“Relax, I’ve got it in my car,” Brownie said. “You stay still or you’ll start bleedin’ again.”
Turning away, he motioned Fatback over.
“Now what?”
“He’s cut up pretty bad,” Fat shrugged. “Needs a doctor.”
“If we take him to a hospital like he is, Moishe’s people are gonna hear about it five minutes later. We might as well shoot him now, save them the trouble.”
“Maybe he’s got it comin’,” Fat said evenly. “He’s the one that mixed it up with the jukebox king.”
“It wasn’t his fault and you know it. Moishe didn’t know who the kid was and didn’t care. After you bounced him, he jumped the first black man who came down those steps. Could’ve been you, me, anybody.”
“That’s Diddley’s tough luck.”
“And ours, too. Diddley works for you, Fat, and I dropped Moishe off at your place. Tony Junior’s mob is so paranoid they’ll figure we set Moishe up for the Italians. We can hand the kid over to ‘em gift-wrapped and still get killed.”
“So? What do we do? Dummy up, hope this blows over?”
“Can’t. We found the kid, it’s only a matter of time before they do, too. Do you know a doctor who can keep his mouth shut?”
“My brother-in-law’s a medic, ex-army.”
“He’ll have to do. Get him over here, patch the kid up. But no hospital.”
“You got somethin’ in mind, Brownie?”
“Hell, no.”
Brownie sighed, wrapping the bloody razor in his handkerchief, slipping it into his pocket. “All I know is it’s too damn hot to think straight, and I’m tired of bein’ pushed around. I’m ready to push back. How ‘bout you, Fat? You up for some trouble?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No,” Brownie grinned. “Come to think of it, I guess you don’t.”
~ * ~
Waiting in the air-conditioned lobby of Churchill’s Grill, Tony Zeman, Jr., felt a twinge of unease. He’d sent Red for the car five minutes ago. What was the holdup? He was about to head back into the restaurant when his black Lincoln rolled up out front. A pudgy black valet in a blue blazer opened the rear door and stood aside, smiling.
But as Tony climbed into the Lincoln, the valet scrambled in after him, closing the door, seizing his wrists with one hand as he jerked Tony’s pistol out of its shoulder holster. “Don’t do nothin’ sudden, Mr. Zeman,” Brownie said, gunning the Lincoln into traffic on Woodward. “We just want to talk.”
“What the hell is this?” Junior blustered, eyeing the gun in Fat-back’s huge fist, trying to conceal his panic. “Where’s my driver? Where’s Red?”
“Back at the bar answering a bogus phone call. By the way, Red’s way too dumb to be your bodyguard, Mr. Zeman. You need to hire better people.”
“I’ll look into it,” Tony Junior said grimly. “What do you want, Brownie?”
“To give you a present,” Brownie said, nodding at Fatback. Fat took a handkerchief out of his valet’s blazer and laid it carefully on Junior’s lap.
Junior hesitated a moment, then peeled back the linen to reveal the bloody razor. “My god.”
“You recognize it?” Fatback asked.
“It’s my uncle’s. Where did you get it?”
“Bought it from some street kids. They took it off a body they found in an alley on Eighth last night.”
“What body?”
“The guy your uncle beat to death before he died of his wounds. The guy who killed him.”
“Who was he?”
“I don’t know his name, but with your connections you should be able to find out easy enough. He’s down at the city morgue. Unidentified body number fifty-four.”
“Was he a professional? Was it a mob hit?”
“Not likely. No pro would have taken on your uncle one-on-one with a blade. Looks like it was a street scuffle that went bad for both of ‘em. You know how your uncle was when he was drinkin,’ right?”
“I know how he was,” Junior nodded, “but I don’t know about you. Why should I believe you? How do I know you’re not —”
“—working for the Italians?” Brownie grinned. “Because you’re still breathin’, young stud. If we were with those guys, you’d already be dead. Instead ...” Brownie eased the Lincoln quietly to the curb and stopped. “We’ll be getting out here. And congratulations, Mr. Zeman. You’re the new jukebox king. Can I offer you some friendly advice?”
“Like what?” Junior said, swallowing, still half expecting a bullet from his own gun.
“The guy that turned up in the alley? Nobody knows what happened to him. You might want to put the word out that you happened to him, Mr. Zeman. That it was your people who took him down. Show the Italians how quick you can take out the trash.”
“I’ll think about it,” Junior said, climbing warily out of the car, sliding behind the wheel.
“And my loan?” Brownie pressed. “We’re even now, right?”
“I’ll think about that, too,” Tony yelled, mashing the gas.
The Lincoln tore off into the night, tires howling. Leaving Brownie and Fat standing at the curb. Next to Brownie’s emerald green Studebaker. “Jukebox king,” Fatback snorted. “You think you can trust that punk?”
“We can trust him to look out for number one,” Brownie said. “Junior’s in law school, so he must be at least half smart. And taking credit for the stiff in the alley is a smart move. If he goes for it, the kid’s off the hook. And so are we.”
“What loan were you talking about?”
