Shotgun Alley

by Andrew Klavan

  Graham let out a long sigh, as if he’d been holding his breath for several minutes while he thought things over. His eyes, enlarged behind the rimless lenses, kept that startled, disapproving expression. They gave nothing away.

  “What about my daughter?” he asked. “Other than being Tweedy’s…‘squeeze,’ or whatever. Where exactly does she fit in with all this? Has she been accomplice to any crimes to your knowledge? Has she been personally involved in anything illegal?”

  “I don’t know that yet, either.” Bishop let the last of his cigarette fall to the deck’s red cedar. He crushed it into the shiny stain with one boot. Graham watched the process grimly—but then, he hadn’t offered Bishop an ashtray, so what the hell. “I’ve started to work my way into the gang,” Bishop told him. “And Tweedy’s taken a liking to me. But it’s still early. It’s gonna take some time before he cuts me in, lets me know what they’re up to.”

  “Well, I can already guess what sort of thing they’re up to. It’s unlikely to be charity work.”

  Bishop snorted. “True enough. And look, it’s your money. I can find out more or I can walk away. Whatever you want me to do.”

  Graham fixed him with that politician’s look again, that look dead center. He seemed about to speak. Then he stopped himself. Then he said, “Come here for a minute. Come with me.”

  He rose swiftly from his chair. Stood waiting until Bishop did the same. He opened the glass panels again, strode back into the house. Bishop followed. Down a narrow hall to a closed door.

  Graham opened the door, let Bishop step through. Came in behind him, and pulled the door shut.

  Bishop looked around. This was the daughter’s room, Beverly Graham’s room. Or it had been, anyway, before she’d gone. There was a big bed with a lacy white canopy hanging from its tall posts. There were heart-shaped pillows and stuffed animals on the lacy white spread. There were jewelry boxes on the dresser top, and the dresser was hand-painted with pink fringes and yellow stars. There were posters of faggy rock boys on the wall. Posters of peace symbols and rainbows and suchlike.

  Graham aimed his big chin at the photographs—a crowd of snapshots on a vanity table, some framed, some stuck in the mirror, some pinned to a bulletin board hanging on the wall.

  “Look at her, Mr. Bishop…Jim. That’s what she was. I mean, till a year ago. That’s what she was.”

  Bishop looked and—well, what was she? She was a girl, an American girl. A rich one, a clean one, a happy one by all the looks of it. She’d been a cheerleader. She’d been to the prom. She’d draped her arms over other girls’ shoulders and had someone take their picture making funny faces. She’d gotten dressed up and dolled up and shrieked and laughed with too many best friends to count. And she seemed to’ve saved every picture of herself as a child that had ever been taken by anyone anywhere.

  Bishop worked his gaze from one photo to another. And, sure enough, they had an effect on him. But it probably wasn’t the effect Graham intended.

  Bishop thought it was sexy to see her like that. To see her as a child in frilly pink, as a coltish schoolgirl in a pleated skirt; to see her with her blue eyes sparkling and her cheeks rouged and her blonde hair piled up for some dance or other, or with the school letter on her sweater for the big game. Bishop hadn’t known a lot of girls like Beverly Graham, not up close. The clean, rich, happy ones—they mostly kept their distance from guys like him. It was sexy for him to see her the way she’d been and to think about her the way she was now, as “Honey,” climbing up her biker’s sleeve in Shotgun Alley, with her lips pursed and her clean, rich, fresh American face all smoke, all hunger.

  “She ran away once before,” her father said. “I didn’t tell you that, did I?”

  Bishop shook his head.

  “A year—not even a year ago. She took off one morning. It was three months before we tracked her down. Know where she was when we found her? She was living with a drug dealer who called himself Santé.”

  Bishop looked at the cheerleader, at the girl in the silver-blue prom dress decked with an orchid.

  “A drug dealer,” he said. “Is that right?”

