The Man Offside

by A. W. Gray

  “Sumbitch kicks up and to the left,” he’d said. “One pull on the trigger shoots five rounds. You want to waste a fucker, aim low and to his left. You can’t miss.”

  It was this split-second memory that saved me. I dove to my right and hit the ground rolling, jarring and numbing my shoulder. I had a glimpse of a vehicle parked out there behind the ‘Vette, a dim shape in the moonlight. I tasted Bermuda grass. The slugs whined overhead and moved on.

  From behind me on the porch came a scream. I looked. Connie pitched backward, slammed against the door frame, hung suspended for an instant, then sagged, and slid limply to the concrete in a tangle of arms and lovely legs. I had about one second to feel sad for Connie before the machine gun chattered again.

  I didn’t remember digging the Smith & Wesson from my back pocket; the pistol was suddenly there, its grip firm against my palm. I snapped two shots off in the direction of the machine gun, not aiming, shooting wild. I focused on the vehicle behind the ‘Vette, and of course I’d seen it before. Breaux’s Jeep, top still down.

  Suddenly I was calm. Bodie—his hat now came into focus, more pale green than yellow in the moonlight—was crouched by the Jeep’s front bumper. The Schmeizer was cradled on his thigh, and he was reloading. My old buddy, who’d probably been the one who’d suggested to Cassel that old down-and-out Rick would make a good patsy to begin with. I steadied the S&W in both hands, drew a bead on the center of his chest, and pulled the trigger. I’d never shot anyone, but this was easy. The bullet streaked toward him, whanged off the Jeep’s bumper, and ricocheted into the night.

  Breaux dove sideways and disappeared behind the Jeep. I got off one more shot, which banged into a fender, and the Jeep rocked on its springs.

  Silence, followed by two metallic clicks.

  Breaux’s head and shoulders popped into view. The machine gun was braced in the hollow of his shoulder. Flame spurted, the Schmeizer barked, slugs dug up the yard. I hit the deck again. The bullets whined overhead and thudded into wood.

  I scrambled up and ran for the corner of the house, feet thudding and lungs about to burst, dove headlong for cover as the machine gun’s brrrt! sounded again. Splinters flew.

  More silence. Far away, down near the lake, a frog croaked. Slowly, carefully, I inched forward and peered around the corner.

  Bodie was standing upright behind the Jeep, the Schmeizer held loosely in the crook of his arm. He spotted me and crouched down out of view. He shouted, his voice even hoarser than normal, “If it ain’t me, it’s going to be somebody else. You’re dead, Ricky-boy. You just walking around and don’t know it yet. You can’t call no cops, you got less chance with them than you got with us. Tell you what, you give me that key of Brendy’s, I’ll let you go for now. Kind of give you a sporting chance, or whatever the dumb-fucks call it.”

  I ducked behind the corner and leaned against the wall. Prison makes for strange alliances; except for jail I never would have known Bodie to begin with. Since we’d been out, we’d been friendly, sure, but I’d never known what he was up to when he wasn’t partying with me. Now I had a pretty good idea. I reached around the corner and snapped another shot off. “What key?” I said. I flattened against the wall and waited.

  The Jeep’s starter chugged. The engine coughed, then roared to life. I looked again as its tires burned rubber; the Jeep with Breaux at the wheel did a fish-tailing U-turn and sped off into the night. I stepped from my hiding place, leveled the S&W at the retreating tail lights, then relaxed. It would be a waste of time, for the Jeep was far out of range. Bodie had figured the angles, just as he always did, and had decided that the time wasn’t right. Hell, why shoot it out with me? He had plenty of time. The twin red lights disappeared from view over a hill. I walked slowly back up on the porch, leaned through the front door, and switched on the porch light.

  Connie was stretched out on her back, legs splayed, arms limp at her sides, palms upward. Her head was propped against the wall at an odd angle, and one corner of her mouth was upturned in an eternally frozen grin. Dollar-sized splotches of blood were thickening on the porch and on the wall. Three bullets had struck Connie’s chest in a upward diagonal pattern from left to right. The wounds had almost stopped bleeding. I touched her neck, found the carotid artery. There was one tiny pulse beat, then nothing.

