by Laird Barron
“How is it you ended up in the slammer and those bozos walked?”
“Officer Friendly took their word over mine.” Lionel sighed and rolled his head on his neck, cracked his knuckles. “May as well amble over and get to it. Round two.”
“No, not tonight.”
He chewed on that.
“Why are we here?”
“Recon, soldier. I wanted to take a gander at the brave fellows who jumped you. They risked their sweet asses. Four of them versus one Marine? Had to be a close contest.”
“I guess question two has to be, why’d you come bail me out?”
“Leave a man in the pokey? Come on, Robard.”
“Told you, call me Lionel. I got all the Robard I could handle in the Corps. Question three: you heard about Reba?”
“I heard.”
“Cops came by, asked some bullshit, left on a doughnut run. They ain’t looking. Not really.”
“Yep,” I said.
The mercs had spotted us in our nook. They were sending hardcase glares, except for Valens. He studied a drinks menu with great intensity.
I drained the Jim Beam and slipped my revolver from its oiled holster, rested it on my knee. Two of the bullyboys swaggered our way. The buzz-cut twins. They moved well. Dangerous, on principle, in the manner of jackals or coyotes.
“She could be on the lam.”
“Virg and Jade think otherwise.” Lionel eyed the approaching mercs. He bounced the shot glass in his hand. He was calm and easy.
“Hi,” I said when the pair reached us and waited there puffing like confused, furious apes.
“Isaiah, meet Galt and Tucker,” Lionel said with a broad, loveless smile. He kept on bouncing the glass like a knife thrower on his cigarette break.
Galt’s lip was split. Tucker’s nose would never recover.
“You got some licks in,” I said. And to the mercs, “Ah, Tucker, your beautiful face!”
The duo gave me the once-over, then ignored me.
“Hey, jarhead,” Galt said to Lionel. “Didn’t we tell you to find another bar to sit your canary ass in?”
“I’m sorry, I forgot,” Lionel said with mock regret. He made a show of slouching and looking at his hands.
“Of all the gin joints in the world, you bozos had to walk into this one,” I said in my best Bogart.
Galt narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth, doubtless to utter a witty rejoinder.
I placed the revolver on the table, hand on the butt, finger inside the trigger guard. Yonder, Señor Valens wasn’t preoccupied with his menu anymore. He couldn’t see the gun, but he understood Galt’s and Tucker’s body language fine. His man was about to get plugged with lead.
“Bye, bye, birdie.” I looked at Galt.
“Really? What, you going to smoke us right here?”
I raised the gun a couple of inches and aimed the barrel at him. I cocked the hammer.
“I’ll drill you in the mouth, the way your mama likes it.”
Tucker had had his fill. He clutched Galt’s arm.
“Dude’s mental. C’mon.”
I waited until they’d retreated.
“For what it’s worth, I agree about Reba. She’s in trouble. Virgil and Jade know their grandkid. Besides, I had a bad feeling about her from the first time we met. Some people are fated, as Mom would say.”
“Your mom said people are fated? As in, die early, go to prison, that sort of thing?”
“Some people.”
Lionel didn’t laugh, didn’t even blink.
“We better skedaddle. My buddies got itchy trigger fingers. Shootin’ is liable to commence.”
I followed him out into the cool dark. The gun remained in my fist, tucked under my coat. The mercs stayed put, glaring death threats. There’d be a later, I assumed.
“None of this is your affair,” Lionel said once we were in the truck and under way. “You and Reba don’t get along worth a damn.”
“I thought I was growing on her.”
“Think again. But you’re in it now.”
“I am. Jumped right into this giant cow pie with both feet.”
“Why? Gotta be a reason why. Man don’t go to war, don’t take a pickax to a mountain, without a why.”
“Call it payback or pay it forward. Call it atonement. Mostly? For the first time in a long time, I get to choose.”
He smiled.
“What’s funny?” I said.
“Your dog tags, man. Never met somebody wearing ’em from a real dog.”
Maybe it was a test, maybe he thought I’d be pissed. I let it roll off me.
