by Dan Flanigan
The story was over. Harrigan stubbed out his cigarette, got up, and started pacing up and down the room. It was someone else’s turn to talk now, and he did not seem to care who. They endured another long pause. Lufkin sat there like a cow lazily chewing its cud. Anderson had the manner of a solemn deity who badly wanted to fart.
Finally, Anderson cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Harrigan tells me that you’re a veteran.”
“Yes, sir. I am.”
“Vietnam?”
“Yes, sir. United States Marine Corps.”
“Combat?”
“Door gunner. Medevac helicopter.”
“Tough duty,” Lufkin chimed in.
“Yes, sir.”
“Mr. O’Keefe,” Anderson gravely intoned, “it’s men like you that make me still proud to be an American.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Call me Ernest,” said Mr. Anderson.
“And you understand, Mr. O’Keefe,” said Lufkin, “that we’re not wealthy men. We don’t have much money to spend.”
He could play this one as well as Harrigan could.
“If I can get access to the books and the secretary, I can have a report on the financial situation after two days’ work.”
“Twelve hundred dollars,” said Harrigan ominously from the far end of the room, his back toward them as he looked out the window wall and off somewhere into the far blue yonder.
“How about finding that little crook Lenny?” Lufkin asked.
“I can probably find out a lot while I’m down there looking at the books. Let’s say another day spent on Mr. Parker, and we’ll decide then the next step we should take.”
“Eighteen hundred dollars,” said Harrigan, still with his back to them.
Anderson turned to talk to Harrigan’s back. “That’s within the budget we discussed, isn’t it, Mr. Harrigan?”
“I’d say so, Mr. Anderson.”
“Well then,” said Anderson, “we’ll be looking forward to working with you, Mr. O’Keefe. May I call you Peter?”
“Please call me Pete.”
“Good. We’ll be going then,” said Anderson as he got up from his chair.
“Just get that little weasel Lenny,” said Lufkin. “I want him in the slammer if nothing else. Let’s see how well he can sell to his new roommates.”
Harrigan and O’Keefe walked to the door of the conference room with the two older men. Hands were piously shaken all around. Harrigan let them find their own way back down the hall to the waiting room. As they shuffled away, their humped backs seemed to carry an invisible but quite heavy burden of defeat, a defeat they had not been prepared to suffer at this stage of their lives.
After the two men had moved out of earshot, Harrigan turned to O’Keefe and said solemnly, “You make me proud to be an American, Mr. O’Keefe.”
O’Keefe’s smile was bitter, but he had done his duty and, despite everything, was pretty sure he would do it again if he had to.
“Just think, those are the kind of sonuvabitches that sent you over there. And they’ll send you right back again if you give them half a chance.”
Harrigan started abruptly down the hall toward his office.
“You want a drink?” he asked.
O’Keefe looked at his watch. It wasn’t quite noon. Then Harrigan said what O’Keefe was thinking.
“What the hell. It’s Saturday.”
Julia rolled in a tea cart that carried a silver ice bucket with silver tongs, crystal glassware, a quart of Wild Turkey, a pitcher of water, and a large bottle of club soda. They each took a little soda and a little water with their bourbon.
“Now, what do you think about that?” Harrigan said, gesturing toward the tea cart.
“I think about the kid whose family didn’t have a set of plates that matched, the kid that had moth holes in every one of his sweaters, the kid that had exactly five pairs of underwear. His name was Michael Harrigan.”
“We gotta take a trip or something,” said Harrigan. “We’re losing touch. You’re all I’ve got left of the old days.”
Harrigan raised his glass in tribute. “To Mike and Pete. Blood brothers. Knights of the Grail.”
O’Keefe raised his glass in response. “To Friday-night mixers and long-haired girls.”
“To Bob Dylan,” said Harrigan. “To poetry and wet dreams.”
“To all our dreams,” said O’Keefe. “To the boys we were and the men we thought we could be.”