  I shook my head slowly, stood, and looked down on her for long moments while the crickets whirred and the frogs chirruped in the distance. Before I left, I rolled her body onto its side. She looked more comfortable that way.

  I spent the night in a rundown motel on East Grand Avenue, near the fairgrounds, where an old black man with kinky gray hair asked for cash in advance and forgot to have me sign the register. A hooker was operating next door to me; I counted four customers who came, frantically creaked the bedsprings for a while, and left, before I finally went to sleep. The air-conditioning had broken down and the temperature in my room was near ninety degrees. Beneath a grimy white sheet, I was shivering and my teeth were chattering.

  13

  In the morning I found a 7-Eleven store a block from the motel, poked around until I found a toothbrush, a tube of Gleem, a can of Barbasol, and a Bic disposable razor, and went to stand in line at the register behind a black girl who was buying four cans of Ranch Style Beans. As I waited, I watched two black kids shoplift a box of Hershey bars and a Hustler magazine. I thought about tipping off the clerk, then forgot the idea. If I snitched on them, the kids might look me up when they got out of jail.

  Back in my room, I showered and shaved. The pipes were rusty, and I let the shower run until the brown tint was gone from the water before stepping into the stall. The motel’s idea of hot water was the temperature of day-old coffee.

  Clean shaven and with a slight razor burn, I squeezed green, minty paste onto the brush and did my teeth, then rinsed my mouth with tap water that tasted of minerals. I was ready for another lovely day.

  My red knit shirt was wilted and limp. I sniffed it. No sweaty locker room smell, just a musty dampness. I put on my sneakers and jeans and climbed shirtless into the ‘Vette, drove up and down some narrow streets until I found a laundromat in a red brick building on the corner of Capitol and Bryan. While my lonesome shirt swirled and tumbled in the washer, I used the pay phone to call Donna.

  “Leave a candle burning in the window,” I said. “Tie a yellow ribbon around the tree.”

  “You’ll love it here.” She sounded happy as a lark, and just listening to her improved my disposition. “There’s a Delta from DFW at eleven this morning,” she said.

  The round clock hanging beside the phone showed eight-thirty. I said, “And an American at one, another Delta at four-thirty, and two or three night flights on puddle jumpers. I’ve got the schedules memorized. I’ll be on one of them, after I do a couple of things.”

  She chuckled merrily, the first real laugh I’d heard from Donna since the day I’d talked to her beside her pool. She said, “Burn a candle? How about a searchlight, maybe a Coast Guard blinker in my window, flashing S.O.S. Jacqueline’s driving me crazy, ding-donging to go back to the amusement park. I swear if I take the Peter Pan ride one more time, I’m going to turn into Tinker Bell.”

  I wanted to be with her so badly that a lump came up in my throat. I swallowed and said, “Okay. Listen, I’ll get my own room. I don’t know how it would affect Jacqueline if I stayed in the same room with you.”

  “Rick. That’s my line, you prude. But you’re right, it would be better. Hurry, don’t take too long. I’m getting lonesome.”

  Funny, that was the word I’d just been thinking about to describe my own feeling. “You won’t be for long,” I said.

  This go-around, I took my sweet time about entering Texas Bank Plaza, cruising the parking lot in search of Jeep convertibles, wandering through the morning crowd in the lobby with an eye out for yellow-billed caps. I’d done some thinking and, in my own mind at least, had at least one murder solved. Catfish’s. Of course it had to be Bodie
. That’s what had taken him so long to reach the Bullrider Danceland. All the while I’d been having my little talk with Candy, Bodie had been standing in Catfish’s bathroom, pumping bullets through the shower door. I’d thought it a little strange at the time when Bodie had showed up waving Snakey’s .45 instead of one of his own guns—a Beretta, a Browning 9mm., or a Llama .380. The bullets that had killed Catfish wouldn’t match the .45, I’d bet on it, and Bodie had known he’d be carrying the .45 when he and I were arrested at the scene. Oh, yeah, he’d set that up as well, had called the police or had them called. The only fly in the ointment had been when I’d talked Atchley into letting us go. Otherwise, I’d still be in jail while good old stand-up Fred Cassel got Bodie free on bond, and probably got the charges against him dropped as well. So old Catfish would still be walking around if I hadn’t called Breaux before I went to the Bullrider Danceland. Somehow I didn’t feel guilty about that.

