At 8:30 on that particular Monday morning the Loop was busy enough, but it’d get busier—the clawing frenzy of its midday was poised in the offing like a headsman’s axe. This two-hour stretch of utter insanity would commence with the riotous arrival of Chicago’s fat women—the Lard Legion, as Duke Denny had dubbed them. They’d come boiling from trains, buses, cabs, elevateds, subways, fanning out to sack the city as the Huns sacked Danubia. There was a ferociously determined inevitability about the fat women of Chicago, and never were they more inevitable than on Mondays.
Lockington sat at the white-enameled counter of a Greek coffee shop on West Randolph Street, gnawing on a grease-soaked chocolate doughnut, sucking on a lukewarm cup of abominable black coffee, thinking of Martha Grimes, pondering the matter of obesity and its effects on the personality of the Chicago female. Turmoil was the Chicago fat woman’s catnip, she revelled in it—if it was absent, she’d go looking for it—if it existed, she’d double it. Lockington knew nothing of Denver’s fat women, or of Baltimore’s, but he was convinced that one Chicago fat woman, smuggled into the Kremlin, could introduce a wave of pandemonium so awesome as to bring Russia to its knees within a fortnight. He wondered why the CIA hadn’t considered the move. Such a plan might already be in the works, he thought, smiling craftily, marveling at its strategic potential. He finished his chocolate doughnut, gulped the rest of his coffee, paid his tab, and crossed West Randolph Street to an ancient red brick building and Duke Denny’s one-horse private investigations agency in its basement.
Denny’s place of business was a tiny, damp, cheaply-paneled single room, its concrete floor covered by dark brown outdoor carpeting which served to make it appear considerably smaller than it was. The Spartan severity of the enclosure had been slightly modified by a cheap beige throw rug that had steadfastly refused to lie flat, its cantankerous middle constantly bowed upwards in the manner of a cornered tomcat’s. There were three straight-backed wooden chairs lodged against the east wall, and another parked next to the dented green metal desk that stood in the northeast corner of the place. There were a couple of black plastic-framed pictures suspended lopsidedly from the north wall—a reproduction of an excellent charcoal sketch featuring a lion and a lamb sprawled contentedly together under what appeared to be a dogwood tree, and a blown-up color print of Wrigley Field where the marquee sign said DEDICATED TO A NEW TRADITION. Lockington assumed that there was some sort of symbolic connection between these, but he’d failed to grasp it, Denny had never offered an explanation, and Lockington had never asked for one.
There was a tarnished brass pedestal-type ashtray, a wobbly wooden clothes tree, several outdated news magazines stuffed into a flowered cardboard basket, a small portable radio belting a song that Lockington hadn’t heard before and certainly didn’t want to hear again, and there was a sartorially perfect Duke Denny, wearing maroon sports jacket, white knit shirt, and tailored baby blue slacks, slouched at the desk in a squeaky swivel chair, watching Lockington’s approach. Denny raised an arm in an exaggerated “Heil Hitler” salute, winking at Lockington. He said, “Well, partner, what can I say? You turned in one helluva job—you made it look easy!”
Lockington sat on the straight-backed wooden chair to Denny’s right. “It was easy—the wrong thing usually is.”
Denny caught the burrs in Lockington’s voice. “You sound sour, Lacey—how do you feel?”
“In a word—slimy.”
Denny brushed that away with a brisk overhand gesture. “Hey, we brought it off, didn’t we? Martha Grimes has her old man by the balls on a downhill pull—her lawyer’s kicking off divorce proceedings this afternoon, and J.B. can’t contest—she has prints of Fingers O’Shaughnessy’s pictures, and she could destroy him!”
Lockington said, “She destroyed the poor bastard the day she married him.” He lit a bedraggled cigarette, chucking the smoking match into the cracked ceramic turkey platter that doubled as Denny’s ashtray. “Martha Grimes is a downright merciless, masculine, domineering, overbearing, grasping, hog-fat bitch-witch.”
