Murder by Candlelight

by John Stockmyer

  "My problem."

  "Yeah. That's your rep around the neighborhood. Good ol' Z. Takes good care of his friends."

  The deal struck, Bud rocked his weight forward. Then back. Then forward, finally gaining enough momentum to stand.

  Z got up, too.

  "Well. I'll be goin', then. But one more thing. When you plannin' to see this guy?" Bud was pleading now. Rare in a man that big. "I got to know."

  "Tomorrow."

  "You got a time in mind?"

  "Midnight."

  "Good. How you goin' to get in? ... But that's what you're good at. Being a P.I. and all. That's your business. I don't mean to pry."

  "Yeah."

  "Tomorrow night. At midnight." Bud nodded to himself. "I don't mind admittin' I'll rest easier after you fix this guy.

  "So ... I'm goin'. Thanks, Z. You were my hero back in high school. Hell, everybody's hero. I was all broke up when those bastards fixed your knee. I was out of school by then, but I come back to see you play in the Raytown game. Hell, I come back to see you play in all your games. You was somethin' to watch, believe me. If only you could have been in the stands and seen yourself. A streak of light. And power, too. They don't teach that. It's natural. You got it or you don't."

  "Yeah."

  "So, I'm going."

  And ... he went.

  And that was that.

  Except it wasn't.

  Z's talk with Bud springing Z from the party, Z let Bud get a head start for the parking area, then followed slowly, careful to avoid dog-dug holes that might twist his knee.

  Across the asphalt jogging strip, through the fence, over the parking and off the curb, Z headed for his car, thinking about the bake-job he was in for in the sun-fried oven of the Cavalier. Roast Z, basted in his own sweat.

  The car had air conditioning at one time ... no way Z could get it fixed this summer.

  At the car, ready to open the door, Z noticed that the black stretch Lincoln was still down the line, its tail end sticking out almost to the street.

  Just something about that car that reminded him of Johnny Dosso's monster-of-a-machine. Same kind of black Lincoln. Something about the way the sun slanted off the car's side windows. A "dense" look to it.

  And that was it!

  John had bulletproof glass in his car, in John's world, a necessary precaution. Extra thick glass did funny things to light. Hard to explain.

  Convinced the car did belong to Johnny Dosso (the "shooter" of the Three Musketeers,) Z didn't see how he could have missed John at the party. Though their infrequent talks were mostly on the phone, Z had seen John now and again.

  Raising the question, could John still be in the car?

  Unlikely, but ....

  Johnny had been of help to Z; gotten Z hard-to-get items like fake identity cards and dynamite fuse. Unfortunately, there was little Z could do for John in return, except be a friend.

  Deciding he'd better check, Z walked along the parking strip, more certain as he approached that it was John's car.

  Detouring around the back of the limo, the car's engine idling, Z came up on the other side to bend down and look through the inch-thick driver's side window -- seeing someone slumped behind the wheel.

  John.

  Was John sick? ........

  My God! Carbon monoxide!

  Frantically, Z tried the door! .... Locked.

  Pounding on the thick window with no effect, Z bent over again, shading his eyes with his hands to look through the darkened glass ... to find himself staring into the barrel of a gun!

  Startled, Z pulled back; saw the black-tinted glass whisper down; felt the cold, inside air spill out.

  "It's the Z-man! How are ya, Z-man?" Johnny was drunk. "Didn't mean to scare you," Johnny continued in his unnaturally high voice, reaching under his hand-tailored summer-weight coat to fumble the gun into its shoulder holster.

  "Come on in." John waved at the other side of the car. "Too damn hot out there. Got it cranked down to zero in here. Come on in and have a drink."

  Drunken friends to be humored, Z walked around the back of the car; opened the heavy passenger door; backed into the sofa-soft black leather seat, and dragged his bad leg inside.

  Swallowed in the cave-like luxury of the custom Lincoln, Z tugged on the silk-handled door pull, the door closing with the "thunk" of a tank turret.

  It was cold inside.

  The car smelled like new leather and Old Crow, a capped pint between them on the seat.

  "Forgot. Forgot you don' drink, Z-man." John was slurring his words. "Cause of your sainted Mama."

