Pilate wanted another drink, truth be told, so when he got home, he had one, sitting in the backyard. With Colin Hay’s “Me and My Imaginary Friend” played on the stereo and his butt planted in an Adirondack chair, Pilate contemplated book proposals and backyard bars.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jackie the Crow downed a shot of Jameson’s and polished it off with a swig of Budweiser. “Piss,” he muttered, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his denim jacket. He glanced around the smoky roadhouse, his head throbbing and his eyes watering. As he placed the Bud on the bar, he observed sparse white hairs that had sprouted from the gnarled knuckles on his left hand. He came by his misshapen digits honestly; he mused silently that the knuckles were the only honest characteristic he possessed.
“Another?” Nelda offered, moving her head slightly. as if trying to move her hair from her eyes, an impossible feat, considering that she’d used enough Aqua Net to keep Lornamead profitable.
Jackie eyed the rail-thin woman’s apprehensive stance behind the bar. Her skin was deeply tanned, her bleach-blonde hair immovable, and her t-shirt far too young for her age.
He pointed at the shot glass. “This, not that.”
“You that Scotch fella who owns the new B&B?”
The man looked at her blankly, cold and disinterested. Then he winked. “Irish…and no. You’ve got me confused with some other Mick.”
Normally, Nelda would have pressed on and asked plenty of nosy, prying questions, making witless American conversation about how half her family was from Ireland or some such prattle, but something about Jackie the Crow’s face told her he was best left alone. Instead of blabbing, she nodded, poured him a shot, and turned her attention to a cigarette that was smoldering in an ashtray behind her.
Jackie’s fat knuckles moved for the shot glass, but he stopped. “Keep your wheels turnin’,” he said. “I’m only foolin’ with ya. Yeah, I know Cusack.”
She brightened, cautiously inquisitive. “Well, why aren’t you drinkin’ at his place?”
“Too dear.”
Nelda raised an eyebrow, uncomprehending.
“Can’t afford his overpriced booze. ‘Sides, he annoys me.”
The door to the Brown Betty swung open, allowing light to pour in for a few seconds. Jackie glanced at the figure of the new patron in the mirror. The patron slipped a dollar in the jukebox and selected “Green, Green Grass of Home.”
As the first few notes played, Jackie looked over his shoulder at the patron. “Speak of the Devil,” he said to Nelda. “Annoyin’ me again. Well, well, well,” he said over the music. “Leave it to a half-Welsh, half-Mick to pick a tune by that tight-trousered tosser. What, ‘Raglan Road’ not good enough for ya”?
“Jackie,” Cusack said, his face blank as he slid onto the beat-up leather barstool beside him.
“Cusack the Corkie,” Jackie said.
Cusack signaled another round of Jameson’s and beer. After Nelda slid them over, he sighed. “So…what brings you here?”
“I figured you’d already know that,” Jackie said, then downed his shot.
“I left all that behind me, Jackie,” Cusack said, his drinks untouched. “I thought we agreed that once I left Cork, we’d be even.”
“I reckon that could be how you see it,” Jackie said, looking at Cusack in the mirror hanging behind the bar, “but the way I see it, you still owe me, and I’m here to collect.”
Cusack felt a wave rush over his features. He knew his face was growing ruddy and hot, as it always did when he wanted to mangle someone. “What do you want?”
Jackie the Crow smiled and cawed quietly under his breath, quite like his avian namesake.
“I’m not giving you my place,” Cusack said adamantly, raising his voice, his face reddening.
“Didn’t ask ya to.”
Nelda, observing through the mirror a few feet away, thought Cusack looked like he wanted to pick up his beer bottle, smash it in the other Irishman’s face, and drink the shot to celebrate.
“What then?”
“You got a good ting here, Cusack the Cork,” Jackie said, smiling and speaking in an unnervingly precious voice, like a cartoon leprechaun. “I asked ‘round. Folks tink you’re just a sweet Irish guy, adding a wee bit o’ color to this boring shithole, shilling the blarney for dumb, fat-arsed Americans, wearing a queer tam o’shanter and tellin’ ‘em stories about the pot o’ gold and all that shite.”
