Devil's Arcade

by Robert Bucchianeri

  “Thank you, my good man,” Joe said. “I appreciate it.”

  “I like the way you play and your voice. Really stirs the emotions.”

  “I think that was Selma.” His mouth curved into a mischievous smile.

  I laughed. “Yeah,” I said. “Hey, you know a piano player name of Q?”

  “Oh my god, sure. Q and I go way-way back. He’s the best old piano hand in San Francisco, save for me of course.” He laughed and his eyes flashed. “You a friend of his?”

  “Yes. I like to think so. He helped me on a difficult case about a year ago.”

  “A case?” His smile faded. “Are you a cop?”

  “No. I just help people out with problems sometimes.”

  “These serious problems?” he asked, pressing his lips together.

  “Mostly.”

  He nodded, looked down at his hands as they moved across the keys together, improvising a melodic riff.

  “So that twenty dollars is for me to answer some questions,” he said, matter-of-factly.

  “No. I really liked the song.”

  “Maybe that’s true. But you also want to ask me for something.” He raised his face toward me, sizing me up.

  I grinned sheepishly and held up my hands. “Okay. You got me. I just have a couple of questions about a guy that comes in here fairly regularly, I think.”

  “Fred and Randy don’t like it. Telling tales on customers.”

  “That’s not what I want. This man has disappeared, and his family is very worried about him. I’m just checking out the places he was last seen, trying to put together a road map to where he might have gone.”

  His aimless riffing morphed into a jazzy interpretation of Paul Simon’s “Homeless” from the Graceland album.

  “His name is Bobby.” I gave him the same description I’d given Selma and added how worried sick his daughter and brother were.

  Maximum Joe kept on playing, swaying his head to the notes.

  I took out two more twenty-dollar bills and put them in his jar and wondered what I was doing. I should know myself by now. I had to stop. I had to—

  “I appreciate the tip, but you don’t need to pay me to answer your question.” Joe had his eyes closed now and a beatific smile on his face. When he finished the song, he opened his eyes, and sadness clouded his features. “So many people are homeless now. And even lots of people who have a house feeling like it isn’t really home.”

  He shook his head and chuckled, “Listen to me. It’s the music sometimes. As much as it can uplift, it often brings the blues right here and home.” He tapped his fist against his chest, his heart.

  I heard him. I didn’t respond.

  “Anyway, I know Bobby. He’s got that brother. The one who owns the big casino out on Treasure Island.”

  “That’s him.”

  “He was carrying a heavy burden. I don’t know if it was his brother or something else. I know his wife left him. That’ll unmoor a man.”

  “Did he talk about that with you? Did he tell you he was in trouble?”

  He continued to tickle the ivories and said, “No. It wasn’t like that. Not in a place like this. Sure. He said it didn’t bother him. That he was better off without that woman. But he wasn’t. No, sir. He was not.”

  “So he didn’t mention his brother or his work at the casino?”

  Joe looked up and his eyes headed straight for Selma’s corner, maybe checking to see that Junior wasn’t lurking about. He combed the whole club before his eyes alighted on me again and said, “That was his real problem. Last time he came in, he was a different man. It wasn’t just the sadness from his lost woman. He was afraid.”

  “And he told you about it?”

  “He’d always come over and request songs, put a few dollars in my jar. He favored Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. Not Duke Ellington, but nothing wrong with that. Anyway, he pulled up a chair and asked me to play Stevie’s, ‘Isn’t She Lovely.’ Said he used to sing it to his daughter when she was a little baby. He had tears in his eyes after only a few notes. He’d had one too many drinks, which wasn’t too unusual for him.”

  His voice trailed off as he launched into the tune, immediately recognizable. He stopped after a few verses.

  “…and then he told me that there was trouble at work and he didn’t know what to do. That he’d gotten into it deep by telling a woman too much and that she and her friends had taken advantage of him. I could tell he wanted to say more, the drink was loosening his lips. But he caught himself and stopped.”

