Running Cold (The Mick Callahan Novels)

by Harry Shannon

  Their house was furnished by Goodwill. It smelled like stale pot and men who live alone. Something was different tonight, the air wasn't as bad. Wes looked around at the explosion of racing and gaming magazines, empty beer bottles, pet hair from the dog they'd put to sleep a few months ago, and tattered fabric. The mess didn't bother him much one way or the other. Not any more. As a kid he'd briefly been fastidious, a losing proposition in his father's home. His tour in the Army had reawakened that tendency, causing turf wars with Calvin that led to a lot of screaming, even a few punches thrown. After discharge, Wes had given in to slob status, surrendered to the idea that his father was an overgrown frat boy unwilling to change. Eventually, Wes had become one too.

  "That you?"

  "Yeah, I'm back."

  "How did it go?"

  "I met this cute girl, really hot."

  "I meant the other, son."

  "Not so great."

  "Oh, man."

  "I know, but don't sweat it," Wes called. "I'll be working on a couple of other plays later tonight."

  Cal didn't respond. The voices from the tube rambled along. Wes eased closer to the living room, the lowered lights and flickering screen. He heard some music and then a lot of out of tune singing. Someone else was here, otherwise his dad would have exploded or whined at the bad news, depending upon his mood. Wes peeked into the living room. He smiled. A large shadow devoured half the wooden paneling nearest the hall door.

  "Hey, Julius. What's up?"

  No one knew his last name. Julius rented the other unit in the yard. It was so run down burglars didn't bother. He lived alone, behind window bars, blinds drawn and windows covered with tin foil to reflect the smothering heat. Bald Julius was morbidly obese, rarely came out at all but most certainly not during the day. He sometimes wore sheets as shirts, stuff with silly patterns, big holes cut out for hairy arms to protrude. Julius sometimes came over to smoke a bowl with Dad. Wes sniffed the air again carefully. Not tonight, though. Calvin was sober as a judge. Nothing in the house but body odor and the usual stench of garbage waiting to be dumped and dishes not yet washed.

  Wes nodded. Julius nodded, flopping his enormous head. More chins than a Chinese college. A really sweet guy underneath, brilliant at anything to do with technology, the internet or gaming, but about as weird a human being as Wes had ever encountered. Julius didn't say much, no one knew where he got his money, but somehow Wes and Calvin knew you could trust him. That kind of went without saying. Maybe precisely because he was so eccentric. More likely just because they were the only white guys within ten blocks.

  "What's up?"

  "Nothing much, dude."

  Julius had his laptop open. It went everywhere with him, like a plastic dog. Wes sat down on the couch. It was open to Internet Explorer, so Wes asked if he could fire off a quick email. Julius grunted. Since he didn't sound pissed, Wes took that for a yes. He accessed his account and fired off an email to Ms. Hottie, Jessie Keaton. Said, "Just hitting you up cuz I have your suitcase from train station let's hang out." He signed off and turned the laptop back around. Sniffed the air.

  "Not smoking?"

  Julius grinned and pointed to Calvin. "Blame that on your Dad."

  Calvin patted the couch. "Promised Doc I'd quit, and right about now I'm feeling good about it. He wants to meet you."

  Wes ignored the statement and the request within. He rubbed his aching stomach muscles.

  "You look like shit warmed over," Julius said. "Piss off the wrong people?"

  "It's a long story."

  "Fighting for the money?"

  "Not for real, Dad. Relax. Just taking a few shots to get some of our money back."

  Julius said, "And you think I'm weird, bro?"

  "Son . . ."

  "Dad, I'm really whipped. It's been a long day."

  Calvin sagged, resigned to the distance between them. "Okay. At least Doc is going to help us out." Cal didn't seem to want to say more in front of Julius. "Go get some sleep."

  Wes shook his head. "Like I said, think I'm going to go out again."

  The TV went to a commercial for a banking outfit, something about how their investment wing won't rip you off like everyone else's did. Yeah, Wes thought, legalized stealing and it's still going on. Without saying a word, Julius hit the mute button. He produced a bag of Cheese Puffs like a magician and began to down them with already yellowing fingers.

