by Jeff Johnson
“So the police were outside the house this morning because of all this?”
“Yep. Dollars to donuts they’re outside this restaurant right now.”
“Well, holy shit,” Suzanne declared, sitting back.
“I know. Exciting, isn’t it.”
“So.” She was thinking, her eyes distant. “So this is what you’ve been working on?”
“Yep. And I won. Except for the strip club, and I even have a plan to get out of that.”
Suzanne was silent, the wheels in her head spinning.
“What are you thinking?” I asked. She refocused on me and an all-over smile spread across her face, the sun rising over an ocean of flowers.
“I’m thinking that while the peach cobbler is cooking it would be a good time to practice my blow job skills. And I really do need the practice.”
“Check, please!”
At exactly eight a.m. my cell phone rang. I sat up quickly, confused, the remnants of a dream about tree houses quickly fading. The phone was on the nightstand next to me, so I snagged it and answered before it woke Suzanne.
“Holland,” I whispered.
“Good morning, Darby!” The Armenian sounded extremely chipper, which was never a good thing. He’d been thinking about our deal all night, so he was hours of mad scheming ahead of me. “The transmissions are in the air! The air! I mentioned the photo shoot to my daughter and she is very excited. Very happy. So let’s schedule that for next week. It would be best, I was thinking, if you could arrange for the flowers. I also want to set up a meeting about our project! The investors! Very hush-hush of course, but now that we are on the road to partnership, I will leave the specifics up to you.” Meaning, get on setting up an expensive night out for him and his friends.
“Sounds good,” I said, rising. I was so relieved that Oleg was on his way to Russia that I could have kissed the Armenian. I walked into the kitchen. “How about stargazer lilies? Or wild roses? Maybe a giant collection of assorted whatever-looks-good, sort of play it on what she wants to wear.”
“Whatever the photographer can afford,” the Armenian said magnanimously. “If he pulls this off, who knows? He may be able to go professional. I love to help the artist! I love it!”
“I’ll let him know,” I said. “Meetingwise, my schedule should shake out in a day or two.”
“Take your time,” he said generously. “I’ll wait for your call. These people, the investors. They are very big people.” Meaning, spare no expense.
“That’s great news,” I lied. “Simply fabulous. Way to get it done.”
“What. I. Do.” He emphasized every word.
“OK, then. Let me make some calls, see what chef has been in the news.”
“You go, Darby! Call me later and have a great day, a wonderful day!”
I put my phone on the counter. Waking up to that kind of interaction, as much of a relief as it was, made me want to go lie down and try everything again. I went back to the bedroom door. Suzanne, I knew by then, was a habitual naked sleeper who gradually shed the garments she had gone to bed in throughout the night. She also had a limited ability to keep the blankets on her, and she preferred my pillow over hers, even if we switched around four a.m. She was the worst bed hog imaginable. I walked over and pulled the comforter over her body. In the short time I’d been up, an arm as long as my leg had drifted right through the center of where I’d been sleeping, along with one knee.
After I got the coffee going, I lit a cigarette and sat down at the dining room table. For the first time in the longest while, I wasn’t plotting or scheming or floundering in a river of vengeful rage. I felt happy, and that, of course, made me feel slightly paranoid.
When I peered through the blinds, nothing obvious leapt out at me. The block wasn’t cordoned off. Cheddar Box wasn’t standing on the porch pointing a gun at my door. A helicopter hadn’t crashed in the street out front. Instead, some watery morning sunlight had made it all the way down the miracle distance to the surface of things, and the world was drippy and tinged with gold, dabbed with emerald winter grass. The street was a hard to soft silver. Pretty.
The brown Ford on the corner didn’t belong to any of the neighbors, but plenty of people got drunk at the bars down the street and left their cars scattered around the neighborhood overnight. I’d leave it at that.
