The Old Dick

by L. A. Morse

  “Nothing else? Come on, concentrate, think back. Go through the whole thing again.”

  Sal shook his head, slumped back, and then suddenly sat up straight. “Wait a second. There was something.”

  “What?”

  “When I turned around, just before I was slugged, I was looking right at the car, and I can remember thinking, ‘I’ve got to remember that.’ “

  “What?”

  Sal pressed his eyelids with his fingertips, then looked up and shrugged helplessly. “No idea. I hadn’t even remembered that there was something, until you made me think back. Being hit must’ve knocked it out of me. Damn!” He hit the dashboard with his hand. “What was it?”

  “Relax. Don’t force it.”

  “Shit. It’s strange. I have this idea that just before I was hit I kept saying to myself, ‘I’m seventy-five; I am seventy-five.’“

  “You are seventy-five, right?”

  “Yeah, but why would I tell myself that? What does that have to do with whatever I saw? Damn it. What is it?”

  “Take it easy. It probably just means you were thinking you’re too old for this kind of stuff. Don’t fight it. You know something’s there now. Let it come up on its own.”

  I backed up to the place where the other car had waited. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Maybe something to convince me that I hadn’t screwed up there as well. I didn’t find it. Maybe it hadn’t been my fault, but I couldn’t help thinking that I should’ve noticed something, maybe even seen the car, if I’d had even half my wits working, if I’d been able to do the job instead of just playing at it If I’d been able to cut it

  Dammit.

  I got the car turned around and went back to the highway.

  * * *

  The ride back to the city wasn’t exactly a triumphal return. Except for Sal giving me directions to his house in Beverly Hills, I doubt if we exchanged half a dozen words.

  Sal stared out the window, grimacing and drumming his fingers, trying to remember whatever he’d thought was so important. I tried to concentrate on my driving, but my thoughts kept going around and around the same futile circle—what I did, what I didn’t do, what I should’ve done, what I could’ve done. And over everything, uncertainty about the whole situation hung like the pall of a bad cigar.

  No, it wasn’t a cheerful journey. I was glad when I finally pulled up at the driveway to Sal’s house.

  From what I could see of it, I was impressed. It was Spanish style, white, with a red tile roof, exactly what I’d always thought of as the best kind of Southern California architecture. Not especially big for Beverly Hills, it had the solid quality and quiet class that they put into houses fifty years ago that made them age beautifully. Inside, I knew there’d be dark pegged-wood floors and lots of leather furniture, worn soft and golden over title years. Just the kind of place I’d always seen myself in, living out an elegant old age.

  Did anyone still insist that crime didn’t pay? Of course, Sal had done thirty years in prison. I couldn’t work out the equation between the time and the house. Only Sal could know if they balanced in any way. Probably not, unless he saw prison as inevitable, which maybe it had been. In that case, it was obviously better to have the house at the end than not to. Then I remembered that Sal said it had taken everything he had to raise the ransom. I supposed that meant the house as well. Shit.

  No way the equation could balance then. And we still didn’t know about his grandson. I couldn’t tell which was worse, the awful uncertainty or the sense of complete powerlessness. Sitting in the dark with Sal, it was all so bad I could hardly believe it. My worst fears for the evening had come to pass. And then some.

  I didn’t want to think about what must be going on in Sal’s head. In mine I was flipping from depression to frustration to anger. I wanted to do something, but there was nothing, unless I chose to howl at the moon. I didn’t know whether I was angrier at the sons of bitches who were causing all this pain or at myself.

  Looking at Sal slumped, beaten, on the seat, I felt the weight of my responsibility in this. Even though I’ve always believed that everyone had the right to go to hell in his own way, I shouldn’t have been such a goddamn willing accessory to Sal’s madness. And I certainly shouldn’t have agreed unless I’d been sure I could do what was required. Damn. It was a little bit late to be thinking about those things.

  Sal turned and we looked at one another. There was nothing to say. We both knew how things stood. Suddenly, all the night’s shit seemed to descend on me. I felt more tired than I could ever remember.

