by Tom Kakonis
One of the three men seated there said through a coil of smoke drifting from the cigarette pasted to his lips, “Yeah? So?”
“I wonder if any of you men could help me.”
Another, an aspiring comedian, tilted back in his chair, put up disclaimer palms, and said, “Don’t look at me, I ain’t lost. You lost, Gordy?”
“Me neither. Last I checked.”
“You lookin’ for a boy,” the comedian smirked, “you in the wrong spot, that kinda action.”
Marshall stiffened. “Very funny,” he said. “But this is not a joke.”
“Yeah, well,” the smoker put in, “this ain’t your missing persons office either. This is Turk’s.”
“You suppose you could at least look at the photo?”
“S’pose you could get the fuck outta the way a the TV? We’re tryin’ to watch a game here.”
Marshall slunk away. Inventive variations on the same theme greeted him at the remaining booths and tables. Ribbons of boorish laughter trailed him out the door. Not an auspicious beginning.
And not much better at the other taverns. Some even worse. All of them almost pridefully grungy and seeming to exude a combative aura of macho bullying and throwaway spite. At each he searched its parking lot in the faint hope of stumbling on the elusive AZ plate. About as much chance of that as catching a fly with a pair of chopsticks. Or hearing a charitable word inside. Nevertheless, he kept on going, stubbornly, one to the next. By the time he arrived at the Norseman Lounge the sun was perched on the rim of the world, about to plunge in a gorgeous violet fanfare, drawing after it all that was left of the mean, malignant day. By then the persistent patterns of rejection and failure had drained the spirit out of him, conditioned him to defeat, and coming through the door he wore his anticipated want of welcome in his face.
And so he was nothing short of stunned to discover a pudgy young man with an open, artless grin, utterly empty of impudence or malice, beckoning unmistakably at no one but him. Offering even to buy him a drink. The first and only place he hadn’t been treated like a leper, or the invisible man. He came over and sank onto a bar stool and said, “A drink sounds good about now.”
“You the fella lookin’ for your kid, right?”
“That’s right. How did you know?”
“Seen ya out by the gate yesterday.”
“You were there?”
“Yeah. You gimme one a them flyers. You don’t remember?”
“Afraid not. Sorry. It’s mostly a blur, yesterday.”
“That’s okay. Was just a minute there, anyways.”
“My name’s Quinn,” Marshall said, extending a hand. “Marshall Quinn.”
“Mine’s Lester Caulkins.”
They gripped palms.
“Thanks for inviting me to join you, Lester. I appreciate it.”
“Ain’t nothin’. Glad for the company. So what’re you drinkin’?”
“I don’t know. Whatever you’re having.”
Lester swiveled on his stool and called, “Hey, Nick, couple brewbies here, huh?”
The squat, swarthy man behind the bar uncapped two bottles, brought them over, and grunted, “Three seventy.”
Marshall reached for his wallet. “Let me get this.”
“No way,” Lester said, slapping a ten on the bar. “My idea, I’m buyin’.”
Marshall took a pull on the beer. Tasted bitter, but not all that bad either. Not after all he’d been through tonight. Which thought reminded him why he was here, and so while change was being made he removed a leaflet from his pocket (long since had he given up trying to hand them out), unfolded it, and slid it under the eyes of the bartender. “I don’t suppose you could help me with this,” he said.
Those surly eyes darkened. Head shook an emphatic no.
“Well, do you have any objections if I ask around in here?”
“What, you a cop?”
“Cop? Hardly. I’m just trying to find this boy.”
“No.”
“No, what? No you don’t object, or no you don’t want me asking?”
“Said no.”
“I heard what you said. I don’t know what you mean.”
“Mean don’t want you bother my customers,” he muttered, and lumbered away.
Marshall sighed. To Lester he said, “Is he always this friendly?”
“Nick, he ain’t exactly famous for nice.”
“I noticed.”
“So you still lookin’? Your kid, I mean.”
