Bleeders

by Bill Pronzini

  Baldy wasn’t Jackie Spoons. Jackie was too big, too tall, and the last time I’d set eyes on him he’d worn a thick Fu Manchu mustache and had a pile of wavy black hair. He wouldn’t have needed a gun to do the job on me, either. He’d have gotten me in a chokehold and snapped my neck with one quick twist. He had arms like Popeye’s and hands like catcher’s gloves. Jackie Shovels would have been a more appropriate sobriquet. But the name Spoons hadn’t come from the size of his hands; it was a childhood nickname pinned on him because his father, a Greek immigrant and amateur musician, had made music with ordinary spoons and tried to teach his son to do the same. Jackie’s real name was something like Andropopolous.

  Nick Kinsella. I knew him a little; he wasn’t Baldy, either. He owned a place on San Bruno Avenue, off Bayshore west of Candlestick Park, called the Blacklight Tavern, but that wasn’t his primary source of income. He’d made his pile in the time-honored trade of loan-sharking. Another rough-trader: he charged a heavy weekly vig, and if you missed a payment or two you could expect a visit from one of his enforcers—big, bad boys like Jackie Spoons. Once, years ago, I’d tracked down and brought back a bail-jumper for a bondsman named Abe Melikian. The jumper was somebody Kinsella had a grudge against; he liked me for putting the guy back in the slammer. Any time I needed a favor, he’d said to me at the time. I’d taken him up on it once, when I had no other way to get certain information. Maybe my credit was still good for one more favor.

  I drove south on Bayshore, took the San Bruno Avenue exit. This was one of the city’s older residential neighborhoods, workingclass like the one I’d grown up in in the Outer Mission. During World War II, and while the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard humped along for twenty-five years afterward, it had been a reasonably decent section in which to live and raise a family. Then the shipyard shut down, the mostly black wartime work force stayed on, and a variety of factors, not the least of which were poverty and racism, combined to erode Hunters Point into a mean-streets ghetto. Now, with the crack-infested Point on one side and the drug deli that McLaren Park had become on the other, this neighborhood had eroded, too. Signs of decay were everywhere: boarded-up storefronts, bars on windows and doors, houses defaced by graffiti and neglect, homeless people and drunks huddled in doorways.

  The Blacklight Tavern fit right in. It was aptly named: From a distance the building looked like one that had been badly scorched in a fire. Black-painted facade, smoke-tinted windows, black sign with neon letters that would blaze white after dark but seemed burned out in the daylight. I parked down the block and locked the car, not that that would stop anybody who thought it might contain something tradeable for a rock of crack or a jug of cheap sweet wine.

  Inside, the place might have been O’Key’s or any other bottom-feeder bar populated by the usual array of late-afternoon drinkers. Two hustlers, one black and one white, gave me bleary-eyed once-overs as I moved up to the bar. The bartender had a head like a redwood burl and a surly manner. All he said when I caught his eye was, “Yeah?”

  “Nick Kinsella. He in?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  I passed over one of my business cards. He didn’t even glance at it.

  “Mr. Kinsella know you?”

  “He knows me. Tell him it’s a business matter.”

  “Be a few minutes, maybe. Drink while you’re waiting?”

  “Beer. Whatever you have on draft.”

  He drew the beer, slid it over, and took my card to a back-bar phone.

  The white hustler, a chubby blonde in her middle thirties, came sidling over and rubbed a meaty breast against my arm. “Big,” she said. Whiskey voice, as deep as a man’s. “Big all over, I’ll bet.”

  “You’ll never know,” I said.

  “Oh, now, don’t be like that. Be friendly. This is a friendly place. Buy me a drink?”

  “I’m here on business.”

  “So am I, honey. Buy me a drink?”

  “No.”

  “One little drink, just to be friendly.”

  “I said no. I’m not interested in company.”

  “Buy the lady a drink, for Chrissakes,” somebody behind me said. “What the hell?”

  I turned halfway to look. He was young, wearing the stained overalls and cap of a painter; the looseness in his face and the shine in his eyes said he’d been here awhile. He wasn’t alone in his afternoon bag. He had a friend, similarly dressed, similarly red-faced, perched on the stool next to him.

