New Title 1

by Lestewka, Patrick

  “Have a nice stay, Mr. Grant.”

  “Do my best.”

  Pearson International Airport was an architectural nightmare: Roman-style granite columns lacking any practical purpose rose to an arched ceiling adorned with a nationalist mural—fir trees blending into buck-toothed beavers melting into the cascading waters of Niagara Falls ceding to the shimmering glow of the Northern Lights. The structural schizophrenia continued in the Arrivals area, where steel pillars were again employed to no functional purpose, except perhaps to divert attention from a sculpture of what may have been a killer whale, a crushed ’67 Dodge Dart, or anything in between.

  Oddy bypassed the baggage carousel and made his way through a pair of frosted-glass sliding doors onto the main concourse. He walked to the outdoor taxi stand, buttoning his buckskin jacket against the cold.

  “Chilly oot there, eh?” The taxi driver was stereotypically-attired: floppy cabbie hat and checkered lumberjack shirt. “Where to?”

  “The Sheraton,” Oddy said, mildly surprised the cabbie hadn’t tacked on “Mac.”

  “You got it, Mac.”

  Oddy leaned back. The cabbie stole furtive glances at him through the rearview mirror: black and bumpy and bald, broad as a meat locker with a neatly-trimmed goatee, whiskers shockingly white. Thick lips, large white teeth. Eyes close-set, but their closeness did not accord him the look of dopeyness that characterized a high-profile athlete the cabbie had once driven. Wearing khakis and a pearl-snap shirt, a buckskin jacket the Toronto winter would slice through like razor blades.

  “In town on business or pleasure?”

  “Not sure,” Oddy answered honestly.

  The cabbie drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “First time in the city?”

  Oddy nodded, staring out over the bleak cityscape. Grey clouds hung so low Oddy was half-convinced he could roll down the window and grab a thickened handful.

  “Lots to see, lots to do,” the cabbie continued. “You like plays? The Phantom of the Opera just opened.” The cab hit a pothole. The bobble-headed Dalmatian on the dashboard bobbed accordingly. “The fucking Phantom. City’s getting some class.”

  “Huh,” Oddy said noncommittally. His mind was occupied with other thoughts, specifically, what he might expect over the next few hours.

  He didn’t need to be told it was a scenario out of a schlocky B-movie: a mysterious stranger with a queer name—Anton Grosevoir? Come on—requesting an opportunity to discuss—what? But Oddy didn’t have any enemies (at least not any Canadian ones), and the location was safe: nobody was going to get whacked in a witness-packed bar in a busy downtown area. Fifty grand for an afternoon’s work, work that didn’t involve wearing a mask or shoving a gun up someone’s nose. Easy money. Ludicrously easy.

  “Some nice museums, too,” the cabbie droned on. Oddy exhaled loudly through his nostrils in an attempt to convey his utter disinterest. If the cabbie noticed, he was unfazed. “The Royal Ontario Museum is a good one. Lots of pretty paintings. And there’s an indoor botanical garden, if you’re keen on flowers’n such…”

  Ten interminable minutes later the cab pulled into the Sheraton’s horseshoe-shaped drive. A bellhop opened the hotel’s thick glass door, ushering Oddy into the opulent lobby. The clerks, two girls with cute prairie faces wearing pinstriped gray uniforms, regarded him with pasted-on smiles. He winked. They averted their eyes, giggling.

  The bar was called Canary Isle, a name Oddy felt would attract homosexuals like mosquitoes to a bug-zapper. The décor was neo-something, very trendy, clear Plexiglas bar threaded with colored neon lights—green, purple, and hot pink running through lengths of flexible PVC tubing. The stools were also Plexiglas, seats stenciled with the initials CI in gold lettering. A Muzak version of Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven is a Place on Earth” filtered through recessed speakers. It seemed to Oddy an environment catering to gold-diggers, fledgling adulterers, and poseurs of every stripe.

