“But let’s not be uncivil.” Giorgio kept his hand extended. “No reason we can’t at least be gentlemen. Even Roosevelt and Stalin did a little hand shaking.”
I removed five fingers from my jaw and grudgingly accepted it.
“Where’d your traveling buddy fly off to?”
“He didn’t say.”
I turned my focus to a couple of magazines tucked into the back pocket of the seat in front of me, but the slap had knocked my sight into a daze, and it took me several seconds to realize I was inadvertently ogling Playboy.
“This interview isn’t starting out so good.”
“Giorgio, you tell your father I had absolutely nothing to do with this.” I looked to Miss June Play-bunny as I spoke. “I was just helping an old college buddy. Had I known he was going to kill your sister, I’d….”
Dino slapped me.
“Ow,” I said.
“What did you call him?”
“I thought his name was Giorgio.”
He slapped me again.
“Ow.”
“You address my cousin, you call him Sir. Who do you think you are – you little cockroach?”
I waited a few seconds in silence for whatever it was that Giorgio or Dino or Tatanka on my right wanted to say, and since all eyes were apparently on me (and mine were on Miss June), I slowly opened my mouth. When nobody slapped my face for opening it, I continued: “I didn’t know Gracie all that well, Sir. But she was a lovely girl.”
“What did you say, Cockroach?” Dino skewered his face into ugly contortions.
“Did I ask for this hole-licker to write her eulogy, Dino?” Giorgio looked to the short stocky man.
“Hell, is that what this creep here just attempted, to write your dear sisters eulogy?”
“I think he did, Dino.”
Dino gave me the broadside of his hand again, harder than before, which sent me toppling over into Tatanka’s lap. The massive hulk of a man spoke with a deep Italian accent as he pushed me back. “What the hell?” Lips curled with an extra layer of disgust. “You one of those guys who likes to bob for apples or something?”
“I don’t know, Franco. He looks like a popsicle licker to me. You think that’s what he and Parker were up to on last night’s romantic getaway?”
“Okay guys. I get it.”
“No,” Giorgio said. “I don’t think you do. That pal of yours, he’s in some real thick gravy, if you get my drift.”
“I believe you, Sir.”
“You just had a conversation with a couple of detectives down at police headquarters.”
Dino tapped my jaw. “Hey, are you paying attention?”
“What did you tell them,” Giorgio.
“Everything that I know, Sir, which is absolutely nothing.”
“Politicians lie less than you,” Dino.
“I know driving him to the airport made me illicit in a crime, but honest Giorgio, I mean Sir, had I known…”
“I’ll ask you again, where did he go?”
I said: “JFK was the last flight of the night.”
“Parisi’s got people in New York.”
“Shut up,” Giorgio told his cousin.
I sat there silently while Giorgio and Dino and that hulking bear of a man, Franco, thought it over, though I doubt Franco had much going through his head at all, other than an echoing European accent. And then my cell phone rang.
Ears perked, three sets of them, and Dino said: “Hand it over.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your phone, hand it over, now.”
I dug through my pocket. Franco snatched the phone from my fingers before I even had a good handle on it and delivered it to Dino.
“Who the frick is this,” Dino studied the caller ID with its 843 area-code. He really did have a potty mouth, that Dino. “It says Preacher, Giorgio. Jack Preacher.”
“You and that detective working a case together?”
“Jack’s long retired,” I said.
“You think he’s fudging with us?”
“I think he may be fudging with us, Giorgio.”
“Call him back,” He handed me the phone.
I did as he asked.
“Put it on speaker,” Dino.
I followed his instructions.
Penny picked up on the second ring.
“You need to watch your back,” the voice on the other end of the phone said.
I said (trying to brush aside any hint of nervousness): “Is that your new JACK PREACHER, PRIVATE EYE business card slogan, or do you need my help solving cases and fighting crime lords in the slummy underbelly of that retirement community your living in?”
“Dick-head, is that any way to treat your great-uncle?”