  “What the hell you lookin’ at, Pops?” the same one said.

  Terrific. Another small man with a small mind, the kind of two-brain-cell cretin who turns mean and belligerent on an alcohol diet and looks for an excuse to flex his bloated machismo. I turned away from him without answering. Anything I said would have been provocative.

  “Hey, I ask you a question.”

  The other one had some sense left. He said, “Let him ’lone, Marty. We don’t want no trouble.”

  “I ask him a question.” Hard and tough. He poked my elbow and said, “Hey, you old fuck, I ask you a question. Why don’t you answer me, huh?”

  Old fuck. The same thing Baldy had called me last night. I could hear the clicks again, loud and clear. And the rage that surged into my throat was so sudden and virulent it surprised me; I had to almost literally hold it down, using the beveled edge of the bar and both hands as a surrogate.

  “Let him ’lone, Marty, goddamn it.”

  “Old fuck comes in here, gives me a look, don’t answer me when I talk to him. Who’s he think he is?”

  Back off, I thought. Back off!

  No. He said, “Hey, lookit, he’s marked up. Somebody else dint like his looks. Hey, Pops, you want some more marks on that ugly face of yours?”

  I turned again, even more slowly, and faced him square on. It was an effort to keep my voice even when I said, “I’ve had enough of your bullshit. Mind your own business.”

  “What you say to me?”

  “You heard what I said. You don’t want any part of me, Marty. Not now, not ever. Start something and you’ll crawl out of here bleeding. Guaranteed.”

  He made a bullish noise and started clumsily off his stool. The other one caught his arm, held him down. “Jesus,” he said, “Jesus, Marty, he means it. Lookit his face. He means it.”

  The bartender was back. He said, “He’s not the only one means it,” and he leaned over and cuffed Marty on the side of the head, not lightly.

  The blow caught the drunk by surprise; it also confused him. He blinked half a dozen times, rubbing his head. “Hey, Pete, what’s the idea, hah?”

  “Shut up. Stick your nose in your drink and keep it there, you know what’s good for you.”

  “Sure. Sure, I doan want no hassle with you, Pete.” He aimed one last weak glare my way, then hunched down and wrapped both hands around his glass. Pouting now, with his lower lip poked out like a three-year-old. He wasn’t seeing anybody or anything except his own alcoholic haze.

  “Okay,” the bartender said to me in a different, almost respectful tone. “Nick’ll see you. First door past the ladies’ crapper.”

  “I’ve been here before.”

  “I ain’t surprised.”

  I went back there, conscious of eyes following me, and knocked on the door and walked into a mostly barren office that stank of cigar smoke and fried food. It had two men in it, Kinsella and a lopsided, three-hundred-pound giant with a heavy five-o’clock shadow and a gold earring that gave him the look of a dim-witted pirate. One of the shark’s enforcers, no doubt. Kinsella sat bulging behind a cherrywood desk. He had three chins and a waistline as big as the giant’s, though he was seven or eight inches shorter. The two of them wore grease on their mouths and fingers, courtesy of a bucket of fast-food fried chicken squatting on the desk.

  I shut the door behind me. “Long time, Nick.”

  “Long time,” he agreed. “You want some chicken? We got plenty. Extra-crispy.”

  “No, thanks. Not hungry.”

&
nbsp; “Wish I could say the same. I got the curse—I’m always hungry.” He hoisted a wad of soiled paper towel off his lap, wiped his fingers and dabbed almost delicately at his mouth. “I won’t ask how you been. I figure I know the answer. I figure I got a pretty good idea why you come around to see me.”

  “Is that right?”

  “I read four papers every day,” he said, “watch the TV news every night. I like to know what’s going on. You come close to it last night, my friend.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Close.”

  “I’m relieved it’s only close. I don’t like funerals, and I figure I’d’ve had to go to yours out of respect.”

  “I guess I should be flattered.”

