by Chris Bauer
“Hi. I’m Eli.”
Eli sipped, stared at my pixie hair, then face, then his eyes lingered on my chest. He seemed on the sweet, coy side. I needed to do my best to not be rude, so things wouldn’t get out of hand Tourette’s-wise.
“Hi, Eli.”
“Nice head,” he said. I guessed that was a new bar thing, lines like that, about a woman’s haircut. I went with it.
“Thank you. It pays to have a good hair guy.”
He gave the rest of me the once-over. “No, I meant mine. I’ve got a nice big head, ma’am, the one you can’t see. And I like older chicks with great tits giving it some attention. Interested?”
I got this from guys sometimes. Hilarious. Supposed to impress me with his big-balls approach and his sexy smile, maybe even get me hot. Not tonight.
“Eli, sweetie, you and that landscape of Strawberry Shortcake ink on your arms and your neck are in my way. I’m watching my friends bowl. Move your entitled ass.”
Tats. Tits. Tits and tats. A quick rub of my furry luck charm on my belt loop and Eli escaped otherwise unharmed, free to work out his sexy mommy issues elsewhere.
Only a few of the drinkers were seniors closer in to the bar, mingling with the twenty- to forty-somethings. I took quick stock of them. Curvy black woman, shiny gray ringlets. My mother would have labeled her ‘demure’; a black Ida Lupino. She slowly stirred her drink, seemed bored with it or herself or with life in general, or bored at least with her interested other party, a dapper reddish-haired guy, his age debatable. A second older woman, a lumpy, rinsed blonde in her forties, her dress too tight, her roots black but not stylishly so, took a sloppy sip from her martini, seemed a bit drunk. The man next to her was overweight and white-haired, with a full white-gray beard. I took a good, hard look at him.
Looked like my guy.
I felt the pressure, stroked the fuzz, and resisted drawing my gun, hoped it wasn’t needed. My facial muscles tightened around gritting teeth. I waded in.
The buzz around the bar suddenly elevated, heads turning quickly, mine included, to focus on one of the TVs. The other three TVs switched stations to join the fourth, all tuned to the same local news event. The bartender turned up the volume and the patrons went church quiet. A quick glance at my maybe-bounty; he was still there. A voiceover accompanied a video taken during daylight hours, recorded outside a restaurant in downtown Scranton.
“Two dead in the popular steakhouse’s restroom earlier today… pills… Executions or drug deal gone wrong, or gang slayings, it’s unknown at this time. Local Scranton investigators were on the scene. And now, so is the FBI…”
Soon as I heard FBI, I concentrated. All four TV screens showed footage of EMTs carrying two body bags out of the restaurant earlier in the day. A cut to live footage on the street showed evening patrons entering the steakhouse, some J. Edgars visible in the backdrop. And there they were: Agent Van Impe plus two other FBI types plus Agent McQuarters, an ogre in a too-short, shitty suit. What interested them was a car parked across the street. A custom-painted Honda Civic. No shit. It was the car I had the pleasure of confronting earlier today at the strip mall drug store. I was now liking this news story a lot.
So too was everyone else in the bar area. Around me I saw a few low-key fist bumps and arms drape more freely over shoulders, the crowd getting chummier with each comment the reporter delivered while they looped the video. The restaurant storefront, the dining room, the bathroom, the bloody toilets. Shell casings littered the brown tile floor, with glimpses of the reflective crime scene chalk that outlined them. Next to me, an unsteady bar leaner raised his hand, looked to me for a high five.
“Ha! Look at all them bingo chips, Walt. That’ll learn ya, ya bastards.” He squinted. His rosy-cheeked, alcohol-fueled smile disintegrated when I left his high five hanging. “You ain’t Walt. The hell you do with Walt?” He high-fived another bar patron instead.
The bowling alley background noise subsided. Rolling balls and pin-breaks dropped off, became sporadic like the last few kernels of microwave popcorn. The TVs became center stage, the alley’s patrons riveted.
“… precise, quiet, deadly. Upscale lunchtime dining marred by two murders that looked like executions. Tune in at eleven for more details. WSWB reporting live from Scranton…”
The news became the weather, the other TVs stuttering back to their baseball games and music videos, my white-haired person of interest still charming his lady friend. The quieted viewers re-engaged each other, returning to the business of drinking and small talk and pickup lines and noisy strikes and spares.
