Karaoke Rap

by Laurence Gough

  All he’d learned was that Steve liked to read about UFOS. Maybe he’d been abducted by an alien, one of those little grey men with pointy chins and great big eyes, Mr. Spock ears ...

  Marty glanced covertly at Jake. The old killer sat hunched in his chair by the gas fireplace, wrapped in a tartan car blanket, his slippered feet resting on Butch’s warm and sturdy back. Jake’s breathing was fast and shallow. He looked gaunt. Worried. Sandblasted. The lines in his face had noticeably deepened in the past few hours, sweat cutting fissures and gullies into the vulnerable flesh. Jake was no wimp, no whiner. He’d kept his mouth shut, but the eyes were the windows of even the most shrivelled of souls. Jake’s pale and rheumy gawkers had showed the breadth and depth of his fear right down to the last inch.

  Marty, peering into Jake’s eyes, had been deeply shaken by the sudden revelation that Jake wasn’t perched on the top rung of the ladder, that there were guys up there, hidden in the clouds, who wielded bigger mallets. If Harold had stolen Jake’s millions instead of laundering them, Jake was liable to end up getting fed to his own Dobermans.

  But, taking a minute to think about it, why should Jake be exempt from the immutable laws of nature?

  Everybody belonged to somebody.

  There was, theoretically, no biggest fish.

  Marty crouched down in front of Jake and asked him if he’d like a nice glass of wine.

  Jake stared right through him.

  Butch growled low in her throat. Did the dog smell Marty’s indecision, a dilution of his loyalty to Jake? No way, Marty told himself. And knew in his heart that his words were true. If Jake went down, Marty’d sink with him. Fuck Jake’s creditors. Let them dig one grave, and toss him in first, so Jake’d have a comfortable bed to lie on!

  His blood racing, Marty went over to the sideboard and poured himself an inch of Johnny Walker.

  Jake, though his bar was being plundered, didn’t even look up.

  Marty downed the whisky and treated himself to another.

  Eight million U.S. was a whole lot of cash. Close to eleven million, in domestic funds. But Jake was a wealthy man. He could absorb the loss and it wouldn’t kill him, not quite. His main problem was that the bulk of his holdings were in foreign real estate. Jake believed in land, specifically waterfront. He owned tracts of undeveloped acreage in Florida and Texas and Mexico, bits and pieces of Italy and Greece. Jake bought with an eye on the long term. Potential was his second-or maybe third-favourite word. He was a man of vision, with an eye on the far side of the horizon.

  In Marty’s unspoken opinion Jake thought too far ahead, for a man his age. Even if he could take it with him, why bother? In hell, everything burned. Especially money.

  But Jake had vaguely referred, from time to time, to the possibility of distant children. So maybe it wasn’t himself he was thinking of. Anyway, the point was that, except for a few hundred grand in petty cash that Jake kept in numerous ten-thousand-dollar accounts scattered across the city, his wealth was essentially inaccessible.

  Jake said, “Try ’im again.”

  Marty nodded, blinked rapidly. Try what? Steve. He hit the phone’s redial button. He dialled Steve’s pillaged room, his pocket cellular, the car phone. Ring ring ring. Defeated, he hung up.

  Jake, feebly hopeful, said, “Busy?”

  “It just kept ringing, Jake.”

  “Maybe he’s takin’ a piss.”

  Maybe. But a two-hander? Doubtful. Marty picked up, hit the redial. He pressed the phone against his ear and resumed listening to that ringing sound that probably meant Steve was down for the count.

  Jake told him he’d maybe take a glass of wine after all. Spirits raised, Marty went into the kitchen and uncorked a nice Chianti, poured a glass about a third full, because Jake’s hands were a little unsteady. He carried the glass back into the living room.

  Jake said, “Where are we now?”

  Marty frowned.

  “Rings,” said Jake. “How many fuckin’ rings.”

  Marty had lost count. “A hundred twelve, altogether,” he improvised. Lying like Burt Reynolds’ rug.

  Jake waved at him to hang up. A little wine sloshed over the side of his glass and splattered on Butch’s head. The dog sighed.

  Marty said, “All those mountains ... Maybe he’s in a valley, someplace there’s no transmitters ... Want me to drive up there, take a look around?”

