THIRTEEN
THAT, CLEARLY, WAS the voice of a woman in trouble, tight and husky, with panic in the upper register, as if a gun were pressed to her larynx. So what was I to do? Join her? Stand like a chump in the rain until whoever had her got me, too? Even if I wanted to go, which I did not, I couldn’t stride blithely out the front door as if off to meet Billie for a Buster Keaton movie at the Metro, not while a glacier encroached on the neighborhood. Maybe this was the setup, force Sybel to call me out and let the Glacier pulverize us both at once, along with the Coliseum if it got in the way.
About a year ago, after an unusually sordid incident, the tenants kicked in to hire a night guard for the lobby. Knowing I had nothing else to do, they badgered me to head the hiring committee. I hired Blue. Blue wants to be black. He’s a young white sax player who longs to have been raised in a New Orleans ghetto. “That would of enhanced my chops,” as he’d put it.
“Hey, Blue,” I called in a loud whisper from the first landing on the back stairs. Blue cautiously stuck his head around the corner.
“Whatchu doin’ up there, Artie?” Blue wore a rumpled tan uniform with a cap several sizes too small, and he carried a nightstick that I occasionally caught him “playing” as if it were a soprano sax. “They pay me to nose out suspicious persons. You about the most suspicious person I seen since the pimp in 8E. Remember that dude?”
“Transitional neighborhood.”
“Don’t I know it, me bein’ on the cutting edge of law enforcement.”
I tossed him a tape cassette. “Julius Hemphill,” I said.
“Thanks. Hey, this ain’t a bribe? I’m clean. I’m Elliot Ness. I’m—”
“I’m expecting a cab. It should stop right in front. When it does, tap on the wall so I’ll know, then go out and open the door for me.”
“Gracious living, huh?”
“Right.”
Blue went off to watch the door. My stomach snarled belligerently. I had forgotten to eat. Nothing but coffee and the rum from Dibbs. I was beginning to feel dizzy, but when Blue tapped on the wall, I walked briskly out the door and straight into the cab. “Thanks, Blue.” If I never come back, please walk Jellyroll every now and then. I told the driver south on Eleventh, then east on Fifty-eighth. I would approach from the rear, where I’d have a decent view of the sidewalk in front of the Coliseum. If things looked nasty, I could then retreat the same way I came. As we pulled away, I looked for the Glacier, but he was either well concealed behind a building—anything smaller would have left elbows sticking out—or he was waiting for me at Columbus Circle.
Though the big marquee still stood, the Coliseum was dark and doomed. Soon it would come down, and another smoked-glass tower, a giant oil filter, would ascend over Columbus Circle, further enriching Donald Trump. I got out a block west of the Circle as a loose crowd emerged from the subway. I melted into it, fooling killers in the jam-up way I fooled them in my Con Ed suit. The International Bath & Hot Tub Expo had been the Coliseum’s swan song. Big red letters on the marquee claimed it would run through January 15. I hung back, searching for a killer in a black leather raincoat, a silenced .22 in his gloved hand. A bag lady sang the national anthem with her hand over her heart. Another explored the rubbish for returnables, the trickle-down theory at work.
Looking under umbrellas for Sybel, I walked across the front of the hulking building under the Bath & Hot Tub sign and looked under other umbrellas. Just keep going north, I told myself, to Vermont. I started back the other way.
“You Deemer?”
I spun.
“Deemer or not?” He was a chesty man, mid-forties, with a round face and stiff, curly hair. He wore a sharp leather cowboy jacket and pointed snakeskin boots.
“Who’s asking?”
“Just get in the car. It’s raining. I don’t wanna ruin the jacket.” He pointed at a big black limo with deeply tinted windows, the kind of car hoods and stars travel in, the same kind of car Billie photographed from her studio window. Before she was murdered.
“Forget it. I’m not getting in any cars.” I backed away. Pedestrians, happy couples, flowed around us. “I’m here to meet Sybel, and if I don’t start seeing her, I’m gonna start yelling cop.”