  “Nah. I don’t like funerals but I go to a lot of ’em because I know a lot of people that die sudden.” He pulled a chicken leg out of the bucket, tore off a chunk of meat with teeth so white and perfect they had to be implants. “Go ahead, eat, Bluto,” he said to the giant. “You don’t have to stand there like a lump with drool on your mouth.”

  The giant helped himself. Chewing, Kinsella said to me, “Bluto ain’t his real name. I call him that on account of he reminds me of the guy in Popeye. You sure you don’t want some chicken?”

  “Positive.”

  “So anyway, I figure you want me to tell you something, but I can’t figure what it is. You got to know nobody in my organization would pull a stunt like that one last night. Hijacking cash and killing schoolteachers, that ain’t my business or my style.”

  “I know it’s not.”

  “So?”

  “So the police aren’t the only ones looking for the shooter. Big guy about forty, bald, bushy eyebrows, onion breath. Uses a short-barreled revolver, likely a thirty-eight.”

  “Could be anybody. How come you figure I’d know him?”

  “You know a lot of people, like you said.”

  “Not somebody looks like that. You, Bluto?”

  Bluto’s mouth was full of chicken breast; he grunted and shook his head.

  “So,” Kinsella said, “I figure there’s something else you want me to tell you. Some other angle. Like maybe you figure this bald schmuck wasn’t a solo worker. Like maybe you figure the lady’s husband was in on it.”

  “You’re pretty sharp, Nick.”

  “Sure I am. That’s how come I’m still in business after, what, twenty-three years. That’s how come I pay such high taxes.” He finished the chicken leg, threw the bone into his wastebasket. Cleaned his fingers and his mouth again, tossed the greasy paper towels in with the bones, and fired up one of the black stogies he favored. Two puffs, and the air grayed; I could feel congestion form in my chest. “Cohalan, that’s the husband’s name, right? I don’t know him, neither.”

  “He’s a crankhead,” I said. “He’s got a girlfriend who’s a crankhead. There’s a chance the two of them were dealing as well as using, that that’s what they wanted the money for.”

  “So? That also ain’t my business.”

  “No, but I hear it’s Jackie Spoons’ business now.”

  “Aha,” he said. “So that’s it. Jackie Spoons.”

  “I know he doesn’t work for you anymore, but I thought you might know where I can find him.”

  “He’s crazy, you know that? A crazy man.”

  “Crazy enough for hijacking and murder?”

  “Sure, but not the way it was done last night. Uh-uh.”

  “I just want to talk to him.”

  “When he quit me,” Kinsella said, “I was glad to see him go. He don’t take orders, he don’t show restraint, he don’t act like a normal human being. And he don’t like to talk to people he don’t know.”

  “I won’t cross him.”

  “Maybe you don’t think so. But what you call crossing and what he calls crossing might be two different things. You come close to it last night. I’d hate to see your luck run out with Jackie Spoons, and I have to go to your funeral after all.”

  “That won’t happen. Where can I find him, Nick?”

  He sucked on his stogie, blew a stream of foul-smelling smoke in my direction. I coughed and waved it away, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Well, what the hell. I said my piece. I figure you don’t want to listen to good advice, that’s your business. I figure maybe you’re entitled to push your luck. I might push mine, too, if I’d been the one come close to it in Daly City.”

  “I’ll keep your name out of it. He won’t know where I got the information.”

  “You figure I care about that? I don’t care about that. Jackie Spoons is crazy, but he don’t scare me. Nobody scares me except Uncle Sam. That’s why I pay my high taxes right on time every year, don’t take no questionable deductions.” He sent another spurt of smoke my way. “Okay. You know the Veterans’ Gym? Out near the Daly City line?”

  “I know it. That’s my old neighborhood.”

  “Yeah? The Outer Mission?”

  “Born and raised.”

  “I be damned,” Kinsella said. “I didn’t know that. Used to be a good, solid working-class neighborhood. Now it’s as shitty as this one. Whole damn city’s falling apart, you ask me.”

  And you’re one of those who helped with the deconstruction, I thought. I said, “The Veterans’ Gym where Jackie Spoons hangs out?”

  “That’s where. Lifts weights, watches the pissants that pass for fighters these days train—like that.”

