“That’s right.”
Gotbaum tossed a pencil against the plastic in-box on his desk and said, “Sit down. Tell me what’s on your mind.”
I sat while Duckie shifted over to the wall, peripherally in sight but well out of reach.
“I’d like to know what you think happened to Charlie Coyne.”
Gotbaum said, “What I think happened to him? Dead is what I think happened to him. That it?”
“Not exactly. Coyne worked for you, and Rust said he was a confidential source for her. Now they’re both dead, and I’m wondering if you see any connection.”
“Connection. Duckie, that’s a nice word there, ‘connection,’ isn’t it?”
“Sure is, boss.”
I said, “What do you mean?”
Gotbaum said, “You never knew old Charlie, did you?”
“No.”
“He was a broad-jumper. World cham-peen.”
“Coyne was a track star?”
Duckie said, “The boss means jumping broads.”
Gotbaum said, “He saw more ass than a toilet seat, right, Duckie?”
“If cocks was brains, Charlie woulda been Einstein.”
“All of which had to do with what?”
Gotbaum said, “Coyne. He looked like a piece of shit. I mean, you saw a photo of the guy, you woulda burned it. Skinny like the Duck here, but no class. Scrungy little beard, one eye green, the other brown, pygmy ears. Nothing. But the broads, I never seen him around one who could keep her hands off him.”
“So Coyne was popular. So what?”
“So what? So what if this Rust broad was duking him. Like nightly.”
“Maybe twice on Sunday,” said Duckie.
“Wait a minute. Coyne and Jane Rust were lovers?”
“Lovers!”
Gotbaum nearly choked on a laugh, Duckie giggled behind me.
Gotbaum said, “I don’t know they heard bells ringing or what. Though maybe they was like that. She’s the only one I know he was doing he never bragged about it. Even had to drag it out of him. Not like that broad he was living with.”
When Duckie didn’t add anything, I said, “What’s her name?”
Gotbaum said, “His shack-up?”
“Yes.”
“I dunno. Duckie, you knew her, right?”
“Don’t think so, Boss.”
“Oh sure you did. She couldn’ta been more’n a coupla years behind you in school there. Cleary, wasn’t it? No. Like that, though. Fearey, right?”
“Maybe,” said the Duck.
“Yeah, yeah. Fearey, Gail Fearey. Lives in her folks’ house up on Grantland.” Gotbaum rested his chins in his hands, drumming fingers on his cheeks. “I’m telling you, pal, Charlie, he would have fucked the crack of dawn, he could get up that early.”
“This Coyne used to work for you, right?”
“Kinda. I try to help the unfortunate by offering them jobs.”
“What kind of jobs did Coyne do for you?”
“Simple shit. Drive things around for me. Deliver here and there.”
“He was busted in a raid next town over, right?”
“Charlie got caught in some kind of net the cops had out that night. I don’t know the details.”
“I understood he got caught with some movies the Supreme Court says we’re not supposed to have.”
Gotbaum said, “The Supreme Court. Let me tell you something. I got a lawyer up to Boston, he’s a fuckin wiz. He can split hairs a barber couldn’t comb. But he tells me, I don’t show no kid stuff and no snuff stuff, even fake snuff stuff, and I check ID’s, and I can do whatever the fuck I want. Personally, I think it’s fuckin crazy. I mean, you know these shows, some of them on TV, they have the little boxes or something for the dummies?”
“You mean close captioning?”
“Yeah, like that. They’ve got these things so the dummies can find out what the normal people are saying, right? Well, they oughta have little boxes for the guy in the street when the liberals come on the air. They oughta have this little window with a guy telling them that the libbie doing the regular talking is fulla bullshit, because he is. What the hell kind of difference is there between my fuck films and the kiddie stuff, huh? You think fucking or sucking is any different because somebody hits so many years on this earth? The libbies are the ones let me keep open, but they’re so fulla shit, I can’t stand them!”
Teevens said, “Easy, boss. Take it easy.”
“You’re right there, Duckie. I shouldn’t get so worked up. What else you wanna know?”