  I offered to go in and wait with Sal until he heard something, but I was relieved when he turned me down. He must’ve figured that as bad as it was to be alone at a time like this, there were some things that were just too bad to be shared. I made him agree to call me as soon as there was any word.

  Before he got out Sal said, “Thanks anyway, Jake. I appreciate it.”

  I supposed he’d meant well, but if his goal had been to leave me feeling as shitty as possible, he couldn’t have come up with a better exit line. Damn. He could give Mrs. Bernstein lessons.

  Halfway up the drive he turned and looked back at me. I got the feeling that he didn’t want to go into the house, that by not going in he thought he could put off whatever lay ahead. He seemed to sigh, then make himself turn around and continue on.

  I watched him for another minute before I pulled away.

  Two hours later, lying on my bed, I was still seeing that sad figure moving slowly up the drive. Tired and aching as I was, sleep wouldn’t come. And sleep was all I wanted, so I could stop replaying in my mind the day’s events. The more I went over them, round and round, the more unreal the whole thing seemed. From a beginning just like every other day for years, there had been a gradual but inevitable descent into some kind of terrible nightmare that might have seemed comic if it wasn’t so damn black. As in a nightmare, things had happened to me, but I didn’t feel quite connected to them. They seemed somehow distant, arbitrary. A ghost from the past A kidnapped grandson. Unseen assailants. All hidden shadows playing strange death games off-stage. It felt like I had been dropped into one of those books I read all the time, and a heavy-handed writer was moving me about to fit the requirements of his absurd plot.

  But it wasn’t a book, and even if I went to sleep, the nightmare wouldn’t be over when I woke up. At least Sal’s wouldn’t be. I again saw the image of him reluctantly trudging up to his empty house.

  Shit. I was an old man, too fucking old for this kind of stuff.

  I got up and put some ice cubes in a plastic bag and wrapped it in a towel. If it wouldn’t cool down my brain, maybe it would ease the throbbing at the back of my head, every beat of which kept repeating, “You blew it, you blew it, you old fool, you old fool.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Unh.

  I woke up to the telephone ringing. I couldn’t remember falling asleep but the clock said six-thirty, so I must’ve finally managed to for a little while. My pillow was cold and soaking wet from the melted ice pack. Swell. That was all I needed, pneumonia on top of everything else. “J. Spanner: Tried to numb his skull; succeeded.”

  Apparently, I was feeling better. The swelling had gone way down on my head, and so, it seemed, had my sense of self-pity. There’s nothing quite like being knocked unconscious, to diminish your self-esteem and to make you feel like batshit.

  “All right!” I called to the phone as it rang for the twelfth time.

  I figured I had been through enough. I wasn’t about to leap out of bed in order to fall on my face. Careful prodding and bending, though, seemed to indicate that standing up was within the realm of possibility. I swung my legs out of bed and slowly got to my feet. At the eighteenth ring I took my first step. Not bad, not bad at all. While it still felt like I’d been run over by a truck, the treadmarks were fading. I might need to use a walker for only the next six or seven years.

  “All right, you son of a bitch! I’m comi
ng!” I yelled at the telephone, and by the twenty-third ring I was there. Surprisingly enough, the caller still was as well. It was Sal.

  “Jake, what took so long? You okay?”

  “Yeah, I guess I am. A little stiff, but that’s all. What is it, Sal?”

  “I heard, Jake.”

  “From who? The kidnappers?”

  “Yeah. One of them called about half an hour ago.”

  “And?” I said, when Sal didn’t go on.

  I heard a long sigh in my ear. “It wasn’t them, Jake. They weren’t the ones who knocked us over.”

  Shit. Shit. Shit. Even when you expected the worst, it was still a blow when the ax actually fell.

  “That’s rough, Sal. What’d you tell him?”

  “Just what happened. Exactly as it went down.”

  “And what’d he say?”

