Hit on the House

by Jon A. Jackson

  Joe turned on the water in one of the sinks on the counter, which was also made of the gold-veined black-marble stuff. “Go ahead, wash your hands,” he said. He sat down on the uppermost step of the bath alcove and watched while Carmine soaped his hands and rinsed them. They watched each other in the huge mirror. “Clean now?” Joe asked, tossing Carmine a fluffy lilac-colored towel that was warm from hanging on a chrome frame through which hot water ran. “Just leave the water running, Carm.”

  Carmine dried his hands and tossed the towel onto the floor. Someone would pick it up, Joe realized, and then he knew that someone would also mop up and vacuum up if the shower water splashed too much. The idea was satisfying to him.

  “You owe me money,” Joe said. “Let's have it.”

  Carmine laughed. He was a handsome man, about Joe's height though slighter in build and twenty-five years older. He had steel-gray hair and a narrow face.

  “Joe, you made a big mistake,” Carmine said. His voice was soft but with a slight rasp, like a banana with a welding rod imbedded in it. “You found the man, but it didn't help us.”

  “So I heard,” Joe said. “It sounded to me like the Fat Man wanted to plead my case, but you wouldn't hear it. I guess I did make a mistake, a couple of them.” He didn't sound contrite. “Mistake number one: I took another job from you. And I didn't get paid up front, that's number two. But, I'm young, Carmine, and I'm bound to make a few mistakes. I imagine you made some when you were young. If a man's lucky and he's good, he can probably get away with a few screwups—when he's young. But when you get old, like you, Carmine, mistakes start to pile up and-pow!-you're gone!” Joe grinned to see Carmine flinch at the plosive word.

  “Joe, you don't have a chance,” said the banana voice, “especially if you screw up now.” Carmine had recovered his poise. “You can run but you can't hide. The old boxer said that—Joe Louis. But everybody knows . . . you can't hide from us. We are everywhere.” Carmine smiled.

  “That was the old mob,” Joe said. “I wonder if it was ever true. Well, it may still be true for most of the guys you deal with, Carmine. It was certainly true for Hal Good. But he had Joe Service on his case. And you don't know where I live, Carm. It's a big country. You could never find me. I'm not Hal, and you won't have me to look for me. But I know where you live, Carmine, and the Fat Man, and all the rest of you miserable pricks. At worst, I figure I'm losing some business, and as it happens, it's the kind of business I can do without. But what the hell, Carm, . . . you want to talk, we can talk. This doesn't have to be the end. Just give me what you owe me, and I'll get out of your hair. And . . . I promise never to bug you again.” His smile had the effect of erasing Carmine's.

  “You didn't do the job, Joe,” Carmine said stubbornly. “I still don't know where the money is, and they're still blowing my guys away out there like it was Beirut or something.”

  “Hal didn't have your money, Carm, and who knows why they're blowing your boys away? It's not my business. You contracted for me to find Hal Good. I found him. Unfortunately, he and I didn't get a chance to chat—he wouldn't have it any other way. But I had a good look around, and the money wasn't there. While we're on the subject, let me point out to you that the contract was for me to find Hal. I know you planned to pop him, but that would cost you more. I guess you would have called Mitch for that. What does it cost? A hundred? No? Fifty? Maybe an easy shot like Hal would go for a measly twenty-five.” Joe shrugged. “As I've always told Fat, I'm not in the fatality line. I'm pro-life, Carm. But I will do it . . . when it seems necessary. Now I have this Hal on my conscience . . .” He shook his head with genuine rue. “You'll have to pay extra for that. Let's say another fifty. The contract was for a hundred and a half. You gave me an advance—which was really just what you owed me from the last time—so if we figure that soaping Hal is worth another fifty, that's a hundred fifty you still owe. Now, if you can give me that, I'll make like the little dot on the screen when you turn off the TV.”

  Carmine laughed despite himself. “Can we talk?” he asked.

  “Sure. Just move your lips and your tongue,” Joe said.

  “I mean . . .” Carmine gestured toward his office.

  “No. It's better in here,” Joe said. “I can run the tap, and it gives us some cover from the bugs.”

  “My office isn't bugged,” Carmine protested.

