Shotgun Lullaby

by Steve Ulfelder

  I hate to say it, but Jessie didn’t add a whole hell of a lot to the Shrewsbury house, where her mother and her sister and I had been doing pretty well. She was as silent and rage-filled as ever. More so, really, because I’d moved in while she was gone. She slept most of the day. Went out every night, never said where or who with. Charlene didn’t know what the hell to do. Me neither.

  Worst of all, Jessie was skinny. So damn skinny it’d break your heart. Wore a baggy sweatshirt to mask it, but the way she cinched her belt to keep her jeans up was enough to make you cry.

  And you know who got the short end, as usual? Sophie, Charlene’s thirteen-year-old. She’d been happy as hell when I moved in—I love the kid like nobody’s business—had thrived, had let loose her smarts, stunning Charlene and me at the dinner table with these concussive blasts of intelligence.

  But Sophie’s family role was peacemaker, mood reflector. Since Jessie came home, all that intelligence had gone dark.

  What could you do? Family is family.

  Charlene had to be thinking along the same lines as me, because she said, “How’s Roy?”

  I shrugged. “You know as much as I know. Still out in the Berkshires with his mother. I’ve been trying to get him here to ride the dirt bikes. Been leaving messages.”

  We were quiet awhile.

  Charlene scratched my shoulder. “What happened after the meeting? I got a half-dozen calls from Barnburners. People said the cops were checking up on you and that boy you brought.”

  I told her the whole thing. It took a while. Halfway through the story she rose, tugged my hand, and led me upstairs to her bedroom. I liked that. Then she stroked my hair while I spoke. I liked that too.

  When I was done, Charlene, pillow-propped on the bed now, was quiet a few seconds. “Before noon today,” she finally said, “three different Barnburners called to tell me about this Andrade beating. Like all gossips, they had parts of the story wrong. But they had the gist of it right.”

  “How the hell did word get out?”

  She shrugged. “The point is, a lot of people are unhappy about it. There’s grumbling about the things you do, Conway. The favors. The muscle stuff.”

  “Do they think I do it for fun? People come to us screwed up in ugly ways. I get them out of jams. And only when I’m asked to.”

  “I realize that, and I realize that some of the bitchers and moaners are the ones who were once in the ugliest jams.” Charlene let a finger play through my hair. “That’s half the problem, Conway. People who need help from a man with your talents don’t like to be reminded of the fact years later.”

  I nodded. “Fair enough. Now I know the holier-than-thous are eyeballing me.”

  Charlene put her head on my shoulder. “Are you worried for Gus?”

  “I don’t know. I think so. Yes. I have to be worried for him.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Cokehead. Rehab kid. College kid. Big bullshitter. Probably doing AA because Daddy made him. I had to guess, I’d say he’ll quit the coke and drink like a fish for the next twenty years. Then he’ll come back to AA for real.”

  “Harsh.”

  “Honest.”

  “But you care about him a lot.”

  I waved a hand. “I’m just helping out a Barnburner.”

  “Nonsense.” She smiled.

  “Okay. I like the kid. He’s got a heart. He’s scared. If he works at it, he could be a man.”

  “What’s your next move? As if I didn’t know.”

  “I need to figure out who’s got a problem with Gus.”

  “And look into it.” She sighed as she spoke.

  “Of course.”

  “Conway Sax takes in another stray.” She said it softly. “He reminds you of your son. You can admit it to me. You might even want to admit it to yourself.”

  “Everybody’s a damn shrink.”

  “You don’t have to be much of one to see it.”

  “I know,” I said. “But there’s more to it.”

  Charlene stroked my hair, said nothing.

  “You should have seen the cops and EMTs coming out of this halfway house,” I said. “Could barely keep their lunch down, some of ’em, and they were hard-core pros. I didn’t want to spook Gus, so I played it light. But it looks like some serious cats want him dead.”

  “If they wanted him dead, and not the poor boy they actually shot.”

  “Yeah. If. But that’s the way I see it.”

  “Of course it is. Because it’s an excuse to take in a stray.”

  Most nights, that would’ve set me off, started a fight. But the way Charlene was stroking my hair made it hard to get mad.

