Death of the Extremophile

by Stuart Parker

  *

  The apartment was a typical Brooklyn firetrap. Hope was holding his cop badge and revolver down in the pockets of his cashmere coat in order to feel better about being there. But then his rap on the door was answered and his eyes widened with the beauty before him. Long glistening black hair, emerald green eyes, long thick eyelashes, soft pink lips and a clear, milky complexion. In her loose white blouse and brown pants she might not have been going out for the evening, but then again she was looking so good she could have gatecrashed a New York Yacht Club function and had the door held open for her in the process.

  ‘Hello?’ Her eyes narrowed and Hope realised he had already gone too long without explaining himself.

  ‘Stacey Turner?’

  ‘That’s my sister. I’m Elsa.’

  ‘Is she home?’

  ‘Not right now. She’s working. She won’t be back till late.’

  ‘Working? May I inquire in what? I only ask as I have come here to offer her a job.’

  Elsa Gurner stared at him a long moment. ‘You’d better come in,’ she finally said.

  Hope stepped inside and she closed the door. The apartment was clean and smelt of jasmine.

  ‘Would you like to sit?’ asked Elsa. ‘Tea or coffee? I’m sorry but we do not drink anything stronger.’

  ‘Coffee would be lovely.’

  ‘Make yourself comfortable.’

  Hope was left alone to a worn white vinyl sofa. It was cold until his body slowly warmed it up. The coffee that came was a jet black under a light brown scum. A matching pair of cups. Sugar cubes had been placed on the saucers. Hope sipped his coffee hot and complimented its bitterness.

  Elsa left hers untouched on a side table. She sat down at another of the vinyl sofas. ‘Being the elder sister with our parents gone, I do take an interest,’ she said. ‘So may I ask what job you had in mind?’

  Hope leaned forward, his seat already angling him that way. Before he could speak there emanated the ecstatic groans of hefty love making from the apartment above.

  Elsa shuddered and went to the record player with as much dignity as she could muster. The record she put on was a Beethoven requiem. It was loud enough to drown out upstairs. Hope smirked. ‘At such times I prefer jazz.’

  Elsa returned to her spot, moving so lithely it was unlikely she had worn out a pair of shoes in her whole life. ‘What job are you offering?’ she repeated.

  ‘It’s a good question, but I’m not entirely sure. What is she interested in?’

  ‘Interested in?’

  ‘You haven’t told me what job she is doing now.’

  Elsa’s voice hardened, starting to perceive Hope as some kind of twisted suitor. ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘Well, she must be looking to branch out, otherwise she wouldn’t be talking to Ario Flinger.’ Hope returned to his coffee cup and his fingers struggled with the small handle. He persevered, nonetheless, wanting something to do while Elsa continued to stare at him.

  ‘When Stacey was younger,’ Elsa finally said, ‘she was always bringing home wounded animals she found out in the streets and alleyways. Now it seems to be men.’

  ‘I’m not wounded.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but then I get the feeling you two haven’t been introduced yet.’

  Hope had his little finger wedged in the handle of the coffee cup and was slurping off the last of the scum. ‘Has she mentioned Ario Flinger at all?’

  ‘Who? She isn’t big on names. All I know is Stacey lives a different kind of life to mine, and it brings her into conflict with a different kind of man. And to answer your other query, she works in a hat factory.’

  ‘Well, the good news is he doesn’t make hats, so there is a chance she isn’t working for him yet.’ He handed her his calling card; the exchange was made from the very tips of their fingers.

  Elsa read carefully the gold inscription. ‘A gentleman it says? It sounds more like a boast than a profession.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean much, only that I do things for ends other than the financial. This case is no exception. I would like to sit down with your sister and see if there is a position of employment she would consider suitable. I have friends in City Hall, law enforcement and private enterprise. So there might well be something.’

  ‘She may or may not have mentioned this Ario Flinger you refer to. But I take it he counts as unsuitable?’

  ‘You would have to turn up your Mozart a little louder still for me to reveal what I think of him. Suffice to say he is a gangster. Devoid of the human condition.’

  ‘I see.’ Elsa rested her hands on her lap, her fingers closed around the card. ‘I will let her know of your visit and your offer. I cannot predict how she will respond. I certainly cannot promise anything. The Haves of this world often get the shock of their lives when they realise the Have Nots are in actual fact the Don’t Wants. The power they thought they wielded turns out to be an illusion.’

  Hope gently nudged his cup back into the centre of its saucer. ‘Thank you. The offer is not an illusion. Anyway, that’s my card if she wants to contact me.’

  Elsa stood up too. ‘How did you say you came to know my sister?’

  ‘You were right that I haven’t met her before. To be frank, it’s Flinger I know. Or should I say know of. That is why I’m here.’

  Hope’s eyes strayed to the wall where among the framed photographs was Elsa posing with a younger woman, perhaps in her early twenties, similar to Elsa Gurner but with lighter, longer hair; broader, happier eyes; a button nose; and a slightly sharper chin. In the background was a Ferris Wheel. Perhaps, the State Fair.

  ‘Is that Stacey? I detect a certain family resemblance.’

  ‘Yes, that’s her. The camera does not well capture her pigheadedness; otherwise, the family resemblance would not be so apparent.’

  Hope smiled. He also noted that the other photographs on the wall, of the two sisters and a couple who he could only assume were their parents, were all very much older. But he kept this observation to himself.

  11. ‘I am willing to believe it despite the blood on your collar.’

