Forty-Four
Thanks to Toohey, the settlement was an even split. I got the twins every other weekend and two months during summer. Reva got to keep the van, while the house went on the market. I got to stay in the house till it was sold, though mostly I slept on the sofa at the bar.
Like father, like son.
The day we closed on the Lantern was frigid and overcast. A late winter storm bore down from the north and threatened a wintry mix of snow and ice. I stopped by the bar to pack up the last of our things. It was my first weekend with the kids since the divorce and I’d promised to take them to a matinee to see some new Disney flick. I didn’t care if it would be awful and noisy and crowded as hell, I was going to start being a better father, even if it killed me.
I had most of the stuff boxed up, crap left over from when Uncle Chuck ran the bar: baseball and softball trophies, crumbling photo albums. Old ledgers. A bowling ball and a few autographed pins. Stuff that didn’t mean a lot to me, but I couldn’t see myself tossing in the dumpster. Better to store it in a garage somewhere, let the mice chew it to pieces. I poured myself a glass of crème de cacao on the rocks. After a solid month of hard drinking we were completely out of liquor and beer. But I didn’t care what I drank. As long as it got me where I needed to be.
I carried the last box out to Roy’s pickup and squeezed it into the truck bed. I hadn’t been gone two minutes, but when I walked back inside I heard the loud crack of pool balls. I glanced across the bar. Randy Goodwin was bent over the pool table, preparing to shoot, his long dark hair in his eyes. “Five ball in the side pocket,” he drawled. He drew back and fired at a solid, but the ball ricocheted out of the pocket. When he stood up his hunting jacket fell open and I got a good look at the sidearm shoved into his waistband. My nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson. The one I kept behind the bar over the sink.
The one goddamn thing I hadn’t packed.
My mind went into panic mode and I was washed with a wave of adrenaline. I thought about making a run for the back door, but then I remembered Reva and the twins. They’d be coming through the front door any minute now.
Randy cleared his throat, spat on the floor. “Been wondering what I ought to do with you,” he said, almost inaudibly. He bent over the table. “Nine ball in the corner.” This time he sighted on the nine carefully and knocked in the three.
I swallowed hard. “Dude, I did not kill Clay, if that’s what you think.” I paused. “Is that what you think? Because I didn’t.” I tried to sound calm, but my voice kept rising and breaking.
He lifted his gaze at me and stared at me with dead eyes. Then he limped around the table, favoring his good leg, studying his next shot.
I wondered if he’d really shoot me in the back if I ran for it.
He once choked a man to death with his own small intestines. Of course he would.
I glanced furtively around the room. Nothing left in the bar to defend myself with. He had my pistol and I’d taken home the shotgun and the baseball bat. Even the little paring knife I’d used to slice lemons was in a box out in the truck bed.
“Figured I’d let the cops handle you,” he said. “Till you went and accused my niece of murder. Now that done pissed me off.”
I leaned against the bar, trying to buy some time till I could figure something out, come up with some idiotic plan. “Come on, dude,” I said. “Think about it. Why would I kill your brother? Okay, so I got a raw deal. A lousy twenty percent. But is that a reason to kill someone?”
He called the four in the side and took aim and dropped it with a solid crack. He straightened and half smiled at me. “You think I’m stupid? You think Clay didn’t tell me what happened? You shot that Sika kid because he was working for the cops. That’s what you thought, anyway.”
“You’re crazy,” I said. “It was a robbery!”
“Executed him right in front of my niece. Made sure he suffered too, didn’t you? That was some fucking sloppy work, man. If you’re going to off someone, you don’t leave witnesses.” He leaned on the pool cue. “And you let your little brother take the fall.” He shook his head. “Guess family doesn’t mean shit to you Carrolls.”
I held silent.
“Then you go out to Clay’s house and shoot him down like a dirty dog. Afraid he’d tell the law how you executed that Sika kid?”
He picked up a cube of chalk and chalked the tip of his cue.
“One thing I don’t get. How you could be so stupid to leave behind the murder weapon?” He shook his head and chuckled. “Amateur. Figured the police wouldn’t give a rat’s ass, right? Just another dead white trash dealer.”
I started to say something when he slammed the pool stick down on the table, snapping it in half. “SHUT UP WHEN I’M TALKING!” he screamed. The top half of the stick shot up, hit the ceiling tiles, then landed a few feet from me and rolled under a table.