  I said, “Why are you being so nice to me?”

  “Something about tonight’s meeting. You still make other men in the room seem … trivial. It’s why I fell in love with you, you know.”

  “You’ve told me that.”

  “A meeting is also the only time you say five words in a row.”

  “You’ve told me that, too.”

  I kissed her.

  Soon she broke the kiss. “Davey’s yowling.”

  He’s my other cat. Generally speaking, he’s a pain in the ass.

  “Hell,” I said, propping myself on an elbow. “I was getting set to yowl some myself.”

  “Let him in before he wakes Sophie.”

  Then Davey kept hopping onto the bed at all the worst times. The more I swatted him off, the more determined he was to stay.

  Charlene and I wound up calling it quits and laughing ourselves to sleep while the big dumb cat purred between us.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Next morning. Had an ’84 Mercedes diesel wagon in for a head gasket and a couple of oil seals. I’d been looking forward to it—we mostly work on Japanese cars now, but it’s the Germans I like best. The parts guy was late, though, so my hands were tied.

  I’d texted Gus to walk the six blocks to the shop when he woke up. He came at ten thirty with a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee for each of us. We stepped to the office, sat, sipped.

  “Let’s say you were supposed to be killed last night instead of Weller,” I said. “Who and why?”

  I’d hit him hard partly to scope his reaction. Most guys, you tell them somebody tried to shotgun them last night, they’d flip out.

  Gus didn’t.

  He did raise his eyebrows some, blowing on his coffee. “Whew. Very Castle, very Law and Order.”

  “Who and why? For the hell of it.”

  “The prime suspect would be Andrade, seller of crappy cars.”

  “I’ll check him out,” I said. “But why would he go after you? I’m the one wrecked his arm.”

  “You’re a tough guy and I’m not. I used Almost Home as my address on the bill of sale, so there’s your opportunity, Castle. And as far as he’s concerned, I owe him six hundred and fifty bucks. That’s motive even if you discount the smashed elbow. As to the means, the shotgun…” Gus shrugged.

  “You don’t owe him a nickel. I erased that debt.”

  He half-smiled. “You truly see it that way, don’t you? Conway Sax declares the debt null and void, therefore the debt is null and void. I doubt Andrade shares your viewpoint.”

  He was right about that. “I’ll look at Andrade first,” I said, “even though it feels all wrong. He’s a born loser, a creep who rips off poor people and illegals who can’t do anything about it. Hard guy with a shotgun? I don’t see it. So play along. Who else?”

  His eyes dodged. I stared him down, wondered what he was hiding. “There was this guy in Springfield who supplied the dope when I was dealing at college,” he finally said. “I was his number-one retailer. I was selling at UMass Amherst and a bunch of the smaller schools out there. This guy loved me because college kids pay twice as much for coke, and you can step on it twice as hard.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Teddy Pundo was his name, aka Fat Teddy, and he was a piece of work. He was a fellow Minuteman, and if he wasn’t r
etarded, he was pretty close to it. He got kicked out, but I heard he went back after a year off. Weird kid. Threw his plentiful weight around, hinted his dad was a Mob guy. I figured he was full of shit. I mean, Mafia guys in Springfield, Massachusetts?” Gus’s eyes dodged again.

  I shrugged. “Why not?”

  “It just seemed très dramatic. Especially because Fat Teddy was this freaky loser, shunned and hated by all. And I, ah … I finally met the father, Charlie Pundo. Want to know what he does?”

  I waited.

  “He owns a damn jazz club. One that’s supposedly a big hairy deal in Springfield. He was mild-mannered, very polite. Seemed more like a dapper retired barber than a gangster.”

  “What’s the club called?”

  “The Hi Hat. Fat Teddy said his old man paid top dollar to get big jazz stars into this little club. A regular patron of the arts.”

  “If you were Teddy’s favorite dealer,” I said, “why would he be out to get you?” Like I didn’t know.

  Gus’s face confirmed it before his voice did. “I ripped him off for the final nine months of our partnership. Skimming, stepping on the product one final time, taking care of my friends for free.”

  “Typical college dealer bullshit.”

