by Pro Se Press
I mashed the gas and the Ford jumped forward. I slipped the car into the hammer lane and rocketed past a tractor trailer at about eighty miles an hour. He couldn’t have been doing more than about thirty. As I shot past, I saw why.
The driver of the rig was giving a respectful berth to a Champion City Police cruiser, which was only doing thirty-five. “Shit, too late to hide now.” I had the Ford running hot. I went straight on after that Karman.
I was closing on the Karman; as a matter of fact I was about to take a bite out of his bumper, when he got wise and stomped the gas. There was no way in hell that little Karman was game enough to get away from 400 horses cookin’ full tilt boogie. The driver knew he was had. It was just a matter of time. I was gonna get to the bottom of this right here and now.
“Damn!” I muttered a minute later, when I glanced at my rearview mirror and saw red and blue lights.
Reflexively, I let up on the gas and it was all the Karman needed to start pulling away. I glanced at my radio and thought better of it. He’d know I was a cop as soon as he ran my plates, and it would be hard to explain that I was running pursuit in my unmarked personal ride, with a female civilian on the front seat next to me.
“Look what you did now,” Candi groaned in the reflected red and blue lights.
I slowed a bit and dropped over one lane, before I pulled over to the side of the road. The police car angled in behind me, and the searchlight came on and aimed into my rear-view mirror. Whoever the prick was, he was good, textbook even.
Once I stopped, I killed the engine and pulled out my wallet. I flipped it open, exposing my badge and police ID.
“Let me do the talking,” I said to Candi as I heard a car door open and shut behind us.
“Don’t worry about me.” She said it as if she’d not spoken all evening.
The officer approached on my side and stopped just behind the door frame, weight on his rear foot and ready in case I was to do something stupid, like poke my Roscoe out at him and let go with a few hot ones.
“Goin’ someplace in an all fired hurry, are we?” the officer said in a disapproving tone.
“I was, yeah,” I snapped back at him. Give me a break, run my plate already I was thinkin’.
“I’ll need your license and registration sir,” he growled.
I hung my wallet out at him, badge first. After a moment and a disheartened sigh, he took it and read my ID.
“Sorry, if I ruined your pursuit,” he said as he stepped forward and handed back my wallet.
“S’awright, this one was extracurricular,” I said, looking him right in the eye.
He nodded so slightly that Candi wouldn’t have noticed.
“I reckon I’ll let you get back to it then,” he digressed and started back toward his cruiser.
“Hey,” I called after him.
He wheeled around and came back, “Yeah?”
“What’s your name anyhow?” I wanted to know because he was a familiar face. We worked at the same place, and I’d never talked him before.
“Rivers, Dwayne. Patrolman first class,” he said with precision.
“Yeah, nice to meet you, I’m also patrolman first class.”
He smiled and we shook hands. “How long you been on?” he asked.
I had to think about it. Had it really been a year? “Be a year in August. I started on the fifteenth. I just got loose of my FTO in May,” I told him.
“I just got loose of mine today. I started at the end of October, and last Friday was my last day with him,” he said, a little hint of nerves coming out behind it.
“Who’d ya have? I had Mark Spitz, but I work days.”—I wanted him to know that I had been trained by the Day Shift Patrol Supervisor himself.
“Terry Orndorf, you know, our Sergeant was off for a long time and just got back to work.” He wanted me to know that he’d gotten foisted off on a drunk waiting out his days until retirement.
“Sorry about that.”
“Yeah, me too. I got a little bit of training on how to do the important stuff, and a lot on how to sleep under bridges and avoid going on calls.”
He sounded surly about it and I couldn’t blame him. The only reason a guy with 20 years on the force is on nights is because somebody hoped he’d get pissed off and quit. This, of course, puts the screws to somebody young who wants to learn the job.
“Are you coming to days anytime soon?” I was just curious if he had any news I didn’t know yet.
