Quarry in the Middle (9 page)

He settled a hand on my shoulder. Gently. His smile emerged from the darkness, Cheshire Cat style. “Jack, you’re going to have to tell me. The only path to my pop is through me. I’m the gatekeeper,
capeesh
?”

I
capeeshed
.

“I saw a guy I’d worked with once in the old days,” I said. “He was a specialist in hit-and-run. You know, ‘accidents’?”

The hand came off my shoulder, the smile disappeared, and the cigarillo tip stared.

“I believed he was casing that guy Cornell, who runs the Paddlewheel—”

“I know who Cornell is.”

“And I think Cornell was his mark.”

“
How
do you know, Jack? Did you talk to this old pal of yours?”

Improvising like a jazz solist, I said, “I only worked one job with him, a long time ago, and that was before I had my face worked on.”

“You had a plastic surgery job? That good, was it?”

“My mother wouldn’t know me. Anyway, I didn’t want any part of it. No skin off my ass if my old ‘pal,’ as you put it, takes Cornell out. My experience is, anybody with a target on his back probably mostly put it there himself. Fuck the guy.”

“All right,” Jerry G said.

He’d liked the sound of that, I thought.

“Anyway, last night, or I guess this morning, I was in my car in the Paddlewheel parking lot. I drank too much and fell asleep in the back seat. Something woke me, and I realized it was daylight, and I saw a couple of Cornell’s security guys grabbing Monahan. That’s his name, Monahan, the hit-and-run specialist.”

“What do you mean, grab?”

“Well, more than grab. One of ’em smashed his head into the steering wheel. Then another shoved him over, and took off out of there, and the other Cornell security guy followed in a second car.”

“Disposing of the body…”

“Obviously.”

Silence.

He dropped the cigarillo, crushed it under his heel, and stepped into the light. “And what does this have to do with my father? And me?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I can see who around Haydee’s Port would want rid of Cornell. If a hit on that guy has gone tits up, I figure you guys would want to know about it.”

“Just out of the goodness of your heart.”

“Not really. I thought your papa might think the information was worth a buck. Or maybe…well, I should save this for him.”

He thumped my chest with a finger. Lightly but the threat was there. “No, Jack. Give it to me.”

I shrugged. “I thought you might need somebody else to step in, and take care of Cornell.”

“…But you’re
retired
, Jack.”

I grinned at him. “Yeah, but I retired early. I’m still healthy enough to pick money up in the street.”

His tan puss split into a white grin. He and Cornell were two fucking peas in one fucking pod.

He slipped an arm around my shoulder and said, “Let’s play cards.”

We played cards. I continued to play conservatively, hanging onto my stacks of chips, which were the envy of the others. I continued not to bluff. When my wristwatch said it was nearing six, I finally asked how late we were going to go.

I could see from the expressions around me that the others would have gone on till either hell froze over or they’d won their money back. Neither seemed likely, and our host knew it.

“Once more,” he said.

He dealt a simple game of five card stud. I’ll cut to the finish, which may be of interest. I had an ace of diamonds up and otherwise bupkus. Jerry had two kings up. We each had two cards down, Jerry having dealt the first and last cards that way. The others had dropped out, and along the way, not a single other ace had been on the board.

Time to bluff.

I had the bet, and tossed out a blue chip.

Jerry G gave me the snort laugh. “You want me to think you’ve got an ace down, Jack? I don’t think you do.”

He raised me a blue chip.

So I raised him another blue chip. “It’s only five hundred to find out.”

He was frowning. I didn’t think it was unfriendly, just a deep, thoughtful frown. He was losing. Down maybe three grand.

“Fucker doesn’t bluff, Jerry G,” the surgeon said.

Jerry G snorted another laugh and threw in his cards. Because it was the last round, though, he gathered all the cards, and I noted him discreetly checking my hand, to see what I’d had. He flinched, but resisted the urge to let everybody know I had indeed, finally, been bluffing. He hadn’t bought the right to see those cards, after all, and that was bad manners indeed.

Jerry G cashed everybody in. I was up six thousand and change above the five thousand I’d brought along. Hands were shaken all around, the little barmaid provided everybody with coffee and sweet rolls (the coffee in Styrofoam to-go cups to prevent the group from lingering), and soon Jerry G and I were by ourselves.

“Let’s talk outside,” he said.

