By the Balls

by Jim Pascoe

  Something else about Trout Mathers spelled certain trouble tonight: Last Tuesday he’d held a performance at a branch of the Second National Bank. Something happened and the whole thing went south. Typically, Mathers slipped through the cops’ fingers; this time, not as typically, he did so empty-handed.

  “Yo, buddy!” Lawton made an attempt to signal the bartender by snapping his fingers. The guy behind the bar, Barton Bourke, rarely went out of his way to rush serving me. Now he gave these guys the same treatment.

  From all I’d heard and from what I was seeing, I knew Lawton to be the kind of gangster not used to waiting. He rubbed his nose back and forth with his hand like he was trying to paint his fingers with snot. When Bourke finally came over to him, Lawton roared about the service, threatening to take their drinking somewhere else.

  Mathers coaxed Bourke into not turning his back on them. He spoke quickly but calmly. I couldn’t make out most of it, but the look on the bartender’s face slowly turned less sour. He even cracked a grin.

  Mathers stepped back, smiled, adjusted the tie he wore with his crisp collar, and flicked fingers from Lawton to Bourke. Lawton shoved his fist into his pocket, pulled out a wad of bills, and slammed it on the bar counter.

  Something fell from Lawton’s pocket. I tried not to stare, so I began casually glancing around the place. When I threw my eyes back his way, I saw him pick up what looked like a dry, scaly chicken foot. He hastily repocketed it.

  A voice from my immediate right distracted me. I leaned my head over to look in that direction, through the cigarette smoke turned gold by the yellow overhead lights. The voice came from a slippery college kid with too much gunk in his hair.

  “Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?” he said, hovering over a girl with her back to me who was smoking a long thin cigarette. He held a drink in one hand; his other hand swam around in the pocket of his baggy trousers. A smile hung on his face, waiting for her to respond or even notice. She didn’t do either.

  “You know, I really think I know you from somewhere. Did you go to law school? Maybe that’s where I recognize you from.”

  She gave him a quick but polite no, which is more than a chump like this guy deserved. If he had taken the hint and walked away, I wouldn’t have thought twice about him or the girl and would have returned my attention to the gangsters at the bar.

  But he didn’t leave. He sat down next to her and leaned forward to look up at her downturned eyes.

  “Wait a second. I’ve got it. You’re from New York,” he continued with a mock affluent wave of his hand. “You’ve totally got this East Coast thing going on.”

  I could only guess at her expression. She crossed her legs and flicked the ashes of her cigarette on the floor. A long, tight black dress with frills at the bottom exposed only her thin, milk-white ankles.

  She breathed out, “Are you from New York?”

  I smiled at her line. I’m not the kind to chase broads; that was Trout Mathers’s bag. You could count on Mathers for a lot of things: he got the babes, he gave the bruises, he got the banks, he gave the slip to the cops. A regular old Mr. Smooth.

  My eyes ran up the line of this girl’s leg, and I thought again: I’m not the kind who chases broads. I’m the kind who chases crooks.

  “Yes . . . well, New Jersey, actually,” the boy stammered. “But I used to like to go into the city when I could. The club scene is really hot now . . . I, ah, really love to dance. You know, just let it all go. The energy, the lights, it all flows through you . . . Hey, can I buy you a drink?”

  This was like watching a car accident. I shoveled a handful of nuts into my mouth.

  Her hand reached down to rub a spot where the strap of her shoe wrapped around her ankle. She said, “I don’t drink.”

  Lawton’s laughter ripped through the place again. I looked to see if he was watching the same scene as me. He wasn’t even facing this direction. Seems like Trout Mathers was entertaining him and Barton with some story or another. Barton would listen to anything as long as it meant he didn’t have to move.

  I licked my lips after taking another gulp of bourbon. I brought my eyes back to the girl.

  “You don’t drink?” He scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, I don’t drink much either.” He set his drink down on her table.

  Another round of laughter rumbled through the joint. This time it came from me.

  The girl turned and looked straight at me.

