As we pulled through a stoplight I asked what Cosby had said about me.
“He said you were one dynamite lay, if I recall correctly.”
That bastard. “I guess my reputation preceded me. You know Crooked Johnny?”
“I could show you a crooked Johnson, if you like.”
“C’mon Arvil, focus. Stacy’s boy, middle son.”
He ran his hands over the wood panel in front of him. “This is what you call a luxe interior. Shouldn’t it be pink though? Like that Pointer Sisters song? ‘I wanna ride in yo’ piiiink Cadillac’.”
“Does that ever work on anyone?” I asked, giving him a look when we pulled up at a stop sign.
“A gentleman don’t kiss an’ tell.”
“More than Cosby can say,” I muttered. “Get out.”
“What, just like that?”
“Unless you got something to say, we’re done. I didn’t come down here to get hit on, though I’ll keep you in mind if I ever need motivation to shower for a whole week.”
“Mm, I could spend a week with you in a shower,” he said, “gettin’ squeaky clean and dirty at the same time…”
“Yeah, bye bye.”
“All right, hold on.” He sighed. “I know Crooked John’s in stir, but that’s about it. I’ll ask around though. I can be very persuasive. People tell me things.”
“Yeah, you’re all charm Arvil.”
“I’m a master of Tongue Fu.”
“Ick.”
*
“Pleased to meet you,” the bank manager said, shaking my hand. “You can call me Lou.” He held out a card. It read “Lucius Gil Sexknife.”
“Um,” I said.
“The middle name rhymes with ‘eel.’”
“I have to say, the ‘Geel’ part wasn’t what caught my attention.”
He gave a weary, practiced shrug. “It’s just a name.”
“Okay.”
“My parents were Ed and Mary Sexknife.”
“So it’s pronounced just like it looks. Right.” I tucked the card in my purse, pulled out a notepad and said, “What can you tell me about the robbery?”
“There’s not a lot to say,” he started, and then paused as the light jazz drifting from overhead was interrupted by a harsh squawk. “STOCKER TO PRODUCE, STOCKER TO PRODUCE.” Every “P” sound made a thudding noise.
“Um, yeah,” he continued. “The guy came in through revolving door, pointed a gun at me and said I should empty the cash drawer. I did it—I mean, that’s policy—and he took off.”
“Was he wearing a mask or anything?”
“Nope. He had a hat, so we didn’t get his face on camera, but I saw it.”
“How much did he get away with?”
“Two thousand, four hundred and eighty-eight dollars.”
“That doesn’t sound like much,” I said. “If you don’t mind me saying.”
“It’s not,” he replied. “We’re a micro-branch inside a grocery store. He probably would have done better if he’d cleaned out the checkout tills.”
I tidied up my notes and shook his hand.
“So, which paper did you say you worked for again?”
“The Tribune,” I lied, and got the hell out of there.
*
Crooked John Crawson had his mother’s heavy frame and his father’s delicate features. From afar he was all broad shoulders and meaty arms, and then you got close and saw wide-spaced, sky-blue eyes under unbelievably long lashes, blonde dangling hair that just begs a woman to sweep it up behind his ear. Full, baby-sweet lips. Put that all together with an orange jumpsuit and the obligatory “LOVE” “HATE” knuckle tats, you get an irresistible classic Bad Boy.
“It’s nice to meet you, Miss Anne,” he said. “My mama told me you were going to come help.” He had just the voice you’d expect—warm and innocent, so much so that you found yourself listening for a mocking edge.
“Umph,” I said, consciously pushing his charisma away. “Hear you have all sorts of police trouble.”
A hooded chill fell over his features, instantly. “Nothing I can’t take.”
“How’d you get fixed for the bank job?”
“I dunno. I was doing some stuff…”
“Stuff?”
“Helping a buddy move some books and records. Furniture,” he said. “You know. Then the cops showed up. Took me in, stood me in a pickup line. I guess the guy fingered me, the witness.”
“That would be Mr. Sexknife,” I said.