“Artie—”
I spun toward the voice and took a couple of side steps to keep Tex in view. The back window of the car was down, Sybel’s face was framed in it. Her expression was grim. “Please, Artie. Get in.”
The back door opened. No light came on. Sybel slid over, and I got in. Something was wrong with her, something in the way she moved.
“Have they hurt you?” I asked.
She shook her head. Then I saw what caused her awkwardness. Her ankles were chained together. A length of chain was wrapped tightly twice around her ankles, cinched in between and padlocked.
“Hey,” I demanded, “take these chains off her.”
Tex got in the front, shut the door, and didn’t even turn to look at his cargo in the back. The driver merged with the Columbus Circle traffic and headed east on Central Park South. The windows were so dark I could barely see the lights outside.
I shoved the brown leather shoulder in front and said, “Hey, why have you got her chained?”
“Just sit back, shut up, and enjoy the ride. This is a Lincoln Town Car.” He still didn’t turn around.
I shoved his shoulder again and repeated my question.
“She’s chained so she can’t run away, at least not real fast. You can run away, but if you do, she winds up in a lotta different cans of cat food.” The driver giggled at that line.
Sybel took my hand and squeezed it. To say shut up? Her hand burned, and there were tears, or the traces of them, on her cheeks. She seemed to be breathing heavily. I was having some trouble breathing myself.
Was this it? Was this the last ride you learn about from gangster movies? It had all the earmarks of the genre. Then why was I going quietly? Sybel, too; she sat there. Because we didn’t believe it? Maybe the bogs of North Jersey were fertilized by moldering disbelievers. Well, damn it, I would fight like a wounded wolverine. Tinted hotels and dressy tourists passed on the right. I had an ice pick in my jacket pocket, a Zinfandel cork guarding the point. I put my hand in there with it, and for future reference I picked a spot two inches up from Tex’s collar.
“They made me call you,” Sybel whispered hoarsely.
“I know,” I said, thinking of other ways to kill Tex.
“Hey, shut up back there,” he said.
“I don’t think so, Tex.”
He turned to face me over the seat back.
I said, “If you plan to kill us, it won’t make any difference if we talk, and if you don’t, you’re not likely to change your mind because we do.”
He grinned at me. “Yeah, you got a point there.” He looked to the driver. “Four-eyes has a point there, don’t he, Dickie?” The driver giggled. Tex faced front again. We passed the Plaza and continued eastward.
Sybel sat stiff and rigid in her seat. I wondered what kind of night she’d had. At the stoplight on Park, I came up with an idea. I decided to act on it, the ice pick being the only active alternative.
“Hey, Tex—” I poked his shoulder again. Glaring this time, he turned to me. His face was big and round, with mountainous jaw muscles that flexed rapidly. “I want to tell you about my arrangement with Ralph.” I could feel Sybel looking at me.
“Oh, yeah? Who’s Ralph?”
“Old friend of mine. We go back a long way. Our grandparents were pals. Ralph’s a very dependable guy. He has a set of the photographs. See, our arrangement is this: if I don’t call him every twelve hours and say in code that I’m fine, no problems, then he marches the photos straight to the cops. Detective Cobb. He’d like to meet you. He loves the rodeo.”
“Well, now that’s some arrangement you got with what’s-his-name? Ralph? Ain’t that a sharp arrangement, Dickie?” Dickie giggled again. “I tell you what, four-eyes. Nobody’s gonna kill you, not unless you continue to poke me. Anyhow, I think it’s great to have old pals like this guy Ralph. All my old pals are dead.” He turned to the windshield and giggled. Dickie joined him. I decided if we left Manhattan, while on the bridge or in the tunnel, then that’s when I’d do it, a short, sharp thrust into his medulla oblongata.