“I'm not sure. Can you rephrase the question?”
“We practically raised you, my numb-nut brothers and me.”
“I'm no expert on the feeling in your nuts, thank the Maker, but otherwise I seem to recall something along those lines. Those were some good times.”
Dino shook his head with displeasure. “Get to it,” he said.
“Are you making fun of my numb-nut brothers?”
“I'm being sentimental.”
“Uh-huh, I am too. Mancini and I go back a long time, – a long, long time.”
“Let me guess, Mancini's an archeologist.”
Giorgio frowned, and on cue Dino raised his hand, only he didn’t follow through with it. I tried my best to remain calm and ignore them.
“Is that supposed to be another joke? Are you calling me a mummy?”
“I was thinking of fossil, but now that you mention it.”
“It's a wonder that you haven't been shot yet.”
“You'd know. As a century old private investigator, how many times have you been shot now, Uncle Jack?”
“I've lost count, but I think it’s been seven times in the ass alone.”
“When you sit on the toilet, does it even still work?”
“Mancini's boys accounted for at least two of those. He's bad news, and I don't like the fact that your name came up in a crime report for a murder related to his only begotten daughter. Is anybody following you?”
I twirled nervous eyes between each player. They were bending their necks forward like vultures. “They wouldn't be doing a very good job of it if I spotted them.”
“This is true. Do you need me as backup?”
“You're ninety years old, Uncle Jack. What are you going to do, shadow me in that golf cart you drive around on the green and beat them over the head with your nine iron?”
“I'm seventy-eight years-young, dick-head. That practically makes me a spring chicken out here in retirement land. I may have Parkinson's, but I can still aim a six-shooter if my life depends on it. I keep hoping those hippie baby boomers who've been taking over the neighborhood break into my stamp collection so that I can keep fresh on the practice.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And I was working the streets as a Private Eye when Mancini swept up a good portion of the south-eastern crime pie after Dragna's downfall. This may not be his glory days anymore, but Mancini's outlived his competitors and he's one bad pastry.”
“So are you.”
“You bet your un-shot ass, I am.”
“I may have met his son.”
Dino made another ugly face, hand raised in striking pose.
Jack said: “Georgie? Years of pampering has made that frat boy emotionally disfigured and malnourished, incapable of running his father's business, which means he's got a lot to prove. I don't like the creeps with daddy complexes. Do me a favor, if you bump into Georgie Mancini or Papa Mancini or any of his Italian boys, don't mention my name.”
“That bad, huh?”
“We go back a long ways.”
“Maybe you can settle your differences over a game of bridge or bingo at the clubhouse.”
“How about you come out here and I kick your ass at bridge or bingo?”
“I'll have my pe
ople call your people.”
“Uh-huh, that's what I thought.”
“Thanks, Uncle Jack. You've always had my back.”
“You need anything, call.”
“Thanks, you old putz.”
“Shmuck.”
I waited until his line went cold with a click. Only it didn’t remain silent for long. It rang again. MOM, it said, with an 843 area code. I showed the caller ID to Dino.
“Do I need to answer this one too?”
“It says MOM.” Dino told his cousin. “I think this guy’s a regular Boy Scout, Giorgio.”
“If there’s anything I respect, its mothers. Let it go to message.” He turned now to his driver. “Slow down.”
The driver pulled up to the nearest curb available.
“If I find out you’ve been holding back information, now or until the second coming…” I waited for Giorgio to finish his thought. But apparently that was it, and I took the overall threat seriously, despite being abstract. “I believe this is the pub you hang out.” He nudged his fat head towards The Guide Dog, which was just across the street from the curb where we’d settled. “See, that’s what we do here in the Mancini family. We run a curb-side service. Just consider yourself lucky it’s currently not the pig farm. I’m sick at the very sight of you. Now get the hell out of my car.”
Franco wedged out, looking awkward with his duster jacket of bulking bison fur, and cracked his back when he stood. I slid past him just as quickly as I could.