What the hell just happened? Before I moved on my person of interest I made another visual sweep of the alley patrons, out on a Wednesday night to bowl and drink and share some grins, but all of it had stopped for a basic, garden-variety local shooting. We interrupt your late night hookup for this breaking news…
To a one, young and old, they’d watched it, and only after they’d reveled in it did they go back to the business of brag and bling. Except I’d heard it. Heard the pride buried within their reveling, and I was expected to share it by way of the high five meant for someone’s good buddy Walt. Heard the drunk talk that went with it too. Bingo chips. Apparently slang in these parts for shell casings. I filed that one away, but not for long because my subconscious had heard it too.
“—bingo bongo boob-o, bibbidi-bobbidi-boo, Babalu! BABALUUUU!”
I gritted my teeth to minimize the drivel until I found the fuzz. No one noticed my lapse because of the surrounding noise level.
The blonde martini lady chatting up my prospective bounty pointed her manicured finger at the TV then at Helen, busy as hell bartending. Martini Lady had apparently been at the Scranton steakhouse, or lived near it, or Helen had been there, or something else about that news story was important to her the way she was gesturing. Martini Lady grabbed her wrist before she could leave, pulled her close, then patted Helen’s shoulder like a proud, drunk aunt, jabbing at her own bicep then at Helen’s, making a point. Helen shushed her and took the new martini away.
The woman pouted then pleaded to her prospective lay for the evening. He gave up his drink for her and she gulped it down, rubbed his upper thigh in appreciation. It was then that he and I made our visual acquaintance. I broke it off, else I’d have spooked him at this distance. He re-engaged his female target.
Before I could move, Helen was at my end of the bar deep-sixing the lady’s martini at the sink, cursing under her breath. She released a few “fucking idiot” sentiments that filled the unexpectedly quiet, dead air around us. She rubbed her left bicep where Martini Lady had jabbed her, her sleeveless top exposing major artwork, shoulder to wrist. The jab—it couldn’t have hurt her, but her mindless massaging of it, and her narrowed eyes, said it had taken a toll, that somewhere beneath the artwork it had hit a nerve.
Same as it did with me right then, me staring at her upper arm, awestruck.
There, camouflaged, other tattoos surrounding it like a collage, with interlocking dragons and unicorns and trolls, one particular tattoo in the middle of the mix shocked me. A puppet head. Kangaroo ears, smiling platypus face, red nose. A fucking bunyip. The fucking Bunyip.
Bunyip’s property. Here, in the Poconos, tending bar, not turning tricks in Philly. An old cold case. I called her over, said two words to her when she asked what she could help me with, me staring her down.
“Bunyip Deveraux.”
She stood statue still, maintained a poker face with no eyelid flutter, her jaw muscles tightening. Her hands… they were going for something under the bar—
Shit. I’d left the wrong impression.
“Helen—no—wait—the dude’s an unsolved missing person in Philly—”
I raised my hands palms up, I come in peace, no mas, don’t tase me bro, etc., etc. Her hands stayed where I couldn’t see them.
I explained. “Sorry. I’m an idiot. I’ve got no interest in the Bunyip or anyone associated with him. Your tattoo—it
surprised me.”
She eyed me closely, stayed deadpan as long as she could. Her hands reappeared atop the bar, empty.
“Some teenagers make really poor choices. He can’t hurt anyone now.” Her jaw still tight she spoke again, calling to someone farther down the bar, her eyes still locked on mine. “Audrey! Over here.” Helen’s fingers beckoned her friend to join us. “You need to meet someone, Counsel, so you get a better understanding of things.”
Her friend excused herself from a conversation and unwound her lower half from the stool. The shorthaired brunette with an oval face had made-up eyes that she’d done a professional job with. Her lacey yellow top was tucked into stylish jeans, the blouse with short sleeves. A few thousand dollars’ worth of exposed ink ran from wrist to neck, the tattoo sleeve broken by the dash of yellow that covered her upper arm and shoulder.