Dickie pulled up to the curb and stopped in front of a movie theater at Fifty-first on Second. Tex turned and showed me his clenched fist. I was impressed. Then I understood that he meant to give me something. Why didn’t he just say so? I put my palm under his fist, and he dropped a key into it. I set about unlocking Sybel’s ankles. She rubbed them when they were free.
Sybel slid across the seat and I helped her out. Dickie drove away. Tex said, “Come on,” and led us toward the box office. From a poster, Clint Eastwood pointed a .357 Magnum at our heads. Tex opened a glass door to the left of the ticket window and led us down a bright hallway to a bank of elevators. Only then did I begin to feel that this trip wasn’t our last, at least not yet. We stepped out of the elevator on the twenty-third floor.
We approached a darkened office suite beyond glass doors with big teak handles and no company name. Tex unlocked the doors and lights came on automatically. He pointed at a wooden door marked private and said, “Wait in there.”
It was one of those corner offices where the corporate heavies command panoramic views, this of the Queensboro Bridge. In the corner, where the two glass walls met, there was a sectional sofa that curved around a low-slung glass coffee table. Sybel and I sagged on the sofa. In the other corner was the seat of power, a sprawling teak desk about the size of a snooker table with a high-back leather chair behind it and two chairs in front where the supplicants could be made to feel appropriately dwarfed, but dwarfed was a hell of a lot better than dead.
“I think we’re all right, Sybel. This is the kind of place you go to get your taxes done.”
“I thought we were dead.”
“How long have they had you?”
“Since about dark. That bastard leered at me for about five hours, told dirty jokes to that fool Dickie. Look, I’m about to fall apart. You’re going to have to handle this.”
“Don’t worry.” Sure, I’ll handle it. No problem.
“Do you have any cigarettes?”
“No.”
“I want one. Bad.”
The door seemed to open automatically, and Harry Pine strode in with a big grin on his face, white teeth glistening. He looked younger in person than in the photos. “Evenin’, folks. Good of you to stop by on such short notice. Who’s for a drink?” We stared stupidly at our congenial host with the happy, white grin. “No takers on the drinks?” He wore old chinos, scuffed Topsiders with no socks, a red knit shirt with an alligator on the tit, and an eight-thousand-dollar Rolex on his stout wrist. “Couple of light hitters, huh, Chucky?” I hadn’t seen Tex come in, but there he stood with his back to the door. He agreed we were a couple of light hitters.
“Can I have a cigarette?”
“Chucky, give the lady a smoke. Give her the whole pack.” Tex walked across the room, which took a while, laid his pack of Luckies on the coffee table and resumed his post at the door. Sybel fumbled one from the pack, and our host lit it for her with a silver Zippo. He placed the lighter on the table beside the cigarettes. I saw the engraving on that lighter in big block letters: Maj. Harry Pine. Eighth Air Force. Beneath the letters was the engraved, unmistakable image of a fighter, a P-47 Thunderbolt, the same plane Danny Beemon flew, in the same Eighth Air Force.
“Chucky, could I have a bourbon like I like it?” Pine sat on the sofa around the bend from us, and Chucky put the drink on the glass table before him.
“You were a pilot? In the war?”
“I was. How did you know?”
I pointed at the lighter. “My father was in the Eighth. He was killed in a Mustang right after V-E Day.”
“Accident?”
“Yes, you wouldn’t have known him. He wasn’t a hotshot, not like Blakeslee and the others. Not like Danny Beemon,” I ventured.
He stared at me. I could see him thinking. “How do you know about those guys?”
“They have books.”
“Funny thing to think of yourself in history books like all those other dead guys.” He nodded, paused, then turned to Sybel. “Sybel, I hear you’re a lez-bean.”
Sybel blinked. “Yeah, so? Are you gay, too?” she snapped.
“Gay? Gay. No, I’m unhappy. Exactly what is it you do down at the antique store, Sybel?”
“I keep track of the stock.”
“Fill orders?”
“That. Sometimes I buy.”
“Sounds like a demanding position.”
“Not very.”
