by Laird Barron
“Great instincts. It is, however, unavoidable. The getting-into-bed thing.”
“Time will tell. The apology?”
“I apologize for how certain contractual obligations are going to ruin our evening. I really am sorry, because it’s been a swell night so far.”
“Swell? My dad says swell.”
“Who’s your daddy?”
“I should slap you.” She moved in a little closer, however. “Are we in danger?”
“Just me,” I said.
“For some reason, I’m a wee bit disappointed.”
The song ended and we repaired to the bar for another round. Feeling it now, I loosened my collar.
Big blond Charles swaggered into the lounge. He did a double take upon spotting me. He cut a beeline to the head table, where Curtis and his cronies had resumed their seats. A conversation ensued, followed by jeers and guffaws, doubtless at his expense. I’d seen the routine before. The guys would be merciless until Charles took care of business as he’d boasted. Almost made me feel like a heel. Almost.
Curtis had laid a neat trap. I made a note to not underestimate the slick enforcer with the terrible makeup. He’d apparently read The Prince too.
It went as I expected, which was satisfactory and tragic by degrees. Charles sat amidst his so-called pals, enduring their japes, his face red as a brick. I slumped over at the bar, patently drunk and belligerent, nursing yet another glass of bourbon. Occasionally, I gave him a surly glare to fan the flames. Overkill, to be sure. In my mind, the risky part of the operation was that I’d crawled out of bed from a life-threatening illness less than forty-eight hours ago. My fuel needle hovered around seventy-five percent at best.
The instant he rose, I patted Meg’s hand and moved toward the bathrooms as if by coincidence. The sway in my step was exaggerated and I didn’t need to steady myself with an outstretched arm, but, you know . . .
The lavatory opened before me, long and narrow and over-bright. White tiles. Marble toilets and countertops. Van Gogh knockoffs hanging over the soap dispenser. Lavender deodorizer. Spiffy, as Meg noted. The alcohol blazed through me and I availed myself of a urinal.
Charles flung open the door and stopped, balanced on the balls of his feet. Everything depended upon his intentions. If he pulled a gun or a knife, matters would escalate and possibly spiral out of control. The furious light in his eyes relieved me. No weapons. The big guy wanted to take me apart with his fists. He’d chosen life without even realizing he’d peered into an abyss.
“You strapped?” he said.
I showed him my empty hands.
“Okay. Okay. Yeah.” He popped his knuckles and took several deep breaths. “Go for anything, I’ll kill you. Understand?” More knuckle cracking.
“Oh, this is a friendly beating, then?”
He wore a blue linen suit and fedora like he’d stepped out of a 1930s wanted poster. He removed his hat and hung it on a hook. His blond hair was pulled back tight in a ponytail. Next went the coat and then he rolled his sleeves over bulbous forearms. Crummy prison tats of skulls and bullets and so forth. Didn’t utter a word, didn’t glance away from me as he prepared. His eyes were bloodshot; he sneered and gnashed his teeth. The boy had definitely worked himself into a lather.
I sagged against the wall and zipped my fly with an insolent flourish.
Charles raised his hands and moved on me with a crab-like stutter step, the prison yard shuffle. I caught the first punch on my arm and it smarted because the guy was powerful and he could throw, make no mistake. The second punch hooked under my guard and dented my ribs. That stung a lot worse. I got my elbows in front enough to soak the worst of it. Sounded like a mallet walloping a side of beef. One-two-three to the body, with a left hook to the temple, kapow, and my head bounced off the wall, sent pieces of tile cascading to dust. I went to a knee and he drop-kicked me in the chest. I got up fast and received a right cross to the jaw for my troubles.
Generally, drunkenness engenders a misapprehension of one’s invulnerability. Bottled courage is the bane of barroom warriors around the globe. Not in my case. I applied it as a tranquilizer, a sacred medium between the civilized veneer and the primordial savage. Yes, a yeoman’s dose of alcohol blunted my reflexes; it also relaxed my muscles and enabled me to roll with the punishment. It slowed my mind and kept me calm while the fires of violence built and built.
