Chasing Sam Spade

by Brian Lawson

  “Patrick, what have you done?” but his voice had gone flat, neutral.

  “Patrick, talk to me.”

  Danny looked at Patrick and turned away from the phone and whispered, “This is it. It’s pay back time. Convince him, make him believe it and we both get what we want.”

  For a moment they stared at each other and Skelley nodded and leaned in toward the speakerphone, his face twisted, all pale sagging skin, bulging eyes and sweat; he sprayed spit across the phone.

  “Daddy, I’m sorry, he made me tell, he knows, he knows something …everything, about grandfather and his father … I’m sorry, I didn’t want to know but I do and he made me tell, he said he was going to hurt me again…no, please don’t yell, please Daddy, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”

  Patrick suddenly pulled back from the phone and relaxed into his chair, a fat, satisfied smile on his thick lips, sweat running down his face. Danny couldn’t even guess what the phone call cost him, how long he’d waited to be able to spit into the old man’s face and hurt him. They waited, staring at the phone, waiting for different things, but waiting. Finally the box squawked at them.

  “You have nothing. You are nothing,” the elder Skelley said.

  “No, I’ve got Patrick and Patrick’s got the old man’s files. Not much, but enough.”

  Again the pause, shorter this time. “What files?”

  “I saw the files, Dad. You know which ones and I copied some of them.”

  “Patrick, you are a worse liar than I ever imagined. Perhaps we shouldn’t run you for office after all,” he said, and the lawyer voice was back. Good, that meant he was thinking.

  “Sorry, Skelley. He’s got ‘em and I’ve got him. That means we’ve got you. And I want Larkin in exchange.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Simple, give me Larkin and I give you Patrick and agree not to use this stuff. Or not, and all bets are off and I splash this all over the Internet.”

  Pause.

  “You have no proof. You’re still bluffing.”

  “He has it, Daddy?”

  “Shut up Patrick, you little worm. Let the adults talk.”

  Patrick snapped back as though the old man had reached across town and out through the phone line and slapped him: his face went pale and he slumped back, his mouth sagging open, eyes wide, glaring.

  “And if I agree?”

  “Meet me this afternoon, Union Square, 3 p.m. Bring Larkin,” and he reached over and slapped at the speaker button.

  Patrick was still slumped but he had a tired, weak grin on his face. He still looked like he’d been kicked in the gut, but he seemed to be coming back.

  “We got him.”

  Danny nodded, yeah, they had him. “How does it feel to finally get back at him? You look like shit.”

  Patrick shrugged, then stared past him, not saying anything. They sat in silence for minutes, listening to the sound of the City coming alive, cars starting to move down the isolated streets, muffled voices carrying up and over the glass walls.

  Finally he said, “And you’ll give me what?”

  Patrick roused himself out of his stupor. He looked at Danny, seeming to see him for the first time in minutes. He reached into his pocket and put a heavy looking, old fashioned brass key down on the glass table next to the phone and slid it toward Danny.

  “What’s this?”

  “Garage key. The car’s in there. The gun’s in there to, under the seat.”

  “Where?”

  Patrick shook his head. “This afternoon, after the trade. I’ll call you on your cell and give you the address.”

  Danny didn’t say anything and Patrick finally said, “Don’t you trust me?”

  Sure, why not, he thought, what else could he do. It was that or stay in the hell the Skelleys had built for themselves and slowly become as crazy at they were. He had nothing to do but trust.

  “Yeah, I trust you. Maybe that’s not enough. But it’s what I’ve got.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN:

  Friday, Blood on Union Square

  “Things went to the hell right from the start. From the moment Skelley walked into the square, things went wrong faster than I would have believed possible.”

  “What happened?” Johnny said. “I was in that goddamn van with hatchet face. Christ he hates your ass. Giving him the slip at the garage was like tasting warm piss in his mouth. He’ll get you if he can.”

  Danny shrugged. What could he do? Everything was over, the old man, Patrick, everything.

  “You sure that’s okay?”