  “You didn’t ask any questions?”

  “That’s not what I’m here for. I’ll listen, but it’s not my place to get too close, too chummy with the customers. Fred and Randy don’t like it, sure. But I could get away with more if I wanted. Just that I don’t think it’d be good. For business or for the customers. So I listen and say a reassuring word or two. What’s a piano player in a bar like this got to offer, except for the wisdom and salvation in a good song played well.”

  “That’s no small thing, Joe.”

  He nodded, and I thought about one of Springsteen’s lyrics proclaiming that you could learn more from a three-minute record than you ever could in school.

  There was more than a little truth in that, even if you weren’t a musician like Joe and me, as I still like to think of myself in my more romantic moments.

  “So he never said specifically what the problem was or hinted at anything he was planning on doing about it?”

  “No. But it was definitely heavy on his mind. Anyway, I told him it’d probably work out, that most things we worry about are much ado about nothing, as Mr. Shakespeare put it. He smiled and thanked me, but I could tell I hadn’t eased his worry any.”

  I asked him if there was anything else he could think of, but he said that was the sum total of his last conversation with Bobby. I put one of my cards on top of the piano and asked him to call me if he thought of anything else or if any word of Bobby came his way. I told him I’d mention his name to Q when I next saw him, and that pleased him.

  I walked away from the piano and headed for the seedy little casino’s exit feeling like I had gotten nowhere much, but that I’d at least given the effort I’d promised Bobby’s daughter.

  Seconds later though, I realized that I’d kicked over a hornet’s nest and that a bit of muss and trouble were heading my way.

  Seven

  As I approached the exit door, a woman stood up from the blackjack table close to me and caught my eye.

  She nodded, came closer, and extended her hand toward me. Surprised, I wasn’t sure what she wanted, but I offered a handshake, and she slipped a piece of paper into my palm, leaned in close to my right ear, and said, “Keep moving, save the note until you’re out of here. You’ll find what you’re looking for at that address.”

  She stepped around me quickly and disappeared behind a bank of slot machines opposite Selma’s corner of the casino.

  In the dim lighting, I’d hardly gotten a close look at her. She appeared to be around thirty, short, squat, nondescript, black hair, dark eyes, wearing a badge denoting her as an employee of Fred’s Flapjack Casino by the name of Karin.

  I debated whether to follow her, or her directions, but my choice was taken away by the reappearance of Randy.

  He was looking at me as if I was a rat he’d found lurking in broad daylight in his home. “What do you think you’re doing?” he growled.

  At the same moment, I felt a presence directly behind me.

  “Enjoying your fine hospitality and chatting with your friendly personnel,” I tried. Butter them up first, I always say.

  “Bullshit,” Randy said, stroking his handlebar mustache like it was his pussycat.

  “I disagree with your assessment. I was doing precisely what I stated. Of course, this being America, you have the right to your opinion.”

  Randy’s eyes widened and his face bunched up into a snarl and he kind of leered at me while grasping and tugging at hi
s big ugly mustache, Simon Legree-like. I don’t know if it was just a tic of his, or he was trying to be intimidating, or he mistook me for an Uncle Tom, but any which way, I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Jeez, Randy you’re cracking me up.”

  “Ted,” Randy said.

  Two big hands dropped onto my shoulders like brick claws.

  Alas, their contact was brief. I reached up and back and dug my nails deep into the tops of his hands. Fortunately, I hadn’t clipped them in a while, and as I scrambled for purchase, I could tell I was drawing pay dirt, or, more precisely, blood. That was confirmed by the little scream that emanated from Ted, whom I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting let alone seeing.

  His big brawny mitts dropped away like bear cubs snatched from their momma.

  I spun and got my first look at him. He was holding his hands, palms toward me, in front of his eyes, and his face was a mask of pain and incredulity. He looked at me and shook his head back and forth like a big old Clydesdale, which he faintly resembled.

  I waited for him to neigh.

