by Jeff Johnson
So I would stall on whatever it was he wanted me to do. It was a simple as that. The Armenian had many powers, but the gateway to the underworld was mine, and he knew it. I was valuable to him, and for once I really needed him to come through. So I went in prepared to raise the stakes to the maximum. Do what I want or no more Darby Holland, forever, with the remote possibility that I might be vengeful. Or the almost unthinkable alternative: the forever debt. I hoped the stakes wouldn’t rise anywhere near that high.
I’d never walked through that particular stretch of 82nd before, only driven, and then I was never paying attention. It turned out it was mostly Asian. I thought about stopping for pho, which was represented by very specific places specializing in just one kind. The soup market was evidently pretty fierce. But there wasn’t time, and I was getting wetter by the minute. I kept my eyes out for any sign of Dessel, but saw none. They probably had my car staked out and were combing through the dozens of possible places where I might be eating lunch or getting drunk on 23rd. But looking around, I spotted a place that solved another problem I’d been worrying about. It was after one, and once I was finished with the Armenian I still had Dmitri to deal with, plus I had to check in on Mikey at the Bismarck. There might not be enough time to go home and change before I met Suzanne for dinner, and I’d unthinkingly dressed like a hoodlum. The solution was Southeast Asia Suit and Tie. There were four mannequins in the window with trim, theater-quality Italian knockoffs that were good for one night. I could never wear a Men’s Warehouse affair without looking like a hit man or some other unsavory variety of impostor, but Asian gangster might be just the ticket.
The door chime sounded as I entered. There was a zitty kid sitting behind the register talking to two of his friends. They were all wearing tracksuits, and the air smelled like weed and menthol cigarettes. All three looked alarmed.
“Hey dudes,” I said, smiling. The clerk went blank and the other two went scowly. I’d interrupted a drug deal.
“Problem,” I continued. “I have a date tonight. Super tall chick, nice place, you get the scenario. I have cash and I need a suit, way fucking fast, too. And shoes. I’m basically a scumbag, just like you guys, so you’ll get it when I say I don’t want to walk in looking like I just got back from chatting with my parole officer. Swanky. Sharp. Like a professional gambler.”
The clerk interpreted that for his two associates, who loosened up as he went along. They smiled at “scumbag,” which probably had no easy translation, and laughed aloud at “parole” and “swanky,” which evidently didn’t, either. When he was done, the clerk slid off his stool and came over to me.
“What you weight? Take off coat. Shoe?”
“Ten and a half,” I said, shrugging my coat off. He studied my shoulders.
“About so-so average,” he observed. He squeezed my forearm. “Hard like muthafucka.” He barked something at the other two and they sprang into action. One of them came back with a shimmering gold imitation silk suit, the other with imitation leather shoes. I nodded my appreciation at both. I tried the coat on and it fit reasonably well. The label in the pants had the right waist size. I took the coat off and put it back on the hanger.
“Shirt and tie,” I said, holding the suit up and looking at the back. It looked like it might stand up to one dry cleaning. The shoes had about five miles in them. The clerk took a white shirt off a rack and after a moment’s consideration selected a skinny blue tie. He held them up and I nodded. “How much, the whole megillah?”
He added it up in his head. “One hundred ten, cash.”
“Bag it.”
It was a little high for a cheap suit, but I was cutting it close timewise, and I wasn’t quite big enough to fit into my old one anyway. I gave him some of the roll in my pocket and he winced as he took the exact change with his fingertips. The other two guys waved as I left. I made it another two blocks and was closing in on the Armenian when my cell phone rang. I dug it out and looked at the number. Delia.
“Almost there,” I answered.
“I’m in a cab. Nigel and Mikey are meeting the everything drug guy in about an hour and then going to the motel. I sweet-talked Gomez just now and he can’t wait to talk to you.”
“Good. I know this is going to be a pain in the ass, but can you pick me up at the Armenian’s in about an hour?”
