by Pres Maxson
I nervously cleaned glassware. For a party of five people, it seemed as though we had gone through enough pints and highballs for an entire dining room. Then again, we broke as many as we didn’t.
It was starting to feel late. Janie and I had missed our regular dinner hour, but in the excitement of the evening we’d failed to notice until now. We’d also failed to address the imminent danger of the situation.
“Psst, honey!” I whispered as I dried a glass. Janie walked over, as the rest of the room apparently didn’t notice.
“Hey baby,” she answered.
“So, are we going to ignore the fact that this guy killed someone?” I motioned toward Renard. “Shouldn’t we be trying a little harder to get the hell out of here?”
Janie subtly looked in his direction. Renard was staring at his half-drunk glass.
“I don’t know. I don’t think that he’ll actually hurt us.”
“Maybe,” I said. “He does seem pretty reasonable, but he just admitted that he killed someone.”
“Yeah, I get that. But do you really want to test him and just try to walk out of here?”
“Not really,” I guessed.
“Plus, think about this: He hasn’t been at all close to violent tonight. Nor has he even said that he has a weapon on him.”
“I guess you’re right,” I sighed. “But still, this is serious. I need to keep you safe.” I puffed my chest a little.
“Please. Exhale, baby. You’d have more credibility if your shirt wasn’t in four pieces.”
I did look ridiculous. She was right.
“Let me ask you this,” she continued. “There’s a good chance that this coin of theirs isn’t anywhere in here.”
“Yeah, I’ve thought of that.”
“So don’t you want to know where it has ended up?”
“Truthfully, I’m a little more concerned about getting out of here right now,” I answered.
“No, I know. But think about it for a second. When we look back on this later, won’t it be annoying to not know?”
“I guess.”
“I mean,” she insisted, “we’re going to wind up telling people about tonight. It’s an incredible thing to happen to us. Won’t it be such a shame if we have an undefined ending?”
I thought about it seriously as I washed a glass. “Not knowing might make it better, actually,” I answered, shrugging.
“I suppose.”
I switched gears, and nodded at the coins. “So, how do they look?”
“They’re cool,” she answered, looking down at the bar top. Janie and Fleuse had meticulously laid out each coin from the safe. Even an inch apart, they took up a large expanse of bar-top real estate. Trudel watched them organize over her shoulder, and all three occasionally made comments about which ones they liked. Most were in foreign languages and bore the faces of unfamiliar royalty. Pistache sat alone at a table out on the floor.
While whispering with Janie, I’d noticed Renard’s spirit had deflated. He wasn’t guarding the curtain with any fervor, but he was seated at the end of the bar closest to it. His drink sat in front of him. It was a lonely look, as if he’d been through a breakup. I was beginning to feel badly for him. He noticed me looking at him.
“So, your girl says you’re a writer,” he said.
“A journalist, yes.”
“I imagine this is plenty of fodder for you.”
“Well, I write about news and events mostly. I’m not sure how I’d approach this experience.”
He lightly shrugged. “Listen, write whatever you want. Just don’t mention Monsieur Peukington. I’m serious about that.”
“Of course.” I was unwilling to mess with a guy who threw someone off a bridge.
“Good. Did you know that you’re bleeding?” he asked with a nod toward my hand.
I looked down. It wasn’t much, and I hadn’t felt it. Really not more than a scratch across the top of one of my fingers, it had been bleeding slowly. It had to have happened during the safe moving.
“Huh, I didn’t see that,” I automatically answered. Instinctively, I wiped it on the front of my shirt.
Janie looked up. “Honey, give me a break. You have soap, a sink, and towels back there. How old are you?”
“That’s true,” I admitted. “Who knows how nasty these towels are, though?”
I washed my hand. Since things had finally calmed down in the bar, for the first time it occurred to me that I might want to let the concierge know that we had found the safe.
“So, listen,” I said to Renard. “I know that you haven’t really found what you’re looking for, and I am beginning to feel as though it might not be in here.”
He made a face and took a drink.
I continued, “So, my wife and I haven’t eaten yet, and we were headed out to dinner when we came in here this evening.”
“We’re way passed dinner now, honey,” Janie said. I had no idea why she would say something that might keep us from getting out of there.
“Well, cafés are still open,” I said hopefully.
“Very few. Kitchens won’t be anywhere,” Fleuse muttered as he tilted a coin in his hand toward the light.
“Well, the point is,” I continued for Renard, “that it seems like things here have kind of reached … an impasse.”
“The coin is in here. I’m sure of it,” he said with another drink.
“I know that you keep saying that, but are you sure that we need to be here while you find it?”
He finished the drink and set the glass down in front of him. “Look. You two have been very friendly. I like you both, and you’ve been helpful. Do I think that you are concealing the coin? No. Can I be absolutely sure that you are not? Also no.”
“We don’t have it!” Janie protested.
“Yeah, if I had it,” I said, “I would just give it to you.”
“Would you really?” Pistache asked as he stood.
“Yes.”
“Think about it though,” the pickpocket went on as he approached the bar. “It’s valuable.”
“Yes, I know,” I said.
