by S. J. Rozan
"Nothin'," he told Otis, pointing his gun at me again.
There was a Smith 8c Wesson .22 strapped up behind the dash, but it would have taken a better man than Ted to find it.
"The Park View," I said suddenly. "You guys sat down the other end of the counter."
"Free country," Otis said. "Fuck the gun. Let's go. You come with me. Ted'll bring your car."
I turned slowly, stood facing him. His face was broad, doughy. The knuckles on the hand wrapped around the big automatic were hairy and thick. "Where?" I asked.
"Guy I know wants to see you." He gestured in the direction of the black truck.
"Who?"
"What do you care?" The gun was black and mean- looking. He waved it around a little.
"I guess I don't." I walked a few steps toward the truck, Otis walking behind, Ted back by my car. When I had space around me I turned again to face Otis, as slowly as before. My arms were still and loose at my sides, but my fingers and my spine were tingling.
"No," I said.
"What the hell do you mean, no? I'm supposed to bring you in, I'm goddamn gonna bring you in."
"You won't shoot me. Whoever wants me probably wouldn't like it if you brought me in dead."
"No." Otis smiled, showing thick brown teeth. "But he might not mind if you was hurt a little." We were standing no more than four feet apart. He lowered the big automatic, leveled it at my knee.
"He might not," I said. "But I would."
While I was still talking, while his eyes were on my eyes and his attention on my words, I whipped my left foot up, over, out, caught his gun hand on the inside of the wrist. His arm flew back and I dived after it, grabbed it, spun him around so he was between me and Ted. He swung at my jaw with his free hand but he was way off balance and couldn't put a lot behind if, when it landed it didn't matter much. I kicked him again, in the stomach this time, and he squealed as I twisted his arm sharply from the wrist, bent it hard in a way it was never meant to go. He grabbed wildly at me. I wrenched the gun from him and smashed it across his jaw. I pulled his twisted wrist hard up behind his back, shoved the barrel of the gun under his chin.
"Tell Ted to drop it!" I said.
Nothing happened. I yanked on the wrist in my hand.
"Goddammit, Ted!" he gasped.
Ted threw his gun down as though it were suddenly hot.
"Okay," I said. "Face down in the road, hands behind your head. Now!" I pushed Otis down. Ted scrambled to flatten himself.
I picked up Ted's gun, a smaller, older version of the Ruger 9-mm I'd taken off Otis. I went over both men for anything else of interest. I found their wallets, leafed through them. Local boys, Otis and Ted, nothing more than what they looked like. I took my wallet, my quarters, and my keys back from Ted and then stepped over to my car.
"All right," I said. "Get up."
They climbed to their feet. Otis was white, holding his wrist close to his chest. Ted just looked sullen, as though his picnic had been spoiled by rain.
"You broke my wrist, motherfucker," Otis growled.
"No," I said. "If I had, it would hurt. Let's go."
"Where to?"
"You tell me. It's your party."
He narrowed his eyes. "I don't get it. If you was coming anyhow, what was all this for?"
"Oh, a lot of reasons. One, I like to be the guy with the guns. Two, I want Grice to know I'm coming because I'm curious, not because he sent some penny-ante punks after me." Otis ground his teeth when I said that, but he didn't speak. "And three, nobody drives this car but me."
"How did you know it was Frank wanted you?"
"I didn't. But this seems like his style. Heavy-handed and amateur. Let's go."
They got into the black truck, started it up. I slid behind the wheel of my car, turned the key, and watched Ted slam the truck forward and back until it faced downhill.
I lit a cigarette, dragged on it deeply. The truck rolled down the hill and I followed. When we came out of the pines we turned right, driving farther up into the hills away from town. The late afternoon sun was lost behind a flat lid of clouds. Geese in a V-formation sliced across the sky, heading north.
I hadn't made those guys in the Park View, hadn't spotted them tailing me. I squashed the cigarette butt against the ashtray, slammed the ashtray shut. Ted sped up, bouncing over the rough road. There was no chance of my losing him but I sped up too, hugging his tail more closely than I needed to. Maybe it would piss him off.