“I could,” Delia replied, “but time is tight on my end, too. I have to take the Empire boys to get their waiter shoes at Payless, and then I still have to dye their hair and wash ’em.”
“Fuck. OK. I guess a cab would be better, but I don’t want the Armenian to know I’m taking one. I’m getting secretive already. It’s like he has a two-block halo around him that changes your behavior when you enter it.”
“Buck up,” she said. “Tell him something mysterious, like you’re on the way to the bar at the airport for a meeting. Then let it dangle.”
“I’ll call in a few hours when I’m done with the Armenian and Dmitri.”
“Don’t hit anyone.”
I sighed. “Believe it or not, I’m all cranium for the duration.”
“Whatever.” She hung up.
The Armenian’s garage had red flags all over it. It was situated between a lawn and garden supply place and a custom wheel outfit. The garage itself was on the small side, with two bays and a front office with a smaller, windowless office behind it, a storeroom behind all that. There were newer BMWs and Mercedes filling the small parking lot. Too many cars. Some Mexican guys were standing around out front, smoking. New faces were bad in this situation. They watched me through slitted eyes as I approached. When I paused with my hand on the front door and gave them a hard look of my own, they had no reaction. It was like staring at mean-ass statues. Off to a promising start.
There was no one in the front office, so I stood at the empty display case and rapped on it.
“George,” I called. The back office door swung open, but there was no reply. I went in.
The Armenian was on the phone. He waved at me without looking and gestured at a chair. I sat down and put my bag on the floor next to me, took out my smokes, and shook one loose. My hair was wet enough to drip and my pants were soaked. I lit my smoke and settled back. The preamble was going to take a while.
When people talk for a long time on the phone in a foreign language right in front of you, they always mistakenly assume you can’t follow along. Only rarely are they right if you’re paying close attention, and I was. The Armenian was talking about me. He made several dismissive gestures with his free hand as he jabbered, which combined with his tone to translate as “what the fuck?” and “he’s alive, but he’s just another white criminal, they’re like roaches or cats,” and then “I know, but they’re not really that bad, c’mon.”
All people also tend to pepper their dialogue with English words, just as the Asians had earlier. The Armenian was seriously guilty there. I almost betrayed my attention by raising an eyebrow at the word “disco,” followed by an insistent monologue. Then “strippers” caught my attention. A minute later “zero,” twice.
In the next ten minutes he also dropped “Mexicans,” “cash only,” “Stark Street,” and “balloons.” Whoever he was talking to was evidently a friend of some kind, because then the conversation lightened up with short questions, long answers from the other end, followed by laughter. The Armenian absently touched his face where my new scar was more than a dozen times, especially in the beginning. A full forty-five minutes after I’d entered, he finally hung up. That would be considered rude by most people, but I knew better. The Armenian had been communicating a great deal already. He wanted me to understand that he knew I wanted something, but in the grand scheme of things I was small potatoes. He was on top of the world, wheeling and dealing with tremendous success, chatting about family after closing a huge deal, a magnanimous giant, benevolently tolerating my mosquito-esque presence. For whatever reason, the Armenian was desperate.
“Darby, my God!” he began. �
�Your face, these newspapers, your shop, what happened?” He didn’t take his eyes off me for a second as he took a bottle of cognac out of his desk drawer. He was in scan and record mode. I shrugged and lit my seventh cigarette.
“Some douchebag blew it up to make room for rich people with better ideas. I was thinking about moving anyway. Old Town is dead these days, so no big whoop. Bought a new motorcycle with some of the insurance money and totaled it in the first ten minutes. Hence my face.”
“Ten minutes,” he repeated, amazed at the direction my lies had already taken. “My God. Did you even make it to the freeway?” He took his eyes off me for an instant to pour us two shots in paper cups, mine huge, his tiny. I’d just established that I had money, so half of whatever he’d been planning had just gone up in smoke. He had to pause recording for an instant to think.