I followed him, and two guys grabbed me. One was the big bald black bastard and the other was the limpnose prick from the dance club. They dragged me out of the lot and into an alleyway between the Lucky Devil and some other dive, and Jerry G followed along. I have no idea how he set it up, other than maybe enlisting his goons by way of a whispered command he’d given the barmaid. He’d risen from the table to do this more than once, and she’d slipped out several times, presumably for supplies, and now I was up against a brick wall, the black guy holding onto my one arm, the noseless guy onto the other, doing my Jesus on the cross impression.

“You’re working for Cornell,” Jerry G said, grinning at me, and it was a vicious thing, a horsey look worthy of a stallion getting ready to kick your head in. “You were seen there, you were heard there, and I gave you a chance to play it straight, but you thought you’d fuck me, didn’t you?”

“I did talk to Cornell! I hadn’t finishing tell you—”

“No, you
are
finished.”

And Jerry G walked away, into the dawning day, while in the darkness, the two bouncers took turns. I felt a fist rattle my teeth, and another bash my nose, then my belly played punching bag first for one, then the other, while I coughed and gurgled on blood. I wish I could tell you this is where I came roaring back, but the truth is, I fell to my knees and then my face found the filthy brick floor of the alley and I got used to the taste of blood while they kicked me in the ass and the ribs, and finally the toe of a shoe caught the side of my head.

My last thought was,
Shouldn’t have bluffed the fucker…

Somebody was asking me a question.

A woman. A girl.
Some
kind of female…

I couldn’t make it out, but I felt hands on me, small, struggling to get hold of me, trying to lift me, but I just wanted to sleep.

“Come on…
come on
…get to your feet. They might come
back
…”

As those words came into aural focus, so did the pain, starting with a blinding headache. I opened my eyes, saw a blur, and shut them again. I was on my side, on something hard, but moving only made it worse. My instinct was to stay put.

“Get
up
…”

The hands pulled on me, and I found myself standing, through no real effort of my own, a broken puppet whose improbable limbs went in every direction but the right ones, operated by an unseen puppeteer, and the headache eased just a little to let in the pools of pain that were throbbing in seemingly random regions around what had once been my body.

“You have to
help
…They’re coming
back
…”

That was when I remembered where I was, if not who I was, and what had happened before I took my nap on a brick bed, specifically that I’d been beaten bloody, and not long ago, because the blood was still warm and wet in my mouth and on my face.

I willed my feet to support me and my legs went
along with it and my eyes focused enough to tell my savior was the little blonde stripper I’d done the favor for. She was in a black silk baseball-type jacket and her makeup was off and her hair was ponytailed back and she looked about twelve. She also looked scared shitless.

“You have a car?” she asked.

What the fuck was this, small talk?

But I nodded.

“Parked close?”

She was on my right, helping my legs hold me up. With my left hand, my wrist limper than Paul Lynde’s, I gestured toward the street.

“Ponty,” I said.

She was walking down the alley toward daylight and the street. “Pontiac?”

“Boo,” I said. Not trying to scare her: trying to say…

“Blue?”

She paused at the mouth of the alley where daylight blinded me. A few moments, and I could see, sort of. Nobody on the street. Not a car moving. Not a pedestrian. I willed my neck to turn two inches to the right and said, “There…”

“Two-tone blue?”

“Yeah.”

We were close to it. She only had to drunk-walk me twenty feet before leaning me against the side of the Sunbird. She looked all around her, like a frightened bird, while one of her little hands dug in my front pants pocket, digging, searching. Not as much fun as it sounds.

I heard the jangle of the car keys as she drew them out and she unlocked the door on the rider’s side, and stuffed me in, shut me in, and came around and got in on the driver’s side.

“I don’t take my car to work,” she said.

I had no comment.

The Sunbird was moving.

“I’m only a few blocks away. Usually walk it. But I can’t walk
you
that far.”

Interesting information, but again, I let it pass. I was busy waiting to see if my head would come apart in pieces like a barrel with the rungs removed.

“Stay awake,” she said. “Stay awake till we get there.”

The unpaved side street she pulled onto made for a rough ride. I understood how a pinball machine must have felt when a ball was running around loose inside it and smacking into things. But it kept me awake.

She pulled up at a mobile home, yellow and white, not very big. A red Mustang circa 1969 was parked out at the curb, where rust was eating it. No sidewalk, no trees. A row of mobile homes, maybe six, but who was counting?

“Candy,” I said. I was not requesting food.

She was struggling to get me pried out of the rider’s side and onto my feet. “What?”

“Your name.”

“You don’t miss much, do you, Jack?”

She remembered my name, too.

She was walking me past the Mustang onto and across a tiny front yard where crab grass was trying to grow and failing. Like a bad hair transplant.