“I run a business that serves good, decent people,” Cusack said quietly, looking at Jackie’s reflection in the mirror.
“Right, and I want what’s mine—my portion.”
“I owe you nothing,” Cusack said, his eyes burning under his bushy silver eyebrows.
Jackie’s hand traveled under the lip of the bar and quickly grasped Cusack’s balls in an unforgiving grip.
Cusack started and grabbed Jackie’s arm. “What the…?”
“Easy, Corkie,” Jackie said. “Just hear me out, and I’ll let yer goolies go.”
“Get on with it,” Cusack said, his face a red, ripe strawberry.
Nelda crept closer to the end of the bar, her hands blindly grasping for a hidden panic button.
“Twenty-five grand, and I go away,” he said. “That money crosses my palm, and the vice comes off your balls.”
Cusack gasped. “Where the fook—”
Jackie squeezed, and Cusack checked his volume, taking it down a notch, just under Tom Jones.
“Where the fook do ya think I’m gonna get twenty-five? Or five, for that matter? I run a fookin’ B&B, not a damn gold mine.”
Jackie shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. My tourist visa lasts for several weeks yet, so I’ll just check on you from time to time, ’til I get my due. Maybe you oughtta put off your real estate purchase plans.”
“Ya damn fool! How do you think you’ll move twenty-five kay out of the country?”
“Leave that to me, boyo,” Jackie said, finally releasing Cusack’s manhood. “Now, outta respect, I’ll stay away from your place, but you best be here next Friday, same time, with the money or a good reason why you don’t got it.”
“And what if I my reason isn’t good enough?” Cusack asked, fearing the answer.
“Well, let’s not get into further unpleasantness at this juncture,” Jackie said. He then nonchalantly downed Cusack’s shot and lit a Marlboro.
Cusack turned to him, his face an inch from Jackie’s, the veins in his temples throbbing. “You two-bit gangster. You tink you can come here, to my town—”
“Your town?” Instantly, Jackie’s voice changed to what could only be described as an Irishman’s inexpert approximation of an American accent, something like John Wayne crossed with James Cagney. “What, are you a true-blue ‘merican citizen now?”
“You come riding in here like it’s the old days and old places and think I’ll just roll over? You fookin’ bastard. You got no muscle. You got nothing but threats and bad fookin’ breath. Get on with it and cause your trouble. You’ll be sorry.”
“I got no muscle, you say?”
“You heard me. You got nothin’.” Cusack slid from his stool, turned on his heel, and strode to the door. He threw it open, letting the light of midday bathe the interior of the Brown Betty again.
Nelda nodded at Tom, who had taken in the last moment or two of the Irishmen’s conversation from his table by the bar. He rose, hitched up his Rustler jeans, and went into his boss’s office.
“Looks like that really got his attention,” Tom said, smirking.
Hilmer Thurman smiled. “I’ll bet, like Marley’s Ghost showing up.”
“Bob Marley, right?” Tom said, leaning against the wall in Thurman’s tiny office.
“No,” Thurman said, sipping black coffee from a chipped white mug. “Tell that little shit to get in here.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Town constables have the authority of arrest and to execute warrants, subpoenas, summons, and other court documents, but there certain
ly wasn’t a lot of that sort of red tape going on in Cross Township. Pilate served one subpoena in his first week, earning a remarkable mileage reimbursement of $4.20.
Due to the lack of a sheriff, and by special dispensation from the county commission, Pilate was given complete law enforcement power within Cross Township city limits as well. He had most of the authority of a county sheriff, though he was told by Ryder to report anything beyond a civil nature—as in violence—to the state police to take action.
“That’ll do you a helluva lotta good if you’re caught in the crossfire at a robbery or handling a domestic violence case,” Simon said. “And why the hell aren’t you carrying a gun? They said you can, as long as you get a permit, which they handed to you.”
“I’m done with guns,” Pilate said aloud, his hands loose on the Saab steering wheel.
“You may live to regret that.”
“Simon, shut up.”
“Dr. Sandberg has turned you into quite the brute, you know.”
Pilate told himself he was doing it as research, for his book.