“Not that I know of. I wouldn’t mind it, but I’m assigned to Pleasant Hill in District Two. I’m covering for Lisa Wexler tonight. She usually has the strip.” He wanted me to know that he wasn’t relegated to chasing tail lights.
“I work that beat during the day,” I offered.
“I better get back to chasing cars,” he said reluctantly.
I started the Ford as he walked away. It sucks to be the responsible one when you are supposed to be a trainee. I didn’t say anything, but that guy was almost my FTO. Lucky for me he had a bad shooting put him off the job for a few weeks before they decided what to do with him—the friggin’ burnout.
“I thought your ass was had,” Candi said as I eased the Ford out into traffic.
“Nah, it takes a felony to get a cop into hot water in this town. Unless you beat up your old lady or something,” I added just to pull her chain. I didn’t want it to go unnoticed that I was sore about losing that Karman, or encountering its driver in the first place.
“Aw, is my big bear unhappy?” she fawned at me, unbuckling her seatbelt, and scooting over next to me. She laid her head on my shoulder and started rubbing my thigh. I gotta give it to her, she could kiss ass when she needed to.
I had a hunch and turned off of North Street onto Walter, and then cutting left onto High Street. I followed it east for a couple of blocks and then went south on Bechtle. I knew that Karman Ghia was going to be somewhere around White Walls Tavern in Pleasant Hill. I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do if it was, but I just had to know if there was more going on at White Walls than some protection racket.
“He ain’t gonna be at the bar if that’s what you’re thinkin’,” Candi said as we turned onto Pleasant Street.
“Oh, no?” I just couldn’t figure her. She acted like the girl done wrong, up until I started to buy into it. Other times she acted like she was some sex starved girl next door. Then with this meat bag, she’d tried to tell him anything he wanted to hear just to get him to let me alone. What she was up to, I had no clue, but something told me that I was in for one hell of a long night. I didn’t know what to expect, so I decided it might be a nice time to stop and have a drink.
We were about to pass White Walls, when I made a sharp right onto Clark Street and angled into a parking spot at the side of the bar. I shut off the engine and glanced at Candi, who looked like she’d just swallowed a canary.
“Why are you doing this?” She asked with more than a hint of nerves.
“Cause I know there’s somethin’ goin’ on and if you won’t tell me, I got no choice but to ask that other guy,” I said with more candor than she was comfortable with.
She put on the doe eyes, “Wouldn’t you rather take me home with you and we could get cozy?” she offered it as a reward, not like something she was really excited about.
“Our night got ruined anyhow, so let’s just have a nightcap and I’ll take ya home.” I let her think it was her idea, but she knew there wasn’t a lot of choices.
“Okay, one drink,” she said, trying to sound tough, but we both knew she was scared to death. I was just wondering what she was scared of and why she wouldn’t tell me.
So for the second time I walked into White Walls. It was your typical neighborhood beer joint. There was a dark stained bar about twenty feet long with the usual brass rail at the corner where it turned to run along the short wall inside the inverted L shaped barroom. I doubt it was real mahogany, just judging from the cheap vinyl rail pad that ran the length of the bar. It was fr
ayed in several places and the yellow foam padding was poking through.
Don’t get me wrong, it was a nice enough place. The décor was, as Candi had pointed out earlier, the work of a man who loved hot rods. There were several expensive looking prints on the walls of some classic rides, and a bunch of photos behind the bar, of who I assume was the owner, shaking hands with some of yesteryear’s racing giants—Jack Bowshier, Carol Shelby, and King Richard Petty.
Candi was hanging close to me, so I put my arm around her and moved in the direction of the bar. There were a few people seated along the bar, and a dozen or so scattered among the twenty tables. There was no need to go to the rail; it wasn’t exactly a busy night.
The barkeep this evening had the used up look of a career lot lizard. She looked tired, half drunk, and pissed off. When she saw Candi, she sneered and rolled her eyes, while she made a show of wiping the same spot on the bar with a towel that was obviously dirtier than anything she was trying to wipe off.
“She doesn’t like me,” Candi whispered in my ear. “Hasn’t since I ratted her ass out for giving away booze.”
