The Mike Murphy Files and Other Stories (3 page)

“And my shoes?”

“Tomorrow afternoon,” he sniffed. “Like I said.”

That’s where I blew it. I should’ve spent a little more time thinking about Joe Lugg and where I found him. Some more time thinking about dogs and Louis Six-Fingers and old Hong Sho’s corpse. I should’ve searched Joe Lugg’s pockets, but I didn’t. I don’t know if the shoemaker did. Maybe he did, and maybe he didn’t recognize what he found.

Instead, I took Maura out to dinner. The sun was low and its light gleamed along the telephone wires and power lines like red fire. The sidewalks were still crowded with pedestrians, hurrying with their shoulders hunched and heads down. The taxicab drivers still yelled and cursed at whoever came into their sight, but they seemed to do it in a kindlier fashion.

Fleur de Lis was hopping. The place was packed with the usual rabble. Rich people looking bored, eyeing other rich people and wondering who was richer. The maître d’, Francois, oiled over. He did a bit of coughing in French.

“Got something caught in your throat?”

“No, monsieur.”

“Fighting a cold?”

“No, monsieur. My cough merely meant you might consider patronizing some other dining establishment. Overjoyed as I am to see you, Fleur de Lis is not the place for you. Your clothing is not—how do we say?—not in harmony with the evening. Your shoes—oh, your shoes! I could write several depressing poems in the styling of Monsieur Camus about the existential problems posed by your shoes.”

“Hey.”

“You wish to speak, monsieur?”

“Yeah, get us a table now, or I’ll break your neck.”

“Ah-ha! Monsieur is so jovial. His speech, while crude and provincial, is like a breath of—”

“I’ll crack it like a Chinese fortune cookie.”

“Very good, monsieur. Right this way.”

“Elegantly done,” murmured Maura. “Crude and provincial, but elegant.”

We ordered crab cakes, mussels in garlic, and clam chowder for appetizers. Then we moved on to a rib eye for me and what looked like an entire salmon for Maura. She’s always had a thing for fish and can pack it away like a linebacker, even though she’s as skinny as a runway model. We kept the waiters coming with the platters. For dessert, I had another rib eye and Maura had a slab of halibut smothered in creamed scallops.

The people at the tables near us weren’t impressed, but I wasn’t impressed with them. A fat man camping out under a hairpiece sneered at me. The blonde with him was wearing more square inches of diamonds than clothing. He was shoveling down a side of pork gussied up in something mysterious and French-looking. She picked at a salad in slow motion.

“What’s this place coming to?” he announced to no one in general. The blonde certainly wasn’t listening. She seemed to be having a mystical experience with the arugula. “They’ll let anyone in now.”

“Pig,” I said to him.

“What?”

“Pig. That’s pig you’re eating. Pig. You know, pig.”

He turned red and pointed a stubby finger at me.

“Look here, my man. I’ll have you know that I’m Trevor Smithson-Smythe the Fourth, of the Hampton Smithson-Smythes, and—”

“The fourth?” said Maura, showing all her teeth in a smile. “Don’t you know that nasty things come in fours? The four horsemen of the apocalypse, the four kinds of poisonous Australian octopi, the four stooges—”

“Four?” spluttered the fat man. “There were only three!”

“The fourth one died, penniless and alone, choking on a ham sandwich.”

“Is everything all right, Mesdames, Messieurs?” Francois materialized out of nowhere.

“Tell the cook my steak’s great,” I said. “Now buzz off or I’ll thump your nose.”

“Very good, Monsieur.” He buzzed off.

All in all, it was a good dinner.

I dropped Maura off at her apartment at a respectable hour and beat it home for an early night. I had big plans for the next day. I needed my beauty sleep. But someone else had bigger plans.

I had my usual dream that always followed a big dinner of red meat. You know, the one with the troupe of clowns, the Waffen SS division, and Emily Post. It was getting to the good part, where Ms. Post begins her lecture on table settings. The clowns were getting restless and the SS were asking hard questions about salad forks. Of course, the phone started ringing at that moment. Ms. Post answered the phone.

I woke up. 5:36 a.m. The phone was ringing.

