by Dana Donovan
“So, Pete,” he said, “I see you’re still tappin` them kegs, eh?”
Pete wadded up the dishrag and tossed it into the sink. “Yeah, Rodriquez, and I see you’re still flat-footin` it in the rain. A little early for a beer, ain’t it?”
He shoveled up a fistful of peanuts and popped them in his mouth. “No beer,” he said, still chewing, “we’re working—”
I reached up and touched him on the arm to stop him. “We’ll have a couple of Cokes, Pete,” I said, “thanks.”
Carlos finished chewing and swallowed hard. “Oh, hey Pete, this here is Tony’s kid, Tony Jr. I don’t think you two met.”
Almost immediately, Pete gave me that same look that Jack Cruz gave me earlier, the one where I thought he recognized me, but I knew he could not have. He smiled a curious grin, wiped his hand on his apron and offered to shake. “Tony’s kid?” His smile grew much wider now. “Sure, I see it. I didn’t know Tony had a kid. How are ya?”
We shook. “I’m good. You?”
“All right, I guess. How’s your dad? He still down in Florida?”
“Yes, he is. He’s doing well. I’ll tell him you were asking.”
“So, you’re a cop, too?”
“He’s a detective, grade one,” said Carlos, “just like his old man.”
“Is that right?” Pete grabbed a couple of tall glasses off a rubber mat by the sink and plunged them into the ice pit. “Well, I guess the apple don’t fall far from the tree, huh?”
“Guess not,” I said, guarding a veiled smile. “Folks have always said I was my father’s son.”
“Yeah, you sure look it.” He gave me a wink that once more made me think he was on to me somehow. “You know, I’ve known your old man since he was about your age.” He lifted one of the glasses to me and pointed. “You are his spitting image.”
I smiled again, this time not so veiled. “I get that a lot,” I told him, and I could not resist adding, “in many ways, he and I are like one and the same.”
He filled the glasses from a jet spray nozzle and walked them to us. By then, Carlos had scoffed down several fistfuls of salted peanuts and was eyeing the drinks like a desert oasis. He snatched the first Coke before it had a chance to leave a water ring on the napkin, and began guzzling it down. I watched the ice cubes dam against his nose, as he emptied the glass, tipping it back until every drop had drained. He set the glass back on the bar and then trained his sights on mine. I gave him the nod, and just as quickly, my Coke was gone.
I said to Pete, “I suppose you know why we are here.”
He grabbed the glasses and topped them off with the jet spray. “You’re here about the guy that got whacked last night.”
“That’s right. We were hoping you could tell us something we don’t already know.”
He walked the drinks back and set them down in front of us. This time Carlos merely positioned his at the ready, pending his decision regarding the rest of the peanuts, I supposed. “Cops were here already,” said Pete. “I gave them a full statement.”
“I know, but we’ve been out making the rounds, talking to a couple of people. We have just a few new questions that maybe no one thought of asking. I hope you don’t mind.”
He looked back over his shoulder at the old man sipping suds. We had time. “Sure, what do you want to know?”
“The man killed last night; his name was René Landau. Did you know him?”
He shook his head. “Not before he walked into this place. I did talk to him a bit, though.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, it wasn’t real busy then. He came in around ten. Sat right there where you are. I asked if he was new in town, and he told me he had just gotten out of the pen.”
“He volunteered that?”
“Yeah, you’d be surprised what people tell their bartenders, especially when they’re in the mood to talk, and this guy was in the mood.”
“Did he seem troubled to you?”
“Troubled? Detective, a guy walks into a bar and starts slamming down drinks, I gotta believe he’s got something on his mind. Sometimes they want to keep it to themselves; sometimes they don’t. If they got troubles, though, you can bet I don’t want to hear them. I’ll talk if it keeps them drinking, but I keep the subject light, you know, sports, weather, cars, movies—anything that ain’t what they’re trying to forget.
“I see.” I turned to Carlos and gave him the look. He understood that meant it was his turn to fish.
“Pete,” said Carlos, “did you say René Landau came here alone?”
“I didn’t, but yeah, he came alone.”
“Did he talk to anyone else while he was here, meet with anyone?”
Pete laughed. “You know it’s funny you should ask. For a guy fresh outta prison, he sure seemed popular.”
“How so?”
“Well, about an hour after he got here, business began picking up some. We often get a wave like that after the movie theater lets out. I hadn’t noticed at first, but at some point,” Pete directed our attention to the corner of the bar by the jukebox, “your man picked up his drink and moved to that table over there. Then these two guys followed him to the table, although I don’t think they were invited.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it looked like he was trying to get away from them.”
“What did they look like?”
“Hispanic, I think. Big, like bouncers. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but their voices were loud. Then one of them grabbed your boy by the collar and dragged him outside. The other followed.”
“There you have it,” said Carlos. “They killed him.”
Pete shook his head. “No, they didn’t kill him. He came back. He looked roughed up some, and a lot pissed, but he wasn’t dead.”