“That’s a laugh.”
“Writing books is always a laugh,” Pilate said. “I actually wrote a bestseller but didn’t see one thin dime of the profits. Probably won’t ever—”
“You’re so boring when you’re consumed with self-pity.”
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Now go check on that boy who won’t stop crapping on Mrs. Drum’s lawn.”
Taters Malley used pliers to cut off the end of the fishhook stuck in the webbing of his right hand. He pulled the hook out of his throbbing paw, trying not to wince.
“Oh Mr. Malley, I am so sorry,” the woman said, hopping up and down on the deck of the TenFortyEZ as if she were jumping an invisible rope, her breasts straining the blue bikini top in a way that made Taters forget his pain for a moment.
When he had reached for the hook in the Amberjack’s mouth, it had jumped, causing Jean, the blue bikini-clad beauty, to shriek and jerk her pole up, pulling the line taut and burying the hook in Taters’s hand. Shaking his head and swearing that he was fine, he cut the fish loose, then removed the hook. “It can happen to anybody,” Taters said around the bloody hand in his mouth. “Just remember what I said about jerking the line like that.”
“Yes, Jean, remember to be more careful,” her companion said wryly. “Don’t jerk it too hard now.”
“Stuff it, Deb,” Jean said, laughing.
Deb and Jean were in their mid-forties, both recently divorced, and in excellent shape, enjoying their first fishing expedition in the Gulf, courtesy of Taters’s Tropical Tours. Back on the dock, they told Taters and his wife, Jordan, they’d dumped their husbands, who spent all their free time fishing. They wanted to see what was “so great about it.” Taters had a suspicion that Jean and Deb were also a little closer than friends, but it wasn’t his place to ask if they were fishing in each other’s ponds.
Jordan shook her head slowly as Taters cast off and waved.
Three hours in, Taters spent fifteen minutes helping Jean wrestle a beautiful, sixty-pound greater amberjack, and they eventually hauled the thing aboard. Jean and Deb whooped in delight until the fishhook incident, exchanging their whoops for hopping on deck in mild panic.
Taters removed his hand from his mouth, smiled, and looked at his old Omega Seamaster watch, then the horizon. The sun was about an hour away from making its evening departure. Mallory Square was no doubt already filled with followers of the Green Flash. He let the amberjack tire itself out on the deck as the ladies continued their version of the pee-pee dance to avoid its thrashing.
“Well, ladies, we’re approaching the moment in our cruise when we stop menacing the fish and have some refreshments before heading back to Key West.”
“If we hurry, we can make the ghost tour,” Deb said.
“Then let’s go to that Hog’s Snout Saloon,” Jean said, making a soundless clapping gesture.
“Mr. Malley, is that a nice place?” Deb asked.
Taters looked pained for a second, then smiled. “Uh, yeah. Good conch fritters.” He then leaned over the cooler, opened it, and felt the cool breath of the ice kiss his face. He scanned the Modelo, Bud, Kalik, and Shock Top bottles, mingling with token cans of Diet Coke and Sprite. “I’ve got beer, the best being Modelo, and—”
Suddenly, he felt something in his chest, as if someone had impaled him with a claw hammer. That was followed by the terrifying feeling of a balloon swelling with air under his sternum, with precious little room for expansion. He had been through such a thing before, only never so bad and certainly never while he was out on the Gulf. “Shit. Not again,” he muttered. “Musta been that dance with the AJ.”
“Mr. Taters, are you okay?” Deb said, her hands folded over her yellow bikini top in a gesture of concern.
Taters crumpled to his knees, then fell back heavily on his rump.
The pair of pretty brunettes examined his pale face with concern.
“Ladies, the good news is that you can have a beer. The bad news is that you’ll have to open it and get that fish into the cold storage by yourselves.”
Quizzical looks crossed their faces.
“Oh, and only after you make a call for me on the radio.”
“What?” Jean said.
He pointed at the radio. “Pick that up. Right, Jean. You look like you can handle a radio just fine. Now push that button and repeat after me.”
She clicked the handset.
