up, sitting on the curb ten feet from the front door. I lit a cigarette and smiled to myself. I closed my eyes for a second, felt the hot
sun burn through my eyelids, then walked up to Frank. He stood, stretching his body up. His hand flicked through his spiky hair and he gave me half a grin.
“What are you doing here so early?” I asked.
He shrugged and looked down at his hands. The same cracked shoes, same stained work pants.
“Saturdays I usually clean up around here,” I said. “Feel like helping?”
“Okay,” Frank said quietly.
Frank followed me through the front door, into the brief cool blast. Mitchell looked up from behind the bar and surprise flash across his face when he saw Frank. I tossed the ones and fives to him.
“Mitchell,” I said. “You remember Frank. He came back.”
Mitchell tilted his head toward Frank, then nodded a sort of hello. Frank waved.
“Help Mitchell first,” I said to Frank. “Then I’ve got some other things you can do.” Mitchell studied me, then led Frank toward the patio. I could hear his drone as he explained to Frank what had happened, what they had to do. Frank listened with a serious scowl and helped Mitch carry the tools out the back door.
I took the brass polish out from under the counter, folded a couple rags next to it. A couple of oil workers came in, wiry guys in jeans and golf shirts. They eased into stools next to Redmond. They’d been offshore. The oil company had cleared all the workers off the rigs in the Gulf, helicoptered them back to Houston ahead of the hurricane.
“You evacuating?” one of them asked me.
I scratched my chest. “Hadn’t really thought about it,” I said.
“When Carla hit, I had just built a house,” Redmond said. I turned to him. He was still smiling his loose, toothless smile, but his eyes were focused. He nodded at the memory of the house in the hurricane. “The wind pulled the window frames right out of the walls.”
“You gonna evacuate this time?” the oil worker asked him.
“No, no,” he said. “My father always said, ‘you hide from the wind, you run from the water.’ It doesn’t flood at my house, so I’m gonna stay. Always seemed strange to me to leave your house when trouble was coming.”
Last Call Lounge Page 9