“Coyne told Rust that you were paying off some cops to let you stay in business here.”
“Paying off. Paying off, huh? You have a blindfold on when you come up here?”
“No.”
“Duckie, he keep his eyes closed coming through the lobby and up here?”
“Wide open, boss.”
Gotbaum said, “I’m making maybe, maybe, my costs here plus 3 percent. You know why?”
“Why?”
“The fuckin Vee-Cee-Are. Videocassette recorder. Used to be, you wanted to see my kinda shit, you have to come to the theaters here. Aw, you’d come maybe with a ski mask on, nobody could recognize you on the way in. I had a Linda Lovelace double feature on once, you’da thought the fuckin terrorists’ union was having a convention on my ticket line. A guy wanted privacy, though, he’d have to have a whole fuckin projection system to see films at home. How you gonna hide that from the wife, huh? Or set it up when she’s out, she comes in the front door, what do you say, ‘Hey, honey, I was just watching the pictures of little Susie’s birthday party. What’re you doing home so early anyways?’”
Gotbaum really started to fire up. “Now, with the VCR things, any yutz wants to can watch anything. He hears the old lady pulling in the driveway, the cassette’s out and back behind the workbench in the basement before she turns the key in the fuckin front door.”
“Boss,” said Duckie, caution in his voice.
I said to Gotbaum, “So what’s your point?”
“My point is, I don’t gotta pay off the cops because what I show is legal. And I don’t got the money to pay off the cops because I’m barely making a living here with the poor old fucks ain’t got the brains or the cash or the house to have a VCR in. Without me, you’d have the poor guys out trying to get laid instead of getting off in here. It’s like that football coach used to say.”
“What?”
“That football coach. He used to say there are three things can happen when you throw the ball, and two of them are bad. Well, same thing with sex. There are three things can happen: one, you can come; two, she can get pregnant; three, you can get the syph or AIDS or something. And two of them are bad. So, I provide like a public service here. Keep all that from happening to the guys.”
“So you don’t see the cops killing Coyne at all?”
“The cops, the cops,” said Gotbaum. “I’ll tell you what I see. I see some guy hearing that maybe Charlie is dropping a dime here and there, get me?”
“Coyne was an informant?”
“Charlie was a little shit, like I told you. When he wasn’t working for me, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out he was hucking it to the cops on the side.”
“And you figure that’s what happened to him?”
“No, I figure some bum in the alley did him, like the cops said. Charlie, the way he dressed most of the time, he looked like a bum. But if he was done intentional, I’d bet it was some guy, hears Charlie liked to drop the dime, and says to himself, ‘Jeez, maybe Charlie was the guy dropped my brother who’s doing eight to ten up in Walpole there the hard way with some jigaboo’s putz up his ass.’ That’s what I figure.”
Gotbaum suddenly appeared awfully florid. Teevens said, “Boss, I think you ought to take one.”
“Inna minute. You got any other questions there?”
“I hear that Coyne was drinking in your bar before he was stabbed.”
“That’s right.
In fact, the Duck was with him that night.”
“I was thinking I might go over there and look around. How about Duckie coming with me?”
“Sure. Duckie, go with the gentleman here.”
“Not before you take the pill, boss.”
“Awright, awright.” Gotbaum pulled open the center drawer of the desk and fished around, coming up with a vial of tiny pills. He popped one under his tongue and began taking deep, uniform breaths.
I said, “Nitroglycerin?”
The fat man nodded.
Teevens said, “For his heart.”
I said to Gotbaum, “It doesn’t bother you that engineers use that stuff to blow away mountains?”
“Naw.” He seemed to be completely recovered. “Naw, you just gotta be careful you don’t bite down too hard.”
They shared a practiced laugh over that one.
“So you like being a private eye?”
I didn’t answer until we could trot through a break in the increasing traffic. “It’s not bad. You like being an apprentice porno pusher?”
“Could be worse. Least I don’t spend my time like most guys, trying to get paid and trying to get laid.”