“See you around, cockroach,” said Dino. “Don’t forget the mutt.”
Franco was already on top of it. The hound flopped his curtain-draped ears back and forth, sort of like a drunken helicopter, in protest as Franco wrestled to lift him from the trunk. My answer to a lifelong question, if dogs landed on their feet like cats, was presently answered as he dropped to the sidewalk, landing on his backside with a furious yelp. Franco then offered me his leash. I accepted it. He lifted the back of his hand too, as though to strike me. But all this produced was a smirk.
The Lamborghini sped away, leaving residues of skid tracks as it went. I looked down to the hound and rubbed my jaw. He looked up at me. And then I said: “Next time, how about you ride in the front and I’ll take the trunk?”
c
“HEY YOU, SSSPPPPP,” THE KID SAID.
I say kid, though he was likely seventeen or eighteen years of age, well below drinking age, and dressed with the poor tastes of a teenager too. There was a pimply-faced fat kid with greasy hair and a tall skinny kid forcibly wearing his own diverse collection of zits, and a purple-haired girl who probably hid her insecurities with too many facial piercings to number and ears further studded with them, though I counted only one belly-button ring, so who knows, maybe we’d make a conservative of her yet.
I pointed at myself from the entrance to Michael’s pub and said: “Who me?”
“Yeah, you mind doing a favor?”
“Depends on who’s doing the asking.”
“I left my driver’s license at home. And that fag in there won’t let me or my friends buy beer.”
“I hate it when that happens.”
“Yeah, me too,” his smile was as skin-deep as his entire personality.
“Are you twenty-one?”
“Don’t I look like I’m twenty-one?”
“No, you don’t. What’s your name?”
“Robbie.”
“You have a last name, Robbie?”
“Larson, why does that matter?”
The girl said: “What kind of dog is that?”
“You know, I’m not really sure.”
She nodded enthusiastically: “Dope!”
And then to Robbie Larson I said: “How about you go home, Robbie Larson, retrieve your license, and come back?”
“I live all the way across town.”
I opened the door, where the sights and sounds and intoxicating smells of The Guide Dog delivered its usual warm welcome. “Rumor has it they sell beer across town too.”
“I’ll take that as a no then, Fork-tard,” Robbie said, without actually pronouncing fork.
I poked my head out. “Just curious, you did see the dog and me practically get thrown out of a Lamborghini by a group of gangsters, did you not?”
“Dope,” the girl said.
Robbie Larson looked confused. People probably got that a lot from him, anger and confusion. The door was almost closed behind me, and I was thoroughly engulfed in the sounds and smells of Michael’s pub, but I could still hear him call after: “SO YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BUY US A BEER?”
c
PHIL HUBBLE WAS SEATED WITH HIS BACK leaning up against the bar, having never probably left since I’d last seen him earlier that morning, as I tied the hound’s leash to the foot rail and then situated myself on a nearby stool.
“You’re still here?”
“Best view in town.”
He nudged his chin towards Zoe and Melinda, who were currently leading a militia of ladies in a series of otherwise unimaginable stretching exercises. It didn’t help that they’d occasionally wave at him with all the flirtatious charms of a Dixie bell.
“Samuel Adams Boston Lager,” I told the bartender. “I didn’t miss Happy Hour, did I?”
“All of the sudden you’re concerned about Happy Hour?” Michael followed my instructions accordingly, pouring a pint-sized glass on tap. He was dressed in his usual uniform; flannel shirt with tight blue jeans, pointy-toed boots, cheeks one or two days unshaven, and a head of jet-black hair so thick it could break the teeth off a comb. Rather ironic, I thought, how he’d seeming recovered from a hangover and now I had one. “When was the last that you actually paid for beer?”
I thought about it. “My memory seems to have escaped me at the moment.”
“Happy Hour or no Happy Hour, it costs me all the same whenever you show up to dirty the chrome.” He set Sam Adams on the empty bar space in front of me.