“Did you think of calling the cops?” I asked.
“Didn’t need to. He returned alone. I figured the three amigos went adios.”
“Did they come back later?”
“Not that I know, but about an hour after that, another man came in looking for him.”
“Another Hispanic?”
“No, this guy was White, late-middle-aged, tall, military looking crew-cut; he seemed to know right where to look for your boy. He came in, scanned the room and made a beeline straight for his table. Right away they start in arguing, and I thought to myself, oh boy, not again. Then old crew cut slams his fist on the table, stands up and storms out of the bar. I never saw him again.”
“Wow,” said Carlos. “Sounds like Landau couldn’t catch a break from the minute he walked out of prison.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Pete, smiling and nodding, “until your boy got lucky and hooked up with some hottie with an ass like a snare drum.”
“Wide?”
“Tight.”
Carlos and I both turned to look at the table, as though her residue image might still be lingering. “Did you recognize her?” I asked.
Pete shook his head. “I wish; a beauty like that.”
Carlos pulled out his phone, thumbed up the photo ID he had of Stephanie Stiles and showed it to Pete. “Is that her?”
“Hardly,” he scoffed. “I said hot, as in beautiful. I mean it. This babe was half his age.”
“A hooker?”
He gave that more serious consideration. “Maybe, but…I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“She gave him her phone number.”
“You sure?”
That brought on another shrug. “Reasonably. I mean I was standing right here when your boy came to me asking for a pen and a napkin to write on. His exact words were, ‘You got a pen and something I can write a phone number on’. I remember clear as day, because I watched him return to the girl with the pen and write the number down.”
I looked to Carlos. “What do you make of that?”
He looked at Pete. “You say the movie house just got out about an hour before?”
“Yes.”
“I guess we shouldn’t have written that clue off so quickly,” I said.
“Yeah, but it could be just an innocent association, the last contact a doomed man had with a pretty girl.”
“Or the last contact a doomed man had with the pretty girlfriend of a jealous man.”
Carlos’ eyes lit up. “Right.” His head began bobbing like a dashboard Chihuahua. “I see what you mean. It looks like our list of suspects is growing.”
“It always is, Carlos. The sad thing is that the killer is probably still not anyone on the list.”
“But probably right out your back door,” Pete added.
I looked at him curiously. “How’s that?”
He jacked his thumb up over his shoulder. “It happens now and then. The restrooms are in the back there. Sometimes when we’re busy and the men’s room is occupied, a guy will step outside and use the back alley to relieve himself.”
“That’s disgusting,” said Carlos.
Pete agreed, adding, “Yeah, but when you gotta go, you gotta go.”
I asked, “What does that have to do with it?”
“Maybe nothing,” he said, “though I should point out that I share my parking lot with the manufacturing warehouse behind me. The warehouse backs up to the liquor store on Madison, where almost every night a small troop of winos gathers and drinks all night long.”
“You think a wino may have killed Landau?”
“I’m saying it’s possible. I have seen instances where these winos have accosted some of my male patrons out back and robbed them.”
“Have they ever shot anyone before?”
“Not before now.”
I looked to Carlos. He seemed agreeable to a working theory along those lines. “Might just be a crime of opportunity,” he said, “wrong place, wrong time.”
“He wasn’t robbed,” I said.
“A botched robbery then, victim accosted, victim stands his ground, suspect panics, shoots, runs. It’s a classic tragedy.”
“I didn’t see anyone out there this morning.”
“Of course not, with all the heat we had out there this morning, would you stick around if you knew something?”
“Good point.” I reached into my pocket, grabbed a five spot and laid it on the bar. “Pete, it was good seeing you again. Thanks for your help.”
“Again?” said Pete, and I knew right away the mistake I had made.
“No, I mean, it’s good meeting you.” I looked to Carlos and saw him grinning like a fool. “Wasn’t it, Carlos? Good, because I just met Pete and he never…we never—”
“Whatever.” He grabbed a handful of peanuts and spilled them into the pocket of his overcoat. “Thanks, Pete. We’ll catch you later.”
Outside, I told Carlos I wanted to slip around back to see if any of the winos had taken up residence under the overhang of the warehouse loading docks. The rain that had been sometimes torrential in the morning and intermittent at best in the early afternoon, spared us for the moment. We walked across the parking lot of the two businesses, stopping at a chain linked fence bordering the warehouse loading docks. As near as we could tell, workers were in the building, but nothing was moving on or off the platform. Carlos elbowed me gently and nodded toward the docket hut by the main gates. “Look there,” he said.
The hut, barely a shack with windows on three sides, normally posts a shipping supervisor monitoring truck traffic on and off the property. At first glance, the hut appeared empty, not surprising since the closed gates eliminated the need for a shipping supervisor. Carlos, however, has a keen eye for visual details. He sees things that others see as so common that they inevitably go unnoticed. It’s a forest for the trees thing, I suppose.
After observing the hut and seeing nothing unusual, I said to him, “Look at what?”
“The docket hut.”
