by Lynn Kostoff
Ben’s visit to the Shack started out as an instant replay of his previous one yesterday afternoon, Ben stepping inside, walking over and unplugging the jukebox, and then asking the not quite rhetorical question about outstanding warrants, the patrons glancing over their shoulders and then down at their drinks, which they quickly emptied before making a mass exodus worthy of any that Moses had been able to muster among the tribes.
Which, once again, left Ben and T.C., the bartender, in a silent standoff.
Maybe a decade and a half ago T.C.’s glower had been genuinely and intractably intimidating, but the years had taken some of the edge off its menace. It had a PG-13 quality to it now, a shopworn malevolence that T.C., with muscle running to fat and ponytailed braid running to silver, could not quite hide.
Ben stood in the middle of Mac’s Shack and waited him out.
T.C. picked up a bar rag and then set it back down. He looked over at the jukebox and then back. The muscles in his throat tensed, then relaxed. He was like a chameleon whose protective coloration had temporarily gone south on him.
Ben waited some more.
“Ok, ok,” T.C. said finally. “Enough of this shit. I can’t afford losing any more business. This is supposed to be Happy Hour. You ask your questions, and I’ll conversate.”
Ben took a stool at the bar. He waved off T.C.’s offer of a draft.
“About Jamison Blake,” he said.
“It was Lester, wasn’t it?” T.C. said. “Him or Danny. It just hit me, who it probably was, one or the other who pointed you here.”
“It doesn’t matter who I talked to,” Ben said, pulling out his notebook. “It’s you and me now, T.C.”
“Those fucking guys.” T.C. shook his head and then jammed his hand into the cooler and pulled out a beer. He opened it with a church key chained to his belt and took a long swallow.
Ben tapped his pen against the bar and ran through the preliminaries, establishing that Jamison Blake had qualified as a regular at Mac’s and that he’d been living with Missy Newton, who sometimes accompanied him to the bar, and that T.C. had, in fact, been bartending on the day Jamison and Missy had been killed.
“Anything unusual that afternoon?” Ben asked. “Jamison acting differently?”
“No,” T.C. said. “Jamie drank some beers, we bullshitted, and he left.”
“What’d you talk about?”
T.C. shrugged. “I don’t know. This is a bar. In a bar you get a lot of bar talk.”
The door to the street opened, and a thin man in a green baseball cap poked his head and part of a shoulder inside. Ben smiled and waved. The man backed out and quietly shut the door.
T.C. sighed. “With Jamie, it was probably about money, ok? He always had money problems. Which I personally can identify with right now on account of what this talk is costing me.”
Ben watched T.C. take another long swallow of beer. “How about Sonny Gramm? Jamison ever talk about him or his troubles?”
“Yeah, but so did a lot of other people,” T.C. said. “It’s not exactly what you call a secret, Sonny Gramm’s in trouble. Sonny’s been around forever. You hear things. Everybody does.”
“What did Jamison have to say about Gramm’s troubles?”
T.C. shook his head. “Look, you never met Jamie, right? You don’t know what he was like. A nice guy, ok, but Jamie, he liked to act bigger than he was. You know what I mean? No crime in that, but that’s what the guy was like. Music, politics, women, anything you got an opinion on, Jamie thought he had the last and best word.”
The phone started ringing. T.C. looked from it to Ben and back again.
He sighed and let it ring through. “A couple times,” he said, “somebody in here brings up Gramm’s Mustang getting messed up, Gramm hiring another bodyguard, you know, like that, and Jamie looks over at me, he winks and got this smile on this face, like he knows something but can’t tell. It being Jamie, I didn’t think it was anything but business as usual.”
“Jamison ever mention Stanley Tedros?”
T.C. frowned. “What? Now you think Jamie killed Stanley Tedros?”
“Do you?” Ben said.
“Nah,” T.C. said, shaking his head. “He liked the idea of the reward money. All the regulars in here did. Bar talk, like I said.”
“Any sense with Jamison that it was more than talk?”