It was cold in the house, so I turned on the heater, snuck back into the bedroom and put on my last clean pair of jeans, then went back out and poured some coffee and sat down at the dining room table for a leisurely second smoke. I could have found out the date, and the day of the week for that matter, by stealing the neighbor’s paper, but it was too nice a morning to start sneaking around first thing, so I turned on my big antique AM radio instead. It popped and hissed as something inside it slowly heated up, and then, with some fiddling of the dial, I got classical.
The cats hadn’t paid any attention to me so far, but the crackle and ozone smell drew them out of the office, which they considered their formal bedroom. My bed was their daybed. The couch was naps only.
I petted Chops for a minute and decided he was getting fat. Buttons came shambling over for some love while the getting was good and I decided he had whorish qualities.
I was bored.
Sketching was out. I didn’t have the creative juice at the moment. I realized that I had to get my nascent and fragile nugget of inner peace outside and build on it before the dark thoughts came and the paranoia grew, so I decided to pester Suzanne. Waking a woman is a skill. I’d learned that I could never get along too well with a woman who woke up irritated and had to be left alone until she built up enough steam to feign politeness. But one thing was for sure—bringing them coffee was usually a good idea. I poured her some and padded into the bedroom. The entire bed was hers now. The comforter was mostly on the floor.
“Coffee,” I said softly.
“I’ve been waiting for coffee in bed for a thousand years,” she mumbled into her arm. She rolled over and blinked. “Who are you and where did you get those pants?”
“I’m bored, so I thought I’d wake you up,” I said. I handed her the coffee and she sat up on one elbow and sipped.
“Bad as your cats,” she commented. “How long have you been awake? Hours?”
“’Bout twenty minutes.”
“Well.” She smiled and beckoned languidly. “C’mere.”
I sat down and she stretched and ended up with a foot in my lap. It was almost as long as my forearm. She yawned impressively.
“I have absolutely nothing to do today,” she said.
“Me fuckin’ neither.”
“It’s Friday. We could hit the coast for the weekend, do the BBQ hotel thing. I’m up for it if you are.”
I thought about it for half a second.
“I’ll make breakfast before we hit the road,” I said. “Bacon? Eggs? Leftover peach cobbler!”
She nodded with a grin and I bounced off the bed and went into the kitchen. There was still half a pan of cobbler left, so I turned on the oven and put it in. A picnic lunch on the way out there would be a fine thing. Fried chicken maybe, with potato salad and artsy beer.
“Can you use your fancy phone and track us down a hotel with all the stuff we need?” I called, pouring myself more coffee.
“Already on it,” she called back. She padded out of the bedroom in her underwear, playing her finger over the screen of her iPhone. “Check this out.” She held it up.
Jacuzzi. Fireplace. Balcony. Bistro next door.
“Right on.”
“I’ll see if they have complimentary sparking wine and check on the robe situation.” She was calling them when my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, but there was a good chance it was good news.
“Hello?”
“Darby?” It was Dmitri. “You told me to call. I sent Jenny to look in that room on the end. That guy is gone. And I need more of my money.”
“Are you sure? About the guy?”
&nb
sp; “Yeah.”
“Well, fuck. Thanks.” I hung up.
Santiago Espinoza, aka Cheddar Box, was awake and probably pissed as hell. Hiding Dmitri in the same motel only seemed like random good luck. Not only had it given me disposable surveillance, but once he was gone Dmitri would be safe enough, since Cheddar Box would be unlikely to return.
I thought about it. Cheddar would know as soon as he used his phone that Oleg was missing. There was my note, so he’d know I’d had something to do with it. It was time for confrontation, and for that I needed to flash a bat signal, indicating my goodwill, and then give him a few days to calm down.
I went back into the bedroom and finished getting dressed. Suzanne finished with our reservations and lay back down, watching me.
“I’m going to go get us some supplies,” I said. “Cobbler’s in the oven.”
“Over the fences again?”
“I’m driving. Going right out the front door.” I finished lacing up my boots. “For some reason I don’t think they’re out there anymore.”
“Why?”
“I dunno. If my suspicions are correct, their attention is otherwise occupied. They know I’m here, so if they wanted me I’d be downtown already. Right now they have bigger fish to fry.”
