The Crimson Shaw

by Elyse Lortz

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “THESE ARE great.” Sam Barker nodded, thumbing through the stack of black and white photographs pinched in his claw-like hands. “Just great.” He praised again and laid the evidence of worldly economics on his desk as some report strong enough to warrant his attention. “So, how much do you want to get out of the old bastard? A hundred grand? One fifty? Two hundred?” I shifted in my seat across the polished wood.

  “Two hundred thousand seems an awfully large amount for a debt a fourth of that.”

  “Do you want to get back at the coot or not? Besides, you’ll be paying me a good cut of that. Seventy percent.” My head swam with the numbers and my tongue felt thick with the constant use of purely American syllables. Either way, there was no end of grief.

  “Why the hell would I give you seventy percent? You’d be getting a hundred forty grand easy.”

  “But I’m also using my funds to get your money. I’m doing you a favor here, not the other way around.” It certainly felt the opposite. He was risking money. I was risking lives.

  I was risking souls.

  “I will give you thirty percent.”

  “Sixty.”

  “Forty.”

  “Fifty. And don’t think I’ll go any lower than that.” I relented.

  “Fine. Fifty then. I suppose we should spit into our palms and shake on it to seal the deal, or something like that.” The young man jerked ever so slightly, appalled by my lower class sense of humour.

  “I don’t think we have to do that, but maybe a contract would be a good idea. I’ll have a friend of mine draw it up and you can sign tomorrow.” He paused with his hand wavering over the layer of strewn photographs. “I guess you would want to hold onto these until then?” I nodded vigorously, swept an arm around the stained collection of supposed sins, and carefully stacked each one before slipping the entire pile back into the envelope. The whisper of lies rattled my ears, yet I was not so affected by it to do something endangering the cause.

  “I think that would be wise. How do I even know you could keep these things safe? We wouldn’t want anything untimely to happen, now would we?” I had hit it; the doubt never to be expressed toward that great male chauvinism. Sam Barker leaned back in his chair with an expression that was neither pleasant, nor reflecting any intimidation. It was the predator sizing up its prey; establishing a list of weaknesses pliable to his wicked hands. His eyes flickered, and I began to fear he had seen through my cropped and pomaded hair or the tight bindings concealing the epitome of womanhood. Gradually he relaxed back into his chair and I into my mind. Of course he had not seen. He could not have. One is always so accepting of the oddities of the world, the obvious falls away into oblivion.

  “Of course.” Sam Barker consented slowly. “Of course you would want to make sure your investment is safe, and I assure you that I have one of the most secure houses this side of Fort Knox.”

  “While that is reassuring, I find it hard to believe that a person who throws so many parties would be able to hide anything.” The young man—millionaire and mobster—laughed with the same gentle features as a shark about to engourge itself.

  “I have Mickey here, don’t I. You don’t have him over without a few precautions.” As if the man in question had just entered the room, Sam Barker stood and strode quickly to the door, swinging open the enormous panels of wood without so much as a squeak of inconvenience. A quick shout for the butler brought the shriveled, ancient man from the woodwork. He was old—easily over seventy—with only a thin lip of wispy, white hair curling around his wrinkled head and a face gaunt and sunk well into his skull. His teeth were all there, though perhaps not those naturally his own. The expensive uniform had been made for a man a good three stone heavier and a bit more at the midsection than the man before me was. He was a withered excuse of a human being; better fitted for fish bait than an example of masculinity. I had seen wrinkled old women in better shape; and that, I thought, was saying quite a lot.

  “Yes, sir?” God, even his voice was raspy; scarcely audible above his laboured breaths. His employer seemed not to notice.

  “Wilson, take Mr. English here to the lock room and show him about. He will be making an investment and wants to make sure it will be secure.” The butler croaked out another polite answer and turned to usher me along. After nearly tripping over his slow, frail frame several times, I moved beside him, carefully measuring my quick, strong strides to match his prehistoric shuffle. It was a miracle that the man worked at all, or didn’t fall to his death when climbing those polished staircases.