A darkness engulfed Harrigan then. O’Keefe could see it in his face. Harrigan’s soul was plummeting, right down to the ground, for he hated what he had become. If it had been twenty years ago, Harrigan would have wept, but he was a different person now. He did not weep. Instead, he covered his despair with a brutal cynicism. Harrigan raised his glass again. “To frauds and scams. To bad faith and breach of promise. To embezzlement and defalcation. To mink farms. To suckers. Where would our bank accounts be without them?”
“How’s the scam work?”
“Old, old trick. A Ponzi scheme. There’s a mink farm down there all right, with about three hundred mink when there’s supposed to be three thousand. And Lenny pays the first batch of suckers with the money from the next batch of suckers. And on and on until he runs out of suckers. Then he splits with the dough if he hasn’t already pissed it all away on cars and boats and diamond rings for his honey girl.”
“You know though, when you hear it for the first time, it seems to make sense.”
“Well, I bet they’ll sell you a couple of minks while you’re down there. The problem is the little fuckers eat more food than their little pelts will ever be worth. It’s a low-margin business even if you know what you’re doing, and I guarantee you that Lenny Parker doesn’t know diddly except how to give mighty powerful sermons to all those suckers looking to make five hundred dollars turn into fifty thousand.”
“Hell, I’d have given him five hundred on that deal.”
“And there you are, Pete—one born every minute.”
Harrigan drained his drink and poured another one. He didn’t bother with the water or the soda this time.
“Do a quick-and-dirty on this one. These guys can’t afford much, and we’ve got to do whatever we can for the least money in the shortest time. Remember, the little fuckers’ll be starving in a few days.”
“I’ll drive down this afternoon and be at the farm first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Monday’s soon enough. Get Preston first.”
“Preston,” said O’Keefe, shaking his head, disappointed in himself.
“We’ve been trying to get that guy for a month, Pete, and it costs Preston forty thousand bucks a month just to keep himself in whores and houses and yachts. Since he’s living on our banker client’s money, that means we’ve let him spend forty thousand of our client’s money this month. And we didn’t get where we are today by fucking around like this. Results. That’s all they want from us. So get him today, okay? I want to shoot him down. It’ll be a service to the country and give me enormous pleasure besides. And pleasure doesn’t come easy these days. Not for me at least.”
Harrigan had now drained his second drink. The muscles in his face were taut as bowstrings. O’Keefe noticed how black and deep were the circles below his friend’s eyes. Something was ravaging him from the inside out. When O’Keefe finished his drink and got up to leave, Harrigan was looking out the window, far off somewhere.
“You know, Pete,” he said, still looking out the window, “when we were kids in high school, we thought life was gonna be some wonderful quest. But it turns out to be just a fucking trench war.”
After O’Keefe had gone, Harrigan sat for a long time, sipping his third drink and thinking about his old friend. O’Keefe made him feel that special warmth the heart reserves for the few friends of childhood you are lucky enough to still know in adult life and still care about. He needed O’Keefe around to provide evidence that his heart had not turned, irrevocably, to stone. He had to do
some paperwork, some contracts and correspondence, but the only time he could stand to do paperwork anymore was when he started at it very early in the morning, the light in his office the only one on in the entire downtown area of the city. That’s what he would do—get in here at five o’clock on Monday morning and start grinding away.
Once he had written poetry. Now he wrote pleadings and contracts. From the language of the heart to the language of the money vault. What a descent! Why did he get the blues like this every Saturday afternoon? The sky outside had darkened, the now-gloomy city hunched forlornly outside his window wall. He did not want to go home to the wife and kids. All he wanted was something worth hoping for. Failing that, he wanted to go to a bar and wrap some oblivion around him. And he did not want to be alone. He dialed Julia’s extension. She would be getting off work soon. He would ask her to go have a drink. He knew she would say “Yes.”
CHAPTER 5
AT HARVEY’S, THE bar downstairs from O’Keefe’s office, Sara, bubbling with delighted self-satisfaction, recounted to the appalled O’Keefe her adventure of the day.
“I just couldn’t stand the suspense anymore,” she said.
“You’re crazy!”
