The Barkeep

by William Lashner

  He had left the doors to his house open and had left the lights dim, except for the bright light burning on the third floor, all to lead his killer up to him step-by-step. Resting on the tatami mat in front of Justin was the envelope, the money fanning out of its opening in an eye-catching display of the most delicious mint green. And in the pocket of his robe, opposite the gun, was a voice recorder, ready to be flicked on as soon as Justin heard the inevitable footfalls rising up the stairs. No matter who showed, he would refuse to give the money to anyone other than Birdie, because with Birdie, there would be a moment of conversation before the violence flared, Justin was sure of it. The Birdie Grackle who had stepped into Zenzibar, no matter how unreal, couldn’t resist a little crowing, a tall tale or two, the deranged aphorism. And Justin would let him talk. Justin wanted the world to hear what Birdie Grackle had to say, he wanted the world to be certain beyond certainties about his father’s guilt.

  And then Justin would kill him, and in so doing, kill his own father’s hopes dead.

  Another sound from below, just as faint as the first, as much a ghost of a stir as anything else. But it was enough to let him know. The fingers that were tapping on the edge of the gun’s grip now wrapped around it. The first bullet was already chambered. He turned on the voice recorder with his left hand and placed his right forefinger on the outside of the trigger guard.

  Derek is not happy. Vern said the back door would be locked, but the door was not locked. Vern said that the job would not be expecting him, but something in the small house gives Derek the sense that he is very much expected. The lights on the first floor are dimmed, but not off, so that Derek can conveniently make his way through the kitchen without banging into the stove or table. And there is a brighter light bouncing down the stairs, as if a sign. I’m up here, expecting you. Vern told him the job would not be armed, but if Vern is wrong about everything else, he might be wrong about that, too.

  Derek backs away from jobs if they feel wrong to him. If something does not match the information he has been given, or if something starts making Derek afraid, he will walk. There have been enough close calls in his time for him to want to avoid any more, even if the people who take care of him get mad. Sometimes very mad. But he simply says, “You do it if you want,” and they shut up. Usually they work out a new plan and Derek then does what he has to do. But one time Rodney beat him over the money they lost by Derek’s backing away. That was just before their last job together in Baltimore. But by then, Derek had already met Tree.

  Derek wants to back away from this job, things do not seem right. But Cody is with him now and he does not know if Cody will give him another chance. And the money that is waiting for him is what he needs to get Cody to go with him when he leaves the city. He is done with Vern, wants to be with Cody, and does not want to do what he will have to do to Cody if things go wrong. So he does not turn around like his head is telling him to. Instead he turns to Cody and whispers.

  “The money is upstairs.”

  “Do we have to do this? This place smells familiar.”

  “Were you here before?”

  “No, never. But…”

  “But what?”

  “I think we should go.”

  “After we get the money.”

  “But you’re not just going to grab the money, are you?”

  “He saw me.”

  “That was his crime?”

  “It is like the girl in that house,” says Derek. “My Grammy always told me to clean up after myself.”

  “We’re going to hell.”

  “I thought Kentucky.”

  “Kentucky?”

  “Someone told me there are horses in Kentucky.”

  “Yeah, there are horses in Kentucky.”

  “And no one in Kentucky will hit you in the face.”

  “I suppose not,” says Cody.

  “Derek is going upstairs for the money. Will Cody wait?”

  “I guess.”

  “Good,” says Derek before heading for the light. He reaches the stairwell, stops, looks up and listens. Nothing to see and not a peep. But someone is up there, he can tell. He remembers the house, the first level, the second level, the empty third level with the soft green floor. The job will be there, on the third level, waiting for him. Derek hopes the job does not have a gun. It will be so much easier if the job does not have a gun. He thinks of just turning around again, but Cody is behind him. And Kentucky is in front of him. And the job is the only thing in the way.

  Slowly he starts climbing the stairs.

  Justin heard a shuffling static downstairs, as if someone had turned his TV on to a distant UHF station. Except he didn’t have a TV downstairs. He gripped the gun a little tighter. Vernon Bickham hadn’t come alone.

  This wasn’t a surprise, but it wasn’t welcome either. First it meant that he might be outgunned, which was a sickening thought. But even more sickening was the possibility that he might have to kill a second man. Justin was shaky on this whole kill thing. He had a gun, yes, and he meant to use it, yes, but on Birdie Grackle only, a cackling figment of his father’s imagination. Vernon Bickham was the actor intoning Grackle’s lines, true, but it was Birdie he was out to kill. Shooting Birdie would be like shooting a piece of his father’s rotten soul; killing Birdie Grackle would be the same as killing dead his father’s dreams of freedom.

  But what about this other guy? A lug, no doubt, hired muscle, just a tool being used by his father’s tool, and by the sound of the voice none too bright. Justin used to watch James Bond movies and wonder how Bond could so casually dispatch all the hired hands manning the missile launch sites. Dr. No was evil, sure, but what about the saps who signed on for the cash? Maybe just to support their families. Shooting them, one after the other in an orgy of stoolie death, to Justin seemed a bit harsh justice-wise. But at least Bond had the fate of the world to consider; what was Justin’s excuse for dispatching some hired hand?