“I don’t know you, but my guess is that you have probably never held anything that valuable before.”
“True,” I said. “But if this thing really belongs to some businessman, then I wouldn’t keep it.”
“Stop calling him that!” Pistache exclaimed and retreated back to his table.
I looked to Renard who wasn’t saying anything.
“Why not?” I asked. “This Peukington guy? I thought that’s what he was.”
“Well, he is a businessman,” Renard said while tapping the edge of the empty glass. “But …”
“He’s a very dangerous businessman,” Pistache yelled out.
“What do you mean, dangerous?” I asked as I refilled Renard’s drink.
“Think about it,” Trudel hissed as she locked eyes on Renard. “Businessmen don’t kill people.”
There was a momentary silence.
“He does business, though,” Renard refuted.
“Do you get it yet?!” Pistache yelled toward me. “He is a bad guy! The cops look for ways to get him.”
“For what?” I asked.
“Not all his business is legal,” Renard said simply.
“Not all his business is legal?” Pistache huffed. “Heh, I’ll say. He ordered you to kill Victor.”
“That is not exactly true,” Renard stated. “I really wasn’t supposed to kill him.”
“No one is saying it, but I will,” Fleuse chimed in as he placed a coin he held back on the counter. He looked at me. “Monsieur Peukington is a gangster.”
“Do you get it now?” Pistache again stood. “This guy, Renard obviously works for him. He’s kind of a henchman. He’s not a trained killer or anything, but he’s muscle. You are not targets of his, but if you try to go anywhere he’ll probably make sure that you don’t have the coin. And he won’t care if you’re conscious or not while he checks.”
&
nbsp; “He seems to like you guys, though,” Fleuse added positively. “Maybe he wouldn’t kill you like he did Victor.”
I looked to Renard, who confirmed the accusation without saying anything. I sighed and reached for a bottle of whiskey. Removing the pour top, I took a swig straight from the bottle. Exasperated by the situation, I was hoping that the booze would help me feel numb to it. My eyes immediately watered from the quick swallow. Pistache huffed in amusement.
I looked in Janie’s direction, expecting to see a horrified and scared spouse. If anything though, she was distracted. I worried that the sudden rush of booze had skewed my perception, but she wasn’t even looking back. I saw her staring at the curtain.
“Who is that?” she said softly. All heads turned toward the entrance, and there was an audible wave of gasps that rushed over the room.
I looked toward the curtain as well and saw a thin, old face peering back at us through shadows beyond the opening in the drape. I thought I was imagining it all before I blinked a few times and the apparition did not dissipate.
The visage barely reacted to being noticed by the group in the bar. Reduced to a gasp, I heard the one word Trudel could muster.
“Victor!”
Chapter XV.
The trip from the bridge to the water was longer than Victor Lacquer expected. It didn’t look like much from a distance. He’d never leapt from anything higher than a diving board in his youth, so the concept of really falling was altogether foreign.
He heard the smack as he hit. Icy water burned his skin numb. His heart punched the inside of his chest. He kicked. There was no bottom. The current immediately pushed him.
Dizzied by the fall and disoriented, Victor somehow found a way to find the surface, even if only for a moment. He craned his neck. Keeping his head above water was much harder than he would have thought. He stretched to get a glimpse of the banks between interrupted gasps for air. No one was there to notice.
Victor’s moments were passing quickly, and it wasn’t long before he realized that he was in trouble. He kicked off his loafers. Muscles instantly ached. He struggled to stay afloat. Panic. Sucking air. For the first time in his life, Victor thought that he was going to die.
He couldn’t have been in the water for more than half a minute. The bartender’s perception of time was skewed. He knew it was only a second or two before his head would sink below the water’s surface. However, those two seconds of swimming saved him. It was just enough time to notice a rope among the waves.
Victor didn’t know where it had come from, but it lay on the surface of the water, floating in a mess of turns and loops. He didn’t know why he even reached for it, but he did. It provided little comfort. The rope did not have nearly the buoyancy it needed to keep him from slipping under. But, still he held it in his hand.
The notion of holding on to this rope felt futile quickly. For all he knew, it was river trash thrown from one of the many quiet houseboats and barges that lined the river’s edge. Suddenly, something pulled the rope. The line sped through his hand. He tightened his grip and was on the move.
He wasn’t going anywhere quickly, but it was suddenly easier to keep his head above water. He rubbed the river from his eyes and was happy to see someone actively pulling him toward a houseboat. With the deck of the long, flat boat towering above him, Victor was happy to realize that there was a ladder along the vessel’s side.
Upon grabbing it, he felt his arms give out. Victor spent so much energy trying to stay alive in the river, that he was unsure now if he could even drag himself up to safety.
Still, he threw his hand at the next thin cold metal rung, and then again at the next. He felt a strong hand grip his collar, and suddenly the strain on his own muscles was lifted as he felt his shirt begin to pull him upward.
Victor was finally lying on the deck of the boat in a puddle of water. He inhaled air in giant gulps. The deck was hard and unforgiving. Gravity pulled him to it so ferociously that his face started to hurt.
