The Hardest Part (A James Bishop Short Story)

by Jason Dean

  This would be Kim Riley, then. Dressed in loose black jeans and a long-sleeved orange T-shirt, she looked to be in her early twenties and was pretty enough, though not as stunning as I’d been led to expect. She was about five-four and fairly slim, although wide around the waist. She had large blue eyes, dark blond shoulder-length hair, and a prominent nose similar to that of the woman I’d almost crashed into.

  She looked across at me as I went to the first aisle of the men’s section. I was pulling down a black shirt from the rack when she entered the aisle and came over.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Looking for something in particular, or just looking?’

  ‘Just browsing,’ I said. She was actually a lot prettier up close, which was unusual. It was usually the other way round. But up close those large blue eyes were practically hypnotic, and I noticed she wore very little make-up too. ‘You know, you look very similar to the lady I almost bumped into when I came in.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s my sister,’ she said, and smiled. ‘People say we’ve got the same nose.’

  ‘What, she gets it at weekends?’

  ‘Very funny.’ Still smiling, she looked at the shirt in my hands and said, ‘So are you after something in black?’

  ‘Sure. And I noticed that cute little girl had the same eyes as yours, too. Would she be your daughter, by any chance?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s my Lisa, all right. Well spotted.’

  ‘So you must be Kim Riley, then.’

  The smile went away and her brow became furrowed. ‘Um, do I know you?’

  ‘No, it’s just I was talking to Lewis Hawkins earlier and your name came up in conversation.’ I replaced the black shirt on the hanger, took down a white one instead and checked the inner collar. ‘We were discussing Leonard Williamson at the time.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Her tone was flat. ‘And why were you talking about him?’

  ‘I’d like to find him.’

  ‘Why, are you a friend of his?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that exactly, but I would like to know what happened to him two years ago. And since he’s the father of your daughter I imagine you would too, right?’

  She looked at me for a moment, then said, ‘You don’t know anything about me, mister. Now if you don’t mind, I think I’ve got a lot of work to do in the stockroom.’ She turned to go.

  ‘You knew Lenny better than anyone, Kim,’ I said. ‘Be honest, do you really think he committed that robbery and then took off with the proceeds without saying goodbye?’

  She turned back to me. ‘Why shouldn’t I? That’s what everyone else says.’

  ‘And what do you say?’

  ‘I say men are capable of pretty much anything.’

  ‘You might have a point there. Do you mind if I ask you a personal question, though?’

  ‘What, like these haven’t been personal enough?’

  I smiled. ‘Okay, a little more personal, then. I just wanted to ask you if Leonard knew he was going to be a father before he left.’

  Kim watched me for a long while. I thought she was going to throw me out of the shop, but she finally said, ‘He knew. I told him.’

  ‘And was he happy about it?’

  She shrugged. ‘He said he was, but he obviously wasn’t or he wouldn’t have done what he did. Look, I really need to get back now, so—’

  ‘Maybe we can talk some more later, then.’

  Kim shook her head. ‘I really don’t think that would be a good idea.’

  ‘Why, because of your boyfriend? Calvin Wilcox, right?’

  She gave an exasperated shake of her head and said, ‘Lewis Hawkins should learn to keep that mouth of his shut. Look, I don’t really want to talk about Lenny anymore, and I’ve got work to do out back, so if you don’t need me for anything else I’ll just leave you to get on with it, okay?’ With that, she walked away.

  With a mental shrug I watched her go, then placed the shirt back on the hanger and looked at my watch. It was just after five. And today was Friday. According to Hawkins most of the workers from the factory liked to finish their week at the Heavy Lifter, which was a good enough reason enough for me to be there too. People generally talked more when there was alcohol around. At least I hoped so. Because while I was a lot more knowledgeable about Lenny’s life than I had been on my arrival, there was still plenty I didn’t know.

  Maybe tonight I’d be able to fill in a few more gaps. But not before I got myself something to eat first.