  A creak of the stairs answered his questions: self-fucking-defense.

  He took the gun out of his pocket, no need for subterfuge now. He aimed the muzzle at the opening to the steep and narrow stairs, and put his finger inside the trigger guard. If there were two, he couldn’t wait. The narrow stairway was his best chance. He’d have to go all Thermopylae on their asses.

  The creaking turned to footsteps. He gently stroked the trigger with his finger. The footsteps rose higher up the stairs, the climber not anymore trying to hide his presence. How arrogant was that? Like death presenting a calling card. And then he heard a voice.

  “I’m coming up.”

  The voice was slow, thick, with a lazy tongue, the voice of a big child trying to enunciate each word very carefully. Justin recognized it right off, the voice of the strangely shaped man who had beaten him in the first floor of his house and given his rote warning.

  “Who the hell are you?” said Justin.

  “Derek.”

  “What are you doing in my house?”

  “Birdie told me to come.”

  “Did he send you the last time when you shoved my face into the floor?”

  “Yes. Can I come up?”

  “Why?”

  “To get the money. Birdie told me to get the money.”

  “He did, did he? Are you alone?”

  “Only I am coming up the stairs.”

  The last couple of answers comforted Justin a bit. This Derek hadn’t lied about beating the hell out of him or being alone, maybe he wasn’t lying about just being an errand boy sent for the money.

  “Stay where you are,” said Justin. “I have the money, but I’m only giving it to Birdie himself.”

  “He cannot come.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Somewhere else.”

  “It has to be him. Go down and find Birdie and tell him to come himself. I’ll be here, waiting.”

  “I cannot tell Birdie that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Birdie would be mad. He hits me when
he’s mad.”

  “Then you should find a better companion.”

  “I am trying.”

  “Don’t come up.”

  “I am coming up.”

  “Don’t.”

  Justin waited nervously as the footsteps started up the stairway again. The gun suddenly felt heavy in his hand. It was one thing letting your baser instincts take you on a ride—anger and lust both could be so damn exhilarating—but it was a whole different thing when the other party was there in the flesh. How could he shoot someone like Derek?

  He was still wondering that same thing when the strangest sight imaginable became visible in the doorway.

  Derek likes the sound of the job’s voice. He does not sound mean or arrogant, mostly just scared. That is good. But the way he is talking makes it clear to Derek that Vern was wrong again and the job has a gun. But even though he has a gun, he does not sound like someone who wants to use it. Occasionally, a job will have a gun but not know what to do with it. Or even if the job knows what to do with it, he does not want to do what he has to do with it. It is not easy jumping over that barrier. Derek had leaped it with Pinsky, but there was a cat involved. There is no cat here, just Derek. Derek is able to do what he has to; the job, maybe not. That is an advantage.

  But Derek does not want the job to see his face. He likes working in darkness; the shadow is his natural habitat. Some people can look at Derek’s face and see everything he is thinking. “You got no guile,” Rodney used to say, whatever “guile” means. Derek just assumes it means that Derek is not a good liar. One look at his face, and the job will know exactly what Derek intends.

  With the old druggie guy, the place was too dark to get a good look, but the room on the third floor is brightly lit. There is no way to get into the room and to the job without the job seeing his face. Then if something goes wrong, the agitation will start again. Somehow Derek has to turn off the light in the upstairs room before the job sees his face. He should have done it before, gone into the basement and cut all the power like Tree taught him, but Vern said the job would not have a gun and he was afraid Cody might leave if he did not move quickly. So now here he is, up the stairs, and Vern was wrong again.

  From the sound of the voice, Derek can place the job toward the back of the room, just in front of the wall opposite the stairs. There is only one way to go into the room so that the job does not see his face.

  Derek turns around and walks backward up the stairs, turning his head away from the entrance as he reaches the top landing. Then he raises his hands high and stands at the entrance with his back to the room.

  “What are you doing?” says the job.

  “I need to get the money,” says Derek. He takes a step backward into the room, his hands still up in the air. His back feels like there is a cockroach scratching at the skin between his shoulder blades. Derek is feeling the gun aimed right at his back. That is interesting. He takes a step further back and the scratching grows deeper. It feels good.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” says the job. “Get out of here.”

  “I am an idiot,” says Derek, examining the area around the door and finding exactly what he is looking for. “But I need to get the money.”

  “I have a gun.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll shoot you.”

  “I am only doing my job.”

  “Where the hell is Birdie?”

  “He said he had to give someone a message.”

  “Who?”

  “He does not tell me things.”

  “Turn around.”

  “You will shoot me if I turn around.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Promise.”

  “I promise.”

  “Okay,” says Derek.

  Derek lowers his hands and begins to slowly whirl to his left. As he does, he reaches his now-hidden right hand toward the light switch he had spotted beside the door. In one quick and savage sequence, he clicks off the light, leaps to the side, and rolls with all his weight toward the man with the gun.

  As soon as Derek feels his weight slam into the man, a huge sound explodes next to his ear.

  63.