  The bartender was a blonde beefcake in a vanilla silk suit. “What can I get you?”

  “Beer you got on tap?”

  “Molson Canadian, Labatt’s Blue, Coors, Coors Light, Budweiser, Connors Best Bitter, Kilkenny Red, Rickard’s Red, Clancy’s Red, Propeller, Garrison’s—”

  “Canadian’s fine,” Oddy said to ensure he got a drink before nightfall.

  The beer arrived in a tapered glass with a tiny and utterly useless handle, like on a teacup. Oddy was somewhat relieved he hadn’t smuggled a firearm: the urge to shoot up Canary Isle was overwhelming. Who knew Canadians could be so pretentious?

  Oddy scanned the room. A man sat in a plush booth, his back turned away from the bar. A woman and a man, the woman dazzling, the man hideously ugly but wearing a platinum Rolex, talked in hushed tones at a corner table. Another man sat on the far side of the oval-shaped bar, everything except his Blue Jays cap obscured by a central display of liquor bottles.

  Oddy sipped his beer and imagined what Mr. Anton Grosevoir might look like: he pictured a remarkably tall and spindly man with watery joints, a marionette cut loose of its strings. Oddy figured he’d slap the check down, get it signed, listen to Grosevoir for as long as he cared to, then hit the bricks.

  A guy sat down a few stools away. Oddy cut a look at him: same age or perhaps a few years younger, a paunch he carried well, tanned, a gray-streaked ponytail and a t-shirt reading “HERE’S THE BEEF” with an arrow pointing down. He ordered a double Stolichnaya and tonic, then told the bartender to fuck the tonic. The beefcake barman copped perplexity.

  “Don’t want you to stick your pecker in the seltzer spritzer,” the guy said. “Just deep-six the tonic, okay?”

  The guy had an accent in conflict with his tan: Upper Plain States, Nebraska or Minnesota. Oddy squinted at him; he seemed recognizable in a distant, unreal way, as if Oddy had once dreamt him.

  A woman with blood-red lipstick, gold hoop earrings, a white miniskirt, and fuck-me pumps strutted into the bar, seating herself at the ugly man’s table. She nodded and smiled at the other woman and soon their hands were playing over the man’s vulturish shoulders and wet-noodle arms as if he were Adonis himself.

  “There anything money can’t buy?” The ponytailed man said, eyeing the display.

  “What it can’t buy I don’t need.” Oddy found himself smiling for reasons he couldn’t explain. “Real pretty ladies, though.”

  Ponytail shrugged, as though he’d seen so many beautiful women the gender itself now bored him. He pulled a soft pack of Lucky Strikes from his jacket and asked the bartender for a matchbook. “Filthy habit,” he said.

  “We all got our vices, son.”

  Ponytail looked at him funny. He offered the pack.

  “I quit,” Oddy said. “But that was my brand.”

  “Name’s a mislabeling,” Ponytail said. “Nothing lucky about these fuckers. Been smoking them since…” Ponytail rolled the cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other and said, “Since too long.” A disgusted snort. “Lost my willpower somewhere.”

  Another man entered the bar. Short and thickly-muscled, dressed in a charcoal suit by Brooks Brothers, right arm in a paisley-patterned sling. His eyes locked with Oddy’s for a moment. He frowned, opened his mouth, closed it, then seated himself in one of the booths.

  “My boyfriend’s back and there’s gonna be trouble…”

  Oddy swiveled on his stool to look at the singer. Ponytail was looking back at him, smiling slightly.

  “Hey-la, hey-la, my boyfriend’s back…” sang Ponytail.

  It slammed together in Oddy’s head with all the snap and flicker of billiard balls following a crisp break. He stared at Ponytail, at the crow’s feet and wrinkles, searching out the young, recognizable face beneath the accumulated years. “Tony… Jesus… Tripwire?”

