Mean Business on North Ganson Street

by S. Craig Zahler

  Fear glimmered in Huan’s eyes.

  E.V.K. motioned to the car. “Slow.”

  The detective opened the driver’s door, and the killer flung the one behind it. Together, they climbed into the car and sat upon its luxurious (and still warm) upholstery.

  E.V.K. thought that the vehicle seemed a little bit too nice for an honest policeman. “Do not slam your door,” he said as he leveled his weapon.

  Huan and E.V.K. reached out, clasped leather handles, and pulled. The doors swung toward the body of the car, slowly, until they were nearly flush. Then, the men yanked hard.

  Latches clicked.

  “Lock it.”

  Synchronized jackboots stomped.

  E.V.K. surveyed the brown home and the unlighted houses on either side of it. The area was as still as a photograph.

  “Back out of here,” ordered the killer. “Slow and quiet. Don’t turn on the lights. If your wife comes outside, she’s joining us.”

  Eyes fixed on the front door, Huan started the engine, shifted into reverse, and backed up until he reached the street.

  Nobody emerged from the house.

  “There’s a construction site on the next block,” said E.V.K.

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “Go there. Do not exceed fifteen miles an hour.”

  The detective toggled the gear, drove down the block, and dialed the wheel clockwise. Purring like a feline, the black luxury car crept through suburbia.

  E.V.K. recalled the discarded bouquet, the acquisition of which had almost certainly delayed Huan’s return home. “Were you fucking another woman?”

  “Playing poker.”

  “With policemen?”

  “Just some guys I know. I won big.” Huan turned onto a cross street. “Let me buy your mother a fur coat.”

  “Shhh.”

  “How about a bazooka? Czechs love those.”

  “Shhh.” E.V.K. knew that the fellow was trying to distract him.

  The black luxury car arrived at the weedy, one-acre lot upon which a new home was being built. Moonlight turned the unfinished structure into a pale arachnid.

  “Pull in.”

  The pockmarked Asian glanced at the devil who inhabited his rearview mirror. “Where?”

  “All the way back.”

  Huan drove onto the grass. Dead vegetation crackled as the luxury car drifted past the arachnid and entered the rear lot. Parked near a ziggurat of cinder blocks was the killer’s charcoal gray pickup truck.

  The pockmarked Asian stomped the brakes, and the car lurched. Twisting in his seat, he lunged at his captor.

  E.V.K. hammered his gun against Huan’s mouth. Incisors cracked like candy.

  The detective’s back thudded against the dashboard. His lips were purplish-red pulp.

  The killer pressed the barrel of his gun into the pockmarked Asian’s right eye. At a speed of less than five miles an hour, the driverless car rolled toward a hickory tree.

  “You will tell me what I want to know or I will kill your wife.”

  Huan spat out white splinters that had once been teeth. “What do you want to know?” His words were slurred.

  “An address where I can find another policeman.”

  The pockmarked Asian was stunned. A low branch that looked like a talon harassed the windshield of the rolling sedan and scraped across the roof.

  “Give me an address or I’ll kill Heather.” The multiple executions might soon be discovered, and E.V.K. felt that he only had time for one more.

  Tears shimmered in Huan’s eyes.

  “If you give me a fake address,” the killer warned, “I’ll come back and take my time with her.”

  The drifting car impacted the tree. Branches rattled, and tears spilled down the detective’s cheeks.

  The world was still.

  “There’s a cop,” said Huan, lowering his gaze and swallowing gore. “A detective. Staying at the Sunflower Motel.”

  “What room?”

  “I don’t know. He drives a bright yellow hatchback and is blacker than a car tire.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Huan’s pockmarked cheeks reddened with shame as he said, “Jules Bettinger.”

  The gun flashed.

  XXXVIII

  More Important than Eggs

  A headache that felt like a palpitating creature filled Bettinger’s skull. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes.

