A Bullet Apiece

by John Joseph Ryan

  “Lookit, lady. You said Hanady was pleasant ‘most of the time’. That means something. What is it?” It was my turn to loom in her face. Only I’m not so pretty up close.

  I had let her know this was no longer her game. She exhaled and rather roughly shoved a strand of hair behind her left ear. As she did so, I noticed her hand trembling. “Here are the goods, detective. When Mrs. Hanady calls, it’s all I can do to be polite. She is a shrew. I would call her a ‘bitch’, but then, since I’m in Mr. Hanady’s employ, I won’t.” Her voice came out strained. The smooth tone of voice from the phone became a kvetching teenager’s. “She calls. He gripes. And then he spews obscenities after he hangs up. Often he’ll leave after that. The next morning, when he comes in, he seems none the worse for it, but I know better. Or sometimes, he doesn’t show up the next morning, and we receive word he’s in Colombia. He’s a sweet man. She’s a drain.” She looked at a wristwatch. “How’s that?”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “That will do.”

  “I thought so. Now, will there be anything else?”

  “One more question. Just how well do you know Mr. Hanady, Miss Brennan.”

  She let the question settle. “Strictly business, Mr. Darvis.”

  “I thought so.” I withdrew a card. “If you have any other nuggets you want to toss my way.”

  “What else do you like tossed your way?”

  Touché.

  “Plenty,” I said and smiled at her.

  “I bet.” She leaned in a little. I couldn’t help but glance down into her cleavage. She seemed to know I would and held her pose for a couple of seconds.

  “Well, if I ever get desperate enough for a gumshoe, I know where to find you.” She took a step to the side and gestured towards the front door. “Now, I’m quite sure security is on their way to lock up. I wouldn’t want there to be any misunderstanding about your presence.”

  “How very giving of you.”

  She smirked and made as if to toss her hair. “Well, Mr. Darvis, must I show you directly to the door?”

  “That and more.”

  “I’m afraid not. It’s been a … a pleasure.”

  “I wish I could say the same.”

  She walked past me to the door and held it open for me, and looked quickly backwards. I followed her gaze to the door set in the wood paneling.

  “Say, Miss Brennan, where does that door go?”

  “Is that imperative for your investigation, Mr. Darvis?” When she saw I wasn’t moving out the door, she added, “But if you must know, it leads to Batman’s cave.”

  “Never needed him. Thanks again, Miss Brennan.”

  “Good evening, detective.”

  As I pulled out of the parking lot, a few cars remained, but no silver-green Jaguar. Miss Brennan played the evade-and-distract game pretty well. But she couldn’t hide a key tell. She couldn’t keep her eyes from that hidden door. I’d play the odds and bet my money that Hanaday was holed up in that snug little office.

  I made for a pay phone. If Bertie was at his desk I might persuade him to stake out Limited Imports. He wasn’t. The person who answered might have been the same sergeant as before, and he didn’t exactly light up at my name. “He ain’t in” was the most I could squeeze from him. I hung onto the receiver a moment. An idea formed. Why not?

  I pushed down the handle on the pay phone till I got a dial tone. I pressed “zero,” then asked the operator to connect me with the District 2 police station. Another sunny desk sergeant promised, with sugar on top, to connect me with Officer Hamilton. Actually, he said, “Hang on,” then let the receiver fall to his desktop with a bang. For ten minutes I listened to not only the music playing for the enjoyment of inmate visitors, but heard an irate woman demanding to see someone named Natty, typewriter keys inexpertly and haltingly tapped, phones ringing and ignored. Finally, I heard a voice say, “Where?” Then, the clunk of the receiver as it was lifted off the desk jarred me back to the reason for my call .

  “Yeah, Darvis, what is it?”

  Officer Hamilton was annoyed when I related where I had been, but he sounded interested when I mentioned the hidden door. From his hesitation, he also sounded like he was pitching between warning me away, and wanting to know what I had learned. I gave him the whole scoop. And like a good reporter, he ate it up and licked the bowl. With forced reluctance in his voice, he said he would cruise by Limited Imports. I hung up and figured he’d be there in ten minutes to check things out. Too bad he’d be too late to check out the scintillating Miss Brennan. But at least I was keeping the investigation moving.