  Gus raised his eyebrows. “Painful but true. The full truth, since you appear to want nothing less, is that Teddy Pundo’s the reason I finally went to rehab. Fat Teddy and some other serious-looking dude came to my apartment one night and beat the crap out of me. Teddy said he knew what was going on. He gave me two days to come up with twenty-five grand. My dad had been bugging me to go to Hazelden anyway. A thirty-one-day trip to Minnesota suddenly looked attractive.”

  Hazelden: the best rehab in the country, and priced that way. Call it confirmation that Gus’s dad was rich.

  “I’ll hit Andrade first,” I said. “Then this Hi Hat, to find Teddy Pundo.”

  “Seriously?”

  “You’re a Barnburner.”

  Gus stared at me maybe twenty seconds.

  I said, “Anybody else I should know about?”

  He blew on his coffee, looked at me from beneath his bangs. “That’s it.”

  Junkies are liars. That doesn’t mean they’re good liars.

  I sighed. Time for a new tack. “Ever fire a shotgun?” I said. “Hell, ever been hit by shotgun fire?”

  Gus made a horse noise to let me know it was a dumb question. “Have you?”

  “Fired one? Sure. Hit by one? Nah. But a pal of mine was.”

  “No shit?” He was leaning forward. This was shaping up to be a story a preppy kid from Massachusetts could sink his teeth into. A story he would wish was his own, would likely steal and make his own.

  “Shot by a watermelon farmer,” I said.

  “No shit?”

  I usually stay away from these old stories. It’s one thing to outline your drunk log in an AA meeting to show where booze took you. It’s another to reminisce. It’s tempting, but it’s a wrong move—you end up remembering the wacky stories but forgetting the misery that went with them.

  An eager audience is tempting too, though. Besides, I had a reason to lay it out for Gus.

  So I did.

  My buddy’s name was Nick. He was five years older than me, and he was mostly deaf and dishonorably discharged from the air force because of what he claimed was a training snafu. Something about high explosives and a plan to scare the shit out of his commanding officer.

  Nick had a little-girl giggle you couldn’t help but laugh along with and curly brown hair he wore in a mini-Afro. He also had the strangest body I ever saw: wingspan and torso of a basketball player, legs of a near dwarf. Called himself the world’s tallest midget when he drank gin, which he freely admitted put him in a self-pitying frame of mind.

  During my bad years, Nick and I spent a summer working and stealing and drinking our way down the western shore of the Gulf of Mexico. Once we cleared Corpus Christi, we got sick of the trip. Hailed a pickup full of Mexicans, asked for a lift north, had a little communication problem, wound up fifty miles west of the Gulf coast.

  Turned out it wasn’t a communication problem after all: the Mexicans had driven us to the middle of nowhere to rob us. They got our last nine dollars, two packs of Winstons, and a brass belt buckle I liked a lot.

  The middle of nowhere was Edinburg, Texas.

  They grow watermelons in Edinburg.

  Hungry as hell, thumbing for a northbound ride that never came, me holding my no-longer-belted jeans up with one hand, we waited for dusk and crawled into a row. Ate watermelon until we got sick, dozed some, talked about our big revenge plans regarding the Mexicans—we both knew the plans were bullshit, but they eased the humiliation—ate some more, got sick some more. Dozed some more.

  At least I did.

  At false dawn, a racket woke me. Near as I ever figured, Nick had woken up, used his tiny legs to sneak a mile or more to a farmhouse, started an old Chevy truck, and boogied my way.

  Which was sporting of him. Back then, I imagine I would have split on my own.

  The farmer must’ve been a light sleeper, because when I woke up, Nick was screaming for me over the clatter of the Chevy’s straight-six. Right behind him was a four-wheel ATV, its single angry-insect headlight aimed straight at Nick.

  Nick had marked the row where he left me sleeping. As he drew level with it, he braked hard, kicking up dust. He threw open the driver’s door and stood on the running board, hollering my name.

  I exploded from the row, ran across the Chevy’s nose, and dove in the passenger window. Didn’t bother opening the door.