Suzanne smiled. “Sounds like you have it all figured out.”
“I fucking hope so,” I said. I scooped up my wallet and keys. My ball bearing was sitting there and we both looked at it. I put it into my pocket and her eyes crinkled.
“I was thinking chicken. Potato salad. Beer. Maybe some of those big deli pickles. A lunch-type thing at one of the scenic pull-offs.”
“Don’t pick out a hibachi without me,” she said. I leaned over her and kissed her right boob.
“Back in a flash. Don’t let the cats out.”
I got my phone and my cigarettes as I passed the dining room table. My jacket was still on the back of the chair, so I swept it up and put it on. The fat check and Dmitri’s five thousand were in the pockets, so I really hoped I wasn’t about to endure a shakedown. I could always say I was on the way to the bank, but no one ever bought that.
It was still nice outside, but there was an edge to the cold left over from yesterday, and the clouds that covered most of the sky were of the heavy, frigid kind. I lit a smoke and studied the street. There was nothing going on other than the brown Ford, which looked empty. I decided to end any speculation and went down the stairs and walked over to it. The inside was full of hipster trash, very different from what I’d seen of cop trash. Some laundry, mostly tube socks and T-shirts with band propaganda, a few squashed Mountain Dew cans, a curling iron with no cord, and a can of hair spray were all dead giveaways. The headless hula girl on the dash said something about the worldview of the missing hipster pilot, but I didn’t have any time to speculate.
Satisfied, I went back to my car and started it up. I missed my Doobie Brothers CDs, but it had been time to switch to iPod technology for a few years. I cracked the window and headed for Old Town.
There was the perfect deli about halfway there, so I made a brief stop and got everything we needed, including the pickles and some figs and plums for dessert. Most importantly, I picked up a box of cheddar cheese crackers. As I put the two bags of supplies on the back seat, I reminded myself to remind myself to remember to check the oil, and then I was off again, with the building excitement of a road trip/lazy hotel/police evasion/vacation.
Either the power had been cut, or the last of the neon had finally died, but “mitri’s izza” was black inside when I pulled up in front. The sun had disappeared behind the clouds again and a cold, gusting, sleety rain had kicked up. I wondered if Suzanne had checked the forecast as I dug the crackers out of the back. Whoever had stolen my CDs had left the collection of half-dried-up pens and shredded napkins bearing important notes I kept stuffed between the seats, so I rooted around and found a Sharpie that worked and wrote on the back of the box:
“Let’s talk. Monday 6 p.m., the motel you woke up in. Out front.”
I took the box and got out, dashed to the door, and let myself in with Dmitri’s key. The wall of stench almost changed my mind as the door yawned open. I stepped in and let the door close behind me, breathing shallowly as my eyes adjusted from the gloom outside. The fight that had cost Dmitri a tooth had evidently been a bad one. Several tables had been knocked over and a chair was broken. My decrepit former slumlord still had some bite. I righted the nearest table and pulled it to about ten feet from the door, directly in front of it, then put the box of crackers in the dead center with the Sharpie writing facing away from the door. I adjusted it just right and then stepped back and studied it. If Cheddar Box looked in, he’d recognize it as a signal, and any enterprising convict could get past Dmitri’s dollar-store locks with nothing more than a flexible boning knife in order to find out what it said on back.
Something fired out of a cannon smashed into the back of my head and the world went white. I staggered and went down, twisting so I fell on my side instead of my face. My vision skittered for an instant and then my eyes focused. There was a siren going off somewhere and I could taste blood in my mouth.
Santiago Espinoza was dressed in a black suit. He was holding the box, reading the back. He dropped it on the floor and kicked it into the darkness.
“Not my brand,” he rumbled. He flexed his gloved hands and grimaced as he came at me, in no hurry to finish the job.
I’d been prepared to negotiate, but I didn’t feel like he’d listen. I was on my feet fast enough to make him smile.
“Tough.”