There was a time when I kept a bottle of bourbon in the glove compartment, but it wasn't there now, so I lit another cigarette and followed the truck into the fading afternoon.
A pale-green house, dark-green trim, peeling paint. Shutters slanting or missing altogether. Unpainted two-by-tens on concrete blocks stepping up to a sagging, rail-less porch. Tattered screen doors; dark, uncurtained windows, staring blind.
The Chevy turned into a swampy field to the left of the house, bounced to a stop. I pulled partway off the road, parked so a car could pass me but not park me in easily.
Not a lot of people had ever tried living up here, deep in the woods near the top of the ridge, and most of the ones who had had given up and gone away. There was nothing here, except small streams and blackberry thickets and pale snowdrops already showing through a carpet of maple leaves. By next week, wild crocuses, lavender and gold; then lilies in stands of sunrise colors on the stream banks. But you couldn't farm this land, and the streams weren't really good for fishing.
I'd driven through here a few times over the years. I'd driven just about every road in the county at one time or another. Sometimes there would be a tired woman hanging clothes out on a line, or a man with his head and arms under the hood of one of the junked cars that sprouted like mushrooms. But mostly there were just empty frame houses and a few desolate trailers, their aluminum doors flapping in the wind.
The Chevy truck sat silent on the grass. I got out of my car, crossed behind it, keeping the car and then the truck between me and the house. Otis's gun was in my hand. I opened the Chevy's driver-side door. "Okay, come on out."
Ted climbed down, his eyes on the gun. He moved a little away from me, chewing on his lip. "Anyone in the house?" I asked. He shook his head, looked into the truck at Otis.
"This way," I told Otis. He slid across the seat and under the wheel, dropped to the spongy ground beside me. "What happens now?" I asked.
His left hand still cradled his right wrist. He scowled. "I'm supposed to call Frank when we get here."
"This his place?"
"He don't live here. But he owns it."
"Where does he live?"
"Cobleskill."
"Why come all the way out here?"
He didn't answer, just kept scowling.
"Yeah," I said. "Stupid question."
We went around the truck and up the plank steps. There was no movement, no noise except for the sounds we made. Otis fumbled with a key but he couldn't work the lock left-handed; Ted had to do it, in the end.
The failing afternoon light didn't reach inside. Otis flipped a switch and a floor lamp came on in the front room, to our left. There was a tattered couch against the far wall; two brown chairs, upholstery split, white stuffing hanging out; some side tables; peeling, faded wallpaper. A doorless doorway in the back led to a kitchen with a linoleum floor, cabinets on the wall. Straight ahead of us was a small hallway. An uncarpeted wooden staircase ran along the right side of the hallway, leading up into darkness.
The whole place was still and deserted and smelled of mildew and stale cooking grease. It was colder than it was outside, in the way a damp, closed place can be.
"Sit down," I said to Ted. I gestured with the gun at one of the brown chairs. "If you get up I'll shoot you. It's not a problem for me. Understand?" He nodded and sat quickly, hands gripping the soft arms of the chair. I turned to Otis. "Okay. We're here. Call Frank."
He crossed the room to a table that stood under the one lit lamp. There was a blac
k phone there. Otis lifted the receiver with his left hand and, holding it, dialed. He put the receiver to his left ear and I put the gun to his right one, repeating in my head the number he'd dialed.
There was silence in the shadowy room, then Otis spoke. "Yeah. It's me. Gimme Frank." He waited. I gently wrapped my fingers around his swollen right wrist. He tensed and looked at me. I raised an eyebrow and nodded. "Yeah, Frank," he said back into the phone, licked his lips. "No, it's good. We're here." Pause. "Yeah." Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. "Yeah, okay. No problem." He replaced the receiver slowly. I let go of his wrist, took the gun from his head.
"What the fuck was that for?" He drew his wrist to his chest.
"Sorry," I said. "You strike me as a guy too stupid to be sneaky when he's really scared. You did fine, Otis." I stepped back a little, included Ted in the wave of the gun.
Let’s go.
Ted stood up fast. Otis said, "Go where?"
