by Tom Larsen
“This is Mr. Santos,” Flatfoot tells him. “He’s been helping us out on this. I told him you were just fortune hunting, but he’s very interested in what you have to say.”
The two men exchange looks and Flatfoot steps back outside.
“Mr. Pittman,” Santos fiddles with a cufflink. “I want you to think back to that evening. You say the man proposed a bet?”
“That’s right, it was Bo Mitchell with some blonde. Bo’s the local ladies man.”
“I see.”
“The guy bet Bo would strike out. And Bo never strikes out.”
“Let me guess, he did that night.”
“Big time, to the tune of two bills. ‘Never put your money on a man named Bo’ is what the guy said.”
“And this woman?” Santos prods him. “She was American?”
“I never talked to her, but yeah. She was American, alright, older but still a looker. We don’t get that type much in the Sombrero.”
“And the man at the bar? American?”
“Him too. But they never got near each another.”
Santos brushes at his sleeve. “Of course not. I’m just trying to get a picture here. We’re obliged to follow all leads of inquiry.”
“Now that Oprah’s on it, you mean.”
Santos gives him a weary smile. “Please, Mr. Pittman, some respect for our beleaguered brothers in law enforcement.”
“You think I’m talking through my hat, but I’m telling you the truth. The guy you’re looking for? Winslow? That was him. Listen, I’ve got to get outa here.”
“You’re free to go, Mr. Pittman. But please, leave us your phone number in the event we have to contact you for the reward?”
Pittman stands to leave. “You know where to find me, if I still have a job.”
“Oh, and one more thing,” Santos holds up a finger. “The ladies man, what was his name, again?”
“Bo Mitchell, Mitchell’s Charter Boat Service. But you’re wasting your time with him.”
“Procedure, Mr. Pittman. We’ve got to cover all the bases.”
“Just don’t tell him I sent you, okay?”
“You may rest assured.”
***
Lena’s walking home from Sacred Heart when she hears a car roll up behind her. Turns to a black Benz with Jersey tags and a faint but familiar sneer above the steering wheel. The Benz idles up and the window slides down.
“Lookin’ goood,” Billy De Pastore, Billy D to the initiated.
“How are you Billy?”
“Can’t complain. Well I could, but who wants to listen, right?”
“Right, so see you around. ” Lena walks off with a wave. The Benz trails at half a length.
“Let me give you a lift,” Billy calls out to her. “We have things to talk about.”
Something clenches in her stomach. Talking with Billy is tricky business and Lena doesn’t feel up to it. They dated for a while years ago and if she could take back one thing it would be that.
“It’s not a good time,” Lena steps up the pace. Billy guns it and the Benz bucks past.
“I’m serious, Lena. About Harry.”
Even worse, Billy’s a bookie so it’s about money. More of Harry’s shit coming down.
“Take it up with my lawyer, Billy.”
“Five minutes, Lena,” he reaches over and opens the door. “Honest, just talk.”
“We can talk right here.” Lena checks the street. Empty.
“Don’t be like that. I might be able to help you.”
“Oh sure, the wise guy with a heart of gold.”
“What wise guy?” Billy whines. “Geez, where do you get that? I’m a businessman. Here’s my card.”
“D’s Dromat? What’s a dromat?”
“Laundromat! I got a string of ‘em. You need something laundered, you come to me.”
“So, it really is who you know?” Lena stuffs the card in her pocket. “I feel so darned connected.”
“Take a ride, Lena. No funny stuff, I promise.”
Lena gets in reluctantly. In the years since their fling Billy’s worked the fence both sides. That he’s managed to survive is a measure of the current criminal element. Not that he’s a moron, but Billy couldn’t spell Mercedes.
“First, let me say that your old man was a standup guy and a pretty good horse player,” Billy eases away from the curb. “Sadly, basketball was not Harry’s game.”
“Shaking down widows,” Lena tsks. “And they said you’d never amount to much.”