“I guess you could call it that.”
“In here?”
“Here, and the other bars in the neighborhood.”
“Jesus, man, you better be careful. These are kick-ass joints. Don’t take kindly to strangers.”
“I found that out too.”
“Didn’t have no luck, huh.”
“About like what you just saw.”
“Shame. Y’know, what y’oughta do is offer a reward. There was any loot in it, even Nick might be interested.”
“If I had the money I would.”
Lester pointed at the leaflet. “Lemme have a look, can I?”
Another first: someone actually asking to see one of his leaflets. Marshall pushed it over, and Lester gave it a long, brow-pinching inspection, saying finally, “Nope. Wish I could help ya out, man, but I ain’t never seen this kid.”
“Thanks anyway.”
“For what? Like I said, I ain’t seen him.”
“For trying.”
Lester shrugged. “Least I could do, nice-lookin’ boy like that. What happen, anyways? He run away or somethin’?”
“He was abducted.”
Lester looked at him blankly.
“Kidnapped.”
“No shit. Somebody snatched him?”
“That’s what happened. About three months ago.”
“Around here?”
“No. In the city.”
Again Lester showed a baffled face. “So how come you lookin’ around here?”
“I’ve got reason to believe there may be a connection with someone who works at your plant.”
“At Norse?”
“Yes.”
“What’d that be? That connection?”
“Connection is a license plate,” Marshall said, launching into his story, gazing into the vapid face with the intensity of a man who’s corralled at last a receptive audience. No matter how dull-witted. Still someone willing to listen. Possibly even to help. “You see, I was out on the tollway, my wife and I, East-West, awhile back this was, and a car cut in front of me, and when we got to the next toll booth this car, a Mercury, maybe a Buick, but—” He broke off, conscious of the excess of words spilling out, the superfluous detail. Slow down. Keep it simple. Stay with the point.
He was about to begin again when a figure emerging from the back of the room entered his field of vision. Lester caught the drift in his eyes, turned, and hailed the runtish man sidling toward them: “Hey, Jimmie. How y’doin’?”
“Doin’ good, Lester.”
“Eight ball droppin’ for ya?”
“Went down couple times. How ’bout yourself? Mouth any better?”
“It’s comin’ along.”
He laid a companionable arm on Lester’s shoulders, glanced at Marshall. A toothpick projected like a moist needle from between his wormy lips. He shuttled it from one corner of his mouth to the other, said, “Who’s your friend?”
“Oh, yeah. Forgot my manners. This is, uh, what’d you say your name was again?”
Marshall said his name.
“An’ this here’s—”
“Jimmie,” Jimmie finished for him, adding quickly, “Pleased to meetcha, Mr. Quinn,” and offering a spidery hand and a slick smile.
Marshall shook the hand. “Good to meet you.”
“Ain’t seen you in here before. This your first time?”
“Yes.”
“Quite a place, huh?”
“That it is.”
“Mr. Quinn, h
e’s lookin’ for his boy,” Lester explained to Jimmie. “Was out by the gate yesterday. Remember?”
“Yeah, I remember that, now you mention. What happen to him?”
“He was kidnapped,” Marshall said.
Jimmie indicated the leaflet on the bar. “That him?”
“Yes.”
He picked up the sheet and studied it for a lengthening moment, his head nodding thoughtfully, the gradually disintegrating pick doing a slow dance in his mouth, both motions implicit with meaning.
“What is it?” Marshall said. “Have you seen him?”
“Well, no. Not exactly.”
“But you know something about him?”
“No. Mean not me, y’understand. But I might know a fella does.”
“Who is he? Can you give me his name?”
“Maybe do better’n that, even.”
“Better? How?”
“Put you together with him. Thing is, though, this fella don’t wanta get mixed up with no heat.”
“Heat?”
“Law.”
“But I’m not the police,” Marshall protested in a voice gone suddenly near to breathless.