“Yeah. I kept thinking, ‘What if he doesn’t come out all day? What if he goes out the back or a side door? What if he’s got a car in the garage? What if he’s got a car pulling up to get him and is out the door and in the car before I can say ‘Jack Robinson?’”
“Jack Robinson,” scoffed O’Keefe.
“Just too much could go wrong. So I called up to his room.”
“Tell me you didn’t!”
“I sure did. And he answers! Mr. Whiskey and Cigarette Voice. And I said, ‘Damon?’ “And he says, ‘Yeah, who’s this?’ And I say, hoping my voice isn’t quavering too much, ‘I hope you’ll remember me. Last night. At Gigi’s. The bartender.’”
“Oh shit, the bartender,” O’Keefe said. “George told you all that?”
“I had to do my homework, didn’t I? Not just sit there like a bump.”
“So,” she resumed, “Preston sounding pleased but suspicious, says, ‘How’d you know where to find me?’”
She jiggled her ice in her near-empty glass as she went on. “Well, that one was a hard one, you can bet.”
“No kidding.”
“I said, ‘You told me where you were staying. Don’t you remember?’ And he doesn’t say a word to that. Which made me very nervous. And I thought, ‘Oh shit, O’Keefe’s going to kill me if I blow this.’ So I say, ‘I called because I didn’t want you to think I was just brushing you off or something. I had a date I just couldn’t get out of. I hope I’ll see you again.’”
“And he jumps right on that. ‘How about tonight?’ he says. ‘I’ll take you to dinner. What’s your favorite place?’ Another big moment, that one. But I come up with ‘I have to work tonight. How about lunch? I’m in your neighborhood.’”
“This better have a happy ending,” O’Keefe said, with no hint of humor.
“And then he says, ‘I’ll call up room service. Champagne is on the way. How long will it take you to get here?’”
“You didn’t,” O’Keefe said.
“I sure did. I grab the subpoena and I’m thinking on the way up to the room, ‘I can’t believe this horny old goat. He was up there all night with two hookers and he’s ready to go again.’ And I get up there and knock on the door, thinking he is going to be a gentleman and come to the door and open it for me. But instead, I knock and hear from inside, ‘Come in.’”
O’Keefe just groaned.
“Yes, Mr. O’Keefe, I fear that chivalry really is dead. But I say to myself, ‘OK, I have to go in there. He will see right away that I’m not the bartender, but what could possibly happen to me in there, really? So I turn the knob, and I’m thinking, because I don’t know, I’ve never done this, ‘Can I just throw the thing at him and run, or do I have to get right up close and put it in his hand?’”
“Jesus!” said O’Keefe, shaking his head.
“But, of course, there was not exactly time enough to call you or Harrigan for an interpretation of the law. So I go on in, and there he is, and I say to myself, not kidding here, ‘Well, this one’s a dandy all right.’ Because he’s there on the couch, half sitting, half reclining, in a fancy robe, no hotel job, had to be his own, silk I really think, smiling big as the moon, tan brown legs crossed quite leisurely, liver spots all over his legs he’s so damn old, but the most beautiful head of wavy, silver-gray hair you’ve ever seen. There’s a champagne bucket standing next to the couch. But here it is, here’s the cake that got took, Mr. O’Keefe.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“I march right over to where he’s perched himself and can’t help noticing that the robe just below his waist is standing up like a little pup tent!”
“Not amusing,” said O’Keefe.
“And as I’m marching over there, his face is changing fast, but before he can really register what’s happening, I drop the subpoena right on his little pup tent and say, ‘Compliments of Mr. Harrigan,’ and I turn around and walk right out of the room, and once I’m in the hall, I hit the stairs—I sure wasn’t going to wait for the elevator—down and out and in the van and back to the office. Mission accomplished.”
She held up her glass in joyful triumph, inviting him to click her glass in a toast, which he did, feigning delight, trying to disguise his disquiet.
“That was great,” he said, “unbelievable work, but you have to promise me you won’t ever do something like that again.”
