Dying Embers

by Robert E. Bailey

  “Background stuff,” I said. “I have a client up to his ass in Chingo alligators and I need to drain the swamp.”

  “That Lambert guy?”

  “Thought you didn’t read the newspaper.”

  “It was on the tube.”

  “He’s taking a cruise of the SS Kent County. The Chingos want big money not to kick his ass, again.”

  “That’s their kind of gig.”

  “I don’t like their kind of music,” I said. “You can’t buy any singles. I think all they’re selling is albums.”

  “Maybe you need a different disc jockey.”

  “Maybe a couple.”

  Ken moved the lumber aside and sat in the windowsill. “Tell me about it,” he said.

  My telephone started ringing, muffled in the desk drawer. “I need a couple of guys to play lullabies. Every night Lambert gets a good night’s sleep, the job pays a grand.”

  “Each,” said Ken. “In cash.”

  “Done,” I said.

  “Won’t work,” said Ken, shaking his head.

  “You said the Chingos were punks.” My telephone kept crying about being stuffed in the drawer.

  “We can handle the music for the cruise, but the natives in the village’ll get to beating their drums and doing a fucking war dance. Could get ugly all over the island unless you parley with the chief and get his mind right.”

  The answering machine took the call. Wendy’s voice said, “Pick up if you’re there.”

  “I’ll get his mind right,” I said.

  “I want to be there,” said Ken. “This I got to see.”

  “Suit yourself,” I said. “When can you line up the DJ’s?”

  “Call me,” said Wendy. She hung up.

  “I’ll call ya,” said Ken.

  “Not on this phone.”

  Ken slid his fanny back and squatted outside the window. “You got my number,” he said, “use a payphone.” My telephone started to jingle and vibrate in my drawer again. Ken lined up the plywood with the window opening and wedged it into the bottom rail. Over the top of the wood he said, “Cash—no bullshit, man.”

  “Bullshit and no cash,” I said.

  Ken banged the panel into place.

  The telephone rang as I took it out of the drawer and set it on the desk. I figured it was the FBI testing the line but when the answering machine picked up I heard Hank Dunphy’s voice.

  “… Light and Energy Applications. I’ll keep this brief. There’s no need to return the call. We’ve had to forfeit Mr. Lambert’s considerable bail. As a result we will not be able to pay your invoices. Mr. Lambert was under considerable duress when he offered you employment with this firm, and considering the fact that his current situation takes him out of the corporate loop, I am afraid that it is left to me to inform you that you will not be employed by Light and Energy in any capacity. Under no circumstances will the Board of Directors agree to submit corporate assets to the extortionate demands of criminals. Should you require any clarification on these matters, please contact our attorneys at Traxmire, Tulley, and—”

  I snapped up the telephone, “Dunphy? Are you fucking nuts?”

  “Mr. Hardin?”

  “F and A howdy, you dumb bastard! You think I don’t know you’re in this up to your armpits?”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “I mean it’s time to come to Jesus. You call Pete Finney, you tell him everything. Then you call the FBI and beg them to hide you.”

  “Is that a threat, Mr. Hardin?”

  “That’s the best advice you’re going to get today. As of just now, when you left the message, you exhausted your usefulness to the cartel and that raggedy-assed battery outfit you’ve been shilling for.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “Nobody left you a message for Scott to meet with Anne Frampton. Why were the detectives waiting at the airport for Scott to show up with your ticket and passport?”

  “The former is ridiculous and the latter is a question you need to ask Mr. Lambert.”

  “The former is a fact. You made my airline reservations. You’re the only one who could have sicked the Fidel Castro-looking dude on me. He missed me. But I didn’t miss him. And before we had to sweep up his brains he told me what was on his mind. Including your involvement in the plan to murder the Frampton woman.”

  “I’m not going to listen to any—”

  “For God’s sake, Dunphy, you’re burned, you’re busted, and you’re expendable! Get your toothbrush, go down to the federal building, and pound on the FBI’s door until they let you in.”

