One Little Goddamn Thing

by Scott Phillips

Sauget, Illinois

Commercial St. Louis looks like it was razed entirely and replaced by a different city on the same grid. The grocery stores, banks, drugstores I knew are all gone, replaced by new ones in the wrong places. Chain stores, all of them, the same as I’ve been seeing in Kansas City the last six months. Right now I’m sitting in front of a bar on Maplewood just west of McCausland, or rather the space where the bar used to be. Now it’s a sandwich shop. Even after thirty years of prison food those chain-store sandwiches taste like shit to me. I got my first blow job in that bar’s parking lot, from a friend of my sister Kathie’s by the name of Cheryl Krieger. The same Cheryl who ended up testifying against me; I certainly don’t blame her for it, but I can’t pretend it didn’t hurt at the time.

But that first night, years before, Cheryl and I had been at the bar for a couple of hours, drinking beer served up by an elderly bartender with a pocked, purplish nose, spectacularly bushy white eyebrows, and no apparent compunctions about serving underage kids. Cheryl put her hand on my thigh and whispered in my ear that we should go outside to my car. There, on the squeaking vinyl upholstery of my ’78 Isuzu, she swabbed my virgin knob, and the look of proud satisfaction on her face as she wiped her lips clean with the back of her forearm afterward remains as vivid in my mind as any memory I can lay claim to. While I’m trying to remember exactly which space it was where this happened, it occurs to me that sweet lusty Cheryl could be a grandmother by now.

Thirty years I’ve been gone, almost. One pass through town, just to satisfy my curiosity about a few things, and then I’ll be gone again for good. I’m not very sentimental by nature; that fondly remembered blow job is about as close as I’m going to get to nostalgia.

I won’t be seeing my sister Kathie, except maybe from a distance if things go right; just a brief, tangible reminder that I pissed my youth away for a good reason. My last contact with her consisted of this charming letter, addressed to me shortly after the start of my Irish vacation:

 

Dear brother Tony,

It pains me to write this sad missive but you will understand that with Mother and Father gone and you in prison I am now the head of our family.

Douglas and I are attempting to bring up the children in a good Catholic manner and they must not know that their beloved uncle is a “jailbird” or convict and so I have told them that you were unfortunately killed in a motorcycle crash involving one of those big trucks one sees on the highway. Do not worry, I informed them that your tragic death was quick and painless but that you had time to tell the highway patrolman that you sure loved your nieces and nephew.

 

(I imagine the kids still think I’m dead. I’d love to show up at Thanksgiving dinner and surprise them with the truth, have a look at my various nieces and nephews, but that wouldn’t be fair to Kathie. As far as she knew––and according to her own husband and the state of Missouri––I was the kind of person you didn’t want influencing your kids.)

 

Douglas is especially real disappointed in you. He has always looked up to you and considered you at one time like a real brother. Don’t worry about me for he is starting up his own construction business and will be a good breadwinner for the children and me.

 

Affectionate goodbye,

Kathie

 

All I’d asked in return for twenty-eight years of my life was for Doug to do right by her. I get back into the car and drive over to McCarran Construction, not certain exactly what my intentions are. It’s ten minutes to noon when old Dougie comes out, looking hale and hearty, a little gray but still a big man with a straight carriage and a purposeful stride. He always did have that gift of looking like a straight arrow; when we set our shop teacher’s garage on fire in seventh grade he was caught a block away and talked his way out of the whole scrape, throwing suspicion on a pair of nonexistent black guys in a gold Lincoln Continental. I had a bit of the same gift—maybe that’s why we were such good pals. Together we were able to get away with misdeeds that children of more sinister mien would have gone down for, and hard.

Besides the gray at the temples, his only concession to the passage of time is a pair of steel-rimmed eyeglasses that make him look like an engineer or an architect. He gets into a Caddy, recognizable as such to my eyes only by the familiar logo on the rear hatch. My own car––the property of my wife Paula, in fact––is an older and considerably more modest model; even so, there are components that I find unnecessary, distracting, or confusing. The first time I drove it in the rain, Paula had to explain to me where the windshield wiper controls were, and at that moment I knew that without her help I’d be 100 percent fucked on the outside.

