Clutching at Straws

by J. L. Abramo

  “Oh, they did more than that.” The Dean’s face reddened. “The last time I met with dear Bill, he had the phenomenal cheek to pickpocket me, like some rube on the street. Specifically, he removed my black titanium credit card, the one with the infinite credit limit. And do you know what he did with that credit card, before taking millions from us?”

  “Blew it on hookers who take plastic?”

  The Dean paused to slurp down a new oyster, his eyes blazing with rage. “Worse. He donated a hundred thousand dollars online to an organization that helps children with cancer. He knows how much I hate moral quandaries, despite my chosen profession. It’s not exactly the sort of sum you can take back, at least without looking like a total scumbag.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “What do you think? I took the money back. Sent the organization a very nice note. Blamed it on the accountant, which is true, in a certain way.” Another oyster down the hatch. “But our friend Bill wasn’t done yet, no sir. Having donated to cure childhood cancer in our lifetimes, he further abused my poor, suffering credit card by taking Jimmy to lunch at the Caviar Room in Midtown, where they ordered a Balthazar of Château Margaux 2009 for the low, low price of fifty thousand dollars, along with their three-hundred-dollar meals.”

  “There were a lot of French words in there I didn’t understand.”

  “Château Margaux is a very expensive bottle of red wine, you idiot. Try to keep up.”

  Although I refused to take crap from just about anyone on the street, I always made an exception for my employer, in light of the enormous amount of money he paid me every few weeks. Not that the cash stopped me from spending a few lovely moments imagining an alligator tearing the Dean apart limb from well-tailored limb.

  Turning my head, I flagged the joint’s lone waiter, a sad sack of middle-aged flesh named Ivan. I needed my morning alcohol something fierce. “So he took your card, and then…”

  “Their very satisfying meal completed, they proceeded across the street to one of our banks, to try and screw us thoroughly.” The Dean sighed. “Jimmy could access too many accounts. If the banker hadn’t called me right after they left, the money would have been on a round-the-world laundering tour, never to be seen again. Pop is so pissed, we had to give him a shot so he’d calm down.”

  “Speaking of shots, I need a beer,” I told the waiter, who had drifted into our orbit.

  “Kinda beer?” Ivan asked.

  “Guinness, if you haven’t already watered down the keg too much.” Once he lurched away, I returned my attention to the Dean, offering up the obvious: “Bill’s probably out of the country by now. He’s too smart to stick around.”

  “He was dumb enough to trust in Jimmy’s so-called intelligence. We already have two people on his trail, but I haven’t heard from them in two days.” He shrugged, as if losing a pair of trained assassins was a daily occurrence. Maybe it was, in his life. “So now I send you in. You’re my backup. And I expect you to make Bill regret what he did.”

  “If it’s an out-of-town job, I’ll need more money.”

  The Dean smiled wide as he went for the kill: “Of course. You need a great divorce attorney, no?”

  A day later I found myself on the road, halfway between Who Knows and Who Cares, listening to my ex-wife’s Cat Power albums and trying not to cry as I thought about our best moments, like the time she overcame her weak stomach to help me dissolve a mob informant in a bathtub full of acid. Go ahead, call me a wimp: I can kill you thirteen different ways with a penknife.

  5.

  Two pints of cheap beer and a shot of engine-cleaner whiskey into his night, Bill found himself less mordant than earlier. The bartender had something to do with his newfound cheer. Raven-haired and dark-eyed, dressed for tips in a pair of tight jeans and a sleeveless shirt, she managed to give as good as she got from the lousy drunks crowding the bar. It was a pleasure to watch her work.

  Bill figured the bartender had a lot more patience than he did. If working here meant having to listen to the same annoying pop-country songs on the jukebox over and over and over again, he would have burned the place to the ground a long time ago.

  “You’re sure patriotic around here,” Bill told the bartender, after she finished helping a blind-drunk customer find his dentures on the sticky floor. He pointed to the red, white, and blue paper bunting draped around every window, along with the giant papier-mâché head of George Washington gazing sternly from atop the liquor shelves.

