EQMM, January 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  I started bad-mouthing the round mound in the places where I'd seen him hanging; not too deep on the West Side where the last of the real tough-guy joints were now only shadows of their old selves but closer to Midtown where a more effete crowd dabbled in what he had for sale, at bust-out prices, mind you. There was just so much to dislike about this guy.

  Paul'd heard I was on to him, and I ran into him once, bellowing and buffooning about something until I caught his eye from the far end of the bar. He tried to hold the stare-down gaze but broke it off. Head down, he pulled out his cell, talked into it while he looked at the floor, out the glass in the front door, back at me. He snapped the phone closed, knocked down the rest of his beer, turned to leave, and I called out. Loudly.

  "Tomorrow, big boy,” I said. “Let's have a chat. Settle all this up."

  The bouncy prick actually turned around, grinned, and tossed off a shrug as he walked out the door.

  "What's tomorrow?” asked Stella from behind the stick, pulling another for table service.

  I had to think about that.

  * * * *

  Next afternoon I walked up the avenue toward the big old bar that had been right there as long as I've been alive—not the oldest in the city by a long shot, but venerable still and a rarity in a place overrun by real-estate mania. I used the door on the side street, about halfway down the long bar between stand-up tables and sit-down booths. Roly Poly Paul and Charlie were already there up front. Willy was at the back end. All the hilarity and bravado that encircles Paul and Charlie kept them occupied while I slipped past the booths to sidle up.

  "Howdy, Bill Bag,” I said, using the nickname Willy'd acquired from his cash-carrying errands. “The gang's all here."

  Nice and easy, Willy drank down half a tumbler of Johnnie Red, put the edge of the glass to the bar top, tapped it a few times, finished it, and leaned his head over toward me. He looked down the bar toward Charlie as he spoke.

  "Yeah,” Willy said, “Charlie, he carries that off up here with these people, but he's nothin'. He's like the fifth cousin of somebody's friend so they throw him a bone. They make a little money off him, means almost nothin'. He ain't close to bein’ no made guy. He's like a charity case doin’ a small-time coke thing almost anybody could do. Plays that up, all in black, leather coat, plasters the freakin’ hair back. He looks like the guy who gets shot in the movie and nobody gives a damn.” He started another scotch, nice and easy. “I checked. You get between him and Paul, deal with that thing you got, have a productive little talk, no problem. Charlie's connection,” he stumbled, “his protection, is ... illusory."

  I sat quietly for a moment. “Illusory? Illusory..."

  We started laughing, not too hard, but the place got a little quiet and we reined it in. I chuckled off to the men's room, went to a urinal with my shoulder to the paint, the Willy Rule being that with your back to the wall you can see everything that's coming. What I saw was Charlie. He pulled up alongside. “Got a problem with my boy, huh?"

  Well. “Good job, lives a little dangerously, amazing he's gettin’ something from any woman at all, and he smacks her around with two little kids, yeah, that tub needs to..."

  Me getting louder by the second had apparently sounded the alarm, because the next thing I saw was Willy at the door, eyes wide, and looking right at me. Charlie's head was down, finishing, and I head-shook Willy off into the toilet stall behind me. I followed Charlie back into the barroom.

  "I'm not letting this go, Chuckie. This is a problem that gets solved."

  He straightened up a little at “Chuckie” but kept walking toward the front, toward Paul. But my end wasn't just noise. I don't know what it was. I am not the kind of guy who does this sort of thing, but I followed Charlie and suggested we were not where we could comfortably discuss our differences, and that tomorrow evening at the lumberyard parking lot just outside the tunnel would do. My “suggestion” was perhaps a little more than that, as I felt the situation demanded. I mean, I didn't snarl at him or anything. I walked back toward Willy and asked Stella for a Jameson, rocks, which I intended to sip, slowly, for a long time. I didn't, so I ordered another.

  "Watch that guy tomorrow night,” Willy warned.

  "I don't think so,” I said. “He's gonna want to impress me with his powers and get me backing off."

  "Just remember when you're done to slit him open so he sinks."

  "Oh, come on. This is all about Paul, man—once Charlie sees the light and gets out of the way."

  "You goin’ home yet?” Willy asked.

  "Nah, not yet. I'm gonna hang, ease into this. What about you?"

  He ordered another. “As long as you're here, I'm here."

  Next night I met with Charlie. We know how that went.

  * * * *

  It was funny watching Roly Poly Paul use his cell phone, curse, slam it shut, and start sweating. You'd think he'd lose some weight. Sometimes he looked like he was in a sauna. No product to move, no man in black to hang with, nobody to back him up, to make him something. I guess Charlie hadn't been IDed yet. Tough guy'd probably never even been printed.