  I sat by the fountain in the lobby for the better part of an hour, watching throngs of people come and go. I was certain that Bodie hadn’t passed by. He might be in Cassel’s office waiting for me, but that was a chance I’d have to take. I fished out two quarters, dropped them into the fountain, and made a wish. Then I rode the elevator up to Cassel’s floor.

  There were four people—a white-haired woman wearing a lot of jewelry and three men in suits who looked like salesmen—waiting in Cassel & Grimes’s reception area. The receptionist wasn’t the same girl I’d seen on my last visit, and since I didn’t want to be recognized, that suited me fine. This one was a pleasantly plump redhead with big boobs straining against the front of a light-weight cotton sweater. A green-jacketed paperback novel lay by her elbow: A Catskill Eagle by Robert B. Parker. This girl was into my kind of reading. I stopped before her half-moon-shaped desk and stood first on one foot and then the other while she pressed buttons and routed calls. She kept her long red lashes down and barely glanced at my belt buckle.

  I told her, “This is a personal call. Fred told me to come on in.” Then I skirted her desk as though I knew what I was doing and headed for the inner offices, holding my breath and hoping that she didn’t notice. The trick had worked a couple of times when I’d been searching for Sweaty’s bond skips, and so far it hadn’t landed me in jail. She gave me the same quick nod-and-smile that she probably reserved for deliverymen, then went on about her business. I went through the doorway and down the carpeted hallway to call on good old Fred.

  His office was at the back of the suite, behind a door of heavier wood and more ornate design than the rest of the doors along the corridor, and which was marked “MR. CASSEL” in plain understated gold letters. Fred’s private secretary was a tall blonde with bright green eyes and long, manicured nails that didn’t look as though she did a lot of typing. She was buffing her nails with an emory board.

  I said, “Hi. Old Fred around?”

  Her gaze flicked at me, then darted over my shoulder down the hallway. Her full lips parted. Before she could ask how I sneaked by the receptionist, Cassel’s doorknob clicked and turned and good old Fred himself came out.

  He was carrying some typewritten pages in one hand and was wearing, as usual, a navy suit. His breast-pocket hanky was silver gray. He said, “Look, beautiful, take these over to—”

  He spotted me. As he’d come through the door, he’d been ogling the blonde’s rear end and looking pretty hungry about it, but now his face seemed to melt. He nearly dropped the papers he was carrying, but finally clutched them with both hands. Then he turned on his heel, made sort of a squawking sound, reentered his office, and closed the door. I thought that he could have handled the situation a little better.

  Beautiful half smiled and shrugged. “Well, as you can see for yourself, old Fred isn’t anywhere around.” She batted her eyes.

  There was a phone on her desk, a three-button rotary with a mother-of-pearl finish. One of its buttons flashed on. That would be Fred, back there in his office calling either Breaux or the police. For me, either choice would yield the same results.

  I tried to look happy and tossed Beautiful a wink. “Just a private joke,” I said. “Old Fred really kids around sometimes.” I stepped quickly around her desk and opened Cassel’s door. She tossed her mane, started to rise, then shrugged once again, and picked up her emory board. I went on in. Old Fred was sure a lot easier to get in to see than Muhammed Double-X.

  Cassel was behind his desk with the receiver flattening his ear. The view from his window hadn’t changed: still the smokestacks and office buildings along Harry Hines Boulevard. The rolling server, still holding the coffeepot, was in front of the window. Cassel’s U of Oklahoma degree still hung on the wall. The only thing that was different was Fred himself; he didn’t look near as confident as the last time I’d visited.

  He banged the receiver into its cradle. “You’ve got a lot of nerve crashing in here. Now wait outside, I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  I smiled at him. His look said that he couldn’t see what I thought was so funny. I crossed the room, went around his desk, sat on the edge nearest him, and pulled the Smith & Wesson out of my back pocket. I stuck the barrel up his nostril. His chair rolled backward about six inches and thudded softly against his credenza. His body went rigid and only his eyes moved as he shifted his gaze from me down to the pistol and back again.

  “So, Fred,” I said, “let’s chat.”