  Instead, his brow furrowed, his nostrils flared, and I expected him to paw the gaudy carpet with his hooves. He dropped his hands and clenched them. “You fight like a girl.”

  I wasn’t offended. I knew some pretty tough girls.

  Behind me, I could feel Randy tense up, preparing to make his move. I pivoted and feinted toward him, putting up my fists. That startled him, and he pedaled back. I smiled and turned back to Ted.

  “I have to warn you, that was only the tiniest glimpse of my girlish moves. Wait until you see how I can scratch and claw.”

  That did it. Ted, all close to three hundred flabby muscled pounds of him, lunged. I sidestepped but left my right foot in harm’s way, just enough to hook around his left ankle. He toppled like a bowling pin, and I placed the same foot against his neck and applied appropriate pressure until he was gasping for breath while I took hold of his left arm and yanked it up so his whole body was kind of caught in a weird and painful facsimile of a bow and arrow.

  Marsh had taught me the move a while back, calling it the Broken Arrow, which didn’t really give a proper representation, but the hold itself was decisively incapacitating.

  I pulled him to and fro for a few telling seconds, eliciting his complete cooperation.

  Randy had disappeared, probably looking for reinforcements. I doubted he’d find them in a place like this. This wasn’t Pirate’s Cove where Poe could call on a couple of dozen men and women, each more formidable than poor Ted.

  I looked down at him and said, “You’ll be a good boy now?”

  He didn’t answer; I don’t think he could, but I interpreted the look in his eyes as a resounding yes.

  I released him from the Broken Arrow and quickly made my escape.

  Eight

  When I got outside, two cops were helping Robert, the homeless guy, into their police car.

  I felt like a good Samaritan. I told myself I was a narcissistic asshole.

  But that seems in vogue now, so I went with it.

  I slipped the note from Karin from my hand to my shirt pocket without looking at it and saddled up on my motorcycle.

  I thought it best to drive a safe distance from Fred’s casino before reading the note and deciding what to do, just in case Randy had called the authorities on me. I doubted he would but wanted to get out of Dodge just in case.

  I pulled into a small strip mall parking lot fronting a 7-Eleven, a pizza place, a chiropractor’s office, and a palm reader’s studio. I thought about finding out what my immediate future held but decided to let it be a surprise.

  I retrieved the note and read its short and to the point contents:

  Beachside Motel

  697 47th Street & Noriega

  It was in the Outer Sunset. Near Saint Ignatius College Prep, one of the city’s finest high schools, a Jesuit establishment, although I wasn’t sure how many true Jesuits were represented there anymore.

  I stared at the name of the motel and the address for a few moments, trying to decide what to do. I should move on, go home, and help Alexandra pack and get ready for our trip tomorrow. I could let Marsh or one of his men check it out, and if he found Bobby or some clues where he was or what had happened, then I could turn it over to Poe, or the police, or let fate have its way.

  But what the hell. It was still only late afternoon. Plenty of time tonight to get ready for Hawaii and to coordinate everything with Alexandra.

  It’d only take me a few minutes to check it out and be on my way. No matter what I found, I wouldn’t get involved. I’d let others handle it from there.

  As I passed Devil’s Teeth Baking Company on Noriega, I realized I’d been there once before with Frankie, who loved their New Orleans beignets. They were mighty fine French donuts dusted with powdered sugar. As I drove the Ducati slowly by, I could smell the scent of sourdough bread and a hint of sweetness in the air, and I thought after I visited the motel that I’d stop and get a greasy bag of beignets to give to Frankie.

  She was trying to put on a good face, but I knew she wasn’t happy about us leaving her, even though she’d be staying with Dao and Meiying, who she loved. In the two years she’d been living with Alexandra, it was the first time we’d left her alone for more than an overnight.

  The donuts would help a little, but I knew she’d miss Alexandra, who she treated as her own mother even though she never called her that.

  Maybe she’d even miss my narcissistic ass a little.

  The Beachside Motel was not beside the beach, but it was near the Great Highway across the street from Ocean Beach and the great big blue Pacific.