  Willy and I started studying him, Paul always waiting for something that never came, on the phone, nervous, almost shaking, until one day it just washed over me. He was alone now, frightened, scared, a lot like Sally had been, and I began to somehow know what he had coming. I can't really explain it ... it was big and wide and proper and really seemed inevitable. I locked onto Paul's eyes and wouldn't let go, got a beer from Stella without looking away, and just opened up a big good old grin. Right at him. I felt Willy get real still, and watched Roly Poly Paul go for the cell phone once more, borderline frantic this time, punching away, making a call that would be answered by a blue crab near a bulkhead at the edge of the Hudson before Charlie ever picked it up. Something like this suddenly became clear to him, and Paul took off out the front door and headed to catch the bus home. I bolted out the side door and ran to the back door of the bus terminal, and made my way to the platform where Paul would be. A line hadn't formed yet—a bus had probably just pulled out—so I waited on the street, outside the entry door to the parking slip, waiting for the riders to gather, waiting for Paul. What I got first was Willy.

  "You son of a bitch ... Why didn't you say something? How can you still run so fast you old bastard...” he gasped, holding his side, bent over at the waist.

  "I'm a motivated guy,” I said. “Step back. Don't let him see us.” And the bus pulled in.

  Quickly fifteen people were on the line, the two of us watching, and then we boarded, stepped to the rear, took seats by the back door, Willy just behind it, me just across the aisle, hunkered down, low profile. Paul got on, didn't see us, sat right near the front. The bus pulled out and headed through the tunnel to Jersey. Just a few minutes, not much traffic, and we were out with a quick view of that glowing sunset skyline until we hit the boulevard and the local streets. A few blocks along and the entire cityscape opened up again from across the river, the postcard shot, glittering, beautiful, the sky already going to that deep, dark blue. Paul's stop, Liberty Place, was just ahead, and he reached up and rang to get off while Willy got a headstart and slipped into the well by the back exit.

  Paul stood to gather himself. So did I, and I waited for him to see me. Willy was out the door; he jogged back a block and turned down the side street. Paul's head came up, caught a glimpse. He spun to the front door, jumped down, turned around, and blazed across the boulevard against the light and ran down Liberty. I blew out of the bus and built up a real head of steam before I crossed the street, which was a good thing, because Roly Poly Paul's little feet were flying.

  I was gaining on him now.

  Halfway down Liberty, Paul could not have been happy to see Willy, a little out of breath, just standing there outside the high school. He was a little beyond the entrance to the faculty lot, really not much more than an alley at the back of the building. There's usually no going through Willy, and Paul t
ore a left into the lot, aiming toward his apartment on Eldorado Place. And now he could not have been happy to see the black steel gates on the Eldorado side closed, the latch posts stuck into the sidewalk and the lock chain looped through. Damn, it's always open, he must have thought, along with realizing that Willy's not usually around to mess with it. I turned in behind him. Some lightweight boards from a garden framing project were up against the school wall, and I picked one up with my right hand. Willy was hanging back. I walked ahead. Paul had left Liberty to reach Eldorado. The irony. Maybe I'd help him get there.

  * * * *

  Roly Poly Paul had turned around and was ponging between the walls and the gates, first just fretting and then trying to dodge. He took a shot at blowing past me on my left, and I 360ed to my right with both hands on the board and smacked him right across the chops. He reeled into a corner and I whacked him again, knocking him toward the center of the gates, blood from his nose all over, his eyes welling, not words but sounds somewhere between moaning and pleading I heard flying by me and I cracked him once more. He went to one knee and I flung the board two-handed up and back over my head, then moved in and drove my knee hard and deep into his ribs, and again and again until I knew I felt damage. I grabbed him by his arm and yanked him up and felt something give in the shoulder, maybe the elbow too. I grabbed his coat and banged his head back against the gates and spun him around and banged his face against the gates and felt how, yes, this was still about Paul and Sally but as I kept banging his face against the gates it was now more about me and a big, overwhelming feeling of rightness and satisfaction and comfort, like truly great music you heard and understood better than anyone else. It was operatic, my head back with eyes open to that deep-blue-sea sky growing darker as night kept falling, admiring the moon as I kept rolling my shoulders and arms forward, stroke after stroke, until it felt so good I stopped.

  I left him in a heap, surprisingly not too much mess on my jacket. As I walked back to the sidewalk the crowd of locals that had gathered was attentive but silent, with a few single nods in my direction. And across the street were two little girls and Sally. I looked, and she looked back, and I craned my neck to keep on her, but then I had to watch where I was going. At the bottom of the hill I turned onto Highwood to go home and heard the cop cars screaming to the scene.

  The story was in the Journal the next day. It mentioned “critical condition” and “rumors of drug use” and “domestic disturbance complaints” and “no eyewitnesses” and “no suspects.” And so that was that.

  * * * *

  Willy called one night soon after, and I went to meet him the next afternoon. He was at the middle of the bar by the taps, the desire to avoid the front end no longer an issue.

  I walked over and said something kind of like “Stella, mi estrella...” and she said something exactly like “shut up.” It used to be all Irish hard-ons working this place. Now it's a lot of women: Mel and sometimes Janeel during the day, Lina and Marlene at night, but mostly we ran into Stel, and that was all right.

  "You gotta go see them, it'll be okay,” Willy said, explaining I was being called to account for whatever I knew about a small-time money maker no longer on the scene. “He was nothing, they'll replace him in a minute, but they can't let even little stuff like this just go, looks like anybody can just do whatever they want. Cowboys. But Charlie was a bad guy for everybody, big mouth, showy, not worth it.” He gave me an envelope to hand over when I got there, something they needed to know, he said. “See you back here, couple of hours, whatever.” And I was off.