  VII

  At Lacy’s Eats I took my time over a large BLT and fries, and from my window seat watched various men and women entering the Heavy Lifter across the way. Most came from the direction of the factory, and all had that tired look of blue-collar workers at the end of another long week. At 18.15 I paid my check, left the diner and crossed the road to enter the bar.

  The interior was fairly well lit and pretty spacious, mostly thanks to the bar itself, which was an elongated L-shape that began halfway down the left side of the room and continued part of the way along the rear. The central space was filled with tables and chairs, some of which were occupied by couples or small groups, while some more booths ran along the wall at my right. There were also four pool tables at the rear. Three were currently in use.

  Two young black guys were serving behind the bar. I went over, and the bartender with dreadlocks came over and said, ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Let me have a Corona. Bottled.’

  The bartender plucked one from the large refrigerator behind him, popped the cap and placed the bottle on the bar in front of me. I paid with two singles and looked at my fellow drinkers sitting at the bar. None of them particularly looked the garrulous type, though, and that’s what I was after. And the few people sitting at the tables seemed to be involved in their own discussions, so they were out. Which just left the pool tables – always a good setting for casual conversations.

  I took my beer over to the tables, found a space against the rear wall and stood watching two guys playing each other for money on one table. On another a man and a woman were playing eightball. On the third, two more guys were playing eightball, while two women watched and made comments.

  I just stood there and drank my beer in very small sips and waited. Patience is always the key. Better if you don’t force yourself into a social situation, but wait until you’re invited. Sure enough, it took less than twenty minutes for one of the guys playing for money to come over next to me as he waited for his partner to take his shot. He was a Latino about my age, and he was losing. It was five bucks a game and this would be the third he’d lost in a row.

  ‘Maybe your luck’ll change next game,’ I said and took another sip of my beer.

  The guy snorted. ‘It better or I’m gonna be broke before the weekend. You want, you can take my place while I get us refills.’

  ‘Sure, why not. As long as it’s all right with your pal there.’

  His friend was a younger white guy with longish black hair. He potted the black ball in a corner pocket and said, ‘Hey, if you don’t mind losing five bucks it’s fine with me.’

  ‘Let’s play, then.’

  He smiled. ‘I’ll rack. Hey, Max, make mine a Bud this time, huh?’

  ‘Right.’

  The first guy, Max, handed me his cue stick and went away and I took the chalk cube from the side of the table and worked the tip. For all the good it would do. Hand me a firearm and show me a target and there’s a good chance I’ll get the bull’s-eye, but pool is another kind of marksmanship altogether, and not one I’d ever mastered or for that matter even tried to. But then, I wasn’t here tonight to win. I was here to listen.

  After he’d finished racking the balls, the long-haired guy potted the number seven solid from the break, so I was on stripes. He then bounced the number five ball off the black until it disappeared down the centre pocket. He potted a couple more and I was still waiting for my turn on the table when Max came back, holding a couple of beer bottles.

  He smi
led at me. ‘Lance killin’ you, too, is he?’

  ‘I’m not even getting get a look-in,’ I said.

  Finally, Lance missed a shot and allowed me onto the felt. I placed the eleven into a centre pocket, then missed the twelve on purpose and stood next to Max, shaking my head in mock disappointment. Lance put down his bottle and stepped up to the table again.

  ‘Ain’t seen you before, have I?’ Max said to me. ‘Just passin’ through?’

  ‘Kind of,’ I said. ‘My front axle went just outside of town and I’m waiting for it to get fixed. Should be ready by tomorrow. How about you two? You regulars in here?’

  ‘Nah, we just finished work is all. Friday nights, all of us at the torture chamber come down here and blow our paychecks. Or what’s left of them after the government’s carved off its slice.’

  I looked at him. ‘Torture chamber?’

  ‘What us old timers call the factory,’ Lance said, and buried another ball. I glanced at the pool table and couldn’t see the black anywhere. Just lots of striped balls. He took a slug of his beer and said, ‘That’ll be five bucks, friend.’

