It slid off him. Most things would, including falling pianos. He was a big man from the waist up, with a dollop of coiled hair on a head that was otherwise bald and a big belly and melons of muscle on his upper arms under a shirt a size too small, but his legs were bent and withered as if by a childhood disease. He could be tipped off them if he didn’t get in the first shot. I steered Thelma away.
“Job’s over, angel,” I said. “Hunt heads if you want.”
“Maybe I’ll just drink. I get caught working this place they mail my legs to Cincinnati. This a union shop.” She left me for the bar.
You never know what to expect in those places. Some of them look like any other saloon, others like an Arab carhop’s wet dream. Naked girls in chains for barmaids are not unknown. Usually, though, the mere prospect of a place to sluice down when the lights go up in the legitimate spots is enough to draw cash customers. This one was set up like a meeting hall, with a bare plank floor and lunchroom tables arranged in parallel rows and folding wooden chairs on both sides, and that’s probably what it was during the day. But at night all but the fluorescent ceiling tubes on the ends went out and the table at the far end blossomed thick glasses and bottles with off-brand labels.
The room had started out as adjoining apartments with a common wall. Nothing had been done to cover the seam where the two color schemes met. About sixty people were seated elbow to elbow at the tables and standing in clots in the corners, fingering their glasses and bobbing their heads in time with the music throbbing out of the ghetto-blaster on the bar. The whites of their eyes glittered like scattered bits of glass in the gloom.
They knew I was there, of course. You can fill all the tambourines you want with talk about how we’re all the same under the color, but that jungle sense dies kicking. I moved to the bar and asked for a double Scotch rocks.
The man behind the bar wore his hair in Stevie Wonder cornrows and a moustache and beard that looked like soot smeared around his mouth. He had on a white shirt with the tail out over a black sweatshirt. The black rubber butt of a revolver stuck out of his pants where the shirt split in front. “You with Thelma?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Kay.” He fisted some ice out of a portable cooler into a glass and poured from a fresh bottle. “Five bucks,” he said, pushing the glass my way.
I laid a twenty on the long table. While he made change from a pasteboard shirt box full of curling bills I said, “Barry Stackpole been in lately?”
“Don’t hear much names back here.”
“You’d remember him. He’s white, limps a little. Wears a glove on his right hand most of the time and he doesn’t use the hand much.”
He took a five and a ten out of the box, smoothed them, folded them, and poked them into his shirt pocket, watching me. I shrugged.
“Try that corner” he said.
I didn’t know how I had missed seeing his sandy head when I came in. He was sitting at the end of the far table with his back to the bar and his Dutch leg propped on the rung of a chair on the other side. Most drinkers seek the dark and he had that fluorescent-washed table all to himself. I started that way with my drink.
“Say, man?”
I looked back at the bartender.
“No refills, man. Drink up and take your buddy and split. I got no insurance against breakage.”
“That fifteen should cover the fixtures.”
Evidently the hat check girl was off tonight. I set my hat and drink on the table next to Barry and sat down. He didn’t look at me. He had a glass half-full of amber liquid in front of him with lumps of ice floating in it and he was playing with a flat tin ashtray, pushing down the lip with his thumb so that it flipped up and landed upside-down on the table with a racket like raining hubcaps. The table was littered with butts and flakes of ash. I watched him do it a couple of times.
“I’m disappointed,” I said then. “I expected to find you face down in a pile of empty shot glasses. Instead it’s tiddlywinks.”
He looked at me for the first time, focused, and grinned baggily. “Hey, Amos. I’m trying to get it to land right side up. Bastards loaded it.”
He was farther gone than I’d thought at first. His speech was okay—if anything it got more precise when he was tanked—but his head swayed and there was a glaze over his eyes that turned them from crisp blue to murky gray. While I was looking at him he picked up his glass in his right hand and drank from it. He wasn’t wearing his white cotton glove. The skin was shiny where the third and fourth fingers ended at the second knuckles.