“Good girl. Say, ‘Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is the sailing vessel TenFortyEZ. This is the sailing vessel TenFortyEZ. This is the sailing vessel TenFortyEZ, declaring a medical emergency…’”
“Mrs. Drum, I spoke with Rocky, and he said Rocky Jr. has been disciplined,” Pilate practically yelled in the elderly woman’s ear.
Mrs. Drum’s face looked as if she had French-kissed a lemon. “Sheriff, he has pooped on my lawn seven times. Seven!” The widow of a music professor—Dr. Drum, no less—Mrs. Drum was approaching eighty-five. However, she still possessed the energy of a sixty-year-old. She pointed at the large pile of fecal matter in the center of her otherwise immaculate front lawn.
“That kid must have eaten an entire can of corn,” Simon said.
“Corn…er, I mean, constable,” Pilate said, shaking his hand quickly.
“What?”
“Constable. I’m not a sheriff.”
“Well, we had one till that creep Mostek shot him!” Her gaze flitted from the pile of crap to Pilate’s badge. Poking the badge with a bony finger, she added, “Sheriff Welliver was a good man.”
“Yes, yes, he was. I mean is. Is.” Pilate reminded himself that Welliver was on permanent disability, not dead.
“And you caught the man. No, wait. You killed the man who shot him in the throat, didn’t you?”
“Not exactly.” He sighed. “It was actually another guy. He ran into a tree.”
“What’s that?”
“Ran into a tree, in an ambulance, at Monticello Cemetery. I hit him with a rented subcompact.”
“Sounds a lot more heroic the way she tells it,” Simon said.
“You should run for sheriff, John Pilate,” the old one advised. “I saw you on 60 Minutes.” She then reeled her head back to the pile of human waste, stretching her wrinkly neck. “You get rid of that poop and make that little brat stop it, and I’ll put a sign in my yard for ya.”
“A sign?”
“’Vote John Pilate for Sheriff.’”
“Oh, no, I’m happy to help you with the poop situation, but I’m not running for sheriff.”
“Why not? You’re good with a gun,” she barked, looking at his belt and adjusting her glasses. “Say, where’s your hog leg?”
“Don’t need it for hazardous waste incidents.”
“What’s that?”
“Corn!”
CHAPTER NINE
Hilmer Thurman walked through the foyer of Cusack’s, nodding pleasantly at passersby. He l
oped into the pub area and eased into a seat at the bar, smiling as Marcy greeted him.
“What would you like, sir?”
Thurman shrugged. “Well, I tell ya, I hear this is an Irishman’s place, so I figure I better have an Irish drink.”
“Pish-posh,” Marcy said; she watched a lot of Masterpiece Theatre. “You can have whatever you’d like.”
Thurman smiled and shrugged again. “Whiskey it is then. Irish whiskey…neat.”
Marcy smiled. “Comin’ right up.”
Thurman glanced around. No one else was seated at the small bar, but the four-tops were occupied by quiet drinkers. They seemed to be nice people, not the rowdy sort that typically patronized his Brown Betty Roadhouse. Thurman decided Cusack had a sizable crowd for a Friday night in the big town. No wonder he’s got money to burn on property speculation.
“Lot of folks,” Thurman said, accepting his drink.
Marcy surveyed the room. “Yeah, we’re just about full up for OakFest.”
An arboretum campus, Cross College hosted the OakFest every fall. The gathering featured family fun, sightseeing, lectures, and a craft show with items made of acorns and leaves. Thurman noted that not many of the festival-goers were likely to stop in at the Betty.
“Nice,” Thurman said, sipping. “I was wondering.”
“You’re not here for OakFest?”
“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t know an oak from a maple.” He laughed. “But I’m a townie.”
“I thought there were no strangers left ‘round here, since we got here six months back. I don’t believe we’ve met though,” she said. “I’m Marcy Cusack.”
“Hil—”
Cusack, who barreled in behind the bar and past Marcy with a bucket of ice, cut him off. He slammed it into the bin and looked up at his wife. “There, my duck.”
“Thanks, sweetie,” Marcy said. “We need it. I was just chatting with this gentleman about how busy we are, full of OakFest fans.”
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