  “Have you worked for Sam long?” I asked informally, desperate to interrupt the grinding inhales of breath at my side.

  “Yes, Sir. Since he was a very young man, it was. Eight years or more.” I guessed the ‘more’.

  “And you like it?”

  “It’s a job, Sir. A little rough on the old bones once and a while, but I can’t complain. Can’t complain.” The butler paused his shuffle a moment, as though struck with a thought strange to his increasing age, but soon continued onwards toward another flight of stairs. “Don’t like his friends much. Down right scary, if you asked my opinion. But I can't complain. Can’t complain.”

  When we at last reached the top, I faced a hall almost identical to the one below. The paintings were different—more expensive—but the woodwork and papering were the same. I could not discern the pattern, but it was yellow. Horribly yellow. Obnoxiously yellow. The sort of color that tears into your eyes at the brink of morning when you do not wish to awaken, or that final taunting as the sun dipped low upon the horizon as the evening turned to night. Yellow. Wonderful yellow. It was vivid with life, glowing as would a pile of the purest gold that had fallen to the earth from the stars above. Gold: splendid, glorious, sickening gold.

  And then it hit me with a blare of trumpets.

  “Midas.” I announced, the unexpected echo of my voice startling the poor butler. “That’s what this house makes me think of: King Midas.” His lips curled back into his face. It took me a minute to realize it was a smile, rather than a show of canine anger.

  “Guess it does that. Can’t say there’s too much of a difference between the two. Mr. Baker has the golden touch with everything: girls, friends, money. Mostly money.”

  “No difference at all.” I added silently. Or at least, there was little ill comparison in the business sense. Sam Barker had ties to the mafia. What of it? Seemed everyone in the United States did in those days. And yet, I had not thought him so much a part of Cohen’s operations as a willing follower. An assistant tied not by either character or work ethic. Sam Barker made no desperate grasp for success, while success coursed through every inch of the great Meyer Cohen.

  Suddenly, with an alarming clatter of polished shoes thumping along the floor, Sam Barker’s ancient butler fell against the wall.

  I was ready to lunge forward to scrape the poor man off the extravagant paper, when the certain panel of the hall moved. A portion about five feet high and three feet across groaned and stiffly slid forwards into the rest of the wall before swinging inwards as a door. The old butler, having dusted imaginary bits of loose plaster from his jacket, beckoned me forward into a pool of darkness. I could not see but black past the end of my nose. It was a stifling darkness; pressing upon the ears and mind until one felt strangled by the mass of emptiness. I had expected an array of white electric lights to blind me at any moment.

  But it was not angelec lights that came.

  It began as a taunting blip before spreading along the walls and ceiling; dozens of red eyes glaring at me with malicious intent. Yet it was not I upon which they leered so devilishly, but hundreds of photographs in different stages of development. Some were seemingly innocent (two people chastely kissing in a doorframe or a group photo carefully positioned), while others were increasingly morbid and certainly something scandalous, should it somehow leak into the press. I had seen some such articles before and, while never ha
ving participated in the act of lovemaking myself, knew the general sense of the idea captured repulsively by a camera’s lens. Good Lord, there must have been thousands of poor souls captured under Cohen’s hand.

  In the corner was an enormous safe that ran from floor to ceiling and halfway across the wall. My voice echoed about my ears; light with a forced hilarity.

  “What’s in there? Dead bodies?”

  “No, Sir.” The servant chuckled dryly. “Tell the truth, I don’t know what’s in there at all. Don’t even know the combination. Mr. Barker tells us very little, but it’s a good job, and I can’t complain. Can’t complain.”

