The Four-Night Run

by William Lashner

  “I got nothing to say,” said Trent Fallow.

  Scrbacek stopped, lifted the Colt Detective Special from the top of the cabinet, aimed it at Fallow’s face.

  Fallow winced.

  “Who painted your face bruise?”

  “Bozant.”

  “He did such a nice job it would be a shame to ruin it.” Scrbacek lowered the muzzle until it was approximately in line with Fallow’s crotch. “Mendoza,” said Scrbacek.

  “You wouldn’t,” said Fallow. “Your balls aren’t big enough.”

  Scrbacek cocked the gun and waited for a moment. Then he gently pulled the hammer and let it slide harmlessly back into place. “You’re right,” he said.

  A broad smile broke out on Fallow’s swollen face. “I knew it. You’re too pussy to pull this off. Just let me go, J.D. I won’t tell a soul where you are. I promise. You have my word.”

  “Your word? Please. I don’t have what it takes to shoot off your nuts, true, but the Nightingale does. Wait just a minute while I get her.”

  “No, don’t,” he said, his face red from the pressure of the tape with which she had so tightly bound him. “She’s cold, that bitch. Stone-cold.”

  “So they say.”

  “She’ll do it.”

  “Not only that,” said Scrbacek. “She’ll do it well, and she’ll like it. Mendoza.”

  “You read the file.”

  “But it’s gone. They burned it. I need the original.”

  “I gave the original to you.”

  “Then where are the copies?”

  “I didn’t make any copies.”

  “What kind of idiot doesn’t make any copies?” Scrbacek looked up and down at Fallow, taped to the chair, and shrugged. “All right, you’ll just have to tell it to me. Mendoza.”

  “I thought you read the file.”

  “I lied. I was too busy with the Breest case to look over your crappy file. Whenever a lawyer says he looked at the file, it means he intends to, sometime in the future, probably on the way to court.”

  “So you could have given it back to me when I asked and never known what was inside?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But you had to lie.” Fallow laughed. “You’re a lawyer. You couldn’t help yourself.” He laughed harder. “And none of this would have happened. None of it.” He laughed until his body convulsed with laughter. “Who’s the idiot now, Scrbacek?”

  Scrbacek let him laugh, let the hysteria build until tears streamed down as Fallow fought for breath, waited without a trace of amusement for the guffaws to devolve into chuckles, and the chuckles to peter out like a choked outboard until the jag ended with a high-pitched sigh.

  “Tell me about Mendoza,” said Scrbacek when it was over.

  “I can’t,” said Fallow, laughter tears drying on his cheek, the afterburn of a smile still on his face. “Bozant will kill me. He’ll fillet my ass off the bone with his knife.”

  “Must be a hell of a knife. Who’s he working for?”

  “Does it matter? He’ll kill me.”

  Scrbacek took some crumpled bills out of his pocket, sorted them out, tossed several onto the desktop. “Five hundred dollars. You can get out of town as soon as we’re through here. Burrow in someplace, hide so he’ll never find you. Start over. A new job, a new life. Maybe find an all-you-can-eat buffet that doesn’t have your photo posted.”

  “He won’t stop until he finds me.”

  “The Nightingale doesn’t even have to search.”

  Trent Fallow stared at the five bills on the desk.

  “I’ll go get her,” said Scrbacek.

  “No. Don’t.” Fallow eyed the bills on his desk. “You got any more to add to that pile?”

  Scrbacek took out another hundred and tossed it atop the others.

  Fallow stared.

  Scrbacek took out another. “That’s it.”

  “A man’s got to eat.”

  “Mendoza,” said Scrbacek.

  Fallow looked at him, down at the seven hundred dollars on the desk, back up at Scrbacek.

  Scrbacek waited a moment more. He was just reaching to take the money back when Fallow said, “Mendoza was nothing.”

  “Tell it.”

  “He was just a guy who wouldn’t leave. I lost control, and when the doctor saw what he looked like, she called in the cops and the loser talked. That’s all Mendoza was, one of hundreds. The job was to clear them out. A sharp lawyer got some judge named Dick or something to declare the buildings unsafe so I could clear them legally.”