  Picking up the whiskey bottle, twisting off the cap with a practiced motion, John took a long pull. "Nev'r be too 'shamed to drink right out'a the bottle, my old man used to say. Better 'an breaking off the neck on the edge of the bar, booze and glass all over." Johnny looked over at Z, John's eyes glazed. "He use'a do that, you know that? Even after he got rich. So's he don't get too high-falutin' was his excuse."

  "Yeah."

  "You been ta the reunion?" Drunk, John changed subjects like a jukebox flipping records.

  "Some."

  "I'm goin', soon as I get myself 'nother nip." John uncapped the bottle again. Took a drag. Replaced the cap. "See anybody you know?"

  "Ted."

  "Be jus' like him to come to a shindig like this. Show off his tin badge. He was always a dumb ass. It's just that bein' a dumb ass don't show as much in high school."

  They sat there for awhile, John taking sips of booze.

  John looked ... old ... his face a map of Bermuda-tanned lines, his substantial nose more hooked than Z remembered. Johnny was wearing a monogrammed, white silk shirt with diamond cufflinks. White wool pants. Italian shoes.

  "I can't go," Johnny said at last, more to himself than to Z. "Can't go."

  Z glanced over to see tears running down John's cheeks.

  Johnny always felt things more than other people, as a child, cried more than anyone when he fell and hurt himself, laughed too loud and too long.

  Why did kids have to grow up?

  "You know me, Z. ... I'm not a bad guy. Hell, I'm no wors' 'an most. I'm in the entertainment business. Just like Worlds of Fun." John giggled at that thought. Took a wet wheeze of breath. "Only I'm in the adult entertainment business while they're doin' children."

  Johnny Dosso frowned. Looked mean. "I can buy and sell 'em. The whole damn lot of 'em!" He shook his head. Was dizzy. Recovered. "Fuck 'em! They all used to cheer me when I was quarterbackin' the team. Even if it was you that made the scores. It was me got you the ball."

  Johnny seemed to soften again, the liquor ruddering him one way, then the other. "I know I didn't throw so hot. I know it was you with your fuckin' fine hands that made me look good." John shook his head to clear it. "They don't understand. I had ta go into the business. Didn't have a choice.

  "My son ...." The tears were flowing again.

  John was thinking of the son who'd killed himself over ten years ago. Z had gone to the funeral; big Catholic brouhaha with not a word about a hell-bound sin like suicide. Gun accident, everybody said. Priests, as well.

  As for John's wife, also at the burial, the two of them had been estranged for years, John's string of hookers having a lot do with the bust-up. Like any good salesman, John used the merchandise he peddled.

  "Well," Johnny said, wiping his hands quickly across his eyes, brushing away the tears, "piss on 'em all. Piss on the kids whose families pushed 'em into bein' doctors. And fuckin' lawyers." John made an obscene gesture. "The girls at Northtown? All bitches. All of 'em. Pretending to be virgins, so some rich bastard'ed marry 'em. That don't make 'em nothin' but whores. The cunts." John laughed. "Had my share of 'em in high school. Same ones as wouldn't spit on me today."

  John had pulled himself together. Why he'd come to the reunion at all, Z couldn't guess; maybe to remind himself of the friends he used to have; maybe to recapture long lost innocence.

  "Been good talking to yo
u, Z, but I got to go."

  Dismissed, Z tripped the catch, pushing back the massive door to ease himself into the August oven.

  Nothing else to be said, he shut the door. Again, the heavy thunk.

  Z clear, John jerked the car into reverse, the limo's tires slipping, twin clouds of rock dust shooting under the car as it swerved into the street. Wheels cranked the other way, John revved the Lincoln's powerful engine, then jumped the car into gear to squeal off down Howell, turning left to careen along 32nd, headed for North Oak.

  All of this happening a long two days ago: a "reunion experience" Z would never subject himself to again -- though he hoped Bud would be pleased with the result.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 3

  Though business types drank wine with lunch in fancy restaurants, Bud's didn't open until 4:00, Gladstone's lowlife tanking up later in the day.

  Bud's Tavern was located near a ramshackle of empty warehouses along the Missouri river, north of the ASB bridge, Z arriving a little after happy hour.

  Leaving the Cavalier, he crossed the cracked concrete walk to the tavern's paint-flaked door.