  “Forget dat,” said Jake, glowering into the fire. Fucking Steve was a fucking idiot. He’d been told to watch Melanie’s apartment, tail her if she went anywhere with the fucking broker. Harold. Suddenly Steve’s on the phone, excited, telling Jake he’s on the Sea-to-Sky highway, following a couple of guys in a van with a Budget sticker on the back bumper.

  Melanie and the broker are in the van, tied up, wearing paper bags over their heads. The Rolls-Royce is back at Melanie’s apartment, full of bulletholes, all shot up. Who are these guys? Pals of pals? Or independents? Jake mulled it over until his brain hurt. All he could think of was that he desperately needed an aspirin.

  He had told Steve not to lose them, but not to get too close. Tricky orders. Too fucking tricky for dimwit Steve, presumably. Jake drained his glass, wiped his chin with palsied fingers. He should’ve known better but he hadn’t known better. He was getting old. The big question, now, was whether he’d be given a chance to get much older.

  “Marty?”

  “Yeah, Jake.”

  “Ya still got dat piece a paper, wit’ dat number Steve gave me, da plate number?”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  “Get da phone book, da Yella Pages.”

  There were seventeen Budget outlets listed in the book, but only six were located in the city. Marty started dialling. He tried the Chinatown location first, told the guy who answered the phone that a couple of pals had rented a van and left their car on the street for him to pick up, but they’d forgotten to tell him which outlet ... The guy wanted a name. Marty told him there were five guys, he wasn’t sure which one had signed on the dotted line, but he had the van’s licence number ...

  Bingo. First pitch, and he’d pounded it over the bleachers. He thanked the man for his help, and hung up. Jake was looking at him. He said, “Michael J. Newman.”

  Jake scratched his nose. “Neva heard a him.”

  Marty fetched the white pages. He turned on a lamp, squinted. “There’s a bunch of M. Newmans ...” Marty’s finger glided slowly down the column. He looked up, triumphant. “There’s an M. J. Newman lives on East Sixth Avenue.”

  “Dere any udder M. J. Newmans?”

  “Nah, just the one.”

  Jake peered into his wine glass. Marty went into the kitchen, came back with the bottle. He poured Jake a short one, put the bottle on the sideboard and leaned against the fireplace mantel, waited patiently for Jake to get his thoughts in order. Finally Jake said, “Okay, take a look. Don’ walk inta a fuckin’ ambush, unner-stand? Keep a eye open for da cops.”

  Marty said, “Okay.”

  “Ya wanna take Axel?”

  Marty chuckled, shook his head in a lateral plane.

  “Newman’s at home, don’t squib him till he gives up Harold. Marty, ya number-one priority’s my bankroll. Dat’s a lot a money, and I wan’ it back. Every fuckin’ penny. Ya gotta squib a couple dumb humps ta get t’ings squared away, so be it. But if I can’t get my money wit’out lettin’ some creep live what don’ deserve ta live, dat’s okay too.”

  “What about Melanie?”

  “Who?” Jake smiled. “Jus’ kiddin’. She’s a nice girl.” He studied his blood-red wine. “I always liked her. It turns out I don’t see her no more, I’m gonna remember her fondly for a long time. Years, maybe.”

  Marty said, “Melanie’s always liked you too, Jake.”

  Jake started to say something, thought better of it. His mouth clamped shut slowly and surely as a vice.

  Marty stood there for a moment, giving his boss time to reconsider. But when Jake issued a death order, that
was that. Marty walked out of the room, down the stairs to the main floor, out the front door. There was a wind coming up the hill from the ocean. The mountains on the far side of the water were a soft moss-green. A large flock of gulls, tiny specks of white that resembled hundreds of scraps of paper, were in hot pursuit of an incoming trawler. It made for a scenic view, but Marty knew the only reason the gulls were chasing the boat was because the crew were standing at the stern, eviscerating corpses and tossing the warm guts overboard.

  Marty looked down at the city. He watched the city. Nothing moved, but he knew that everything was moving, nothing was still. The city was a goddamn highrise ant heap. There were a million people down there, all of them frantically scrambling to stay alive, all of them dying day by day. Or maybe that was just him on his way to work, being morbid.