  “Judge Dickerson?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one.”

  “Chief Judge Dickerson?”

  “I suppose. He was the one what signed the orders.”

  “Condemnation orders?”

  “Fuck if I know.”

  “How many buildings did Judge Dickerson condemn?”

  “Dozens. I hated that job, tramping door to door to give the bad news, roaches falling on my head. It’s not like these places were palaces. 63 West Polk. 694 Fillmore. 38 North Taft—that was Mendoza’s building. The vultures in the city had already pretty much taken these places apart. It was like they had been squeezed already for anything of any worth. My job was to evict the hangers-on, the ones like Mendoza who stayed only because they had no place left to go.”

  “Who was the client?”

  “Galloway.”

  “The developer?”

  “Yeah, sure, if that’s what you want to call her, though all she develops is slums. She owns half the city, Frances Galloway, and still she’s the cheapest bitch I ever met. Said she’d take me to lunch to set the thing up. Dragged me to some hot dog vendor. And then after she took her dog, she turned her back. I had to pay. Woman’s worth fucking millions and can’t even buy herself a hot dog. So there we were, this millionaire slut, all dressed to the nines, and me, eating hot dogs on the street as she told me the plan. She wanted to redo the buildings, she said, make them shiny and nice. But to do that, she needed them cleared, so she got her lawyer to do the legal work and wanted me to make sure of the evictions. I was going to be her Sherman, she said, which I understood completely. She wanted me to be strong like a Sherman tank, to roll over obstacles and blow away anything got in my way. That’s what I did with Mendoza, just like she said.”

  “How’d a loser like you end up with a big-time operator like Frances Galloway?”

  “Torresdale set it up. I mean, not for free. Not out of the goodness of his heart, you know what I mean? He got his twenty percent just like when I worked for you. But he set it up, and Galloway’s got pockets, know what I mean?”

  “So Joey Torresdale and Frances Galloway are somehow linked. That means Breest is involved.” Scrbacek sidled over to the map of the city hanging on one of the dingy office walls. “Any idea who brought Caleb Breest and Frances Galloway together?”

  “They tell me nothing but what to do and when to do it. I’d love to get inside one of them deals, take some points, make some real money, but I’m just a drone to them.”

  “You’re breaking my heart, Trent,” said Scrbacek, staring now at the map. “What were those addresses again?”

  “63 West Polk.”

  He searched for the location on the map. The map had street numbers indicated, and he quickly found the spot. “All right. Next.”

  “694 Fillmore.”

  “Okay. Next.”

  “There was one at 79 West Polk.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “And 223 Harrison.”

  “Right. And you said something about North Taft?”

  “Thirty-eight.”

  “Son of a bitch. Hey, Fallow, give me a pen.”

  “Fuck you. I look like I’m in any condition to play your butler?”

  Scrbacek turned to look at Trent Fallow, trussed in his chair, and shrugged out a “Sorry” before darting to the desk, searching through the junk on top to find a pen, and then heading back to the map to mark the locations. “Give me some
more addresses.”

  “I don’t remember them all.”

  “Just give me what you know, all right?”

  Trent Fallow let loose a string of numbers linked to names: Pierce, Hayes, Van Buren, Tyler, Taylor, Arthur, Cleveland, Harding, the whole gamut of undistinguished presidents after whom many of the streets in Crapstown were named. The greater presidential names—Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Kennedy—were reserved for the boulevards of Casinoland. One by one Scrbacek marked the locations on the map, and when it was over it looked like he had drawn a graph, something like a supply curve in an economics textbook or a well-correlated example of money and happiness, not a bell-shaped curve but something straight and wide, moving upward to the right.

  Scrbacek took a step back from the map and stared at it for a moment. “You remember the Ever-Dry factory?”

  “Sure,” said Trent Fallow. “‘Keeping the rain off your parade.’ What they needed was a little more rain to put out that fire.”

  “What was the address of that place, do you remember?”

  “I don’t know. Something like Ninth and Garfield.”

  Scrbacek stepped slowly to the map, made another mark, and then stepped back again, shaking his head and sucking his teeth, staring and staring.