The hardest part was her getting me up the three wooden steps, and not having me fall back down them while she held onto me with one hand and tried to unlock the door with the other. She couldn’t quite get the key in the slot and finally just pounded a tiny fist on the wood and yelled, “
Honey?
Are you up?”

She waited, and then the door opened. A little kid, maybe three-and-half feet tall, blond, blue-eyed, blank, in
Star Wars
pajamas, opened it. He didn’t seem surprised to see his mother lugging a strange man with blood on him. It was that kind of town.

The kid didn’t pitch in after that, except to shut the door behind us. He returned to the floor in front of the little TV on a stand where he was eating a Pop Tart and
Sesame Street
puppets were doing a better job of staying upright than I was.

The trick after that was her navigating me around and through an elaborate wooden train track that took up a lot of the midget living room’s threadbare green carpet.

She moved me down a little hallway, sideways because there wasn’t room for two abreast, and then guided me into a small bedroom, putting me on my back on top of a sunflower bedspread.

I passed out.

Some minutes later, I woke up and was wearing nothing except my jockey shorts. The bruises weren’t showing much yet, but she was checking me over, and had a little bowl of warm water and a washcloth she was using to clean the blood off my face.

“I don’t think you have any broken bones,” she said.

“Ribs are sore.”

“Could have a broken rib. There’s an emergency room in River Bluff, if that’s what you want.”

I shook my head, which was a mistake.

“Shit,” I said, as the blinding headache knifed across the back of my eyes.

“Your nose isn’t broken,” she said.

“Should be.”

She wasn’t in the baseball jacket now. She had on a B-52’s t-shirt and denim cut-offs. Did I say she looked about twelve? Without her makeup.

“You got any aspirin?” I asked. My lips felt thick. My tongue felt thicker.

“No. Better.”

She got up and I admired her ass as she receded down the hall. This did not mean I was feeling better. Lenny Bruce told a joke about a guy in car accident who lost a foot and made a pass at the nurse in the ambulance. Difference between men and women.

I took the two pills she brought me and swallowed some water. “What was that?”

“Percodan.”

“…Thank you.”

I passed out, or went to sleep.

Take your pick.

When I woke up, I realized the little bedroom had blackout curtains. I felt stiff, and I felt sore, and I had a dull headache, but not throbbing. I wondered how
many hours I’d been out. Sunlight was peeking in around the edge of the dark curtains, so it couldn’t have been too very long.

She heard me stirring, and came in to check on me. She had a different t-shirt on, a pink Cyndi Lauper one, but the denim cut-offs looked familiar.

I asked her, “What time is it?”

“It’s about ten.”

Ten a.m., huh? I was a resilient motherfucker—a couple hours sleep, and good as new. Not bad for thirty-five.

“Friday,” she added.

“No. This is…Thursday, right?”

“No. You slept round the clock. Except for twice when I woke you up, led you to the bathroom, then fed you Percodan.”

“Fuck. No wonder I feel like somebody emptied me out and filled me with molasses. I don’t remember you doing that at all.”

“You weren’t very talkative.” She perched on the edge of the bed. “You look better. You don’t have a black eye or anything.”

I flipped the covers back. The deep blue bruising crawled in amoeba-like blotches over half a dozen places. I was breathing deep and the ribs weren’t hurting, though. Small miracle I hadn’t busted one. That is, had one busted for me.

I covered and sat up, which didn’t hurt any more than falling down a flight of stairs. She propped an extra pillow behind me.

“Hungry?” she asked.

“I could try to eat.”

“There’s left-over alphabet soup from Sam’s lunch.”

“Sam’s your kid?”

“Sam’s my kid.”

“Alphabet soup please.”

“Grilled cheese sandwich, maybe? Milk?”

I was a kid home sick from school.

“Grilled cheese, perfect. You wouldn’t have any kind of Coke, would you?”

“Diet Pepsi.”

I wasn’t going to insult my hostess. “That would be swell.”

She sat and watched me eat off a tray in bed and I began to feel vaguely human. The little boy came in, wearing a red t-shirt and blue shorts, and tugged on his mother’s arm and whispered something, and she went off and tended to
that
kid for a while.

When she came back, I was done eating, and I found a place for the tray on the little nightstand. “Why are you doing this? Why did you help me last night? I mean…night before last?”

“You helped me.”

“Candace,” I said, trying to impress her by not shortening her name to the more stripper-like Candy, “all I did was let you give me a free table dance. I have a feeling a lot of Good Samaritans would have done that.”

“You didn’t take advantage. You were nice. I’m a good judge of character.”