  “Sure, no problem, it don’t hurt too much,” Johnny said, holding up the casted arm like some heavy signal and waving it at him.

  “How are the ribs?”

  “Okay. Get a little shot when I turn some times, but okay. You were right. Nothing major broken,” he said, smiling at the old man.

  They were at the airport lounge, backed on the bustle of the airport, watching the silent departures of jets. They had some time until Danny’s plane would be ready to board. Johnny had insisted on making the cab ride out and waiting with him; it was just as well, Danny had never cared much for the places. He took another sip on his coffee and Johnny matched him with a long, pleased draw on his Guinness.

  “I’ll have to go back to the cheap stuff now,” Johnny said, wiping the sticky foam off his mouth. “Danny Boyle, you’ve been hell on the liver, not too good for the old bones, but one interesting son of a bitch to be around.”

  He nodded, “Sorry again about the arm and everything.”

  “Hey, it was my fault. After they snatched me I should have sat still and dummied up. Those guys would have been gentle as kittens if I hadn’t kicked that small one in the nuts. Can’t really blame a guy for popping you one when you do that. It was my bad luck to fall wrong,” he said, that great, loopy grin stitched from ear to ear. “Course, at my age, every fall’s the wrong way to fall. Getting old’s a bitch, son.”

  “Well, at least it turned out okay,” he said. And it had, for them. “What’d the guy do, when it all happened?”

  “We’re sitting there, in the van and that punk holding onto my busted arm so if I so much as moved he’d give me a little squeeze. Hurt like hell, I’ll tell you.”

  He nodded, again feeling sorry for the pain he’d caused the old man.

  “It looked like it was going to go okay, you know? We’re watching the old man pace and then you two come walking up big as life. I’d never seen the kid before, but I guessed what was going on soon as I saw you and him. I couldn’t hear what you was saying but I could tell his dad didn’t like it,” Johnny said. “So they’re talking, and the kid is jumping around, waving his arms and the old man’s just standing there, then, bam, he ups and hits the kid one and I’m thinking, oh no, that tears it. But the kid just grins and the old man just kind of collapses. It was something to see. What’d he say, that made the old man hit him?”

  Danny shrugged; he’d told the story but, why not? “Well, it was working just like the kid said it would. The old man was fit to be tied, I think, and he was talking fast and low so I couldn’t hear anything then all of a sudden he steps back and he hit him. Out of the blue. I didn’t see it coming.”

  “Patrick must have done something.”

  Danny shrugged. “More what the old man did, or said. I couldn’t hear much with the traffic noise so I don’t know what the old man said to the kid, but all of a sudden Patrick screams ‘fuck you, your father and every Skelley that ever lived’ and pow, that was it. I didn’t think he had it in him. Or that he’d move that fast.”

  “He punched him.”

  “No. Slapped. But the hardest slap I’ve ever seen. This wasn’t a Hollywood slap.”

  “Brigid letting old Peter Lorre have it, huh?”

  “Harder. It damn near took his head off, snapped his head around. The kid’s eyes actually rolled back in his head for a second and I thought he’d go down. But he got it together and j
ust started grinning at him, the whole side of his face swelling up and red.”

  “Instead the old Daddy goes down for the count.”

  It had looked like that. The elder Skelley had simply turned with his swing and gracefully pirouetted to the bench and crumpled onto it. For a moment Danny had thought he had stroked out or suffered a massive heart attack.

  “Patrick just stood there, grinning at him, the side of his face swelling up like a balloon. It was over. The kid had won. That slap was just like admitting the kid was in charge. You know, the last hurrah or something. Patrick was shrewd. Got me lined up, nailed the old man. It would have been over. He could have just turned around and walked away and I think Skelley would have just sat on that bench ‘til the pigeons roosted but no, something must have snapped when the old man hit him cause that’s when he did it,” he said, shaking his head.