  The motel room in which the detective lay was black, excepting an isosceles triangle of sodium light and the digital clock that told him with bright green numbers that it was half past two in the morning. He had deposited coffee in his stomach throughout the long day, and minutes ago, the surfeit of caffeine had finally overpowered his physical exhaustion and pulled him from the land of dreams.

  “Junk.”

  Bettinger knew his fifty-year-old body very well, and he was certain that he would not be able to fall back asleep until he had eaten a meal and flushed the remaining coffee from his system with water.

  The detective yawned, and suddenly, the bright green numbers disappeared. Something had moved between him and the clock.

  Bettinger seized his pistol.

  The luminous display reappeared, accompanied by the sound of something flapping.

  Embarrassed, the detective lowered his gun, cursing the newspaper that lay on the nightstand and the ceiling fan that had given it life.

  He switched on the table lamp, and soft amber light filled the room. The barricade in front of the door appeared to be undisturbed.

  Bettinger rose from the mattress, stretched, and grabbed his cell phone. Its display told him that he had no messages. An inspection of the carpet revealed his car keys, which had been slid under the door as promised.

  He decided then that he would drive over to Claude’s Hash House, get some eggs, and return for a little more sleep. Even one additional hour of shut-eye would help him survive the coming day.

  The detective walked to the bathroom doorway, stabbed his hand into the dark, and felt along the wall, looking for the light switch. It clicked, and an overheard bulb glared.

  Squinting, Bettinger entered the room, urinated, and washed his hands. He gargled hot water several times, but was unable to remove from his mouth a terrible taste that reminded him of a car battery.

  “Junk.”

  While the detective dressed, he happily remembered that Claude’s Hash House had a big bowl of complimentary breath mints on its front counter. Even if they had been there since the seventies, he would eat a handful.

  Bettinger put on his boots, pocketed his keys, holstered his handgun, zipped up his parka, turned off the lamp, and slid the couch away from the door. His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he listened to his surroundings. The room was silent, as was the world outside.

  Quietly, the detective undid the bolts, turned the knob, and cracked the door. The steel chain grew taut, and as he looked through the opening, a cold wind chilled his right eye. Nobody inhabited the second-floor walkway, and the rear parking lot was empty, excepting his hatchback, which sat in a puddle of sodium light that painted its windows an even uglier yellow hue than the one that covered its body.

  Bettinger’s exposed eye began to freeze, and soon, he stepped back from the opening.

  Gripping his gun, the detective unfastened the chain and walked into the night. Winter attacked him like a thing that hated the main ingredient of every human being.

  As he locked the door to his room, he monitored the passageway and the darker environs. It seemed as if he was the only person stupid enough to be outside at this time of night so far north of the equator.

  Bettinger hid his firearm, entered the stairwell, and descended to the ground level. There, he traversed a dark and empty passage that led into the parking lot.

  A light flashed in front of his face.

  The detective withdrew his gun and then realized that what had startled him was his own breath, brightly illuminated by a sodium lamp.

&nbs
p; “Christ’s uncle.”

  Embarrassed by his edginess, Bettinger strode across the rear lot to his hatchback, which had two new tires. He opened the driver’s door and found a sheet of paper lying on the seat.

  B.

  It’s suposed to snow alot late tonite or early tommorrow so I put a ice scraper in you’re trunk.

  D.

  The detective sat down, shut the door, and started the engine. As the car awakened, he withdrew his cell phone and went online. Nine hours ago, Slick Sam had been the police department’s best connection to Sebastian, and Bettinger wanted to find out if the crook had been apprehended.

  Cogitating, the cell phone grabbed a signal. The detective opened his account, where the lack of work-related e-mails in his inbox did not say anything good about the progress of the case. Sitting at the top of the screen beside a subject line that read “Call” was the name “Jacques Bettinger.”

  “Junk.”

  The detective opened the e-mail that his father had sent.

  I’ll be up late.