There was a door in the wall under the staircase. I backed over to it, watching the two men who stood in the yellow lamplight. I threw the bolt and the door creaked open. A gust of mud-scented air rolled into the hallway. "Downstairs," I said.
Ted and Otis filed past me. I bolted the door behind them, then went quickly out the front. There was a double- doored cellar hatch on the side of the house by the truck. It was held shut by a large bolt. I found a piece of warped two-by-four from a rotting pile of construction lumber on the porch and, as insurance, wedged it through the doors' iron handles.
I went back inside, looked at my watch. Five-thirty. It would take Grice at least half an hour to get up here from Cobleskill. I switched on another light in the living room, picked up the phone. I dialed the number at Antonelli's.
It rang a long time in the emptiness.
If the cops were still there they would have answered, because all over the world that was what cops did.
If they were gone Tony should have answered. Under the circumstances another man might have closed the bar for the rest of the day, or the rest of the week. But as much as the big house across the road, the bar was where Tony lived. And unlike the house, in the bar he wasn't alone.
I pressed the cut-off button, got another dial tone, called the state troopers.
"D Unit. Sergeant Whiteside," a woman's voice said.
"Ron MacGregor, please."
"Sorry, he's gone. Someone else help you?"
"You still have Tony Antonelli up there?"
"Hold it." The voice went away, came back. "Says here Antonelli was just here answering questions, left hours ago. Who're you?"
"Richard Wilcox. You guys find Jimmy Antonelli yet?"
"Who's Richard Wilcox?"
"Jimmy's lawyer. Are you holding him, or is the sheriff?"
"Far as I know, no one is," she said cautiously. "You hear different?"
"My mistake," I said. "Thanks, Sergeant." I hung up.
Out in the kitchen an old refrigerator started to hum. I went back there, looked around. A cast-iron pan with a half inch of pale grease and crumbs in the bottom sat on a splattered gas stove. Dishes and crusted silverware were piled in the sink and a breadboard held a hunk of bread you could have thrown through a plate-glass window. I opened the fridge. What was in it I wouldn't have touched on a bet.
Except the three green bottles of Rolling Rock, lying on their sides on the bottom shelf. I took one out, twisted off the top, and went back to the living room. I moved one of the brown chairs so that I could see the front door from it, but someone looking in the window couldn't see me. I sat, lit a cigarette, sipped the Rolling Rock, and waited.
I was on the second bottle when I heard the faint rumble of an engine, coming closer fast. A minute later a pair of headlights swept into the front windows, stopped moving, went out. The engine stopped abruptly. Doors slammed, footsteps sounded on the loose boards of the porch.
I raised the automatic, held it steady in my right hand. The beer was in my left. The front door opened. Frank Grice stepped into the little hall, trailed by the big, friendly- faced guy with the mustache. Grice turned into the living room doorway, his mouth open as though he were about to say something.
Then he saw me. He stopped, frozen in a half-completed motion. The big guy stopped too, then started again, moved forward with a little growl. Grice put his hand up without taking his eyes off mine. The big guy stopped.
"Hi, Frank," I said. "Disgusting place you've got here."
He still didn't move. "Where are Ted and Otis?"
"Downstairs," I said. "They're not very good, Frank." I sipped the beer, waved the gun. "Sit down."
He came through the doorway, sat on the other chair, facing me. He leaned back, crossed one leg over the other. His twisted face was bruised; there were two Band-Aids over his right eye.
"You too," I said to the big guy. He looked at Grice, who nodded. He crossed to the couch and sat, leaning forward, eyes a little wide, hands rubbing his knees in opposite circles. In the light I could see that his lip was split and swollen under the mustache.
"You wanted me," I said. "I'm here. Why?"
"Last night," Grice said easily, "I didn't know who you were.”
"If you had?"
"I'd have shaken your hand. Your trick-pony lawyer saved me a lot of trouble last fall, when they dropped the charges against Jimmy. I never got to thank you."
"If I saved you any trouble, Grice, it was an accident. Any trouble I can make for you," I said, finishing the beer, "will be a pleasure. What do you want from Tony?"