  I tilted my head back as I tossed the last of my Old Grand-Dad down my throat. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. Short hair, black as wet ink, framed her porcelain face. Her straight bangs hung above her eyes like the blade of a razor. She wore her hair short in the back with the sides cut at an angle to match her cheekbones.

  “You know,” the kid kept going; she kept staring at me, “if you’re not busy, we should take lunch together sometime.”

  Her heavily penciled eyes, fixed below sculpted eyebrows, looked bored and mischievous. A line of smoke rose from the cigarette in her upturned hand.

  “Or maybe we could get some dinner . . . and a movie.”

  On her face, thin lips painted the deepest red formed a smile so sharp it could slice a weak man in two.

  I’m not a weak man.

  “How about I call you . . . ?” his voice trailed off.

  She got up and walked over to my leather booth. It was hard to turn away from her, even for a moment, but I wanted to check on the two crooks; they were still busy with the bartender. I looked back, and before I could say anything, she sat next to me and asked, “What are you drinking?”

  I spun the empty glass in front of me between my fingers. “Right now, I’m not drinking anything.”

  “Then we should get you a refill.”

  “Sure.”

  “Name your poison.”

  “Old Grand-Dad, three fingers.”

  She held my stare for a couple seconds, then flashed me some teeth through a sly smile. She waved over the old waitress and ordered: “Six fingers of Old Grand-Dad, three in one glass and three in another.”

  Before the waitress could acknowledge the order, a gaggle of drunk young folks sitting in the booth next to mine shouted for her attention.

  “Hold on now, I’ll be right with you,” the barmaid called over to the rowdy group. The Pandora’s weekend patrons, especially the kids with no sense of style or manners, always barked orders at her.

  She turned back to the girl sitting next to me. “I’m sorry, dear, what was that you were saying about a bunch of fingers? Can I get you something to drink?”

  The girl played it simple for her: “Two glasses of Old Grand-Dad, straight up.” The waitress nodded and ambled off.

  “I’d offer up a cheer for friends,” she said, “but we must not be friends yet if I don’t know your name.”

  “I’m Ben Drake—”

  “Beth Hrubi. There’s a silent h before the r . . . in case you want to write that down.”

  “I won’t need to.”

  When we had full drinks in front of us, we clinked glasses and took our sips. Playing with her hair, she whispered, “Does this mean we’re friends now, Benjamin?”

  “You always this impatient, Elizabeth?”

  “Don’t call me that.” Her acid attitude did nothing to stop the attraction that initially caught my eye.

  “Call me Beth or Betty or even Liz. Only my mother calls me Elizabeth. You’re not my mother, are you?” She sipped her bourbon without taking her eyes off me.

  “Nope. I’m not.”

  “Good.”

  She reached out and smoothed her hand across the width of my broad shoulders. “Where’re all your friends, Benjamin? A strong, good-looking man all alone on a Friday evening doesn’t seem right.”

  “I’m not that good-looking, sister.”

  I pulled out a tin of smokes from my breast pocket. With the stroke of a wooden match, she and I got down to smoking.

  “Normally, I’m a sit-at-the-bar kind of g
uy. But you see that oaf behind the counter?” I nodded my head in that direction. “That’s my least favorite bartender, Barton Bourke. I can endure his enthusiasm for old pulp crime fiction and his constant inane yammering only when in the company of my regular drinking pals. Seeing as these pals of mine are all somewhere else tonight, I figured I’d relax in the secluded comfort of a booth. Not that I’m complaining about present company.”

  “And I was just about to get worried.” She cocked her head in a way that made her teardrop earrings shake.

  “I don’t believe that for one moment.”

  We both laughed.

  “So, Benjamin, what do you do for a living?”

  Part of being a detective is knowing when to tell the truth about your job and when to conveniently come up with a new occupation. I thought I’d give this girl a chance with the straight skinny.

  “I’m a detective.”

  “Really?” She shot me an impish grin. “Like a crook chaser?”

  “Yeah, I’ve chased down a few crooks.”

  “What a coincidence. I just happen to be a crook.”