“Yeah, I know that. But this fella don’t. He thinks people might get the wrong idea, they was to see him rappin’ with you. That’s just how it is in here. You follow what I’m sayin’?”
“No, I guess I don’t. Is this man here?”
“Right out back.”
“Will he talk to me?”
“He might, I was to put in a word for ya.”
“Now?”
“Whyn’t we go out there and see?”
For just a speck of an instant Lester, forgotten in this curious exchange and with nothing to add to it, seemed on the verge of uttering something. Instead he lifted his bottle and took a long swallow. He knew, better than most, what it meant to go out back.
What it meant for Marshall was different only insofar as it was nowhere near so imaginative in conception, though no less startling or painful in execution. He was ushered through the door and out into the alley, this Jimmie person behind him, urging him on. His eyes fluttered, adjusting to the dark; and a towering shape seemed to materialize out of the shadows; and there was a peculiar whooshing sound of some object parting the muggy air, and then the sound of his own astonished grunt as it (what it was he couldn’t tell: lighter than a bat, heavier than a fist) slammed into his chest, exploding the wind from his lungs. Here it comes again, across the small of the back this time, whipsawing him, buttering his knees. And from across a widening distance he hears the Jimmie voice saying, “Enough with the stick, Tiny”; and in the splinter of a second before he goes down, a hand seizes him by the collar, whirls him about, and flattens his back against a wall. It props him up, that hand, while the other, balled into a fist, delivers a series of short, chopping blows to his head, like a piston pounding, setting his eyes spinning, stars—no, whole galaxies—erupting in gorgeous bursts of light behind them.
“Okay, that’ll do,” said the Jimmie voice; and the pummeling stopped, but for a final coda of a punch driven with the force of a sledge into his midsection, just beneath the belt line; and he doubled over, gagging, and a blackness seemed to swell up from under his feet and he toppled, face first, onto the gravel’s cool stones. A silence filled his punished head. Not for long. From the far side of that blessed silence he heard his name pronounced, upwardly inflected. If he made no attempt at a response, maybe it would go away. A hand grasped a hank of his hair, jerked his head back at a spine-stinging angle. “Mr. Quinn? You hear me? Mr. Quinn?”
Wasn’t going away. So he tried to speak, but all his mouth would produce was a foamy drool mingled with the blood leaking from his nose and split lips.
“Mr. Quinn? This your friend Jimme here. How you feelin’?”
He groaned.
“Not so good, huh.”
He was silent.
“See, this little thumpin’ you took here, it ain’t nothin’ like what can happen, you keep pesterin’ these boys. So what I’m recommendin’ is you take your fuckin’ flyers and scoot on outta here. While you still can. You understand what I’m tellin’ you?”
Still silent.
The hand tightened, yanked his head into the hollow between his shoulder blades. “Askin’ you a question, Mr. Quinn.”
Some feeble noises, efforts at words, burbled out of his distended throat.
“Think I heard a yes in there. You hear it, Tiny?”
“Unh-uh,” another voice rumbled. “Needs more stompin’.”
He tried again, sputtered something approximating the yes they wanted to hear.
“There it is. Sure hope so, anyways. ’Cuz for you it don’t get no better’n this, Mr. Quinn. Gets worse. Next time you get your ticket punched.”
The grip on his hair was released. His head fell limply. He rolled over onto one side and drew himself into a fetal position. A sound of receding footsteps reached his closing ears.
Lester hung out awhile, finished off his beer, and then when this Quinn fella didn’t come back inside, drank his too. No sense lettin’ a good brew go to waste. Still a few bucks left outta that ten, buy him another, he showed. Fat fuckin’ chance a that. Don’t wait up.
Never shoulda been here, first place, fine gentleman like that. Educated. You could tell that right off, way he talked, threads he wore. Don’t belong, hooch-hole like this. Fuck, he told him that. That’s what he told him.
