by Jack Getze
In the corner of my eye, Rags leaves his drink and comes zipping around the curved bar like a terrain-tracking missile. Clearly, the pointy-nosed little rodent is headed my way. Crap. The guy is not only mean, stupid and boring, he also hates me. In a rage, Rags once hit me with his moving Jaguar.
“Perhaps a beer?” Luis says.
Luis likes to show people the proper path. I think maybe it’s because he’s descended from Toltec warriors. Even in his bartender uniform—black slacks and white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, showing off his Popeye muscles—Luis’ European features don’t hide the Native American in his ancient hunter’s gaze.
Rags saunters up, filling the empty spot beside my stool. He smells like a cigarette butt. I forgot how beady his dirt-colored eyes are, how quickly they shift from side to side. I give Rags the Rat a half-boat grin. I’m democratic that way. “What’s up, Rags? Haven’t seen you for a while.”
“I want my stock back,” he says.
Rags refers to the seventeen percent interest in the former Shore Securities I bought from him last year when he and Carmela were having an on-again, off-again, on-again divorce. Carmela’s dad Mr. Vic sold Rags the stock while they were married. I took the stock off Rags’ hands cheap while they were getting divorced.
“Carmela hasn’t mentioned you two getting back together,” I say. “But hey, you want the stock, fine. Just hand me a cashier’s check for three-hundred thousand.” My purchase price was less than five percent of that figure. At the time, our firm was generally thought to be circling bankruptcy.
Rags bangs his fist on the bar.
I shift my gaze to his hands so I’ll see the punch coming. He has to be pissed. Carmela says he’s lost everything, says he works now in some kind of giant bakery or factory up in northern Jersey.
“Am I making you nervous, Carr?” he says.
“You did cream me once with a foreign substance.”
It takes Rags three or four seconds to figure out I mean his Jaguar. “Too bad I wasn’t going faster.”
I peek at Luis’ ornamental sombreros overhead. A row of these wide-brimmed caballisto hats hang all around the horseshoe bar. I’d never tell Luis, but the setup is quite reminiscent of hub caps at a junk yard.
“Killing you then would have saved me a whole lot of trouble,” Rags says.
When I glance again at my former sales manager’s hands, I notice there’s a gun in one now—the left, I think, although it’s taking my brain a while to confirm. My nerves are engulfed in a cold polar vortex. I have to admit Rags is scaring me. He’s crazy enough to shoot. He holds the weapon low, on his hip, with his sport coat shielding the small automatic from Luis’ patrons. Rags says, “You’ve always been a pussy, you know that?”
I’m waiting for the shot. Waiting for the pain to rip through my gut. This crazy son-of-a-bitch has been my enemy since the day he came to work at the old Shore Securities. He was Mr. Vic’s future son-in-law then, a pain in everybody’s ass. But he was always a long hard stick up mine.
Rags’ jaws tense. He leans forward, inching the pistol’s muzzle closer to my heart. “One way or the other,” he says, “I’m getting—”
I follow Rags’ worried gaze toward whatever has distracted him.
It’s Luis, my friend and favorite all-time greatest bartender, sliding a waded towel across the bar toward Rags. I don’t see how a towel is going help much until the black business end of a large caliber pistol peeks from the soiled material. Luis’ interruption comes to rest inches from Rags’ ribcage, the bartender’s forefinger pressing against a strategic spot in the towel.
Luis is all smiles. “Please lay your weapon gently on top of my bar, near this rag.”
None of us move. I’m sure my nutty ex-sales manager is going to kill me. The restaurant presses on, oblivious and noisy while Rags seems to think over his situation in more detail. What’s to think? Is he going to shoot me or not? You would expect the man to do what Luis says, guns being pointed the directions they are now, the look on Luis’ face. But I know Rags is crazy enough to shoot anyway, take a bullet from Luis. Inside my cold skin, a frightened heart beats mambo time.
Luis leans closer to Rags. “If I am successful in targeting your spine, this forty-four magnum will cut you in equal halves.”
Rags works his jaw like he’s chewing gum. One beat. Two. Finally air hisses between his teeth. Submission. He takes his finger off the trigger, slides the lady-size automatic onto the bar beside the towel.