  Tripwire slammed his palm on the bar. “I can’t believe it—Oddy, Christ! I never would’ve figured except you calling me ‘son.’ So I thought—”

  “You’d sing that trademark tune of yours�
��”

  “And if it was you, you’d understand, and if it wasn’t—”

  “I’d just think you were some nutjob who got off singing in bars!”

  They shook hands, then, needing something more, chucked each other on the shoulder. He took the stool next to Oddy, his head shaking, a goofy grin on his face.

  “This is too much. It’s been, what…?”

  “Twenty years.”

  “Twenty?” Tripwire’s shoulders slumped. “Jesus. Half a lifetime.”

  “You look good,” Oddy said. “A bronzed god.”

  Tripwire looked relieved. “You think? Man, it’s a miracle, then—haven’t exercised in a decade. You, though—what’d you do, swallow a goddamn refrigerator?”

  Oddy smiled. “Clean living, son.”

  “And steroids?”

  “Clean living.”

  They ordered another round. At the corner table, the ugly rich man swore loudly and kneaded the women’s thighs under the table.

  “So,” Oddy said, “what you been up to?”

  “Pretty broad question, Sarge,” Tripwire said, slipping effortlessly into their old dynamic. “Job-wise…” He coughed into a cupped palm. “I direct adult features.”

  Oddy cocked an eyebrow.

  “Ah, fuck it,” Tripwire said. “I make pornos.”

  “Ah,” Oddy said, considering. “Well, are they good? I mean… artistic?”

  “Well, we’re not talking Fellini or anything, but…sure, they’ve got merit.”

  “Anything I might have seen?”

  “Ever watch Dirty Sanchez Versus the Anal Virgins of the Sierra Madré?”

  “Must’ve missed that one. Sure sounds artistic.”

  “Oh, it was.” Tripwire rolled his eyes. “And you?”

  “Been robbing banks the past five years.”

  It was Tripwire’s turn to cock an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

  “Last one was a balls-up. I shut it down.”

  “Wait a sec.” Tripwire covered his mouth with his hand, eyes staring down in concentration, as if consulting an internal Rolodex. “I read about a botched job in, where was it…Washington, I think. Was that you?”

  Oddy shrugged.

  “Holy shit. There were, what, four bodies or something? A security guard, a couple cops—”

  “Yeah,” Oddy said. “A guy on the crew went Section-8. Total apeshit.”

  “Fuuuuck,” Tripwire said. “So, you up here ’till the heat dies down?”

  Oddy shifted on his stool and said, “Not really sure why I’m here, son.”

  “Makes two of us.”

  At the corner table, one of the women stood abruptly. She shouted something at the hideous rich man and threw a vodka gimlet in his face. The man cackled and grabbed at her ass, greasy black hair plastered to his scalp in three long ropes. The woman took a step back and kicked at him. Displaying perhaps the most grace he ever had or ever would, the man caught her foot deftly, doffed her satin pump, and tried to suck her toes off. The woman squealed as his thick pink lips engulfed her big toe.

  The man in the Brooks Brothers suit exited his booth, crossed to the corner table, grabbed the toe-sucker by his collar, spun him around, and punched him in the face, all with one hand. Mr. Toe-sucker folded like a Mongolian lawn chair and went down under the Plexiglas table. The woman frantically swabbed her toes with cocktail napkins. Mr. Toe-sucker struggled to sit up but the other woman kicked him in the nose. He went down again, head hitting a table leg with a hollow sound. The white knight laughed. Oddy and Tripwire exchanged glances.

  “Couldn’t be—”

  “No fucking way,” Tripwire said. “Danny? Hey!”

  Zippo turned and saw the huge black man he’d noticed on the way in sitting beside a Coppertoned longhair wearing an obscene t-shirt. Both of them were grinning like goons.

  “Get your ass over here,” the black dude said.

  “You got a problem?” Danny pointed at Mr. Toe-sucker. “Want some of what he got?”

  The beatnik leaned forward, feet hooked around the stool legs, arms outstretched.

  “Danny,” he said in a chiding tone. “Zippo. Don’t leave us hanging, baby.”