  The rattling heater attempted to make the freezer in which Bettinger sat as warm as a refrigerator. Toggling the gear, he pressed the accelerator. While the yellow hatchback crossed the rear parking lot, the detective highlighted the word “Father,” stuck an earplug in the side of his head, and pressed the connect button, knowing that there was no point in delaying the dialogue.

  The car circumnavigated the body of the motel, and in the driver’s ear, a phone rang.

  Headlights glared upon the windshield.

  Squinting, Bettinger flashed his high beams at the oncoming vehicle. Again, the phone rang.

  The blazing headlights dimmed, and the detective saw the other automobile—a charcoal gray pickup truck, which was currently pulling into the far side of the parking lot. He looked at the person behind the wheel, but the man’s face was obscured by the tilted brim of a black baseball hat and the tinting that Missourians were allowed to have on the uppermost part of their windshields.

  For the third time, the phone rang. The pickup truck turned into a parking space, and the hatchback exited the lot.

  “It appears as if you’ve chosen a very exciting place in which to live,” said a deep, creaky voice through the earplug. “A real jewel.”

  Bettinger glanced in his rearview mirror, but was unable to see through the driver’s side window of the pickup truck, which was darkly tinted. Perhaps the fellow had just spent the night with a prostitute or currently had one crouching in the passenger seat so that she (or he) would not be descried. To the hungry detective, none of these transgressions mattered as much as eggs.

  “What did you want to discuss?” Bettinger asked Jacques.

  “Do you intend to dodge bullets for the next five years?”

  “You’d prefer I didn’t dodge them? Got you some souvenirs?” The detective checked his mirrors, signaled, and switched lanes.

  “I know you think you’re clever, but you’re just a watered-down version of the man with whom you are speaking.”

  “So Mom’s contribution to my DNA was water?”

  “There are some deficiencies.”

  “Your reverence for the deceased is touching.”

  “And that sarcasm of yours is what landed you in nigger Siberia.”

  Bettinger passed a pea green sedan. “Does that mean you aren’t going to visit? ’Cause I’d consider that a perk.”

  “Afraid to face your old man on the checkered battlefield?”

  Chess was one of the only activities that the two Bettingers could enjoy together … probably because it confined most of their fighting to a two-dimensional rectilinear surface.

  “You’ve been slipping these last few years,” added Jacques. “I think your mind is starting to go.”

  “It happens.”

  The eighty-six-year-old grew irascible if he lost more than two games in a row, and so the detective occasionally threw a match to keep him happy.

  “We don’t have to talk about it if it makes you uncomfortable.”

  “What did you want to discuss?” asked Bettinger, applying the brakes as he turned onto Summer Drive.

  “Do you intend to stay in Victory?”

  The detective glanced in his rearview mirror, which showed only a dark and empty road. “You’re asking me this because of the homicides?”

  “Of course not. It’s because an astrologer doesn’t like where Saturn is going.” The oldster’s sarcasm was as thick as honey.

  “It’s possible that I’ll be relocated at some point, but I’m going to finish out my term of service no matter where I am.” Bettinger switched lanes to avoid a dead pigeon. “I don’t like Victory, but I know that I can do some good here.”

  “Most martyrs don’t get hemorrhoids.”

  “I wasn’t aware.”

  “And they tend not to be bald.”

  “Balding,” corrected the detective. “Haven’t caught up to you yet.”

  “Stay in Victory and you never will.”

  “So that’s your advice? Leave?”

  “Or get an A-bomb.”

  “I really hear the Georgia accent coming out on that one.” Although Bettinger did not at all wonder from whom he had received the major part of his personality, he hoped that he was less unpleasant than his progenitor. “So that’s it then?”

  “I know that you find me irritating—”

  “Not at all.”

  “Quiet. I know that you find me irritating, but what happened to those policemen is national news, and when I heard about it, I went online and read some articles.” Jacques whistled. “Twenty-eight newspapers referred to Victory as the single worst city in this entire country.” He paused, letting his words resonate. “I know you’ll do whatever you want—and that you’re long past taking advice from me—but the sooner you get transferred out of that sewer, the better.”

