Snitch World

by Jim Nisbet

  Alone in the elevator, its doors closed and going down, Klinger sagged backward into a corner and closed his eyes. The car shuddered the eight stories down the shaft without making another stop, and Klinger was grateful for that. As the doors opened onto the lobby, he pulled himself together. People flooded past him, looking to go up.

  As he made his way toward the street exit, Klinger thought that this must have been the longest short con he’d ever undertaken. Unless you counted his life. Either way, the strain had wrung him out, and he needed a drink.

  Pondering the difference he missed the chance to exit the revolving door, and had to go around again.

  SIXTEEN

  In the appointed cocktail lounge, a dark-curtained joint called the Gavel two blocks west of the Federal Court Building, Antonio Carlos Jobim drifted along deep pile carpet and mahogany wainscoting and big-shouldered chandeliers and subdued chatter of a thinning crowd lingering over coffee and digestifs as its participants decided whether or not to go back to work or call it a weekend.

  It’s Friday, one of them reminded his companions, as Klinger passed their table on the way to the bar, what the heck, either they’re out on bail or they have a dry place to sleep until Tuesday. Agreeable laughter. Another round? No thanks, I’m going to the gym later. And what about you? Sure: I’m going to hell any time now. Agreeable laughter …

  It was ten minutes after five. He didn’t see her at a table, nor was she in the bar, at which he reluctantly took a stool. The bartender, who wore black slacks, and an open-necked white shirt, a black vest and black sleeve garters, placed a coaster in front of Klinger that advertised a single-malt Scotch at twenty-five dollars a pop. He ordered his usual, double and on the rocks.

  A copy of the Wall Street Journal lay on the bar, and just as Klinger was thinking he was going to have to begin to read it, Phillip Wong’s phone went off in his pocket.

  He might have heard that ringtone a thousand times and not known it for the obscure piece of music it was. He slapped the pocket like it contained a live snake.

  It went off a second time, louder than the first, before he retrieved it and, imitating billions of other people, he held the thing next to his face and told it hello.

  “You have it,” she said.

  “I have it,” he agreed.

  “You’re in the Gavel?”

  “I’m in the Gavel.”

  “I’ll be there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  Klinger frowned. “Are you in a laundromat?”

  After but a moment’s hesitation, she laughed. “How did you know?”

  “That noise in the background? It sounds like sneakers in a dryer.”

  She lowered her voice. “A guy who just loaded a pair of sneakers into a dryer down the line from the change machine, here, didn’t want to put his blanket in there with them.” After a moment she added, “He’s sitting in a roll-around basket in front of his dryer, watching it go round and round, while he holds his blanket and sucks his thumb.”

  The bartender placed a rocks glass containing a single ice cube and an inch and a half of whiskey on the coaster in front of Klinger, put a check face down beside it, and went away without a word.

  “I think I know that guy,” Klinger said. He turned up a corner of the check as if it were a hole card, just enough to read the amount. Eighteen dollars plus tax—a dollar seventy-six—might as well add up to twenty, even if he were to stiff the bartender his tip. He smoothed and re smoothed the face-down check with the side of his hand as if he were considering a bluff. The check’s a double, the drink’s a single, the guy’s stiffing me, and I’m going to stiff him. Now there’s a social contract.

  “So now you’re doing laundry?”

  She laughed easily. “I could have been doing your laundry.”

  Klinger could hardly believe what he was hearing. He shook his head. “Look—,” he began.

  “What it is,” she interrupted, “is, these places always have change machines, and I always need change for parking. So,” her shrug came right down the line, “I ducked in for a short transaction.”

  Just show up with my grand, Klinger said to himself. Just show up and trade my grand for this telephone and let’s go our separate ways. And—”Forget my laundry,” he said aloud.

  “Plus,” she added meaningfully, “This place is dry and it’s right next to an ATM.”

  Klinger didn’t raise his voice. “So we’re meeting any time now,” he said tightly. “Right?” He siphoned a little whiskey. “I can’t afford to be lingering in this luxe clipjoint.”

  “I’m on the way.” She hung up.