  The receiver crashed in my ear. I clicked the telephone until I got a dial tone and pecked out a number I knew all too well. Pete Finney was in his office, and his secretary was no longer blocking my calls. I told him about the call from Dunphy and wrapped up the story with, “I think we just crashed and burned.”

  “Arthur, you really must let me do the talking,” Pete said. “Talk to me, and I will talk to them.”

  “He was just leaving a message.”

  “Mr. Dunphy left the door open. He may not have meant to, but he invited you to contact his counsel.”

  “Traxmire, Tully, and somebody. I cut him off.”

  “I talk to them every day,” Pete said. “Hugh Traxmire and I are golf partners.”

  “So you knew this was coming?”

  “Not a word. I am surprised. Nonetheless, Mr. Lambert remains the majority stock holder, and the patents are in his name. There really is no question as to his authority, but his current situation does make it difficult for him to act.”

  “What if Lambert is dead or permanently unconscious?”

  “He was sent to the hospital to be examined after the fiasco at the jail.”

  “I’m not sure that’s going to make a big difference. The Chingos made a run at me in a hallway in the admin section of the jail.”

  “This is where I defer to you, Arthur,” said Pete.

  • • •

  I twisted the steel peg key into the driver’s door—no key hole in the passenger door—and the convertible top popped loose from the windshield and the windows started down. I jumped back.

  Two ladies sat watching me from the front seat of a pale blue minivan. At the back of the lot a Chevy Blazer with darkly tinted windows started up. The sky threatened in shades of steel gray and a moist edge softened the breeze. I twisted the key again and watched the top disappear into the “boot.”

  I climbed into the white Jag and fired it up. The ladies waved and laughed. I waved back even though I had no idea who they were. When I turned north on Breton, sprinkles were on the windshield, I couldn’t find the wipers, and the black Blazer was still with me.

  I took Breton to Lake Drive, pushing the speed limit in the hope that I was driving out of a squall. At Wealthy I turned left onto the red brick pavers where the Jag was invisible behind up-turned noses and raised pinkie fingers. The Blazer turned into the Onion Crock restaurant, probably for some of their fantastic onion soup that comes topped with melted cheese that runs down the sides of the bowl. Two blocks east the pavers gave way to blacktop.

  The Rabbit, a two-story white stucco cube with parking at the side and rear, toed the sidewalk on the north side of the street. A hard-rocking Prince number rattled the inward sloping front windows, which had been de rigueur for the building’s first incarnation as a neighborhood market. Gang signs had been keyed into the flat black paint that now covered the windows. The double front doors each displayed a sign. The one in English read, “Entrance at side door.”

  Just half past three, and the lot brimmed with a democratic mix of Beamers and battered pick-up trucks. I pulled up to the “Valet Parking” sign and an olive-skinned young man with a black pompadour, ruffled white shirt, and tuxedo trousers with a cummerbund ran to open the driver’s door, holding an umbrella over both of us. I gave him the keys.

  “No,” he said, “you just give me the green key. That’s the valet key.”
/>   “What’s the difference?”

  “The green key doesn’t open the trunk, sir.”

  “Cool,” I said. “You know how to put the top up?”

  He smiled. “Sure,” he said.

  “Good, do that.” I peeled off the green key and reached into my pocket.

  “That’s okay, sir,” he said. He took the key and gave me a poker chip with a number on it. “Maybe you want to take care of me when I bring the car back.”

  “Car belongs to an acquaintance,” I said. I gave him one of Billy’s steel engraved portraits of Grant. “Don’t park it in the neighborhood.”

  “Count on me,” he said. He smiled as he took the fifty. “I’ll wipe the seats.”

  I took my cane off the back seat—the package shelf was upholstered to look like a seat, just no room for legs—and made a show of leaning on it as I made my way through the door.

  A cocktail of stale beer and cigarette smoke hung in the air. “Ten dollars,” said the doorman—five feet ten and about fifteen stone as the Brits would have it. He was liveried pretty much the same as the valet driver, except that he wore a satin bow tie to match his cummerbund and the sleeves of his shirt had been removed at the shoulder. The veins of his biceps and forearms stood out like forking road maps to the iron pile where he’d built the massive arms that sleeves could no longer contain.