  “ ‘Tough shit.’ Those were his words—’Tough shit, old man.’ They weren’t interested, didn’t care. That was strictly my problem, he said, and it didn’t change anything. They still want the money. I told him I don’t have any more, and he said I’d better find some. Fast. I tried to explain, but he wouldn’t listen. Gave me until next week to come up with the dough. If I don’t, he said they’re going to start sending me Tommy through the mail. Piece by piece.”

  “Jesus, Sal!”

  “They put Tommy on for a minute. He said he was okay, but he sounded real scared. Kept saying, I want to come home, Grandpa, I want to come home.’ Then those assholes did something to him and he screamed and then they hung up.”

  The nightmare was continuing, all right. Listening to Sal, I forgot all my aches and soreness as I felt the anger rising in me, churning my gut. I wanted to smash those scum, inflict pain, make them feel some of the suffering they were causing. Fuck. The righteous anger of the impotent. I looked down and saw my leg twitching with tension. Calm down, Spanner, before you have a cerebral hemorrhage. I took a couple of deep breaths, exhaling slowly.

  “So what are you going to do?” I tried to make it sound like it was solely his problem but I knew it wasn’t, not after last night, not after that phone call.

  “I suppose you think I should go to the cops.”

  “Yeah, I think it’s about time for that.”

  “Well, I don’t, and I’ll tell you why.” He started talking very hard and fast, as though it were vital that he convince me, too. “If I wanted to catch those bastards, I’d go to the cops, but that’s not what I want. Oh, yeah, I’d love to get those shits and tear their cocks off and feed ‘em to them. But that’s for later. Right now the only really important thing is to get Tommy back. And it still looks to me that the only chance I have to do that is to come up with the money they want.”

  “I thought—”

  “Yeah, you thought right. I’m pretty well tapped out, busted. I’ve got a couple of possibilities out of town, though, that might pay off—old debts, maybe a hustle or two—and I’m going to have to give them a shot.”

  “And if they don’t come through?”

  Sal paused for so long I thought we’d lost the connection. “Are you still willing to help me?” he finally said.

  “To do what?” As I said it, I knew what he wanted. I wasn’t quite so sure what my answer would be.

  “Try to get a line on the guys that hit us.”

  I was right. “Sal—”

  “Look, I realize it’s probably impossible, but if you did manage to find them and we could get the dough back, then...” He didn’t need to finish it. Then he’d be right back where he was before last night’s fuck-up.

  “Sal, that’s the kind of thing the police should handle.”

  “Listen, Jake, I’ve been up all night thinking this through, and I know I’m right. Let’s say we bring in the cops. And let’s say they find those guys. And let’s say they recover the money. Do you think they’re just going to hand it back to me, with no questions, with smiles and good wishes, and a suggestion that it’s not such a hot idea to carry that much dough around in a briefcase late at night?”

  “They might if you explained the situation.”

  “Yeah, they might, but only if they were involved in the pay-off, and I can’t have that. Look, you saw what the setup was last night. We’re dealing with smart cookies who know how to cover their asses, who’ll be able to spot any funny stuff a long way off. They know what they’re doing. No, Jake, I can’t bring the cops in for one part without having them in for the whole thing. And I can’t risk that. I couldn’t last night and I can’t now. You didn’t hear that guy on the phone. You didn’t hear Tommy. Man, these people are serious.”

  Sal had a point. In fact, lying awake this morning I had reached all the same conclusions. The only hope for Tommy was to deliver the ransom, and the only way to do that was to get it back from whoever ripped us off. If the cops were involved at all, they’d be in all the way, and that could well be it for Tommy. I figured the kid’s chances, no matter what happened, were piss poor. However, he was still alive, for the time being, and maybe the kidnappers would play it straight. It had happened before. If that was your only hope, you damn well hung onto it. I realized I had reversed my position from the previous day, but the situation seemed different to me now, or at least clearer. No, there was only one of Sal’s conclusions that I had real doubts about.

  “Sal, what good do you think I could be? You saw how well I handled things last night. Shit, that’s what created this problem.”