“Now don’t you hide your light under a bucket. Lotta objects in there. I’ve seen them. Must be demanding for one person to keep track of all those objects.”
“I’m unusually bright for a lez-bean.”
“Ha! Tell me, Sybel, did the Palomino brothers ever discuss blackmail with you?”
“Blackmail? No.”
“What about Jones?”
“No.”
“Never? Hell, let’s not limit things. Extortion, grift, plots, schemes, anything like that, around the water cooler, on coffee breaks.”
“I don’t take coffee breaks with them.”
“So you never overheard anyone talk about blackmail and/or the rest?”
“No.”
“What about you, Arthur?”
“What?”
“Aren’t you paying attention to the subject at hand?”
Keenly, but I was trying to figure out what to tell, what not to, and what he already knew.
He was strong and fit. That was muscle under the reptile shirt, aging muscle but far from flab. And I noticed then that something was wrong with his face. It wasn’t exactly askew. But the upper part seemed to list ever so slightly to the right, and his jaw seemed out of alignment. “Me and Chucky, we’ve been seeing you every time we turn around. We never laid eyes on you before the, uh, trouble started. Before somebody tried to shake down two very dear friends of mine. Then we start seeing Arthur Deemer. So I’m asking what you know about blackmail.”
“I’ve never blackmailed anyone in my life. Leon Palomino talked to me about it. He was scared. Of you. He asked me to give you a message: He and his brother are getting out of town. You have nothing to worry about from them. He pleaded with me to tell you.”
“That’s curious.”
“I thought so.”
“Why did he come to you?”
“He saw me every time he turned around. Dr. Harvey Keene also visited me. He said someone was trying to blackmail Barnett Osley.”
Sybel stared at me open-mouthed.
“Doctors Harvey Keene and Barnett Osley. Brilliant men. Humanitarians. Only great men I ever knew. In peacetime, that is. I don’t like to see them upset by any greedy fucking grifters.” His eyes hardened. “But, hell’s fire, the three of us, we ought to be able to strike a bargain. Ideals are nice, but you almost need a war for ideals to be the basis of loyalty. In peacetime, money’s far more reliable. Let’s say I wanted you to work for me, Arthur. Would I need to negotiate with some present employer?”
“I’m self-employed.”
“Yeah? At what?”
“May I have that drink now?” Sybel asked.
“Sure may. Artie?”
“Okay.”
“What’ll it be?”
“What you’re having,” Sybel said.
“I’m an animal trainer,” I said.
“Yeah? Elephants, like that?”
“Smaller.”
“Like the R-r-ruff Dog?” He grinned at me, a kind of southern-boy charming smile. I grinned back at him. “That’s some dog, the R-r-ruff Dog. He must do all right.”
“It comes and goes.”
“Got to make it when he’s hot, huh?”
“Right.”
“How hot is he? Ballpark.”
“Hot enough that I don’t need money.”
“So you live off your dog?”
“It’s always a little embarrassing to hear it put that way.”
“Well, I’m glad to know that. I don’t trust poor people. I was a poor person once, and you sure couldn’t trust me. That’s why I pay my people well. You don’t have much of an employment history, Arthur. I did some research. What were you doing with yourself before you acquired a rich dog?”
“Odds and ends. Freelance.”
“I see. What about this Billie Burke person?”
“She’s dead.”
“I know that. I read the paper. How well did you know her?”
“Quite well.”
“Lovers?”
“Yes.”
“How about you, Sybel? You know her well?”
“Quite well.”
“Oh, she swung both ways, did she? No matter. I’m a liberal sort of fellow despite my agedness. I don’t much care who fucks whom or by what means, but this Billie Burke, she’s a very shadowy figure. Just take the name, for instance. Billie Burke. You know who that was? Glinda the Good. Wizard of Oz. Remember that? What was her real name? Your Billie.”
“That was her name. But now she’s dead.”
“Yeah, that often happens to grifters. But what about those photographs? Chucky says you have ‘em.”
“Yes.”
“Where’d you get them?”
