Chasing Sam Spade

by Brian Lawson

  “You ok?”

  He gulped, feeling the bile rising, carrying the brandy and coffee and days of junk food and he rolled over and off the chaise, staggering to the corner of the deck. He threw up violently, spewing the days of fear and anger off the million-dollar deck, into the rich man’s cypress. Patrick said something from somewhere behind him. He shuddered like a wet dog, felt his gorge rise again, and bent double and vomited the last of it up in deep, wrenching heaves. Finally, his eyes streaming and the slime and stink filling his head, he stood up and took a deep breath, then another.

  He turned and walked back to the table, catching the dishtowel Patrick threw to him, wiping his mouth and eyes. He slumped down on the cold, slick fabric, grabbed his drink and took a long, bitter swallow.

  “Man, you going to be ok? You want another drink, some more coffee?”

  He nodded, yeah, and Patrick went inside and came back out with the bottle and the steaming coffeepot. He poured another brandy and coffee and leaned back. Yeah, finally, he was going to be ok.

  “You son of a bitch,” he croaked, feeling his vomit burned throat rebel at the work.

  “What?”

  “You made me sit through that whole story, then just spring that on me. Oh, by the way, my father killed your father. Just like that.”

  “Hey, you brought it up a long time ago, man,” Patrick said, the strange guttural whining back. “You said it, I just said yeah, that’s it. Now, you want to quit, or you want to get even?”

  “Shit, you people,” he grunted. “So, get it over with. Why’d he do it?”

  “I guess the old man thought he’d come up with something. Maybe something he missed, I don’t know. So he had him killed, him and the others,” Patrick shrugged. His voice now was drifting off, indifferent.

  “He had these guys killed just to keep this hushed up?” Danny said, shaking his head, caught in the wonder of it that was even stronger than anger.

  “That’s the old man for you. Always going for the neat and tidy package.”

  The words grated at him and he felt his bile rising again. The morning had lowered and he felt like the city was sitting on top of him, flattening him, crushing the air out of him with a roaring that filled his head. That was it, neat and tidy, somebody is annoying you, you kill him and his friends. Neat. Tidy.

  “Man, you don’t look good,” Patrick said.

  He shook his head, trying to keep the roaring down. All this, all this.

  “He probably thought nobody would notice. Just a weird coincidence. Old guys have accidents. One guy can’t get out of the way of traffic, another falls down some stairs. Shit like that happens. He must have thought nobody would care. The cops didn’t, who else would?”

  “So, after all this, it’s really all about the cover-up? And your father’s tired, dirty little sins?” he said, shaking his head. “Are you sure?”

  Patrick shrugged and stared past him, looking into the distance, looking at the Bay. “Oh yeah, I’m sure.”

  “How?”

  “It doesn’t matter, I’m just sure.”

  “It matters to me,” he said, and now that he knew, that the truth had been heard about the stolen years and the pain and the strange, pointless murders, he felt suddenly very tired. He patted his jacket pocket. “ Tell me.”

  “I got the proof.”

  “What is it?”

  “Stuff. Evidence. I know what car he used to run those guys down with. Where he has it garaged. The gun he used in the fake stickup. That sort of stuff.”

  “Take it to the police.”

  “I was waiting, for the right time.”

  “What?”

  “I said I was waiting,” and Patrick stood up and walked over to the corner of the deck, looking out through the glass, a gust of wind ruffling through his thick black hair.

  “What the hell are you talking about? You said you wanted to get even, so get even. Go to the cops and let them take care of him once and for all.”

  His back was to Danny, and he shrugged and turned, his arms outstretched like some fat boy asking for seconds. He had a look on his face Danny couldn’t place. It looked the face of a man about to twist himself apart from the inside out.

  “My God, you can’t do it, can you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe not. I don’t know why, I just can’t,” he croaked. “He’s still my father.”

  “He’s a killer. Jesus fucking Christ what the hell’s wrong with you,” Danny screamed, the words ripping at his raw, brandy and vomit ravaged throat.