  “I didn’t see that. The whole thing spooked old skinny cause the next thing I know he reaches over for the door and shoves me out and takes off like a bat out of hell,” Larkin said. “That’s when I got it, you know? I thought all along they were working for the old man, they kept saying ‘Mister S.’ and ‘Mister S.’ that.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He’s pushing me, on the broken arm? Hurt like hell, like I said, but I’m getting out and he looks right at me and he says, ‘I knew I should have stayed away from that fat fuck, he’s crazy’, just like that,” Larkin said, shaking his head at the memory of his surprise. “I’m standing there, my mouth open cause I see who’s doing what around here, and my arm hanging like a limp dick, and he’s making a run for it. Nothing I could do. And by the time I turned around, it was all over. You’re lucky the crazy fucker didn’t shoot you too. You were right there, close enough to do it if he wanted to.”

  Danny shrugged, yeah, could be. “The cops asked me, did I see it? Yeah, I saw it. Or maybe heard it, I don’t know. I was like you, half crazy myself by then with what Danny had said, then, pop, it sounded like a loud pop, no smoke, nothing. Just a pop.”

  “Small gun, the newspaper said. A .25 or some little purse gun, a woman’s gun they said. You didn’t see the gun? I’d have run like hell.”

  “Yeah, maybe I should have, but it was so damn fast. He just leaned over…”

  “Patrick, the kid?”

  “Yeah. Patrick leaned over, and grinned in the old man’s face. He reached out, I think he was going to pat the old man on the head or something like you’d pat a kid, or maybe a dog. Instead, he came out with the gun and shot.”

  He had been ready for anything the old man did; and he thought he’d heard everything that Patrick had to say; but he hadn’t been ready for that. “I don’t know, Johnny. I knew the kid was sick, twisted, fucked up, but I just didn’t figure on that.

  For a moment he felt the last two weeks closing in on him, like somebody was sucking the air right out of him; he gasped and it came back and his lungs filled with the stale recycled airport air.

  “Damn it, it still gets to me,” he said and Larkin nodded, his eyes full of some old, tired knowledge that Danny was decades away from, if he ever got to it at all. “Okay, so then he said, ‘Daddy, it’s you or me. They’ll take me away Daddy.

  “Where were you?”

  “A few feet, maybe eight or ten or so. I couldn’t move. I was frozen, numb. I wasn’t ready for that. Maybe a confession from the old man. Maybe I thought I’d know what to do when I was face to face with him. Maybe I would have slapped him instead of him slapping the kid. You know, for Chuck. But we never got there. Patrick just started going on about the family and his mother and after the old man slapped him, things happened too fast. Nothing you could do, not by then.”

  “Who coulda figured that? Nobody.”

  “I couldn’t. I didn’t, I don’t know. It wasn’t just the shooting. It was the craziness of it all. There was something shining in his hand and this pop and just a little flash. They were so close. And he just doubled over, his hands on his chest. There was this funny look on his face,” he said, trying to shake the memory. But the memory wasn’t going anywhere, it was like a song trapped in some terrible loop, playing over and over again.

  “I’d be surprised, somebody shot me, sure as hell I would.”

  “No, maybe not that,” he said, trying to see something in the memory, the picture of the old man slumped on the bench, legs splayed out, and then the kid just dropped on his ass. He was just sitting on the cold, dirty cement and crusted pigeon shit, sitting there in his expensive cashmere topcoat, holding onto the gun in his lap, and a look on his face like…

  “…like what? What was it?”

  “Wistful. He looked wistful. As though he suddenly remembered something and it was sad and lonely and a long time ago,” he said. “Then he just laid down on his side curled up like a little kid and closed his eyes.”

  Johnny nodded, then said, “And what’d you do?”

  “I just stood there. With my mouth open. What could I do? The old man was either dead or he wasn’t, but Patrick still had that gun in his hand. And people were yelling and the cop was running over across the square. What could I do?”

  Danny watched the ponderous, silent glide of a 747 across the window. Everything was effortless through the window, everything was measured, orderly. He said, “Well, it was something up close. You know, Johnny, I’ll always wonder if it had to go that way.”

  “What?”