“Yeah. Well, I’m at that point in life where I measure my remaining years in good dogs.”
“I dig. Worked with the bomb squad. Best dogs in the world.”
Lionel lit a cigarette, cracked the window to let the smoke go streaming into the night. He glanced at me and, by the dashboard glow, his expression was solemn as an Arthurian knight’s from some kid’s picture book. I swear, the noble little bastard flashed a halo for a second.
“I’m your man. Tell me where and when we start.”
“It’s already started,” I said. No halo on me.
FIFTEEN
All those years in Alaska, I’d loyally served the Outfit. Let’s be clear on one thing, however. I never joined the Family. I performed work for the Family. Mr. Apollo kept me on a more or less permanent retainer. No loyalty oath, no omertà. Also, no ironclad protection from rival factions or rivals within my own faction. I could be rubbed out with impunity if someone took offense. I also counted as a member of the Outfit while on the job with regard to propriety. Were I to step on someone’s dick while conducting Outfit work, then Chicago had to own it.
Not a chance I’d ever get made even if I had signed the blood pact. Chief headhunter was the greatest honor an outsider could expect of an organization that ran on patrilineal lines. I always thought it enough despite a nagging worm of doubt, despite seeds of dissatisfaction ever waiting to take root in my soul, despite the abused pride of warrior ancestors. I drank, gambled, fought, and lived day to day locked in battle with personal demons. That’s how it is, on the Last Frontier. Days bleed together while monsters circle and you finally arrive at a place where survival is its own reward, beginning and end, like the teeth of the ouroboros chomped upon its own tail.
The walrus massacre, my violation of Family orders, the chair, and exile . . . The world unfolded in beautiful and terrible revelations. I felt an unexpected pang of conscience, which in turn made me slightly afraid. Life returning to my extremities after a long, long sleep?
Don’t get the idea this meant I was a changed man. Hardly. I was the same man, only my perspective had altered. I hadn’t the slightest notion of where all this would lead. However, I knew quite well the road to get there.
* * *
—
FIRST THINGS FIRST.
To carry out the operation in my inimitable fashion, I needed to pay fealty to the king. Saturday morning, I dialed the number on Curtis’s card, talked to some schmuck who sounded as if he were eating a sandwich.
Curtis eventually picked up and listened to my spiel.
“Be at the Sultan’s Swing tonight. Seven sharp. Know the place?”
I said I’d heard of it and he gave me directions and said see ya later.
Meanwhile, Virgil wrote down a list of names and numbers of Reba’s immediate family and friends. He didn’t ask questions. Gave me that peculiar, cagey look and thinned his lips. I handed him two hundred dollars and said I’d need a pass on the bulk of farm chores for a while, thanks. Again, he took the rent money without pesky questions or argument. Rolled it up and stuck in his shirt pocket next to his tobacco. The wrathful light in his eyes told me that the old bird wished he were twenty years younger.
Driving out to the highway, I witnessed the trapeze artists assembling before the altar to their art for early-morning worship. I glanced at my watch, then did a spit check in the rearview.
“Oh, Coleridge, this is wrong with a capital W,” I said to my reflection. I backed up and got out and walked over to where Meg and an infuriatingly handsome fellow acrobat were stretching on the grass. Neither of them seemed overwhelmed with joy at my arrival. It occurred to me that word of my antics at the festival had gotten around.
I cleared my throat and struggled not to fidget. Getting punched in the face was always a joy by comparison to giving a woman a free shot at one’s heart.
“Do you have plans tonight?”
“Yes,” Meg said. Her hair was held back by a purple band. Her uniform consisted of a cotton tee with ARMY across the front and cotton shorts. The rest of her gleamed like the wet grass.
The handsome acrobat looked on me with genial pity. His abs were rocks, his teeth were perfect.
I said, “I’m taking a drive to the Sultan’s Swing around six-thirty. You got a nice dress to put on? You could come with.”
She let me dangle for a bit. Finally, she quirked her lips in what an optimist would’ve taken for a smile.
“What are you going to wear?”
“I clean up okay. Don’t fret.”