  “You wouldn't know,” Joe replied. “Have you had it swept lately? No? Well, as you can see, anybody can get in here. I just walked in here this morning, nothing to it. That's the kind of help you've got, Carm. It's also why I don't want to screw around with you guys anymore. I knew better than to come back to Detroit, and yet maybe it was my soft heart, I let Fat talk me into it. But no more.”

  “No, wait a minute, Joe, you've got a point. I like what you're saying. We've been getting a little soft. You're right. I need to talk to you. You could help us out. There would be a lot of money in it for you. A lot.”

  Joe sighed. “Go on. Let's hear what it is this time.”

  “This is how we got screwed up in the first place,” Carmine said, “with Sid. He burned us once, a while back, and we stepped on his fingers, but we took him back into the fold. Then he did the same thing again, which is when we called in Hal, who—before you say anything, Joe—always did good work for us in the past.”

  “Hal was in it with Sid,” Joe said.

  Carmine eyed him carefully. “How do you know this?”

  Joe fished out the telephone book he'd taken from the Iowa City house. “Hal's,” Joe said. “There's lots of numbers for Sid in here-home, office, certain bars, certain women. They were close. It was coke, right? Sid was skimming, or is the word dipping? Scooping? And he was going to take a hike, right? The thing is, Hal was in it, too. Maybe a bunch of others. Tupman, for instance.”

  “This is interesting,” Carmine said. “How do you figure it? Was there anything else?”

  “I didn't really apply my mind to it,” Joe said. “It's not my business. No, he didn't leave a detailed plan or anything, but there are a lot of interesting little names and numbers in here. I'll throw the book in for free when you pay up.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Carmine say, nodding. “We'll get to that, . . . but why did Hal pop Sid if they were in it together?”

  “The minute you gave him the contract you showed you were on to Sid. But were you on to Hal? He couldn't take the chance, he had to take Sid down. And . . . he probably figured if he cooled it, kept his mouth shut, he might still have a chance to cop the skim. Did you recover any of it?”

  “Not yet,” Carmine said, “but we've got a couple of lines on it. We'll find it.”

  “I'm sure,” Joe said dryly.

  “But, Joe, this is a perfect job for you. It's what you do best, right? Hey, why am I fooling around with these local dopes when the best in the world is right here, talking to me? I'll tell you what. You find the skim, find out who all was in on it—you don't have to do any wet work—and you can take half.”

  “Half of what?”

  “We don't know, Joe. That's the problem. Only Sid knew how much it was, though we hear rumors. Say it's a million. It had to be a million because Sid isn't going to leave a sweet setup here, even if he's crazy about some chick, for less than a million. Wouldn't you say?”

  Joe thought about it. “Who knows? Who's the chick?”

  Carmine gave him a long, sad look. “Forget about the chick, Joe. She ain't in it. We talked to her already, and believe me, she's not part of the problem.”

  “We are talking about Germaine Kouras?”

  Carmine nodded.

  “I see,” Joe said. “An accident, I guess.”

  “You could say that.”

  “Can I talk to her?”

  Carmine looked pained. “No, I don't think so, Joe.”

  “And she wasn't able to enlighten you beforehand? Yeah. Well, it can happen. It happened in Iowa City. But, to get back to the main point . . . How much would you say Sid—and his
friends—had access to?”

  “That's hard to say, Joe. It depends over what period of time it went on. Let's face it, we didn't notice anything wrong. So he couldn't have been taking a high percentage, but for how long? We don't know.”

  “Do you think he could have taken two million?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Four million?”

  Carmine made a face. “Now, Joe, . . . you're starting to get speculative here—”

  “Maybe I'll just take all of it,” Joe said.

  “All of it? Who the fuck do you think–”

  Service pulled the trigger on the pistol, and the mirror behind Carmine shivered and collapsed onto the counter. Carmine leapt away, staring wildly at Joe.

  “Are you crazy?” he gasped.

  “You were forgetting to be scared,” Joe said. He had not moved from the alcove steps. He swiveled slightly and pointed the pistol at Carmine's stomach. “Is it two million? Or is it more?”

  “It's more,” Carmine said. “Maybe it's four, but we don't know. Honest.”

  “I'll take fifty percent,” Joe said, “with a minimum of a mil. But first I want my hundred fifty. Right now.”

  “Sure, sure,” Carmine said. He gestured toward his office. “I can give it to you right now.”

