by Jeff Johnson
“Dipshit.” She sniffed and smeared her makeup around.
Delia was one of the scrawniest little punk chicks imaginable, and her fashion sense ranged from the bizarre to the perfectly dreadful. It was five a.m. and she was wearing baggy black rubber pants, an imitation snake skin belt with a Texas rodeo buckle the size of a coffee saucer, and some kind of shirt that looked like it was made out of pantyhose. The bra underneath was more of a half-corset, with eyes where her tits would be if she had any. Dangling from her right earlobe was an earring she’d made out of the tooth of a hipster dork who got his ass kicked in front of the Rooster Rocket.
“We got any beer?” I asked. She wiped her eyes again.
“Go change. You smell like a trash fire. We have vodka.”
“Bitchin’.”
I went into my bedroom to change while Delia busied herself in the kitchen. My two cats looked up at me from the bed, insulted by the commotion. Chops was an ugly little guy, so he projected bad vibes with ease. His sidekick Buttons was huge, red, and glorious, but close to vegetables on the intelligence totem pole, so for him projecting anything was a fleeting affair. I stripped my shirt off and dropped it in the hamper. It did smell like fire. The pants did, too. I smelled like a burning building, and it was deep in my pores. I wanted to take a shower and wash the ashes of my life off my skin and out of my hair, but I wanted the vodka more, so I pulled on a pair of cords and went barefoot into the kitchen. Delia handed me a double on the rocks and we carried our drinks into the small dining room and sat down at the table. She fired up two smokes and passed me one.
“So what the fuck?” It came out of her with a tiny pause between each word, and it wasn’t a question.
“I was sitting around when Monique called. I’m sure it was her, even though she tried to disguise her voice. She’s the only person who calls me white boy.” Monique was a local hooker we’d adopted. “Anyway, I looked out and the street was blocked off. Went out and the cops corralled me.” I stared at my drink, remembering. “About a minute later the place blew. I watched them hose it down for as long as it took for them to get the call to bring me in to see Dessel and Pressman. Radio chatter said the bomb was in our bathroom.”
Delia shook her head and took a sip of vodka. Her hand was shaking.
“We’re in shock,” she stated. “We need medication. I’m in shock, Darby. I feel like I’m about to have a heart attack. You’re sitting there like a mental patient. You’re blank.”
“I know.” I squinted at her. “We have any drugs?”
She shook her head. “I hurled my emergency Valiums an hour ago. Biji said she could bring by some Xanax.”
“Fuck.”
She poured us more vodka.
“So Pressman and Dessel are still wicked pissed at me,” I went on. “But it says something that the first people who grilled me were those two guys. Interstate crime. They might already know something.”
“Jesus, Darby. It’s personal with those two.” She studied my face and her expression went from worried to sour. “You got all smart-mouth again, didn’t you?” Her nerves were shot, I could tell, her movements jangly and wrong.
“I did.”
“Biji called me a few hours ago and told me it was on the news when she got home. I drove down there, but they wouldn’t let me anywhere near the Lucky. They wouldn’t even tell me if you were in there.” Her lower lip quivered and her eyes watered up again. She took a quick drink and sniffed. “And then I came here and you were gone. I let myself in and did your dishes.” She shook her head and looked up at the ceiling. “What the fuck are we gonna do?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said, “but we’ll figure it out. We always do.”
Delia sniffed and looked up at me. She smiled a little.
“So I guess this means I don’t work for you anymore.”
“Way to look on the bright side. But don’t even think about putting my dick on your menu.”
Delia barked out a laugh and curled her legs under her.
“Like I’d even think about it after seeing your underwear.”
“Least I wear some.”
I went into the kitchen and got the bourbon and brought it back, then splashed a little into our glasses. It was time for mixed drinks.
“Darby,” Delia said after she’d taken a few meditative sips, “you better find out who did this. You know the feds have been trying to bring you up on something after you blew their last big case. This could be their golden opportunity to hang you.”
“I know.” It was true. “I’ll start tomorrow. I mean today, I guess. After I get some sleep.”