He looks truly horrified. “That’s cold, Lena. I was sick when I heard about Harry. You think I enjoy this?”
“You’re the bookie, let’s see the book.”
“Come on. I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
Billy looks away. “It ain’t ethical. I got my reputation to think about.”
“See, it’s your reputation that concerns me, Billy. You stole the March of Dimes money, remember?”
He whacks himself in the forehead. “That was in the fifth grade! We’re adults now, Lena. This is grownup stuff.”
“Oh?”
Lena has to laugh, Billy’s wearing a silver ring through an eyebrow and a Betty Boop T-shirt under an Armani jacket.
“This hurts me, Lena,” and he does look hurt.
“How much?”
“Three G’s. I told him he was nuts to cover Tennessee State.”
“I’ll write you a check,” Lena fumbles in her purse.
“Lena, don’t insult me.”
“It’s good. I promise.”
He reaches for her knee.
“Easy Billy. Harry would break your arm.”
“Aw, don’t be like that. You know I’ve always had the hots for you, Lena. It’s just something I can’t control.”
Lena jabs his hand with a ballpoint.
“Yah! Fucking–” Billy cracks her in the face. Lena goes for his neck but he pushes her off him and pins her to the door.
“Bitch! Now you’ve made me mad. Remember how I get when I’m really mad?”
“Get off me you piece of shit!”
“Guess what, I’m still like that, baby,” a hard shove into the window. “Mean as a junkyard dog.”
He scoots back behind the wheel and steps on the gas with a giggle. Lena thinks of bailing but Billy’s all over the road. They sprint down Second Street through two lights and onto the freeway.
“Go ahead, say it, bitch! You think I’m a loser, right?” Shove. “Right?”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Where nobody can hear you scream. Look at this! Look!” he waves the stabbed hand in her face and she leans in and takes a bite.
“Yow!” nearly sideswiping a minivan. “Ow-y!”
Lena can taste him, sweat and garlic, and when he looks at her she let’s fly.
“Fucking cunt!” Billy wipes spit from his face. “Okay, that’s it! I was gonna just scare you, but you had to push it. You know what I think? I think you had this all planned, right? You know I like the rough stuff and you wanted to push my buttons.”
Lena stomps him into a cross lane skid, they nearly whack the rail but Billy wrestles it back together.
“You’re crazier then I am, I like that.”
“Lookout!”
The Benz swerves around a pickup and spins off the shoulder in a cloud of smoke. Lena struggles with the door but Billy yanks her back.
“Okay Lena, game’s over,” he produces a knife. “If I have to kill you to get off this fucking freeway I will.”
Lena nods. Billy puts the knife to her ribs.
“It’s okay, I’m not gonna hurt you baby,” he pokes around. “Might have trouble riding a bicycle for a while, but that’ll pass.”
Lena forces a laugh. “And you might just live, if you get to a hospital.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Blood poisoning. I’m a nurse,
remember? It’s an ugly way to die, Billy.”
He just laughs. “What, you think I’ve never been stabbed by a ballpoint before?”
“Listen to me Billy, Harry’s alive. He’ll hunt you down and cut you to pieces.”
“Jesus, just how stupid do you think I am?”
“The whole thing is an insurance hustle. Don’t do this. Take me home now and Harry will never know. I swear it.”
Instead he exits by the airport and takes the ramp for the cargo terminal.
“What is it, Lena? Is it because I’m Italian? You think all dagos are stupid, right?”
“I’ll pay off Harry’s losses and keep my mouth shut. He’s crazy. He’ll figure it out, you know he will.”
“I ain’t listening. Dead or alive, Harry don’t scare me.”
They cross railroad tracks and turn into a warehouse parking lot. Billy circles behind a row of empty flatbeds, kills the motor and slips something from his jacket pocket, a square of tinfoil. Lena watches him pick at a corner of it, hears an in-bound freight and trucks idling by the front gate. She makes a grab for the door but he’s at her too fast, pressing the blade to the point of her chin.