“Come on,” T.C. said. “Remember what I just said about knowing the guy. Jamie was a bullshitter. A couple times he maybe mentioned he could get his hands on what the guy—” T.C. broke off, squinting. “What’s the guy’s name, the nephew?”
“Buddy Tedros,” Ben said.
“Yeah. Jamie claimed he was close to getting what Buddy Tedros was after. Said he had something all worked out, he was going to sidestep the police altogether, just deal with that Buddy Tedros, not give him his name or anything like that. Jamie was going to set all the terms, and Buddy Tedros was going to have to go along with them if he wanted to know who killed his uncle.” T.C. paused and hit his beer again.
He leaned closer to Ben. “That was Jamie, ok? He was a bullshit artist. Nothing more complicated than that. He was always hatching something. Once he told me about a plan he had to catch shrimp with magnets. It never stopped with him.”
“Was he talking about Buddy Tedros and the reward on the afternoon he was killed?”
T.C. threw up his hands and stepped back. “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe probably. He was in a good mood, I remember that.”
Ben looked down at his notes then back up at T.C., who was standing with his arms crossed on his chest, his namesake tattooed on each bicep, Ben recognizing the old Hanna-Barbera cartoon character, Top Cat. He remembered Top Cat lived in an old galvanized garbage can and wore a straw boater and a vest. What he could not remember, looking at T.C.’s biceps, was an episode in which Top Cat gave someone the finger or held a bloodied knife triumphantly above his head.
The bar lights flickered.
“Old wiring,” T.C. said.
“A couple more questions,” Ben said.
“Let’s get it done.” T.C. unfolded his arms. “You’ve already wrecked Happy Hour. I want you out of here.”
“Did Jamison ever talk about any of his friends? One guy in particular, I’m thinking about. Someone named Clay?”
“Croy,” T.C. said. “I don’t know if that’s a first or last name though. Never met him. Jamie was always talking about him not being normal and doing robot things.”
Ben set down his pen. “Robot things?”
“Yeah,” T.C. said. “I don’t know what else to call it. Like counting under his breath all the time. Or buying a bunch of same color shirts. Or eating a certain food over and over for every meal. Things like that.” T.C. paused and scratched the bridge of his nose. “Oh yeah. To hear Jamie, this Croy didn’t like sex either.”
“Where’d Jamison meet him?”
“Beats me,” T.C. said.
Ben glanced down at the notes from his interview with Blake’s neighbor, Marilyn Keane.
“Maybe at work?” Ben said, leaning back on the stool.
“Jamie didn’t work. Neither did Missy.”
“I don’t think you’re being completely forthright with me on this one,” Ben said and closed the notebook. “Maybe I’ll drop by later and see what you have to say then.”
T.C. held up both hands. “That won’t be necessary.” He paused. “It’s just, what you’re asking, it involves some personal things of a business nature.”
“I’m not interested in your business, T.C. I want to know who Jamison worked for, when he worked, that’s all.”
T.C. nodded. “Sure you don’t want a beer?”
Ben hesitated for a moment, but then said no.
“That’s a real first. Never known a cop who turned down a free beer,” T.C. said, reaching into the cooler. He levered the cap and tossed it in the direction of a trash can.
“Back to the subject,” Ben said.
The lights flicker
ed again, taking a little longer this round to return.
T.C. looked down the length of the bar toward an ancient pinball machine buttressing the east wall. He fingered the end of his ponytail.
“My name doesn’t have to come up if you talk to this guy, does it? Like I said, we do some business sometimes. It helps, you know, with the overhead on this place.”
Ben waited.
“Russ Sharpe,” T.C. said. “He runs a landscaping outfit. Him and me, we go back. Jamie worked for him sometimes.”
“Let me guess,” Ben said. “Off the books, right?”
“My name, I really don’t see why it would have to come up.”
Ben took out his notebook again, asked where he could find Sharpe, and took down the address.
“One last thing,” Ben said. “Did this Croy live with Jamison and Missy?”
“I think maybe,” T.C. said. “At least Jamie made it sound that way sometimes.”
Ben got off the stool and rapped the bartop twice with his knuckles. “I appreciate your cooperation, T.C.”