  “Oh, not a street thug or anything. In fact, I understand he’s quite successful in his field. Has an estate down south, in Santa Ynez somewhere. Hundreds of acres of prime real estate. Apparently he keeps a mud pit in one area, not far from the house, and when he’s bored, I’m told, he dumps a garbage can of hundred-dollar bills into the mud and then sends his various girlfriends in there to fish them out. The girls are naked, of course, and our Mr. Santé and his friends sit on the veranda and watch them and take bets on which girl will collect the most hundreds.”

  Bishop looked at the cheerleader now, with her breasts pushing against the school letter. He imagined her in the mud pit naked, fighting other naked girls for hundred-dollar bills. Whew, he thought. Then he forced himself to stop imagining.

  “Fortunately, I was able to convince Santé that his life would be less complicated without having me for an enemy,” Philip Graham went on. “He cut her loose. She called me from a mall in Santa Barbara, crying, broke. She has no money of her own. I’ve made sure of that. Don’t ask me what happened to all those hundreds she pulled out of the mud.”

  Bishop tore his gaze from the pictures. Looked at the man. The lights were off in the room. The house, low on the hillside, didn’t get much sun through the foliage, so it was gray in here and shady. It was hard for Bishop to read Graham’s expression. For all he could tell, it didn’t seem to’ve changed much.

  Graham squared his shoulders. Continued, stalwart. “I drove down to pick her up myself. Brought her home. She actually seemed grateful at first. I thought maybe she’d learned her lesson. She moved back in, applied to some schools. I think she even started seeing some nice young man from the city. Then…” Graham’s voice trailed off.

  Bishop considered. Slowly, he drew his hand over his stubbly cheek. “Like I said, Mr. Graham, it’s your money. What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to get her the fuck out of there,” Graham answered quietly. “That’s what I want. I want you to get her away from this Cobra and out of there before she gets herself into real trouble. And before she embarrasses me by getting her face on television or in the newspapers.”

  “Well, yeah, I can see how you’d want that. The question is, how’m I supposed to pull it off? She’s nineteen years old. Legally, she can be with whoever she wants.”

  “I don’t give a shit how old she is. She’s my daughter. I don’t want her to get killed. Or beaten up or arrested. And I don’t want my life derailed because some smart reporter happens to spot her on the back of this punk’s motorcycle. I want her taken away from Cobra quickly. And I want it done quietly. And I want it done this time so it stays done.”

  “Well…” Bishop scratched at his stubble again. “I don’t think you can scare Cobra off like you did with Santé—he doesn’t have enough to lose. You could try to buy him off.”

  Graham pressed his lips together. “No.”

  “Right,” said Bishop. “Right. If the media got ahold of that, you’d be finished.” He shrugged. “Look, I could toss her over my shoulder and carry her out, but from what you tell me, it’s a pretty sure bet she’d just take off again. No offense or anything, but she’s climbing up this ratbag like ivy. Unless you’re planning to lock her in a tower somewhere, if I drag her out against her will, she’ll be back with him in a week.”

  Graham made a soft, derisive noise. “Why do you think I brought you in here?” he said. “Why do you think I wanted you to see these pictures? You think I give a shit if you cry over my daughter’s lost innocence? I wanted you to see who she was—and what she is: a spoiled, rebellious little girl who thinks she can hurt me and break away from her past by demeaning herself with violent, dangerous men.”

  Graham shifted. Looked down at Bishop from his greater height. Matched Bishop gaze for gaze in the shadows. The little girl and the cheerleader and the prom
queen—none of that mattered now. There were just the two of them, the two men, eyeball to eyeball.

  “You strike me as a pretty dangerous man yourself,” Graham said.

  Now Bishop—Bishop was a pretty cool case, too, no one cooler. But even he hesitated here for a second. “What…what do you mean?”

  “You know exactly what I mean. You said it yourself: She’s an adult, a free woman. You can’t drag her out or bluff her out or buy her out. She needs to be given a reason to walk away. She needs to be…convinced.” He didn’t bother to hide the scorn in his voice. “I’m a very good judge of character, Mr. Bishop…Jim. You strike me as just the sort of man who could convince her.”