  Marty took Jake’s white Land Rover Defender. Because he was packing iron, he drove at a steady fifty kilometres per hour and braked at every red light he noticed. The verbal abuse he received from other drivers was fierce, but no cops pulled him over, though they probably wanted to, suspecting he must be a DWI, to drive so cautiously. Snailing along, the drive to East Sixth took him almost half an hour. He parked a block from the building, fitted a bright-red wig over his close-cropped hair, put on a pair of glasses with thick black plastic frames and clear lenses.

  He got out of the Land Rover, locked up.

  Mike Newman’s apartment was a top-floor corner unit in a square stucco box. The building dated from the fifties. There was no security system, other than a glass front door that automatically swung closed.

  Marty climbed a threadbare waterfall of carpet to the third floor. He walked down the hall to 814. The door was locked. Dead-bolted. He pressed the buzzer, heard it ringing inside.

  He drew his Colt King Cobra .357 Magnum, the stainless model with the two-inch barrel.

  His scalp itched. He scratched energetically, realigned the wig. The glasses slid down his nose and he pushed them back up again.

  The buzzer raucously buzzed.

  He stood there in the musty hallway with the revolver’s muzzle in line with the seam of his pants. Except for the rasping buzz of the doorbell, the building was quiet. He had noticed that there were no cars parked out on the street and only a couple in the uncovered lot behind the building. The tenants in a place like this would be blue-collar types. With any luck every damn one of them would have gone merrily off to work, be someplace too far away to hear gunshots.

  The Colt’s weight tugged at him, enticed his body off the vertical. His palm was damp. He gripped the revolver so tightly his knuckles cracked.

  The buzzer faltered, made weird clicking sounds, small electrical burps, and fell silent.

  Marty banged on the door with the Colt. Each time he struck the door the gun’s muzzle left a small semicircular dent in the mudbrown painted wood.

  He pressed his ear to the door, put his eye up to the fisheye lens, even though he knew he wouldn’t be able to see anything.

  Correct.

  He’d waited until it didn’t make sense to wait any longer.

  He stepped back, kicked hard. The door flinched away from the frame. Wood splintered around the lock. He kicked out again. The door flew open, banged against a wall. He followed the Colt into the apartment. The living room stank of cigarette smoke and beer. A tap in the bathroom was dripping at half the speed of Marty’s heart. The bedroom smelled of cold sweat, introspective love.

  Marty emptied the bureau drawers. Socks. T-shirts. Joe Boxer shorts, red hearts on a white background. A pair of almost-new bluejeans.

  But where was Michael J. Newman?

  Somewhere else.

  Marty found a Blockbuster paycheque stub on the floor by the bed. He lifted the mattress, let it drop.

  The fridge was empty but for a half-pound of butter, slab of bacon, a dozen eggs, a plastic jug of milk. He peeked inside one of several waxed cardboard containers of Chinese food. Noodles. He sniffed the milk. Yuk.

  He phoned Blockbuster, asked for Mike Newman. The girl on the other end of the line sounded like she was about twelve years old. She told him Mike’s mother was sick and he’d quit his job and gone back to Thunder Bay to be with her. Marty had never heard of Thunder Bay, got a quick geography lesson. The girl gave him an area code, 807, and phone number. He hung up, dialled the number. The guy on the other end said he was Mike’s father. Marty asked if Mike had arrived yet and the guy said he’d been there a couple of weeks. Playing a hunch, Marty said he was a cop. Had Mike lost his wallet or had it stolen? The guy said yeah, lost it. He sounded pleased, and surprised. As if he hadn’t much faith in the system.

  Marty hung up, shut the door behind him when he left the apartment. There was no doubt in his mind that Michael Newman and Budget Car and Truck Rentals had both been victimized. He thought about how nice it would be if Steve had checked in by the time he got back to the house. But he knew it wouldn’t happen, because nothing was that easy.

  As he exited the building, he paused to hold the glass door open for a woman old enough and pretty enough to be his grandmother. He’d expected the woman to brush past him. Instead, she gasped, brought her hand to her heart, stopped dead in her tracks and gave him a stricken look. In a trembling voice, she asked him if that was a real gun.

  Marty looked down at the Colt. He noted the desperate way the woman clutched her purse.

  He said, “Yeah, it’s a real gun.”