  Hesitating before going in, Z turned back to check on the Cavalier (the car hunkered down to seem not-worth-stealing,) then looked up to admire the rusty, rivet-angled superstructure of the ASB, the old bridge no longer carrying cars but still transporting trains. The ancient span's auto lanes had been recently torn down a viaduct replacing them: the substitute, another soulless concrete road that accidentally crossed a river.

  Turning with a sigh, tugging open the tavern's door (the door solid enough to keep in the riffraff,) Z paused to let the stale smell of hops and malt leak out. (Some beer joints like this had taken to calling themselves "Drinking Establishments," Z speculating that the difference between "joint" and "establishment" was about a buck a bottle.)

  Bud's was the sort of place where a person in a clean, checkered work shirt and steel-toed boots was overdressed; would have looked that way if the light inside was better, Bud keeping the wattage low to shield the regulars from the reflection of their red-veined noses in the mirrored glass behind the bar.

  Dim light also helped to hide the roaches.

  As it did in fancy restaurants.

  Stepping inside, closing the door, waiting to let his eyes adjust to the gloom and his nose to the sour smell, Z made out Bud's barman, Olin Brainbridge, sloshing beer for two retirees. Further down the bar was a scraggly haired man in a well-greased baseball cap; a guy who might have been taken for a muffler welder if he'd been a little cleaner.

  Behind the bar was a black-and-white TV. Tuned to the sports channel, what else? Volume kept low so as not to disturb the dedicated drunk.

  Figuring Bud might not like his business spilled out on the bar, Z sat down at one of the round tables that huddled near the "cocktail lounge's" dilapidated pool table.

  Seeing Z enter, Olin Brainbridge finished "gassing up" the regulars and headed toward Z's table.

  Arriving, Olin paused to sneeze; after blowing his nose on his wipe rag, grinned his apology.

  Z remembered Bud had said his counter man was sick.

  "Bud here?" Z asked.

  "He's in back."

  From the look of the tavern's "action," Bud was keeping out of sight for reasons other than to count the day's receipts. "Get ya something?"

  "No."

  "A man don't normally take up a seat, less he has a drink." Not said to be unfriendly, Olin just making the constant conversation of the dedicated barkeep. Z wondering if barmen kept yammering in their sleep.

  "What's on tap?"

  "Got Old Milwaukee."

  "OK."

  Olin smiled at making a sale. "Ain't I seen you in here once or twice? You that friend of Bud's he's been talking about? Old high school buddy?"

  Z nodded.

  "You want me to get Bud for you?"

  Z nodded again.

  "You fellows OK down there?" Olin called, turning.

  All three drunks happy for the moment, Olin sauntered to the bar, slipping behind and along it to disappear through curtains at the counter's other end.

  Abruptly, curtains billowing, Bud burst out of the back room, Olin trailing him, Bud heading for Z's table.

  Big grin on Bud's face.

  Reaching the table, Z waved Bud to sit, Bud showing confidence in the sturdiness of his chairs by thumping down on one.

  The fat man safely seated, Z's nod said everything Z had to say.

  "You did it, boy!" Reaching across the small table, Bud wrung Z's hand.

  There was something ... odd ... about Bud's manner, about his tone of voice (other than that the sound was too high for the size of the big man's body.)

  "I knew I could count on you," Bud enthused.

  Sweating.

  Whatever Bud had been doing in the back had made him sweat, Z putting his hand below the table to wipe off Bud's damp shake.

  "What I'm saying," Bud said more quietly, Z's look chilling the big man's enthusiasm, "is I don't know a thing about what you did. You get my meaning? But that I'm grateful." Bud lowered his voice even more. "And you got my promise that this stops with me. I'll never tell if you don't." This time said with a grimace and a nervous chuckle.

  "Yeah."

  "Good to know he'll never bother me again, though."

  Z nodded.

  "That's fine. That's just fine. I owe you." Bud looked up, then all around. "And I'm going to pay up now so we can both forget this. Forget all about it, isn't that right, Z? No sense bringing it up again. Am I right?"

  "Yeah."