“This better be good,” I snarled. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Oh, it’s good.” The voice chuckled on the other end of the line. “Now be quiet and listen. You’ve been asking questions that bother Mr. Louis. He doesn’t like being bothered. So we need to come to an understanding. This morning. Seven o’clock at the docks, at Mr. Louis’s place.”

“And if I don’t?” I growled. “If I think you’re full of—”

“You’re in no place to argue, Mr. Murphy. We have her.”

“Her?”

But he had already hung up. I dialed Maura. There was no answer. Threw on my clothes, grabbed my gun and an extra clip. Out the door, down the stairs. Started to run down the sidewalk but remembered the wad of money from Finnegan. Whistled loud enough to bring a passing taxicab to a screeching stop.

“Where you want go?” said the cabbie. He had some kind of thick accent. Maybe Egyptian or Peruvian or Finnish.

“7
^th
and Ballantyne, and step on it!”

“Yes, yes. Step on it. I hear this much.”

“I mean it! Step on it, or I’ll knock your block off!”

“Less KGB shtick,” said the cabbie, inching out into traffic. “More glass of vodka, you know I mean?”

“All right, you little squeezer. Fifty bucks if you get there pronto!”

“That’s like it! You are the cool man!” The cabbie stepped on the gas and the car leapt forward. He hollered at some pedestrians. He shook his fist at another cab seeking to overtake us, shot through a yellow light, and leaned on the horn behind a produce delivery truck.

“Your mother’s goat lover is son of big gun!” he screamed out the window. “Hippie scum! Make my day! Vote Ronald Reagan!”

“Where’re you from?” I said, clutching the door handle.

“Odessa, Ukraine,” he said, grinning into the mirror. “I emigrate 1981. I love America. I love supply side economics. You ugly ape son!” This last bit was directed at an elderly lady tottering through the crosswalk. He swerved around her in a squeal of tires and then came to a sudden stop. I dug my face out of the back of the front seat.

“We here,” said the cabbie. “Fifty bucks?”

“Fifty bucks,” I said, slapping the bills in his hand. “And there’s more if you stay.”

I ran up the steps, three at a time, to the third floor. Down the hall. Her door was unlocked. I slid through with my gun drawn. The only positive thing I can say is that she didn’t go without a fight. The place was a mess. Her purse lay in the middle of the floor, contents spilled. I knelt down, rooted around in them. Nothing had been taken. I glanced around the room quickly. Definitely nothing stolen. Except for Maura. I ran downstairs and jumped in the cab.

“Where you want go?” said the cabbie.

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Checked my watch. 5:57 a.m. I thought for a moment.

“You a Catholic?”

The cabbie looked at me as if I was a moron. “Russian Orthodox. Saint Peter on Van Buren Avenue.”

“Let’s go! Get going!”

“Look. What the speed limit here? Yes, yes. 15 mile each hour. We go church and you ask me speed? No, no. I am good Orthodox Christian. I fast, I pay tithe, I—”

“Fifty bucks! Step on it!”

The taxi barreled away from the curb like a jet fighter. We careened through town, a threat to life, property, and my nerves. I checked my watch again. 6:04 a.m. We pulled up to the church. I hurried in. The cabbie followed me, regarding me with the fond gaze a farmer might have for his prize cow. I sat down in a pew toward the back. There weren’t many people there. Mostly a bunch of old women dressed in black. The priest droned on in the front. The cabbie mumbled somewhere behind me in response.

We got out of there fifteen minutes later. The priest blessed people at the door. He blessed me. He then blessed me a second time after I shook his hand. He blessed the cabbie and they conferred for a moment in Ukrainian, both sounding pious. I paced back and forth in the vestibule and stared at the little crucifix hanging on the wall. Jesus stared back at me. 6:33 a.m. I glared at the cabbie and he edged away from the priest, smiling and bowing. I hustled him back to the cab.

“The docks! Step on it!”

“Yes, yes. This I hear before. Everyone say—step on it!—like in the movies. Life, I say, not so—”

“Fifty bucks!”

The taxicab leapt forward. The city whizzed by in a blur of color, honking, and Ukrainian-laced profanity. I gritted my teeth and tried not to think about Maura. Thought about Louis Six-Fingers. Sweat ran down my forehead.