  "Julius, does your dick ever get yellow from jerking off at the computer screen? Never mind, I don't really want to know."

  "Funny man."

  They both grinned. Calvin stared for a long time. The sadness in his eyes made Wes uncomfortable. He was used to Cal stoned out or pissed off or scared of someone or something. Not morose like a puppy. These strange new vibes didn't sit well.

  "What?"

  Calvin seemed to carefully redirect himself, like a barefoot man backing away from broken glass. "Nothing. We can talk later. Where are you going?"

  Wes shrugged. "This girl I know has been working a parasail boat out on Catalina Island. Somebody told me she had a couple days off because her mom got sick, so she was going to be in town. Thought I'd try and find her."

  "Free place to stay at Catalina?"

  "Maybe."

  A few seconds passed with neither of them knowing quite what to say or do. Calvin glanced at Julius, who grabbed the remote and turned the mute off. The room got noisy. The racket drove their heads closer together so they could talk. Julius became a hulking statue. Wes had to focus to shut out the television show. B-list stars on some kind of panel were discussing which of three singers would make it to the semi-finals. Fortunately, Julius seemed completely enthralled.

  Cal dropped his voice, said, "Doc says he's going to help me out, have a talk with Roth. I think he may even front us the money."

  "What's the catch?"

  "This is if I stay sober from now on. That's good news, right?"

  Wes leaned even closer. His dad smelled of sweat and aftershave. "No offense, Cal, but until you have it in writing that Roth is going to let us skate, you stay right here. Those people are bad mother fuckers and we both know it. Maybe this Doc guy, Callahan? Maybe he doesn't know that, but we do."

  "He knows it."

  "Come on. He's a movie star or something, not like us." Don't trust him, Dad, he'll probably get us both killed.

  "You look at this guy," Calvin said, "you know he's AA, you listen to him talk, but even though he's a therapist and all that, you get this feeling. Like he's not anybody to screw around with. Maybe Roth will pick that up, you know?"

  Saw a shrink once after I got home, the guy was more bat shit crazy than I'll ever be. He's got you swindled. "From your mouth to God's ear, Pops."

  "You know me, look on the bright side."

  "A little too often. I think we'd both better knock it off soon."

  They grew awkward at the same moment and eased away from one another. Calvin licked his lips. He tried a couple of times to say something and failed. Wes wasn't sure he wanted to hear this.

  "Hey, Wes?"

  Wes waited. Another plane went over and the house shook. After organizing his thoughts, Calvin said, "It's my debt, boy. It's not 'ours' or yours. Thank you for wanting to help, for trying to do something, but I pooped in my own diaper, and I'll figure out a way to clean it up."

  God damn it. Those emotions trickled into his dad's eyes again, white eyes clear of marijuana for a change. Wes didn't have a clue how to respond, him sitting there totally sober. I need to stay off the booze, away from gaming and out of trouble. Hell, if he can do it, so can I, right? But Wes didn't want to say anything like that aloud, make it a contract.

  "Julius?"

  Julius waved his hand as if to say "wait." On TV they announced the winner. A gay dude in a skin tight flamenco shirt lost out to a country singer with big tits. Julius darkened. "What a crock of shit." Clearly he'd been rooting for the one who got second place.

  Wes said, "I'm sorry, man
. I'll give you a moment to recover, partly out of sympathy but mostly because you're as big as the average rhino."

  "Join a comedy group, Wes. Really."

  "Julius?"

  The big man turned, mouth crunching what looked like a shit load of little yellowish, dried-up worms. "Umph."

  "I'll be back later. Hang around and look after Cal for me, okay?"

  Julius shook his head. "Going home now, I'm really depressed." He rose with a blubbery quiver, wriggled his sausage fingers. "I'll be right next door. Call or text if you need me."

  They watched Julius make his way down the hall, oversized shoes thumping on worn carpet. Calvin eyed his son. "You wouldn't be thinking of going out there, maybe trying to talk to those people, right? Roth and his big zombie bodyguard?"

  "Of course not," Wes lied. "Why would I do that?"

  "Because you're a hot tempered bastard. Because I don't want you to get hurt. Besides, it's covered. Believe me. Relax. Doc is going to handle this, he promised."