  I used to go to the submarine races, as parking and petting, back in the day, at one of the little parking alcoves off the highway fronting the beach. My first girlfriend and I spent many a late evening, panting and pawing, tussling and pleading (I believe that was mostly me) our respective cases, and exchanging gestures of affection there. She was a good Catholic girl, and I was supposed to be a good Catholic boy.

  But propriety had a tendency to fly out the window in the hothouse heat of my 1985 Dodge Charger’s steamy interior.

  Her name was Annie Oakley. The car, not the girl. I named her after my favorite white plastic shotgun when I was a young boy.

  You call me a sissy at your own peril.

  But the girl was a lovely, sweet innocent who I felt guilty to the bone of fouling with my rancid lust.

  I’d really swallowed the Kool-Aid that the Church provided as a salve for foregoing Eve’s temptations.

  But, guilty or not, deeper urges overwhelmed us both.

  Golden days.

  The Beachside was a weathered two-story faded blue stucco building. There were twenty-four identical units in all. I was sure each had a television on a cheap wood wall mount and a Magic Fingers vibrating bed that you could feed quarters into for fifteen minutes of shaky fun.

  A well-dressed middle-aged man was behind a shiny new Formica-topped reception desk in the small but tidy office. A room deodorizer delivered a minty scent that almost hid the underlying Lysol and ammonia residues.

  He greeted me with a warm smile. His small brown eyes twinkled behind large black eyeglasses. His gold-hued plastic name tag read, Frank.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  “I hope so. I’m looking for someone.”

  “Well, we have rooms available,” he responded pleasantly, but off point.

  “I’m sure you do. And the next time I need one, I’ll be sure to remember that. Right this moment though, it’s important for me to find a gentleman I believe is a guest of yours.”

  The smile on his face stayed fixed, his eyes stayed twinkling. Life and its challenges seemed to amuse him.

  “I’d like to help, sir, but I’m afraid that our guests' privacy is of primary concern.”

  Everything about Frank argued that he would do well at a much fancier establishment, and I wondered what the hell a guy like him was doing in
a dump like this. I thought about inquiring more about his life’s journey, but my own path beckoned more strongly.

  “His name is Bobby Fenderdale.”

  “Sir, I understand but—”

  “Just nod your chin if he’s staying here. You don’t have to say yes. Or maybe wink your right eye. That’ll work too. No muss. No fuss.”

  He laughed.

  I liked Frank. He was a rarity among motel desk clerks, a man with a bit of class and a sense of how strange and funny life is.

  I noticed no nod nor wink.

  I pushed a cards across the desk toward him, one that represented an alter ego, a pseudonym, and he picked it up and read it and then looked up at me with a quizzical expression. I understood, like all my cards, it was devoid of information save for a name and phone number.

  “I do private consulting work. And my client, in this case, is the daughter of Mr. Fenderdale. She’s worried about him. He’s disappeared, and she fears he may harm himself.” I paused, let that sink in, and then added, “I’d hate to have him harm to himself here at the Beachside Motel.”

  Frank studied my face, searching for something.

  “Truth?” he said.

  “God’s honest.”

  Did I see a wink?

  I did.

  Frank led me to Room 12, the end unit on the first floor, and knocked politely three times.

  Gauging by the number of cars parked in front of the rooms, there weren’t more than a handful of rentals. Despite Frank’s hospitality, the place had seen better days.

  The creak of someone getting up from a bed inside, then a couple of heavy steps and a brushing hand on the door. I felt eyes on us from the other side of the peephole.

  The door opened a crack, to the width of the attached chain lock. An unshaven face appeared, tired, blinking eyes in the semi-bright light.

  Bobby had just woken up, and he looked the worse for wear, like an extra in a Hollywood zombie film.

  “Mr. Fenderdale, sorry to disturb you, but a man is here to see you.”

  Bobby squinted, frowned, looked over Frank’s shoulder, and found me.