  Tattooed hash marks marched down his neck into his shirt collar. The thin skin of his arms was mostly blue with jailhouse graffiti including an ornate “Chingo” under a death’s head with a dagger on his right bicep. He racked a six-cell flashlight under his left arm and thrust out his right hand. “I got change,” he said. In his left hand he held a wad of bills as thick as the Detroit Yellow pages.

  “I didn’t come to see the girls,” I said. “I have business with Luis.”

  “Ten dollars,” he said. “I don’t know no Luis.”

  “Poco Loco,” I said. His eyes snapped to my face. “You know who I mean. This is business.”

  “How you hear that name?”

  “Flaco. At the jail. He had a message.”

  The doorman laughed. “He the one that kicked your ass?”

  “You got to be kidding. He ran away—showed me so much of the bottom of his shoes I thought he was kneeling and praying.”

  The doorman nodded a disgusted face. “Boss is busy. He don’t want to talk to you.”

  “How do you know?” I said. “You didn’t ask him.”

  “The boss is busy, he don’t want to talk to nobody.”

  “How do you know he’s busy?”

  “When he ain’t busy he’ll come downstairs.”

  “Fine,” I said, “I’ll have a beer and wait.”

  “Ten bucks.”

  I felt my face curl up a smile—a little pressure on the nose brace, but it didn’t hurt anymore. I gave him Billy’s last half yard. He made a show of counting out four tens in change which he offered to me folded in half and tucked between his first two fingers. I held them in front of his face and fanned out three tens.

  He smiled and shrugged. “Maybe you dropped it on the floor.”

  “Turn your hand over,” I said. “I think you’ll find it under your thumb.”

  He turned his hand, the bill lay tucked into his palm with his thumb. “A little joke,” he said. He handed me the bill.

  A woman with pencil-sharp silicone breasts and a sequined G-string writhed out a hip-hop number against a brass pole mounted on a mirrored stage. Dancers in nylon panties danced on tables and dry humped the laps of seated customers.

  Leading with my cane, I sidestepped though the maze of tables and made my way to the bar. The bartender looked at me and nodded while he loaded a tray with long necks. I picked up a matchbook from an ashtray on the bar. The cover featured a rabbit in a tuxedo and top hat with a cane. On the inside a question lurked behind the matches, “PRIVATE PARTY?” There was a telephone number.

  Shafts of red light, reflected from a disco ball, cut through a foot-thick tide of cigarette smoke that washed the ceiling. I ordered a Corona with a wedge of lime and got four singles in change for the doorman’s ten spot. The house was packed. Too many to count. I set out in a slow search for a door that led to a stairwell.

  A lap dancer screamed, slapped a customer, and climbed off his lap. Backing up she yelled, “Rudy!” Pointing an accusing finger on the end of an extended arm, she added, “The bastard stole my tips.”

  The customer stood up. Dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans, he wore a backwoods-bush beard over a weathered face. He was six feet tall and well over two hundred pounds. He said, “I caught the bitch trying to lift my wallet!”

  The doorman with the arms turned out to be Rudy. He said, “Time to go, man.”

  The customer picked a looping right fist off the table and laid it on the side of Rudy’s head.

  Rudy let his head ride out the punch. He smiled. “Big mistake, man.” Rudy drove the butt of his flashlight into the big man’s solar plexus.

  The customer bent forward, clutching his middle with both arms. Rudy spun him toward the door and planted his foot in the big man’s backside. The crowd applauded. I found the stairway through a curtain at the far end of the bar.

  23

  AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS I found a curtain in place of a door. The office amounted to a raveled rug, a battered desk, and a stanchion fan in the corner of a stockroom. I told Luis, Poco Loco, “Your guys are punks!”

  He sat rocking in his chair, hands limp on the desktop—humming or groaning—wearing photo gray glasses. Maybe in his late twenties, he had a full head of curly black hair and a pencil moustache like a tango dancer. I couldn’t tell if his eyes were open. If he’d noticed me he didn’t let on.