He smirked.
“It’s just a name,” I told him. “You have any idea who did it?”
“Sounds like a dumbo snatch an’ grab to me.”
“And if you were to rob a bank, it wouldn’t be some nickle-ante grocery branch?”
“I never stole nothin’,” he said, and that mocking tone was in the voice now, for sure. “’Cept maybe a heart or two.”
“Ever steal anyone’s identity?” I asked. He just raised an eyebrow, which I think was as good as a yes. I gave him the Sideways look.
The big decision, of course, was to change himself into Crooked Johnny. Or not. Sideways, his blockiness was mostly fat and his face, while exactly the same, was also as different as a handshake from a fist. The glimpse I got put him in a cheap brown suit, working his hands in a nervous gesture that wasn’t quite wringing them but would get there in a few years.
“When I came to your mama’s house, there was a white-blonde woman waiting for me. Buncha rings, candle, high-strung disposition.”
“Ugh,” he said. “That’s Tasha. She’s a psychic,” he said sympathetically, the way you’d say “she’s HIV-positive.”
“You think she’s got a horse in this race?”
“She’s boards. The boards are the big winners around here,” he said. “You hardly see any tarot at all. Tasha and her bunch chase ’em out. If they’re in anyone’s business, well, we don’t know about it.”
“How about a guy called Arvil? I guess he watches the Dead Leather Office now that Cosby’s gone?”
“Arvil owns a bookstore, record store, second-hand kinda place,” he said. “That’s who I was helping move stuff.”
“Right. The cops don’t know where the money is, do they?”
“No one does.”
“If you did,” I said, “you wouldn’t tell?”
“If I knew who robbed that bank, I wouldn’t tell,” he said. “Omertà.”
*
Bruce Bunce entertained me in his home, which was entirely decorated in red and black. I mean entirely. When he offered me coffee, it was poured into a red cup and stirred with some kind of black metal spoon.
“Cadillac Anne,” he greeted me. “It’s been a while.”
“Not since the Crawson funeral,” I said.
“Mm, I can see why you didn’t want to come back.”
“I’ve made right with the family,” I said.
“That’s good.” The whites of his eyes were so bloodshot they looked red, the pupils black. His mouth was completely toothless, just a wavering line of red gums.
“In fact, Stacy asked me down to help Crooked John out of stir.”
“Huh.”
“I couldn’t help wondering why she didn’t reach out to locals. Long John’s old people. You, for example.”
He narrowed those red-black eyes at me and said, “I don’t like your tone.”
“Sorry.” I wasn’t.
He grimaced. “You know how it is. People drift apart. Sure, she knows a little bit of what’s going on, but she doesn’t have any goals, you know? What’s she going to do, anyway? If she gets involved? Get hurt, that’s what.” His toothless s-sounds were a bit mushy, made him sound faintly drunk.
I couldn’t see anything about him. No past, no future, no alternate selves. Nothing but red and black.
“Her son had ’em though,” I said. “Goals. What was he up to? Stealing third base, or people’s ideas?”
He tapped his spoon delicately on his coffee cup, watc
hing the white sugar blacken. “Stolen glances, yeah. That sort of thing.”
“Not snatching bank money at gunpoint?”
“I wouldn’t say it’s his style but what’re you going to do? The boy’s pure gangsta, as they say. Wouldn’t snitch to the cops if his life depended on it.”
“I suppose a spell in the joint won’t do his rep any harm, will it?”
“You know how stories get around,” Bruce said, looking idly away. His face was as wrinkled as a rock star’s hotel bedsheet, but there wasn’t a single white hair on his head. All curly, glossy black.
“Does he even want out, do you think?” I asked.
“If he doesn’t, you can just pack it in, right?”
“It don’t work that way,” I said, and he must have caught something in my voice because he said, “Too bad.”
“I hear Cosby went to church,” I said.
Bruce was tough, but that made him shudder. “Damn shame, that.”
“Now this Arvil character is keeping tabs on it?”