  "Hey," Wes said, abruptly, changing the topic. "Like I said, I met a girl."

  "Where? In Vegas?"

  "Yeah, at the train station. She says we went to school together and she had a crush on me."

  "No accounting for taste."

  Julius got to the front door. Opened it. The floor groaned and shook like wood in the throes of orgasm. Julius said, "Depressed. Going home." He went out on the porch. Kind of like a fridge on rollers, Wes thought.

  Wes turned back to his dad. "Her name is Jessie something. She's a knockout."

  "Knockout is good," Calvin said. "But remember, we got a lot more to worry about than women these days."

  The door closed with a BANG and both men jumped.

  Wes continued. "I think I might want to track her down. You never know. Or maybe when I get a job, get some legs under me. That might be better."

  "Women like that. Jobs and shit." A wry smile.

  "Indeed they do."

  "Wes . . ."

  Don't say it, whatever it is old man. You're making us both really uncomfortable here. I need you to be a player, a big shot, a somebody. I don't care for all this therapy bullshit, turns a man into some kind of a sniveling teenaged girl . . .

  "I'll be back in a couple of hours, Dad."

  "Yeah," Calvin said. "Okay."

  Wes backed away and turned to go out the front door. Something made him stop and look back. His father was still standing there in the living room, framed perfectly by the two splintering beams of the doorway and back-lit by the flickering television. His body seemed electrified, slightly transcendent somehow, face pale and just worn out. Calvin looked old, older than his son had ever seen him, and his eyes seemed bottomless and dark and somehow irretrievably sad.

  EIGHT

  Wednesday evening

  Callahan left the delicatessen, the bookie and the pretty girl behind. He strolled out into the evening, feeling reasonably satisfied yet also way out of balance. He turned and walked down Ventura Boulevard for a while, searching for some fresh coffee. There were lots of places open, but surprisingly long lines in most of them. LA drinks an awful lot of coffee for a city that is supposed to be laid back. Callahan backed away from the crowds. He was still jacked up on adrenalin from the confrontation with Roth and Quinn, and didn't want to have to stand close to anyone. His skin was twitching. He didn't trust himself to drive. One bout of road rage and he might end up doing ten to twelve for manslaughter.

  Callahan knew violent behavior took him back to an abusive childhood even as it gave him some sort of release. That was obviously not the healthiest way to get out of a bad mood, but sometimes it worked.

  He walked briskly down the sidewalk, arms swinging to fend people off, head up and eyes granite cold. Passed closed clothing shops and furniture stores and crowded restaurants. Callahan finally stopped into a small cafe on a side street. Someone was playing bongo drums. A wiry, long-haired man in black clothes was reading T.S. Elliot to a small but rapt audience.

  "You know only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief. And the dry stone no sound of water. Only there is shadow under this red rock."

  The reader paused. He looked up, eyes beady from drugs. Those two red-freckled orbs bored into Mick. It was as if the man were addressing Callahan personally. "Come in under the shadow of this red rock and I will show you something different from either your shadow at morning striding behind you, or your shadow at evening rising to meet you."

  Callahan knew the rest. After another pause, "I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

  A silence fell. Callahan stared back. The reader dropped his eyes. He ignored the applause, gathered papers and notebooks and made a dramatic exit. The bongo player, a younger woman with frizzy hair, followed him out.

  The guy behind the counter offered Callahan any number of potent brews. Wisely, Mick settled for an iced decaf. He added some brown sugar and cream, went outside and tried Calvin McCann on his cell phone. It went straight to voice mail. Callahan left a message for Calvin to call him back, said he might be stopping by. What the hell, why not give good news in person? Besides, the truth is you don't want to go home alone again. To have to think. Not until I'm really, really tired . . .