The Cadillac’s bumper is festooned with all manner of information on the fancy private schools the kids attend and not-so-subtle hints at Doug’s politics, about which I don’t give a shit. One reading EQUAL RIGHTS FOR UNBORN WOMEN, though, makes me wonder whether Doug has ever ratted me out to my sister about Cheryl’s abortion. Doug didn’t approve at all back then, yelled at us both and called it murder, asking me what was I going to say in confession. When I told him I didn’t go to confession anymore, didn’t even consider myself a Catholic anymore, it was about as close as our friendship ever came to collapsing. But he stopped talking about it, and I assumed he must have gotten over it eventually.

The Caddy turns onto Kingshighway. I don’t know whether Doug is going home or to a restaurant for lunch, but on the off chance it’s the former I want to find out where they live; if it’s the latter I’ll drive on.

At I-44, Doug takes the on-ramp, heading east toward Illinois. I don’t know that side of the river well but maybe there are some nice towns within commuting distance. I never saw or heard of one, but still.

* * *

It should have been simple. Cheryl used to work there, and in fact the reason she quit was a fear of getting robbed. A lack of attention paid to security, cash lying in a safe left unlocked half the time. She told me about the elderly proprietor, superstitious about hiring a guard, so set in his ways the nightly routine hadn’t varied since the late 1950s, according to the old lady who worked with her. If I hadn’t gotten my name into the papers, Cheryl never would have known she’d had any part in it. Listening to her testify, I understood the degree of guilt she felt for having innocently tipped me to it. I understood it because I felt the same guilt, because I’d been the one to get Doug involved. The proceeds were supposed to get the construction firm up and running. I even told myself we’d pay the old man back once the money started rolling in.

* * *

Across the river the Caddy pulls off at the miserable, barren village of Sauget. I maintain a discreet distance and when it pulls into a large parking lot, freshly paved and serving a number of businesses, I keep driving. He parks a good distance from any of the buildings, and the Caddy’s windows are tinted so I can’t see what he’s up to, but based on my observations of nearly everyone I’ve met since getting out, I imagine my brother-in-law is checking one pointless fucking thing or another on his phone.

I pull into the lot of a restaurant on the opposite corner of the intersection. Inside I get a table next to the window and order a cheeseburger with fries. I’m almost done eating when Doug finally steps down out of the giant jeep-like vehicle––another ubiquitous aspect of modern American life that makes me feel like a time traveler––and strides toward one of the buildings that border the western and northern edges of the big lot. He’s not headed for the furniture liquidators, nor to the used–kitchen supply warehouse, nor to any of the various storage bays. As he passes a parked county sheriff’s car, he gives the deputy a friendly, familiar wave which the officer returns with crisp military élan, and he then disappears inside a building marked with a giant neon sign reading, CINNAMON BUNZZ: A Gentleman’s Club. Silhouettes of chesty women recline atop and lean onto the sides of the sign, and I wonder what Doug could possibly be doing in such a place. The old Doug wouldn’t have considered doing business with any sort of establishment of an immoral nature; I once had to hire a couple of near-strangers to help me tuck-point a massage parlor in St. Charles County because Doug wouldn’t have anything to do with it. Maybe the experience of running a big construction company all these years has made him look at money differently.

I’m not particularly hungry anymore but I order a slice of peach pie and drink some more coffee and wait for Doug to come out. When I’m finished the waitress keeps coming over to warm my coffee up, but I’m getting self-conscious sitting there for such a long time. I’m about to get up and walk to my car when Doug finally comes out the front door and heads for his car, smiling and nodding at the deputy. I leave a twenty on a fifteen-dollar tab and thank the waitress as I pass by her on my way out the door.

Following the freak Caddy back into town, I try to guess where Doug and Kathie will have ended up. He’s done well, by the looks of things. Maybe Ladue? Creve Coeur? On the back of the Caddy there’s a sticker for a radio station, and I feel a sudden desire to hear music. Knowing Doug, I assume that 99.1 JOY!FM is a rock station, but what comes over my speakers is treacly, weak-kneed Jesus pop. I’ve got nothing against religious people, but I had a cellie awhile back who used to listen to that Christ elevator music and it fucking scarred me. I listen for a couple of minutes, wondering if maybe the Caddy isn’t actually Kathie’s car. Surely Doug is up there rocking to Foghat and AC/DC on KSHE, but it strikes me that this crap, if not explicitly Protestant, is certainly not Catholic enough for the likes of Mary Kathleen Gillihan McCarran.