  SAM BARKER HAD GONE out by the time the butler escorted me back down to the office, and I immediately saw myself out. I leapt into the open arms of a taxi—checking first that it was not Keane huddled behind the wheel—and was carried back into the rushing rivers of Los Angeles life. A quick wash and change of clothes was all I needed to feel myself sufficiently drawn back to my resources, and not one in the Devil’s employ. To seal it; however, I felt the best solution could be found in sacred stones. I chose a modest necktie and shoved out into the streets; walking rather than whistling for a yellow chariot. The pavement was not particularly crowded that afternoon, nor the air quite so filthy as the day before. It was as though a pure life had fallen upon the streets. I could see as far before me as I could behind me.

  And yet it was not until I had walked several blistering blocks that I first became aware that I was being watched. Or at least, it is quite an unnatural coincidence that, at the exact moment I leaned against a building and dropped to tie my shoe, two men a few yards behind me were required to do the same. I followed a different path then; diving into taxis for a street or so, changing automobiles, leaping into most any shop and store, and occasionally searching for a back way out. The men were not particularly hard to lose, but when they disappeared, two others came.

  Always two.

  Always armed.

  Occasionally there would be a car following me with a bit too much accuracy to be strictly natural, which only proved a large sum of money hiding behind the muscled facade. Twice they came much too close to me. Three times they coughed when they oughtn’t have. And no less than six times did they curse to the other when I disappeared behind them. It took several hours to finally break myself away from them, but break away I did. At last, as the final wisps of daylight played at the horizon’s purple edge, any burly, overgrown figures to whom I had become unfortunately associated, crumbled into the earth.

  I had succeeded.

  As the nectar of momentary relief fell upon me, I dropped back down a street and walked the distance to my initial destination. It was the belltower that was first to appear; the rest of the mortored stones following close behind. An enormous window of stained glass showered the pavement in spectrals of vivid light. The steps were perfectly distanced from the street to the ominous oak doors; holding the church well above the immorality of passersby, while still remaining a welcoming figure in the darkness.

  The sanctuary was enormous, vast stretches of elaborate representations of all spiritual feats of the divine lord. White doves raised themselves towards the great bowl-like ceiling with their wings spread outward in peace. The high altar had been carved in a stony mass of white, and decorated by a simple, green linen cloth. Saints had been depicted splendidly in every window; staring dejectedly down at us mortals left to walk the turning earth.

  I moved to one of the front-most pews and took my place in prayer before the tabernacle. Even to those who do not pray, one must admit there is a peace to it. Now, among the saints and angels, I recalled not the glory of these things, but a time churning with suffering and death. It was a time where Keane was forced to carry his nephew’s body in a long, wooden box down the Irish countryside to the cemetery. He did so dutifully and without complaint. His back remained rigid throughout the entire affair; his face filled with quelled emotions. Keane had known his nephew well, it seemed. He had known him through the joys of boyhood, troubles of adolescence, and the pains that create a man.

  After all, even murderers are family in the end.

  Thomas too looked upon the brink of death’s door; his once heavy frame whittling away to a frail stalk of a man. Any relation to Keane’s strength and endurance had disappeared, but even my companion, stiff and sure against the world, seemed a good deal older as he and five others lifted the young Michael Keane upon their shoulders. Shoes on snow crunched the funeral march down, down into the graveyard. And there the young man lay even now, adjacent to his grandparents, lest he felt alone.

  But this is not what I remembered.

  I remembered the final words; the frozen fistful of earth as it was thrown against the coffin’s lid with a rattle of finality. Finality. It was finished. A life had officially ended.

  Michael Keane was dead.

  Thomas left then with his wife Catherine, his frail form desperately supported by her steadfast strength. The death of their son seemed not to affect her as tragically as it did her husband. Or perhaps she had not yet accepted the fact that he had gone. Or had she indeed accepted Michael’s death as easily as she would soon accept Thomas’? In any rate, the solemn priest too moved off toward the sparse group of mourners, leaving Keane and I towering above the hole.

  The hole that swallows man.