“Are you okay?” a woman’s voice asked.
Victor’s eyes were open, but he hadn’t thought yet to look upon the person who had saved him.
“Hey,” she repeated. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” he mustered through labored breaths. “Thank you.”
“What happened?”
He finally was able to focus on her. How she had been able to pull him from the water with such ease was a mystery. She was short. Her wiry black hair was tied in back, and her blue sweater was old and ratty. She stood next to an unfinished wooden chair, hovering over him. Her long skirt stopped just above her bare feet.
“I was thrown off the bridge,” he blurted out.
“What?!” she asked with surprise.
“Well, I …” He wasn’t sure how to explain it. Victor was out of breath still just trying to talk.
“Come on,” she urged. “Let’s get you up.”
Before Victor knew what was happening, she had him on his feet.
“You had better come inside, it’s cold,” she continued. It was still summer, but the nights had begun to cool considerably, and he shivered.
She walked him passed some weathered outdoor furniture on the boat’s deck through a small doorway. Victor had to duck. Bathed in the soft yellow light, the bartender collapsed in a chair. A light hung from the ceiling, practically tapping him on the forehead. He felt his clothing being removed. It felt better.
“Take off your pants,” the woman said. “My husband has a pair that will work. Or I can just get you a blanket.”
Victor, still in shock, complied. “A blanket is fine,” he muttered. “Thank you for the help. Who are you?”
“I’m Sarah,” she said through the door as she hung his clothes over the railing outside. “You said that someone threw you off a bridge?”
“Well, yes,” he replied simply as she returned to him. He wasn’t sure how much he should explain.
Victor looked around. He sat in a room that clearly doubled as kitchen and dining area. The woman kept numerous houseplants in every corner on the space. There was barely room to walk. Pots and pans hung from the ceiling, and Victor was reminded of the bar. Sarah fit under them all, a remarkably small woman.
“Do you live here?” he asked.
“Yes. Let me make some coffee. You need to warm up.”
“You live on a boat?” Victor asked.
“I do,” she answered with a snicker. “I live on this boat.”
For a moment, Victor considered retirement on a boat. Then, he remembered his current circumstances. The future of the coin was suddenly very much undetermined, and it seemed he had less claim to it than ever.
“So are you going to tell me who threw you off the bridge?”
Victor snapped out of his daydream. “I actually don’t know him.”
“So you were randomly thrown off a bridge? I hope that trend doesn’t catch on.”
“Not exactly. He did introduce himself first.”
“I don’t want to pry,” Sarah said as she sat at the table with a cup of coffee for herself. “But, it seems like there is more to this story.”
“Well, there is.”
“I know we just met, but why do I get the feeling that you might have deserved to be thrown off the bridge?”
Victor chuckled. “Yes, maybe. Who knows?” he said as he took a sip. He was beginning to feel more like himself.
“What’s your name?” Sarah asked.
“Victor.”
“Good. Since you were thrown off a bridge and I saved you, a police officer might one day ask me about it. I want to at least tell them I asked,” she said nonchalantly.
The bartender liked her. She made him feel comfortable.
“Victor Lacquer,” he said as he extended his hand, finally having fully caught his breath.
* * *
Victor emerged from the kitchen in the cool grey morning light. Sarah let him sleep on a trundle that pulled out from a bench along the side of
the kitchen table. There had been barely room to move, but he’d been warm and comfortable. His muscles were so numb and tired from the river, it had been a solid sleep.
His hostess had left some of her husband’s clothes for him to wear. They were slightly too big for him, but Victor didn’t mind. When he emerged onto the deck of the houseboat, he saw Sarah seated at an outdoor table. He didn’t know why she’d trusted him, but he felt a particular kindness toward her as well.
“Good morning,” she said as she sipped coffee and turned the page on a newspaper. Her bony hand gripped the mug, stretching leather skin over her knuckles.
“Do you get the paper delivered on the river?” he asked, jokingly.
“Actually yes,” she answered. “Someone comes along every morning.”
Victor walked to the railing and looked up and down the quai. The boat had not moved from the night before. Many others like it were tied to the shore near Sarah’s. He looked up the great stone walls that lined the river and saw backs of kiosks that lined the sidewalk above. Behind him, he viewed the distant opposite riverbank.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Sarah asked.
“Sure,” he answered, looking at other houseboats. “Do you know the other people tied up along here?”
“I have met him,” she said as she nodded to the houseboat directly in front of hers. “But, not many others. There’s a pot of coffee right here. Empty mugs are inside. The cabinet above the wash basin.”
“I wasn’t sure if this was a regular neighborhood or anything,” Victor thought aloud, ducking back inside briefly. “If everyone’s houses come and go, I suppose not.”
“Actually, that is not exactly the case,” she called after him. “I have been tied here for years.”
“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of having a moving house?”
“Well, my husband and I don’t crave change the way some boat owners do.”
“Interesting,” Victor noted as he emerged.
“So Victor,” Sarah began. “Now that you are rested and dry, I take it you won’t be staying here today. I’ll just need those clothes back before you go. I have yours drying on a line near the bow. They should be ready within an hour or so.”