This was a gladiatorial exhibition, nothing more. The booze helped me hold on to that idea.
Charles—angry, angry Charles—remained oblivious to my metabolic transformation. Sweat glinted on his cheeks. He grimaced with concentration and dug his fist with the signet ring into my belly, then backhanded me when I lowered my guard. Whiteness filled my vision. I went slack and allowed my body to be battered and flung. There was a damned lot of me to abuse. I went deep into myself, became a leaf in a hurricane, whirling toward the eye.
My head slammed through the door as he bum-rushed me into the lounge. Reality smeared into a blur of lights and distant screams, his labored grunting, the squeak of our shoes. People cleared the way for our wrecking ball passage. After crashing through the main entrance, I pivoted and flailed at the front of his suit. Charles started from his hip and drove me off the steps with a vicious uppercut that put me on my back in the gravel.
The stars flared, lovely and unreal, short-circuiting as if they were a holographic projection. I rolled over and crawled between two cars, hidden at last from the crowd gathering on the porch.
Charles wheezed. He’d gone from exultation to exhaustion. Using someone for a punching bag isn’t as easy as it appears. A couple minutes of that will tucker out the hardiest soul. He betrayed that exhaustion when instead of trying to finish the job, he waited until I struggled upright. He shoved me against the frame of an Escalade and socked me again.
I grinned through blood at him, nearly there, almost fully into it. I don’t process pain as a normal person does. The more I get hit, the stronger I grow as the dopamine and adrenaline do their magic. Couple that with enough liquor to stone a rhino and it’s a bad night for whomever lays a hand on me. While I don’t enjoy getting beaten on, and while I’ve been injured in my day, no man, except for dear old Dad, has ever truly hurt me with his bare hands. I’m not certain it’s even possible for anyone who isn’t a professional fighter. Charles possessed talent, size, and meanness. However, he wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination a pro.
I started whispering to him.
“My favorite match of all time: the Rumble in the Jungle.” Another punch connected with my face. I turned my head and slipped the blow. “Do you understand what rope-a-dope means, Chuck?” His follow-up to my short ribs had nothing on it. “You’ve got to know your history.”
His face shone blank in the houselights. His mouth gaped. He smacked me again, again, again, weaker each time; kitten soft. The strangled sounds he made were music to my ears.
I snatched his final punch out of the air, clamped his wrist, and looked him in the bulging eye.
“Show’s over, chum. Sorry about this.”
I clinched him and reversed our positions. I slammed a knee into his testicles, driving through for a spot near his shoulder blades as one does, then released him and stepped back. He slid to the ground and writhed. He had no air to scream, although, judging from his expression, he would’ve loved to. I braced myself by grasping the roof of the car and stomped Charles’s left knee with the heel of my shoe. Full weight, full force, everything I had. I felt bone and cartilage mash, heard the familiar pop of a joint that would never be the same. His face went gray and his body stiffened as if he’d touched a live wire. He found his voice again and shrieked. An animal’s wail that raised the hairs of my arms. I got away from him and strode across the lot to the building.
I needed a drink.
EIGHTEEN
Lionel put us in his Monte Carlo. Valets from
the club would bring my truck home later. We dropped Meg at her place. She leaned over the backseat, where I lay bloodied, to thank me for the dance. Blew me a kiss and departed.
“That went well,” I said.
Back at my cabin, I counted the wad of C-notes Curtis had slipped into my coat pocket on my way out the door of the Sultan’s Swing. He hadn’t owed me a dime. It’s a compulsion with wiseguys—they throw cash around like a guy with Tourette’s cusses. Shoving envelopes into pockets is habitual.
I set aside the dough and opened a bottle of booze.
Lionel hung around for a nightcap. He shook his head.
“Ain’t you drunk enough? I sure ain’t, but you? You’re sloppy, fallin’ down drunk.”
“I’m so drunk, this’ll put me over the top and on the downhill slide to sobriety.”
We clinked glasses of Johnnie Walker Double Black.
“Slàinte,” I said.