  “The Fourth’s coming up, we always do a big party,” she said. “As if people need an excuse to get smashed. Just look at Gareth over there, the guy I just helped? He’s a billion years old, won’t buy teeth that fit his mouth, but he’ll blow each Social Security check on that bottom-shelf shit.”

  “Speaking of getting smashed and bottom-shelf shit,” he said, tapping the side of his empty pint glass. “You got something better than Bud?”

  “Who’d ever want to drink anything other than Bud?” Her innocent look would have made a preacher think grubby thoughts. “Isn’t it the best thing ever?”

  “You’re confusing it with pretty much anything else.” A sane part of his brain told him to order a plate of fries or the infamous steak, to absorb some of the alcohol, but Bill ignored it. After that phone call with his former boss, the prospect of food made him feel nauseous.

  “I’ll check the fridge, see what we have.” She grinned and stuck out a hand. “I’m Casey, by the way.”

  “Rick.” They shook. He noticed the way her eyes lingered on his timepiece.

  “Nice watch,” she said, and winked, in a way that let him know she wasn’t someone bowled over by flashiness. He tipped an imaginary hat to her, and she sauntered away.

  As he waited for his beer, Bill ran through sums in his head. The duffel bag in the trunk held fifty thousand in twenties and fifties. He had another eighty-two dollars in his wallet. That was enough for a fresh start somewhere, right? On some islands, you could live like a king for thirty bucks a day.

  Casey returned with a fresh pint. “Miller Genuine Draft,” she said. “Not quite what the doctor ordered, I suspect, but you’ll have to drink it anyway.”

  He took a sip. “I think I’ll live.”

  “So, Rick, you sticking around or passing through?”

  He shrugged. “Passing.” Provided the car actually starts up, he thought. Don’t ask about a garage nearby. Don’t advertise your engine trouble unless you have to.

  “Heading west?”

  He shrugged again.

  She pouted a bit. “You’re a mysterious man.”

  “Mystery’s an asset in my business.”

  “What business is that?”

  “That’s the point, I can’t tell you.”

  “Or you’d have to kill me?”

  “That’s too high a penalty. I was thinking a good Dutch Rub or something.”

  Her head jerked back. “Are you some kind of pervert?”

  He squinted at her. “What?”

  Her voice rose. “What the hell is a Dutch Rub?”

  “How old are you?”

  She took a step back, horrified. “Are you trying to figure out if I’m legal?”

  “No, a Dutch Rub, it’s a thing, like you take your knuckles, rub them on the top of someone’s head, like.” He mimed it. “It’s an older phrase. Maybe people don’t use it as much anymore.”

  She met his eyes, a slow smile parting her lips. “I know what a Dutch Rub is. I’m just messing with you a little.”

  He sipped his beer. “You’re good at it, but I’m still not telling you what I do. Why ruin a good mystery?”

  Her smile widened. “I know all the cops around here. I should let them run your name, Rick, see if you got some outstanding warrants.”

  Bill had an excellent poker face. “All you need to know is I try to be good, and I’ve never done anything bad without a really solid reason. Most of the time, I’m a well-behaved boy.”

  “Well, that
’s no fun. Anyway, back to my point, if you’re staying any length of time, I was going to recommend our fine hotel in this wonderful little town.”

  “How fine?” Bill glanced down the bar, noticing a couple of locals giving him a hard stare, probably wondering why he wore a decent linen jacket in a bar where the dress code leaned toward faded jeans and baseball caps.

  “You won’t have to fight the bugs for the bed,” Casey said.

  He laughed. “Sounds good enough.”

  “They also have those old vibration things, you know, you put in a quarter and the bed shakes.”

  “The Magic Fingers.”

  “Hey, yeah,” she winked. “Seems you know something about those.”

  “I grew up in a motel.”

  “No crap?”

  “Oh yeah. My mom cleaned rooms.” If you want to educate a kid fast in the underbelly of the world, set him loose in a twenty-room motel on the Texas-Louisiana border: a new movie of human depravation every night, courtesy of a traveling cast of losers and lunatics. Bill’s key lesson from his childhood: never be poor, if you can avoid it.