“From her.”
“How’s your drinks?”
“Fine.”
“Want Chucky to freshen them up some? No? This is all very confusing to me. Arthur, you must have been working Glinda’s grift. How else would you have the pictures?”
“They came in the mail. After she died.” We had entered the minefield. I took a stout gulp of Harry Pine’s old bourbon. Stay calm.
“Note?” he asked casually.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean a note. These pictures just arrive in the mail, no note. That’s sort of odd.”
“Yes, I thought so.”
“I’ll bet you did. Shadowy figure, all right, this Glinda. Did you see the pictures, Sybel?”
“I showed them to her.”
“Now, Arthur, just because you two shared the same lover, that doesn’t entitle you to answer for Sybel.”
“Artie showed them to me.” She too had a big gulp. Was I taking care of things or fitting us out for an oil drum? Sybel was asking the same question, I suspect.
“Now before I get hopelessly befuddled: Some pictures arrive out of the blue from your murdered grifter lover, no note. What was in those pictures?”
“People.”
“Me?”
“And Harvey Keene.”
“Who else?”
“The Palominos, Jones, Ricardo.”
“Renaissance Antiques?”
“Yes.”
“No note?”
“No,” I insisted.
“Note says, ‘One of these suckers killed me.’ Now there would be a piece of what law-enforcement folks term hard evidence. Otherwise what have we got? Portraits and pictures of a legal wholesale business. What does it mean? Nothing. You see how I’m confused?”
I certainly did. So did Sybel. But neither of us spoke.
“Chucky tells me you’ve cooked up this elaborate arrangement with a guy named Roy for pictures that don’t mean shit.”
“I don’t know what they mean. But precautions seem necessary under the circumstances.”
“Prudent. Sybel, what do you think of Jones?”
“He gives me the creeps.”
“Creeps. I know what you mean. Cold sort of fellow.”
Sybel nodded.
So did Pine. “What do you think of Jones, Arthur?”
“I don’t know him.”
“Now that’s bullshit. Chucky saw you talking to Jones at the store. Chucky asked Jones who you were. Seth Klimple from Sausalito. You’re a pretty shadowy figure yourself, Arthur.”
“I wanted to have a look for myself before I took the photos to the police.”
“I wouldn’t bother the police. What with this crack business, they have their hands full. See, I own Renaissance Antiques, and Sybel, you’re due for a loyalty raise. Chucky, go get me a thousand bucks.” Chucky left. “Now let’s talk a little about this agreement you got with Roy.”
“Ralph.”
Chucky returned with a fistful of banded bills and placed them on the glass before Sybel, then took his place as sentry at the door.
“You have a set of photographs. So does Roy. If you don’t call in every twenty-four hours, he takes them to the cops. That about it?”
“Twelve hours, but never at the same time.”
“Variable call-ins, huh?”
He was smirking at me, but I played along. “Certain times are automatic alarms even if I say I’m all right.”
“Like now would be such a time, right?”
“Right.”
“Thought so. Chucky, go get another thousand bucks.”
Chucky left. “Sometimes in the world of business you hire folks not so much for their skills but for their unique placement. You folks are uniquely placed. It’s not as clear as I’d like it to be how you got there, but that’s where you are.”
Chucky laid new twenties in hundred-dollar wrappers on the table in front of me.
“What if we don’t want the work?” I asked.
“Not everyone has a rich dog, Arthur. Take Sybel here. A working woman. A child to support. How is little Lisa?”
“Are you threatening my daughter, you fucking asshole?”
“Calm down. I don’t hurt children. Not intentionally. No, this is what I’m saying. Somebody’s played hell with my business. All my holdings. It looks right now like Glinda’s behind it. But she’s dead. Who’s still alive? Here I am, an old codger, I should be playing shuffleboard on St. Pete Beach, but instead I got people asking me the tough questions. I need answers quick. You’re gonna help. Willingly, I hope.” He looked from Sybel to me. His face was bright, almost jovial, if out of alignment, but his eyes scared me. Then suddenly they changed—warmed, sparkled—and he smiled. “Right there’s your first week’s pay. You get what you pay for in loyalty. I pay cash. But I like to get to know my employees. Where are you from, Sybel? I got an ear for accents, and I hear some Florida in yours. I’m from Florida, born and raised. Where’s home, Sybel? Sarasota?”
