Battle Axe

by Carsen Taite

  “Then why don’t you do that? As I recall, you showed up here without an invite. You can leave anytime you like.”

  She didn’t deserve my anger, but I didn’t have anything else to offer. I stood and started toward the door, pausing when she called my name.

  “Luca.”

  I turned around. “Yeah?”

  “Be careful. I mean it.”

  She frowned, with worry not anger. I recognized the look. I’d seen it before and had even welcomed her concern, but right now, I’d trade a pound of her concern for an ounce of something deeper. When had the balance between us shifted from need to want? I shoved the question deep. I didn’t have answers. At least none I wanted to explore. I left without another word and she didn’t try to stop me.

  *

  I drove home and took a nap. I planned on a long one to compensate for getting up too early for absolutely no reason whatsoever, but precisely at the moment my eyeballs started REMing, a loud and unrelenting knocking jerked me out of sleep. At the same instant, my cell phone started ringing. Boy, was I popular. I glanced at the phone—unknown number. Again. That made at least five I’d gotten in the last week. I pushed ignore, grabbed the Colt from my nightstand, and strode to the door, ready to shoot up whoever felt the need to knock so damn loud at eleven in the morning. I swung the door wide and waved my gun. “What the hell do you want?”

  “Put that thing away. You could kill somebody. And put some clothes on before you answer the door. Didn’t your mama teach you any better?”

  My landlord, Ernest Withers, averted his eyes, but his red face signaled he was truly mortified to have seen me half-dressed. I’d answered the door dressed only in an old, ratty T-shirt, sporting a big gun. I probably looked ridiculous, but I didn’t care. He was the one who’d interrupted my nap, after all. “My mama taught me not to beat on people’s doors in the middle of the day.”

  He shuffled in place, but he didn’t back down. “I came for the rent you owe. Don’t you own any clothes that don’t have holes in them?”

  The non sequitur didn’t faze me. I was used to his eccentric ways. His ways, and the fact that he overlooked most of mine, were a large part of the reason I stayed in this dump. I usually paid my rent around the middle of the month, and considered the delay a free line of credit. This month, I’d gone into the third week before he’d caught me. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the cash. It was just that there were so many more fun things to do with money than pay for a roof over my head. I thought back to the other night when I’d blown a large part of my stash at Bingo’s. That’d been fun, but paying Withers now would put another serious dent in my cash flow. I hunted around until I found my jeans on the floor where I’d shed them and pulled a small wad of bills from the pocket. I peeled off a few bills, about half the rent, and handed it to him. “Here’s most of it,” I exaggerated. “I’ve got steady work. I can get the rest to you next week.”

  He snatched the bills from my hand before I could change my mind and sighed heavily while he counted it out. “Luca, I have a business to run. You may be able to work whenever you like, and do God knows what in the middle of the day…” He cast a disparaging look from my smashed hair to my crumpled attire. “But I have bills to pay.”

  “Aw, come on, Withers. I’ll get you your money. I always do.” I waved the Colt again. “Now run along or I’ll report you to the housing authority for being a slumlord.” I had no idea if there was a housing authority who made sure cheapskates like me have decent housing for almost no money, but I played the bluff well. He scurried off and I hit the bed again, but this time sleep was elusive. Instead of counting sheep, I counted unanswered questions about Diamond, Bingo, Vedda, Petrov. And Jess. All subjects I knew less about than I should, but more than I wanted.

  After an hour of futile ciphering, I gave up on sleep and consulted Hardin’s list. The next jumper listed was Otis Shaw. Bond had been posted at fifty grand, a healthy payout. Time to collect some funds and forget about gamblers, gangsters, and girls. For now, anyway.

  I’d saved this particular jumper for a reason. Apprehending him was going to be more work than the others. Otis Shaw wasn’t a small-time thug. He’d been charged with murder, and he’d cut out the day his trial was supposed to begin. He wasn’t a psycho kind of murderer. The person he shot down was a childhood friend turned rival in a dispute over drugs and a woman. To guys like these, the drugs were probably more important than the woman, but she’d probably been what had tipped the scale from anger to gunshots. Finding her would likely lead me to him.