I take my first breath in thirty seconds.
Luis waves his bartender wipe-cloth like a magician—one swipe and everything disappears below his bar.
Luis and I glare silently at him until Rags takes an angry first step toward the front door. But he stops and turns. “One way or the other, Carr, I’m getting the stock back. And I’m not the only one who wants what you took.”
“Oh yeah? Who?”
“Mr. Vic and his mother, for starters.”
“Mama Bones?” I say. “Are you kidding? She loves me.”
THREE
Ignoring her cell phone chimes—bells recorded for her at the Vatican—Mama Bones Bonacelli slips the old skeleton key into the lock. A twist, a familiar click, and the half-ton basement door glides open with a gentle push. Aunt Maria’s old bronze and wrought iron entry swings easy now that Gianni installed those six barrel hinges with ball bearings and grease fittings. Mama Bones can get inside her hideaway smooth and fast now, quicker even than her dead husband Domenic in bed. Ha.
Inside, Mama Bones flips the new light switch. Overhead fluorescents blink on one at a time, clicking and clacking like cans of tomatoes rolling off a cupboard shelf. She shuffles across the newly refurbished second kitchen, her sneakers pushing ripples on the dirt floor. Her husband Domenic wanted to lay tile down here when they bought the place thirty years ago. He was from California and didn’t understand about second kitchens in the basement—where Italian families like Mama Bones’ killed chickens, boiled and preserved bushels of peppers and tomatoes, or cooked up forty, fifty quart jars worth of red gravy for freezing. Enough food to last a winter.
“You gotta have the dirt down here, Domenic,” she whispers now, three decades later. “Notta the fancy tile.”
Domenic. She doesn’t miss or talk to him much anymore. He’s been dead too long. She is too busy. But now, with her own comfortable space down here to sit and remember the past, who knows. Maybe she’ll bring down that picture of Domenic from upstairs, the one of him in the tux, set him on one of the olive oil barrels.
Ignoring the phone again, she opens the giant Kenmore refrigerator, reaches for an opened jug bottle of Gallo Brothers Paisano. Nice boys, those Gallo Brothers. So are Gianni and Tomas nice brothers, Mama Bones’ nephews who fixed up her old basement this summer. All new appliances, the refinished table with a desktop computer, electricity, a clean new pallet for her jugs of olive oil, drawers for her gang’s hand-written-only revenue and expense books. And now today, with those six new hinges, Mama Bones can get in and out of here easy. Do some cooking, have a glass of California wine, even play with Aunt Maria’s old book of magic spells for fun. Relax a little. This is the new Mama Bones’ private getaway. And who knows, maybe she’ll have time to talk again to her ex-husband Domenic.
Probably not much, though. He was a mean son of a bitch.
Her cell rings again. These new telephones, you can see who’s calling, decide if you want to talk to the person or not. Oh, Vic again. Her son really gets himself worked up about Austin Carr, that Carr Securities sign on Vic’s old place of business. Wonder what happened with her son’s big insider trading scheme. Said he was going fix things.
Mama Bones pours a glass of wine, sits down at the nice round table Gianni and Tomas bought her. Smooth dark wood. Her handsome nephews treat her well. Whereas her son, Vittorio, or Vic, not so much.
“’Allo, Vic. What’sa the matter now?”
“Oh ditch the accent, Ma. You don’t have to pr
etend you’re stupid with me.”
“You sure? I want to make the conversation easy for you.”
“Ha ha.”
“Ha, yourself. What do you want, huh? You been calling all day.”
“You know why I’m calling. We’ve waited months, like you said. Tell me why you won’t take care of the guy who’s torturing me.”
She swallows a mouthful of wine, clears her throat. “I’m not asking for a hit on Austin. He doesn’t deserve it. He didn’t do nothing bad. Truth is, Austin’s smarter at business than you. You left the country, remember? You left Austin all alone to deal with Bluefish. His friends took care of it, too. The place would belong one hundred percent to New York if it wasn’t for Austin. So why you want to kill him?”
She can hear through the phone her son don’t like what she’s saying. Too bad. The truth hurts.
“This is our stock and bond business,” Vic says. “You and Daddy helped me start Shore Securities thirty-five years ago. You going to let some big mouth, fast-talking prick like—”
“Watch your mouth.”