“I’ll call Big Mike and Nigel. They’re both going out of their minds. Why don’t you go rinse off the soot.” Big Mike and Nigel were my two other former employees. Neither of them would have had anything to do with it. Nigel would have killed someone the moment he caught wind of a bomb and then demanded some kind of reward for it. Big Mike usually needed a hug after he hurt anyone or anything.There were also Earl and Ted, but they were new, as in two weeks new. I ruled them out as suspects immediately because both of them hadn’t been in for a few days and the bomb had been planted in the last twelve hours, plus they were both salon tattooer hipster pussies. We’d never see either of them again after this. I sighed as Delia took out her phone.
“Thanks.”
She looked up from dialing and cocked her head. “I’m glad you’re alive, Darby Holland. It’s a daily fucking miracle.”
I grinned, even though I felt empty. Delia was right. I was in shock, and somehow, for me, it had taken the form of nothingness.
When I finally got out of the shower and into some pajama pants and a T-shirt, Delia was asleep on the couch. I got a spare blanket out of the cabinet and covered her up. The sun was coming up. I was bone-tired when I crashed down on the bed and pulled the quilt up to my neck, but as soon as my head touched the pillow the explosion went through my head on a continuous loop, replaying over and over again, punctuated by flashes of Dessel, smiling and laughing, and Nicky Dong-Ju, coming at me with dead eyes and a hole in his face where his nose should be. Slowly, the booze caught up with the ten-second movie reel and blurred it into flashes of light and echoes. After about an hour of that, I heard the soft patter of bare feet on the kitchen floor and then the bed rocked a little. Delia climbed in under the quilt behind me and wrapped an arm tight over my chest.
“Cold,” she murmured.
I could feel her tooth earring pressed into the back of my neck. She snuggled around a little, burrowing for warmth, and then her breathing became soft and regular. It was that sound that finally lulled me to sleep.
I found Clarissa standing on the corner of Burnside and Broadway, smoking a long menthol cigarette under the awning of a strip club called Mozie’s. Clarissa was tall and black, and for all I knew she might have actually been a man under the insane wig made out of silver Christmas tree tinsel and the low-cut black dress that hugged her extra-jumbo boob job. With her heels on she was around six foot three. Big enough for the doorman at Mozie’s to leave her alone if she wanted to blow any of the horndogs going in and out of the place for a fifty. I ducked in next to her and lit up a smoke of my own.
“Darby Holland,” she purred. “The deposed tattoo king of Old Town. Wazzup, little white fool? Been what, twelve hours since the Lucky lost its rabbit foot. You can’t have got the ‘me’ kinda lonesome that fast.”
I shrugged. “Same old same old. I’m looking for Monique.”
Clarissa squinted down at me. Her large brown eyes were ringed with blue. She shook her silver mane.
“What she got I don’t? Always knew you had a thing for that bubble-butt piece of trash.” She blew some smoke in my direction. Her breath smelled like she’d been chewing on mothballs and urinal cakes.
“Got some money for her.” I took a drag off my cigarette to filter the air as Clarissa barked a sharp laugh into my face.
“Fuckin’ lame. Like I give up a sister. You want t
o lie to me, you need to get creative. Shit, I thought you used to be an artist.”
“I’ll tell you what I’m thinking.” I took another drag and stared out at the wide street. “I’m thinking two things. Whether I should take you into Mozie’s and buy you a beer and maybe slip you some cash, or if I should put this cigarette out in your eye and steal your wig. How’s that for creative?”
Clarissa stared at me.
“Think fast,” I prompted. “My feet are getting cold.”
“Guess I’ll take me a Heineken.” She flicked her smoke into the gutter.
The inside of Mozie’s was dark. The doorman glanced our way and refocused on whoever he was texting on his phone. A rubbery naked chick was crawling around the stage on the other side of the room, flexing her butt cheeks and doing Juarez yoga for an audience of three. It was still early. Clarissa and I took a seat at the bar, well away from the action, and I ordered two Heinekens. When I tossed a twenty on the bar I slipped a fifty over to Clarissa, who neatly made it disappear.
“So,” I prompted. “Monique.”
“Yeah.” Clarissa took a pull off of her bottle and then absently swirled it around. Her hands were long and bony, with big, mannish knuckles.