  The stakeout taken care of, I decided to head to Broad Jimmy’s downtown. It was nearly 6:00 o’clock, and my body protested its lack of nourishment—of the liquid variety.

  Even though I live in the West End, I liked Broad Jimmy’s better than the hoity-toity, three-dollar martini watering holes four blocks south of my apartment. And I sure as hell wouldn’t fit in at the north-side bars. White guys like me would be made for a cop or a P.I. right away. Plus, at Broad Jimmy’s every now and again I’d stay past happy hour and get to see my Uncle Charles. Since his heart attack two years ago, he earned a desk job at National Freightways. Logically, he says, he’s putting less strain on his heart pushing a pencil, rather than toting boxes. One thing, though, alcoholic that he is, his heart attack hasn’t slowed down his drinking and smoking. But then, here I was at Broad Jimmy’s earlier than he was. By the time I arrived on Locust Street, my tongue was practically sticking to the roof of my mouth.

  I opened the tavern’s heavy oak door, its white paint peeling, and stepped in. Even in the dim light, I could see that Broad Jimmy was nowhere around, and he’d be hard to miss. He must be in his mid-fifties by now, but he’s barrel-chested and thick-armed. He served in the Pacific jungle mess as a Marine, at Okinawa. He still refers to the Japanese as Japs, usually preceded by other endearing terms such as slant-eyed, fuckin’, and goddamn. Jimmy reminds me of this story about a guy who trained lions for circuses. One day this lion, who’d been raised from a cub, looks edgy when the guy gets in the cage. As he approaches the lion as usual, suddenly the son-of-a-bitch rears back on his legs and clamps the trainer’s head right in his jaws. Enough pressure to be meaningful. Just when the guy thinks this is the end, the lion lets go and backs off a few steps. The poor bastard eases out of the cage and locks the door. Just a warning that time. I wish I knew if that guy ever set foot in the cage again without a good strong whip. Broad Jimmy’s like that damn lion. I’d hate to be Jimmy’s customer who got a final warning.

  As I sat down at the bar, I looked around for Uncle Charles, but all I saw were three other regulars at the far end. I nodded to them, even though we’ve never exchanged more than a few words. By the time they’d get good and juiced, they just wanted an audience, not a conversation partner. All the regulars get the same treatment. If Broad Jimmy ignores you, that’s a good thing. You know you fit in. If he’s harangued you, questioned your patriotism, or served you watered-down beer, you better get your suds somewhere else.

  Kira Harto, Broad Jimmy’s wife, was working behind the bar. Despite Jimmy’s tiresome anti-slant rhetoric, he brought his Japanese bride home after the war. Maybe that helps me put up with his pistol-whip bullshit. Plus, I don’t mind that Kira is tall, slim, and always wears clingy black shirts with push-up bras that summon your attention, like sweet semaphores. Every lonely guy in the world needs a barmaid who will look him in the eye, bend forward just enough to allow a little peep at the cleavage, and ask, “You need another, hon?” with all the sincerity a man has to have. Kira Harto ain’t exactly picture-perfect, but she will certainly do. Her English is rough but decent. And she’s untouchable, so a guy gets his jollies with just flirtation. And with enough booze in him, a lonely guy will think he’s in the tropics, the hard-working world just a dream outside the heavy oak door, a coy woman keeping his glass full. That is, till he remembers the monster of a man she married, with Semper Fi tattooed on one
forearm and a caricature of a Japanese soldier being squashed by a fist on the other.

  “What you have, soldier?” she asked as she finally came around to me. Oh, yeah—that little touch is nice, too.

  “Gin and tonic. With lime.”

  She smiled at me in that helpful way, and turned to make my drink. I lit a cigarette and looked around. Now this was more my speed. No gilded paintings and Italian marble, no nouveau-riche pretense here. A few strings of colored lights festooned the mirror above the bar. Below, lined up along a translucent display shelf, bottles in various states of emptiness were illuminated by the white light beneath the shelf. I caught my reflection in the mirror—what the hell, it wasn’t going to run from me—and did my usual nonchalant assessment of my looks. I don’t look half-bad in this light, I told myself. I turned my head sideways, keeping my eyes trained on my head, and brushed the grey at my temples. Some might say rugged; others bum. I doubt ‘distinguished’ would figure in on anyone’s take. Whatever keeps me employed.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I was aware of somebody coming out of the men’s room. I looked over and saw George “The Beef” Reynolds. He kept to his feet, placing himself behind the seated bunch at the bar. I’ve never seen him sit down. Instead, he hangs over his listeners, while they sit, drink, and nod up to him. The Beef will pace behind them, stab his finger at the opposite wall to make one of his many points, and get uncomfortably close to his chums to look them in the eye. Then he lets dramatic pauses turn into an executioner’s gaze. The Beef had been a pro fighter, heavyweight in the late forties. He’s maybe two inches shorter and more compact than Broad Jimmy, but my money says he’s just as tough. No one would dare suggest it, but I bet lots of us wouldn’t mind seeing how the two of them would fare in a ring.