  I had not expected my companion to say anything, not from a lack of heart, but one that often does not reveal itself in great flows of emotion. Many times I had seen him draw into himself; tucked away in his books or a selection of exhausting lectures at some respectable university. No doubt he would smoke much, sleep little, and eat even less. It was a shock then to hear that rich baritone, carefully built upon rough Gaelic and smoothed by the King’s English, as it flitted outward into the air like waves gradually rolling unto the shore. With each meticulous word, the power grew until every syllable smashed downward into my mind with all the force of the world.

  “Go dtreoraíonn na haingil tú go Paradise; go dtiocfaidh na mairtírigh chun fáilte a chur romhat agus tú a thabhairt go dtí an chathair naofa, an Iarúsailéim nua agus síoraí.”

  May the angels lead you into paradise; may the martyrs come to welcome you and take you to the holy city, the new and eternal Jerusalem.

  I recited the words myself then, in that Californian church; allowing each word to mingle with the lost incense and float before the stained glass windows. The saints seemed little impressed by the pitiful whisperings, for they had said hundreds of such words in their own lives, but I was not particularly interested in being a saint. Children wish to be saints, and men wish to be gods. I, being neither of these, wished to be only mortal. To live life and be glad of it. I wanted to live knowing my weaknesses, follies, imperfections, and all the things that so kept me tied to this earth. One doesn’t have to like or approve of their own faults, but they must at least know them. I repeated the prayer a second time, though again my mind wandered to my missing companion. He had made it quite clear when I had left that I would not know where he was, and I did not try to find him. That did not mean I did not search for him casually in the face of every butcher or baker or taxi driver or business man or most any other person. But he was not there. I said the prayer again. Then again. And each time I finished wondering if I was truly distracted, or if I was subconsciously repeating it for him. For his safety. Or . . . or could it be I was saying it to be more like him? It was possible. I often wished to march through life with the same billowing force that changes tides and makes mighty ships crumble at the helm. I recited the prayer one final time, and at last entered peace.

  A peace that was immediately broken by a pair of heavy footsteps behind me and a cold, comanding voice whispering down a thousand curses of destruction.

  “Mr. English, I could shoot you now, or you could come with me. Since I haven’t already put a bullet in you, I hope you know which one I like better. I may not be a religious man, but killin’ someone in one o
f these places gives me the creeps.”

  The simplicity of the words, matched with the stale taste of a cheap film, gave the entire situation an odd sense of hilarity . . . up until the moment a gun’s cold barrel settled into the nape of my neck.

  And yet, my voice did not waver.

  “What right do you have to shoot me?”

  “A friend of a friend who wants to talk to you. And he doesn’t like waiting, if ya get my meaning.”

  “And if I do not wish to go?”

  “Then I shoot you. There. In your head.” There was the creek of the pew’s backing as the man leaned down on it; the frozen metal pressing further into my skull.

  “This is a church. You would not shoot in a church.”

  “I would if I had to. You have sixty seconds to decide.” A full minute wasn’t necessary. I stood gradually, the barrel following me with a lethal hesitation. At last, when I was on my feet, I turned slowly around. He was not as menacing as the many villains I had the misfortune of facing, but a part of my mind screamed that he had killed before. Another life ended. Another coffin buried. If he had already ridded the world of at least one human being, why hesitate to kill another?

  But the gun did not shatter the sacred silence of the church, and no glass exploded into deadly shards. But the gun did not stray from its lethal poise.

  “Come on. The car’s outside.” I calmly stepped into the aisle, considering briefly the weight of his words. Keane had been run down by an automobile in Ireland; left bloody and bruised on the side of the road. We had nearly been killed in another automobile upon arriving in Los Angeles. Now, I was to trust my life to the metal confines of yet another car.

  How ironic.

  My polished shoes hit the glimmering floor with a heavy solemnity, each step ringing as a march to an eager firing squad. The shouts of doomsday did not scese as I stepped out into the street and approached the black, elegant car waiting impatiently at the edge of the pavement. The door was opened and I was shoved inside by a heavy hand on my shoulder. Shock. Pain in my back. A sudden realisation that I was not alone. I wrangled the first glimpse of a smile and nodded to the man adjacent to me.