“Slàinte.”
The screen door kept the mosquitoes at bay. Crickets sang in the hollow. A cool breeze ruffled my sticky hair. My face hurt wherever it hadn’t gone completely numb.
“That’s a fancy suit you ruined,” he said. “You dress like that when you worked in Alaska?”
“Caine in Get Carter has been my model. I used to be better about not splashing blood on them.”
“You played that guy. I got there and had a few seconds to speak with your girlfriend before you and Hans busted through the wall.”
“I played that guy.”
“He never had a prayer.”
“No.”
“Why the charade?”
I appreciated the fact that he used the word charade.
“Whenever you think of gangs, think Romance of the Three Kingdoms. In the gangster universe, it’s all ancient Chinese court drama. Face, protocol, plausible deniability. This is what motivates wiseguys and bangers. Pussy and money too.”
“But mostly saving face.”
“That’s right.”
He appeared to consider that for a bit.
“What now?”
“Now we pound the pavement. We talk to everyone Reba knows. Her friends, her professors. The cops. Someone knows something.”
“Someone always does. Making them talk is the fun part.”
“We find that red Suburban, maybe we’ll find the guys who were in it. We find the guys, maybe we find the girl. Do you know anybody you can trust on a stakeout?”
“Me.”
“No. Go through this list of Reba’s friends. The basics—when did they see her last, did she have a boyfriend, was she in trouble, et cetera. Get ahead on your farm chores. Tell Coates what’s what. I’ll need you at least one day this week.”
He shrugged.
“Coates is cool. He’ll play ball. I also know a cat who can run surveillance.”
I wrote down Kari Jefferson’s address with a copy of the girl’s yearbook photo and passed it to him.
“Have him keep tabs on who comes and goes. If Jefferson leaves the apartment, your guy tails her. Five hundred for twenty-four hours’ work. I’ll pony up extra for pictures. There’s more, though.”
He waited while I drained my glass.
“One fine day, a man from Chicago will come to see me. A heavy hitter. He’d love to add my scalp to his collection.”
“He as good as you?”
“Better,” I said. “Night is a robot. Precision reflexes, zero conscience. Women, children, dogs, he’ll kill anything you point him at. Fast with a gun. Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday fast. Last time we met, I won because he didn’t understand the gravity of the situation. Caught him with his guard lowered. That won’t happen again.”
“You’re pretty fucking calm about it.”
“Violence doesn’t scare me. Plenty of other things; not violence.”
“The ancient Chinese curse May you live in interesting times seems to apply here,” he said.
“Bad part is—”
“That’s not the bad part?”
“Vitale was spawned by a family of professional murderers. Hung their shingle out since the colonial days. Some are pros—a few do it for fun. Assume I get the drop and whack him. Then I’ll be dealing with all his bloodthirsty kinsmen. My bastard grandchildren will be dealing with his bloodthirsty kinsmen.”
“Huh. What are you going to do?”
“Whack him, obviously.”
“Alrighty, then.”
“We’re going to want weapons. Clean, untraceable. I’m in the market for revolvers, no automatics. Thirty-eight snubs and .357s, preferably. Nothing cheap, nothing disposable, even though we may indeed be disposing of them. And a couple of rifles. I like Rigby and Remington. At least one .308 with a good scope. In touch with anybody who can handle that?”
“I know a guy who knows a guy. I’ve dealt for him on the side—only way to keep my chin above water.” He shuffled his feet and glanced away, as if I’d accused him of something. “Shoveling shit alone isn’t going to get me to Bora Bora anytime soon.”
“Hombre, I’m not judging. If this works out, it’ll be an ongoing arrangement.” Of course, If this works out was code for If we survive. I sighed and fetched the money Curtis had paid me to cripple hapless Charles. Lately, it felt like I was nothing more than a currency conduit. “That enough for a down payment?”
“Done,” Lionel said, slipping the envelope into his coat. “I’ll visit my source and get what you need. Wednesday. Thursday at the latest. What are you gonna do?”