  Sometimes something strange happened. A shift in time and space. It was unlike any other experience, a peek behind the curtain thrown down to cover the numinous. Most people didn't seem to notice it, or know how to express it. Callahan supposed another therapist would say he'd disassociated, split off from himself and experienced the world from a safe distance. That it was merely an anxiety reaction. But to Mick there was something more spiritual at work, and perhaps not in a good way. A light rip in the fabric of the universe could allow the daemons in, let them run up gibbering and pulling. Whenever that happened he was eight years old and hiding in the closet while his Uncle Danny rampaged drunkenly through the house. To Callahan, that moment was not a memory, it was a current reality. Something that co-existed with whatever else was going on. Callahan was in two places at once, and momentarily paralyzed. Both realities were vivid and bright and demanded his full attention at the same time.

  Callahan staggered outside. A light breeze rustled food wrappers and other trash along the darkened sidewalk. The world tilted sideways. Buildings were further away than they had been just a split second before. Sounds grew fainter, Mick's breathing grew louder. A group of young people went by, chatting and laughing, trailing rancid cigarette smoke and cheap perfume. And then it happened. Just like that, a shot glass sprang to mind, warm amber inside, glass glinting under the neon lights of a retro bar; country music playing on an old-style jukebox, scattered sawdust on the worn wooden floor, bar girls in skin tight jeans.

  Callahan wanted to drink. More than he'd wanted to drink in years.

  Callahan's eyes closed like fists and held tight in a glowering darkness. Dry Wells was a state and many years away, but in his soul it was happening all over again. Young Mick held a girl close in a shadowy corner, gripped her ass through spray painted blue jeans as their tongues danced like blind serpents. Someone else's girl. Big John Hardy was pacing outside swearing and chest thumping his buddies, demanding that Mick step outside. On some level Mick felt sorry for him. Hell, she was banging half the men under fifty in that little town. Mick didn't care one way or the other about Penny, he was just dead drunk and as full of mean as the rest of them.

  They had all looked the same back then, dull eyes and lean muscle and angry attitude, cowboy hats and boots, none of them with a lick of hope they'd make it out of there. Ever. Each of them clinging to a closet dream they didn't really believe in. Penny that she'd be a model in big magazines, Mick a vague sense that he wanted to go on with school or join the service, even Big John who played some guitar and tried his best to write songs and didn't sing half bad. But none of them were ever going to actually do anything, get out of Nevada, arrive at any destination other than the grave.

>   And now sitting there by that coffee shop Callahan was seventeen again and drunk off his ass in that dive bar, stirring up trouble on a Saturday night, necking with someone else's girl, just . . . because. Younger Mick would have said he was bored, needed something to do. But that wasn't it. Like the rest of those kids, he could already feel death breathing hard, pushing its ugly snout through a torn window screen. He could sense the grief of old age once you'd never amounted to a fart in a windstorm, lived an entire lifespan in a booze-addled blur, then laid down to die here in this small armpit of a town in the Nevada desert. Felt the horror of ending life alone, out in the sticks, with nothing of substance to show for having suffered the journey.

  Childhood had run its course long ago, it was over and done. Now it was time to face the music. To grow up, grow old and die. Callahan was scared. He felt astonishingly alone. That same old phobia of having it all just happen, roll by in a blur and then get taken away with snap of a bony finger. It had felt like time was slipping through his fingers even way back when. And now? Hell, it was nearly halftime in the football game and he was getting his ass kicked.

  Callahan was spooked by the same things now, near the end of his thirties, as he had been back in the day. After having gone up and down the escalator of fame a couple of times, after nailing things down pretty tightly and promptly screwing them up again, one thought kept running through his mind, like a musical counterpoint to the urge to drink. It was the truth he would have told a client if presented with the same chords of contrary emotion, the same notes in bitter sequence. She can't save you, she can't save you. Because life is what it's going to be, with or without a partner. We can struggle to connect, but in the end we all die alone. And we all are fully accountable for whatever did or did not happen in our span of years.

  He flashed back. That night in Dry Wells, Big John and Mick, they beat each other up pretty good, both of them drunk, not aiming punches very well. The crowd gathered around and urged them to hit each other in the mouth. They were both so bombed they must have been a boring fight, because it went on forever, and eventually everyone drifted away. Big John and Mick ended up sitting next to each other, facing north and south, wordlessly crying. After a while Big John wandered off too and then Mick went home. They never spoke of it again. Eventually Big John Hardy married Penny, fathered one son, and then got himself blown up in Iraq.