  Smiling, I pulled a five note from my pocket and handed it over. When money’s involved, everybody likes a happy loser. Good thing I’d paid a visit to the ATM at the Wells Fargo branch before coming here. We continued playing pool and drinking. Taking turns with Max, I won a few games, lost a lot more, and bought several rounds to show what a sport I was. They each returned the favour. As the night wore on, the people on the other tables were introduced to me and I discovered they all worked at the factory as well.

  By nine o’clock the bar was a lot busier, the jukebox music a lot louder, and our small group was pretty well lubricated. And I was generally accepted as an okay guy. I was also down a hundred bucks, which was part of the reason why. I was keeping a careful watch on my own alcohol consumption, though, making sure to take only small sips from my beer bottle and always starting another before I was even halfway through. As we played, we talked about the usual things one talks about in bars the world over: football, taxes, and how much the current administration sucked.

  I was taking a breather from the game when I heard one of the women playing on the next table – a large girl named Pam – say, ‘Well, old man Rogan sure don’t need to worry about his taxes, not with that little windfall he banked two years back. Am I right?’

  ‘Aw, shit, Pammy,’ Lance said, laughing as he chalked his cue, ‘not that again. The guy’s already rich, so why the hell would he need to rob his own safe? A hundred and twenty grand is nothin’ but chicken feed to guys like that.’

  ‘Ha, don’t you believe it, Lance baby,’ she said. ‘Rich people ain’t no different from us, and that’s a damn fact. They see a chance to screw the insurance company they’re gonna take it as sure as sin. Don’t tell me no different.’

  Finally, the opening I’d been waiting for. ‘I heard about that robbery,’ I said. ‘The guy working on my car, Cartright, he mentioned something about it this afternoon. He said it was some guy called Kenny who worked there and then disappeared the morning after.’

  ‘That’s Lenny,’ Max said, ‘and he did vanish the next day, Pammy.’

  ‘So?’ she said.

  ‘I’m with Pammy,’ said a black guy playing at her table. ‘But I think old man Rogan paid Lenny to do the job, then gave him a share of the takings and told him to take off. I heard stories that the old man had gambling debts at the time.’

  ‘Gambling debts?’ Lance said, open-mouthed. ‘Old man Rogan? You been drinking meths again, Marky?’

  I could see what Hawkins had meant now. Lots of conspiracy theories going round, each one probably wilder than the last. To bring things back on track, I said, ‘How was it done? I mean, was the safe actually broken into, or did they use the combination?’

  ‘The second one,’ the shaven-headed guy next to Marky said. ‘And I heard Rogan used his wife’s social security number for the combination too.’

  Which suggested it hadn’t been a professional job, at least.

  ‘And only three people had access to that safe, don’t forget,’ Pam went on. ‘Rogan, Clarabelle, and the accounts manager, Randy, who was on vacation in Mexico at the time.’

  I looked at Pam. ‘Clarabelle?’

  ‘Rogan’s PA,’ she said. There was some chuckling from some of the men, and I assumed the relationship between this Clarabelle and her boss was more than just business.

  ‘Well, if it was Lenny,’ Max said, ‘and my money’s on him, then he must have got the combo from Clarabelle. Ain’t no other way he coulda done it.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have even needed to do that,’ Lance said. ‘He probably just searched her desk drawer one night and found that piece of card she’d stuck to the back, with the combination written on it in case she ever forgot. Man, she never was the smartest cookie in the pot, was she?’

  ‘Rogan didn’t hire her for her brains, man,’ the shaven-headed guy said.

  ‘So maybe it was her, then,’ I said.

  ‘Nah,’ Pam said, ‘You didn’t know her, mister. Believe me, that woman was dumber than a box of socks. If she’d a done it, she would have blabbed sooner or later, or bought herself a new Porsche or something. She wouldn’t have been able to help herself.’

  ‘She left the company six months later,’ another woman said. ‘Married some pilot in Alabama, I heard.’

  ‘Guess she wasn’t that dumb after all, then,’ the one called Marky said, and laughed.