“It doesn’t matter. He’ll weasel on the deal. I owe him six large, and those white boys are killin’ each other over jukebox quarters.”
“Them quarters add up.”
“To what? Bleedin’ out in an alley? All I know about jukes is what’s on ‘em. John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, they’re the real jukebox kings. People will be playin’ their music a hundred years from now. Nobody’ll care who got the quarters.”
“We might care. If it was us.”
“Meaning what?”
“After seein’ Junior up close, I ain’t sure he’s smart enough to hang onto the jukebox business, Brownie. Or tough enough.”
“You want to be the jukebox king, Fat? Like Moishe? Look what it got him.”
“Okay, maybe not a king,” Fatback conceded. “Too risky. I ain’t sayin’ we should try to grab up the whole thing. But maybe we could take back the action around the Corridor. In our end of town.”
“Like . . .jukebox princes?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Fatback said with satisfaction, his vast face brightening. “Jukebox princes. Listen here, after you close up tonight, why don’t you come on down to my place. We’ll shoot us some pool, drink some beers. And figure out how to be jukebox princes. What do you say?”
“Gotta admit it does sound interesting,” Brownie nodded, mulling it over. “Jukebox princes? Yeah. Why not?”
<
~ * ~
CHRISTOPHER CHAMBERS
Aardvark to Aztec
from Washington Square
Miranda wheeler was against adultery in theory. She had been raised uptight and proper, if not churchgoing, her parents nominally Episcopalian or the like, and she had occasioned to sin far more in her mind than in practice. Though not a classic beauty like of film or supermarket fashion magazines, she was not bad to look at with almost always a pleasant smile. Her body attracted male notice and comment even now at thirty-one, and after one kid, causing her some embarrassment and an uneasy glow. Fit and curvy in all the right places, she carried herself with an awkward charm, as if her body were a new pair of shoes that did not quite fit. She worked during the school year as a teacher’s aide at Laurel Elementary, where little Duff Jr. would enter fourth grade in the fall.
~ * ~
Miranda ran into a clown outside the Krusty Kreme. She watched through the cracked windshield in disbelief as he stumbled in sad comedy in front of her car, trippi
ng on his oversize shoes to sprawl with a sorry thud full length onto the sun-faded hood of the Nova. His orange wig lolled against the windshield for a moment like an obscene, alien fruit. Miranda stopped the car. She got out and touched hesitantly the gaudy shoulder of the prone buffoon, his Hot Now — Indulge! sandwich board underfoot. The manager appeared, sweating profusely, and most solicitous of Miranda. He fired the clown after determining he was unhurt. Miranda felt awful.
She offered to buy the clown, whose name was Josh, a cup of coffee at a neighboring franchise. And so Miranda sat at a concrete picnic table overlooking the frontage road, eating Krusty Kremes and drinking coffee with a surprisingly charming, though unemployed, clown. They talked about little or nothing as the world drove by. She could not remember when she had last laughed so.
When school let out the following week, Miranda drove Duff Jr. to her parents in Jackson for a break so she and Duff could work some things out. In the days that followed, Duff left for work, and Miranda cleaned the empty house and read paperback novels, waiting for Duff to come home. Some evenings they would fall asleep watching garishly colored classic films on their new big-screen television. As the days passed, she found herself thinking, and smiling at the memory, and wondering what had become of the clumsy clown.
~ * ~
Miranda’s husband, Duff, a former high school athlete, was senior sales consultant at a local car lot. Duff spent his days lounging among clean, expensive automobiles in a clean, well-lit showroom, getting people into cars. What would it take to get you into this car today? he’d ask. He typically draped the jacket of his pricey suit over a chair, rolled up the starched white sleeves of his shirt, and loosened the knot of his power tie. People are drawn to the appearance of success, he told Miranda, they are made comfortable by the image of a man at ease in his surroundings. And when they are comfortable, they buy.
Duff surreptitiously snorted cocaine in the stalls in the employee restroom throughout the day. He did not approve of illicit drug use in general, but had found the occasional toot gave him an edge in a keenly competitive marketplace. This was not recreation. This was business. Life or death, success or failure. No different than the gridiron and the steroids old Doc Highfield slipped to a few select starters on Laurel High’s state-champ football team in the glory years of the late seventies.
~ * ~
Josh, local college boy and ex-clown, working his way down the blistering street, came hopefully to Miranda’s door, as to all the others, peddling his encyclopedias. Miranda had just finished a lawyerly murder mystery when the knock came at the door. She peered judiciously out at the traveling salesman. Stared in disbelief. He shimmered like a mirage in the heat on her stoop.
“You’re that clown,” she finally said, though his shoes fit, proportional, and his hair was no longer orange. She invited him in. They could not afford a set of encyclopedias what with Duffs erratic sales record and her own meager unemployment check, but it was unbearably hot outside. The dead of June, most languorous month.
Josh stood inside the door, settling into the air-conditioning, his sweat cooling pleasurably. He accepted her offer of a cold drink.
From the kitchen, Miranda, pouring iced tea, called out to him. “Sweet or unsweet?”