  Bishop stared another second, then nearly laughed out loud, very nearly. Of course, he had been thinking about fucking Honey Graham from the first second he set eyes on her. That was Bishop, that’s what he did. He fucked anything fuckable whenever he got the chance. Still, it hadn’t occurred to him that her father might actually pay him to do it, might actually hire him to seduce her away from Cobra.

  “Once she left him for someone else, I doubt a man like Cobra would take her back again,” Graham said.

  Bishop blinked. “Uh…no. No, you’re probably right about that.”

  “Well, I want you to see to it that she leaves him for you. And this time, when she comes crawling back, abandoned and broke, I’ll handle it right. Get her out of the country. Switzerland maybe. Put her in a school somewhere. Somewhere she won’t be able to hurt herself—or if she does, she won’t be able to embarrass me.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Bishop murmured.

  “It is. It is a plan,” said Philip Graham. “That is, if you think you can do it.”

  There was some more of this man-to-man eyeball bullshit. Then Bishop did laugh once. “Oh yeah,” he said. “I can do it.”

  “Good,” said Philip Graham. He threw open the door to his daughter’s room. “Do it.”

  Eleven

  So next day, Monday, Bishop was with the gang again. He was at Cobra’s place in Berkeley, a great big clapboard box of an old house in the town’s run-down southwestern lowlands.

  Bishop, Cobra, and Shorty were all out in the wide garage. This was Cobra’s chop shop, where he and his buddies worked on their bikes. Cobra, ass planted on an upended milk crate, was taking the carb out of his silver hog’s manifold for a rejet. Shorty was assembling a new chrome intake system on his Fat Boy. And Bishop, just to be doing something with them, was on one knee, laboriously polishing the spokes on his front wheel—a new wheel he’d gotten because of the wind resistance on the full disc original.

  Unscrewing a Phillips head from the carburetor’s float bowl, Cobra stole a glance across the garage at the newcomer. Checking him out, gauging the give-and-take between the man and his machine. This was important business around here: the bikes, the way they chopped the bikes, knew the bikes. It was like the language these guys spoke to one another. Even just shining up the chrome the way he was, Bishop could feel Cobra watching him, judging him.

  Now, fingering the grooves of his screwdriver handle, the outlaw pinned Bishop with one of his gaudy emerald eyes. The angles of his craggy, V-shaped face sharpened in a canny smile. “Hey, waxer,” he said. “That chrome won’t get you home, y’know.”

  “Oh yeah.” Bishop nodded at the other’s silver Softail. “Look at that thing, dude. Like something that came out of a slot machine. This, I just put a new stroker in last month, gave me another quarter inch.”

  “That’ll speed her up, all right,” said Shorty. He was cross-legged on the shop floor, his shaved head bent as he twisted a breather bolt into a carb bracket. “Till you blow your rods all over the highway.”

  Bishop went on carefully working his rag around spoke after spoke. “Nah, I ran a plate in there at one-eighth, kept the ratio the same. She starts a lot better now, too. Of course, I had to weld in a spacer to get the engine back, and fuck me if I blow a gasket.”

  Cobra laughed. Nodded, satisified. He sighted along his screwdriver blade and started on the next Phillips head.

  Bishop polished the wheel. The smell of the degreaser and the oil was thick and sharp. The garage door was closed. There were two windows on one wall, open to let out the fumes, but there was no cross breeze and it was a still, warm day. The fumes and the stench were stifling. Sweat dripped off his brow onto his arms, onto the floor.

  Now the door from the house came open. Both Bishop and Shorty automatically glanced over that way. Then they kept looking that way as Honey stepped into the garage.

  She was wearing one of Cobra’s leather jackets. It covered her to the tops of her thighs in back but it was unzipped in front and she had nothing on underneath but a pair of pink panties, bikini panties. When she moved, the jacket came open. The white of her flat belly flashed. The curve of one small breast showed to the dark nipple. She had her blonde hair tied back in a ponytail with a red ribbon. It was a sweet touch. It made her face look scrubbed and fresh and innocent. It was the way she looked in the photographs, Bishop thought. Those photographs on the vanity table in her father’s house.

