Bad Luck City - Matt Phillips

by Near To The Knuckle

  “I was sure I didn’t.”

  “Chelsea was born twelve years after you,” he said. “Don’t hate your dad for not telling you. Shit, he hardly told anyone.”

  The realization, the heavy weight of it, finally hit me. For a moment, things came unhinged in my mind. I tilted on my bar stool and caught myself on the bar’s edge. A sharp hum entered my head, hung there like mist. I tugged at my sleeves, touched the .38 through my blazer, pulled my hand from it. A burn spread from the center of my chest, up my neck, and into my head.

  I began to sweat.

  “I’m sorry it came like this,” Mathis said. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know what you’d do or how you’d react. I thought I could keep my own shit out of it, but now I’m in it and there’s nothing I can do.”

  All these years, I thought, and I didn’t know my dad. He was a stranger to me. Even when he died, all those months in the hospital, he kept his lies alive. I yanked my consciousness from the depths and shoved it back into Aero Lounge’s sweaty air and dull noise. “And I’m in it, too,” I said. “Many, many thanks to you.”

  “This is how things go, when you’re in the life.”

  “I never was in it.”

  “You were though—you were born into it, Palmer.”

  “So, where the fuck is Chelsea then?”

  “I don’t know. It’s been a while now, maybe six months, and some of the girls have been disappearing. The thing is, Richie told me to lay off when I asked about it. And I did. But when Chelsea went missing…”

  “You came to me. Wanted me to get her out without dragging you into it. Wanted me to do what’s right, so you could go on doing wrong.”

  Mathis swallowed what was in his glass and chewed the ice.

  “What do you think it is, the girls disappearing?”

  He said, “I don’t know, but it can’t be good.”

  I stood and grabbed his collar, yanked him toward me. My oxycontin–beer breath shot into his face. The bar went quiet. “You tell me, what is it?”

  “Fuck, Palmer,” he said and tried to scramble from my grasp. “I don’t know. I swear I’d tell you—I don’t know.”

  “Where do I find Richie Fresco?”

  Mathis glanced to both sides. “I can’t tell you that. Not if I want to keep breathing all this smog and hot air.”

  I released him and climbed back onto my bar stool. “Get the fuck away from me,” I said.

  Mathis straightened his collar, picked up his fedora and smiled at the staring crowd. It took a second or two, but the place went back to normal. Mathis tossed a twenty on the bar and left.

  I waited thirty seconds, and then I followed.

  ***

  Mathis walked north along the street toward the airport. Planes rose periodically in the far distance and I hung back, watched him with quiet dedication. He moved fast across dark and lonely intersections; streetlights cast tricolored shadows on his stealthy frame. Once, he stopped and turned to his rear, searched through the darkness for whatever he felt at his back—me, I thought. But I moved close into a building’s doorway and waited. When I stepped back onto the sidewalk, Mathis was jogging. My hand brushed the .38 pressed against my belly. A smile came to my lips. I couldn’t help it. I felt horrible; my face seemed twice its normal size and, every so often, the vision in my left eye would blur, but some odd electricity burned through my veins.

  I kept following Mathis as he turned right—headed east—onto a street peppered with ramshackle warehouses. The street came to a dead end and was lit by a lone street lamp—all the others were shattered and dark. The one lamp cast a wavering circle of orange light where the pavement met a chain–link fence. Mathis crossed through the light, lifted one corner of the fence, and then squatted and crab–walked beneath it. He disappeared into the darkness beyond, what looked like a loose stand of misshapen brush and trees.

  I hustled down the sidewalk and crossed through the light without thinking or looking backwards; I lifted the fence and scraped my slacks as I slid beneath it. On the fence’s far side, the darkness thickened and I had trouble seeing more than a few feet. I moved forward and my foot sunk two inches into what felt like perpetual mud. I kneeled and brought out my cellphone, used it to cast light on the ground. I saw footprints ahead of me. They were slowly filling with murky water. I followed the tracks through a narrow trail walled by stiff brush on each side. My cheeks and hands scraped jagged branches and leaves—the smell of standing water and garbage entered my nose, made me want to cough as hard as I could. After a minute that felt like a month, I came to waist–high grass that tapered up a short hill. I stepped into the grass and the mud changed into solid footing. I slid my phone back into my pocket and hiked to the hilltop.