  Joe smiled and stood up. “You can turn off the water, Carm.” He opened the door and they went into the office. Carmine went to a painting on the wall, a kind of collage of fire engines and numbers and obscure angular shapes, and opened it like a door. He spun the dial of the safe and reached inside.

  “Easy,” Joe said. He had slipped up behind Carmine and placed the barrel of the silencer against his head. He reached around him and withdrew the neat little .32-caliber automatic and slipped it into his pocket. Then he pulled out several packets of bank notes and let them fall onto the carpet. He stepped back and said, “Go ahead, Carm, . . . start counting.”

  Carmine knelt and began to count. Joe sat on the arm of one of the teak chairs and watched. Then he studied the sculpture in the corner for a while, whistling “Spring Is Here” in a whispery way. Carmine's phone warbled, and without hesitation Joe picked it up. “Yeah,” he rasped, holding the receiver a foot away.

  “New York,” the secretary's voice said, “Mitch.”

  “I'm busy, doll,” Joe growled. “Tell him I'll call back in a minute.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Carmine gathered the money up and dumped it on the desk, then collected the remainder from the floor and pushed it back into the safe. Joe stepped close and stuck the little automatic back into the safe, then slapped the safe door shut.

  While Carmine put the payoff into a large manila envelope, Joe said, “Do you really think you're clean here?” He waved the pistol around the walls and ceiling.

  “Certainly,” Carmine said.

  Joe stepped over to the rat-man. It was almost as tall as he. “What do you call this dude?”

  “It doesn't have a name. It's a Jabe.”

  “A Jabe? What's that?”

  “He's some kind of hotshot sculptor,” Carmine said. “My wife got it for me. Don't you like it?”

  “It's cute,” Joe said, running his hands about the sculpture. “How much does something like this cost?”

  “You could afford it,” Carmine said.

  Joe slid his hand up the wicked tail and up the inner thigh, feeling the little bumps of burned steel. There was a hole precisely where the anus should be. “What kind of realist is this Jabe?” Joe wondered out loud. He stuck his forefinger into the hole and felt about, then jerked a tiny little lump of plastic and putty out.

  “Hmmm, doesn't look exactly like the sort of thing that would come out of a rat's ass,” Joe said, “but . . .” He carried it over to the bathroom door and tossed it into the commode. Turning back to Carmine, he began to unscrew the silencer from the revolver and said, “So tell me, Carm, who else do you think was in it with Sid?”

  Carmine sat back in his chair and rubbed his smoothly shaven chin, looking at Joe speculatively. “You know, Joe, I believe I have underestimated you. I apologize. We really ought to discuss business. I mean the business, you understand?”

  Joe sighed. “I don't think so, Carmine. I like my business. I'm a snoop. I'm curious. And it's fun. Your business—the biz,” he said sarcastically, “doesn't strike me as fun. It's awful. You know what you should do? You know what I'd do if I was running this awful biz?”

  Carmine shook his head.

  “I'd shut it down. Especially this crack biz. You know what you've got? You've got teenagers standing on corners hawking poison. Actually waving it in the air. Can that be sane, Carm? I mean, think about it. You're already making a fortune out of numbers. The folks have a dream, they consult the dream book, they run down to the corner bar and put a buck or two on a set of numbers that no way in hell might make them a couple of hundred. Is that a bad thing to do? No, that's not bad, Carm. That's a service to the community–feeding the dream. And you've got dozens of these splendid community services—a guy finds out his wife is screwing Jim Bob, he comes to you for a gun, he shoots Jim Bob, and his marriage is saved. What a guy you are! Better than a priest. But selling crack on the corner, Carm, . . . that's just nuts. Why don't you shut it down? It just gets you into trouble, like with Sid. Now who do you think was in it with Sid?”

  It was Carmine's turn to sigh. “Joe, you're way out of touch. We don't run the crack. We've managed to get a wedge into it. That's what Sid was doing for us. But the thing is we saw it the same way you saw it. We didn't want it. You're right, it isn't the kind of business we ought to be in. So . . . we let it go. The Colombians, the Bolivians, the Peruvians, the Panamanians . . . they all jumped right in. We let it happen.” He waved a hand sadly.

  “You let them?” Joe asked, incredulous.