“Wisconsin.”
“A Florida girl. I knew it. I’ll bet you were chief cheerleader for the Seminoles of FSU.”
“Just because I’m forced to work for you, do I have to hear your bullshit chatter?” asked Sybel.
“Chucky, go get me another thousand bucks.”
“I brought another round just in case,” Chucky said. He took a fat stack of money from his cowboy coat and gave it to Pine, who used it to double Sybel’s stack.
“Now I pay you enough to listen to my bullshit chatter. Chucky went to FSU.”
“Isn’t that most fascinating,” said Sybel. “Was he a cheerleader?”
“Chucky was on the marksmanship team. What was your weapon, Chucky?”
“Grenade launcher.”
“I think you owe her money for keeping her chained up all day with your lackeys,” I said.
Pine pointed at his lackey, who laid another band of bills on Sybel’s pile. “Now have we addressed the remuneration question, can we talk about job definition? Sybel, you just go right on doing what you do. Only now you report back to me. Somebody comes to see you, I’d like to know. You hear anything, you tell me. It’s your job to tell me. Go ahead, take your money.” He turned to me. “Your job is to give me those pictures. Negatives, too. Course, I don’t know how many sets you got, but hell, in business you got to have trust.”
I moved my thousand to Sybel’s stack. “Suppose I give you the pictures for free, and then you leave us alone?”
“Drink up,” he said.
Dickie driving, Tex riding shotgun, we sloshed up the Park Drive to my neighborhood. Dickie needed no directions, and no one spoke. I got out in front of my place. So did Chucky. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“With you.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“Come on, don’t be so unneighborly,” he said, taking my arm the way the police do, but I jerked it away.
“I’m through being bullied by you, Tex. If you so much as set foot in the lobby, the deal’s off and I take the photos straight to the cops.”
“Don’t even say that in fun.”
“I’m serious. You’re waiting here. I’ll bring them down. I don’t want you in my home. Take it or go back and tell Pine you dicked up the deal trying to be a tough guy.”
Tex considered that. “Listen, four-eyes, you go ahead, but you better do everything just right or I’ll turn ugly. Real ugly.”
“Come on, Tex, in business you got to have trust.”
I went up alone to get the photographs. I removed the Family Snaps and put the rest in an envelope. I took the negatives—minus the Family Snaps—from their hiding place in the freezer, their natural habitat, and put them in the envelope. On the way out, Blue stopped me in the lobby.
He was crouching in the little alcove beside the entranceway and peering out the corner of the window, now welded shut against the members of the community. He beckoned me with his nightstick, and I joined him.
Tex was standing on the sidewalk near the fender of the car and he was chatting with the Glacier. They were in this together. Pine’s people.
“See that huge black dude?” Blue asked. “I mean, how could you miss him. He’s been hangin’ around ever since you left. He come in here and asked about you. I told him you moved to Pittsburgh. I’d go out there and beat him into submission, only I got on my new dress uniform.”
“Thanks anyway.”
Suddenly everything out there changed. Chucky tensed and stepped back a pace or two. Even through the welded window I could hear him say, “Beat it, nigger!”
The Glacier reached out, hooked his fingers in Tex’s ruffled shirtfront, and parted it like a curtain, sending shrapnel buttons flying. A look of fierce outrage flashed over Tex’s face, and he sent a pointed boot in an arc aimed at the Glacier’s balls. It never landed. The Glacier caught the boot in his fist two inches from the target. He lifted Tex’s leg skyward. Tex hopped twice for balance before the Glacier, in a movement full of terrible grace, blasted Tex flush in the face with a towering overhand right. We could hear the impact, like a well-hit line drive. He fell hard and lay motionless on the wet sidewalk except for his right foot, which twitched spasmodically. I clapped Blue on the back.