Denny threw up his hands defensively, warding off the storm of adjectives. “Granted, but she’s a rich bitch-witch, and, baby, that’s the bottom line!”
Lockington blew smoke into the speaker of Denny’s portable radio. “My God, Duke, you sure got yourself into a sleazy racket!”
“Aw, look, Lacey, this is a service agency—if I don’t handle this sort of crap, somebody else will!”
“There’s a familiar self-justifying line.”
Denny leaned forward, elbows on the cluttered desktop.
“A man’s gotta eat, doesn’t he? Martha Grimes is on the proper side of the road, isn’t she? What the hell, J.B. Grimes goes to bed with men!”
“Uh–huh—well, after being in bed with Martha, maybe that ain’t such a fucking radical departure.”
“Partner, that’s just none of my God damned business! Martha Grimes came in here, she placed her order, and she laid her money on the line.”
“It’s just that simple, huh?”
“It’s just that simple!”
“Tainted goods, tainted money—that’s how simple it is!”
Denny shrugged the remark off. “C’mon, partner, let’s go out for breakfast—I’ll close the joint for a couple hours.”
“I’ve already had breakfast. J.B. Grimes ain’t such a bad apple. So he went queer—with Martha at home it’s a miracle that he didn’t get into something a helluva lot worse!”
“What’s a helluva lot worse than going gay?”
“Try religion—he could be going around speaking in unknown tongues, y’know!”
Denny chuckled. “Lacey, I’ll be damned if I can figure you! You poke fun at the churches, yet you’re the quintessential rugdusting, old-time evangelist, preaching up a storm!”
“Duke, listen—all I’m saying is that there are things a man can do for money—and there are things he can’t do!”
“Depends on the man, if you ask me.”
“I don’t recall asking you—I’m just telling you how it looks from here!”
“Hey, partner, wake up—this is Chicago! I’m a Johnny-come-lately and I’ve adjusted to it—you’ve been here since you were born and you haven’t. In this burg it’s devil take the hindmost! When in Chicago do as the Chicagoans do!”
“To hell with how the Chicagoans do it, to hell with how anybody does it! Have you ever considered being your own man?”
“You’re your own man and what’s to show for it—what kind of car are you driving, how much money you got in the bank?”
“I drive a clunker and I’m damn near broke, but, God damn it, I can sleep at night!”
“Yeah, sleep at night, and starve all day—big fuck-ing deal!”
Lockington was silent for a time, letting the heat of their exchange subside. Then he said, “Duke, someday I’m gonna find me a quiet little town where people mean what they say—where they do what they say they’ll do.”
There was no humor in Denny’s laugh. He said, “Lacey, there ain’t no such fucking place!”
“Maybe not, but they can’t hang a man for looking!”
Denny squinted puzzledly at his ex-partner. “What the hell side of the bed did you fall out of this morning? Man, you’re in some kind of mood! You better get your ashes hauled!”
Lockington said, “Looky, Duke, I’d appreciate it if you’d get yourself another boy—busting into people’s bedrooms just doesn’t turn my crank.”
Denny shrugged resignedly, nodding. “Okay, I can see your point—you’re too direct for this pea patch—but could you spare me just a little time?”
“I’d rather not.”
“Well, hear me out before you say no—this is the spot I’m in—I gotta go to Ohio tomorrow morning—Cleveland—I have a manipulating stepsister down there who’s trying to shoulder me out of my cut of an inheritance.”
“If it’s any of my business, what does that amount to?”
“I don�
�t know, but I’ve been told it’s in the ballpark of fifteen grand.”
“Is she beating you out of it legally?”
“Probably—she’s a very good Christian.”
“Then why bother?”
“I want to check it out from the ground up—it may be worth a shot.”
“You driving to Cleveland, or flying?”
“Driving—it’s just seven hours or so.”
“How long will you be gone—outside figure?”
“Offhand, I’d say a week—maybe slightly longer—I’ll have to contact a Cleveland attorney.”