  “I just can’t.”

  Danny slumped back on the chaise, very tired. His head was swimming but he struggled through it. “Ok, give it to me. I’ll go to the cops. ”

  “What about Larkin?”

  For one, bright moment, Danny saw the end of the whole mess, now he slumped as the weight of what he was saying hit him. What about Larkin?

  “If they arrest him now, who knows what’ll happen to Larkin, right? I don’t know where he is, only he knows, and I know him. Nobody’ll ever get it out of him. That old man can die, and nobody will find him.”

  He hated to say it, but Patrick was making a tortured kind of sense; send a thief to catch a thief, send a Skelley to catch a Skelley. If anybody could figure out the twisted Skelley logic, it would be Patrick.

  “Ok, just tell me where the car is, the gun, all of it and I’ll do it later, after.”

  Patrick shook his head. “No, you don’t get nothing until after you let me go.”

  “No way. I let you go and I’m right back where I started, and Larkin’s still in deep shit.”

  “But what’s to stop you from killing me if I give you everything? What’s my insurance?”

  He looked so earnest that Danny felt himself laughing. It was the first laugh in days and it had a thin, hollow feeling, like something rattling around in his chest. Maybe it was going to be all right, after all.

  “It’s ironic, but I think you should trust your old man on this one, Patrick. He said I don’t have the balls. And he’s right,” he said, choking back the laugh. “Besides, if I could kill you, then what would I trade. Trust me, Patrick, he’s right. I don’t have the balls.”

  “You had the balls to kidnap me.”

  “Sure, but it was a bluff. Your old man knew it.”

  “I don’t know that. I just know I’ve got something you want and as long as I do, I’m safe. Make the trade and I give you the proof.”

  Danny shook his head. “This is fucked. I can’t let you go or I don’t have anything to bargain with to get Larkin back. But your old man won’t bargain. It’s like that story, the Ransom of Red Cloud, or something? I’ve got you, and now I can’t get rid of you. Jesus Christ, this is a mess.”

  “No, I told you he’d trade if you hit him where it hurts.”

  Danny looked at him, staring at that soft, pasty face. The look in the man’s eyes, the nasty slit of a smile that made those blubbery lips stretch and twitch. He’d been set up. The kid knew all along. It all made some strange, sad sense to Danny. It couldn’t be that he’d been set up, manipulated by the lump of suet sitting in front of him. Not his own kidnapping and the groveling at the garage “You set this up, you sonofabitch, didn’t you?”

  Patrick shrugged. “Naw, not really. I was waiting, trying to figure out what to do and you showed up. I figured you’d cause enough shit that something would happen. And it did.”

  Patrick shrugged, then slowly nodded. “Yeah, a little. I’ve been trying to figure out how to make this work. But I didn’t figure on you grabbing me and the ride around town. But once it happened, it all worked out.”

  “It was an act?”

  “Some, yeah, some no. What do you care? You’re here, you got what you wanted, and I’ll get what I want. It’ll fuck him over. He’s out, I’m in. You tell him, he’s out. I take over the law practice, the holding company, everything the family controls. I get elected, I am a well-respected man. And he’s finished, washed up.”
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br />   “Once I go to the cops you’ll be a killer’s son. Everything will come out, you don’t stand a chance.”

  Patrick smiled at him again. “Think so? Or maybe I look like some hard done by kid of a really, really dysfunctional family. You never know, maybe there’s enough sympathy votes out there.”

  “My God, what’s wrong with you people? It’s just about the money. That’s all it is, money and power. You’re doing the same thing your grandfather did.”

  “Not the same thing, not the same thing,” Patrick snarled, slamming his hand down and making the glasses jump. “This is justice. This is for what he did to her. Not the same thing, don’t ever say that again.”

  He’d grown used to the rapid shifts in moods by now; he wasn’t surprised, just tired. “Alright, never mind. What do you want to do?”