  BLACK-EYED CODY

  There was an instant after the lights went out that Justin was functionally blind. It was only a blink and a half, if that, before his eyes adjusted enough to see clearly what had happened. But by then it was too late.

  Before the lights went out, the strangely shaped Derek was standing just inside the entrance of the tatami room, his arms up in the air. The way he was standing, he was like an optical illusion; by the mere shape of him, it was impossible to tell if Derek was facing Justin or not. But if he was facing Justin, then the hunched figure was made even more grotesque by a face that was full of short cropped hair, like a freak show attraction or a Magritte painting. Justin had his gun pointed right at the man’s back, but there was no question of firing. He had been indoctrinated by too many movie westerns, he wasn’t going to shoot a varmint in the back, especially a varmint that seemed as limited as Derek. So Justin told Derek to turn around, and as Derek began to turn, the lights suddenly went dead.

  In the instant it took for Justin’s eyes to adjust to the darkness, Derek was gone. And then something huge and hard slammed into Justin’s left side. His finger slipped on the trigger and the gun went off with a shocking crack as a blue flash spurted from the barrel.

  Before Justin could recover from the trauma of the shot, something grabbed hold of his right arm, and his arm was slammed elbow first into the mat. Another futile explosion. Justin tried to bring his hand around so that he could shoot off this huge mass of muscle that had latched onto his back, but as he tried, his arm was slammed again into the tatami floor, and suddenly he wasn’t anymore gripping the gun, just gripping air. And something close to steel was wrapping itself around his neck.

  He could feel him now behind him, this Derek, one arm around his neck, another gripping his head, putting unbearable pressure on Justin’s nose.

  Justin tried to kick himself violently into his attacker, but the kicks swished empty in the air. He grappled at the arms entombing his face and neck, grappled and failed, his own feeble hands no match for his attacker’s iron limbs.

  He reached backward, felt the short bristly hair on the man’s scalp, tried to slip his gouging fingers down to the eyes, but this Derek was burrowing his face so hard into Justin’s spine that it was impossible.

  The darkness grew darker, Justin kicked for air. He grabbed one of Derek’s tiny ears and twisted, and twisted harder, and tried to pull the damn thing off, eliciting a roar from behind him.

  But things were growing blacker, and the struggle to breathe overtook him. He let go of the ear to grab futilely at the unmoving arm around his neck. He kicked again, involuntarily this time, listlessly and again to no effect. He felt things slipping away, his breath, the light, his anger and fear, his hatred.

  And in a moment of stillness, he heard the words from the book he had been given in the asylum, the very words he had wished he had known to whisper into his mother’s ear as she lay in her blood on that marble floor, words being spoken now directly to him.

  The time has arisen for you to seek the path. They came to him, those words, in a soft, lovely voice, a voice as familiar to him as his own breath. Your breathing is about to cease, and you are about to experience that reality wherein all things are like the void and the cloudless sky.

  It was the voice of his mother, guiding him through the next stages of his existence. At this moment, know thyself and abide willingly and peacefully in that state. For I, too, am with you.

  And he felt just then the strangest bit of grace, as if his greatest fear had been soothed, as if his mother had found her salvation, as if she were coming back to help him find his own, as if the sufferings of the world were already peeling off him like the bitter skin of a rare and precious fruit. And he could simply close his eyes and drift away into the void. Toward the voice. Toward the
sweet and loving voice of his mother.

  A light burst through his closed eyes, a painfully bright light that jerked him from the realm of utter peace and dragged him back into a harsh and painful reality. A reality where some deranged goon was choking him to death. His eyes opened and, even as the brute strangled him from behind, there was someone standing in front of him with a gun in his hand.

  “Let him go, Derek,” said the man standing in front of Justin, in a voice familiar but wildly out of place. A few blinks later, as the disappointment of being jerked back from the lovely void alighted off him like a flock of birds, Justin knew exactly who it was standing there with the gun.

  “I need to finish,” said Derek.

  “No, you don’t,” said Cody. “Not this one. Let him go.”

  “But Vern will be mad.”

  “Don’t worry about Vern.”

  “I need Vern.”

  “No, you don’t, not anymore. Let this one go and I’ll take care of you.”

  “Promise.”

  “Yes, I promise,” said Cody.

  “Okay.”

  A blast of fresh air gushed down Justin’s throat as the brutal pressure eased on his face and neck. Justin greedily gulped down more air, even as he grabbed at the loosened arms, trying to pull them off.

  “What the hell?” gasped Justin. “Cody?”

  “Shut up, Justin,” said Cody. “There’s nothing you can say that will help. Let him go, Derek.”

  Justin, completely released now from Derek’s grip, collapsed onto the tatami mats, still wheezing, grabbing at his own neck, as if the arm were still wrapped around it.

  “He saw my face,” said Derek, standing behind Justin.

  “He won’t say anything.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ll take care of it. That’s what you want me to do, take care of things, right?”

  “Yes. I have to go. Will you go with me, Cody?”

  “Sure I will.”

  “Away from the city.”

  “That’s the deal.”

  “As soon as I tidy up Vern.”