She recited a Rosendale address and dismissed me by resuming her routine that included significant stretching and bending. The handsome acrobat’s smirk vanished. He appeared terribly dismayed.
* * *
—
I DECIDED TO VISIT Reba’s roommate. My guess, her being a college girl, was that she’d be at home recovering from a Friday-night bender. It being college, every night was likely party night.
Kari Jefferson’s apartment sat atop a brick Gothic Revival house on the rough edge of Kingston. Many of the surrounding buildings were dilapidated or shuttered. Poor folks gathered on stoops or played stickball in the street or congregated in weedy yards. A lot of the men wore shirts a couple sizes too large or no shirts at all. Baby mamas pushed carriages while toddlers with dull eyes and runny noses chewed Day-Glo pacifiers. Pit bulls panted behind rickety fences, watching it all go down. Reba’s Mazda sat near the corner, its doors locked. Seats and dash were clean, so I moved on.
I didn’t know as much about Ms. Jefferson as I would’ve preferred. Twenty-one years old, she attended SUNY New Paltz and her father was a hotshot director of psychiatric services for the county. Kind of surprised me that Dad hadn’t shipped her off to Vassar or Amherst. It also puzzled me that he let her hang around the po’ folks. I climbed the tight stairwell, crunching empty party cups underfoot, and knocked on her door.
Kari Jefferson answered the door, hungover. Last night’s makeup, bed head, raccoon eyes, the whole bit. She had on some guy’s basketball jersey top. The jersey didn’t disguise her figure. Her bunny slippers were new and plush.
“Hi, Kari,” I said with every ounce of charm at my disposal. “Sorry to disturb you. My name is Eli. I’m Reba’s uncle.” Eli West was my favorite and most disposable alias.
The reason she was stuck in Kingston and not riding a scholarship to an elite academy came into focus as she stared at me, dimly turning the pieces over in her teeny little mind. Surely Reba had never mentioned her ruggedly sexy hunk of an uncle . . . Thankfully for both of us, Kari gave deduction up as a bad job right away.
“Yeah? Wanna come in?” Her voice rasped.
The apartment was wrecked. A guy in boxers sprawled on the bed. He snored. Probably the owner of the basketball jersey.
She stumbled around and laboriously made two cups of instant coffee and handed me a Van Gogh mug. Van Gogh’s ear vanished with the addition of hot water.
I sat on the edge of a ratty couch and sipped coffee, trying not to make faces like you do when being poisoned.
She curled into a stuffed chair and tucked her legs beneath her.
“From out of town, huh?”
“Why, yes, I flew in from Anchorage.” I pointed at the ceiling. “Alaska.”
“Uh, oh, right, right. I’m sorry you came all the way for no reason. It’s like I told the cops. Reba does this.”
“Disappears?”
“Nah, she just splits. Does her own thing. She always comes back. Will this time too. You’ll see.” She studied me more closely. “Are you a cop or an investigator, or something?”
“Heavens no,” I said. “I’m in communications. Business in New York, very boring. I got a call from my sister, and since I’m in the area . . . You know. Thought maybe I’d check it out, make Mom and Dad feel better.”
Kari stared at me with an expression either inscrutable or vacuous.
I kept beaming benevolent intentions.
“By the way, how is it you girls know each other? Classes?”
“Uh-huh. We’re in art together.”
The way she said it struck me as peculiar. Too flaky to spin a good lie, but cunning enough to hem and haw when it served her purpose.
Unlike Ms. Jefferson, I wasn’t too shabby with putting two and two together and carrying three gangbangers to arrive at the sum of “drug connection.” I visualized Kari and Reba lounging around the apartment. Kari would say, Hey, man, why don’t you text that pal of yours, the banger, and score us some rock? Or blow, or Mexican Gold, or whatever these crazy kids were into this month.
“I heard she was supposed to go partying with you the other night?”
“Unh. We were gonna meet up in town. She didn’t show.”
“Reba’s underage. Fake ID, I presume?”
“Unh. But we know the guys at most of the places and they let her slide anyway.”