  “That wasn’t your fault, Jake. I don’t blame you.”

  “Thanks anyway, but the hell it wasn’t. I walked us right into a sucker trap and never noticed anything was wrong.”

  “Nobody would have.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. I keep thinking that if I’d been able to do the job, if I hadn’t been so damn old, I’d have spotted a dozen things to alert me that there was trouble, and you’d still have your money. But I didn’t.”

  “You’re full of shit. You know that, Jake?”

  “Yeah? I also keep thinking that of all the mistakes I made last night, the biggest one was agreeing to go along in the first place. Sal, this time, be smart. Get someone who can do it right.”

  “Cut the crap, huh? I want you. Will you help me?”

  “Sal, this is too important.”

  “I think it’s important to you, too.”

  I sighed. “It is.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “Sal—”

  “ ‘Sal, Sal,’“ he mimicked, a harsh whine in my ear. “What’s this bullshit? Who are you thinking about? Me or you?”

  Good question. I didn’t know.

  “If you don’t want to help me,” he went on, “just say so. But don’t give me this number about you’re too old, you’re no good, you can’t make it. If that’s what you think, why don’t you just curl up and die? That’s what you told me last night. Remember? I think you can do it. Too much is at stake here. I wouldn’t be asking you if I didn’t. And I think you think so, too.” He laughed, not especially warmly. “You’re like the virgin who keeps saying no while she nods her head yes. What do you want, Jake? Me to say I love you?”

  Damn.

  Sal was pretty sharp. That was exactly what I was doing. Nearly all of me badly wanted to go ahead, but I didn’t want the responsibility for the decision. I wanted to be swept off my feet. Sal was right—that was bullshit. I couldn’t have it both ways. Either I did it or I didn’t, but whichever way I went, I had to accept the consequences.

  Sal was also right about the fact that I thought I could handle the job. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, and despite what I had tried to tell both Sal and myself, I really did feel that, if it could be done, I’d be able to do it. Deep down, I felt it. Or maybe I wasn’t so sure, but wanted the chance to prove it—to myself, to anyone—to show that Jake Spanner still had it. Or maybe it was to redeem myself after last night, to make things right again. When I’d been working, I’d screwed things up a few times—maybe more than
a few—and it had always bothered me for a long time after. Three-A.M. shakes, four-A.M. guilt. This was a load I sure didn’t relish carrying around with me.

  Most of all, though, I was involved; had a commitment. To Sal, who had everything in his life on the line. To his grandson, locked in some room, alone and frightened. And to myself. I’d been hired and paid to do a job, and I hadn’t done it. Just like in those dumb books, that used to mean something to me. It seemed it still did.

  Jesus! I couldn’t believe what was going through my mind. The motives weren’t all clear, maybe they weren’t all smart, and they sure weren’t all honorable. Motives rarely were. But all mine certainly did point in the same direction. I was saying no and shaking my head yes. The hell with it, I told myself; enough. “J. Spanner: Lost while searching his soul.”

  “Hey, Jake, are you still there?” A small tinny voice issued from the receiver.

  “Yeah, Sal, I am. For as long as you want me.”

  Christ. The comedy continued. The old dick was back on the case.

  I heard a sigh of relief in my ear that I felt was hardly justified under the circumstances. “Thanks, Jake.”

  “I wish you’d stop thanking me. Or at least wait until I do something to thank me for. Which, believe me, I think is pretty unlikely. I really don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do.”

  “I don’t know, Jake. You been in this town a long time. You know lots of people. Start asking around, I guess. Maybe you’ll get a line.”

  “You forget, I’ve also been out of circulation a long time. Most of the people I know are dead.”

  “Well, you’ll think of something, Jake. If I remember right, you always used to.”

  “Not always. Not nearly always. And that was a long time ago. I’m not sure I even know how to go about this anymore.”

  “Oh, hell, it’ll come back once you start. It’s like fucking. You never forget how to do it.”

  Bad analogy, Sal. Real bad analogy.