  Kira brought my drink with a lime and a smile. I smiled back, savoring the eye contact mixed with the anxious knowledge that Broad Jimmy might be in the shadows glaring at our interaction. Jimmy’s rigged a helluva lion’s den.

  I tuned in to The Beef’s boasts and proclamations without looking his way. Today I just wanted a drink and a little female attention, so I played the guy staring at his drink by himself. Most people see this as harmless; others take it as a threat. The Beef probably took it as the latter when he called down to my end of the bar.

  “Hey, Gumshoe!”

  I looked his way concealing a sigh. “Yeah, George?”

  “We’re trying to work somethin’ out here and need your skills.”

  That was likely bullshit, but once engaged by The Beef, it was best to take him at his word.

  I got off the bar stool and carried my drink in one hand and cigarette in the other. I stood outside swinging range and waited.

  “Take a seat,” he said. I took one. He likes to be the only guy at Broad Jimmy’s standing up and in action.

  “What’s up?” I asked, though I was thinking, “What’s the beef?”

  “Simple Simon here thinks you could take me on.”

  “Yeah?” I looked at Simon, a skinny, towboat deckhand with a poorly trimmed grey beard. His rheumy, wide eyes and nervous smile told me he didn’t know what the hell The Beef was talking about, but he was snared and knew it.

  He didn’t make eye contact with The Beef when he spoke. “Now, George, naw, I never said—”

  “Sure, you did. You were thinkin’ it, hunh? You can’t hide nothin’ with those clear blue eyes, Simon.”

  “No, George, I sure wasn’t thinkin’ that. Not at all.”

  “You were. Don’t lie to me, Simon.” The Beef’s executioner’s gaze was beginning to protrude through his eyes like darts. The pupils enlarged, swallowing up the silver-blue of the irises. If Simon could see himself reflected, he saw a man about to step off the gallows for a short ride south.

  “Hey, Beef,” I cut in. Mostly people called him George, but “Beef” has a way of arresting his attention in an animal way.

  “Yeah?” He turned his dilated peepers my way. Which—I won’t lie—unnerved me.

  “It’d be no contest. Just give me a blackjack, some cords to tie you down, and a car running outside with a Tommy gunner to make my getaway when you tear through those ropes.”

  “That’d be about right, gumshoe.” He was mollified, his eyes turning dull again. The silver-blue leached back around the pupils. “You got that, Simon? No matter what this guy’d try, I’d still tear him apart.” He returned to me and feinted right and left, then landed—what to him—was a light punch on my right shoulder. For me, it was more like he’d slammed a hammer against bone.

  “Ouch, Beef, you’re slaying me. I give,” I said. I rubbed my shoulder exaggeratedly, but it sure as hell hurt. The Beef skipped around lightly, made as if to punch Simon, too, but Simon threw his hands up in front of him like he was at gunpoint. Then, The Beef laughed. It was a laugh like a machine gun, Rat-a-tat-tat-tat, somewhere deep in his throat. He stopped his antics and slung an arm around Simon’s shoulder.

  “Ah, Simon. Buddy, I love to fuck with you. I really love it.” Simon picked up his beer and tried to smile, but it was more like a wince, and his lips quivered just a bit. I recognized then that a keen sense of hunger was erupting for that mythical bout I’d always wanted to see happen between Broad Jimmy and The Beef. I’d be there. And I’d have a big goddamn blackjack for The Beef.