I said, “I haven’t seen you use that arm in years.”
“I’ve been exercising. A doctor told me I’m using muscles meant for something else. He didn’t approve. They don’t approve of anything, and wind up jogging into the paths of butchers’ vans at forty.”
“You doing anything with it besides bending it?”
“My column’s set through next week. I’m on vacation.”
“What about the book?”
“The book’s deader than Lazarus. Take a necromancer to raise it.” He swirled the liquid in his glass, watching the lumps of ice collide. “This is honest liquor.”
“It’s stewed barbed wire.”
“What I mean. No phony aging or blending or storing in musty kegs in some Mick’s basement. Just the quick burn and that feeling you’ve got the world on your belt. Irene send you?”
“Yeah.”
“I guess she said she loves me or something.”
“She said to tell you goodbye.”
“Yeah?”
The conversation was going nowhere on a tankful of fumes. I looked around. The bass was still buzzing out of the portable radio on the bar. A pretty brown girl in a white jumpsuit with her straight black hair in bangs was standing in front of it, moving unconsciously with the beat and listening to a party in denims telling her about his childhood. You would sneak glances at her over your glass, admiring her trim lines and the way her white teeth flashed when she laughed, and then you would walk out behind her and she’d glance back and give you some hip action and the rest would be all business. I wondered what had happened to Thelma.
I said, “I didn’t know you were still seeing doctors.”
“Ongoing thing, chum.” Barry fingered the ashtray. “Until they pat me in my pasted-together face with the well-known instrument. I go in, say hello to the pretty nurse-receptionist—they’re all pretty these days, and none of them dates patients—show the man in the white blazer how my stump is doing, pick up my new prescription, and blow. Make an appointment for next week on your way out, Mr. Stackpole.”
“Prescription for what?”
“Headaches, pal. You ever try to chew a piece of tinfoil with a fresh silver filling in a back tooth? That’s my head when it’s cold or rainy, or when it’s muggy or snowing or when I flush the toilet and forget to jiggle the handle. Not that the aching ever goes away. It’s there, like Muzak. Our skulls weren’t built to accommodate steel plates.”
“I’ve got a papercut on my trigger finger,” I said. “Haven’t shot anybody all week.”
He grinned down at his drink. “Okay. No violins today.”
We drank. The overhead light threw pale double shadows on the table.
“This dump remind you of someplace?” Barry asked.
“A high school cafeteria with ethyl added.”
“There was a place in Saigon just after the Cambodia bugout. We got shitface there. I left for home the next day. What was it called?”
“Minh’s.”
“That sounds like it.”
“They were all called Minh’s,” I said. “And it didn’t look anything like this. There were candles on the walls and a fishnet behind the bar.”
“I didn’t say they looked alike. Half the clientele was Cong. They made your back crawl. You feel it?”
“At least twice a week, and in better places than this.”
“What it looks like,” he started, and stopped. “I
did the program, you know.”
“Program?”
“A-goddamn-A. Meetings in church basements and like you said high school crematoriums.”
“Cafeterias,” I said. “No, you were closer.”
“All the meeting rooms look the same. Long tables like this and folding chairs and fluorescent lights and scrawny old ladies with rhinestone glasses and blond streaks in their hair, not at all what you expect of a burned-out alkie. It can’t compare with a redwood bar and rosy light from a Budweiser sign and a juke and a twelve-year-old bartender in a red coat and bow tie who calls you sir and are you ready to go again. If they put the guys who design bars to work on the rooms where AA meets, we’d lick alcohol abuse in a month.”
“Except for funny cocktail napkins. They can lose the funny cocktail napkins.”
“Funny cocktail napkins are the key to the whole thing. That’s the ridiculous note that makes the rest of the symphony sublime, like the flaw the Chinese used to build into their porcelains. Boxer shorts with evening dress. Without funny cocktail napkins the whole beautiful plan falls to shit.”