  “You got it wrong, Trent,” Scrbacek said, finally, “the remark about Sherman.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Galloway wasn’t talking about the tank, she was talking about William Tecumseh and his march from Atlanta to the sea. Look what you’ve done here. You’ve cleared out a direct path from Diamond’s Mount Olympus to the Marina District, where James E. Diamond plans to build his new casino resort. Galloway and Caleb Breest have somehow gotten together to buy up and clear the land for Diamond’s highway straight through the heart of Crapstown. Breest ruins the properties with crime, Galloway buys them cheap, and Chief Judge Dickerson signs the orders that lets you clear them of tenants so they can be knocked down with no fuss, no muss. It’s like a highway through the heart of the city to Diamond’s new casino has already been built.”

  “I thought the politicians hadn’t yet given the Marina District plan the okay.”

  “Well, Breest and Galloway have sort of preempted City Council, wouldn’t you say? Either they figure it’s a done deal and are working together to make a killing when they sell out to Diamond, or . . .”

  “Or what?”

  Scrbacek stared for a moment more at the map.

  “Who’s Bozant working for?” Scrbacek said.

  “Breest, I thought. Or maybe Galloway. While he was beating the shit out of me he wasn’t, like, into answering my questions. He told me what to do, and I did it.”

  “Galloway ever mention Diamond?”

  “Never.”

  “Never mentioned some business partner or some big megaplan?”

  “It’s not like she confided in me.”

  “How often did you guys meet?”

  “That one time, with the hot dogs, was all. After that she told me I should deal with her lawyer, the one that was getting all those orders from that Judge Dick.”

  “Chief Judge Dickerson. Who was the lawyer?”

  “A cocky little Cuban asshole. Treated me like shit.”

  “What was his name, Trent?”

  “Vega. Yeah. Like the car. Something something Vega.”

  38

  CIRILIO VEGA

  Cirilio Vega, Esquire, looks left, then right upon climbing from his BMW and scans the landscape once more when hitting the street out of the lot. His caution is understandable, what with the craziness that has infected the city in the last three days. The courthouse is to his right, but he ignores it. His office is behind him, but it will have to wait. He needs to make his regular morning stop before he starts his day, he needs to hear the early morning word, and the best place for hearing the early morning word is at Sweeney’s Sunrise Club.

  He picks up his pace, knowing he is later than usual, thinking of the sweet burn at the back of the throat, of the calm that settles like an alighting butterfly with the very first taste. And today, with a madman on the loose, his need for the calm is greater than usual.

  He is handsome and dark, Cirilio Vega, with sharp feral features. He wears a double-breasted suit, small shiny shoes, a bright tie tied into a tight Windsor knot. Cirilio Vega. Cirilio. Not Cy, like some fat gym teacher. Not Cyrus, like some cabin boy on a Greek freighter. Not Cyril, like some poofy British writer. Not Rilio, not Leo, not Cirry, like some diseased drunk. Cirilio. Cirilio Vega, a Cuban fire-eater on the rise, you better believe it. They can’t keep him down, no matter how they try, and oh, how they try. On the rise, headed to the top, if he can just make it through all this craziness without losing his ticket or his mind.

  The sign outside Sweeney’s is unlit, the neon in the windows is off, the place looks deserted, but that’s how it looks every morning. Sweeney opens the door just for them, the Sunrise Club, so they can have their morning pick-me-ups without a load of gawkers, so they can talk over the morning’s news without the gossip spreading beyond their narrow corps, so they can strategize their way through the minefields set for them by the County Prosecutor’s Office. They are criminal defense attorneys all, the Sunrise Club, men and women, defenders of the dispossessed, part of an elite club that went into law for all the right reasons, no matter how it has turned out. There are some in the defense bar who started out as prosecutors before falling into the private sector to earn more money, but those are not welcome in the Sunrise Club. Former prosecutors tend to maintain allegiance to the enemy. They tend to make deals, to convince their clients to flip and rat out former compatriots. The Sunrise Club frowns on such behavior. The names of its members—Vega, Gray, Pomerantz, Broida, Cannoni, Gonzalez, Scrbacek—read like an honor roll of the hard-core.