  "Good ol' Z. Best damn footballer ever. And best damn friend a man ever had. I can't tell you what this means to me, Z. I told you, I wasn't sleepin'. Now, I can get a good night's rest. Have to have that, running the bar all night. All night until closing, is what I mean."

  "Yeah."

  "This old place's my whole life," Bud said, looking around like a child grins at a toy. "I couldn't do no better, 'cause I never learned, much, how to read. You know that? The letters all go wiggly on me when I try."

  "Dyslexia."

  "What?"

  "Nothing."

  "Don't own a TV," Bud rushed on, expecting Z to be amazed.

  Z pointed to the TV behind the bar.

  "Don't own one at home, that is. Don't even watch the bar's TV cause it's locked on the sports channel. Don't like sports no more, now that I can't play myself. No siree. This joint's my life, for sure. Got all my happiness wrapped up right here. Not your usual day job. I been asleep all day. Just got up, in fact."

  For being so happy, there was still a lot of "sad" clinging to Bud Izard. Of course, Bud had a mountain of meat for sadness to cling to. Though you always heard that fat people were jolly, Z had never seen one yet, who was. A fat man would pretend to be happy-go-lucky, sure, but that didn't make it so. It was probably the same for fat women, though Z didn't pretend to know much about women, fat or thin.

  "But what am I runnin' off at the mouth so much for?" Bud said, starting up again. "You said a hundred? Am I right? And I said you'd have to wait. But I just wouldn't feel right making one of my best friends in all the world wait for his money. Nosiree. I got the money right here."

  Proving he was heeled, Bud bent forward to pull a folded-over stack of greenbacks from his back pocket.

  Z wondered if Bud kept the money on him for fear of a stick-up, figuring a hood would go after the cash drawer in the register.

  All in all, Z was glad he didn't have Bud's job. Too many fights. Too much chance of a drug-crazed kid gutting you.

  Meanwhile, Bud had unfolded his wad and started to count.

  "No charge."

  "That's crazy!" Bud protested, waving a hand so huge it made a breeze. "I got the money now. Hell, I was going to make it two hundred. A man's got to take care of his friends. Easy come, easy go, I always say."

  Z shook his head in such a way that Bud stopped counting.

  "Well, hell, Z. I owe
you a favor, then. Matter of fact, if its' action you're looking for, you come to the right place."

  "Got a girl."

  "I know that. Hell, I know that. I wasn't talking about that kind of action. I meant, if you was interested in a game of skill, I got a room at the back for that. You'd make a fourth. I guess now, a third." Bud winked, at the same time leaning to one side to reach behind him and stuff the bills in his wallet pocket. "I'm too far from the river to get me a license to be a gambling casino, but I do all right."

  Z shook his head.

  "Nothing I can do for you?" Z shook his head again. "If there ever is, you just come to see old Bud Izard. You got a friend in this establishment, you can bank on that."

  Another sweaty handshake, and Bud Izard launched himself to his feet, the big man thumping off toward the bar, going behind it to enter the back room again.

  Never wanting the beer Olin Brainbridge had forgotten to bring him, Z got up and pushed his way out the door into the dazzling sun.

  * * * * *

  The next day -- no rush to get to his two-holer of an office in the Ludlow building on Chouteau -- Z got up at 9:00.

  Dressed in his usual slacks and shirt, he shuffled into his living room to turn on the twin air conditioners he'd installed to either side of the front (side) door.

  Cold air blasting, Z was shocked to realize his living room was even smaller that Kunkle's.

  On the other hand, you didn't expect apartments to be as big as houses.

  Reaching the circular metal firebox Z had situated in the archway between the living room and the kitchenette, Z paused to admire his work. Hidden compartment underneath. Black metal pipe rising to penetrate the ceiling and the tar paper roof outside.

  Bending down to the "fuel box," Z layered in paper and split oak. Reaching down again to get the jar of kerosene, he splashed some coal oil in the round fireplace, touching off the flammable mixture with his lighter.

  Z was an old hand at making fires; had been doing that -- one way or the other -- since he was a boy. Loved to see flames dancing up! Loved the smell of burning oak.

  The air conditioners and fire neutralizing each other, Z opened the door between the chugging coolers to step out into the heat, taking the path to the front where he picked up his Star, the paper one of three thrown each day to the building's renters.