“All right, what could I possibly accomplish here alone? I wouldn’t be able to get out on the street—the best I could do would be scratch my ass and answer the telephone.”
“Partner, that’d be good enough—you’d be my buffer, my good-will ambassador—you could stall appointments, sweet-talk people, freeze everything until the tail end of next week. I don’t give a damn how you do it, just keep the ship afloat until I get back.”
“And then what?”
“Then you can saddle up and hit the trail for Pepper Valley. I got a guy on the line—he’ll be available by then. Whaddaya say, Lacey—just a few days—for old times’ sake?”
Lockington sighed, banging the desktop with the flat of his hand. “I’m a sonofabitch—the damn-fool things a man will do for an ex-partner!”
Denny was grinning from ear-to-ear, digging enthusiastically into his top desk drawer, locating a key, sliding it across the desk to Lockington. “That’ll get you in here tomorrow morning. Now get the hell outta here and get laid!”
They shook hands and Lockington said, “You’ll be in touch?”
“I’ll call from Cleveland at least once a day.”
“How do I get hold of you in case the building burns down?”
“I’ll leave a Cleveland number—I’ll be staying with an old high school buddy—we chased a lot of pussy together. Don’t look so downhearted, Lacey—maybe I can get this business ironed out sooner than I think.”
Lockington went up the short flight of stairs, stepping onto the West Randolph Street sidewalk, thinking about Duke Denny—a rascal, but a lovable rascal—he’d never known one quite like him. Lockington didn’t see the westbound fat woman and she piled into him, knocking him flat on the seat of his pants, plowing straight ahead, maintaining a steady course, never looking back. Lockington sat there, glancing dazedly at his wristwatch. It’d stopped at 9:32. 9:32 last night or 9:32 this morning, he wondered. He’d never know, and the realization saddened him.
22
Lacey Lockington was not a genius, nor was he a dimwit. He wasn’t an optimist, neither was he a pessimist. He was, he figured, a skeptical realist, theorizing that all skeptics are realists, and all realists skeptics—that it’s impossible to be one without being the other, but there were moments when he wasn’t dead certain of that.
He was given to spending considerable time wondering about things that he had no business wondering about, because these invariably led to questions that no one had ever answered, and probably never would, at least not to Lockington’s satisfaction. He had a habit of wrestling with such weighty matters while driving, and now he herded the rattling blue Pontiac Catalina west through a torrent of fender-to-fender Kennedy Expressway traffic, oblivious to the breakneck sound and fury of his immediate surroundings, his thoughts probing dark niches, considering once more the birth of Planet Earth and the origin of mankind. Had these been spinoffs of the legendary Big Bang, or had the entire kaboodle been deliberately set in place and motion by a Supreme Being? Lockington leaned heavily toward the Supreme Being line of reasoning, not necessarily because he preferred it—it just worked better for him. His realm of comprehension failed to encompass some twenty jillion planets roaring around out there at fifty skillion miles per split second in flawless synchronization for umptillion eons without timing and guidance from an intellect long preceding man’s contrived and self-serving laws of physics.
And he was unable to accept the groundwork for his own existence having been laid with a couple of amoebas knocking off a quickie in some prehistoric Afghanistanian swamp, or wherever the theory of evolution claimed it had occurred. In lieu of that, Lockington liked Adam and Eve fornicating under a Wap-Wap tree in the Garden of Eden. He wondered about Eve—had she been an active lay, or had she ho-hummed the experience? Active, probably, Lockington thought, very active—a real stem-winder.
Crossing Kimball Avenue, Lockington turned to the human soul—was it an actuality, a tangible thing, or merely a wispy figment of man’s wishful imaginings? How was it to be defined, what was its function, did it react before or after the fact, was it activated by senses or by thoughts, how did the damned thing work, if it worked—a cacophony of automobile horns was seeping into Lockington’s consciousness and there was a thunderous pounding on the left front window of his Pontiac. His soliloquy shattered, Lockington took stock of his location and found himself parked under the traffic signal of the Kennedy Expressway’s southbound exit onto North Mannheim Road, a spot not on his itinerary, because he’d intended to depart the Kennedy Expressway at Harlem Avenue, some four miles east. He was able to drum up vague recollections of having stopped at a red traffic signal, but now the light was green, and a fat woman stood at the door of his automobile, waving her arms, stamping her feet, her beady eyes blazing, her face livid, her chins quivering, every damned one of them. She was screaming, “Are you gonna move this frigging pile of junk or am I gonna call the frigging police?”