  “Do his dealing there, too?”

  “Uh-uh. He’s crazy, but he’s smart enough not to crap where he relaxes. You go out there, ask for Zeke Mayjack. Him and Jackie Spoons been friends a long time. You connect with Zeke, schmooz him a little, get him to walk you up to his buddy, and maybe Jackie’ll talk to you after all.”

  “Thanks, Nick.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. You ain’t seen Jackie Spoons yet.”

  I said, “Before I leave, can I run a couple more names by you?”

  His sigh turned into a hacking cough. When he got it under control he said, “These names maybe also connected?”

  “Maybe. I’ll know when I find them.”

  “So go ahead.”

  “Charlie Bright. Junkie and small-time dealer.”

  “Nah. Bluto?”

  Bluto shook his head.

  “Dingo,” I said.

  “What the hell kind of name is that, Dingo?”

  “I don’t know that it is somebody’s name. A place, maybe. Mean anything?”

  “Nah. Bluto?”

  Bluto shook his head.

  “So that’s it then,” I said. “Unless I can talk you into asking around about Bright and Dingo?”

  He thought about it. “I did you one favor, now you figure I’m good for more than one in return. Well, maybe I am. I’m a soft touch for people I like, people done me a good turn one time. But I’m also a guy believes in what you call your quid pro quo. You done me a favor, I done you a couple, now I figure we’re even. So if I ask around about this Bright and this Dingo, then I figure you owe me one. Not right away, but someday, and you don’t say no when I ask. Fair enough?”

  I didn’t like the idea of being in Nick Kinsella’s debt, but I did not have much choice. If I refused it would offend him, and Kinsella was nobody you wanted to be mad at you. “Fair enough,” I said.

  He grinned, coughed, scowled, jabbed the stogie into an ashtray, and grinned again. “I got your card, I’ll call you. Won’t be too long, one way or the other.” I nodded and turned for the door, and he said, “And don’t forget what I told you.”

  “About the quid pro quo?”

  “Nah. About Jackie Spoons being crazy. About don’t make me have to go to your funeral after all.”

  The Veterans’ Gym was one of those time-warp places that have somehow managed to survive into the technological age and the new millenium. One good reason, if not the only one, is that it was tucked away in a blue-collar section well removed from the heart of the city. Even so, its days had to be numbered. San Francisco’s explosive economy h
as driven real estate values through the roof and changed the city’s shape, cultural diversity, and future. It used to be a bohemian paradise, flavored by old-world ethnicity and a laissez-faire attitude; now, the bohemians and artists, poor by nature, are being forced out in droves, and residential and commercial space is being auctioned off to the highest bidder. Big Business and Big Bucks rule, and you can’t tell the politicans from the developers and all the other high-profile, high-living, high-handed movers and shakers. The old way of San Francisco life is dying; places like the Veterans’ Gym, despite its location, are little more than upright corpses waiting for the undertaker.

  As soon as I walked in, it was like stepping back fifty years or more—into a scene in a circa 1950 black-and-white boxing flick that had been poorly colorized. The walls in the big anteroom were coated with fight cards, many of them for bouts that had been held in the old Civic Auditorium, and high-gloss photos of boxers in fighting poses. A lot of the names were familiar: Joe Louis, Ezzard Charles. Unfamiliar were such long-gone, long-forgotten local white hopes as Silent Ramponi and Mongo “The Rock” Luciano. Through an open doorway I could see part of the main gym, two guys sparring in a ring, somebody in sweats banging away on a light bag. Smack of leather on leather, male voices yelling encouragements and obscenities. Smells of sweat and liniment and leather and canvas and wood so old even the termites were fifth or sixth generation. Strictly a male domain, the Veterans’. Not even the most ardent feminist would care to try breaching its testosterone-soaked atmosphere.

  A counter ran along the wall next to the gym entrance, and behind it was a guy about my age whose torso bulged in a light sweatshirt with the word Veterans’ across the front. Ex-light heavyweight, from the look of him. He gave me the once-over as I approached and was not impressed: I had the wrong look, the wrong body type, and I was a stranger besides.