Reba always wore work clothes at the farm. Fix her hair, mascara and lip gloss, a summer dress . . . yeah, she’d be a beauty who could easily pass for her mid-twenties. The bozos guarding the ropes would’ve fallen all over themselves. And maybe there was another layer. Her gang buddies most likely had juice with the clubs. Another item to add to my growing list.
“When’s the last time you actually saw her?”
“That morning. I think it was that morning. Yeah. I went to work at the salon. Medusa’s, off Stockade. She’d left when I got back at around one. Dunno where she went. We don’t keep tabs on each other or anything.”
I made a reassuring expression.
“Ever happen to see a pal of hers? Somebody outside your usual circle of friends . . . Skinny white guy about yea tall. Might’ve been two other gentlemen with him. Hispanic gentlemen. They’re joined at the hip, so to speak.”
There it was again, that shadowy hint of evasion in the tilt of her head.
“Oh, Hank? Think that’s his name. She didn’t introduce us. Unh, I’ve seen her with the other guys. The three of them are from Newburgh or somewhere.”
“Does Reba keep a diary? A laptop?”
“No diary,” she said. “The cops took her computer. Sucks, because I used it too. I hate logging in at SUNY.”
“Make your daddy buy you a new one.”
“I should! He’s so stingy.”
“Yeah, mine too. Why don’t you write down the name of the club you all were headed to that night? Heck, why not make a list of the usual places she hangs out?”
She hesitated, her dim eyes sharpening ever so slightly.
“Pretty please with sprinkles?” I said as winningly as I knew how.
“Sure. Okay.” She jotted down a handful of bar names on a piece of scratch paper. The Velvet. The Electric Peach. Tom Thumb. Bruno’s. She handed me the list, cheerful again.
The girl was definitely hiding something. I’d smacked the truth out of too many fools in my day to miss the signs. Odds were, it was one of those stupid things people do, a white lie that looked bigger and uglier than the truth would’ve. She probably didn’t want word of her associatio
n with thugs and dealers to get back to Papa.
I considered pressing the issue, leaning on her to see if she could be pushed. The guy on the bed snorted and half awoke. My cue to exit. There was always tomorrow, and tomorrow, to follow up on Ms. Jefferson’s omissions. Or maybe a visit to dear old pops was in order.
I said good-bye and left.
SIXTEEN
Cherry, the barber at Do-Little’s in New Paltz, did a job on my hair and beard, taming my Rasputin vibe by chopping enough of both to fill a sackcloth.
I drove my truck to Bad Wolf Car Wash, plugged in the coins, and watched soap and water spill down the windows while the radio crackled and Johnny Cash took his guns to town despite his mama’s protestations. I went whole hog and got the deluxe wax and buff in hopes of transforming my chariot into a somewhat respectable conveyance to the Mobsters Ball. I even vacuumed the bench seat and hung a pine air freshener from the rearview mirror.
Six-thirty p.m. saw me rolling to a stop in front of a tidy green-and-white house in Rosendale. The lawn was hemmed by hedges and crab apple trees, roses and wisteria. Instead of garden gnomes, there was a toppled tricycle, a whiffle bat, and plastic throw rings lying in the grass. A flagstone walkway scattered with blossom petals curved toward a snug porch. On the porch was a wicker love seat and a swing.
Up the walk I went, brandishing a fistful of posies. I’d broken into the emergency trunk and put on a razor-sharp gray suit and glossy black wingtips. One benefit of working for the Outfit was I learned how to dress for, and behave in, high-toned social settings. Boss didn’t want thugs in his employ, he wanted operatives, which really meant we were thugs who cut sharp—but, whatever. Thanks to him, I understood how to swim with the sharks. Certainly did feel sharky that night.
I held my breath as the door swung open and Meg Shaw stood in a spill of light from a Tiffany lamp. Her dress was ivory and sequined and it clung in exactly the right places to do me harm. White pumps and sheer stockings. Charm bracelet and a fine silver chain at her neck. Lucky I didn’t knock her out thrusting the posies in convulsive reflex.