  When I reached the apex, I found myself at the southern–most tip of the airport—this area seemed to be separated from the runway by fencing to the north, but I couldn’t be sure. It was a flat area with broken pavement and an old airplane hangar at its center. The hangar’s big door was open and a pool of bright yellow light fell rectangular against the long unused tarmac. There was a dull roar and, to the north, I saw a small jet glide upwards into the night sky. I pulled my vision from the jet and scanned the spot where the hill met the pavement: Mathis emerged from the grass. He jogged toward the open hangar, crossed through the yellow rectangle of light and vanished.

  ***

  I descended the hill and crossed the old tarmac. From the location and look, I thought the hangar must be an old portion of the airport, somehow zoned off from new development. The night was cool; the air was tinged with creosote and I tasted hard spikes of ragweed on my tongue. As I approached the hangar, I skirted the rectangle of light and crouched near the open door. I twisted my head slowly and peered into the lighted hangar—it was empty of planes, but there was a shiny black Mercedes parked in a far corner. Near the car, three men sat at a cheap fold–away table. Their ties were loosened and cigarettes hung from their mouths. I could see—none wore coats—that all had pistols in shoulder holsters. They were playing cards with nonchalant gazes and ignoring the man standing near the table, Mathis. One man, his back to me, caught my eye; his head was shaved and his shoulders were like two bowling balls hunched up to his ears—Richie Fresco. My throat twitched and a disgusting taste filled my mouth.

  Mathis spoke and his voice floated across the hangar, a hollow–toned assertion: “I did what I thought was right, Mr. Fresco. I knew Chelsea’s father and that meant I owed him something.”

  “That’s why you got the reporter involved?” Richie’s question, too, sounded nonchalant and without worry.

  “He’s Chelsea’s brother. I knew him since he was a kid, before he was halfway to a runt. His father, he was my best friend and—”

  “That’s the saddest story I’ve heard this week, and now it’s headed for the papers. Thanks to you, that is.” Richie tossed his cards into the center of the table. “I fold,” he said and turned to face Mathis.

  Mathis tilted along the ridges of his feet. “I had to tell the reporter—it was the right thing to do. All my life, I’ve been doing the wrong thing and, I just, I wanted to do what was right this one time. What was I supposed to do? Let the girl just be gone? We needed to know anyway, what the hell was going on.”

  Richie said, “It’s nothing you or anybody else needs to know.”

  Mathis removed his fedora and held it in his hands, pressed it like a belt buckle against his midsection.

  Richie pushed back his chair and stood. “I didn’t take you for stupid, Freddie. Six years we worked together, and you’ve never done one stupid thing. Why’d you start now?”

  “I wanted to do right by Chelsea. And my pal, Stretch Palmer.”

  “That’s it?”

  “And his son.”

  “The reporter?” Richie said it with a crooked sneer.

  “That’s right.”

  Richie’s next words came in a barrage, like artillery–fire. “You didn’t think Evers w
ould let the girl go, did you?”

  Mathis tilted his head, peered at Richie with a surprised look and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The two men at the table didn’t pay any attention. They dealt another hand and placed bets.

  Richie shook his head and grinned at Mathis. “Your job was to keep tabs on the girls—that’s all I wanted.”

  “I know. I did that.”

  “To a fault,” Richie said. “Now, there’s a reporter writing everything down in his cute little notebook. I got you all gushed up over some girl. Most of all, I got a client—Stan Evers—at risk of seeing his face in some shitty newspaper.”

  “Look, I ran with the reporter’s dad, back in the day. I had to tell the kid about his sister. He didn’t know,” Mathis said.

  Richie sat back down, scooted his chair under the table. He shrugged and nodded at Mathis. “He didn’t need to know. Probably didn’t want to know. You didn’t have to tell him anything.”