  I decided not to stick around to see what other fun and games The Beef would be up to. Besides, sooner or later Broad Jimmy would come down from his upstairs apartment and assist Kira with the nighttime bar duty. And when he did, she would reign in the flirtation to the occasional discreet wink. Not only that, but The Beef would be sloppy drunk by then. Lucky for him, though, with Jimmy on the premises, he got less belligerent. Which would give Simon the chance to slip out of The Beef’s grasp and go home. Wherever home was. The other couple of guys would probably wait around for their part-time drinking buddies, fresh from dinner with the wife and kids, or maybe wait for the second-shift workers who arrived as the night wore on. I’d see my uncle another time. And having been summoned by The Beef, the chance for any peaceful drinking, had soured.

  I slapped a couple bills on the bartop. Kira was busy examining glasses to rub spots off them. She didn’t notice, or care that I was leaving.

  Chapter 5

  The Big Nap

  I drove home with the windows down to the blessings of the heat and humidity, and chided myself for letting The Beef get to me. The Beef was a nobody now, a has-been, at least as far as his professional career was concerned. But in the bar he haunts, he’s the chief spook. And what was that business today? Just to prove he’s still cock of the walk when Jimmy’s not around? I wondered briefly how Kira could tolerate him. Or any one of us, for that matter.

  Home was an apartment above a music store in the West End. That sounds quaint, but quaint it ain’t. The apartment itself is okay, but the police should license the muggers in my neighborhood. Also, just three blocks away, women hook on Washington. Anyone picturing tall gals with legs to die for and a gleam in their eye for some schmuck, well, all I can say is they should save their spunk for the centerfold girls. Some of the prosties, I know, support drug habits. Others are welfare moms from the Pruitt-Igoe Housing Development, just trying to make ends meet. Occasionally, boys, probably runaways, show up. Whatever the market will bear. Single men, married men, older men with a thing for little boys. The police love to bust those pervs especially. It all gets pretty sick at night. By day, though, you’d never know. Washington’s what passes for our garment district. Shoe sellers, jewelers. Walk down there and you hear the inflected patter of Jewish immigrants, the jingle of silver coins, and the cha-ching of cash drawers crunching down on their feed.

  As I opened the door to my apartment, I could hear the jazz trio practicing downstairs. One is the owner of the music store, the other two, I think, are brothers. Nice looking colored guys who blow mellow jazz, which is all right with me, till it verges on bebop noise.

  One night, I went downs
tairs to listen to them jam. They invited me to a back room afterwards for gin and funny cigarettes. I tried to pass off a shallow inhale of the joint, but the resonance of their music, their easy, joshing speech, and the smoke that filled the back room, all made me pretty high. Of course, the gin helped it along. Later, I went back upstairs, getting a kick out of each step I missed along the way, and fried up a batch of eggs. I added spoonfuls of grape jelly to the mix, which was hilarious. I enjoyed the hell out of them. It was a good night, but one I don’t mean to repeat. I’d just as soon stick with my world-pitching-sideways gin and scotch.

  But tonight, their tunes wouldn’t blend with my budding headache. The greasy hamburger still sat hard in my gut. How long was an intestinal guess. I took a shower and peeled an orange, standing white I ate. After I finished, I glanced over at my wall clock: five after seven. I’d told Mrs. Hanady I’d call around eight. So, that gave me very little time to scope out her place.

  As I rolled onto Route 40 west, I couldn’t help but notice the brilliant sky washed blue by the passing storm. A high upsweep of clouds fading into orange and pink made me think of going west when I was a kid, the one time my father took me on a sales trip. I shook my head at the memory and concentrated on the traffic. I rolled down the window and had a smoke. Maybe Miss Brennan was right. Maybe I’d find the estate lit up with little Rachel laughing and spinning on the lawn in a bright pink dress, mom and dad sipping tall drinks on lounge chairs, fingers entwined, expressions of marital bliss on their faces. Experience told me otherwise. More than likely, I’d likely see rookie cops parked in plain view.

  My suspicions were confirmed when I pulled off the outer road and onto the blacktop driveway of the Hanady estate. At the top of the hill, an unmarked car sat, running lights on, pointed towards the house, which was just visible behind a grove of oaks. One figure was silhouetted in the car. Officer Frederick most likely. I let the Chevy roll back down the driveway in neutral until I hit the outer road, then pushed in the clutch and slowly eased the car a hundred yards down and parked on the gravel shoulder. The trailhead to a nature preserve was right across the road. Convenient.