We pass the exits for Ladue. Then we pass 270, which by my lights is the best way to get to Creve Coeur. Once again I’m struck by how little I know my hometown anymore; there might be new freeways or underground tunnels leading to all the suburbs for all I know. Finally we arrive in Chesterfield, now built up to an astonishing degree, outlet malls and upscale hotels and shopping centers as opposed to the open farmland I remember. We take an exit I’m pretty sure didn’t exist in my day and I consider slowing down in case Doug is watching, but I know perfectly well he doesn’t think that way, and I stay within an eighth of a mile of his ass-ugly Caddy.

When Doug pulls into a cul-de-sac I keep driving. Half an hour later I return. The Caddy sits parked in the circular drive of a three-story mansion, gabled and mansarded and looking like something out of a movie. The notion that my sister might live in such a house is completely foreign to me, but I feel a quiet pride that my sacrifice has allowed her and her kids to live out their lives in luxury.

And then, heading back to I-64, I find myself wondering why there are school stickers on Doug’s car, which appears brand new. Twenty-eight years ago my littlest niece was not quite two years old. Must be grandkids.

* * *

Mrs. Floyd Willis was how the Post-Dispatch identified the bookkeeper in the morning, though it was long past the time when the papers named women as though they didn’t have first names of their own. I suppose that was all the information they’d dug up by press time. The next morning she was Mrs. Nina Willis and the next day there was a note that it was pronounced Nine-uh. She wasn’t supposed to be there when we came in at closing time, should have been at home with Floyd watching Magnum, P.I. or T.J. Hooker or The Cosby Show. When we bumrushed the old man into the back room and Doug saw her, he freaked out. He shot her in the face and then shot the old man. Nobody was supposed to get shot. Nobody was even supposed to have live ammo, especially not Doug.

* * *

Back at the motel, I call Paula and tell her about my day. She’s worried, doesn’t think I should be there. “You’re not safe out there in the world. Come on back to KC, sweetie.”

“It’s just another day or two.”

“Be careful and don’t do anything foolish.”

I did my full stretch. I have no parole officer to answer to, no restrictions on my travel, but she’s still afraid I’m going to break some law and go back to prison. I remember meeting her in the visitation room, coming to see her own no-good burglar brother, how sad she was about him and where his dumbassery had landed him. “I won’t do anything stupid, sugar. I’m coming back to you.”

She’s the only person I ever told the truth to about August of ’87. Since it’s safe to assume Doug never came clean to anyone, it’s a secret only we three know. She swears she’s never told her kids or the rest of the extended family, who all treat me fine, considering their beloved mother––aunt, sister, grandmother, etcetera––married a convicted murderer while he was still incarcerated. She’s smart and pretty and if it weren’t for her I’d be flopping somewhere, maybe in a shelter, maybe planning something nonviolent that would get me sent back to the relatively uncomplicated existence I knew in the joint. So do I consider myself lucky? Yes, officer, I most certainly do.

* * *

At one thirty in the morning I walk over to the parking lot of a bar near the motel and make a quick round looking for a vehicle with the keys inside, belonging to someone who showed up late and already drunk, someone who might even be too drunk to realize they’ve had their vehicle stolen when they come out at closing time. Thirty years ago I might have hot-wired one, but I have no idea whether this is even possible anymore. And good fortune is with me tonight. A recent-model Ford, a small, ugly thing with Illinois plates, sits there with its door ajar and dome light burning, a set of keys lying there on the asphalt. I pick them up in a latex-gloved hand and tell myself I’m doing the owner a favor; he won’t get shot through the windshield driving home plastered, and tomorrow he’ll get his car back, with a functioning battery to boot.

I park down the street from Doug’s house and, despite myself, drift off to sleep in the driver’s seat. At four forty-five I awaken to a rap at the window. I squint at a flashlight carried by a short, thickset woman in uniform, and I pick up one of the latex gloves as a shield between my fingers and the crank before fumbling with the window.

“May I ask what you’re doing out here this time of night, sir?” She looks to be in her late forties, with a shiny, round face, and she lacks the belligerence some rent-a-cops have.