  A few minutes and three long blocks away, he tossed the glasses and wig out the Land Rover’s window. A mile or so down the road, he pulled the truck over to the curb. At the bottom of the purse he found a green rubber band wound tightly around a roll of bills thick as his thumb. Fifties, twenty of them. He sifted through the rest of the contents but found nothing of interest — unless you collected lint. He stuffed the cash in his pocket, powered down the curbside window and tossed the purse.

  A thousand bucks. The only reason he had the money was because he’d been so tightly wrapped he’d forgotten to put away his gun.

  Was there a lesson to be learned?

  Jeez.

  Marty sat there in the Land Rover, trying to make sense of his situation. Was he scared? No. Okay, what was he feeling? He settled on deep concern. But why was he deeply concerned?

  Because he’d worked for Jake all his life. Not just his adult life, but even when he was a kid. Jake had always been the man. Solid as a rock. Totally in control. Daddy.

  Marty flicked ash out the window. He worked it out, added up the years. He’d worked for Jake longer than he hadn’t worked for Jake. More than half his life.

  More than half his life, and what did he have to show for his labours? An interesting collection of scar tissue, courtesy of a spontaneous shootout with a low-level cocaine dealer, now deceased. Four gold crowns paid for by Jake’s dental plan. Fifty-two thousand and change that he’d put away subsequent to unexpected bonuses such as the one he’d scored tonight.

  He owned some nice clothes.

  He lived rent-free in his garden-level bedroom with a nice view of the back yard. He ate well. Got to drive expensive cars at no cost to himself.

  But he probably worked, when you added it up, about fifty or sixty hours a week. Hardly any of this was what you’d call serious gangstering. Most of it was pretty dull stuff. He still cooked weekends, when Maria was off duty.

  What a situation. How grimly fucking pathetic.

  It wasn’t like he got a regular paycheque. Jake sometimes handed out money by the fistful, a thou or more at a time. But you could go for weeks and never see a penny. Worse, though he hadn’t realized it until just this minute, Jake was no fun any more. When he’d first started working for the old man, they’d gone clubbing every night except Sunday. Partied till dawn, first-class all the way. No fucking lineups no matter which way you turned. Ringside tables. Complimentary champagne. Women falling all over you. Not the kind of girls you’d necessarily want to marry. But they were nice, most of them. The type
who were always looking for a reason to laugh.

  Marty bet that they were still out there, the next generation of them. Wild personalities. Girls with bright eyes and shiny hair, who never merely sat or stood but were forever posing. Doing their best to be better than they were, in every tick of the clock. Romantic girls. Girls who, if they ever bothered to ask what you did for a living and you said you were a gangster, toyed with their swizzle stick and whispered into your ear that it must be the most wonderful, wonderful life.

  The only girl Marty knew any more who was like that was Melanie, and she’d been a pal of Jake’s for close to twenty years. But just look at her now. In harm’s way, due entirely to circumstances beyond her control.

  But was there the slightest possibility that Steve and Melanie had relieved Harold of Jake’s money, and then taken a hike?

  Marty told himself the answer was no. He refused to believe it. Steve was young, and correspondingly foolish. That thing with the Rott owner, blasting the guy ... Squibbing, Jake liked to call it. A marginally nicer word. When Steve had rashly pulled the trigger, he’d simultaneously yanked the rug out from under himself, labelled himself terminally expendable. If Steve had told Melanie what he’d done, she’d know he had no future. What if she took it upon herself to explain his fragile situation to him, suggested a course of action that would save his ass, make them both rich ...?

  Marty pictured Steve and Melanie hunkering down in some cheap motel, getting romantic, hatching some seedy plot. No, wait. Melanie was a straight arrow. Wasn’t she? He hoped to never find himself in a situation where Jake was shoving a rubber mallet into his hands, spittle flying as Jake yelled at him that truth was beauty and beauty was truth, so go ahead, what are you waiting for, pound the goddamn truth out of her!

  The Land Rover had a powerful engine, but Marty drove home so slowly that he might as well have walked.

  33

  Willows half sat on the window ledge, watching Sean eagerly devour the pizza he’d just brought him from Settebello. Willows had just learned that Sean was making steady progress, but that no decision had been made as to when he might be discharged. Sean had been told about the connection between his shooting and the Harold Wismer kidnapping, the perforated Rolls. He’d listened intently as Willows told him about Harold’s wife, Joan, and about Melanie Martel and her switchblade-toting boyfriend, Marty.