Lockington nodded, tipped his hat, and pulled onto Mannheim Road, adding the incident to his already bulging file of clashes with overweight females. There was a strange, turbulent venom seething within these creatures, and the fatter they got, the testier they became.
He turned left on Grand Avenue, tooling his old blue car eastward through Franklin Park, River Grove, Elmwood Park, pulling into the Shamrock Pub’s parking lot. Shamrock Pub action rarely picked up before five o’clock in the afternoon, and the place was reasonably quiet, Mush O’Brien standing behind the bar, one foot up on the sink drainboard, watching the door with jaded eyes, the juke box throbbing a tango—“La Cumparsita”—Joe Brothers and Rosie Delancey dancing to its beat. They weren’t dancing to it, exactly—they were standing in a dim corner behind a Hickory Barrel Ale display, glued pelvis to pelvis, rubbing to it. Cheaper than a motel room, Lockington thought, but there were certain drawbacks. At the bar Buster Weatherby and Duffy Gray were discussing the destruction of Pompeii, and Buster Weatherby was saying, “It wasn’t Mt. Vesuvius—Pompeii was bombed, baby, bombed!”
Duffy Gray said, “Yeah? Who bombed it?”
Buster Weatherby said, “Mussolini—who the fuck else?”
Duffy Gray said, “I didn’t know that.”
Buster Weatherby said, “Me, neither, till I figured it out!”
Duffy Gray said, “But Mussolini was Italian!”
Buster Weatherby said, “Uh–huh, and so was Joe DiMaggio!”
Duffy Gray said, “By God, I never looked at it in that light!”
Lockington took a seat at the bar and Mush O’Brien said, “Martell’s, Lacey?”
Lockington nodded and Mush served him, rolling his eyes, lowering his voice. “You listening to them two lamebrains?”
Lockington nodded. “Highly enlightening conversation.”
Mush said, “Now, Lacey, you know God damned well that Benito Mussolini never bombed Pompeii!”
Lockington said, “A doubtful premise, I agree.”
Mush said, “It was that fucking Adolf Hitler, that’s who!”
Lockington didn’t say anything.
Mush said, “Think of it, a whole fucking town! Oh, my God, the humanity!”
Edna Garson came swinging in, ignoring Lockington. She went to the far end of the bar, waited for Mush O’Brien, ordered a screwdriver, took it to a rear booth, and sat with her back to the door. Her walk would have derailed a two hundred car freig
ht train, and Lockington picked up his cognac, following her to the booth, sitting across the table from her. He said, “Hi, long time no see.”
Edna scowled. “That’s what the fat man said when he saw his dick in the mirror. Where in the hell have you been?”
“Around.”
“Around? Around what—the fucking world?”
“I’ve been downtown, mostly. You aren’t working today?”
“Apparently not.”
“How come?”
“Possibly because it’s my day off.”
“I see.”
“I’m so glad.”
“Well, I got a new job, sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“Yeah, it’s a temporary thing.”
“Doing what?”
“Not much of anything.”
“So tell me about it.”
“Okay, I’m—”
“Not here!”
“All right, let’s go to your place.”
“No, let’s go to your place. I’ve never been to your place.”
“What’s to do at my place?”
“Same thing that’s to do at my place.”
“Oh, that.”
Edna gulped her screwdriver, getting to her feet, grabbing Lockington’s hand to tug him from the booth. When they were in the Pontiac, she said, “For God’s sake, hurry—this is an emergency!”
The Fifth Script: The Lacey Lockington Series - Book One Page 9
