by Ryan Sayles
In my car, I call Carla Gabler.
“Hello?”
“Carla, it’s Richard.”
“Hi. How’d it go with Joann?”
“Fine. Listen, when Mickey used to sell his scores, Joann said he’d take it to a pawn shop south of the river. Which one?”
“Let me think.” I can hear her drag off a cigarette. I hear Carla’s granddaughter playing in the background, laughing that musical note that all little children have. “Joe & Barry’s Family Pawn.”
Joe & Barry’s. Good enough. “Thanks, Carla.”
I hang up. Drive to Petticoat’s.
I don’t call ahead of time. I drive up to the office and see his car nosed into a space. I nose in behind him until my bumper touches its ass. I sift through my console and find a roll of pennies. I make a fist around it, feel the weight, slam my door and head in.
His office door is locked, but I can hear him on the other side of it. He speaks low. I hear a woman giggle. Say something coy. It’s nine in the morning and Petticoat is getting ready to part his secretary’s knees.
I pick the lock, open the door.
27
0921 hours
“Give us a minute, will ya, honey?” I say.
Petticoat and his secretary explode away from each other in a desperate attempt to conceal whatever it is they both have hanging out. Petticoat leans at the waist and fiddles with his zipper as his pants are left open like Travolta’s collar in the ’70s.
His secretary, blonde, ten pounds past ‘curvaceous,’ sweet-looking, squeals and tucks a freckled boob into her shirt with one hand while the other is grabbing handfuls of her skirt and yanking down. All she accomplishes is pulling it down too far and de-pants-ing herself.
“Petticoat, ask the dame to go into your office and take her time fixing herself up.”
They just look at each other and his eyes say it all it. He flicks his head at his door and she scoots off. The door shuts. I pull up a chair to the front of the secretary’s desk, sit down, kick my feet up and light a smoke.
“You’re one serious motherfucker,” I say.
“Just what in the fuck do you think you’re doing here, Buckner? Aren’t you supposed to be out there getting results? I mean really—”
“Oh, I’ve gotten results.” Pull my iron and cock the hammer back. Point it at his face. “Sit the fuck down and get ready to explain some things.”
Petticoat turns white as pureblood neo-Nazi and drops right where he is. Lucky for him a corner of waist-high filing cabinet is there to catch him or else I really think he would have just fell flat-ass to the ground.
“I’ll just rattle some things off here and you tell me when it’s enough. You used to be a corrections officer at Happenstance. You meet Carla Gabler there and she tells you about Mickey Cantu. You get washed out of the all-women’s prison and wind up meeting Mickey. Arrange with him to burglarize your place. Something happens and your wife gets raped instead. Fast forward to when you’re rich and your face is plastered everywhere about town. The rapist sees this and knows you’ll never squeal so he blackmails you. You pay until the price goes up and then you hire me, give me some complete bullshit story and hope I deal with your blackmail problem for you in a very final way. Sound right?”
He just stares.
“I went to the hospital you said you were at. Worked my magic. You’re not scheduled for surgery.”
“All right. Maybe I told you wrong—” he starts.
I jump out of the chair. Come across the desk. He screams like a bitch and falls off the cabinet. Gun to his eyeball, hand on his throat. I hear him piss his pants.
“Okay! Okay! Okayokayokayokayokayokayokay! I lied! All right! I lied!”
“GIVE UP THE STORY!”
“I just hated being a CO! All right? All right?” He swallows hard around my grip and tears roll down his face, up the crest of my fingers and down into the troughs between them. He breathes deep and his jaw shudders.
“Before—I dabbled in real estate before my wife got sick. I mean, really sick. The bills, all that. She needed the hospital but I convinced her to stay out until I could get a job that had benefits and when I did we had to wait until they kicked in...she almost died but we weathered through the worst of it. I wanted to go back to real estate, but you know how—how it is. I was already in the corrections job, had a few years under my belt, the wife was touch and go for a while, then I was just...I dunno, stuck. I was used to the routine, the guys I worked with, everything. But I just knew if I could get back into it...but it’s so damn expensive. The license, the testing fees, promotional materials, the cost of speculation. It goes on. I needed cash. Everything costs money, man. So I thought, an insurance scam would be perfect.”