  “I brought you guys some beer,” she said.

  She had two bottles of Rolling Rock in one hand and a third in the other. They clinked and rattled as she set them on the worktable at Cobra’s back.

  “Ah, you’re the best,” Cobra growled at her.

  He pulled her down across his lap. He kissed her deeply. His hand went up her back, lifting the leather jacket. The pink panties had only a thong back there. Her slim ass was bared to the other two men.

  Cobra worked his tongue in her mouth, worked his hand up over her waist, pushing the jacket up farther. She moved her body against his touch.

  Bishop watched her. He felt the rhythm of his breathing change. The sweat ran down his forehead in two streams. He and Shorty exchanged a glance. Shorty shook his head and smiled in admiration.

  Cobra broke out of the kiss. He nuzzled his face affectionately against the girl’s. Then he spanked her twice and set her on her feet. She pouted down at him.

  “You ever coming in?” she asked him. “You said you would. I’m getting bored.”

  He reached behind him casually, snagged his Rolling Rock off the worktable. “Yeah, just let me finish up in here, okay, baby?”

  She sighed, trailed her finger down his cheek. “You sure do like to take those things apart, Co. You spend all day at it practically.”

  “S’ what it’s all about, sweetheart. What it is all about.”

  “What?” She still pretended to pout down at him. Moved her hips near his face. “It’s all about taking engines apart?”

  “Fucking A,” said Cobra. He winked at the two others. “And not just engines, either. Everything. Am I right? Taking everything apart. Taking everything apart until it all comes tumbling down.”

  He lifted his beer high by his head, sitting knees wide and grinning, wicked, a sceptered king on his milk crate throne. As if he’d said something true and profound, he toasted them all and drank to it.

  Honey smiled at him indulgently. Gently mussed his combed-back hair: He was her baby boy. “Well, when you’re finished bringing society to its knees, you can come upstairs and do the same for me,” she said. “Okay?”

  “Oh man!” whispered Shorty, shaking his head again.

  Honey stepped in between Cobra’s spread legs. She drew one side of her jacket open. Cobra pushed open the other side with the neck of his beer bottle. She pressed her naked self against him, the jacket folding over him.

  Shorty bit his lip, squeezed his eyes half shut, jamming to the turn-on like it was a riff on a mad guitar. It was hot to see, all right. Bishop lifted the stub of a cigarette burning on a cinder block beside him. He wiped his brow with his T-shirt sleeve. He pulled smoke and watched Cobra’s hands lift Honey’s jacket in back again. He watched the way her yellow ponytail hung down against the black leather.

  He wanted her. He was surprised how much. He watched h
er through the fumes and smoke and heat that swirled around his head. He watched her grinding into Cobra. He thought of the cheerleader and the prom queen in the photographs. He wanted her a lot.

  This wasn’t going to be easy, he thought. To draw her off, to steal her. He’d felt pretty sure of himself in her bedroom back home. He’d sounded awfully sure, striking the raw deal with her father. Why not? Women fell for Bishop. It was wild sometimes the way they fell. Maybe it was because of his good looks or all the cool stuff he did, riding motorcycles, flying planes, beating people up and so on. Or maybe it was just because he was such a coldhearted bastard, a challenge to the female sensibility.

  But Cobra—Cobra was just as cool, just as cold, and every inch as big a bastard. It was going to be genuinely tough to take Honey away from him.

  Bishop took a last drag off his cigarette. He smiled to himself behind the smoke. Yeah, he thought. It was going to be tough as hell.

  Finally, the lovers broke it up. Honey drifted off reluctantly, lifting her arm to let her hand linger in Cobra’s hand, her fingers trailing away. She blew him a kiss from the door.

  Bishop watched her, still smiling to himself. He watched her until she went inside, until the door closed behind her.