  They’ll all be there, thinks Vega. All but Scrbacek, of course, though J.D. will undoubtedly continue to be the main subject of discussion. It is only rumors that are spreading through the Sunrise Club—rumors the lawyers have learned from their clients or overheard in the cells below the courthouse—but rumors that have the ring of authenticity. Scrbacek burned down his own building to destroy his records; Scrbacek burned down a house on Ansonia Road; Scrbacek stole a red Cadillac convertible and was on his way to Vegas; Scrbacek single-handedly battled four gang members in the heart of Crapstown; Scrbacek embezzled millions from a trust fund and was already in Rio; Scrbacek was dead, his corpse buried so deep in the wetlands that it would never, ever be found. It is to this last rumor that Cirilio Vega gives the most credence. It is always that way, hope driving belief, but in this case Vega has a valid basis for so believing. He knows better than anyone what Scrbacek is actually up against.

  Cirilio Vega pulls open the door and steps into Sweeney’s. It is cool inside, and dark, the morning light slatted dim by dusty venetian blinds, and it smells of camphor and spilled beer. It is not much of place, Sweeney’s—a long bar on the left, booths on the right, a jukebox, a pay phone, a video poker game—it is not much of a place, especially when it’s empty. Vega is running late, and he would have expected the whole of the Sunrise Club to have been there already, huddling at the bar, swapping rumors and stories, but all he sees is Sweeney, standing by the sink, polishing.

  “Morning, Sweeney,” says Vega, bellying the bar, looking around. “Where is everybody?”

  “I told ’em not to show,” says Sweeney, his voice a harsh Irish whisper. “I told them I’d be staying shut this morning. I told ’em I had a funeral to be going to.”

  “Yeah? Then what are you doing here?”

  “I couldn’t find meself a corpse to drink over,” says Sweeney before taking down a bottle, lifting up a glass, and pouring a double shot of vodka for Cirilio Vega. Vega likes vodka in the morning so his early appointments can’t detect from his breath that he’d treated himself to a dawn breaker.

  Vega lifts the glass to Sweeney and takes a gulp, his eyes closing reflexively as he fe
els the burn and the calm. “You lose my number or something?”

  “I was asked not to be calling you away.”

  “Oh? Is that so? So who’s the practical joker? I’ll be sure to pay him back in triplicate.”

  Sweeney nods to the back of the bar. Vega turns to see a hunched figure in a ratty raincoat sitting in a booth, his back to Vega.

  And then the figure twists around in his seat.

  And then fear ripples through Vega’s blood, and his lower lip begins to shake.

  “Scrbacek.”

  “Hello, Cirilio,” says J.D. Scrbacek, his normally booming voice soft and hoarse. “How’s tricks?”

  Cirilio Vega spins to stare at Sweeney behind the bar. Sweeney looks at him with a hard, level gaze. Vega downs the rest of his vodka in a quick snatch. When he turns back to face Scrbacek, the shake in his lower lip is gone, willed to still. On his face now is the unctuous feigned concern of a trial lawyer.

  “Scrbacek, my God. How are you? We’ve been so worried about you. Let me get you something. Your normal scotch and soda? Anything.”

  “Club soda will be fine,” says Scrbacek.

  “No scotch? No nothing?”

  “Not this morning, Cirilio.”

  Cirilio Vega turns and gestures for Sweeney to make up the club soda for Scrbacek and another double vodka for himself, and while he waits, he thinks desperately about what he should do.

  He has the urge to run, but he fights it and holds his ground. Scrbacek doesn’t intend to kill him, Vega figures, or he’d already be dead. And Scrbacek wouldn’t try to start anything here, in the tavern, not with Sweeney and his shotgun behind the bar. No, Cirilio Vega figures he’s not in danger from Scrbacek, so long, he’s certain, as he doesn’t try to make a call. So he’ll act calm, make no urgent gestures, retain his normal cheerful manner. Scrbacek is there to talk, that is all, and so Vega will listen. He’ll hear what Scrbacek has to say, learn what he knows, promise to help, and then, when Scrbacek leaves, then and only then, he’ll let out his breath and take out his phone.