No, she wasn’t.

“Anyway, I’ve seen how people just disappear around the Lucky. And I didn’t want that to happen to you.”

“Those two bouncers who jumped me…do I remember you saying they were heading back for me?”

She nodded. “I’ve seen them do that before. They take somebody in the alley, work them over. Then they pull a car over and throw the poor person in the back seat or trunk, and drive off.”

That didn’t mean Jerry G had intended having me killed, just that they were going to dump me off the premises. A ditch somewhere, or a parking lot across the river. Or, they could have killed my ass, and tossed me in the river. Either way, Candace was a rare angel in Haydee’s.

“Why do you work there, Candace? You’re a pretty, intelligent girl. You could do better.”

She smiled and laughed. “I’m pretty, but I’m not that smart. I never got better than C’s, and I dropped out my sophomore year. I have a little boy to support, who the H knows where his father is, and I hope to do better for myself, so for right now? Nothing pays better than dancing at the Lucky. Not for me.”

I didn’t want to insult her, but I had to ask. I tried as delicately as possible: “That’s all you do at the Lucky? Dance?”

She didn’t take offense. “I’m not one of Jerry G’s party girls. They don’t make all that much more than I do, anyway, by the time Jerry gets his slice, and they risk a lot. Some of their customers can get rough.”

“Rougher than your biker pal?”

“Way rougher. That’s real sad, those girls. Jerry G gets ’em all hooked. Free drugs at first, then so much of their pay goes to it, they just sort of spin their wheels. I don’t take drugs. I don’t even smoke grass, anymore. Not around Sam, anyway.”

Good-naturedly, I reminded her, “You have Percodan around.”

“I work long hours, on my feet, shaking my bottom, always around a lot of smoke, and sometimes I get bad headaches. I can buy those pills at work, but I’m careful. You can get addicted to that shit, y’know.”

“I don’t smoke or drink much or do drugs,” I said. “I’m the clean-cut guy you’ve been dreaming about, Candace.”

She grinned; her gums showed a little, as her teeth were rather tiny—it was endearing. “What are you, a priest?”

“I didn’t say I was celibate.”

“I didn’t think you were.” Still grinning. “I was sitting on your lap the other night, remember?”

“I remember…I hope I don’t get you in any trouble. I’m sure your boss wouldn’t be thrilled with you, if he knew you’d bailed me out.”

She shook her head; the ponytail flounced. “Nobody saw me. We’re fine. We’ll just get you healed up and healthy, and you can find some other town to have fun in.”

I didn’t argue the point.

We chatted for a while, and she told me her long-term plans, which were to save enough money to sell
the trailer, move to Des Moines where her older sister lived, and go to beauty school. She wanted to buy a nicer car, too. She had about ten thousand saved, and another fifteen thousand or so would make her dreams come true.

Which reminded me.

I’d had eleven thousand in cash on me. Surely part of the point of that roust in the alley had been to retrieve Jerry G’s poker losses; but I didn’t remember that happening. Not that I would, busy as I was getting the shit kicked out of me and bleeding out my nose and mouth.

“Could you bring me my pants?” I asked.

“You’re not getting
up
already?”

“No, I just want to check something.”

She jerked a thumb. “Well, I’m washing them, your shirt and pants. They were pretty filthy from that alley. But there was some stuff in the pockets.”

After disappearing briefly, she came in with my wallet and a thick fold of bills.

“You must have won,” she said, eyes big.

I counted it. Nothing was missing from the wallet, including the phony credit cards I was using.

Christ, they’d half-killed me, and left all that dough on me? Maybe they intended to clean me when they returned to take me for a ride. Or maybe the beating hadn’t been about the poker game at all. Maybe Jerry G’s pride in his own poker playing was too high to allow him to help himself to another player’s rightful winnings, even when he was planning to have that player beaten like a red-headed stepchild.

“What kind of boss is Jerry G?” I asked her.

She was perched on the edge of the bed again. “If you don’t cross him, he’s no problem. He doesn’t take a cut of my tips. If I sit and talk to a client, and get him to buy me a drink, that’s split between the house and the girl.”

“What does he pay you to dance?”

“Nothing.”

“You shitting me?”

“No. It’s strictly the dollars in our g’s, and the table dances and V.I.P. lounge tips. And we don’t date the customers. Jerry G says, if we want to do it for money, he’ll get us a little trailer out back.”

“What about Gigi?”

“Jerry G’s pop? He’s a nice enough old guy. He used to be a horndog, I hear—they say he used to audition all the girls who were tricking. But he’s been sick, lately.”