’Course, what he didn’t tell him was what goin’ out back can mean, even when he had the chance. So what? No skin off his ass. Ain’t his fault. Ain’t like he got elected bodyguard to the world, or its conscience. Except the poor fuck come in here lookin’ for help, and what he gets is Nick dumpin’ on him and then Jimmie shuckin’ him there, woofin’ like he knows somethin’ about the kid, which he already said he didn’t. Which was just pure mean, dog ass mean. No call for it. Even that ain’t enough, not for Jimmie. He gotta take him out back, God knows why. Maybe just a joke, lead him down the alley, get him turned around. Coulda been that, little joke. Hoped so. But he sure as shit ain’t goin’ back there, find out. Not this grunt. Once is plenty.
Thirty minutes elapsed. He snuck a couple peeks at the back door. Shut up tighter’n a nun’s twat. Nick spotted his empties and came over and demanded, “You goin’ drink or hold down that stool?” Lester ordered another. Waited some more. Nobody comin’ through that door. Not Jimmie. Not Quinn. Nothin’ doin’ here, so he sank the last of the brew and hauled himself up and, weaving a little, headed for the other door, front one. Outside, it occurred to him he’d neglected to find a ride home. He was about to go back in, see what he could turn up, when, for reasons he couldn’t have explained to himself, he walked instead over to the side of the building, peered into the darkness a moment and then, keeping in the shadows, keeping down, edged his way along the wall, moving cautiously toward the alley out back. And when he came around the corner what he saw—a figure on the ground, rocking a little, moaning softly—impelled him to exclaim, “Ah, Jesus. Look what they done.”
From between the fingers laced over his battered face he could see the blurry outlines of a shape looming above him, then stooping toward him, and his first panicked thought was They’re back. He squeezed himself into a tight ball, shrank from the tentative hand laid on his shoulder. Till a sad, slurry voice whispered, “Just me, man. Lester.”
“Lester?” he said, his own voice emerging a sandpaper rasp. “You?”
“Yeah. You okay? Gonna make it?”
“Not sure.”
“Anything broke?”
Stiff as an arthritic, Marshall uncoiled his limbs, testing them. Amazingly, they seemed to work. Gingerly, he touched his nose and his cheek and jawbones. “Don’t think so,” he said.
“Piece a luck. Look like they give you the primo whuppin’.”
“Why?”
“That ain’t important now. What is, is we get small, both of us, an’ before quick. Case they take it in t
heir heads to come back.”
“Good idea.”
“Think you can get up?”
“Try.” He sucked in a wide, dragging breath, but on the exhale a fit of hacking seized him and a froth of blood bubbled to his lips and trickled down his chin.
Lester produced a handkerchief, swiped it away. “Lemme give ya little boost,” he said and slipped his hands under Marshall’s arms and tugged him heavily to his feet.
“Thanks. I’ll be all right now.”
Lester braced him against the wall of the building, took a step back, shook his head doubtfully. “I dunno. You got wheels?”
“What?”
“Car?”
“In front.”
“What kind?”
“Volvo. Wagon.”
“Gimme the keys.”
“Why?”
“I’ll go get it. Bring it around back.”
Marshall hesitated.
“Just gimme the keys, okay? We gotta move.”
He reached into a pocket, handed them over.
“You wait right here, huh? An’ hold down the coughin’, you can.”
“Lester?”
“Yeah?”
“You coming back?”
Over his shoulder Lester said, almost ruefully, “Yeah, I’ll be back.”
Maybe he would. Had to trust somebody. But as the moments lengthened, Marshall also had to wonder if he’d played the fool again. First his body served up for beating, now his car forfeited. Lori was right. Even Chip was right. He was out of his depth here, should have gone to the police.
He heard gravel crunching. A vehicle, head lamps out, nosed around the corner of the building and rolled into the alley. He recognized it as his own. Wanted to cheer. It pulled up beside him. The passenger door swung open, and he heaved himself in. “We’re outta here, man,” Lester said, and he switched on the lights, punched the pedal, and they took off, rubber squealing.