“Nope.” I took my shot. “Wiped out on the on-ramp. I was out for three fucking days in the ICU at Providence and the police freaked out. So, the papers. The idiots eventually tracked me down to the hospital and apologized a million times. I was just beginning to remember who I was. Three weeks of that. Anyway, small out-of-court settlement from them for the bad PR, don’t tell anyone. And hey, is there really any such thing as bad publicity?”
“Good for you!” He raised his glass and we drank. Cognac is terrible stuff, but I made my tasty face.
“So what about you?” I asked. “How have you been?”
He looked down to his left and smiled faintly. I had formally opened negotiations. “Ah, Darby, I have been great. Just great.” He looked up. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you, actually. Moving from Old Town is going to be good for you. When I heard about your place being destroyed I was so worried, Darby. I thought, ‘What can I do to help this guy? What can I do!’” He slammed his hand down on the desk.
“You’re too much, George,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“No, Darby,” he scolded patronizingly. “A man with no business is too much like a child or a woman. I know you. It will kill you. But this I can do. I will do! I have a place on Stark Street, a nice building, two shop fronts, actually, much bigger than your old place. One is for you, for your new tattoo shop, and one is for I don’t know yet.” He poured me another cognac. “First, I was thinking a restaurant, but in this town? Then maybe a strip club, but I don’t know those people. Art gallery, artist space, with booths? I don’t know those people, either! So then I think, they’re your neighbors! You decide! Help me run the place and I will give you a good rent!”
The building had a For Lease sign in the window for the last six years. The Armenian wanted triple the going price for anything else in town and the building was full of trash. He was having cash flow problems and he needed to get something up and running in there for premium dollars, faster than yesterday.
“I like it,” I replied. He sipped his drink without taking his bright eyes off me, the cognac just wetting his upper lip. “A strip club is the way to go. I know about a billion strippers. We’d need a bouncer, someone huge and dangerous, and a bunch of crap. Tables, chairs, a bar, one of those poles. That kind of stuff. Probably a disco ball and a jukebox.”
The Armenian’s eyes lit up. “Exactly!”
“Yeah. No. I mean I don’t want in, personally. If I had a shop next to a strip club I’d have security issues of my own, and I’m planning on moving to Costa Rica anyway.”
“Costa Rica! It’s full of Mexicans!” The Armenian was wildly alarmed. “No, Darby, no! You’re giving up! One bomb and you give up? C’mon!”
I drank my drink while he watched. He was on the ropes. I could feel it. I pretended to think while he sat there on the verge of exploding.
“Tell you what,” I began, speculating now. “For old times’ sake, because we’re friends, and also because I may need a place to work from time to time if Costa Rica’s boring … OK. I suppose I can track down everything, now that I think about it. Pretty easy. The furniture? I know people. Strippers? They love me because I’ve never fucked any of them. Head bartender? No problem. Manager? Easy, too. I can get you up and running for next to nothing now that I don’t have anything to do, but … I want twenty-five percent of the place. And that’s a friends deal.”
The Armenian cringed into a protective posture. “Darby, it makes me uncomfortable to talk this way. I don’t even know what you’re proposing.”
“Strip clubs are a gold mine,” I said. “All the strippers in this city? They actually pay to work at those places.”
He was stunned. “Really?”
“Oh yeah. Totally fucking disgusting. If we didn’t charge them? Every back-flipping, pole-climbing, fire-breathing bombshell in a hundred miles would be knocking down our door to get in on it. It’s a simple idea, George.”
He played pensive. “My children would hate me.” Meaning he wanted no involvement whatsoever. The risk and the exposure, the entire burden, would all be mine.
“Kids,” I said sympathetically. “I can see that. Just keep your name off the liquor license and stay away from the place. Blame the whole thing on me. But I’ll be honest, that sounds more like a fifty-fifty partnership.”