  My senses tingled like a kid caught looking at a girlie magazine.

  “Very interesting,” I said, sipping some more sauce. “Would I know your work?”

  She laughed playfully. “I have the feeling that if you did, I’d be behind bars.”

  “True. In fact, that’s something you can count on.” More bourbon went past my lips. Booze seemed to go down better with Beth around. “But indulge me. What’s your specialty?”

  “I guess you could say . . . I cause trouble.”

  “Trouble, eh? What sort of trouble?”

  “Usually the sort that someone else has to clean up.”

  “Someone like me?”

  This was a cool game of cat-and-mouse we were playing. I just couldn’t figure out which one of us was the mouse.

  She purred, “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have cleaning up after me.”

  Before I could toss out my next verbal volley, I glanced up to find two guys standing in front of our booth: Trout Mathers and Blackie Lawton.

  Lawton was the first to speak: “Yo, Beth. It’s time to go. I don’t want to be late.”

  Mathers held out his hand to silence his partner, then pointed my way. “Who is this guy?”

  Beth spoke up for me: “This is Benjamin. He’s a friend of mine.”

  Mathers gave me the tough-guy look. I gave it back to him. He said, “Yeah? Well, I don’t trust a guy in a suit and tie. And guys in hats are even more cause for concern.”

  He fidgeted with his cat’s-eye cuff links while he put this to me: “What’s your deal?”

  Again, Beth chirped up: “He’s a salesman.”

  “Salesman?” Mathers needed convincing.

  She tried to give it to him. “Yes. He sells vacuum cleaners, you know, door-to-door.”

  Now Lawton joined in. “You sell vacuum cleaners?”

  I snapped back: “Yeah. You got a mess that needs cleaned up?”

  The crooks laughed. All three of them.

  Now, I’d be a fool to trust Beth Hrubi, and I was no fool. She was right in thinking I didn’t want these joes knowing I was a detective, and I appreciated her covering for me. I decided to follow her lead a little while longer.

  Lawton knocked his knuckles on our table. “Hello, people. Let’s get going. I don’t want to be late.”

  I had just set my drink down when Beth threw her spaghetti arms around me. She planted a wet one right on my cheek. Then I felt her hot breath tickle my earlobe.

  She whispered, “Do you feel like getting into trouble tonight?”

  Adrenaline surged through my system like high octane.

  I said, “I’m always up for a little trouble. What’s on the menu?”

  She pulled away from me so she could look me in the eyes. Still whispering, she told me: “We’re going to the hottest ticket in town. Where fortunes are made and lost. We’re going to the Cockfight Club.”

  * * *

  When we walked out of the Pandora, Beth took me by the hand and told me that Mathers insisted on driving us to the fights. The last thing I wanted to do was get myself stranded without means of getting out. But I had already committed to this masquerade, enough that it was best to go with the flow.

  In Mathers’s big, black touring sedan, we began heading south. Beth and I took the backseat. She curled up real nice next to me.

  Nobody talked much on this ride, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to start any conversation.

  Some kind of dirty contemporary blues scratched out of the radio. Beth put her lips to my ears and sang right through me:

  You can dream of drugs or dream of the deal

  Don’t mean a thing, don’t mean a thing

  You can put all your money on a guaranteed steal

  Don’t mean a thing, don’t mean a thing

  You can believe in love or believe in lies

  Don’t mean a thing, don’t mean a thing

  ’Cause at the end of the day, we’re all gonna die

  Don’t mean a thing, don’t mean a thing

  It’s a fool’s game, baby

  Don’t you make a sound

  There’s blood on the dirt

  And dirt in the ground

  Mathers’s eyes haunted me from the rearview mirror. Once we had arrived at our destination—a collection of ramshackle huts on either side of an isolated road—we descended into the crowded basement of one of the abandoned buildings, and the four of us went our separate ways. Mathers and Lawton weren’t the kind to keep me company, so their leaving me behind didn’t seem out of place. But the way Beth left my side the moment we walked into this smoke-filled joint left me wondering. I tried not to wonder all that much; instead, my eyes took their turn haunting Mathers.