I studied the shaft. It wouldn’t make much of a weapon.
Randy limped over to the wall rack and selected another stick. He sighted down the line for irregularities and seemed satisfied.
“Tried to frame my niece for Clay’s murder, making up some bullshit story about him raping her.” He bent down, then stood up again. He leaned into the table and said, “Six ball, corner pocket.”
The cue ball kissed the six and went wide.
“Fucking table is lopsided,” he said.
I waited till he finished, then I said, “I didn’t make that up, about the rape. Your niece told me that. If anyone made it up, she did.”
He took up another piece of chalk and chalked the tip. “I’ll hand you one thing, though. Pretty slick how you got rid of Sheppard. Can’t be leaving any snitches around, can we?”
He set the chalk down on the table. “You know, all them people you killed—Sika, Pritchard, Sheppard—you’re right, nobody gives a rat’s ass about them. But you made one mistake.” He paused for effect. “You fucked with my family.”
My insides iced over and I felt my gut harden. “You’re a special kind of crazy,” I said. “I didn’t kill anyone. Everyone knows Sika was robbing my bar. Everyone knows his death was self-defense.” I took a deep breath. “And as for Clay and your niece, that was a family feud. It had nothing to do with me.”
He shook his head. “Almost forgot the old woman you left to die in the cemetery. What was her name?”
Wow. He knew about that too. Creepy didn’t begin to describe it. It was like he’d been following me around for months.
He snapped his fingers. “Helen. Helen Cole. That’s right. Damn if you didn’t almost get away with it too. Course you were dealing with the fucking Keystone Kops.”
He was enjoying this, taking his good old time. A cat playing with a poor, doomed mouse.
Only I wasn’t no fucking mouse.
He straightened and looked at me. “What do you say we make this interesting? You’re a sporting fellow, ain’t you, Denis? Tell you what, if I miss this shot, I’ll just turn and walk out of here. With the .38, of course.”
I studied the table. There were at least two shots that a blind monkey could make.
“And if you make it?”
He laughed, showing off all twelve of his rotten teeth.
Outside, tires crunched on snow as a vehicle pulled into the lot. Randy didn’t seem to notice. I glanced at the clock above Uncle Chuck’s shrine. It was about time for Reva and twins to show up. A cold void opened in my bowels. Any second now they’d walk right into the middle of this hell.
I was out of time. Out of options. This crazy motherfucker, no telling what he’d do to my family.
He was so cocksure he never even saw it coming. He had his back to me, bent over the table, studying his shot. I stooped for the broken pool stick and hurled myself toward him. I waited for the bullets to rip through my body but somehow it never happened. I slammed the stick alongside his head. It splintered into a dozen pieces. I was pretty sure he never knew what hit him.
He rolled off the table and slumped onto the floor. I fumbled the gun out of his belt and shoved it into his rotten mouth. His eyes were dull. He muttered something. Whatever he said, they were going to be his last words.
The van door slammed. Children’s’ voices rose on the crisp wintry air.
I got up and gave Randy a sharp kick in the groin and seized him by the collar and dragged his scrawny ass across the barroom floor and down the hall to the walk-in cooler. I flung open the door and dragged him inside. I gave him a nice kick in the ribs, for good measure. He let out a muffled groan, so I kicked him again, this time in the mouth. The few teeth he had would have to go anyway and besides, I didn’t want any sound out of him, not while Reva and the twins were on the premises.
I closed the door and slipped the lock. Then I went over to the cooler’s thermostat and turned it down as low as it would go.
I can’t begin to describe the relief I felt. Maybe even a little satisfaction. I may not be a war hero like Vince, or a lifesaver like Chad, but sometimes I think I deserve a medal or two my own damn self, the way I’ve cleaned things up here, made this town a better, safer place to live. Even if nobody knows what I’ve done. It would be a long time before anyone reported finding a decayed, half-eaten, toothless corpse in a pot field behind Clay Goodwin’s compound.
I closed the door to the hallway and walked out to the bar. I dug my hand into my pocket, dropped a dollar’s worth of change into the jukebox, and scanned the playlist till I found it. Our song. “I Cross My Heart.” The first song Reva and I danced to on our wedding night. George Strait’s voice filled the room. Damn if George didn’t know how to pull on the old heart strings.
Then I hurried to the front door to greet my family.