  Zippo’s mouth fell open. “Tripwire? Get the fuck out of here.” He took a step back, squinting at the black guy like he was staring directly at the sun. “Od…Oddy?”

  “The one and only, son.”

  “I can’t believe…how long?” Zippo brushed off the woman’s grateful half-embrace and muttered, “No problem, toots,” before making a beeline for his long-lost unit members.

  Oddy pulled him into a rough embrace; Zippo sucked air through his teeth as Oddy’s shoulder pressed against his injured arm. When Tripwire hugged him, Zippo felt the ex-demo-man’s beefy paunch pressing against his own toned abs.

  They relocated to a booth. When asked what he did for a living, Zippo ran a finger across his upper lip and said: “I clean up messes.” Oddy said he didn’t know many janitors who wore thousand-dollar suits. They ordered another round, Zippo taking a double-shot of Dewars.

  “This is some coincidence,” Tripwire said after awhile. The question hung.

  “Anton Grosevoir,” Oddy said.

  “Think I heard that name before,” said Zippo.

  Tripwire nodded. “Fifty G’s to meet in a certain upscale bar got a familiar ring to it?”

  Oddy patted his breast pocket. “Check’s right here.”

  Their drinks arrived. Each man took a long swallow. Their minds were abuzz with questions: Who knew of the connection between them? Why, knowing this connection, would someone seek a reunion? What would they have to do to earn fifty-thousand dollars? And who the hell was Anton Grosevoir?

  Tripwire’s over-stimulated mind concocted a ludicrous revenge-fantasy: a dirt-poor Vietnamese village boy had witnessed an atrocity the unit committed in the heat of battle, killing his father or mother perhaps. Later, the boy flees to North America, becomes fantastically wealthy, and concocts an elaborate scheme to avenge himself on the men who’d ruined his life. Ridiculous, yes. Paranoid, definitely. But beyond the realm of possibility…?

  “So,” Oddy said, “Anyone got the slightest idea of how this might play out?”

  Zippo took a Cuban cigar from his inside pocket. He snipped the tip off between his teeth and said, “Plan A: This Grosevoir cat signs our checks.” He spat the nub into an crystal ashtray. “Plan B: He refuses and I floss my teeth with his guts.” Zippo’s tone suggested Plan A and Plan B possessed equal appeal.

  “Some things never change,” Oddy said.

  “Fair’s fair, Sarge.” Zippo exhaled a quivering smoke ring. “Some guy’s going to drag our asses out here, we better get paid.”

  “He isn’t just going to hand over fifty large for nothing,” Tripwire said. “Cough up that kind of green for a meeting?”

  Oddy said, “A deal’s a deal. Letter doesn’t mention anything beyond a meeting.”

  “And woe betide the fuck who welshes on me,” said the hitman.

  Tripwire slugged back the last of his Stoli and said, “Just us, though?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, our unit. Only us three? What about Crosshairs—”

  “Last time I saw Crosshairs, he wasn’t looking so shit-hot,” Zippo said quietly.

  “But he survived,” Tripwire said. “I got a letter from him, way back. And Answer—”

  “It’s been twenty years,” Oddy said. “People go missing. People die.”

  “I’m not sure Answer will ever die,” Zippo said, “because I’m not positive that fucker was ever alive.”

  Oddy smiled. “I used to say that boy could make Satan himself roll over.”

  “Ice water pumping through those veins,” Tripwire agreed.

  Oddy said, “Or brimstone.”

  Another man entered the bar. Six-feet but a stooped posture made him look shorter, wearing tattered corduroys, Asics tennis shoes, a dirty sweatshirt with a picture of an overflowing slot mac
hine above the caption “Everybody scores in Vegas!” His features were draped by black bangs grown long and combed down. Despite this attempted camouflage, Oddy could tell there was something wrong: the man’s face looked unnatural, like a burn victim’s.

  “The last time I saw Crosshairs—” Tripwire started.