  He strolled across the crowded room and took a moment to adjust the knot of his tie. Mathers made this gesture with the subtle flourish of a man in uncomfortable surroundings. This basement brouhaha obviously wasn’t his territory, so why did he bring us here?

  I kept my eyes on him and spent a good amount of time absorbing the atmosphere of the place. The stagnant air was hot and moist, and sweat started to seep slowly out from my pores. I expected the place to smell like a farm, but to my surprise it smelled more like a muddy high school football field.

  On the other hand, the noise that filled the place did remind me of a farm. However, unlike the storybook sound of early country mornings, the endless cock-a-doodle-do’s felt like nothing more than the screaming of roosters.

  This was my first time at a cockfight.

  A short man in a silver tie came up to Mathers. They exchanged a few friendly words that I couldn’t hear. Mathers belched out a phony laugh, then tugged at the chain on his hip and pulled out a pocket watch. He quickly glanced at its face, while the short guy tried to light a cigarette with an empty lighter. Mathers was quick to hand him a bright purple pack of matches. He motioned for the guy to get lost, and the guy did.

  The short man headed to the left of the entrance, where round tables lined a long wall. A small sampling of guys sat there with women in skimpy outfits—women with too much hairspray and sloppy lipstick, women with too many bracelets, women with a price tag.

  Lawton had wasted no time in joining this group, though he didn’t pay any attention to the short silver tie who sat elsewhere. Because of Lawton’s reputation, I had a feeling I knew what the people dealt at these tables, and it wasn’t cards. I could spot all kinds of dope exchanging hands—pot, pills, pharmaceuticals, you name it. In fact, he had already bent over to sample some speed.

  To the right of all that sniffing, pinching, popping, and pushing, a large crowd gathered around what looked like, at this distance, an enclosed horseshoe pit; obviously, tonight’s action happened here. A series of floodlamps hung from the beams of the ceiling, sending light as bright as the noon sun streaming into the pit.

  I looked back at Mathers. A detect
ive has to notice the little things that a person does, especially the kind of things they don’t even realize they’re doing—like the fact that a girl will play with her hair if she’s interested in a guy she’s talking to. Well, Mathers looked at that watch of his for the third time in about two minutes. And I’d bet that if somebody went up to him right then and asked him for the time, he’d have no idea what to say.

  Naturally, I couldn’t help checking my own watch. It was almost eleven thirty, still early for me. I hadn’t forgotten about Miss Hrubi. Unlike Mathers, she blended into the crowd real nice.

  The men who made up the audience could just as easily have made up a who’s who list of crime. I didn’t recognize all the faces, but I didn’t need to. What really gave them away were the little details: the ostrich-skin boots, the gold-nugget pinky rings, the occasional flash of a holstered 9mm.

  Mathers checked his watch yet again, shoved it back into a pocket, and crossed his arms. Despite being in the thick of the throng, he paid no attention to the action in the ring. He simply slinked ringside with the rest of the criminals, right where he belonged. Despite that, he stood out like a knife in a drawer full of forks.

  Watching Mathers just stand there was like watching a ticking bomb. He could go off at any time, and if I just stared at him, I’d go mad. So I continued my surveillance of the room: A collection of cages, covered with blankets and stacked up to the ceiling, stood against the back wall behind the goon-encircled pit.

  To my immediate right sat a small table set up with food and drinks. A few homely looking women served up some kind of sandwiches made with meat fresh from a Crock-Pot. I didn’t know what looked worse, the processed supermarket buns or the mystery mash in the slow cooker, so I passed on the grub and grabbed myself some liquid refreshment.

  With a paper cup of whiskey in hand, I glanced over at the tables; Lawton seemed content as could be, reclining in a chair with his head tilted back. Suddenly he sat up, grabbed the arm of a woman next to him, and checked her watch. He smiled and leaned back in his chair.

  I wanted to talk with Beth and see what I could read between her coy lines. Maybe then I could figure this caper out before things flew out of control. I twisted my head around to find her; she had found someone else.