As she told me this, she made it a point to brush a few stray hairs to make it look like she was genuinely concerned with my appearance. Then she took my hand with both of hers and kissed it. It was just then that the hygiene deficient barkeep sauntered over, presumably to take our order.
“What d’you want?” she asked in a very hard Kentucky brogue.
I looked at Candi to confer, and she tilted her head a little in what I thought was some kind of signal, but I didn’t get it.
“Give me a shorty and a fuzzy navel for the lady,” I told the barkeep, not impolitely.
She snickered and rolled her eyes at Candi again, “Humph, if you say so pal.”
She turned around to a lowboy cooler, pulled out a Champion City Brewery stub-neck Pilsner, and sat it on the bar while she poured a shot of Dement’s best Peach Schnapps into a chilled Collins glass, and then drowned it with orange juice.
She sat the beer in front of me, and the cocktail in front of Candi, and in her best faux kindly voice she cackled, “N’you watch that honey, it might get to the head of a nice little thing like you.”
There was no doubt that she was being sarcastic, but at the same time, she had a point. Dement’s Schnapps were 100 proof and a six ounce Collins glass with five ounces of OJ and a shot of the good stuff in the furnace might be enough to scuttle someone incapable of holding their sauce.
“I think I’m in good hands,” Candi said in a sweet but razor sharp stiletto voice, and looked up at me with those damned doe eyes again. Every time she did it, I got the feeling that I was doing something wrong by not taking her straight home and tossing her in the sack. I’m ordinarily a closer, and I do all right with girls. But Candi, I’m telling you, was some kind of ankle. I thought she was trying to jazz me up and dupe me into the sheets before I knew it. I’d done the same to some unsuspecting tail in the past, but this was ridiculous.
So we took our drinks around to the back corner of the joint where it was mostly deserted, and I could sit with my back to the wall, and observe both the front door and the door to the back of the house. I wasn’t about to be surprised again. One gun behind my head with an unseen shooter is enough for two lifetimes.
Candi slipped into the booth. I sat down next to her and gave a look around the joint. The people in the bar were mostly couples, save for the guys up at the bar, and none of them looked like the trouble type. Mostly factory guys drinking their dinner; all but one, a skinny little mug with an angular jaw and a razor blade moustache. He was drinking at the bar near those other guys, but he wasn’t with them by any means. I decided to keep my eye on him.
“So here we are, sweetie,” Candi whispered and took a long pull on her drink.
I watched as she lowered the glass, expecting the spirits to take her breath away, but I was wrong. She held it just fine. I was impressed.
“Yeah, here we are.” I unscrewed the cap from the beer and drained half of it. I could have taken it all easy, but I was relaxing. She didn’t hit hers hard again either.
I think the schnapps might have lubricated her jaws a bit, because after a few minutes she decided to start talking.
“Did you bring me here to get me drunk?” she giggled, “I don’t want to be drunk if we…”
I covered her mouth with my hand and I growled at her, “What the hell are you doin’?”
She crossed her eyes at me, and licked the palm of my hand. When I pulled my hand away from her mouth, she smiled.
“You said you wanted to have a drink and then you were taking me home,” she said insistently, “so guzzle your suds already so you can take me back to my place, screw me, and fall out of my life.” Her words were hard, cold steel brandished like a knife and just as sharp.
I flushed. I mean, I’d never had one come on to me like this. I mean, right out in public like some kind of drunken prom date. She took my arm around her, put my hand on her boob, and held it there. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it, but it wasn’t comfortable for me to have my girl all over me in a public place.
While I was trying to peel Candi off of me, I noticed that weaselly fella with the razor blade moustache was givin’ us the eye, so I decided to play along.
I pulled Candi closer. Hell, she was almost sitting in my lap. She gave me the eye and put a hand on my cheek.
She leaned in to kiss me and I asked, “Who’s the skinny bastard at the bar?”