I’m dressed in a nice, clean shirt, my haircut is a mere three days old, and I made a point of shaving before leaving the motel. Two-thirds of a lifetime spent in custody have made me slick when dealing with authority. “I’m sorry, officer. I was making a surprise visit to my baby sister and brother-in-law, they live right there. I drove in from Springfield, didn’t get in until about two, and didn’t want to wake them up. Like I said, they’re not expecting me.”

She shines the flashlight into the car and sees nothing of particular interest, and I note that her uniform is that of a neighborhood security patrol, so she probably doesn’t have the means to run my plates. “What’s the matter with a hotel?” she asks.

“I’m fine sleeping in the car. Doug’s an early riser, so’s my sister. If you don’t want me on the street, I can clear out.”

When she looks at me as though trying to judge my character via my physiognomy, I know I’ve won. My face has always been as sweet and honest as a toddler’s.

* * *

I wake again with the dawn. I turn the radio on low and wait.Doug eventually comes out fully dressed and drives the Caddy away. The house has what looks to me like a three-car garage; what the hell are he and Kathie storing in there, anyway?

Another half hour and the passage of time starts making me antsy. If Kathie doesn’t walk out the door in another fifteen minutes, I’ll abandon the car in the parking lot of the outlet mall and call a cab. When the front door opens, it’s not Kathie. It’s a woman in her late thirties or early forties with luxuriant, shoulder-length blond hair, tottering on three-inch heels, made up so elaborately that it’s hard––though not impossible––to make out the look of frustration and resentment on her face. Looking closer, I think she may have had some sort of plastic surgery or neurological event that froze her face that way. She grabs the Post-Dispatch off the driveway and reenters the house. A niece? The oldest might be that age. The younger one? Maybe. I try to remember exactly what their ages would be and after a minute I give up.

I’m about to leave when the garage door opens. There are three cars inside, all of them monstrosities like Doug’s Caddy. I wonder which one is Kathie’s. A giant black vehicle pulls out, the blonde at the wheel, and I give it a minute to get down the street before starting my engine and following.

She takes 64 all the way into town and gets off at McCausland. Waiting at the off-ramp stoplight I see a pink cursive monogram on the rear windshield: TML. That puzzles me for a moment until I realize that the M in the middle is the largest letter, and that the initials are actually TLM, and as I follow her turning left toward the park, I try to think what the TL could stand for. Little Teresa’s middle name, I’m pretty sure, was Jane, after my mom, and the other niece’s first name––all I can call forth from my memory––was Marie. Maybe this is little Mikey’s wife.

I follow her to a school and drive on by when she turns into the parking lot. This is starting to get confusing, and I turn back to the freeway to drop the car off someplace where my taxi bill back to the Wentzville motel won’t be ruinous.

* * *

“Can you help me with some of this Internet business?” I ask Paula.

“Well, that’s a first.”

I explain the situation to her, leaving out the stolen car. “Can you get on there and find out if my little nephew Mikey’s married?”

“Probably. What’s his last name?”

“McCarran.”

“Born when?”

“Seventy-nine, maybe ’80?”

“Middle name?”

“John? James? Something with a J.”

“That’s real helpful.”

I watch the television for a while, a Columbo rerun, and right before Peter Falk gets that look in his one real eye and starts dismantling the killer’s story, the little phone trills. I’m still not accustomed to the fucking thing and the ringtone makes me jump.

“Hello.”

“Your nephew’s married, but he lives in Florida. Another thing you’re not going to like much.”

“Okay.”

“Your brother-in-law’s got a Facebook account.”

“I thought everybody did now.”

“It’s what’s on it. That lady who dropped off the kids at the middle school, that’s his wife, Tamara, and they have four kids.”

I feel nauseous. My throat constricts, and though I’m alone in the room, I’m still embarrassed that tears are welling in my eyes. “Kathie’s dead?”

“No, sweetie, she’s alive. She’s got her own page.”

“That’s impossible. Neither one of them would ever get divorced. They’re more Catholic than the pope.”

“Well, they are, and from the looks of it, Doug is a pretty active member of some megachurch out there in Chesterfield, so I’d say he left the whole Catholic thing behind with your sister. Sorry.”

“I can’t believe she’d allow that.”