“Yes, I see the docket hut. What about it?”
“There is someone inside.”
I looked again. Still I saw no one, but this time I did see what Carlos saw. A slight haze fogged the glass along the bottoms of the windows, with the steamy build-up dissipating gradually higher up on the glass. “I see it,” I said. “Come on, let’s check it out.”
We came up alongside the hut and peeked inside. There on the floor with his knees to his chest, sat an old man sheltered from the cold; his clothes ragged and disheveled, his unkempt hair and beard gray and matted, making him look more beast than man. His hands, streaked with road tar and caked in mud, clutched a bottle in a paper sack between his knees. Carlos thought he was dead; I thought he was sleeping, but neither expected to jump as high as we did when the man, perhaps startled by the scuff of my shoe on some gravel, sprang to life in a howling fit. Good God, you would have thought someone let the dogs out on his ass, the way he kicked and screamed, especially after seeing us flanking the doorway, preventing his escape.
“Easy there!” said Carlos, his hands out, fingers splayed to show the old timer he posed no threat. I did the same with my left hand, as I fished my badge out with my right.
“We’re not here to hurt you,” I said. “Please, calm down.”
The excitement died almost as quickly as it began, as the old man seemed to realize that the nightmare he awoke from was not the reality to which he returned. He dropped his bottle and clasped his hands together below his chin. I believe he thought we were there to drag him out and evict him from the premises. The look on his face told me they had done it to him before, and maybe not so gently.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He blinked. “Eh?”
“We’re not here to throw you out. We don’t work for the warehouse. You can stay here, as far as we’re concerned.”
That seemed to calm him greatly. Carlos reached into his pocket and pulled out a fistful of salted peanuts. “You want these? They’re good.”
The old man cupped his hands and Carlos spilled the peanuts into his dirty palms. He looked at them in wonder. I am sure he knew what they were, yet he seemed not to know what to do with them. I waited until he looked up at us again and I said, “It’s okay.”
That is when he smiled at us, a toothless grin so wide it damn near melted my heart. I reached down, grabbed the brown paper bag from the booze bottle and held it out before him. He looked at the bag and then at me. “Go on,” I said. “Dump`em in there. You can suck on them later.”
The look Carlos gave me then made me sorry I said anything. “Listen, we want to ask you a few questions. If you tell us the truth, there’s a hot meal in it for you down at the Perc. You know where that is, don’t you: the Percolator?”
He grimaced as though he had just swallowed a sour grape. “`Course I know where it is,” he said. “I was livin` in this town since `fore you was born.”
I started to dispute that, but then remembered how old I looked to him. “Okay, I am not going to ask your name. I don’t need—”
“Bart,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“That’s my name, Bart.”
Carlos smiled at that. I positioned myself more in front of the door and squatted down on one knee. “Nice to meet you, Bart. I’m Tony, and this here is Carlos. We’re here because of something that happened in the parking lot early this morning. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
He shook his head. “No, I can’t think of nothing`, less you mean that skinny fella that got popped behind Pete’s Place.”
“Yes, Bart. That’s what I’m talking about. Did you see it happen?”
“Nah, I didn’t see it. Word is that it happened late, around two in the morning. I was out by then. I can’t stay up no longer like them young guys. Once me and Captain Morgan hook up, it’s lights out for me.”
“Captain Morgan?”
Carlos cleared his throat to gain my attention. I looked up to see him looking down, his foot toei
ng the empty bottle of rum on the floor. I smiled back, feeling stupid. To Bart I said, “So, you didn’t see anything suspicious all night?”
“No,” he said, coarsely. “I didn’t say that.”
“What did you see?”
“I saw old skinny getting` roughed up by a couple of serious thugs.”
That got my attention, and Carlos’, too. “What did they look like? Where they Hispanic?”
“Hard to say, could a been. Was too dark. A third man stood by and watched. Looked to me like a shakedown.”
“Could you hear what they were talking about?”
“I heard the word, money.”
“Money?”
“Yeah, the big guys were askin` `bout it. Skinny said he didn’t have it. That’s when the one fella that was watchin` told him he better get it, and then he punched Skinny in the gut.”
“What then?”
“They left.”
I looked at Carlos. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Yeah,” he said, but then shook his head. “No, what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking the three thugs weren’t Hispanic. They were Indians.”
“Dot heads?”
“No! Tribal Wampanoag—from the casino.”
“Oh, Indian Indians.”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
I said to the old man, “Did you hear any names thrown around.”
“Sure,” he said. “I heard cock-sucker, mother f—”
“No, I mean names: Tom, Dick or Harry?”
That seemed to amuse him. “I heard dick, but I don’t think that was any of them’s names.”
“Right. Forget it.” I stood up and backed away from the door, not wanting to let the old man know that his stench was beginning to nauseate me. “Carlos, are you ready for a drive?”
“Where to?”
“The Wampanoag Indian Reservation. It’s time we saw the chief.”
The old man reached up for me, but by then I was several steps back. “What about my hot meal?” he said.