  “That’s beyond my control.”

  “Alyssa and the kids are far away?”

  “More than an hour.”

  “How are they?”

  “Good. Alyssa just got a show at a big Chicago gallery.”

  “What gallery?”

  The detective did not want to hear a diatribe about Zionism, and thus, he withheld the name David Rubinstein from his father. “I forgot.”

  “If it’s not a memorable name, it’s not a good name for a place of commerce.”

  The hatchback’s headlights shone upon the sign for Fifty-sixth Street. “I need to go.”

  “Why’re you up so late? Are you playing around?”

  This proclivity was one that Bettinger had not inherited from his father. “Bye.”

  “Get a bulletproof vest.”

  The line went dead.

  Annoyed, the detective took the cork from his ear and turned onto Fifty-sixth Street. The area was very dark, and he feared that Claude’s Hash House might be closed, despite the sign on its front door that proclaimed such an event never occurred. If he had been a little more alert, he would have called the establishment before leaving the motel.

  Four luminious rectangles that were the front windows of the diner soon appeared on the north side of the street. The detective put on his blinker, slowed his car, and landed in the lot.

  There, he surveyed the interior of Claude’s Hash House. A trio of bearded truckers sat in a booth near the entrance, and an unhappy, light-skinned Latina occupied a corner table, smoking a cigarette while chastising a man who slouched. Sitting on a stool at the counter and reading a newspaper was a lank black guy who wore kitchen whites, an apron, and a hairnet.

  Bettinger exited the hatchback, locked the door, and strode into the diner, which was warm and smelled like hash browns. Rap music issued from the overhead speakers like boisterous precipitation.

  “Here.” The cook launched a menu down the counter. “Fryer’s off, so nothin’ deep-fried.”

  “I’d like eggs.”

  “How many and how?”

  “Four.” The detective tossed a han
dful of mints into his mouth. “Over easy.”

  “Potatoes?” inquired the cook as he folded his newspaper.

  “Hash browns.”

  The fellow rose from his stool. He was exactly halfway between six and seven feet tall. “Toast?”

  “Whole wheat.”

  “Pumpernickel close enough?”

  “I like pumpernickel.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Decaf. And a pitcher of water.”

  “Got it. Sit wherever you want.”

  “Thanks.”

  Bettinger walked toward the window booths and took the one that was farthest from the truckers. On the opposite side of the diner, the Latina dashed her cigarette in an extravagant manner and threw a well-rehearsed look.

  “I’m Buford if you need me,” said the cook, opening the double door that led to the kitchen.

  The detective nodded his thanks, surveyed the parking lot, and looked across the street. There, a sodium streetlamp threw ochre light upon a used car lot that had been closed for years, though the cracked windows of its office still advertised an “Amazing Bargain Bonanza!”

  Bettinger wondered if the people who contrived such phrases were actually human beings.

  The man who had been slouching beside the light-skinned Latina exited the diner, and as the door closed, the detective returned his gaze to the corner table. Two dark eyes and a pair of freshly painted red lips were waiting for him.

  Bettinger gestured to the empty bench at his booth, and the woman nodded her head. Although she probably did not know anything of value about Sebastian or the executions, she may have been an associate of Elaine James’s or heard something about her murder. At the very least, a conversation with her would cover up the rap music.

  Rings of smooth skin showed between the bottom of her short lavender dress and the tops of her black thigh-high boots as she stalked across the establishment, cradling a white fur coat in her right arm. Her clicking heels stopped the truckers’ conversation like a high command.

  “Want me to sit here?”

  The Latina’s mouth worked in a lopsided way, and she had a small lisp. Although she was probably twenty-five years old, these qualities made her seem far younger.

  “Please do.”

  The woman rested her rump upon the bench and arranged her half-exposed breasts, which were large, but believable. “You’re not a cop, are you?”