  He sounded as though he was choking as he said, “Jesus Christ, man, be careful with that thing. Look, I can’t pay you any more money. It was Jack’s money I was going to give you, not my own.”

  For just a second there he had me stumped. Oh. The thirty grand that had gotten me into this to begin with—money I hadn’t seen or now ever expected to see. I damn near giggled in his face. I said, “You can think up something better than that. Hell, I know I’m not going to get any money from you. I’ve come to talk about a real estate deal, among other things. But first you’re going to give Beautiful, or whatever her name is out there, a buzz and tell her we’re going to be tied up a while.”

  He nodded. The motion caused the S&W to press harder against his nostril. He whimpered, “Please. Just take it out of my nose.”

  “I shouldn’t, Fred. You and your buddies have been jamming it up my nose.” I sat back some and returned the gun to waist level, keeping it trained on Cassel. “Call her,” I said.

  I stood aside to give him room, held the pistol inches from his ear as he pressed the intercom button. He was trying his best not to look at the gun, but as he talked to his secretary his gaze darted in that direction anyway. He told Beautiful that we weren’t to be disturbed, and during the conversation I learned that her name was Virginia. He hung up and swiveled to face me. His face was the color of a black-and-white movie.

  “I’m going to cooperate with you,” he said. “Just don’t get excited.”

  I waved him back and he rolled away from his desk.

  With one eye on Cassel and the pistol held ready, I used my free hand to do a quick search. “Sounds like you’ve been reading up,” I said, “on how to handle a crazy man, huh?” His top drawer held only pencils, pens, and paper clips. I slammed it closed and moved on to the side drawers. “Above all, keep calm, right?” I said. “Don’t let him know you’re afraid, huh? Well, Fred, you can bet your sweet ass I’m crazy. I might’ve already been a little bit crazy before I met you, but I’m damn sure crazy now. So you’d better humor me because the slightest fuckup on your part might drive me right over the edge.” I found a gun in his bottom right-hand drawer, a Walther PPK .380, a collector’s item. I checked the miniature clip: three rounds. I jammed the Walther into my waistband, circled the desk, and sat down across from him in a visitor’s chair. “So do yourself a favor,” I said. “Tell me about Connie Swarm’s house and what Jack Brendy’s money had to do with buying it.”

  He licked his lips and said shakily, “Connie Swarm?”

  I aired back the hammer, two soft clicks. I didn’t say a wor
d.

  He tried one more time. “I don’t think I’ve heard the name. Is she supposed to be a client, or a friend of Jack Brendy’s? I didn’t really know Jack on a social basis.”

  I extended the pistol, holding the barrel two feet from his face, grinned, and crossed my eyes.

  He flinched, held his hand palm outward between the gun and his nose. “No, wait. Her name’s Lorraine Daley.”

  “That’s better, but I already knew that,” I said. “And you knew that Skeezix was staying at her place before you hired me to get rid of him. And you know that Bodie killed her. So don’t give me anything that’s old hat. I want to know about a loan on Connie’s house, backed by some of Jack’s stock. I want to see your file, and don’t bother bullshitting me that you don’t have one. You’ve got five seconds, Fred. One . . .”

  He nodded quickly. “It’s over there, in the top drawer.” He was indicating a dark wood four-drawer file cabinet beside the window.

  I went to the cabinet, opened the drawer, looked at the alphabetical guide cards. “Under Swarm or under Daley?” I said.

  “Under L. For Lorraine,” he said. A quick flash of sunlight glinting from the glass covering his law degree caused me to blink.

  I found it, a letter-sized manila folder with an inch-thick sheath of papers held in its two-pronged braid. “What’s the deal on the loan?” I said. “And don’t worry. I’ll go through this file, and if you lie to me I’ll shoot you. The word was that Skeezix paid cash for the house.”

  Cassel sighed, his gaze riveted on the pistol. “That’s true. There never was any loan on the house; that’s just what Jack told the bank he needed the money for. He told them he was posting the stock as collateral so the house could be lien-free. Also because he didn’t want his wife to know where the money was going. Sixty-two thousand dollars.”

  “And I guess the money went to bankroll a drug deal. With Breaux, or did Bodie use Skeezix as a go-between?”