“Sweet, please, ma’am,” he replied. This being the South, certain social graces endured.
“So, selling encyclopedias now?” Miranda returned to the room.
“Yes, ma’am.” Josh took the glass from her hand, thanked her, and drank deeply.
~ * ~
Josh was downright shy without the clown costume. The outfit had afforded him a joi de vivre which he was unable to muster as himself, and so he sorely missed his old job. He had not yet mastered the art of small talk, and made up for the lack of it with politeness and his unconscious youth. The conversation that ensued was borne by Miranda then, who tended to talk quickly and without stop when nervous, non sequitur ad infinitum. When she finally paused, she felt a bit lightheaded from her oratory. She fanned herself with a brochure. Josh’s glass was empty, the sample case of Encyclopedia Americanos forgotten at his sneakered feet. Miranda looked at Josh as if truly seeing him for the first time. He was of indeterminate ancestry, sunburned, tall, and handsome in an ungainly sort of way.
In considerable silence, they sat upon the sofa, which had come to Miranda from her parents. She’d covered the horrible thing — upholstered in Civil War battle scenes, a dark brocade — with a cheery yellow blanket. Miranda reached out and touched the boy’s face, a gesture more maternal than seductive. And yet he shivered involuntarily and she felt the shiver course through her like a fond memory, or a low-voltage electrical current. For Josh, this moment seemed his highest dream come true. A full-grown woman in a cool faint before him, her cotton summer dress slightly askew. This was not Playboy, or Hustler even. She was real. Flesh and blood, as they say. There was a moment more of silence. Trembling, Josh wound up and reached out to touch lightly a coffee-colored mole on the low inside of Miranda’s left leg. She sighed in spite of herself.
“No. Please, don’t,” she said, “stop.” But she did not move away.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s like I’m under your spell.” Josh looked away, as if to fight his awful urges. He was painfully aroused, and lyrics from pop songs suddenly true came unbidden into his mind. A high-fidelity system gleamed in the corner, bought on credit from Circuit Circus. “Nice stereo, ma’am.”
“Call me Miranda,” said Miranda. She stood unsteadily and walked across the room. Inhaled deeply. She drew closed the draperies. The cheap sandals on her feet felt awkward and cheap. She kicked them off, sending them sailing into a lamp and Duff s La-Z-Boy, respectively. Miranda selected Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, a recording by the Atlanta Philharmonic. As a child she’d studied briefly the violin, and she still loved the strings. She returned to the sofa slowly, her bare feet gripping the shag, the great hopeful swelling of the first movement all around her. Spring, was it? She had been in school for physical therapy, spring semester, when she got pregnant with Duff Jr.
~ * ~
Duff cringed at the ringing of the phone on his desk. The conversation was brief and hushed. He covered the mouthpiece with his hand, and warily eyed the office door.
“Listen ...”
“Yeah, but...”
“Aw, man ...”
“All right, all right...”
“But...”
“O.K. All right. Friday.”
“Friday. I swear.” Duff replaced the receiver, clenched his teeth, and mopped his beaded brow. “Son-of-a-bitch.”
He searched his shelves for something small to break, hefted but replaced unharmed his golfing trophy, a dusty Salesman of the Week plaque. He picked up the framed glossy of Miranda and little Duff Jr. He gazed upon his lovely wife and his only issue, chip off his block. There was one thing he could do. He fogged the nonglare glass with his shaky breath, buffed it to a shine with his shirttail, and replaced it to its place of prominence on his desk. Duff straightened up, the old fighting spirit rising in him. It was time to sell cars.
~ * ~
Miranda sat beside Josh and kissed him abruptly on the mouth. Then looked him eye to eye.
“I’m not, I don’t ever, don’t do things like this,” she said truthfully. “I can’t, well, you know. But if you want, if we’re careful, we can, maybe, sort of. Only so far.”
“Okay,” said Josh.
He was on her at once, eager to please, his hands and his mouth here and there, careful, lightly and firm, grasping, finessing. He had studied for this moment. Miranda pushed aside her awkward childhood, her rumbling guilt. Plenty of time for that later, she thought. Time only now for this traveling heaven. Josh knelt on the floor and kissed her on both knees, and then the mole that she always had hated. His mouth moved up her leg, his hot breath saying something profound to her on a cellular level, though his words were too muffled to make out. Miranda thanked god she’d taken a shower that morning,
and buried her hands in his hair, guiding his enthusiasm onward and upward.
~ * ~
Duff, across town in a stall in the men’s room at Jeff Davis Honda, snuffed with vigor. He licked his finger, and wiped the paper bindle clean of its powdery residue and paused. He peered at the small, unfolded piece of paper, the glossy image of a fleshy cheek or inner thigh, a curve of breast perhaps. The Frenchman folded his gram bindles from the pages of skin mags. Pervert, thought Duff, dropping the piece of paper into the toilet bowl. He rubbed his gums, depressed the handle of the toilet with a polished wingtip, and exited the stall.
The Best American Mystery Stories 2003 Page 4