At the door to Bun’s, Teevens spoke to the bouncer, an ox with a Duran Duran tee shirt and a bullet-shaped, shaved head. “He’s with me.”
“Enjoy the show.”
I said, “Thanks.”
Inside, Bun’s opened up into one big room. A raised stage with purple velvet curtains as backdrop occupied the far left corner. Running from the stage and toward the entrance was a bar with a center runway, constructed so that the performers would always be separated from even the bellied-up customers by the bar itself and the moat of bartender space between the bar and the runway. Although no one was on stage, the place was pretty full, ten men for every woman, as best I could see in the dim light.
Duckie said, “Take a seat at the bar. I gotta see a guy here first. Don’t order till I get back to you.”
I did as he said, telling the bartender who came over promptly that I was waiting for Duckie. The bartender moved away, and I felt long nails squeeze my leg.
I looked up into a tough female face wearing enough eye shadow to fool a male raccoon. The punked-up hair glittered so much that I couldn’t tell what color it was.
“I’m Sherry. What’s your name?”
“John.”
“John. I like that name.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Wanna fuck my brains out?”
“Thanks, but it sounds like someone already beat me to it.”
The smile gave way, but Teevens put his hand tenderly on her shoulder from behind and said, “He’s with me, Sher.”
Sherry lifted her head defiantly and stalked off.
The bartender came back and Duckie said, “Cal, a round of the boss’s stock.”
I said, “Just beer for me, thanks. Bottles?”
Cal said, “Bud or Mick.”
“Michelob. No glass.”
“Right.”
Teevens said, “You don’t like the hard stuff?”
“Not most of it.”
Cal poured Duckie a double shot of Johnnie Walker Black. I made sure I could see the top of the Michelob bottle from the time Cal used a church key on the cap.
After Cal served our drinks, Teevens said, “You’re careful. I like that.”
“Watching the drinks?”
“Yeah.”
“Force of habit. I ask how you figure Coyne died, will I get a straight answer?”
“Not likely.”
“Why not?”
Duckie rotated his drink on the bar, leaving artistic whorls of water rings interlinking each other. “Charlie goes into the books the way the cops say, nothing changes. I put in my two cents, maybe I make waves.”
“Off the record, what do you think?”
“What, you think I was born yesterday? The fuck does ‘off the record’ mean to me?”
“Okay. How about what you saw that night.”
“The night Charlie got it?”
“Right.”
“I didn’t see much. Charlie was a real asshole. Bunny told you true there. He used to drink in here a lot, but couldn’t hold the shit, even just Bud.”
“What’s a beer go for when you’re not buying it for somebody?”
“Four bucks a bottle. Used to have some on tap for three, but nobody was stupid enough to buy it. Figured it was watered or stale.”
“Four bucks. I thought Coyne didn’t have two nickels.”
“Meaning you don’t see him drinking in here a lot.”
“That’s right.”
Teevens gestured toward the empty stage. “Maybe he liked the show.”
“A guy who played around as much as you say he did would pay that kind of money to watch strippers on a regular basis?”
“Charlie wasn’t no brain trust. Like we told you.”
“Gotbaum comped him to the drinks, right?”
Duckie smiled and drank some Scotch. “Yeah, we comped him.”
“Why?”
“Bunny, he’s a compassionate, generous man.”
“No, Duckie.”
“Bunny, he grew up with Coyne’s old man. That generation down here, religion was no big thing. They were tight with each other, looked after the families. That kind of town, you know?”
“How did you hook up with Gotbaum?”
“Same way. My father and him knew each other. Mine croaked off this stuff,” Duckie indicating the liquor on the shelves, “so Bunny give me a job at fifteen. Been with him ever since.”
“And you tell him to take his medicine.”
Teevens straightened, and for just a second I felt the instinct to fight rise inside him. Then he relaxed and half laughed. “I promised his wife. Before she died.”
I let it drop. “You have any idea how Jane Rust got involved with Coyne?”