He wiggles and I let him go. For good measure I shove him hard enough to send him sprawling. Lower the gun. Stand up. Walk back over to my chair where my lit cigarette is burning a hole in his carpet. Pick it up, take a drag.
Petticoat stands there behind his desk, looking helpless. “I...I just started looking around at Happenstance. See who the burglary folks were. Which ones were solid. My grandpa always said, no matter whatchoo do in life, ya gotta surround yerself wit solid peoples. He’d always say that.”
He fiddles with his loose belt for a second, then gives up with a frustrated yank. “So I looked for solid. Carla wasn’t, but her boyfriend sounded like it. He was over at the men’s prison and it just so happens I got transferred there. Big hustle and bustle. But, I met Mickey Cantu, told him I knew his gal at my last gig. Told him I took care of her, you know; all the usual. Kept her safe from the gym teacher dykes and all the crazies, snuck her goodies. All bullshit, sure, but still. Bought his goodwill, I guess.
“We made a deal. Simple. I take my wife out on a date from six p.m. to ten p.m. He has a four-hour window to rob my house empty. Anything I wanted to keep I moved somewhere else. He could have the TV, stereo, furniture, art. I didn’t care. Insurance money. Plain and simple, simple, simple. Then we never see each other again. He agreed.”
He leans against the wall and looks furious.
“I come home at ten fucking thirty and we get jumped. I open the door and BOOM I get hit square in the face. Out cold. I come to and the first thing I see is my house...it’s still full. Nothing is missing. I was so angry I completely missed my wife sobbing in the corner, two black eyes and blood coming from her crotch. I walked through half the house in a trance while she curled up into a ball. And I did come back to her, asked if she was all right, the only thing she could do was ask me why I went walking around the house like that? What did I know? We had an agreement. We had an agreement!”
He cries. Drops to his knees. Bares his teeth like he wants to devour every word coming out of his mouth.
“I never told her. I never said it was all my fault. All this...I never said anything. Not to the police, nobody. Talking to you, right here right now, this is the first time these things have ever been spoken aloud.”
He makes a fist and hits the floor, over and over. Curls up himself.
“And when she committed suicide I hoped there was no God. Because if there is she’d go to Heaven just because of the raw deal she got. And if she went to Heaven, she’d know what I did to her and what I hid from her. And, I guess she’d know about all the inmates I’d fuck while she was too sick and she’d know she completely threw her life away by ever setting eyes on me.”
All true.
“So I wanted Mickey Cantu dead. But I’m no good at man hunting and I never found him. I don’t know how hard I tried; the sick ironic thing is I had a life insurance policy on Sheila and when she died, it paid off. I had the money to get into the business then.”
I don’t know how hard I tried. Read: I asked around at a couple of bars and then bought a whore and stayed drunk for two months. That’s good enough, right?
Petticoat smirks at the hideous fulfillment of his scheme. Not what he wanted, but the double-edged sword of the deal he made nonet
heless cuts both ways. It took with one side, and gave with the other.
“Then all these years later, just like you said, I get an email out of the blue blackmailing me about that night. I paid because I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t call the cops, you know? Then the amount went way up. I needed help. And I remembered all those years ago working in the pen everybody there was afraid of you. The guys you put away, they’d wear a brave face but you get to know what fear looks like working in a prison. They’d talk about how rough you were. Some considered themselves lucky you were on the PD’s leash. They didn’t talk about what would have happened if they crossed your path and you were...a free agent, so to speak.”
“So you look me up and see that now I am a free agent?”
“Yes. It was a no-brainer.”
Again, all true.