I took two fast steps in and dropped seriously low, my entire upper body whipping in a gravity-assisted curve, and delivered my best punch, a straight arm left from the shoulder, flat-out pile driver, square into his dick.
Cheddar’s teeth clacked together and he stooped as I rose inside his reach and drove a leg-powered uppercut into his jaw. It was like hitting a frozen horse, but his head snapped back and his arms went wide. Then I was on him, still climbing up. I left the ground and wrapped one arm around the back of his bull neck as I went higher, then balled up on his huge head and bit down on his face, getting a huge mouthful of cheek. Cheddar roared and fell backward. I landed on top of him, but I didn’t let go. I sank my teeth in a little deeper. Spit ran out of my mouth down into his ear. I growled.
“Stop,” he rumbled softly. “You weren’t about to die. I just want to know where Oleg is. There’s no need for this.”
My ears were still ringing, but I heard him. Somehow my forehead had bounced off the ground when we landed, so my brain had been sloshed around pretty good for the day. We were at an impasse. I had a few more tricks up my sleeve, but bringing him all the way down again with anything like a mouthful of face to bargain with would be pure luck. Biting what I had in my mouth off would buy me an unknown window of time to find something to kill him with, but I didn’t like the odds.
“How about I agree to hear you out,” Cheddar Box continued. “I still have to know about Oleg, but I give you my word. You get your teeth off my face and tell me where Oleg is, then we both walk away and settle this another day, if we do at all. Maybe we don’t even bother. The cop situation being what it is right now, I need a body to get rid of as much as you do.”
I let go and sprang back in the same motion. Cheddar Box lay there for a moment. I backed away a few more steps and he wiped his face with his sleeve.
“You cheat,” he said, sitting up.
“I keep telling people.”
Cheddar slowly rose to his feet and dusted himself off. Then he checked his teeth with his pinkie. “Oleg?”
“Should be in Russia before midnight.”
“Huh.” That baffled him. “He’d be desperate to go back. About ten warrants waiting, all minor shit, not enough to extradite, but from what I gather there’s also a price on his head. Why the hell did he do that?”
“No choice. Rufied. Air express in a transmission box.”
&
nbsp; “Good one,” he said, smiling ruefully and rubbing his cheek. “Guess that means I’m out of a job.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Can’t say I’ll miss that asshole.” He was depressed again, I could tell.
“Santiago,” I began. He looked at me sharply. I raised my hands. “I looked at your driver’s license. So, here’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Oleg didn’t get the deed to the building. I did. I also sort of inherited the management of the shit hole we’re standing in. Plus, in order to get it all done, I wound up with a percentage of a strip club. I have contractors galore to deal with, this place, three floors of apartments above us, and more Olegs might come sniffing around now that he’s left a vacuum. I’m in over my head here.”
“What the hell are you telling me for?” He seemed genuinely mystified.
“All my shit is aboveboard. Holland LLC. Your parole officer will like it. Think Décor Magazine. You could chase a James Beard Award if you turned this place into the fusion joint that would fit in with the new Old Town game. Plus, tons of pussy.”
“You’re offering me a job?” he asked, incredulous.
I slowly reached into my pocket and took out the fat check and Dmitri’s stack of cash. I took two steps closer to him and held them out. He cautiously took them.
“Signing bonus, plus some cash to get this place cleaned out. First priority is getting one of the old apartments upstairs fit for human habitation. Eventually they all have to be brought up to snuff, but one of them has to be done up right away. Dmitri.”
“He’ll go for this?”
“That five grand is his. He’s on board.”
Santiago Espinoza looked out at the rain-swept street and his eyes grew distant.
“What’d be my monthly for all of this?”
“Say 10 percent off the strip club, plus manager salary and a bar shift. I’d pick a Friday. Pretty OK there. This place? Apartment manager, I’d say not much, but you’re looking at a free place, maybe a grand a month on top of that. “Mitri’s izza”? I’d gut it completely, put in a froufrou diner-type thing.”