He shook his head, dismissing the question. "Just business." He smiled a cockeyed smile. "You're right," he said. "Otis and Ted aren't very good. They're typical of what's available around here. You ever get tired of working for Tony, I could find a place for you."
"First, I don't work for Tony Second, I don't work for assholes like you."
"That's too bad. That was what I wanted to see you about."
I stared at him. "You sent two armed morons after me so you could offer me a job?"
He nodded. "What do you get?"
"Fifty an hour, plus expenses. Working for a guy like you, expenses could be high."
He lifted his uneven eyebrows, smiled his crooked smile. "That's all? Jesus, you're in a chickenshit business, Smith. I pay Arnold more than that." He gestured at the big guy, who smiled through his split hp. Arnold? Well, what did I know? Maybe since Schwarzenegger, Arnold was a tough name.
"What did you pay Wally Gould?"
He shook his head. "That was too bad, wasn't it? Wally was valuable. I'll miss him."
"Then why'd you kill him?"
"Me? You've got to be kidding." He looked at Arnold, who snickered. "Maybe you're not as smart as I thought. Why would I kill Wally? And if I did, why would I do it in Tony's basement?"
"Damned if I know. You were trying to shake Tony down for something last night. Maybe Wally wanted too big a piece of the action."
"Wally wasn't bright enough to want anything, except to be allowed to kill something once in a while."
"Like Tony or me, last night?"
"Sure, he would've enjoyed that. But like I say, I didn't know who you were."
"Well," I said, standing, the gun held loosely in my right hand, "you know now. Sorry I can't help you, Frank." I moved toward the door.
"Don't you at least want to hear the offer?"
"Okay," I said. "Okay, Frank. Let's hear it."
"A thousand dollars," he said. "I want to talk to Jimmy Antonelli."
I laughed. "Every cop in this county is probably looking for Jimmy by now. What makes you think I could find him first?"
Grice spread his hands, made a little self-deprecating smile. "You're a friend of his."
"Why do you want him?"
"Not your business, Smith. A grand for finding him and walking away. I'm not going to hurt him. In fact, I can help him."
"Why does he need help?"
"Murder's a harder rap to beat than disposing of stolen cars."
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"There's always the chance Jimmy didn't kill Gould, just like you."
"Yeah," he grinned. "I guess there's that chance. But whether he did or not, he'll be better off if I find him than if Brinkman does."
"He'd be better off with Godzilla than with Brinkman. But I told you, I don't work for assholes."
Grice shrugged. "Think about it. The cops'll find him sooner or later. I'd like to find him first."
"Why?"
"Let's say I feel like I owe him one."
I leaned against the doorway, slipped a cigarette in my mouth. "You do owe him," I said. "But you don't know what that means or what to do about it. I'll tell you something. I was the guy he called, when Brinkman finally let him near a phone. My advice was to take the deal, sell you to Brinkman for as much as he could get. He wouldn't do it, Frank. Not because he likes you. He doesn't like you. But he wouldn't rat. Even on you."
Grice took a cigarette out of a gold case. He closed the case and tapped the cigarette slowly on it as Arnold hurried to dig a lighter out and hold it for him. Jesus.
He blew a thin trail of smoke and said, "I guess I'm a pretty lucky guy, then."
"Tell me something, Frank." I blew smoke of my own. "You're not much better than Otis or Ted. And Brinkman seems to want you a lot. So how come he hasn't been able to make anything stick to you yet?"
"Like I said: I'm lucky."
"Luck runs out, Frank. Keep away from Jimmy, and from Tony."
There was no sound of movement behind me as I opened the door and went out.
I stepped down the planks and walked to my car over the spongy earth. The night air felt sharp and clean. As I reached my car Grice stepped onto the porch. "I'll find him," Grice said. "You can make a grand on it or not, but I'll find him."
I turned to face him, saw him silhouetted in the dim light of the doorway. The silence was complete and heavy; there was no moon, no light but the glow from inside the house. Arnold appeared next to Grice. He was grinning.
I could have shot them both, two quick, surprising shots from Otis s big automatic; then to the basement, two more shots, and I could have driven away. No one would miss them, no one would wake suddenly in the night and know all over again and feel that helpless sick feeling start to grow.