“Ease yourself,” I say to him. “Mickey Cantu is dead. My guess is he got a third party involved in your house deal. He would have needed another hand with Carla still locked up and all that loot to take. Whoever he teamed up with must have killed him and made plans to rape your wife instead. Explains why you got home a half-hour late and he’s still waiting for you. That’s the guy we want. He’s preying on the fact that you still think it’s Mickey Cantu. He gets away scot-free and a dead guy takes the rap.”
“So we just tell him we’re onto him, right?”
“No. Absolutely not. That’s our upper hand. His guard is up anyways, but once he finds out we’re sniffing for him instead of Mickey Cantu, he’ll disappear. He’s too smart and too patient. Way too patient.”
“What then?”
“You meet him at the normal time and place, like he thinks you will. I’ll take it from there. Now, tell me about the meet.”
“Simple, really. I go to the bench at the northwestern corner of Macken Park and throw away a fast food bag into the trash bin there. Money’s in the bag. I go about a hundred feet away and pretend like I’m watching the geese on the pond for five minutes. I assume that he comes by and grabs the bag then. I never see him waiting for me to drop it off. I couldn’t describe him if my life depended on it.”
I roll my head on my neck. “I’ll think of something.”
Petticoat raises an eyebrow and gives me a half-smile. “We have time. Let’s use it.”
I light a smoke, say, “Famous last words.”
28
The Old Pinnacle Theater, otherwise known as the John Wayne Theater.
The 1920s. When the movies became a larger-than-life, steamrolling industry, they decided they needed theaters equally grand to house themselves. No mere building would suffice if it were to contain the magic of Hollywood. Becoming detailed, exotic and ornately decorated, the theaters were exciting places where stage pageants and motion pictures could be displayed the way they were meant to be seen: avant-garde.
Constructed at the height of the Roaring Twenties, the art deco styling of the Pinnacle Theater enjoyed a few years of a raucous and nearly garish existence before the Great Depression laid its withered fingers upon it. The Great Depression razed this city, leaving no stone unturned. The theater suffered just as great as its patrons and when the nation resurfaced after pummeling the Axis Powers, the theater limped along. By the start of the 1950s it eventually became known as the Old Pinnacle Theater.
It sat in disrepair for a while. It was a second-run theater for a while. Someone tried to make it a porno house for a while. Failed. In the ’80s a new owner spent every last dime to restore the place to its original glory. He went broke doing it and sold it to a company that has since used it for marathon film festivals. Continued to this day. For weeks on end it will play Westerns back-to-back, hence the John Wayne title. It also does marathons of Ed Wood, Universal Pictures’ Classic Monsters with guys like Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney living forever. There are some small art film shows, a festival or two.
Candy Man is four rows in front of me. Dark glasses and he’s always on the phone, that carjacker thug said. This guy meets the description. Only an asshole wears sunglasses in a movie theater. A Blues Brother this guy ain’t.
There are several patrons with us, all annoyed to varying degrees by the fact that Candy here is constantly on his phone. At the beginning of the movie he spoke quietly—though he never turned down the volume of his ringer. Now, an hour in, he laughs out loud and is profane. The ushers won’t come talk to him. Maybe they have before and he showed them his iron. Maybe they have before and he clocked somebody. Maybe they can smell thug, gangbanger and drug dealer and won’t chance it.
The Old Pinnacle Theater costs a whole dollar to get in. Candy hangs out near the rear entrance and exit. His customers must buy their ticket, come find him, buy their score and leave. I’ve seen some fellas come and do the drug deal handshake with him then sit down to enjoy the film. I’ve seen several turn on a heel and bolt. Why people pay to come buy drugs is beyond me. Maybe his shit is that good.
Candy gets up and walks out. I follow. I move slowly and watch him as he dials a new number on his phone, walks to the bathroom. Oh good. I bought a large soda before sitting down to start the movie. I drank half of it in a hurry to make room for whiskey. So I need to drain the lizard anyways. Two birds.
I give him some lead and then go in myself. He takes the one shitter and I take the one urinal so we wind up side by side with the thin wall of the stall between us. He’s obviously put the female on speakerphone so he can wipe. But then, I hear him pop open some kind of container. I hear him tap the container and then the quiet sounds of him chopping.