Vic sighs like a girl. “Okay, forget about having him killed. Talk to him. Rough him up some, explain he has to sell me back Carmela’s and Walter’s stock at a fair price.”
Mama Bones sips her wine. “I thought you were going to set him up for insider trading. You know, get rid him that way. Cost him his Series Seven license.”
“I could, and maybe still will, but I’d rather not. It would be a lot easier—and a lot more profitable—if my Austin Carr problems went away so I could use Patricia’s information all for myself.”
“Listen, you want Austin beat up, you do it. But you’d better watch out. The man is trickier than Bugs Bunny. You try to push him over a cliff, you’ll end up with a giant carrot up your ass. Who knows what it’ll cost you this time.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have to spell it out? You left him to deal with Bluefish, he ends up with a majority share of the company.”
“Jeez, Ma. Why do you talk like that to me? You want Austin to steal all of our business? How do you feel when you see that giant Carr Securities sign Sunday when you go to church?”
Mama Bones sets down her wine, opens the three-holed notebook centered on the round table—her collection of Aunt Maria’s spells. “Okay, Vic, I tell you what. I gotta an idea that maybe will help. We’ll have some laughs with Austin, get him in trouble. How’s that sound, huh?”
“No magic spells, okay? Gianni told me the way you’ve been fooling around with your aunt’s magic again. Reading that book of hers. He says it makes the crew wonder if you’ve got all your marbles.”
Holding the phone to her ear, Mama Bones searches the shelves near the table, checking the contents of one dusty cigar box after another, then a series of sealed ceramic jars. Various ingredients for Aunt Maria’s recipes stare back at her, offering memories and smells from the past. Lavender. Garlic. Unborn mice. Finally, her fingers pinch inside a jar of cranberry pits.
“Don’t you worry,” she says. “This’ll work.”
It’s true the magic Mama Bones learned from her Great Aunt Maria often fails. So far the potions have offered what Vic, the smarty pants, calls a “low rate of return.” But this time, Mama Bones is pretty sure the magic spell is going to work great. Past performance indicates success. Ha.
“Ma?” Vic says. “No magic, okay? Promise me.”
“You wanna make a bet this potion works?”
“Oh, jeez. No, no, no. Please.”
“You wanna bet it works or not?”
Vic sighs again like a girl. “O-kay. Five thousand says Austin Carr doesn’t feel a thing. Whatever it is you give him.”
“Make it twenty grand, smarty pants. I wrote down the ingredients for this spell extra carefully fifty-two years ago, and it already worked once. I was a teenager, and guess what I wanted? What do all teenage girls think about, huh?”
FOUR
I’m not sure the black silk cummerbund is on correctly, but, boy, do I look good in a tux. Right out of Esquire Magazine. Austin Carr will be a hit at the wedding reception—the ladies will go nuts. As all men eventually realize, dressing like flightless birds is one of the easiest ways to tap female illusions about civilizing men.
I am honored to be in Luis’ wedding party. Of the five ushers, I’m the only one who wasn’t born south of the border. Austin Carr, token gringo. Although being born and raised in Los Angeles should count for something. L.A. used to be part of Mexico, and is still the second-largest city in the world where the majority of the citizenry speak Spanish.
Parking the Camry, my gaze catches Luis’ friend and restaurant chef, Umberto, leaving the snappy-dressed group of ushers roosting on the church steps. Looks like Umberto is headed my way. Bushy wild hair and a mouth as big as a pablano chili; but even Umberto looks good in a tux. Like a freakish James Bond villain.
I slide into the late morning sunshine. St. Theresa’s rests only a block from our offices in downtown Branchtown, and I can hear the minor hiss of weekend traffic mixing in with the echo of musical church bells. Dead perennial hibiscus stalks, a reminder of summer, form a tan row beside a line of green privet.
Umberto digs inside his coat pocket for something, and shows me on arrival: It’s a black and white photograph, a candid, magnified head-and-shoulders of a tough-looking Hispanic male, a shot you might see in the post office on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Yikes. Late thirties or early forties, with a devilish mustache, a pointed goatee and tortured Native American nose. The tattoo on his neck is a skull and crossbones.