“Yeah. It was from that raid there. She was after him for some kind of story, and Charlie, he could sense when a broad wanted something he could trade for. Fuck, underneath it all she probably just wanted him to ball her. He sure got caught with his hand in the nookie jar often enough, anyway.”
“Jealous husbands?”
“Yeah. Or fathers or boy—” Duckie stopped.
“What’s the matter?”
“Shit, man, that was good. That was better than your routine out by Connie there.”
“What?”
“Cut the shit. You were getting me to tell you what I thought happened to old Charlie. Indirect.”
I downed some beer. “You’re a lot brighter than you show, Duckie. Why is that?”
He shrugged. “Don’t get you.”
“Sure you do. Take your knowing about The Shape of Things to Come being a book. H. G. Wells, right?”
“You say so.”
“‘Generous,’ ‘compassionate,’ ‘indirect’ …”
“Okay, okay.” He took a bigger bite of the booze. “I didn’t exactly finish high school, right? But some of the stuff they told us to read was okay. So, I kept after it on my own. Like I’d go over to the community college there, and I’d pick up a book list making out I was some student, and I’d go buy some of the books. All kinds of shit, plays, poetry, whatever. One thing I learned. You ever heard of Maxwell Anderson?”
“Barely. He wrote plays, I think.”
“Yeah. There’s Sherwood and Maxwell, both Andersons, but I’m talking Maxwell here.” Go on.
“Well, this guy writes a play called Barefoot in Athens. All about how they’re gonna kill Socrates. Now the Greek king in the play, he comes across as kind of a clown, okay? So at this one part, Socrates says to the king, ‘Hey, you’re a lot smarter than you give off. How come?’ And the king says, ‘You know, when you come on stupid to people, they don’t bother you so much. Lets you live okay without them figuring they got to get rid of you. Which gives you time to get rid of them first.’ Well, that made a lot of sense to me.”
“Be smart, don’t
look smart?”
“Right, right. I’m learning this business from Bunny real well, but it’s gonna be a while yet. And he was good to take me in, you know? So I say, ‘yes, boss,’ and ‘no, boss,’ ’cause he likes that kind of shit. And I get after him about the heart pills, ’cause I don’t want him thinking I’m pushing my chances any. But to everybody else, I come across as Bunny’s gofer who’s got this mind’s in the gutter and can’t say a sentence without ‘fuck’ in it somewheres. Nobody’s gonna be worried about me competing with them to take over when Bunny goes, and so when it’s time I can get them before they even think about getting me.”
“I didn’t get the impression from Bunny that you guys were in a growth industry. One worth preparing for and protecting against competitors.”
“It is if you do it right.”
“Meaning kiddie porn, that sort of thing? For the VCR crowd?”
“I don’t know nothing about that.”
“Then how about an answer to my original question. How the hell did Jane Rust ever get involved with somebody like Coyne?”
Teevens took a minute. “I think maybe for Charlie, this Rust broad was the real thing. But she had another boyfriend, right?”
“Right.”
“Guy over to the Redevelopment Authority.”
“So I understand.”
“Yeah, well, I understand from Charlie that there were some problems there.”
“At the Authority?”
“No. Well, maybe. I don’t know about that. I’m talking the boyfriend himself.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Rust broad told Charlie about it. ‘Confidentially,’ of course. That fuckin Charlie, he run off at the mouth like a sewer.”
“Told him what?”
“About the boyfriend. Seems there was more heat than meat.”
“You mean the sex was bad?”
“The worst. The boyfriend just couldn’t get it up.”
“Impotent.”
“That’s what they call it.”
I left Duckie at the bar and said good night to Bullet-Head at the door. Turning left, I walked to the closest of three liquor stores in sight. I bought a pint of cheap rye whiskey and circled around the block to the mouth of the alley behind the store.
The alley was about fifteen feet wide. I heard some scuffling and laughing down aways. As my eyes adjusted to the moonlight, I could see half a dozen pairs of legs sticking out from behind overflowing dumpsters and overturned trash cans. Then I picked out the source of the sounds.
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