  “Sounds rough.”

  “Yeah.” He wanted to say something more. Having a conversation with a real human being, no matter where it went, made him feel warm and tingly after the past few days of brutal tension. Except the moment he opened his mouth to tell a crummy-hotel joke, a glass shattered at the end of the bar, and they turned to see old Gareth sink his fake fangs into another drunk’s neck.

  Casey spun on her heel, waving an arm toward the door, where a hulk in a black hooded sweatshirt sat on a small stool that seemed ready to break under his weight. With a shout loud enough to quake the floorboards, the hulk stood and marched for the bar, the crowd scrambling to clear a lane.

  The bouncer gripped Gareth’s shoulders, and the geezer responded by trying to bite one of his shovel-sized hands. The bouncer’s fist rocketed forward, plowing into Gareth’s nose with enough force to knock the old drunk clean out of his untied sneakers, which would remain beside the bar for the rest of the evening. Gareth’s teeth flew across the room, almost smacking the head of George Washington, who looked nonplussed.

  The crowd broke into applause as the bouncer carried Gareth, toothless and shoeless, out the front door. If the old man whacked his head on the doorframe on the way out, well, that was the price you paid for starting a fight in this joint.

  Casey tossed a dishtowel to the drunk with the bleeding neck and headed back toward Bill, who had downed his pint. “Big guy,” he said.

  “That’s Rex,” she said. “He’s my half-brother. Different mom.”

  “Seems like a good guy to have your back.”

  “Yeah, helps keep the flies off.” She plunked a fresh beer in front of him. “Where you from?”

  “Philadelphia.”

  “Where you headed?”

  He shrugged, smirking this time.

  “Traveling with anyone?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. Picking up a friend in Austin tomorrow night.”

  Everything seemed a little too blurred around the edges. Maybe it was the days of driving finally catching up to him, or the alcohol hitting him harder than usual. On a normal night, Bill could down enough beers and hard liquor to stun an adult bull. How odd that a couple of pints made his vision blur so badly.

  “You okay, champ?” she asked, smiling sweetly.

  His jaw felt a few tons too heavy, dragging his head onto the bar. Casey kept staring at him, her eyes twinkling. He wanted to speak, to tell her that he was finally ready to order food, take a run at the giant steak. Before he could muster the strength to say the words, blackness descended like a curtain.

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  Prologue

  Castro is dead.

  ¡Gracias a Dios!

  Now what?

  ***

  The veranda curtains were partially drawn against the full moon, yet the young servant girl could see everything. Her mistress was lying on the bed, curled into a protective ball, elbows over her head, knees to her chest. The maid heard the steady breathing, slow and strong, and no hint of a whimper, nor pleas for help. Just another night in which the master of the house had lost control, using his considerable authority at home instead of at his Ministerio de Justicia. This time it was about Raúl. Prior to that, it was always Fidel.

  The girl had heard the shouting. She wasn’t snooping or sneaking around—the angry words could not be blocked out. And her imagination could not be stilled. There was change in the wind, and it was frightening. So she sat downstairs by the kitchen door and waited. It was very late, almost dawn. Shapes of moonlight washed over the gardens and the trellises of bougainvillea, turning the warm tropical colors into moving shadows and white ice. Out beyond the cliffs the beach was a ribbon of bone fronting a sea ablaze with summer phosphorescence.

  Eventually the generalisimo had left. First there was the sound of a shower running and she imagined him putting on his uniform, slipping his black leather gloves into his coat pocket, and striding out the front door. His coffee would be waiting for him at the ministry. He was an important man with an important job, a violent job that he seemed to enjoy too much.

  But sometimes he brought his work home. Lately he’d been ranting about Fidel’s younger brother and his new pact with the United States. A deal that would certainly put an end to the niche he’d carved out for himself. But things moved slowly in communist Cuba. He still had time. And President-elect Trump was a wild card at best.