Sniff.
I zip up. Think about washing my hands first but decide it’ll be more fun to punch out this guy with dirty fists.
“Ronnell, you better listen to me!” The female voice, all demands and sass.
More sniffing.
“You the baby daddy of two of my kids! You ain’t movin’ out, you ain’t fuckin’ no other bitches and you ain’t gonna treat me like your other baby mammas! I ain’t some throw-away pussy like that! Got me, motherfucker?”
“Bitch, lower your voice,” Candy man says, his voice husky. He continuously sniffs with the runny nose that coke users have.
“I ain’t no bitch—”
“You a tired, play-out bitch and I got better things to occupy my time with—”
“Ronnell, I’m gonna get your momma on the phone and then we’ll see who you be answerin’ to. Wanna see that? Huh?”
“I said shut up, bitch.”
Well, I’ve heard enough. I go to the stall door and kick it in. Candy man shoots up off the toilet, pants down around his ankles, cell phone laid across the toilet paper dispenser. His coke mirror and a small vial fall to the floor.
“What the fuck?” he shouts. His mouth is full of gold, and collapses inward as I drill him into the wall behind him.
I drag him out of the stall, all to the chorus of gleeful shouts from his phone. “Beat his cheatin’ ass! Whoever you is, motherfucker! Beat his cheatin’ ass! He need to learn! But send him home now, I need my baby daddy!”
I go back into the stall, get the phone and whisper, “I’m going to kill and eat him, if for nothing else than to spare him all your bitching and moaning,” and terminate the call. She immediately calls back, and I drop the phone in the toilet.
Go to work.
Before he comes to I dig through his pockets.
The usual: no ID, state-issued welfare debit card, two more cell phones I find just as they start to ring as well. Probably baby mamma. They go in the shitter also. Cheap gun, a wad of money which resembles a cash register since its all small denominations for making change, twelve plastic wrapped dollops of cocaine. Money in my pocket. The rest in the shitter. I must have flushed it eight times by now.
Candy Man’s eyes creak open and my gun goes to his forehead.
“Where does Thuggie hang out?”
“What?”
“Thuggie. Where is he?”
“Ahh, man. I ain’t no snitch—
”
I slug him with the gun. The bridge of his nose opens up and spills crimson all over the tiles. I braced the bathroom door before this all began, but I need an answer quick.
“Answer me before I put you face down in the toilet and we start over.”
“You think you gonna—”
Slug him again. Eyebrow splits like an over-roasted pig. He screams. I lay the gun across his throat as leverage. Press down. He wiggles and writhes, makes wet choking sounds.
“I’m waiting.”
He starts to mouth something frantically. I let up on the gun. He draws a ragged breath and shouts an address. I know the place. I press down again.
“I want to make sure you’re telling me the truth.”
Candy Man’s eyes pop out. He must have a thing against helplessly being choked to death. He tries to nod his head like a wild animal. He wouldn’t be more spastic if I were electrocuting him.
“All right, I’ll buy it.” I let up. He gasps for air, starts to vomit. I let him roll over and he wretches across the tile. “If I get there and it’s bullshit or I’ve been set up, I’ll live. I want you to understand that. I’ll live and find you. Do we have an understanding?”
He nods as he spits, dry heaves. “I ain’t no snitch,” he coughs out. Translation: he has more to fear from that reputation and what will happen than he has to fear from me. Fine, if he thinks that. Not true, but let him think that. It’ll buy me a surprise entry into the building.
I stand. He struggles to his feet. I drill him in the back of the head and he collapses into his vomit. It’s where he needs to be.
29
My phone rings as I’m washing my hands in the bathroom sink.
Knuckles are chewed up, but it comes with the gig. I look down at Candy and his shattered glasses are sitting crooked on his flat nose. At first I think it might be his cell phone since the damn thing wouldn’t shut up, but it’s mine. I step out of the shitter and answer it. Petticoat.