“We all pitch in. There’s more to Arvil than you might have seen on the surface.”
“There would have to be,” I said. “Then there’s this Tasha woman who poked me in the throat.”
Bruce chuckled, then immediately held his hands up apologetically. “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.”
He wore fine black leather gloves. He said it was because his hands had been burned, but I think it was to hide red nail polish.
“That’s more apology than I got from her,” I grumbled.
“Tasha is just… Tasha. She’s crazy, and you know I know crazy. Has a dozen or so puppets on her string, people who don’t dare squat for a piss without her casting their horoscope.” He pronounced it “pish.”
“Cards or board?” I asked.
“I shouldn’t say,” he said. I dropped my head and looked at him over my glasses.
“Fine,” he said. “Cards. You happy now?”
“The Death Church must make her crazy,” I said. “Why isn’t she setting up shop, getting herself a set of Major Arcana embossed on rawhide? You guys stopping her?”
“We don’t have to,” Bruce said. “You know as well as anyone. She doesn’t because she doesn’t. It’s not her wyrd, her fate, her destiny.”
“And the rest of you?”
“Who bells the cat?” Bruce asked. “You know how many people that black hole’s gobbled up.”
*
Arvil’s bookstore was a hole, but an interesting one. Not just books, but vinyl records and old toys in their boxes. Everything dusty and reeking of the past. The kind of place where people think they can find anything, if they think they can find the past in things.
“Cadillac Anne!” he called out as I entered.
“Arvil,” I said. “Crooked John had some words for you.”
“Just like I got words for you, words like luscious, irresistible, hot…” He waved his hand as if he’d just touched a stove burner.
“He was helping you move some furniture when the robbery went down, isn’t that right?”
“I’d like to help you move some furniture, preferably a bed but I have a chaise lounge that would do in a pinch.”
“Okay, that’s enough,” I said.
“You’re no fun,” he pouted. “All right, yeah, I think he was.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police? Alibi him?”
“The less I have to do with the cops, the happier I am,” he said. “I got whatcha call underworld contacts.”
“What, you know someone who shoplifts?”
He rolled his eyes and shook his head and I just kept my face steady and unamused. Eventually, his lasciviousness faltered, then died.
“Okay, honey, you’re queering an ‘everybody wins’ deal here,” he said. “Crooky J. gets f’real penitentiary time to beef up his cred. As a bonus, he stays alive.”
“You think he’s safer in jail?”
“Are you kidding? With his story in play he’ll run that place within a week.”
“His mama…”
“His mama’s getting him back in nine years even if he doesn’t skate,” Arvil said. “She should count her blessings.”
“Count her…?” The penny dropped. “He was going to take down the Dead Leather Office, wasn’t he?”
“No,” he said, looking away.
“He was going to try. What, was he going to use simony on it? Robbing the place of its charm?”
“In the 1930s, pickpocketing was ‘lifting leather,’ I guess,” Arvil mumbled. He put down the Terry Pratchett paperback he was fiddling with and turned to me full face. “It’s all water under the blood gutters and baptismal font now, isn’t it? I hate that place more than anyone. Cosby and me, we were tight, understand? But you don’t just de-consecrate the Death Church and turn it into a pizza place. That place eats order, and identity, and craps out ruin. All anyone’s been able to do since Stamwicke stopped skinning people in it is… is containment. At least this way, everyone wets his beak a little.”
“Crooked John gets his legitimacy,” I said. “The real bandit gets his thousand bucks and change.”
“Bunce,” Arvil said.
“Bunce? The gunman was Bruce?”
“Think about it.”
“How’d he pass for Crawson?”
Arvil laughed. “He didn’t. The branch manager just lied about it. You think a guy managing a bank pulls teller duty all the time?”
“Why?”
“You might want to ask Mrs. Sexknife about that.”
“Aw Jesus,” I said. That bad boy appeal. “John stole the manager’s wife. Could it get more sordid?”
“Well, if you and me was to…”
“Give it a rest,” I said, then stopped as the sensation hit. Icy, like water running down my whole body just behind the skin, from scalp to heels, pushing out gooseflesh and shivers.