“Who’s this?” I say. “The priest?”
“This is not a joke,” Umberto says. “This man is muy malo, very bad. He comes here from Luis and Solana’s past, threatening to prevent a marriage he believes insults his love for Solana. We must all of us watch for him. He was spotted near the train station last night.”
“I don’t understand?” I say. “He’s an old boyfriend of Solana’s?”
Umberto shrugs. “He is Santo Vargas. Watch for him.”
I worry for a while about Mr. Vargas, but when the wedding music starts, I’m the first one down the aisle. Well, me and Jessica, a petite blonde whose big puffed up hairdo barely reaches the top of my cummerbund. Such a dainty little thing, tiny Jessica. When I met her last night at the rehearsal dinner, I thought she was the ring-bearer.
“Step on my dress like you did last night,” Jessica says, “I’ll kick you in the balls.”
Maybe dainty isn’t the right word.
No sign of any trouble, the ceremony goes off perfectly. Luis and Solana flee the church under clouds of thrown flower petals, the bags waiting for us in baskets near the big church doors. We’ll see the couple later at a hotel reception, but for now the crowd on St. Theresa’s marble steps is happy to watch the couple drive off, then trade handshakes, hugs and kisses. It’s a friendly crew, and though I make a gregarious and rousing start at engagement, shaking enough hands to get elected Branchtown Mayor, I soon must slip away for a restroom.
Too much wine last night. Too much coffee this morning.
A knowledgeable source in a black and white habit directs me through various turns in the hallway behind the last church pew, and I find the men’s with little trouble. On the way inside, I notice the broad, muscular back of a guy standing near the entrance, and after I pass him, I sense his energy coming inside behind me. But I don’t realize quickly enough he means me harm.
A kick smacks my spine below the shoulder blades, the powerful force knocking me forward, expressing my weightless body into the bathroom. I get my hands up but still collide head-first with the wall of a stainless steel toilet compartment. Stars and planets circle my stunned consciousness. My legs fold, dropping me onto the tile floor. My hands press against the cold wetness. I shiver in disgust. A minty sweet disinfectant doesn’t hide the aroma of fresh urine.
Hands grab my tuxedo. They leave me sitting, but slam my head against the st
eel again. Adrenaline pumps my vision back, and I focus on the man crouched over me. A Native American face, but without the feathers or wisdom. I haven’t met a smart guy yet wore a skull and crossbones tattoo on his neck.
This is Santo Vargas. Not quite the same—no beard and ’stash—as Umberto’s picture, but close enough.
“Where will Solana go on her honeymoon?” he asks.
Vargas’ face and tattoo are intimidating, but his eyes are like nothing I’ve ever seen. More purple than hazel, they are gemstones embedded in the dark brown face of a prison-hardened First American.
His fist pummels my left temple. Once more my head bangs against the stall. The stars and planets turn into red shooting comets.
“Where will Solana—”
“The Martha Washington,” I say. “Luis and Solana are staying above the reception tonight.”
Vargas seems skeptical. Could be his black and brooding eyebrows that make me think that. Or maybe it’s the switchblade he’s withdrawn from his back pocket.
Click. Extended, the turquoise-handle weapon is as long as a barbecue fork. The double-edged tip touches my nose. “If this is not the truth,” he says, “I will cut out your eyes.”
“There’s a room key in my coat pocket,” I say. “I’m supposed to give it to Luis at the reception.”
Vargas reaches his scarred claw of a hand inside my tuxedo coat pocket. His fingers probe my ribs like pliers, then wrap around the credit card that passes for a hotel key. The room number—233—is penciled on the paper envelope protecting the key card, but I’m not giving up Luis and Solana. I rented 233, my own junior suite above the reception, in case I get lucky with one of the bridesmaids tonight—anyone but Jessica.
“Luis asked me to get the room in my name,” I say. “They’re going to drive away, then sneak back later.”
Hope I’m still a good liar. Vargas’ movements are deliberate, exaggeratedly so, like a robot the way he assesses the hotel key. The number. The paper. The magnetic strip on the card. Seems like a full minute before he looks down at me again with those odd Tyrian purple eyes. “I wonder why you would so easily give up your friend,” he says. “One who trusts you to hold this key for him.”