“Ain’t seen that crazy bitch in a few days, which is rare. Cheeks runs ’em seven days a week. Don’t matter if a ho got polio, she be out slingin’.”
“Cheeks is her pimp?”
Clarissa snorted, but there was a little fear in it. “Big nigger faggot is what he is. Some girls go to him because he’s gay and they think he won’t be fuckin’ ’em all the time. Thinkin’ he might be sensitive. Shit. That man is a lunatic psycho. He carves an X into a bitch’s ass so they know who they belong to. Monique has one.” She looked at me. “You seen Monique’s ass?”
“My old toilet has. Keep going.”
Clarissa shrugged. “Cheeks is convict trash. Hit the streets hard three years ago and picked up a string. Keeps ’em cooped up out on the interstate at the Sands, right across from that tiki bar. He herds ’em in around three a.m., maybe a little early on a shitty night. You maybe find Monique there, though like I say, I ain’t seen her since your place blew up.” She gave me a flat look.
“Good,” I said. “Anything else?”
She downed the rest of her beer, signaling that my time was almost up.
“I don’t know if I should tell you shit, Holland. I heard you a good man with bad edge on him, but it pisses me off, with that beatin’ on me mouth you got. Just so we clear, I tell you one more thing, an’ then I bounce, as in you don’t know me. Cheeks’s a big time psycho, but he’s a crazy man with a crazy plan. You lookin’ for a girl he got hid up or dead, don’t be lookin’ right in front of him.”
I drank the last of my beer.
“He better not know I’m coming.” I stood up and patted Clarissa’s beefy shoulder. “He does and I’ll be seeing you. No talking at all next time.”
I’d parked five blocks up, close to the big bookstore in the opposite direction of the Lucky. It was still raining and the gray sky was running fast toward night. I missed my coat. After our midafternoon breakfast of Delia’s special nuclear pork chop tacos, I’d gone through the coats of yesteryear and settled on an old gas station jacket with a missing name tag, but it didn’t quite cut it. The engine was still warm when I got back in, so I cranked the heater and went from wet and cold to wet and lukewarm before I set about phase two of my crappy plan.
The Sands Motel looked like a place that might have had character about forty years ago. It was a two-story cinderblock dump, but most of the big neon sign with a palm tree and VACANCY still had juice. I sat in my car in the parking lot of the tiki bar across the street and watched the place for a while. The sleet was finally turning into a light snow, but none of it was sticking. Something about looking at a neon palm tree through snowflakes struck me as bad luck, so I eventually stubbed out my cigarette and braved the tiki bar for a drink.
The inside was no busier than Mozie’s had been. A few hipsters were drinking in a booth, and a couple was sitting at the bar with their faces about six inches apart. None of them looked like a giant gay pimp named Cheeks.
Theme bars can be irritating, but the place was as old as the neon across the street. I sat down at the far end of the bar from the first-date couple and nodded at the bartender, a chunky girl with big hair, big eyes, and big tits propped up in a mega band under her tight black T-shirt.
“Whatcha havin’?”
“Jameson rocks.”
She shoveled some ice into a tumbler and gave me a heavy pour and set it in front of me.
“Slow night,” I said, looking around.
“Snow on a Wednesday,” she replied. “People just stay home. I’m from Minnesota. Ninety-year-old ladies with bald tires tear through shit like this.”
“I hear ya.” I raised my glass and took a sip. “What’s good to eat here?”
She put a menu in front of me. “I like the steak. Get it with the onions. Grady is bored back there, but I know he’s got some slow cooking for me for later.”
I slid the menu back. “Medium rare it is. Fries.”
She poked the touch screen and I swiveled a little on the barstool for a casual view of the door and the Sands parking lot. No new cars had pulled up and the snow was still coming down. It was beginning to stick a little, so I could look for tire tracks every few minutes. I turned back to my drink and my new cell phone rang. It was probably Delia, so I fished it out of my jacket pocket. I’d picked up the phone at a 7-Eleven earlier and she’d been the only person I’d called. I’d memorized her number a long time ago, because you only get one call when shit goes sideways and I doubt the police will look it up for you.