  Klinger looked at the screen on the phone. disconnect? it asked him. warning, the screen added, device unlocked. Klinger narrowed his eyes. It seemed to him he remembered something about these things. He touched the disconnect query and held his finger there. The phone disconnected, lingered as if thinking about it, then a new message appeared: shut down? Klinger fingered yes. The phone shut down.

  Thank fucking god, he sighed raggedly. He pocketed the phone and devoted his attention to his drink.

  By the time Marci arrived, twenty minutes later, Klinger had finished his first double and ordered a second—so he was down forty bucks already. But hey, he admonished the amber cylinder of his cocktail, glistening as if impatiently before him, you gotta spend money to make money.

  This thought, however, did not delude him into playing the high roller. When the bartender, no doubt suspicious of Klinger’s overall solvency, asked him to square up, Klinger peeled off a couple of twenties, told him to keep the change, and let his eyes say it all: Keep the forty-eight cents, you fucking cunt, and take it to the Kentucky Derby.

  That’s the hieratic attitude, he assured himself: blame the help.

  She placed the shopping bag full of warm clothing on the floor between stools, draped her raincoat atop her purse/briefcase and the furled brolly atop it all, and assumed the stool to Klinger’s left.

  Noting the uptick in customer quality, the bartender dealt her a coaster right away, as if from a deck of them he kept in a universe parallel to the one in which he kept the deck from which he dealt to the likes of Klinger. “Cappuccino,” she told him. “I’m still on the clock,” she added modestly.

  The perky insouciance of this stipulation rubbed Klinger entirely the wrong way. She was on the clock? His hands on the rail in front of him, the one removed from the drink just to give it something to do until the time came to refresh the palate, clenched. You’re on the clock? he said to the eight inches of bar rail between the hands. I’m always on the clock.

  “Everything go smoothly?” she asked.

  Klinger wagged a finger.

  She frowned.

  “The bottle,” he said quietly.

  Her mouth formed the syllable Oh without uttering it. She plucked the brown paper sack from her purse and handed it over. Klinger had it uncapped, his drink topped off, the jug recapped, and the bag in the side pocket of his jacket before the bartender had properly tamped the grounds in the basket strainer.

  “How’s Phillip?”

  “Pretty racked up, by the look of him,” Klinger said weakly.

  “He’s going to live—right?”

  “Do you care?”

  Marci took great umbrage at this remark. “Care?” she admonished him. “Of course I care. I’ve known Phillip since … Since … We’ve been … We were …”

  Klinger cut it short. “He’s going to be fine.” He put the phone on the bar.

  She looked at it.

  “Go ahead,” Klinger said, taking up his drink with both hands. “Make a call.”

  She touched the phone. The screen flickered to life.

  “Careful,” Klinger said. “It’s got a hell of a ringtone.”

  Marci laughed nervously, then nodded. “It’s from Phillip’s favorite movie. I forget the name of it.”

  “Is there some way to make it go away?”

  The bartender appeared with a foaming c
appuccino, set it on the bar in front of Marci, landed a little bowl of sugar cubes, both brown and white, interleaved with various packets of artificial sweetener, pink, white, and blue, and went away.

  “It’s loud and nerve-racking,” Klinger added.

  Marci nodded. “If it weren’t annoying, you wouldn’t pay any attention to it,” she commented absently. She took a sip of her coffee with one hand and fingered the screen of Phillip’s phone with the other.

  “Hey.”

  She set down her cup, but didn’t divert her attention from the phone.

  “Hey,” Klinger repeated.

  She looked up midswipe. “Oh.” Her attention reverted to the phone. “Hand me my purse.”

  Klinger retrieved the briefcase/purse from beneath the raincoat and handed it to her.

  Still with one hand on the phone, Marci unzipped the mouth of her purse, removed the chamois wallet, plucked a thickness of hundred-dollar bills from it, and slipped it into the side pocket of Klinger’s jacket. “Pretend it’s a banana-flavored condom,” she whispered, and patted the pocket.

  “What,” Klinger said, frowning, “am I getting wood?”