“What?” he said, too startled to even leer at my stiff nipples.
“The future,” I said. “You… oh God, we do it.”
“Oh ho?” the same overdone, lecherous-not-really-humor snapping back into his tone. “You an’ me doin’ it, huh?”
“Because I’m grateful,” I rasped. “Because you step up and kill it.”
Easy come, easy go. His words and face were suddenly cancer-serious. “Me? I’m ’sposta kill the Office? No, that’s got to be some mistake, I… I mean, promising your body if I take a stab at it, that’s one thing, but…”
I slapped him.
“I’m not offering you a goddamn thing,” I said. “But it looks like you’re the one who figures out something.”
“You expect me to come up with an idea when I’ve been racking my brain for years? Just suddenly figure out how to stop the ever-eating Death Church like that?”
“Figure it out any way you like,” I said, and staggered out. Should’ve stayed and put him on the track to his destiny but, honestly, I couldn’t stand to look at him.
*
“I can’t make heads or tails of it,” I said.
“Bruce Bunce is the scum of the earth,” Stacy said, hands in fists so tight you could see her bones through the padding. “Calling himself Long John’s friend and then scheming with some, some outsider to put our son in jail!”
“For all we know, it was Crooked John’s idea.”
“No, he wouldn’t take the fall for anyone unless he had to. He was set up. I should call his brother…”
“Which one?” I said, getting a little nervous.
“Why not both?”
“Let’s not let this get out of hand.”
“That’s easy for you to say, he’s not your son!”
We just sat in silence for a bit, then got back to eating. She’d made meatloaf.
“Did Crooked John ever talk about the church?” I asked.
“Hm? We’re not what you’d call traditionally religious,” she said, and then she got it. “Oh.” She set down her fork, like she’d lost her appetite, and something t
hat big’s hard to misplace.
“He talked about it after his dad died,” she said.
“Long John was involved?”
“The Dead Leather Office is a stain.” Her voice was low, almost murderous. “Live here long enough and it touches you. It gets on you. You live with the stink long enough and you don’t realize you’re making it too.”
I nodded. “Okay. This is deep. Can you find Tasha?”
*
There’s a neighborhood, not all the way downtown, but close by the brewery. There’s some crap stuff all around it. Urban blight, or whatever you want to call poor neighborhoods. Food deserts, I guess. But in the middle of it there’s this one stretch of blocks where the brownstones are all getting renovated and bought up by retiree couples, gays, and mid-range professionals. It’s centered around an organic grocery store, a coffee shop and, right between them, a tiny store front psychic. No sign, just this big vintage palmistry poster in the window.
It was late but the lights were on, with a BMW parked right in front. We pulled into a tiny space right behind—I could barely parallel park the caddy in it.
A brass bell rang when we entered and even though the surfaces were all clean, I could see spiderwebs forming in the corners. A young woman with vacant eyes smiled up from her laptop, sitting at an antique roll top desk.
“Hi, I’m afraid we’re scheduled full for the evening but if you’d like to make an appointment for tomorrow…”
“We’ll just head on back,” I said.
Her smile faded and she nervously got up. She couldn’t quite bring herself to block the doorway, though, and I didn’t break stride.
“She’s with somebody!” the receptionist said, alarmed.
“Nah, she’s expecting us,” I replied. “I mean, isn’t she?”
Her fingers plucked at my sleeve. “It’s private,” she whined, but then I was past. If she didn’t stop me she wasn’t even going to slow Stacy down.
The back room had the mood lighting and the mysterious scents and in the middle of everything, a round table with some truly beautiful astrological crap carved and inlaid on the top. A coiffed woman of about my age was frowning down at the table, at little marble representations of the planets, at yellow scraps of paper with numbers scrawled on them.
Tasha looked up from saying something about Venus, then stood, nostrils flaring.
“You’ve got a lot of brass coming in here,” she said.
The New Hero Volume 2 Page 8