  “I did. I needed to do right by his father.” Mathis lowered his head and stared at the gray fedora. He turned it over in his hands.

  Richie nodded at the man to his right. The man took the cigarette from between his lips and stubbed it out in an ashtray. He reached into his shoulder holster and pulled a gun, swung it toward Mathis. The three shots were short and abrupt, almost digital in sound. Mathis dropped the fedora, stepped back twice and landed flat on his back. The fedora spun on its brim like a finger–flicked quarter, slowed, swayed softly against the ground and stopped.

  The trigger–man waited for a moment, his gun in the air. Mathis didn’t move; the man slid his gun back into its holster and picked up his playing cards. He grunted and spread the poker hand across his palms.

  Richie Fresco lit a cigarette and squinted at Mathis, a dead man lying prone on a cold floor. “Kill the reporter, too,” he said. “He took that beating pretty well—I kind of doubt he’s the type to give up on things.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Toss that shovel into the grass,” I said.

  The gangly man stopped digging and turned to face me. His eyes searched the darkness, probed at the spot where I hid in the bushes. The man was nearly seven feet tall—a damn giant—and he had a gun in a shoulder–holster. At his feet, Mathis was dead; his feet and hands were wrapped with duct tape and his face was plain and expressionless. The giant’s right hand inched upward and he said, “What are you going to do to me, and who are you?”

  “Stop moving,” I said and stepped into the small clearing. It was a few hundred yards from the old airplane hangar, hidden behind a sloping hill and inside the large clump of trees and underbrush. I waved my revolver and then centered it on the giant’s crotch. “Let’s make things easy—it’ll be better for you.”

  He tossed the shovel into the grass and dropped both hands to his thighs. “You’re in charge,” he said.

  “The gun, too,” I said and lifted my chin at his shoulder. “Do it slowly because I don’t want to use this one here.” This was a lie, but I said it anyway. My finger inched along the crescent trigger.

  The giant pried the gun from its holster and tossed it at my feet.

  “A shallow grave, huh?” I dipped my head at Mathis, now nothing but a dead body in the desert. His tailored suit was wrinkled in places and the bloody splotches along his chest were dried almost black.

  The giant looked at the body, and then swung his eyes to me. “You must be the reporter,” he said. “You’re next on the list. You know that?”

  “Did he deserve that?” I pointed the gun at Mathis and then centered it back on the big man’s stomach. “You have an opinion?”

  “He lasted a long time—what can I say about it?”

  “That it was wrong, maybe. Or that he didn’t deserve it. Not like that.”

  “Well, he doesn’t give two shits now.” He grinned and the moonlight glinted off his teeth. He stepped back twice and lifted his hands.

  I raised the gun and pointed it at his head.

  He stopped, but the grin stayed pasted on his face, like something a child would draw on a too–large stick figure. “Not a bad spot for this kind of thing,” I said. “Though I think the desert would be more secure. What happens when this place gets excavated?” Another plane taxied down the runway and, though I couldn’t see it, a long rumble filled the night as it took to the air.

  “Cuts down on the commute,” he said. “Place has been like this for thirty years. What’s going to happen? Look, my pals will be here in a minute and—”

  “You mean the two guys who left in the jet–black Mercedes?”

  He pressed his lips together and his cheeks flattened against the bones in his face. “What do you want? I can’t bring your pal here back from the dead.”

  “Oh, I can see that. Tell me about what Richie Fresco does with the girls.”

  He sighed heavily and shook his head. “You know what Richie does—it’s an escort service. From the streets on up to the top dogs. It isn’t complicated to figure that out, not for someone like you.”

  “I’m talking about the ones who go missing, those girls.”

  “I’m not going to say a word.”

  That little phrase did it. I saw myself strapped to a chair and I saw Richie Fresco standing over me with a clenched fist. I saw Finnegan, too. I saw him smirk at me from behind the smeared, glass walls of his office. I saw my dad. I heard the tinkle of poker chips dropping in a pile. I saw him going all in like a fool. I watched him saunter out of a poker game with a sour look on his face—his ghost in front of my eyes. I lowered the revolver and squeezed the trigger.