  The Internet gave her last known in just a few clicks. I dressed in the Colt, Sig, and my trusty switchblade, and headed out the door. By now it was one o’clock and I was starving. I should definitely eat before taking on Shaw. I glanced down the street. Maggie’s place was open and it was easy. Maybe she’d have some good gossip. Maybe my dad wouldn’t be there hanging on her arm. Wasn’t sure why their relationship bothered me, but maybe I was just tired of seeing all the bachelors in my life suddenly coupled up. Jess, Dad, my brother.

  Jess’s words from the other day rang in my head. Are you going to be in the wedding? Hell no, I wasn’t going to be in the wedding. Mark hadn’t even told me there was a wedding. I didn’t blame him. We didn’t share much since he’d hightailed it out of town to get away from the life-sucking drain of our parents’ house. He’d had it the hardest when they spiraled into divorce. Me, I’d never believed in happily ever afters, but he’d always harbored fancy notions about true love, destiny, and all that crap. When he finally figured out Mom and Dad would just as soon beat each other to death as look at each other, he was devastated. He told me once, when he was in college, he no longer believed in marriage.

  Fast-forward and Mark was engaged. If it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone. Was no one safe?

  Maggie’s place was mostly empty. I grabbed a barstool and laid a twenty down. I had a tab, but lately I felt funny using it, like it was nepotism. Stupid, I know, but with everyone blurring lines around me, I clung to my independence. I can’t always afford principles, but I liked it when I could.

  Maggie bounced over and shoved the twenty into my breast pocket. Well, I’d tried to be principled. “You hungry?” she asked.

  “Very.”

  She nodded, poured me a glass of tea, and left with an “I’ll be right back” tossed over her shoulder. The tea was okay, but I’d have preferred a beer. A couple actually. Probably best I didn’t indulge. If I started drinking, I wouldn’t be hungry anymore. I hoped for a burger. And fries. Protein and grease to fortify me for the job ahead.

  She returned in a few minutes. “Your lunch will be ready in a minute. Have you talked to your brother?”

  “You sound like my mother. You bucking for the role?”

  She didn’t flinch. “Not a chance, girl. But it would make your dad happy if you were involved in the wedding.”

  “I haven’t been asked. Hell, I’ve barely been told about it.”

  “I don’t think it’s been long in the making.”

  “Really?” Mark was the last person I’d expect to get married on the fly. “Is she pregnant? Maybe they’ll elope.”

  “Not a chance. Girl’s parents want a big shindig. They have money. Society folks. It’s going to be quite a to-do.”

  With that threat, she took off again, hopefully to check on my lunch. While she was gone, I tried to picture my dad stuffed into a rental tux, standing alongside fancy rich folks, making a toast to his son, the groom. I wondered which of my mother’s husbands she’d choose to bring to the affair. She’d remarried so often, I stopped keeping track. Her string of husbands all had money, the primary prerequisite for marrying my mother. Dad and I would be out of place at a society wedding. High school educated, blue-collar misfits. Nerdy Mark should be out of place too. How he had gotten hooked up with money, high-class money at that? Last time I’d talked to him, the most exciting thing in his life was being on the brink of cracking some kind
of code. I didn’t understand a word of what he’d said, but I knew it had been the most important thing in his life. Granted, our conversation was several months ago, but what happened to change all that?

  “Here you go.” Maggie slid a plate in front of me, a huge smile on her face. I decided her smile had to do with the joke she was playing on me. Instead of a big burger and crispy fries, I was staring at a turkey sandwich on wheat bread. With leafy greens that looked suspiciously like spinach. And a fruit cup where the fries should be. Fresh fruit.

  I pushed the plate back toward her. “You running low on food back there?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean this looks a little healthy. I eat this, I might have a reaction.”

  “Like feeling good?”

  “I feel just fine.”