T.C. crossed his arms and resurrected his glower.
By the time Ben made it to his car, a line of regulars had already sidled up to the front door of the bar and started to duck inside. A moment later, the lights flickered, and the jukebox was up and cranked.
FIFTY-SIX
JACK CARSON heard the woman the little girl called Mrs. Wood apologize for having to leave early. The girl said she could take care of things until her mother came home.
“I’ve given your grandfather his afternoon medication,” Mrs. Wood said, “and I put something in the refrigerator you can microwave if you two get hungry.”
“Thank you.” The girl walked the woman to the front door. “We’ll be fine.”
The thing was, Jack didn’t feel that way. Lately, more and more, he was losing control over his moods. He’d be doing ok, and then with no warning he was angry. He was angry, and then he was crying, and before he could wipe away any tears, he was laughing, and then he was afraid, the moods like competing and shifting weather systems, stretching out indefinitely or suddenly overlapping or colliding, independent of what Jack was doing at the time.
His days had come to feel like a car windshield before the defroster had enough time to clear it.
The girl walked up to where Jack sat in his recliner. She reminded him her name was Paige and asked if he were hungry. She said Mrs. Wood had left a tuna casserole and some green beans and biscuits.
Jack was very hungry, but he heard himself telling Paige he could wait a while before they ate. He wasn’t sure why he’d told her that, but it seemed important that he did.
Paige said something about a chat room and went back to the kitchen and her new computer.
Jack watched television with the sound off. There was a show on about icebergs. He closed his eyes and fell asleep for a while.
When he woke, the girl was standing next to his chair. She was wearing white tennis shoes, a new pair of blue jeans, a shimmery top, and two barrettes shaped like palm trees. Jack had forgotten her name.
“Your stomach’s been growling,” she said.
“I think I feel asleep,” Jack said. “Did I miss him?”
The girl furrowed her brow and looked over at the front door. “Who?”
Jack tried to hunt down a name and finally gave up. “The tall man who’d been coming by the house,” he said. “Sometimes he would come late at night too.” Jack paused. “He was a policeman, I think.”
“He went away,” the girl said. “You couldn’t count on him. He was just another mistake Mother made, like she did with Ray, my father.”
Jack tried out a smile. “I didn’t leave though, did I?”
The girl looked at him a long time. “No,” she said. “You’re always around.”
Jack’s stomach growled again. The girl went to microwave their supper.
He looked around the room. His days had come down to watching television with the sound off, a handful of meds, microwaved meals, a slow parade of faces that he found increasingly difficult to identify, short disjointed naps, and an abiding confusion.
He was sorry to hear the policeman had gone away. Jack had liked him. He was never in a hurry with Jack and talked quietly and smiled and asked Jack questions about the things Jack had built when he’d owned the construction company in Myrtle Beach.
Jack would miss the policeman.
He made good Po’ Boys.
FIFTY-SEVEN
AFTER LEAVING MAC’S SHACK, Ben Decovic broke up a chain-reaction assault and battery that started out as a minor-league disturbing the peace on Wilson among four neighbors, then wrote up an early-bird DWI, worked the paper on a new case of vandalism at a convenience store on Camellia, and did the preliminary investigation on a half-hearted break and enter at the Milforde Hotel involving one of its sluggish junkie tenants.
Near dusk, Ben took Pickett and followed it west for four blocks and then cut to Clarke, heading two blocks north. Sharpe’s Landscaping and Lawn Service was across from the warehouses for Coastal Trucking, its office housed in a hail-dented white single-wide set on cement blocks and flanked by two long greenhouses and a chain-link fence enclosing two lines of pickups and flatbeds holding lawn equipment and bags of fertilizer. The air was threaded with the smell of gasoline, motor oil, and mulch. Ben called in his location and got out of the car.
Russ Sharpe answered the door after the third round of knocking, mumbled a distracted greeting, and waved Ben Decovic inside. Ben followed him to a small office at the rear of the trailer where Sharpe dropped into a swivel chair and swung away from a desk whose top was lost to piles of invoices, a phone, two Styrofoam take-out boxes, a large silver thermos, and a computer holding a screen-saver of a tree morphing every few seconds into another phase of the seasonal cycles. Ben watched autumn pop up and the leaves dry, brown, and blow away, then sat down across from Sharpe.