He squirmed again, and then played his only remaining card. “Speaking of children, you said you had a present for my daughter?” Meaning, what are you here for, let’s get down to hard trading.
“Yeah. Day before the Lucky blew up, I traded this local photographer for some work. He shoots models, mostly. High end, tasteful stuff. Anyway, he was going to reshoot all my big pieces for my new portfolio, but with Costa Rica and all, I don’t need him anymore. He still owes me a super classy photo shoot, and Delia thought your daughter might enjoy it. Something upscale, cosmopolitan, or maybe natural, like out in the gorge. Chicks love that stuff. But now, I dunno. Maybe we should just spin it into the PR campaign for the strip club.”
“Hmm. I see.” He chewed his thumbnail. “Maybe both. My daughter visits next week. She would love this. Maybe we can use her as a test, to see how good your photographer is. Then, maybe, I don’t know. It has to be worth something to him to spend a day with beautiful women and get credit for it. Advertising his work for him for free? I don’t know.”
“So, fifty-fifty. Get the papers going and I’ll have my guy look it over, we can be up in two months or less, and then …” I rubbed my fingertips together in the international sign for money.
“Lawyer, papers …” The Armenian seemed exasperated by it all. “That slows everything down. I don’t know, Darby. I know you need to get something going, but …” He shrugged.
“What I really need to get going is my move to Costa Rica. My new girlfriend will go for it, but if I don’t move fast, she’s going to take this job in Japan or some shit and then I’ll never see her again.” I got up, in no hurry. “Let me know about the photographer thing.”
“Wait, Darby, wait,” he said gently, patronizing again. “I can’t let you go like this. I’m concerned. To run off to Mexico with a woman. The insurance money cannot be that much. You will go broke and then what? I think you’re still in shock. An explosion, an accident, a new woman? This is too much for the mind. The mind is fragile. I know you have no father to advise you. Come. Sit.”
I took my phone out and dialed a cab, told them where I was. When they told me five minutes, I repeated it for George to hear. The countdown to the end of the market day had officially started.
“Maybe, George,” I replied, snapping my phone closed. “You can see why palm trees and pussy sound good right now. But the future should be bright, you’re right. Tell you what. I’ll put the word out to the strippers and get someone going on the booze. Drop the keys by my place and I’ll put someone on cleaning everything up. New paint and all that. Get the buzz started.”
“I see.” He didn’t like that I was standing up, or that we were nearly done. Negotiations were supposed to take hours. Days, even.
“That part is easy. These clubs usually gross cash by the van load, so I want my part to stay cold
.”
“Ah yes. Van load.” He brightened a little, but I could also tell he knew something was coming.
“How’s the transmission business coming?” I asked. There was no point in feigning casual. He met my eyes, on scan and record again.
“An interesting question. Why do you ask?”
“I need to mail something to Russia, two-day air. It would fit right into one of those transmission boxes.”
“I see. I see. What is it?”
“Just junk. Tattoo crap for my friend Constantine. He has a shop over there and I don’t need most of the stuff I had in storage.”
“Ahh.” The Armenian sat up. “Some of these items might be … not illegal, but frowned on? Questions and questions? My transmissions get through easily because I mail them back and forth so often. I could do this for you, sure, but the shipping cost is high.”
“When do you mail this stuff?”
“Three times a week. The day after tomorrow my Mexicans are taking seven boxes down to the pier. They’ll be in Magadan on Friday.”
“Great. Constantine can make arrangements from there.” I took my greasy, bloody, smelly roll out. “What’s that cost? With the fancy armored box.”
“Around eleven hundred,” he replied instantly. Probably more like seven. I peeled off fifteen.
“Little extra for the Mexicans. I don’t want them opening the box and stealing my art supplies. They look sketchy, man.”
“I will take care of it.” He didn’t flinch at the quality of the money.
“Great.” There was a beep outside. My cab had arrived early. The Armenian stood. He knew whatever was in the box was going to be unusual, but dealing in the unusual was his game.