“It only takes one to make a divorce. I Googled Douglas McCarran St. Louis and got all kinds of responses. News articles about the construction firm, charity stuff, that megachurch. Looks like he’s a big swinging dick in your hometown, hon. Also, there’s rumors he’s planning to run for lieutenant governor.”

Dougie? Dim Doug? Douglas McCarran the panicky impulse killer, lieutenant governor of the State of Missouri? It sounds about right, actually. “Find out where Kathie lives, would you?”

* * *

Late in the afternoon I’m in Dogtown, parked on a residential street not far from Doug’s construction company. Kathie’s house is smaller than the one she and Doug lived in back when. The aluminum frame of her screen door is twisted out of position, as though someone very drunk tried to break in, and the grass is high enough she’s likely to get a citation before long. Shame on Mikey for going down to Florida. I’ll have to get Paula to find out where my nieces are, see if they have husbands who can step up to the plate like men.

Twenty minutes after five she pulls up in a little Asian car, one of those makes that didn’t exist when I was free, and parks in front of the house. She’s shorter than I remember, getting fat, and she limps as she carries a bag of groceries up the steps. It seems to me that she’s aged more than I have since the last time I saw her; she could be my older sister. Hell, she looks like she could be our mom’s older sister.

* * *

Next day I have lunch again at the Sauget restaurant and wait for the big ugly Caddy to show in the strip club lot. One good thing about working with Doug was how reliable he was. A creature of habit, you might say, predictable as the phases of the moon. Now I have an idea Dougie Boy might be a regular at Cinnamon Bunzz; the question is, how regular? Once a week, twice? Five times?

And at 12:27 he pulls into the lot and parks in damn near the same spot as a couple days earlier. That’s all I need for today, and I finish my burger and leave without waiting for Doug to get out of his vehicle, careful nonetheless not to let him see me going to my car.

* * *

I call Paula that night and reassure her that nothing bad is going to happen, that I’ll be back as soon as I can be. That might be tomorrow night or it might not. When I get off the phone I head over to the tavern from whose lot I borrowed my wheels the other evening, and find the recovered vehicle sitting there, presumably locked this time. At the bar I nurse a beer and listen to a sad, hollow-cheeked man telling a friend about the difficulties involved in getting his stolen car back from the impound. I feel like buying him and his friend a round as compensation but resist the temptation.

* * *

Unlike her unfortunate employer, Mrs. Floyd Willis––Nina––survived the bullet to her brain, though not without sustaining some serious intellectual deficits, as the doctors called them. At trial she testified that I had acted alone, and that she’d remember my face anywhere. In fact, Doug and I had both been wearing rubber, over-the-head Ronald Reagan masks, which we’d thought would be hilarious. I didn’t contradict anything in her testimony, since the notion that I’d acted alone served my purposes well. I had a real bleeding-heart judge––not many of those around anymore, not in Missouri––and though I declined to reveal where I’d hidden the proceeds of the robbery, he sentenced me to twenty-eight years. Every time I had a shot at parole they’d ask where I’d stashed the money and I’d tell them I couldn’t rightly remember. But it all went into Doug’s construction business, which was supposed to be mine as well.

Which is just the way the shit happened to stick to the wall that time.

* * *

At eleven thirty the next morning I park my car in back of Cinnamon Bunzz next to what I hope and presume is an emergency exit and walk around the corner to the front. Though the presence of the cop car fills me with dread, as a test of will I give the deputy a friendly salute when I pass. He returns it with a friendly grin.

Inside, I take a seat at the bar and order a Wiedemann’s, which the bartender has never heard of. “They still make Old Style?” I ask.

“I got Bud, Bud Lite, and that’s it on tap. In a bottle I got Corona.”

“Is that A-B?”

“They distribute it.” Her hair is cut in a sort of shag, with gradations of color ranging from platinum to black, and her tank top is so tight it looks like it must hurt.

“I got an old grudge. Got fired from there over a fight with my supervisor back in ’82.”

“Shouldn’t argue with the boss.”

“Wasn’t that kind of fight. I cut off a piece of his left ear.”

“Hah. Like Johnny Cash.”

“All right, I guess I can forgive them after all this time. Bud it is.”

She must be about thirty, and I suppose that’s considered old in this place. She pulls a draft, sets it in front of me, and gives me a curious, crooked-toothed smile. “What’s your name, sugar?”