  “You eat crap. This is good food.”

  “You force feed your other customers with this stuff?”

  “You’re not a customer. This is on the house.”

  I pulled the twenty back out of my pocket and tossed it on the bar. “How many French fries will that buy?”

  She sighed. “You’re just like your father.” It wasn’t a compliment.

  “You try to get him to eat like this?”

  “He says he likes it, but I think he sneaks off and eats junk when I’m not around.”

  I grinned because I knew he did. My mother had given up trying to get him to eat right when I was still in diapers. “You can’t change people.”

  “That right, Luca? Bet you thought your brother would never get married.”

  We’d talked about my family before she’d ever met my father. Bartender/drinker kind of talk. Didn’t think she’d retain or remember anything I’d whispered into my beer. “You’re right about that.”

  “What about you? You ever going to get married? Whatever happened to that nice cop that helped Billy out? You two seemed to get along real well.”

  And there went my appetite. Maggie didn’t usually refer to cops as “nice.” They were pesky rule-mongers who badgered suffering business folks. But she’d taken a shine to Jess after Jess had helped her no-good brother out of a jam.

  I started to reply with a “we’re just friends,” but stopped myself when I wasn’t sure if “friends” was an accurate characterization of what we were to each other. We’d gone to the police academy together, bonded over a shooting that got out of hand, and had been fuck buddies ever since. I used Chance when I needed info on a case. She used me to fill in on her softball team. I didn’t know what to call our relationship, but friends seemed both too much and too little. Didn’t really matter anymore because Jess had a girlfriend and, like all women who hook up for the long haul, their friends become second-class citizens.

  I felt even lower than that.

  Chapter Seven

  After I left Maggie’s, I stopped at Whataburger and ordered a double with cheese. And a large order of fries. Turkey sandwiches on wheat bread don’t stick to your ribs. I scarfed it all on the way to find Shaw. My only real lead was his girlfriend, Dalia Franklin. She’d posted the bond and put up the house as collateral. It wasn’t so much a house, but a bunch of sticks propped up to look like shelter. One big wind and it would come tumbling down.

  I knocked three times and was about to leave, when the door finally swung open. One look at the under-aged girl holding a crying baby standing in the doorway, and I decided Shaw was in more trouble than he thought. “Dalia?”

  She shook her head. “She ain’t here, but she’s supposed to be. She and that jerkwad baby daddy of hers. They left me here with their snotty kids, and I got places to be. She’ll come back late tonight and forget she promised to pay me five bucks, as if that’s enough.”

  She had a lot more to say on the subject. Her rant took on a surreal quality, and as she continued, all I could hear was blah, blah, blah. I pegged her for all of fourteen, maybe fifteen. Wherever she had to be was likely somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be. I had no idea if five dollars was good wages for a night of babysitting. I only knew no amount of money would cause me to switch places with her. I’d never sat babies a day in my life, and I figured her complaints were justified. Didn’t mean I wanted to be the one to hear them. I watched for her to take a breath and jumped in. “Do you know where either of them are?”

  “Dunno where Dirty is, but Dalia’s at work.”

  “Where does Dalia work?”

  She opened her mouth to answer and then shut it and squinted her eyes at me. “Who are you?”

  I started to tell a lie, but why burn a good one when the truth will work just as well. “I work for Dirty, er, Mr. Shaw’s, bondsman. He missed court and I came by to remind him.”

  She looked me over, nodding her head. No doubt she noticed the bulges under my jacket and decided I meant business. Business she wanted no part of.

  “You leave Dalia out of this. She’s a pain, but she’s my sister and she never did nothing wrong except gettin’ hooked up with him.” She paused and punctuated her threats with crossed arms and a fierce look. “You tell anyone I talked to you and I’ll cut you.”

  I smothered a laugh by faking a coughing fit. Once I recovered, I made a solemn vow to keep her identity a secret, and I scribbled the address and hours she gave me into a tattered notebook I keep on hand. I didn’t intend to show up at Dalia’s work, but now that I knew her hours, I wouldn’t have to hang around waiting.