The Glacier yanked open the driver’s door and hauled Dickie out by the collar. Dickie waved his hands in front of his face, pleaded for his life. The Glacier gave him a shove, and Dickie ran, shoes slapping in the puddles. Then the Glacier picked up his tiny umbrella, opened it against the drizzle, and strolled away as if he’d done nothing more strenuous than buy a lottery ticket.
“Jee-zus!” said Blue.
Dickie was returning, creeping behind parked cars on the other side of my street, crossing it cautiously to kneel beside Chucky. He pulled Chucky up to a sitting position, but Chucky still had serious trouble with his head. He couldn’t hold it up. It hung limply, like Raggedy Ann’s.
I went out. I had to sooner or later; best do it while Tex was on his ass. “Hey, what happened?” I asked. “Did you get mugged? Gee. This can be a tough neighborhood. You know what you should do when that happens? You should fake a fit.”
Dickie, mouth agape, looked up at me. Tex tried, but he couldn’t pull it off. Dickie was a skinny-faced little punk in his twenties with greasy black hair that now stood on end like the cartoon man with his finger in the light socket.
Chucky’s eyes were running in and out of focus. The fearful fist had landed on his forehead between his eyes. Ground zero was turning black even as I watched.
“Hey!” screamed Dickie in a voice laced with hysteria. “That nigger says he’s your bodyguard!”
“Bodyguard?”
“That big nigger! You didn’t see him?”
Bodyguard? Could he be? My lawyer never called to confirm. Of course he never calls to confirm. “Was this sort of a large fellow?” I queried.
“Large?…Large?” whispered Chucky. “Did this asshole just say he was sort of large?”
“He was a Buick!” squeaked Dickie.
“Yes, that sounds like the fellow. He used to be my bodyguard, but I had to let him go. He was just too big to fit places. Well, here’s the pictures Harry wanted.” I dropped the envelope on Chucky’s thighs.
“We’ll meet again,” he managed. “I promise you that.” But Dickie largely carried him into the car.
“Nice to be working with you,” I called. I could see through the open side window Chucky’s troubled head lolling on the seat back. I waved as they drove off.
“Hey,” I called to the shiny, shadowy street. Blue watched from the window. “Hey, bodyguard.”
“Over here.”
Behind me! I spun. How’d he get behind me? He’d walked off in the opposite direction. What a bodyguard! He stood under his feminine umbrella and loomed over me, even though he was ten feet away. He was ebony black, like a West African. “I’m Artie Deemer.”
“I’m Calabash. Bruce de crooked lawyer say you need some watchin’ over. Bruce ain’t right very often. Look like he’s right this time.”
We shook hands. “Did you say Calabash?”
“My real name Maurice, but don’t call me Maurice.”
“Welcome, Calabash. Come in.”
“Rains a lot.”
“Where are you from, Calabash?”
“Bahama Islands. I fish. I’m a fisherman. But de fish left. Even de little ones. I’m up here doin’ some library studyin’. Make some money while I try to learn about de fish.”
Blue met us in the lobby. “Blue, this is Calabash.”
“Well, you sure did Calabash that dude!”
“Lotta bad men in dis worl’.”
“Don’ I know it,” said Blue.
But I had to be sure. “Blue, can I use the phone in the basement?”
“Sure.”
“Excuse me a moment, Calabash.” I drove the service elevator to the laundry room and called Jerome’s Billiard Academy. After a long wait, my lawyer picked up. “Did you send a bodyguard?”
“Didn’t you contract for one?”
“Yeah, but I could have used a confirmation.”
“Did you want a bodyguard or a phone call?”
“Losing, huh?”
“Never.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Well,” said my lawyer, “I’ve seen smaller one-bedroom apartments.”
I was delighted with my new bodyguard.