  The gun jumped in my hand and nearly swung up to smack me in the face.

  The giant toppled over and grabbed his left knee. He rolled into a ball and moaned. “You punk,” he said. “I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you. I swear—”

  I squeezed the trigger again. His other knee exploded.

  The moans came from his mouth in thick waves.

  I took two steps and stood over him. “Shut up,” I said. “Tell me what Richie Fresco does with the girls. Do it in thirty seconds or I’ll shoot you in your fat–fucking–forehead.”

  “It’s not Richie,” the giant said. He hissed through his teeth.

  “Who then?”

  “The casino guy… Evers. The artist.”

  I closed one eye and aimed. “Tell me why.”

  “I don’t know. How could I fucking know?”

  “Oh, you have to know. You’ve got an idea.” The ground beneath my feet was damp and dark with the giant’s blood. I was sure someone heard the shots, but I couldn’t run… No, not yet.

  He hissed through his teeth again. “I think he draws them, the girls.”

  My time with Evers earlier that day came into my head; his odd portraits of women in pain and pleasure and torment. I remembered the queer feeling that came over me while I looked at the work, the queer sense I got from Evers. “But what happens to the girls? Where do they end up?”

  The giant’s face screwed into a spongy mass. Blood seeped between his fingers. Mathis’s body lay motionless beside him. He said, “I don’t know.”

  My index finger pressed against the Colt .38’s trigger. I ran my eyes over Mathis’s body again and shook my head. I turned back to the giant and said, “This grave isn’t deep enough for the both of you.”

  “No,” he said. “Please, don’t.”

  But I did.

  Sunday

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was a long walk back to my apartment. I liked the city around midnight; it was lively, but somehow peaceful in a Las Vegas kind of way—wide silver moon and neon lights and the soft thrum of traffic. In my head, I turned over theories about Stan Evers and Richie Fresco and Chelsea Losse. It was apparent, I thought, that Evers was a customer of Fresco’s, but I wondered how bad he treated the women. Did he beat them? Kill them? And to do either for a quick chance to paint a portrait, a true portrait, as he called it? My mind fal
tered when it came to this point—I couldn’t grasp what might happen to the women, or why.

  But I knew that, somehow and some way, Chelsea Losse was involved, that Evers had plans for her, too. I guessed that Mathis got what was coming to him. Fine. But not Chelsea. She didn’t deserve to die. Or get beaten. Or whatever the hell this was or would be.

  I glanced over my shoulder as I walked, made sure nobody followed. I passed Aero Lounge and dodged a few wandering drunks. I wasn’t worried about cops. Fresco would clean up those bodies—I knew that. But I also knew that he’d be after me.

  This was way beyond the police, or journalism, or right and wrong.

  This was me trying to find out what happened to my only sister.

  I had to take it all the way to the end, the bitter end.

  ***

  At the apartment, I swallowed another oxycontin and opened a beer. I walked to the window that overlooked the street and peered down at the red–tinged sidewalk, the pawn shop sign, and the trash laying in the gutters. It started to rain and everything got wet. I heard the elevator hit my floor and creak open. The clumsy sounds of a man and a woman—both drunk as hell—came through the walls. I heard them drop a set of keys. The keys got scooped up and I imagined the man fumbling with the lock. The woman pounded on the door and groaned. The lock clicked open and the door slammed. They made it. The man laughed from deep inside the apartment. My window was wet, and instead of seeing through the running water down onto the street I caught a glimpse of myself, a reflection in the water and light. I saw fat lips and bloodshot eyes. I saw a rumpled button–down shirt and a loose pink tie that hung like a noose. I saw a half–purple eye and a neck that was red and raw.

  I saw a man that once wanted to do nothing but right.

  I saw a killer.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was still dark outside when my cellphone buzzed on the night stand. I opened my eyes and fumbled for it; I pushed the button and there was silence on the line. “Hello?” Nothing. I tried again, “Hello, who is this?” Hard breathing came over the line and then distant footsteps. The sounds faded and then a car’s tires squealed. “Are you there?”