“How far do you think you’d get?” Billy sweeps a hand at the lot.
“Okay, Billy. You win, I won’t fight you.”
“Maybe just a little, eh?” he snickers and snorts up a fingernail full of cocaine. “Oh, that’s good. Some for you?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Atta girl,” Billy chops more lines. In-coming train catches his profile and he turns to look. Lena barks a cough while pressing the dashboard lighter, four, three . . .
“Fucking teamsters,” Billy tees up another nose full. The train rumbles in and the snap of the lighter is lost to the racket.
***
Harry takes the back roads south, starved for the city. How he thought he could hack the hinterland, just another flaw in the plan. Like getting Stevie’s story wrong and having to kill Frank. Mind blowing fuckups any way you look at it and Harry’s looked at it every way there is. He needs to be around people and to cut the distance to Lena. Manhattan for the sheer numbers, one more needle in that freaking haystack.
He knows they’ve been lucky and wants desperately to believe their luck will hold. Really does believe it for long stretches, unbelievably lucky with Frank when you consider. How you club a guy to death and just walk away is a testament to something. Shoddy police work or divine intervention, or both. Not to mention Frank’s luck, all bad, has to count for something. The press float their motives, cops in the crosshairs, but any strong leads have fizzled away now. All the evidence in the world won’t help if you don’t have a suspect. What good is the answer if you don’t know the question?
So back to civilization, but round about it, via old roads with their postcard views, hills, dales, sleepy towns no one would miss. He listens to Poppa Hayden, humming along to the cello solo, thinking about the money, what it would look like banded in bundles. Around noon he sees a sign for Larry’s Bar-B-Que ¼ Mile hand lettered and cut from cardboard. Last thing you’d expect out here in bucolia, but a quarter mile later, like the sign said, a tin shack at the edge of a parking lot across the road from a by God pig-pen is visible. Harry parks and heads inside.
“You Larry?” he asks the old guy at the counter.
“Yes sir. Got a yen for some barbecue, have ya?”
“You got that right. What’s on the menu?”
“Today we got garlic sausage and onions. And chips and whatnot. Doctor Pepper, if it’s cold.”
“That’s it?”
“Come again?”
“That’s all you have? Garlic sausage and onions?”
“Had some kielbasa but we’re out of it.”
“That’s quite a selection, Larry.”
“So, what’ll it be?”
“Let’s see . . . know what? Give me the garlic sausage with onions and peppers.”
“No peppers.”
“Hold the peppers, thanks.”
Larry ducks through a curtain and Harry listens to him knock around the kitchen. Not much to the place, a few picnic benches and a short counter, but the smells drifting in go straight to his stomach. Pork and garlic, onions and coffee, food, the way it should be. He hears real pigs grunting and a tractor way off and something high and lonesome on someone’s radio. Larry brings him a big sandwich on a paper plate with chips and whatnot. Harry digs the fuck in.
“Truly delicious Larry, but I gotta tell you, it isn’t barbecue.”
“Well now, barbecue is what you call a catch phrase. Gets folks thinking pork.”
“You’re a pork man?”
“Forty years. Tell me something about pigs I don’t know.”
Harry pauses for dramatic effect. “Did you know that a pig is the only animal that will eat while he’s being eaten?”
“I won’t ask you how you know that young feller, but it has the whiff of horseshit to me.”
“I saw it on television.”
The old man chuckles to himself. “Pigs and show business.”
“It’s a little known fact. Honest.”
“Fact is eatin’s all a pig knows to do. But getting eaten involves a fair amount of discomfort. Not the sort of thing to work up an appetite.”
“They couldn’t say it if it wasn’t true.”
Larry looks to see if he’s serious.