  I’d been woken from a migraine sleep. I barely knew my own name. My pants were falling down. I’d puked six or eight times in the past five hours. Hadn’t had decent food for a week, hadn’t drunk water in two days at least.

  But my memory of the next few seconds is clear.

  Nick began to giggle, the way he did, and swing his long torso back inside the Chevy.

  A roar cut through everything.

  The giggles stopped.

  Nick sagged against the front door.

  The ATV’s angry-insect light came closer.

  “Yeah?” Gus said. “Don’t blue-ball me, Conway. For chrissake, what happened next?”

  I snapped to. I was breathing hard. The long-buried story had brought more pain and shame than I would’ve guessed.

  I licked my lips. “The point,” I finally said. “The point is, it pulped him. It pulped my buddy Nick.”

  “What pulped him?”

  I blinked, realized I’d told it all wrong, had lost track of the reason for the story. “The watermelon farmer’s shotgun. Fired from maybe twelve feet back. It took the left side of him, from his ass to his shoulder, everything not blocked by the truck’s cab, and it … shredded him. Turned everything to pulp.”

  We were quiet awhile.

  “What happened next?” Gus finally said.

  “The farmer was no killer. He was as surprised as me, went white as a sheet. We just stood there and watched Nick bleed out. It was a double-barreled shotgun, but the farmer never cocked it for a second shot. I never got the feeling I was next.”

  In a dead voice, I told Gus how the farmer had crossed himself about a hundred times, then fallen to his knees and wept. He told me in Spanglish he knew he’d sinned, he’d done something awful, but the wetbacks—his word—had been raiding him all year long. He was going to throw away the shotgun, no, bury it, bury it eight feet down.

  Then we pidgined our way to an understanding. I made it clear Nick was no relation to me and that I wasn’t a guy who would go whistling for the law. Then I helped flop Nick’s body into the bed of the Chevy, cover it with a tarp, and haul it back to the barn. In return, the farmer spent the better part of the day driving me to the bus station in Harlingen, where he bought me a ticket to New Orleans.

  It was a quiet ride.

  “That was that?” Gus said. “No blowback?”

  “No blowbac
k.”

  “You left your buddy in Bumfuck, Texas, to be buried in a row of watermelons.”

  “It was Edinburg,” I said. “And it wasn’t a war movie.”

  We were quiet again.

  “Yeah,” I finally said. “I left my buddy there. But don’t lose sight of the big point.”

  “Which is?”

  “A shotgun is a serious tool. A shotgun is not something you can wise-ass your way past.”

  * * *

  Once Gus took off, I told Floriano I had to leave for a while myself. Then I ducked his dirty looks and called Tory Sasaki, who helps out when we’re swamped. Or when I go off to do my thing. Which, according to Floriano, is way too often. Which explained the dirty looks.

  Tory would be over in fifteen minutes. She always jumps at the work, and she’s good. One of these days I’ll smarten up and hire her full-time, but for now I can’t bear to think of myself as a manager.

  Gus’s copy of the bill of sale for his shitbox car had Andrade’s home address, but I decided to try his shop first.

  During the drive, I called Randall. Voice mail again, for crying out loud. Left another message: in addition to checking on Brian Weller, could he do a quick google on the Pundos? Supposedly Mob-connected in Springfield, but that might be BS. I started to click off, then mentioned he ought to see if the Hi Hat jazz club fit in.

  I neared Andrade’s shop in Marlborough, cut across Route 20 to Mechanic Street. Pulled in behind a low, barn-red building with ten roll-up doors. They belonged to a cast of small garages that came and went. This was a lousy location, hard to find. To succeed here, you had to be a specialist and you had to be good. The minute you could afford to, you moved to a better location. That’s what I did a few years ago.

  Most of the doors had amateurish, faded signs above. MIDLANDS TRIUMPH USA, EDDIE’S AIR-COOLED VW. I found ANDRADE AUTOMOTIVE, banged on the door. Nothing. So I cupped my hands and peered through smeared Plexiglas.

  The one-bay garage surprised the hell out of me. When you know a mechanic, you take a guess at how he’ll run his shop. After a while, you get pretty good at it. Same way a realtor can meet a couple and know what their house’ll look like inside.