  Hope was starting to wonder if this really was the baddest man in the bar. He looked bad enough with his shaved head and bulging neck muscles, but as Hope got him talking into his beer, it was all about union rights and congressional inquiries. Railing against the establishment. Quoting snippets of radio speeches. Hope really had to question the judgment of the bartender who had directed him to this table. It seemed he had confused the amount of saliva discharged in a rant with actual menace. This man who went by the name of Debrew, simply had too many opinions to ever need to put himself on the line to defend just one.

  And then, as Hope gulped passed the second beer in his company, there were the sounds of gasps and bottles being knocked over. All eyes in the Queller off 72nd Avenue were drawn to the bar, where a short, broad shouldered man in an old brown leather jacket had locked a fearsome handhold on the bartender’s throat and was shaking him about as though he were washing just unpegged off the line.

  The short man was hissing something into the bartender’s ear. He then threw him disdainfully backwards into the wall and set about pouring himself a drink from the nearest bottle. He gulped it and slammed down the glass.

  He strode to Hope’s table and pulled up a chair.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. He smiled with too much mouth and with dark eyes that were not set right. ‘You really the guy that paints all those buildings?’

  His breath smelt awful and Hope wondered what a dentist would have made of the teethwork. A grove of yellowy brown stumps.

  ‘That’s right,’ Hope replied indifferently.

  ‘I saw you in the paper. What’s your name?’

  ‘George.’

  ‘They call me Snap. On account of my temper.’ He pointed back at the bartender, who was shakily righting toppled bottles. ‘I wasn’t losing my temper just then. He had it coming. Tells me a
bout you and these funny questions you’ve been asking and how you wanna' meet the toughest man in the joint. He should’ve told about me. I know I wasn’t around at the time but you see I’m worth the wait.’

  He glanced disdainfully at Hope’s table companion. ‘Why you letting yourself be bored by this leach? Debrew moans about the Government like someone wants to know and he doesn’t even realise it is his old lady and mother-in-law who pull his leash. Well, I slap harder than those fine, attractive women, so he can keep his mouth shut from now on.’

  He held out his hand for Hope; Hope shook it: the skin was rough, riddled with scars.

  ‘Out of respect for you, I’ll let him stay at our table,’ Snap said.

  ‘Forget it,’ muttered Debrew, climbing out of his chair. ‘I’ve got to be somewhere else anyway.’

  ‘You’ve got to be somewhere that won’t kick your sorry butt.’ Snap glanced at him until he was all the way out the bar, then proceeded to stare at the door he had departed from.

  Hope took the opportunity for a closer look at the man and was intrigued by what he saw: the dull black unresponsive eye smacked of mental illness and drug abuse and the battered face showed as much evidence of a violent past as the surface of the moon - just the kind of person Hope had come here wanting to meet.

  The eyes finally drifted erratically back to Hope and locked on him in an unblinking stare.

  ‘You’ve now got the baddest son of a bitch without question. But if it ends in tears, you don’t get your money back.’ He laughed and his lips got stuck to his teeth like he needed the next size up.

  ‘That’s all I want. A bit of danger,’ said Hope.

  ‘You really sure about that? You’re a paint salesman. Real danger might come as a nasty revelation.’

  ‘I think I can handle it.’

  ‘Well, we’ll never find out in a lifeless dump like this. If you’d like to know for sure how bad I am, come with me.’

  ‘Sure. If you’ve got the time.’

  ‘Let’s go.’ Snap belligerently threw back his chair and headed for the door. Hope stood up, feeling more sober than when he had first entered the bar and it was not for a lack of drinking. This man who called himself Snap was dangerously unpredictable, the impulses he acted upon entirely violent. Whatever was about to happen it would not be so easy as calling Longworry to make an arrest.

  Once on street lever, with an unseasonably icy wind blowing, Snap looked edgily about. He spotted an alley on the opposite side of the street and veered that way, pointing his finger at it. ‘That’ll be the quickest way to get where we want to go.’

  ‘Want to go?’ Hope doubted the alley went anywhere much at all but skipped ahead regardless. He fancied his chances more there than in the cramped confines of a car. He could imagine how much easier those in the bar were breathing now that Snap had left - it was time for all the world to share in that feeling.

  He let the alley’s thick darkness envelope him and then he made his move, spinning and landing a vicious punch upon Snap’s jaw. The blow was enough to stun the man and render his retracting-knife thrust ineffectively slow. Hope caught the wrist and twisted it until it snapped sickeningly. The agony was voiced in an animal-like high pitched squeal. Hope was not at all sympathetic, the knife had already been drawn, the alley set to be bloodied one way or another, and the first rule of the street fight dictated that the one who missed first rarely hit last.

  Hope had his man pinned against the alley wall and lay into him with a flurry of brutal blows, employing hands hardened and callused by the three different sized punching bags hanging in his apartment; when he felt his fingers getting inundated with a warm sticky liquid he knew it was not his own skin being breached. He continued to punch, however. He would do so until he could no longer feel Snap against his knuckles but rather the wall he had pushed through to.

  But then Snap had gone limp and there was a bitter taste in Hope’s mouth that he tried to spit out and he let Snap drop to the ground. He peered down at the limp body and took a moment to wipe off his hands with his black handkerchief.

  There might have been blood on his clothes too but he had taken the precaution of wearing black for the night, and it occurred to him that it might have been the reason the villains always wore black in the cowboy films: they were the ones most expecting to get stained in red.