“Luther,” I say, in honor of an old, dead cellmate.

“Well, Luther, I’m Noodles, if you need anything you let me know. Got Salty Taffee and Cinderella up on stages one and three and there’s lap dances in the back.”

At 12:32 Doug walks in and shouts a big hearty hello to Noodles, who waves back at him with a smile as insincere as I’ve ever seen outside of a jailhouse preacher’s face. It’s funny hearing his voice. It hasn’t changed much, a little croakier than before but still full of the joyous conviction that the whole damned world loves him. He heads straight for a back room, snapping his fingers and shouting out for a certain Cherry Vanilla to join him.

“Not a particular fan of old Dougie’s?” I ask Noodles, seeing her as a potential ally.

“That cocksucker. You know him?”

“Used to. Not an admirer myself. What’s your beef? He a bad tipper?”

“Nothing like that. Let’s just say he has a cavalier attitude and leave it at that.”

“That’s what I hear.”

“And in a place like this, the competition is pretty fierce.”

I wait for five minutes. I don’t know how long a lap dance is supposed to take, but if Doug’s a quick finisher it’s time to intervene. I leave a twenty on the bar and wink at Noodles.

“Time to renew that acquaintance,” I tell her, jerking my thumb toward the door behind which Doug disappeared with Cherry Vanilla.

“You can’t go back there, Luther,” she says.

“It’s okay, I’m just poking my head in.”

She starts to say something else, then stops. Surely her job is to stop me, or to call the muscle and have them do it, but she cocks her head and looks amused.

* * *

Cherry Vanilla is a remarkably fit young woman, her back muscles and quads as well developed as any obsessive penitentiary body builder’s, and as I quietly push the door open she’s gyrating her pelvis just above Doug’s own to the tune of “Dream On,” his cock in his hand and his eyes fixed on her finely trimmed blond bush, a harsh grimace of concentration on his mouth. Their skin shines purple in the lurid glow of a black light.

“Hiya, Dougie, funny seeing you here,” I say, and, startled, he stands, sending Cherry Vanilla tumbling to the ground.

“Jesus, Doug!” she yells, then turns to face me. “You get the shit out! You want a lap dance, you ask at the fucking bar.”

Meanwhile Doug’s looking at me, completely baffled, mouth open like he’s about to venture a guess as to who I might be, cock still engorged in his hand. He looks as dumb as I’ve ever seen him look.

I pull the filleting knife out of my inside jacket pocket and Cherry Vanilla screams. The music is loud enough that I can at least entertain the notion that the security guard didn’t hear. I lunge forward and get a good swipe at Doug’s dick. I get his hand instead, and when he jerks it away I slice his swollen dick. It’s not completely severed, but it dangles by a fleshy thread, and Doug and Cherry Vanilla are both yelling. They’re so loud I have to get right up on top of Doug, who’s writhing on the floor and sobbing.

He looks up at me in horrified recognition, tries to say something but can’t manage to form the words.

“Remember, no statute of limitations for murder, Mr. Lieutenant Governor,” I tell him.

He’s looking in horror at the bloody shreds of his member, keening in pain and sorrow.

“I asked you to do one thing,” I tell him. “One little goddamn thing.”

* * *

I run out to find the security man, a potbellied, mustachioed goofball in a stained Cinnamon Bunzz polo shirt, huffing toward the back. “For Christ’s sake, he stabbed her!” I call out to him. “Call an ambulance, call the cops!”

Not being a very good security man, he runs right past me toward the screams. Before I walk out the emergency exit to my car, I wave at Noodles and give her a thumbs-up.

This morning I bought what I understand is called a burner phone, since I don’t want this call traced to Paula. As I drive away, I dial the first of a pair of numbers I programmed into it this morning. “KSDK TV,” a voice says. “How can I direct your call?”

“Newsroom,” I say.

After I’m confident I’ve convinced the initially skeptical reporter, I call the Post-Dispatch and give them the same tip. By that time I’ve made it from 55 north onto 70 west, and I figure it will take me a good five hours to get to KC and Paula. I don’t intend to go so much as a mile per hour above the posted limit, don’t intend to ever commit so much as a misdemeanor ever again.

By the time I hit Wentzville I’m feeling pretty good. I put on KSHE and I take it as a good omen that they’re playing Foghat.