  As the group were talking, I glanced up at the entrance doors at the other end of the room and saw Kim Riley enter the bar, bracketed by two guys. The one with his arm round Kim’s shoulder was about five-nine with dark, close-cropped hair and the kind of face that probably didn’t have to work too hard to gain female attention. He also had small eyes that constantly moved, taking in everything around him and logging it for future use.

  Calvin Wilcox. Had to be.

  The other guy was obviously Bobby Fairlane. He was about six feet tall with greasy black hair, wearing vest and jeans. His arms were wide and muscular, his neck was wider than his head, his nose looked as though it been busted more than once, and his eyes were dull. He was also about twenty pounds overweight, and carrying a heavy pot belly. Like Hawkins said, it seemed Bobby liked his beer a little too much. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, but he was going to seed already.

  As Calvin led them over to the bar I turned back to the group I was with. Max was saying, ‘And ever since he got that promotion to supervisor Lenny was always visiting the management offices to get stuff signed off, just like Calvin does now, so maybe he just searched Clarabelle’s office when she was out at lunch or something. It would have been easy enough for Lenny. Everybody trusted the guy, after all.’

  The woman next to Pam said, ‘That’s what he counted on all along, though. He played everybody for suckers in the end, even his girlfriend, and she was pregnant with his kid, for Chrissake.’

  Lance said, ‘Guy probably wasn’t aware of that at the time, though.’

  ‘Sure he was,’ Pam said.

  ‘Yeah, how do you know?’ Lance came back.

  I let the friendly argument wash over me. This wasn’t helping much. While I hadn’t expected too much out of the evening, I’d hoped for a little more than just gossip and rumours. Although I now knew Calvin was now in Lenny’s old job, which was kind of interesting. But I just nursed my beer and waited patiently for another natural gap in the chatter so I could fill it with another question about the robbery itself.

  Then, from behind me, a man’s voice said, ‘Giving out the family secrets to strangers now, are we, Pammy?’

  I turned and saw Calvin Wilcox standing there, his small eyes glaring at all of us, but especially me. Everybody fell silent. Kim was by his side and looking at everybody except me, acting as though I didn’t exist. Bobby Fairlane was standing there like a statue, holding a huge pitcher of beer in one hand and watching Calvin with a faint smile.
r />   ‘Shouldn’t be doing that, should we?’ he went on. ‘Especially shouldn’t be talking about Kim here. That’s bad manners.’

  ‘Sorry, Cal,’ Pam said. She looked nervous, and I realized Calvin must have a fair bit of pull around here. Especially if he was now their overall supervisor at the factory. ‘We don’t mean nothing by it. We were just playing pool and shooting the shit, that’s all. Just like we always do on Fridays.’

  ‘Don’t always do it in front of strangers, though, do you?’ he said, and turned to me. ‘Just who are you, pal, and how come you’re so interested in our business?’

  ‘I’m not, particularly,’ I said. ‘Mostly we were talking about the old robbery at the factory, which I do find pretty interesting actually.’

  I noticed everybody was slowly moving away and distancing themselves from the danger area. With Bobby’s hulking presence in the background, I couldn’t really blame them. Soon it was just the four of us at the last pool table, Lance and Max’s game now forgotten.

  ‘That’s all ancient history.’ Calvin said. ‘Now I asked you a question before. Who are you?’

  ‘Just a guy filling time while he waits for his car to get fixed.’

  ‘Yeah? That why you were in the clothing store earlier this afternoon? Just filling time?’

  I glanced at Kim, who immediately looked away. I wondered if she’d told him what we’d discussed in the shop, but I could see no earthly reason why she would. Which meant he must have simply heard that I’d paid the store a visit earlier and decided to try his luck.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I was bored and decided to check out some shirts. What’s it to you anyway?’

  Calvin turned to Kim. ‘That what happened, baby?’

  She sighed. ‘Like I told you before, he just wanted a shirt and I asked him if he needed any help and he said he was fine, so I left him to it. That’s all.’