Sharpe reached around for the thermos and topped off his coffee. He was a large man in his early forties with thick black hair in a buzz-cut that had outgrown its original lines, his face sun-battered, his skin with the deep pink and texture of a slice of baked ham.
“You’re a new one, right?” he said around a sip of coffee. “I don’t remember clearing you with Adkin though.”
Ben frowned. “You mean Carl Adkin?”
“Who else would I be talking about?” Sharpe asked. “Adkin and the rest of you on Patrol. All the same. Always looking for the free tit.”
Sharpe rummaged the desktop until he found a clipboard. “I’ll add you to the list,” he said, “but we’re talking the basic package. Anything else, it comes out of your pocket.”
“I don’t understand,” Ben said.
Sharpe let out a long, tired sigh. “I’m not talking retail, ok? At cost. You want anything extra, a Bradford Pear or a Palmetto, something like that, I’ll give it to you at cost, put the bastard in for you, but I’m not throwing it in with the original package.”
Ben started to speak, but Sharpe held up a large calloused hand, interrupting him.
“You got a problem with that, take it up with Adkin. And tell him for me he should have called first and cleared this with me. Remind him I got paying clients too. I can’t be sending my crews out every time I turn around, to do landscaping and maintenance for all of you.” Sharpe paused and shook his head. “Most of the Patrol roster have lawns and gardens that qualify for a spread in Southern Living magazine.”
“I think you misjudged the situation, Mr. Sharpe,” Ben said. “I came here to ask you a few questions.”
Sharpe set down the pen and clipboard. “Ok. You’re new. Adkin was supposed to talk to you, explain things. No questions, that’s the whole point, all the work I do for the Blue.”
“Do you have someone named Croy working for you?” Ben said.
Sharpe leaned forward in his chair. “Do you have any idea how hard it is for an independent to compete with all the regional and national landscapin
g franchises around here? Something comes up, a new subdivision, a new outlet complex, I got to put in a bid like everyone else, except I’m not like everyone else, because most of the other outfits are franchised and can cut overhead through volume, and my bids will be D.O.A. unless I can find ways to stay competitive.”
Meaning, Ben thought, keeping a skeleton crew officially on the books and paying the rest of the crews below minimum wage and under the table, no payout for health, unemployment, or workman comp benefits.
“About Croy,” Ben said.
“Look, we can work something out,” Sharpe said. “I apologize for earlier. We’re running behind on two deadlines. And then this drought, it seems like it’s never going to end. I get testy, at least that’s what my wife calls it, when that happens.”
“I need to find Croy,” Ben said.
Sharpe rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know where he lives. I send a few trucks out in the morning to designated spots around town, and anyone that wants to work is waiting there. We drop them off at the same place that night. Where they go after that, I don’t know.”
“What’s Croy’s full name?”
“Wendall,” Sharpe said. “Croy Wendall. You mind telling me what this is about?”
“Some follow-up on the murder of Jamison Blake,” Ben said. “From what I understand, Croy was a friend of his.”
“Jamie Blake. Oh shit. I don’t need this,” Sharpe said. He went back to rubbing his forehead. “Look, you show up around any of the crews asking questions about Jamie, I’ll never meet those deadlines. These are the kind of guys who spook very easy, a cop comes around. The word’ll get out, and the next day, none of them will show up.”
“You tell me what you know then,” Ben said, “and maybe I won’t have to bother your crews.”
“Adkin was supposed to take care of things like this,” Sharpe said.
“Take that up with Adkin,” Ben said. “I want to hear about Croy Wendall.”
Ben left twenty minutes later, getting back on Pickett and heading toward the low end of Atlantic Avenue. He took his scheduled break at an I-Hop, starting off with the cup of coffee Sharpe had never bothered to offer him and then realizing, after he’d taken a booth, that he’d forgotten to eat today. Ben called the waitress back over and ordered one of the specials.