  The girl had earlier assembled her things—a pair of clean towels, a pan of warm water, some mild soap. She would open the door and go to the woman and clean her up. She knew what was needed. She’d done it many times before.

  The woman would protest. She would deny that she’d been hurt. But she would accept the assistance, and the morning sunlight would stream into the room and another day would begin.

  1

  Dixon Sweeney shaded his eyes and looked at a cloud, a puffy little thing hanging on the horizon. Maybe it was a sign, an omen of his first free breath in eight years. He picked up his cardboard box with the duct-taped handle containing all his possessions and walked down the three concrete steps and out into the early morning heat that dampened his body and stained the pits of his Goodwill suit.

  He glanced back at the huge, institutional green complex that was Florida State Prison. Well that sucked, he thought. He turned around again and his face went prickly hot and he suddenly felt naked because there was nobody there to greet him. Calm down, he told himself. An emotional episode would not be cool.

  He changed mental directions and decided to ignore the homecoming slight. I’m keeping this suit forever, he decided. He pulled at his crotch. The seersucker coat didn’t cover his wrists, and the seersucker pants didn’t cover his ankles. But so what? He could hang it on the wall. Or eat the lining. It was bound to taste better than the glop that passed for food inside prison walls.

  The guards had laughed at him when he received his clothes that morning. A bunch of redneck guards laughing at his cracker ass and making jokes. He wasn’t the first guy they’d ever forced to wear a clown suit on his way out the door.

  “You’ll be back,” cackled Sergeant Dimmit Hogg Hardin, a steroidal fatso who belonged in a zoo. “Y’all boys are all the same. Wash some dishes, mow some lawns, dig some ditches, you every one come back. Besides, ain’t no dicks to suck like they is in prison.”

  “Ah, so that’s why you’re still here,” replied Sweeney.

  “I’m here to slap the shit out of smartasses,” said Hogg, stepping closer, snapping his rubber gloves at the wrists. Playtime was apparently over.

  “I’m gonna miss you, Officer Hardon,” said Sweeney as he tucked his shirt in.

  “Hardin,” said the
sergeant now inches from Sweeney’s mug. “Sergeant Dimmit Hardin.”

  “I suppose you’ll have to live with that,” Sweeney said. He turned and ducked through the gates just as Hardin was reaching for him.

  The heat was overpowering and the mosquitoes were a torrent by the time the bus stopped in an open swale of dirt commonly used by protesters who gathered for executions. Sweeney picked up his box and climbed aboard. There were only a few riders, but he sat in the back, as far from anyone as he could. The new noises frightened him. Conversations confused him. Colors blinded him. And making any kind of decision was damn near impossible. So he sat by the latrine and endured the stink and watched the miles roll by. He wondered again why his wife hadn’t been there to greet him at the gates. Where the hell was she? This was Sweeney’s big day. This was his coming-out party, his delivery and whack-on-the-butt-so-he-could-breathe moment. Yet no one was there to welcome him or even stare at him and wonder if he took it up the ass six times a day from Aldo the Gorilla and his posse.

  He rubbed his broken nose. It had healed long ago, but it wasn’t straight anymore.

  Boy, did that suck.

  Eight years ago, he’d been accused of smuggling Cuban refugees into Florida. A whole boatload of them. He’d denied it, of course, and the assistant state attorney, a guy named Alvin Scopher, had called him a liar.

  But Sweeney had stuck to his guns. He’d made it hard.

  So the investigators got mad, objecting and carping and working him over. And that’s when Sweeney knew they were having trouble getting witness testimony.

  That’s also when Scopher went to Dixon’s mother, Mrs. Adelia Sweeney, getting old, ailing, sometimes becoming confused, especially in the face of such a creep. And when the creep accused Mrs. Sweeney of harboring smugglers, of abetting a criminal, and told her he was going to be forced to go federal and she was going to lose her house and do hard time as an “organizer/manager,” Dixon, her only son, had to cave. He’d had to plead out, take the eight, learn a new language that began with sally ports clanging behind him and ending an hour ago, in the heat, on the wide prison sidewalk where no one was waiting.