  * * * *

  "Well, Bill Bag, that was interesting.” I sat down and stared at him, almost bemused. “I'm in a little deeper than I was before. Right, Will?” He smiled, took a little sip of whatever it was, listened. “I seem to have earned bigger responsibilities, not that I want them, in the Downtown Collection Agency, one of which is riding shotgun with you on your appointed rounds. Man. But you knew that. Right, Doctor Scum?"

  "Yes, well you've shown you can get things done,” Willy said. His laughter was warm; not a usual thing.

  "I'm not that kind of guy."

  "You like baseball? Take a look at the scoreboard."

  Well, right is right. “Gee, let's talk some more,” I said, and we did, laughing a lot, until almost dusk when I took off for a stroll down Liberty Place.

  Another beautiful evening going to night, warm for getting on into autumn. I walked toward the high school, I don't know, scene of the crime maybe. Or maybe pass by and see if anyone was around. They were. I could see Sally, towheaded boyish haircut bouncing, a bit more animated than you'd expect. She seemed to be arguing with some neighbors who came into view as I neared the corner across from the school lot. Just a few feet away and she noticed me and turned to say “Hi” with her head tilted back to her right and her chin pointing out to her left and shifting back and forth, arms flapping and hands kind of spinning slowly at the wrists, each eye rolling around and back on its own. Talking, talking, talking, saying I don't know what because she was just blathering and I was immediately beyond listening and she was obviously so high I didn't know what to do. Her girls were maybe twenty feet behind her on the sidewalk, heads down, just kind of standing around, waiting for their mom. The several women I'd seen were still stuffing bills into their jeans, money that had fallen when Sally spotted me. Guess I got the drop on something. Man, drug-dealing abhors a vacuum as much as nature does. Probably no worse than even money the guy who'd already picked up Paul's business had also taken his old apartment. And maybe taken up with Sally, judging by the pressure bruises on her arms and the marks on the right side of her neck. One thing that would be new, and maybe higher than Sally, was the price of whatever New Paul was peddling. New guy, new game, automatic inflation. I was probably less popular on this block than I thought, less than I deserved to be. It took only a few seconds to go from shock to rage to resolve.

  * * * *

  Sally's girlfriends were riding the same train she was, and they kept a cold focus on me. Dead stares, even breathing, thinking, thinking. They had all been on the street that last time I was in the neighborhood, and this zeroing in on me got me thinking maybe fewer of them around would lower the odds of somebody talking to who knows who.

  I could see their goddamn melon heads just splitting open ear to ear, flapping up and down, spilling their guts about a certain evening and how it all came back in a dream and yes we sure can identify him, Officers. Since being given a great opportunity to change their situations, they had all, even Sally, opted to keep doing the same old things.

  Well, I had done some brand-new things myself. Night fell as I went down the hill and headed for home. I threw a look back, then straightened out and walked on, realizing that every day really is a journey toward self discovery.

  I really am not that kind of guy. But those rat bastards better hope I don't develop a taste for it.

  ©2008 by Gary Cahill

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Novelette: HARDBOILED by Tim Maleeny

  Tim Maleeny is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Columbia University. He currently lives in San Francisco, near Chinatown, the setting for his first mystery novel, Stealing the Dragon (Murder Ink), which was named a “Killer Book of the Month” by the Independent Mys-tery Booksellers Association. He has followed up that debut with two more books in the series: Beating the Babushka (Murder Ink 2007) and Greasing the Piñata (Poisoned Pen Press 2008). This is his first story for us.

  Some women just looked like trouble. This one didn't, which should have been the first clue.

  Carver looked up from his paperwork as she stepped into the dingy office. Short blond hair, expensively cut, medium height, pale blue eyes. Gray suit over a cream blouse that successfully hid curves Carver could only imagine. A ring where it mattered, displaying a rock that cost more than Carver made in a month.

  There were only two desks in the cramped space, his and the ancient roll-top that belonged t
o his partner, Max, who was having a late lunch at the sports bar down the street. The blonde didn't hesitate as she navigated the moving boxes in heels that should have been registered as weapons. She made a beeline for Carver. He forced a smile as she helped herself to the client chair.

  She didn't return the smile but looked at him expectantly, as if he should already know why she was there. It was a look he'd been getting for most of his adult life.

  "Make yourself comfortable,” he said, in a tone that acknowledged that she already had. “What brings you to my office?"

  "I'm looking for my husband."

  "Is he missing?"

  She laughed, a flash of white teeth. “In a manner of speaking, yes."

  "I don't follow."

  "He's missing,” she said, “but I know where he is."

  "Is this a riddle?” Carver tried not to sound irritated.

  The blonde laughed again, mirthlessly this time. “He's working,” she said. “He's always working. That's the problem."

  Carver had heard this tune before, sitting in this very chair. He twisted his own wedding ring with the thumb of his right hand, feeling like he was tightening a loose screw. He nodded at the woman across from him but didn't respond. First rule of successful client interviews: Let them do all the talking. She gave him that look again, waiting.