  Carmine grimaced. “It wasn't my decision, but I went along with it. It was decided at a higher council.”

  “You let a bunch of South Americans come in and run a biz like that, on your turf? I don't believe it.”

  “OK, so we kept a few handles,” Carmine said, “but we didn't have the biz. We figured if it started to look good, we could take it back. Better to let these goofy dick heads take the first heat. But,” he sighed, “it kind of got away from us. It really took off. It wasn't really organized. It was one of those things, like Prohibition. All my life, Joe, I heard from the old ones about how Prohibition opened up the country. They didn't know what was happening at the time, but they fell into it, for Chrisake. You think Capone and the rest of those crazy Sicilians knew what was going to happen? Don't be silly. But once they saw an opening . . . You gotta hand it to them, Joe, they stepped in and made something out of the opportunities.”

  Carmine laughed quietly, gazing at his rat-man in the corner. “They were wonderful tough guys, Joe. We're just a bunch of wimps by comparison.” He looked up and his chin stiffened. “That's what these Colombians look like, Joe. They fell into it. They were ready, they were tough, and they didn't give a shit. We let them in and they just took it. And once they had it, once they had this street network, well . . . I'm like you, Joe. It looked like hell to me. The kids, the violence!” Carmine's features contorted in disgust. “They don't have any standards. They're a bunch of savages!”

  He sat forward suddenly, clasping his hands. “I saw we had screwed up. I decided to take it back, . . . but quietly. So I put Sid into it. I figured somebody was going to get bonked here, in the early days. Better it was Sid. You understand?”

  Joe nodded. “But Sid went over, is that it?”

  “That's the way it looks. Maybe he was playing both sides, I don't know. But we couldn't go on with Sid.”

  Joe considered all this in silence, then said, “Icing Sid wasn't enough, though. Fat told me you thought Tupman and Conover were in it, but you didn't do the job on Tupman. Who did? The Colombians?”

  “They didn't have any reason to as far as I know,” Carmine said. “We don't know who did it. Maybe
it was them. Conover? Well, he's walking a tight line, but he seems all right. I think you should talk to him. Who else? To be honest, Joe, I don't know. That's why we need you. We had a long, hard talk with Roman Yak, Sid's old hand. We were a little rough, but the Yak held up. Roman wasn't in on it, he didn't know anything. He was just a spear carrier.”

  “What about this Lande?” Joe asked.

  “Lande? What Lande? You mean Gene Lande? What about him?” Carmine seemed genuinely surprised.

  “His name is in Hal's book, next to Sid. He even drew a little box around it, like a guy draws when he's talking on the phone . . . He writes the name down, he draws a box, he doodles a star in each corner–”

  “This is a chump, a nobody,” Carmine said, a disbelieving smile on his face. “You know who he is? He's one of those guys who likes to hang around the edges, you know? He likes to pretend he's a big criminal, public enemy number seventeen or something. He got into trouble with us years ago . . . gambling, or was it a loan? I can't remember. Sid leaned on him, straightened him up. The guy was into electronics, I think. Sid gave him a little business. His wife was an old punch of Sid's. You know Sid—well, you didn't know him that well—but he always had a bunch of ex-girlfriends, and he was the kind of guy he'd try to do something for them. He fixed this chick up with this Lande and Lande began to do a little work for us from time to time. Nothing big or even crooked, really, but he'd do it for next to nothing.”

  “I think I should talk to him,” Joe said.

  “I already talked to him. And his old lady.” He snorted a laugh. “Hah. She called me up one day, says it's about Sid and her old man. So I tell her to come in, we could talk—I knew her from old times. Soon as she hangs up I send Fat to get this Lande. She comes in here, throwing her tits and ass around, whining about her poor li'l Gene—I had to laugh. Turns out she's scared shitless because Lande had been working on some kind of golf-resort development with Sid, and she was afraid I'd get the wrong idea. I gave her a pat on the ass and a big kiss, just to make sure her lipstick is smeared, and I waltz her out of the office. Lande's out in the office, see, waiting. She doesn't see him, but I make sure that he gets his eyes full. Christ, you should have seen his face when Fat brought him in.” Carmine laughed loudly. “He didn't know if he was mad or scared. I threw a good scare into him, and I let him know he couldn't pull any shit. He's nothing.”