  Patrick didn’t move for a moment, just glared at him, then past him into the trees and far view of the Bay. Slowly, his hands unclenched and he sighed. Maybe it was how he gathered himself, got control of the sudden, shocking anger. For the first time, Danny felt afraid of the man.

  “We call and tell him you’ve got something about the sex crime thing, and the cover-up. It’ll make him deal, don’t worry.”

  “How? That gives him a reason to kill me and Johnny. Why not?”

  “We do it in public. He doesn’t work that way.”

  Danny shook his head. Patrick’s plan wasn’t even a plan, just the strange hopes of vengeance tied together with thready logic. “I don’t think that’s going to work. He can run, he can hide, he can hurt Johnny. You really think he’s going to turn over Johnny, let me go, sign over everything to you and, what, just abdicate?” Danny shook his head. “He’ll kill us and if he figures out you were involved, he’ll kill you. He thinks you can hurt him that bad, he’ll have your head on a platter, son or no son.”

  Skelley shook his head and now, suddenly, the Skelley bloodline began to tell: shrewd, hard edged, a look in his eyes of calm, dispassionate appraisal. Danny had been on the receiving end of that look in the old man’s office and it wasn’t pleasant.

  “No, he won’t kill me. He’ll think you’re conning him, but he won’t know that that’ll be enough. He can’t be sure you don’t have something, some evidence. You tell him it’s stashed somewhere, ready to go to the cops if he does anything.”

  “Christ, that’s a cliché. The unmailed letter, the videotape in the safe deposit box.”

  Patrick was excited now, getting carried along by his ideas, spittle flying at his rumbled on, throwing out ideas, knocking down objections as fast as Danny raised them. As he talked Danny realized he’d tried to think of everything, plan for everything. He’d been working on this a long time.

  “Yeah, it’s a cliché, but things are cliches because people buy into them. Everybody uses them because they work. He’ll laugh at it, but it’ll still work, see? He’ll deal because he has to, just to be safe and to protect the family. Shanty Irish make the grade. The family. Everything’s about the family. There’s only me,” he said, nodding heavily. “He can’t do anything to me. There’s only me and if I’m gone, it’s all over. Finito. I’m golden. He won’t do anything to me and he can’t do anything to you.”

  Danny glanced slowly, pointedly around the deck, back through the expansive picture window into the million-dollar apartment; he lifted the crystal mug and shrugged. He didn’t really care if the old man cut Patrick off; maybe it would even be the best thing for him, but he guessed that even in his rage to strike back at the old man, Patrick had himself covered, somehow. He was right.

  Danny wasn’t so sure. Did the family name really matter to him? Were the twisted old man and his crippled son really a family, or would he eat his young like any other good cornered rat? And that didn’t matter either. All that mattered was righting the damage Danny had done, getting Johnny out of harm’s way. He knew everything he’d ever need to know about the Skelleys and Chuck; that was closed business.

  “This is our chance to get him. Don’t you want that, isn’t what all this is about?”

  “Yeah, that’s what it’s about, but I don’t see it happening, Patrick. I see every body getting hurt. If he guesses you’re in on this?”

  “So what? He’ll never know you don’t have the goods. He has no options. Roll over and play dead, Daddy, or you ruin him. He’ll buy it. He won’t like it. He might suspect me, but he has no choice. He always does the smart thing.”

  Maybe it would work. It was screwy enough to make sense, if the elder Skelley was as screwy as his kid. Danny stood up, letting the kinks slowly straighten and walked to the front room bar, popped a 7-Up and poured half a glass. The sweet needle carbonation tasted good and it calmed his stomach; he took another drink and poured the rest of the can into the glass before walking back the table. He pulled another chair over and sat down, facing Skelley across the crazed table.

  “What’s wrong? It’ll work. What?”

  “I don’t know. Lying down with dogs,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  “If you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas.”

  “You want to do this or not?”

  He nodded, yeah, he did. “God forgive me for what I do. Yeah, I do. Jesus Christ, I mean, I don’t know,” he mumbled. “How the hell do you people live like this?”