“Darby,” I said.
“Duh, I called you, dummy,” Delia said. “How the fuck did you ever graduate from high school?”
“That whole high school thing is a sham,” I said. Delia had gone to Cal Arts, a closely guarded secret I made fun of at every opportunity.
“Where you drinking?”
“No place you need to be.”
“Whatever.”
“So, couple things I’ve been thinking about.”
“Really? Got your little tinfoil thinking cap on?” I could hear the clink of ice in a glass in her background.
“We’ll see. I’m still hunting for Monique. Didn’t stop by the shop.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Prying into the world of our pet hooker has been fascinating. This American Life kind of deal. Heartwarming snapshot of the streetwalker experience.”
“Darby,” she said firmly. “Where are you?”
“Some tiki bar, waiting for a steak. I have an appointment to meet Monique’s pimp in an hour or so. I might not get back for a while. Feel like watching the cats for me?”
“I’m at your place right now, dumbass. Drinking the rest of the booze and eating leftovers. Pick up beer and get me some gas station nachos, extra cheese squirts.”
The waitress was bringing my steak. “Can do. The cats will try to get out if they can, but if they do they’ll blame you personally for the snow.”
“The little piggies are lying on my lap right now. We’re watching The Two Towers on my computer. You really need to get a TV, Darby. It’s kind of like having a colon or a belly button, if you see what I mean. People generally have one.”
I thought about that. I thought about Delia in my place, watching my cats and cooking. About her curled over my back last night. But mostly what flashed through my mind was an image of her on the last day the Lucky was alive, tattooing some biker with a big head, ribbing him about shoe polish, laughing and vibrant. Happy. There was something forced in the lightness now.
“I’ll see ya later,” I said. “We need anything else?”
“Maybe get me a hot dog, too, everything on it. Just load it up. Especially jalapeños.”
“OK.”
“OK.”
We listened to each other breat
he.
“Be careful,” she said finally.
“Not tonight.” I hung up.
I finished off the steak and fries and another Jameson’s as slow and quiet as I could, but a few hours later it started to look too much like I was stalking someone. I tipped out the now-suspicious Betsy the bartender well, mostly because it was a slow night and I felt bad for her. Then I went out and sat in my snow-covered car and watched the neon palm tree across the street through a little hole I rubbed out in the windshield before I got in. Classic surveillance.
Just around three a.m., my new witching hour, two cabs pulled up. Eight loud women piled out and went up to room 117 on the second floor. No Monique. In spite of what I’d said to Clarissa, I’d recognize Monique’s cartoon bubble butt anywhere. It was true that she was crazy, and I couldn’t imagine her getting along with monster ladies like Clarissa, but I’d let her use the bathroom at the Lucky to wash her hair and brush her teeth and probably shoot up for two years. I knew her voice from those years of her screaming at me and listening to her cry. Monique cried softly, with a little voice that reminded me of roosting pigeons. She yelled impossibly vile things, just like most of the women I’d known, only louder. She had a butt out of comic books.
Half an hour after the stable came in, a low-slung Lincoln with gold spinners rumbled into the Sands parking lot. The suspension heaved and two enormous black men draped in thousands of dollars of wool got out. One of them was fat. The other one was just plain big. The fat one was carrying a box he’d had in his lap. The just plain big one had a bottle of something in a paper bag. They went up to room 119 and the lights flicked on behind the curtains. The fat guy came back out, went next door and collected money, went back.
I gave them a few courtesy minutes to warm the place up and settle in and then I got out of the car. The snow was still falling, but it was small stuff, almost like flecks of styrofoam. I ducked down in the collar of my jacket and stuck my hands into the pockets, then went up to meet Cheeks. I could hear music through the door, a floaty disco with a strong backbeat. I uncurled one of my hands and knocked on the door. The music dialed down and big feet tromped in my direction. The peephole went dark, the chain came off with a loud rasp, and the door opened wide. I was briefly stunned mute by the gaudy interior of the place, just visible around the frame of the scowling fat guy. Old lamps, velvet paintings, leopard rugs, beaded wall hangings. They’d redecorated the motel room completely.