“Helen, honey,” Audrey said, me getting some side-eye. “You good here, sweetie?” Her opinion of me was no doubt still formulating, pending Helen’s answer.
“This lady here, she needs to see it.” Helen nodded her head in my direction then in Audrey’s, giving Audrey permission.
“‘It’?”
“Yes, ‘it.’ Please.”
Audrey hesitated, a pronounced eyelid flutter greeting Helen’s stare at her. “You sure, honey?”
“Yes, I’m sure. This is Counsel. She’s a friend.”
Audrey got up close and incredibly personal with me. Her dark eyes stayed on mine, making me wait a few beats. Then, “Look closely at my arm.”
So I did. A sleeve full of A Midsummer Night’s Dream tats, faeries and horned nymphs and cupids all scampering north from her wrist, a dizzying array of green and red and peach flowers sprouting everywhere. I followed the artwork up her forearm to her bicep. She lifted up the short yellow sleeve, exposing more blossoming flowers. One bore the face of the Bunyip.
“See Big Drew over there?” Helen said to me, accompanied by a chin point. I looked, saw a heavier woman, anywhere from twenties to forties, slow-dancing near the bathroom with a date, her exposed arm a rather meaty mirage of tattoos. “She’s with her husband. The lighting’s low, but if you look close enough you’ll see she likes Thomas the Tank Engine, because her toddler is a big Thomas fan, although Thomas’s face looks a bit bunyip-y.”
Helen had to draw a beer for an impatient customer. She reached over Audrey’s head to deliver it. “One last thing, Counsel. No one survives a hit like the one they put on Deveraux. They should have found a body with only half a face behind that bar in Bristol, but it never turned up. No body meant that people had to take precautions.”
“There are procedures that can remove your ink, Helen,” I said. “They can be painful, but why not have it removed?”
“Maybe a person never wants to forget how bad things can get. Maybe a person wants, needs that reminder. Maybe it’s something that keeps her sober. Or so I’ve heard.”
I was impressed. Safety in numbers. Some misdirection. Overkill. My next question to Helen: “What’s under the bar?”
She gave me a hard face, her eyes now cold as a gunslinger’s. “What you’re thinking is under the bar, is under the bar. Loaded.”
Lovely. Helen left to get someone else a drink. I gulped down my beer and started toward the other end of the bar where Martini Lady and her suitor were swallowing each other’s tongues.
“A Woolworth!” Charlie hollered from the hardwoods. All the heads at the bar turned toward the lanes, including mine.
“Stop into the five and dime, Andy! Hairbrush the five and put some lipstick on the ten. An easy split…”
I recovered from the distraction, had a difficult time pushing my way through the other bar leaners, jostling many of them, pissing off the women, getting leers from the men. The crowd cheered the spare. I reached the end of the bar, and fucking shit bastard son of a motherfucking bitch, both Martini Lady and her suitor were gone. I scanned the crowd, then the perimeter. The door to the building’s entrance was swinging shut.
Outside. I needed to hustle my ass outside.
In the parking lot, a few smokers and gropers were tucked in against the building, another couple in an embrace had settled against the hood of a Hummer in a handicapped space. The flashing overhead marquis meant there was no privacy anywhere, but this didn’t matter when you were drunk. Except there was no older drunk blonde and no potential Stephen Linkletter out here among them.
One minute into my walk through the lot, the fog became prohibitive, but it didn’t mask the pockets of sweet-smelling weed I passed through. A blow job was in progress in a white Beemer sedan. Not my guy; too young. I reached the last row of cars and ended the search at my van. It was noisy inside, Tess growling at my approach. When I opened the driver’s door she sat up, her eyes on me, her growl low key, her wiggling butt on my seat but resting there only lightly. In her mouth was the Linkletter plastic bottle, shredded in spots, crushed and chewed flat elsewhere, the green of the Poland Spring label only partly intact. She hopped out without permission and sprinted around the back of the van, on a mission. I followed, circled the van, found her growling, hopping and springing at the window of the car next to us. A Cadillac sedan. Nice. Empty. She didn’t stop with the hopping, the driver’s door getting scratched in the process, but right about then I didn’t really give a shit, because right about then was when I realized whose car this was. I wrestled what was left of the shredded bottle out of her mouth and tucked it into my pocket. I opened the back of my van.