  “I wonder if the kid ever would have done it if the old man hadn’t slapped him, pushed him over the edge, he might have just played it out.”

  “Yeah, if daddy hadn’t spanked junior.”

  “Yeah. The one thing he couldn’t handle. It pushed him over the edge and he wanted to hit back.”

  “Well, the old man got it wrong. Never guess how far a man will go. You never know. Shouldn’t put so much store in your kids, they’ll let you down,” Johnny said, and Danny looked at him. “I don’t mean you, don’t get me wrong there. You did the right thing. Chuck would have been proud.”

  “I don’t know, Johnny. I don’t know anything for sure right now.”

  “Yeah, funny how things get like that,” he said. There was something in the tone, something old and sad and tired that he’d never heard in Johnny’s voice before. They looked at each other for a moment, then Johnny looked away. He’d let it go; another time he might have asked, might have taken another piece of Johnny Larkin’s history away with him, but not now. Danny looked out the window until Johnny’s subdued voice brought him back.

  “I still kinda wonder.”

  “What?”

  “Why’d he do it? Kill Chuck and the others.”

  Danny shook his head and shrugged, playing with the glass in front of him on the table. “I don’t know. Nobody’ll ever know, not now.”

  “But you think it was just some big sick idea to force his old man out? And you just stumbled into the middle of it and he used you?”

  “I don’t know, really,” he said, and he suddenly felt very tired. Physically and of the story and trying to speculate on the plotting of a lunatic. “Whatever it was, I don’t really want to think about it, you know what I mean? Not now, anyway.”

  “Sure, I understand. Let it go, best thing,” he said, finishing off his Guiness. “But you know you’re lucky the cops didn’t tumble to all of this.”

  “Yeah, lucky,” he said.

  The cops had gotten there in minutes and Danny stood around with the crowd, waiting, watching the slow stain spread on the front of the old man’s shirt where it leaked out of his mouth. The bullet was so small it didn’t come out, just rattled around. And only a little blood leaked out, sliding slowly over his chin and soaking into his collar and down along the right side of his tie. But not too much. More than on Patrick, who just looked like was very tired and sad, curled up on his side at the old man’s feet.

  “And they bought that you were just walking by, just a spectator?”

  “I guess nobody saw me walk up wi
th Patrick. He was ahead anyway, so eager to get to the old man he was just skipping almost, running ahead like this big, eager puppy. And I stayed out of it once they got started,” Danny said. “I was looking around for you, but I figured I’d wait until they stopped and we could work out the trade. It never got that far.

  “Then, after it happened and the cops and ambulance showed up, they just took my name and everything and you know the rest, we were out of there,” he said. “And by then, it didn’t seem very important to tell them anything. Chuck was gone, the others were gone. And now the Skelleys. The old man looked dead. He wasn’t, but he looked it. And even if he makes it, he still faces the murder charges if Patrick talks. And Patrick gets locked up one way or another. It’s over, for them, for me. Like mom said, let the dead lie.”

  “Yeah, maybe you’re right,” he said, raising the glass and taking the last swallow. “I’ll pay you back for the arm, the hospital and everything.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Least I could do.”

  They sat in silence for a time, watching the jets float out of the sky, watching for the small puffs of tire smoke, waiting for the dull rumble of the reversing engines to seep through the thick lounge windows.

  “What now, Danny?”

  “Good question,” he said. And it was. He’d talked to Ben and said he was coming back but Ben said the chair of the department was talking about public flogging and Danny could guess there wouldn’t be a contract after the semester ended. He never had called Doris and suspected there was no reason now to bother. No reason to go back, no reason not to. “I don’t know. I’ve got to finish up the term, then I’ll see. I think I’ve had it with Seattle and it with me. I don’t think the chairman bought the death in the family story.”

  “Guess maybe it was. A death in the family. Just maybe not yours,” he said, nodding solemnly. “What can he do about it?”

  Danny shrugged. “Don’t know. He probably doesn’t have any choice. It’s too late to get anybody else in the quarter, so he’s kind of stuck.”