  “If I were a man,” Marci cooed at the phone, “money would give me wood.”

  “You’re not a man,” Klinger watched her, “and money still gives you wood.”

  “True,” she nodded. And, “Aha.”

  “Aha?”

  She nodded happily.

  “His e-mail password is entered automatically by his browser,” she declared with a lilt.

  “So a girl could effortlessly access a boy’s e-mail,” Klinger concluded, “if a girl were so minded to do.”

  “True enough. Not to mention a boy’s cloud.” Marci frowned. “Of course, he’s got a lot of e-mail, and his cloud is big.”

  “Any from the girlfriend?” Cloud meant nothing to Klinger and, despite the compelling nature of the conversation, his mind had begun to tilt along toward its conception of his future. A slightly better hotel room, a tub full of scalding hot water, with epsom salts and scented bath oil, a fifth of whiskey, a bucket of ice, a rocks glass instead of a plastic cup … The thought of epsom salts reminded him of Mary Fiducione. He could take the bath at her place and buy her dinner for once.

  “Girlfriend?” Marci said, not really paying attention.

  “Yeah,” Klinger said, not really paying attention either.

  “Oh,” Marci said, abruptly recollecting herself. “She’s probably in here somewhere …” But her attention was elsewhere.

  “Uh huh,” Klinger agreed without conviction.

  “Let’s query ‘me,’” Marci suggested half aloud.

  “Let’s do that,” Klinger said, evincing no interest whatsoever. The bartender floated by long enough to deposit a receipt in a tray in front of Klinger, with one quarter, two dimes, and three pennies atop it, and another check, face down, in front of Marci’s cappuccino.

  “And there it is,” Marci said happily to the phone. “Zipped under its proper name, yet.”

  “Which would be?”

  “Object_10,” she told the phone, “dot zip.”

  Dot zip, Klinger repeated to himself. Banana-flavored object ten dot zip equals one thousand bucks. He sipped his drink and set down the glass. He carefully centered the glass on its coaster with both hands. He fell to wondering if and when he had ever had a thousand dollars in his pocket.

  “I think the FTP site would be a good place to park it,” Marci said to the phone. “Give it its own folder … Maybe a subfolder? Change the name while we’re about it. We need a mnemonic so we can remember what the hell we’re doing …”

  There had been that caper involving a forty-foot trailer full of stainless steel motorcycle footpegs, Klinger was thinking, in San Luis Obispo. But that had been a thousand dollars total, which he’d had to split with two other guys. Both of whom went to prison, as he had to remind himself. In order to spare the county the expense of a trial, there had been a deal. One guy took the grand larceny rap, the other stood still for a parole violation, convicted felon in possession of narcotics, though he had to go back to school and do at least another nickel for it. Better than another strike, though. And Klinger’s name got left out of it. He moved into a cabin with a kitchenette behind a truck stop in King City, where the three hundred and thirty-three dollars lasted him a month. That had been … He exercised his mind as regards the subject, but to little avail. Quite a long time ago, he decided. For that matter, he realized, and if so, both of those guys should have gotten out by now. One of them, at least. What was his name, anyway? Alfredo, the parole violator, Alfredo Potrero, had been pretty advanced in age. Could he have outlived his sentence?

  “Done,” Marci said. She offered the phone to Klinger. “Want to make a call?”

  Klinger looked at the phone, then looked at Marci. “No, thanks.” He shook his head. “I don’t know anybody with a phone.”

  “Surely there’s somebody,” Marci cajoled. “How about your mother?”

  Klinger failed to see the humor.

  “Oh,” Marci said. “Sorry.” She powered down the cellphone.

  “We’re done, too,” Klinger said. “Right?”

  She stared at him for a moment. Then her lips parted slightly, as if she were about to say something, then she appeared to reconsider, and they closed again. “Right,” she said softly. She nodded and added, “Right …” She reached for her wallet.

  Klinger, who had turned back to his drink, lifted his glass to his lips and paused to say, “I’ll get that.”

  She hesitated.

  “Girlfriend, my ass,” Klinger said over the rim of his glass. The mirror behind a row of single-malt Scotches, ranged above the back bar countertop, reflected her profile.