“I can see you’ve given this a lot of thought.”
“Mostly I’ve been sitting here wondering if I should blow off the top of my head like Hemingway or just climb into a warm tub and do a vent job on my wrists.”
I gave that all the space it deserved, sipping my drink. “Any of this have to do with Irene?”
“No, I tried her first. When she didn’t bore me to death I figured I was harder to kill than that. Maybe I’m all right. They say people who do it don’t talk about it.”
“They’re wrong as usual. A thing like that generally takes a pep talk. This personal, or you want to make a statement?”
“Forget I said anything. Just another lush in love with his own funeral. Tell Irene I’m okay. Having hot flashes.”
“Irene’s gone.”
“I forgot.”
I was aware then of the room stirring. I’ve gone back over it since and I’m sure the patrons were moving before the first blow. That jungle sense again. Then the noise started, like gunshots, and I went over in my chair, knocking Barry out of his, which took some doing because he was sitting there loose like a sack of mud. But I hit the floor on top of him and clawed my gun out of its belt holster. There was a lot of yelling and running and someone in the room shouted something about the police in a proprietary tone and then I knew the noises weren’t shots but the reports of a sledgehammer striking the heavy door.
4
“CAN’T BE A RAID,” Barry was muttering. “They hit the place last week.”
“You can’t trust cops. Can you walk?”
“Is my leg still on?”
I looked and told him it was. I leathered the gun and untangled my own legs from my folding chair and got a double handful of Barry’s jacket and hauled him up with me. At least he was helping and not short on bones like some drunks I’d handled. The crowd, which had moved instinctively toward the door when the racket started, was now surging in the other direction as shreds of paneling began to fly. We moved with it. A yellow shirt with a Superfly haircut was standing in front of the window with a .45 pistol in one hand and a gold badge in the other, telling everyone to stay in his place and keep his hands in sight. He was one of the bunch I’d come in with. It’s an old trick; get inside and if you’re not out in ten minutes it’s assumed you’ve observed a buy after hours and the time has come to go in with the hammers. He looked at me with Barry hanging on.
“Maybe next time you spend your mornings squeezing cantaloupes in Greektown,” he said.
I said, “I’ve got to get my friend to a doctor. He’s sick.”
He glanced at Barry. The whites of the cop’s eyes were bluish and he had an old burn scar on his right cheek, crackly looking like the skin of a roast duckling. Something fluttered across his features then. Recognition? Barry’s picture appeared atop his column daily. The cop said, “He should do his drinking in better places.”
The door came apart then with a noise like ripping cloth. I saw the bouncer go down with a plainclothesman kneeling on his back and more suits and uniforms tumbling through the torn space. A big sergeant had the bartender spread-eagled on his palms against the wall behind the bar and was reading him his rights with the bartender’s gun screwed into the nape of its owner’s neck. The cop in the yellow shirt moved his eyes that way. I hit him with the room.
It wasn’t bad, considering I’d had to use my left while supporting Barry with my other arm. I caught him square on the corner of the jaw and he dropped like a ripe peach. The leather folder containing his badge flopped to the floor. I picked it up. He was lying on top of his gun but I didn’t need that.
The invaders had fanned out and started breaking the crowd into sections with that combination of arm-wrenching and bellowing through bared teeth that always seems to wind up “proceeded to separate the offenders” on the report. I put Barry’s head through the open window and shoved at his rump with both hands until he got the idea. Climbing over he banged an ankle against the window frame with a loud crack and I winced, but he kept going and I remembered that ankle was fiberglass. I followed him out.
The cool air smelled funny after the smoke and fumes inside. We were standing on a fire escape that still had some red paint clinging to the rust, over an alley with a police cruiser parked in it splashing red and blue light over the brick and asphalt. We started down. Barry supported himself on the leprous railing.
“Freeze! Police!”
I looked at a shiny visor at the bottom of the stairs with a square beardless jaw underneath and a revolver gawking at me in two outstretched hands. I flashed the gold buzzer.