I went for the body armor. I suited the three of us up.
“Fungo—dude—sit. You’re staying back here for now. Tess, let’s go. No squirrel hunting inside, capice?” I shook a finger in her face. “Or no bedtime treat later. You understand, sweetie?”
She lowered her head and whined. She knew what I meant.
42
Randall might well have been a misogynist but he’d never considered himself a bigot. Meat was meat; color never mattered. Except he wasn’t breaking through to this sexy older black woman at the bar, which was making him frustrated. She was like, ho-hum, you tell me you got a big dick and some drugs, so what? You got anything else, white boy, her perceived disinterest implied.
Yes, was his mental response. Yes, he did have something else.
“Guns. I have guns. You ever shoot a gun?”
Her eyes, dreamy slits a moment ago, opened a bit. The question had registered. They stayed lazily interested in her daiquiri, but this sleek-looking woman with fuzzy gray ringlets, flawless black skin, wondrous pink lips, and nice round booty was for sure intrigued. She paused, didn’t take the sip she’d intended to take. “Your name again?”
“Howard,” Randall, aka Howard, said. “I’m a lawyer.”
“Howard. Huh.” Another pause. “Yes, I’ve shot a gun before.”
She stirred her drink, then sipped. She again settled into searching for the answers to life’s mysteries in her rum and lime juice. One more try, Randall decided, this time with a different angle. He leaned heavily on the bar with both elbows, faced forward, spoke some into the long mirror that ran partway behind the bar’s length, some into his drink, but what he said was meant only for her.
“I kill people. For fun,” he said.
Some contemplative blinking accompanied a turn of her head, as in, had she heard him right?
After a few beats, “That’s a joke,” he said. “Your name is?”
Her frosty lip-sticked pink lips went back to the straw in her drink. They sucked the daiquiri glass dry, slowly and sensually. This time when she spoke, she faced him. “Order me another drink, Howard who jokes about killing people for fun. I’m Iota Jean.”
There it was. He could waste time overthinking her ridiculous first name but he didn’t, because he was in. He motioned for the bartender at this end.
“By the way, Howard,” she said, eyeing two rude young adult men leaning over and pushing past seniors waiting their turn at the bar. “I kill people too, when I’m
in the mood. Like those two. The entitlement generation. When they act that rude, they deserve it.”
Randall analyzed the two fools she’d just outted, then reanalyzed her. She didn’t flinch, staying deadpan. His smile emerged. “Ha. That was really good. Wow. You had me there.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
The young, alcohol-soaked, invincible nightclub population was where he’d start too, he said, hypothetically speaking, because the smug bastards were at an age where they thought they couldn’t die. His fantasy included binges of sex and drugs before, you know, strangling them, keywords fantasy and strangling.
This storytelling was new, thrilling territory for him, because this time he was all but telegraphing his intentions.
“I get the part about the sex,” she said. “The part about the strangling,” her eyebrows tented, “I’m not so sure.”
He’d pegged her as a bored older housewife, deep and nonjudgmental, someone who, rather than running away from him as fast as he could say Natural Born Killers, was maybe willing to ride the wild side if she could get some cheap thrills out of it.
“I figure the ultimate orgasm,” he said, “would come by killing younger people after sex, because they’re at an age where they think they’ll never die. Still hypothetically speaking, of course.”
“The sex I can get anytime,” she said. “My fantasy would be in killing people who do bad things to other people. Hypothetically speaking, of course.”
“Of course.”
A segue coming up, right… now.
“So there was this young woman in Philly,” Randall said. “A teenager who said she was from Rancor. She was, I guess you could say, exciting. Different.”
The pivot was smooth, seamless, no need for him to produce photos, which would have called attention to themselves, maybe make this talk too serious. “She made some big mistakes in an unforgiving environment, did risky things that could severely limit her life expectancy, except, hell, she was young, right? And invincible. She started abusing her body, at first because it was fun and she could, but then it was to keep from having to admit that her naiveté about getting into the movies had put her in a very bad way—the family way to be specific, and with a drug monkey on her back.”