“Well, I’ll consider that,” she said, “as long as there’s an ‘again.’ Promise me there really will be an ‘again.’”
“That’s a deal,” he said. “A solemn covenant.”
They sealed the covenant with another toast. She felt guilty because she had lied to him, by omission if not commission. It was the “walk right out of the room” that was the lie. Yes, she had turned to walk swiftly out of the room, but as she did that, she could not see the sudden rage in Preston’s face. She could not see or hear him leap up from the couch. But she did hear him say “You fuckin’ bitch,” and felt him coming after her. She had started to run just before he knocked her down.
“You cunt,” he said. One of his fists bounced off the side of her head. She tried to fold herself into a fetal position, but the blow had stunned her, and it seemed like she now moved in slow motion. Then he suddenly stopped beating on her. Instead, he had forced her dress up to her waist and was ripping at her underpants. Struggling to free herself, she somehow instinctively perceived the futility of that in view of his superior strength and, instead, suddenly relaxed, went entirely limp, which caused Preston himself to unthinkingly relax in response, which gave her a precious moment or two to raise both of her knees and shove her feet hard into his gut, and she quickly wriggled free as he groaned and feebly grabbed for her. She came to her knees and then to her feet and dashed toward the door, taking a quick look backward as she grabbed and turned the knob, and saw that he had only managed to struggle to his knees (“age catching up with you” flashed through her mind) as she quickly opened the door, ducked out, slammed it shut, and ran fast toward the exit sign leading to the stairway and safety.
Yes, she felt guilty but with only a little regret for the lie because she knew that if she told him the truth, her chance of ever getting out from behind that secretary’s desk would disappear.
Oblivious, O’Keefe kept his eyes on her as long as he dared. Her neck was soft and white. Her dark brown eyes seemed to bid welcome. Oh, Sara, be careful, or I’ll fall into your eyes.
Their eyes met and quickly looked away.
O’KEEFE WAS ONE of the “characters” that Harvey liked to have hang around his bar. Harvey took special pride in O’Keefe, whose presence imparted a sense of adventure and even some danger to the place, which had become, regrettably, according to Harvey’s 1960s way of thinking, just another after-work watering hol
e and meat market for the yuppie crowd. Harvey would look around the place at Happy Hour, shake his head, and say to O’Keefe, “Fuckin’ yuppies. What did I do to deserve to live in a world full of yuppies?” But then Harvey would not hesitate to shamelessly use the exotic O’Keefe, the ex-hippie, ex-Vietnam “baby-killer” private detective as a drawing card to keep these same yuppies coming back to his place. “See that guy over there at the bar?” he would say to them. “That’s Peter O’Keefe. He’s a private dick, and he carries a gun all the time.” And the type of yuppies who frequented a place like Harvey’s, ex-romantics most of them, would look at O’Keefe and envy him for the life they thought he led. They would keep hanging around Harvey’s, just hoping some of whatever O’Keefe had would rub off on them. Little did they know that his life was really not much different from theirs, that he was sort of a yuppie himself.
Harvey’s was almost empty now, at 3:30 on a Saturday afternoon, except for a couple of lone, middle-aged men sitting a couple of stools away from each other at the bar, drinking resolutely and watching a college football game on the big-screen television that Harvey had reluctantly installed. “Now I’m runnin’ a fuckin’ sports bar, for Christ’s sake,” he had grumbled. Harvey was waiting in vain for the return of the beatnik coffeehouse, the return of the good old days when life had really meant something. O’Keefe was glad not to have to tell the story of the day to a gaggle of half-envious, half-contemptuous bankers, accountants, and lawyers. They were at home today, raking leaves or standing on the sidelines watching their kids play soccer, urging them to do better, always to do better. He winced inwardly as he recalled that he had missed so many of Kelly’s soccer games this year. He vowed to make a much better showing in the upcoming basketball season.
Sara ordered a big meal and delicately wolfed it down as O’Keefe drank his Moosehead and stared at her in amazement at the large size of her appetite versus the relatively smaller size of her.
She noticed him staring at her and looked embarrassed.