  Patrick shrugged but Danny could see that the question didn’t really get to him, that he didn’t know another way and even if he was ready to attack his father he still wasn’t ready to throw everything away that the family had brought him.

  “Hey, every family’s got some problems, right?”

  “Not like this,” he said, shaking his head. What the hell, it wasn’t really his problem, he only had one real problem left. This time Skelley heard the tone.

  “Hey look, you’re no hero. Remember you kidnapped me, and if you hadn’t gotten involved, nothing would have happened to your friend,” he said. “I could press charges, you know.”

  “They’d probably give me a medal.”

  “Not in this town. I’d end up looking like the victim, the kidnapping, the brutalization, fighting for my family and my father while tied up in the back of a madman’s car,” he said, head down so Danny could barely hear him. But he could hear the barely suppressed mirth.

  “You little son of a bitch. That’s why you went along with it.”

  “Yeah. You didn’t have a gun, that was easy. And you really think I couldn’t get away, some time, last night? Shit, if you hadn’t done it, I’d have figured out some other way.”

  He shook his head. The kid was surprising him right and left now, and he felt like he was being had. But it was too late. Short of killing the old man with his bare hands, the kid might have the only way of hurting him. “Are you really ready for this, Patrick? You really want to get even this bad?”

  “You did.”

  “What? I’m not following you.”

  “You came down here and stirred all this shit up. Why’d you do that? Just to find out what happened to your old man? I don’t think so,” he said, nodding now, a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

  “Okay, wise guy, why’d I do it?”

  “Pay back. Pure and simple. You wanted to get even. Just like me, nothing different,” he said.

  Danny looked at him, searching for something, anything that would give the lie to what Patrick said. He couldn’t. For all the talk, for all the reasons given to Doris and Ben and himself, maybe it wasn’t any different. Something a pure and simple as revenge. Striking back. No nobility, no heroes here. He felt the cold creep in that all the brandy and hot coffee and heaters weren’t going to touch. He was in it and he had to finish it.

  Patrick nodded at him, went inside and came back out carrying a phone and plugged it in. He said, “It’s a speaker phone. So we can hear him squirm.

  “Don’t be so sure,” he said.

  Patrick dialed the number and they waited for the ice-cold voice. He wasn’t sure what it would feel
like to hear the man’s voice, the voice of the man who killed his father. Patrick was watching him through puffy, slitted eyes, watching, waiting.

  The voice came in, surprisingly full from the small speaker.

  “Hello.”

  “It’s me, Skelley.”

  “How’d you get this number?”

  “Well, maybe that tell you something? I’ve got your baby boy here and he wants to talk.”

  “Patrick, you there?”

  “Right here, dad,” he said, and he managed to make his voice weak, shaky and weak. Patrick was a real surprise, in a lot of ways.

  Danny cut in. “Bluff’s over, Skelley, I ain’t going to kill him and you know it. I don’t have the balls, but here’s the deal,” he said, looking at young Skelley who was hanging on every word, mouth open, pink slug tongue licking his lips. He felt cool, almost relaxed. He sounded calm but his hands were shaking and he felt a cramp building in the back of the white knuckled fist that clutched the phone.

  “Your baby boy can’t take the pressure. He gets started talking and he tells the damnedest stories about the family and...”

  “I want to talk to Patrick,” Skelley interrupted.

  “He’s right here, on the speaker phone. Just talk up, but first listen, will you, just once in your miserable fucking life?”

  “Watch your mouth, Boyle.”

  “Of what? This isn’t hypothetical this time, Skelley. Patrick’s talked all night. He’s a little upset you won’t trade for him, and when he gets upset, he just can’t seem to shut up.”

  “Let him go, right now, or so help me God….”

  Danny cut in again. “Don’t threaten, don’t even talk for a second, you son of a bitch.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “No, fuck you,” Danny actually snarled, and the anger was balling up in his chest. He took a quick deep breath, then pushed on.

  “He’s told me some very interesting things about your father and his cozy little deal with the child molesters.”