She gave me one hell of a kiss, and then laid her head on my shoulder, “Joey Catanza. He works for The Outfit and collects for the rackets they run up here in Pleasant Hill.”
There it was. She’d said it again. “The Outfit.” It sounded like some kind of clandestine government agency where they run secret and mysterious operations that nobody wants to know about. In truth, The Outfit was the easy to digest name for the organized crime element in Champion City. It had been around for ages, I figured at least since prohibition, maybe before. They ran all the usual rackets—protection, numbers and other gambling, some real estate deals, adult entertainment, dope; and they owned the Champion City Brewery and a majority interest in Dement’s Distillery. The current king pin of Champion City’s underworld was a first generation homegrown descendant of a real live Sicilian Mafiosi, Dino Delapina. C.C.P.D. had been trying to get the goods on him for years.
During my Granddad’s tenure, Vicenza, Dino, and Gianni Delapina trafficked in illegal booze and ran a skirt joint right in the heart of the downtown area. Gianni shot up the old police headquarters with a tommy gun, and came to my granddad’s place to kill him for having Vicenza deported and, sending Dino to hell with the very same Smith Model 10 I would jam into that skinny little bastard’s face, if he gave me any lip.
During my father’s time on the force, Angelo’s father Giacomo was sent to prison a couple of times for pulling insurance jobs. They would buy interest in a business; heavily insure the contents of the building, and then pay some torch to burn it down. They had the insurance agents on a rope somehow, but the third job was ruled arson, and Giacomo followed in his father’s footsteps.
We sat there a while longer. I was trying to relax, but I still had my hair up over having had a gun pointed at the back oo my head. Candi seemed to have forgotten about the whole incident; content for me to wear her like some type of skin-tight shirt, or something.
Just as I was taking the last sip of my beer, a couple of new faces came in the door. One of them had a quite distinct Mediterranean look about him; wearing a henna colored silk shirt and khaki chinos. The other one was a pretty husky looking blond with a good start on raccoon eyes. I wondered if his nose still smarted from its close encounter with the table at the Grille.
“Honey, your boyfriend’s back,” I said quietly, pulling my arm from around her and gently adjusting my piece for easier access.
“We gotta get out of here before they see us,” she whispered urgently.
As mu
ch as I wanted answers, I didn’t want Candi anywhere around if I had to be aggressive. I didn’t know what her history with these guys was, and I didn’t want to take any chances. As much as I wanted to trust her, something told me I shouldn’t.
I should always listen to that something.
I glanced toward the front, and saw that Henna and the beefy one were talking to the weasel. “Can we go out the back?” I asked Candi, who once again looked like she wanted to melt into the woodwork.
“Yeah it’s back by the bathrooms.” She gestured over her shoulder to the left of where we sat.
I took Candi by the hand, and we went for the doorway under a wooden sign that read, “Restrooms.”
We passed under the sign and down a short hallway, past doors on the left that read his and hers, and two unmarked doors. Across the hall, there was a door to a stock room, and a back entrance to the kitchen. At the end of the hall, there glowed an exit sign, and we headed straight for it.
I put my hand where the crash bar should have been, and there was nothing. After a minute’s fumbling at either side of the jamb, Candi reached in front of me and flipped the lever on the deadbolt, gave the door the slightest push and it opened freely. I closed the door behind us, and we ducked around the corner to my car.
We got in, I started the car, and we were on our way. When we were a couple of blocks beyond the bar, Candi started to decompress. She produced a silver cigarette case from somewhere and opened it, taking one out for herself and holding the case up, offering one to me. I declined.
She tucked it back wherever it came from and produced a lighter, from the same place. She lit her smoke and took a long drag, which she held for several seconds and then exhaled it slow, like it was her last breath.
“I really want to know what the hell is going on,” I said, “Because it generally isn’t my style to have people I don’t know point guns at me, allude to shit, and then sneak off before I get answers.”
She didn’t do that coy, doe eyed harlot deal this time. She cracked the window, tossed out the butt, and put it up again, “Do you like me Thurman?”