“You in tandem?” I barked.
The barrel pointed skyward. “Sir?”
“Oh, for—you got a partner?”
“No, sir.”
“Go around front and give them a hand. I’ve got an injured officer here. Move!”
He hesitated for less than five seconds, then obeyed, his footsteps swallowed in darkness. He was a month out of the academy, tops.
Barry and I skidded the rest of the way down the iron stairs and went up the alley behind the uniform. The usual crowd of civic observers was gathered in front questioning the parentage of the officers escorting the first of the handcuffed parties out the door into the county wagon. I let the folder and badge slide down my leg into the mill of feet and helped Barry into my car on the passenger’s side. I was losing him fast now that the physical part was over. Getting the door closed without sacrificing any more of his limbs involved propping him up with one hand and then withdrawing it and slamming the door fast, like closing a closet full of bowling balls. If the latch didn’t hold I’d be scraping him off the street after the first turn. As I browsed the front of the Olds through the crowd into the traffic lane I glimpsed a big black detective in a green corduroy suit frowning at the car in the rearview mirror. Probably looking for a busted taillight or an expired plate. They are always working.
5
TRANSPORTING BARRY FROM the car into the house was one for the Egyptians. I opened the garage and drove in and left him dozing in the seat while I got the side door open and turned on the lights. He tumbled out when I pulled on his door but I caught him under the arms. I locked my hands around his chest and tugged. He kept saying, “Wait, wait a minute.” I didn’t have a drunk’s minute; no one has, except another drunk. I backwalked him to the door, leaving a double black line from his heels on the concrete. He was ten pounds lighter than I, but he kept wanting to melt through my grip and I had to stop every couple of seconds to hike him up. His jacket and shirt were bunched under his arms. The bee-sting I had between my shoulder blades from the long drive north spread to my discs and the bad Scotch was thrumming in my skull. Walker, you need a vacation.
The trip through the kitchen into the living room was more of the same. I let him down once to rest and get some bedding on the sofa. He was snoring when I came back. Finally
I sat him on the cushions and lowered his top half and raised his legs parallel and peeled off his shoes. I had the right one off before I remembered that one wouldn’t make any difference to him. The artificial foot was a glossy flesh color and looked like a shoe tree, attached by a ball and socket to the leg. I wondered if he was in the habit of taking the leg off when he slept, then decided it didn’t matter and spread the blanket over him. Tomorrow I’d start taking home stray cats. The neighborhood brats would call me Crazy Amos and throw things when I pedaled past jangling my bicycle bell.
I popped three aspirins, switched off all the lights and locked all the doors and turned on the shower. My suit smelled of cigarette smoke and Toledo. I hung it up for the cleaners and looked at my face in the clouded mirror and then killed the shower and went to bed. I’d have fallen asleep in the stall and drowned under the spray, but that didn’t worry me half so much as not being able to think of a good reason not to.
It was still dark out when I heard bumping noises in the living room. I lay listening for a while, the way you do. The luminous dial on the electric alarm clock said I’d been asleep forty-five minutes. It didn’t feel like any more than forty-four. I got up and fumbled into my robe and slippers. The light found Barry standing in the middle of the room with his knees against the coffee table and a litter of the usual coffee table junk around his feet. His hair stuck out in spikes and half his shirttail hung down under his jacket like a comic drunk’s in a nightclub act. His eyes weren’t comic. He looked scared as hell.
“Where’s the bathroom?”
“That way. Want help?”
He shook his head and turned and wobbled the way I’d pointed. While he was inside I went into the kitchen and plugged in the coffeemaker. It had been perking for a couple of minutes when the bathroom door opened. He had tucked in his shirt and smoothed back his hair and his eyes weren’t so scared. He saw me sitting in the easy chair and said, “I guess we did some talking before.”
“Don’t draw that old gag on me, Barry,” I said. “You remember the serial number on your family’s first television set.”
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