  Without another word, Marci stood off her stool. When she’d gathered her things she said softly, “I’m very grateful for your help.”

  A certain rigidity had entered Klinger’s physique, a stiffening due to the damp, the cold—and the resentment, it seemed, or some kind of residual unrecognized feedback that pissed him off. But hey, he admonished himself, what business is it of mine? So what if I have no idea what this seemingly straight, innocent, scheming, ambitious, and ostensibly shallow chick is really up to, with that phone and her boyfriend or ex-boyfriend or fiancé and nonexistent other woman and, for that matter, with you, Klinger, yourself? Think of the contrast. Pretty ballsy, when you come to consider it. This little girl from another world drops in on Klinger, gets what she needs and ornithopters out again. He could practically hear the carbon fiber blades as they beat the moisture-saturated air. Though it would be more realistic, he considered, to be hearing the hiss of tires on an otherwise silent hybrid taxicab, as it chauffeured her out of his life forever.

  Yes … She dropped in on his world, got what she needed, and moved on, up, out. Up, the key vector. Klinger, left to his own devices, and despite a thousand bucks cash in his pocket, would likely move down, and that sooner than later. Likely? Hah: certainly. Down was Klinger’s totemic if dimensionless vector. Down was his destiny. Down was his color. Down was his town.

  By the time Klinger returned his drink to its coaster, only ice remained in the glass and the woman Marci was gone.

  Good riddance. He turned over her check. The cappuccino in this joint cost nine dollars, too.

  Klinger stood off the barstool and reached into the front pocket of his trousers to retrieve what was left of his modest roll. He stopped. What am I doing, he said to himself. Just a little bit upstairs and a pace aft, I got a grand in C-notes. He retrieved his hand empty and rerouted it to the side pocket of his jacket. Where Klinger was going it would be good to have at least one of them broken. Where Klinger was going, while change for a hundred might be hard to come by, even regarded with suspicion, a hundred broken down to its constituent twenties would do for several evenings’ entertainment.

  And it wasn’t until just about that very moment, as he peeled a bill away from its nine crisply fo
lded brothers, that Klinger realized that, though he hadn’t had a bank account in many, many years, there was one thing that he was pretty sure of, which was, automatic teller machines did not dispense hundred-dollar bills. Not yet, anyway. If they did, people would rob them more often.

  Was that what had been bothering him?

  He attracted the attention of the bartender, who took Marci’s check and the hundred without so much as a wince. While he was away Klinger leaned on the bar, mulling things over. When the bartender returned, he counted ninety-one dollars into a tray and topped it off with the receipt for the nine-dollar cappuccino. The receipt now exhibited a single tear—paid. Conspicuously, the change included four twenties, a five, and six dollars in singles. No chump, our bartender. There’s always the possibility of a tip, even from a sullen party in damp tweed.

  Klinger retrieved every bill except one, a single, which he left on the tray, along with the receipt. Now you got a buck forty-eight to squander on the ponies, sport.

  Always room for another one, though, he reminded himself thoughtfully, as he took up the damp if commodious thrift-shop shopping bag that contained his new-tohim pea coat and watch cap and trousers, now lofting the musk peculiar to damp wool.

  He pushed out through the revolving door of the Gavel, where the storm raged unabated.

  Hope your horse runs good in the rain, sport, he muttered to himself as he turned up the collar of his tweed jacket.

  Always room for another sport, he reflected somewhat wryly, altogether damply, as he plunged into the downpour.

  Always room for another sport. Especially in the great outdoors.

  SEVENTEEN

  Physically speaking, it’s not all that far from the Gavel to the Hawse Hole; sociologically speaking, it’s like jumping off a cliff. Weatherwise, on that particular Friday afternoon, it was like jumping off a cliff into the ocean.

  Down through the streets he plummeted, shedding institutions, mores, raindrops, and dry cleaning fluid as he splashed puddle to puddle, waded over backed-up storm drains and flooded crosswalks, retaining only a sack of clothes, his memories, and a thousand bucks.