  It had been a full day already. I’d exercised, eaten, worked a little. The one thing I hadn’t done was get laid. Jess was out on that front, but someone owed me. I just needed to find something to trade. Time to find Sandy Amato and Vince Picone.

  I was half tempted to go by Bingo’s and bully him into talking to me, but after last night’s revelations, I figured his place was being watched. I wasn’t in the mood to have my every move caught by either the Feds or Petrov’s men, but there was someone I knew who could go to Bingo’s without drawing any suspicion. And it was time I paid him a visit.

  I fished the key from underneath the dirt-filled flowerpot and opened the door. My childhood home was exactly like it was when I was sixteen. Frozen in time, every stick of furniture was exactly the same, every creepy knickknack was in exactly the same place, and every family photo hung in exactly the same position on the wall. No one entering would know that this place housed only one person—an aging, lonely, alcoholic whose family had scattered and dreams had shattered. As much as Maggie had become a fixture in Dad’s life, nothing about this place had changed. It may have gotten worse, since Dad spent most nights at her house, making this place seem even more desolate. I walked the halls, sure I would find him here. It was early afternoon. His favorite time to drink, and no way would he start drinking this early in front of Maggie, the reformer.

  He was out back, smoking a cigar and drinking from a can of Pabst. Three empty cans lined the concrete patio.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  He turned in slow motion, and I could tell it took him a minute to decide if I was someone he knew. A few second later, his eyes lit up. “Luca! What a nice surprise. Join your old man and we’ll toast this great weather.”

  I pulled a beer from the plastic rings and snapped the top. “Pretty cold day to be sitting outside.”

  He pointed at the cigar. “Your mother trained me well. No cigar smoke in the house. Guess I got in the habit of being outside with them.” He pulled another from his jacket. “You want one?”

  I waved him off. “Maggie know where you are?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “She thinks she’s teaching you to eat right, be healthy.”

  “She doesn’t put real mayonnaise on her sandwiches.”

  “I know.” I put a hand on his. “She used to push greasy food on everyone in sight. You know what it must have taken for her to change her own ways. She cares about you.”

  “She’s a good woman.” His tone was wistful. He hadn’t changed for my mother and he wasn’t going to change f
or Maggie, no matter how much of a catch she was. Wasn’t in our DNA to change. Except for my brother Mark. Apparently, something or someone had prompted a change in him.

  “What does Mark say about the girl? You know, the one he says he’s going to marry?”

  “Their picture’s on the fridge. Fancy, professional job. I think it’s going to happen.”

  Curiosity won. I walked inside to the kitchen and studied the happy couple. She wasn’t stunning, but her smile was bright, and the way she looked at my brother spoke volumes. She was in love. Not hard to imagine. He was a catch. Smart, good-looking. We didn’t talk about money, but I felt sure he did okay. Hard to believe this was the same guy who hid under his bed when our parents fought, which was often.

  He looked at his future bride like she was the most important person on the planet. I glanced at the caption. Save the Date, November 19th, Dallas, Texas.

  When I joined Dad back on the patio, I asked, “They’re getting married here?”

  “Yep. She’s a doctor. Something about a fellowship here in town. Don’t really know what that means, but he’s got a line on a new job, and since her parents live out here, they decided to tie the knot in Dallas. Your mom’s on cloud nine. Think they’re making a big deal of it. The girl’s parents are loaded. That’s what I hear anyway.”

  The girl. Guess Dad hadn’t met the bride to be yet. At least he’d been told about the wedding. Jess’s words echoed. Guess I wasn’t going to be there at all since I hadn’t been asked. Not that I wanted to be. Big fancy to-dos weren’t my thing. If I couldn’t wear jeans, I pretty much didn’t go.

  My mom was probably having a field day, helping plan a fancy party with other people’s money. Well, she could have her party. If I got an invite, I’d scrape up money for a gift. Maybe even manage to buy something they wanted, but I could pass on the ceremony.