“I’m going for a drive into the lovely Adirondacks,” I said. “Unfortunately, I must go visit my old man. Don’t ask.”
“Okay. Here’s some news. I got tailed tonight. A four-door sedan. Brown. Five, six years old. Followed me until I turned off at the Sultan’s Swing.”
“Weird. I’m usually the one who gets tailed for driving while not white. Could be the Family. Deluca’s boys hedging their bets. Then there’s the Black Dog goons . . .”
A shadow crossed his face. He shook his head. Less a denial and more like a man rousing himself from a dark vision.
“No . . . Valens ain’t tracking me. He’s too lazy. Anyway, I made it for a government car.”
“DEA? FBI?”
“Yeah. That’s how it felt. Didn’t get a look at the driver.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” I said.
Sunday was no day of rest for wicked me, thus, after we finished our drinks, I fell into bed and dreamed nary a dream.
* * *
—
DAWN EVANS WALKER, mother of Reba, awaited me in the yard when I staggered from my cabin at the crack of 10 a.m. No doubt, she’d gotten leave from her job in Cleveland. I could tell by the way she’d planted her feet that she’d been bird-dogging my door for a while. A stout lady with tired eyes and an ironed-on scowl. Navy blue blouse and slacks. Kept her hair cropped matron-style. Reba had inherited her nose and mouth.
We shook and she had a strong grip. Nursing is tough work.
“I wanted to see for myself,” she said. “Had to see this person who’s going to find my girl.” Terse and pitiless. Her daughter’s mother through and through. “Well, sir, every Friday night I stitch jigsaw men up in the ER who look a sight better than you do.”
Barely put together in a T-shirt and sweats, oozing blood and lumpy with bruises, to say I looked a mess would be to put a very fine point on the matter.
“It was all for the good, Mrs. Walker.”
Her frown deepened as she caught wind of my boozy reek.
“That definitely sounds like something you say a lot. I’ll allow that some fellows do their best work drunk. My ex-husband protested as much.”
“Is it possible that’s where Reba is?”
“What? No. She wouldn’t run to him. Not in a hundred years.”
“How
can you be sure?”
“Jade told me you were on our side. Reba hung around a bad element. One of them did this. They took her.” She was a rock, Mrs. Evans Walker, but her voice trembled.
“Ma’am, I wouldn’t be much use if I didn’t ask questions.”
She exhaled and relaxed her shoulders. She didn’t ask for my credentials. That surprised me a bit. Instead, she reappraised me, perhaps peering deeper than before; took my measure and accepted the situation at face value. A mother’s desperation is considerable.
“I called Dante and asked, point-blank. He’s a louse and an idiot. And a drunk. Can’t keep a secret, can’t keep his mouth shut. It’s always gotten the best of him. Reba is the light of his life. If she’d come to him, he’d be crowing. He hasn’t seen her, hasn’t heard from her in months. She’s not there. Trust me, Mr. Coleridge. She’s not there.”
“I believe it, then.”
“Jade says you have a good heart. Says you’re a lout, but a good man.”
“She has my number. The Walkers have been kind. I want to help.”
“You’re friends with my daughter?”
“Reba hates my guts, ma’am.”
She smiled; the sun breaking through storm clouds.
“She would, wouldn’t she? My girl has attitude.”
“To spare.”
“I don’t know if I like you either. Doesn’t seem to be a choice. Just . . . do your best.”
“I’ll do my worst, ma’am.”
Mrs. Evans Walker didn’t smile this time. Neither did I.
* * *
—
I FIGURED THE UPCOMING TRIP might be a bit taxing on the ancient Ford, so I rented a sleek Acura in Kingston. The cell rang as I forked over a credit card and signed the papers. My new best friend, Detective Rourke, wanted to meet for brunch.
The detective waited in his brown Buick in the lot beside the Frozen Rainbow, a popular blue-collar joint that specialized in about a million flavors of ice cream. He was eating chili fries.
I pulled alongside and passed a paper bag through the window. Rourke took a gander at the cash within. He hadn’t shaved lately and his jowls were gray and grizzled.