  The sweet smell of cut burley hung in the air. Cases of cigarettes stood, stacked in long dark rows, among truck-load quantities of computers, projection televisions, and video game players still in shipping cartons. The wooden floor vibrated with the hard rock beat from downstairs.

  The quantity of goods wasn’t as amazing as the fact that it had all come up a steep narrow stairwell and would have to go down the same way. I entertained the notion of the floor giving way to the music and the customers finding themselves under a piñata cascade of swag.

  Luis’s attire needed a passport to get to the dry-cleaner. His suit—the jacket hung from the back of his chair—was custom cut from black pinstriped wool and Italian silk. French cuffs finished his tailored white linen shirt. A dragon, hand painted in gold, stood rampant on his red silk tie. His wristwatch and jewelry were worth more than his thugs had demanded from my client. Maybe the attraction of extortion was simply the fact that you didn’t have to haul it up and down the stairs.

  I rapped my cane on Luis’s vacant desktop and yelled, “Aye!”

  The receiver jumped off his telephone and clattered onto the desk. A woman let out a muffled yip under the desk. Luis bolted straight in his chair and snapped his head toward me. “The fuck?” he said. He put his hands under the desk and pushed.

  I said, “You know where the restroom is?”

  Luis didn’t get his nickname from diminutive size. He was as wide as I was and probably as tall, if he stood up—which I didn’t think he’d do just now.

  He said, “Get the fuck outta here.”

  I set my beer on his desk, the wedge of lime still sticking out the top. “That’s no way to talk to a paying customer who’s just looking for the pisser.”

  Luis picked up the telephone handset and stabbed the disconnect twice with his finger. He studied me with a mean face until his eyes went wide and he pushed the chair back to look under the desk. “Just a minute,” he said, and then into the telephone, “No, not you. Send Rudy up here.” Luis banged the phone down and looked at me. “Guy’s coming,” he said.

  I let it pass.

  “He’ll get you what you need,” he said.

  “Rudy?” I heard hurried heavy footsteps on the stairs.

  “Yeah.”
>
  “Met him downstairs,” I said. “He’s a good guy?”

  “The best. You think you’re fucked up now? Give it a minute.”

  I stacked my hands on top of my cane. Rudy slashed the curtain aside with his flashlight and filled the doorway. “Rudy, my man,” I said, “I was just telling your boss about the fast count you tried to give at the door.”

  Rudy made a sheepish smile, looked at Luis, and shrugged.

  Luis said, “Get him. The fuck. Out of here.”

  Rudy smiled and let his head tilt to one side. “I tole ya he was busy, man.”

  “And break something he walks on,” said Luis. “That should keep him off the stairs.”

  Rudy stepped toward me with his left foot, his flashlight cocked in both hands like a long ball hitter stepping into a three-and-two count heater. I drove the tip of the cane into the toes of his left foot hard enough to make the floor thump like I’d dropped an anvil. His face blanched stark white as he piled onto the floor and abandoned the flashlight in favor of his foot.

  The woman under the desk screamed and the desk bumped up. My beer went airborne. I caught it with my left hand and set it back on the desk.

  Luis’s hands pushed under the desk. “Just fucking stay there,” he said. “You don’t want to see nothing out here.” He leaned to his right. I heard a desk drawer sliding open.

  Rudy roared like a bear and started off the floor. I flipped the cane, curved end down, and laid a nine-iron drive on Rudy’s right knee. I heard a wooden snap. Rudy crashed onto the floor, held his knee, and screamed. The end of the cane skittered across the floor, leaving a splintered point which I turned and hooked under the knot in Luis’s tie.

  “Better be a taco,” I told Luis. He showed me his open palms. “The whole drawer,” I said. “Set it on top of the desk.” He did. It wasn’t a taco. It was a chrome Astra .25 engraved with scrolls and filigree, nestled in about three inches of twenties, fifties, and hundreds.

  Rudy grabbed my ankle. I whacked his patty. Luis reached for the Astra and I smashed the drawer on the back stroke. Luis snatched his hand back as the drawer exploded in a flurry of currency.

  The woman under the desk yelled, “Hey, what’s going on?”