“But the important thing is you enjoy my company.”
“Mm-hmm,” Michael frowned.
“Does it ever bother you that you’re my best friend and my bartender?” I spoke to Michael now, further nursing my Sam Adams Boston Lager.
“All the time,” he stacked several pint-sized beer mugs on a shelf behind that same bar that I was seated at. “It’s taken me years to realize you’re never going to pay that beer tab. I may be smiling, but deep down inside I’m mourning.”
“My credit it good,” I said, accompanying my claim with another swig of Sam Adams.
“Good thing I’m not a collecting agency, because I’ve been putting it on your tab since you were twenty-one.”
“Alright,” I pulled out my wallet. “Sock it to me. I’ll pay up. What’s the damage?”
Michael held out the palm of his hand. He said, “Care to give me the keys to Preacher House?”
“That bad, huh?”
“Let’s just say I have you down as a yearly business expense whenever it’s time to fill out my tax report.”
“I’m confused. Can you explain that to me again using the analogy of a lemonade stand?”
And then quite suddenly, totally out of left field, Phil said: “You must be getting audited, because is that a Bibeau triplet?”
I turned around to gaze out the window, with a view that emptied out onto Bay Street. Sure enough, Elise and Josephine’s other third, presumably so, was on the furthest sidewalk holding hands with someone at least ten years her superior. They entered a Greek restaurant by the name of NOSTIMMOS. It shared wall space with Zoe and Melinda’s studio.
Michael said: “It’s Desarae. And she’s with another man.”
“No, she’s not.” I spoke without any of the confidence that might accommodate a world champion poker player. “It must be any one of her triplet sisters. Elise…Josephine….” I started counting them off on my fingers, but when I reached the third and final option, I started at one and two again. “Elise….Josephine….”
“I’d know
my wife’s own shadow apart from her other Bibeau-counterparts, and that’s certainly not Elise or Josephine’s shadow.”
Michael rounded the bar counter, slapping a bartender’s towel down as he did so. Then Phil stood up from his barstool. Then I stood up from my barstool, and with the hound in tow, said: “You can tell them apart?”
c
A BUICK SWERVED AND SLAMMED on its breaks, probably to avoid the hound. Its bumper tapped my leg, rather than engaging in animal abuse, with an agitated honk from its driver to follow. There may have been a finger too. I waved without looking at the person inside, and in the corner of my eye I thought I might have caught sight of the homeless man who referred to himself as Driftwood, South Carolina, 29907 digging through a trash can.
“This isn’t a good idea,” I called after Michael. “Remember the Naked Atheist fiasco.”
He didn’t listen.
Phil said, “Hey Boss, I’ll watch the bar!”
He didn’t listen to that either.
“Remember the Alamo then.”
I was sensing a theme here, because he ignored that warning too as he stepped onto the curb and swore with all the innocence of a cheated lover: “I’m just taking a closer peek.”
c
MICHAEL’S PROMISE WAS QUICKLY BORKEN, though I doubt it was ever intended to be kept, as he swept in on the very table that had indiscriminately offered a seat to his wife.
“Desarae, you love this restaurant.”
The guy whom she entered with was suspiciously absent. I scanned the restaurant for him without a single Sasquatch sighting. Perhaps not so surprising, my ex-girlfriend was seated at Desarae’s same table with the new Mr. Somebody in her life. He was tall and skinny, not nearly so handsome as I, with a thick mustache under his nose, and he dressed cool enough, I suppose. I still wasn’t impressed. But then again, who could compete, especially now that the fashion police were dressing me?
“Michael,” Desarae surfaced from behind her menu with all the beauty that incorporated any Bibeau-triplet sighting, faithful or unfaithful, though startled, and said: “What are you…I thought you were…...You weren’t supposed to…”
“I took off work last night, after our little escapade, and switched shifts with Richie. So where’s the fourth wheel?”
Desarae gasped.
Some We Run From (Preacher Book 2) Page 4