Back on the road and into the mountains, snow-capped Catskills draped in evergreen. He listens to a program about restless leg syndrome, how it ties in with chronic fatigue syndrome and other figments of the medical imagination. Lets his thoughts run to the money, what to do with it, bankroll something, put it to work. Harry’s no math whizz, but he can see where a million might not last. Best to look into investments, maybe real estate or those storage places. Ned owns one and Christ, they make a mint! And it’s time to start thinking of where they’ll resurface. And forget the country life. Those sticks run him up the freakin’ wall.
***
Lena ditches the Benz in the ShopRite lot and walks the two blocks home. There’s a cut above her nose and her wrist is burned where the lighter fell after she jammed it into Jimmy’s thigh. Other than that she’s okay, has to hide her face when she passes Gus Lane smoking on his stoop, but reaches the house without incident. In and out in a flash with an overnight bag, her down pillow and Harry’s ball-peen hammer.
Drives her own car to the airport and checks into the Ramada. Knows she should be scared, that she was lucky Billy bolted from the Benz without the key. That she should go to the police and get dragged into some Billy D mess, no thank you. Knows for God damn sure she should never have told Billy about Harry. Not that he believed her, but sew a seed in that mushy head and . . . Knows that Harry must never learn of this, any of it. Wants, right now, to do nothing more than pound something with this hammer, something glass, or solid and splintery, a skull, maybe.
She settles for the hotel pillows, flailing little round dents until the hammer flies from her hand and crashes through the ceiling tiles. That done, she gobbles some valium and sleeps like a baby.
In the morning things look better. Not her nose, swollen now and gruesome, but her slant on things. What her options are and how she should proceed on this. Unless he’s all the way psycho Billy will lay low for a while, lick his wounds and see what happens. Sunday, when she talks to Harry, she’ll make some excuse to come see him, get out of town for a few days, let the dust settle. When he figures out she didn’t go to the cops, even a pea-brain like Billy will surmise he got lucky, a few burns and abrasions, nothing felonious.
She’ll tell Harry she hit a pole. Shit happens when you’re not around.
Lena checks out and drives back to town. Raining now and it’s backed up going into the city and even though she fights it she can feel her resolve crumbling. It’s just as likely Billy’s waiting for her. No way does he let something like this slide. And just like
that the fear rolls over and she slips off the exit and back to the airport. Sheraton this time, two nights, cash in advance.
***
Past Rhinebeck Harry stops for gas and a paper. His eyes are gritty and his mouth tastes foul, but he’s making good time and should hit the city by daybreak. Get a room and a bottle, lose a day or two to cable, put this upstate behind him and chill for a while.
He takes the tunnel into midtown and after weeks of isolation he feels suddenly alive. Crowded streets, noise and motion, all the people he’ll ever need. Harry loves the mid-town mess, nothing like it in Philly or anywhere. Full-length mink stepping out of a limo, old Asian lady trailing old Asian man, shift the eyes, focus on anything, the wrought iron storefronts, the stoplight parade. Here and now at the highest level, just what he needed, just in time, he finds a place to stay.
“I’d like a room high up, with a view?”
“How’s the forty-fifth floor, East River side?”
“Perfect.”
Harry watches from his window taken by the contrast. Streets set in perpetual motion, Manhattan millions to swallow him up.
“Room service.”
“I’d like to order steak and eggs, coffee and a cheese croissant.”
“We’ve got latte, double latte, cappuccino, espresso, double espresso–”
“Regular, black.”
“How do you want that steak?”
“Medium well, eggs over easy.”
“Some orange juice with that? We got pulp, no pulp, extra pulp–”
“No pulp, large.”
“What kind of cheese croissant? We got–”
“Surprise me.”
“You got it.”
And on into the afternoon, bourbon and television talk shows, Seinfeld reruns. Dozing through a John Ford epic, dreaming of Mexico, a dusty bus ride, the cluster of hotels out by the airport. Something tugs at his subconscious. He awakens to a voice outside the door, two voices then a lock unlocking, none of his business, doesn’t concern him. Shadows stretching to the river, bourbon and Oprah, God, how he loathes her. Falling out again, voices in a hallway, trapped in a hotel room, Roland at the door.