Louis Six-Fingers had been around forever. Mayors weren’t elected unless they had his approval. The city council didn’t wipe their noses without his blessing. He owned the planning commission. He controlled the garbage contracts, the unions, and the building suppliers. He owned the warehouses, the docks, and the second-largest bank in town. He ran most of the organized crime in the city: five gambling joints, three whorehouses, and both political parties.

“Which dock you want?” The cabbie turned to look at me.

“Here’s good.” I threw the fifty bucks over the seat and got out.

I checked my watch. 6:47 a.m. There was no one in sight except a couple of stevedores one dock over. A cold wind blew in off the water. I hunched my shoulders and walked down the dock. A big building stood at the end, ugly, falling apart, a rusty metal roof. Louis Six-Fingers’s place. I had never been there before, but I’d heard stories. A black sedan was parked on one side. I could hear the waves sloshing against the pilings below me. The closer I got, the taller the building looked. The place stank. Rotten fish, seagull crap, and something else.

A door stood open. I tiptoed through, gun out, into a gloomy, empty warehouse. The floor was concrete and stained with oil. Light shone from another doorway.

“Mr. Murphy?”

The voice floated through the open door. The voice from the phone. Smooth, polite, educated. The voice of someone I’d feel much more comfortable about if I could fire a few hollow-points into him first. I sidled up to the door and took a quick peek through. It was just a hallway opening up into what looked like another warehouse space.

“Come in, Mr. Murphy. We are—ah—men of peace.”

Stacks of wooden boxes lined one wall. A forklift rested idle in one corner. A man sat in a wheelchair in the center of the warehouse. Behind him stood another man. But I barely saw them. I was looking past them. The entire far wall of the warehouse was a metal rollup door. It was up, revealing the sea below. A small crane angled out of the opening, its arm extending over the water. And hanging from the crane’s claws, bound in chains, gagged, and staring at me furiously: Maura.

“A pretty thing, your woman.”

It was the standing man. The voice from the phone. Manny Lolo. I knew him by sight. Always dressed in Armani. Taller than a basketball-playing giraffe. Smoother than a drugged colonoscopy, but ready to stick a knife in you sooner rather than later. But I wasn’t looking at him. I was looking at the man in the wheelchair. Louis Six-Fingers. He was slight and grey-haired and looked just like anyone’s grandfather. Except he was the most dangerous man in the city. He seemed to be dozing in his chair.

“Delectable.” Lolo grinned. He had too many teeth.

“Put her down,” I said. My mouth was drier than Monday morning.

“With a hundred pounds of chain on her? What a dreadful thought. She’d go straight to the bottom. It’s deep off the end of this dock. Though we’ve filled it with a few concrete blocks over the years.”

That was the moment Louis Six-Fingers opened his eyes. He smiled, and it seemed like he had even more teeth in his withered mouth than Lolo. Still, he remained silent, slumped in his wheelchair.

“Now, Mr. Murphy,” said Lolo. “You’ve been a bother to Mr. Louis. First the dog, then asking questions about the fire. Granted, we didn’t foresee the dog escaping, but the little brute was much cleverer than he looked. And then you had to go kill poor Joe. Joe, who wouldn’t squash a fly. But I think we’ll have to squash you, Mr. Murphy. I appreciate you arriving so promptly for the squashing. I dislike making house calls. Now, now. Put your gun away.”

I threw it from me with a startled yell. The thing had suddenly started to move in my hand, squirming as if it were made of flesh. A gun with a beating heart. It skittered into a corner and lay still.

“The dog,” I said. “I don’t get the dog.”

“Come now. You aren’t that stupid. The dog knew the vault codes of Mr. Frederick T. Givens IV’s bank. Had heard and seen them as it pottered around its master’s feet, lifting a leg on the banknotes, no doubt. Hong Sho chose to stop paying protection. His stubbornness was timely for us, as we were in need of a fresh hand. There’s a lot you can find with a fresh hand, a candle, and an old spell or two. It was, ah, handy in finding the abandoned old sewer lines running beneath Finnegan’s shoe store.”