Dead Clown Blues

by R. Daniel Lester

  I was so tired the last time I borrowed Taffy’s car I wrapped the car around a lamp pole on the way home. I walked away, fit-as-a-fiddle, but the car wasn’t so lucky, resembling more a smoking heap of metal than an automobile. Way I heard it, Taffy worked a little insurance scam of his own, convincing the cops that a vagrant must’ve stolen his car and been living in it before the crash because there were food wrappers everywhere and a jug of pee in the backseat.

  The other surprise for Taffy today was going to be the mechanic’s bill. On the way to Bartell’s cabin the engine started to smoke something fierce. It might have been the pothole I purposefully hit to test the shocks or when I redlined the engine and slammed it into gear when I was racing that rich kid with the rolled-up shirt sleeves, ducktail haircut and his daddy’s Corvette. Most likely it was shoddy workmanship. They didn’t build anything like they used to.

  The engine still pumping smoke, I nursed the car along to the access road that, according to the map in Taffy’s glovebox, led to Bartell’s cabin in the woods. I parked on the side of the road and put the hood up to clear the smoke. I waited for a few minutes but the car wouldn’t start, so I decided to walk the rest of the way, hoping Mr. Rightly was home so it was worth the trip.

  Up the road, around the bend, down the hill, and I was four kinds of lost and on my way to five. The trouble with forests was there were no street signs and the trouble with trees was they all looked the same. Me, I was a city guy, concrete and steel. Neon signs and crowd noise. The hum. The action. Then I saw it: smoke curling out of a cabin chimney. Bulls-eye.

  I crept behind a tree and surveyed the scene: nothing. Just smoke coming out of the chimney in little wisps. Twigs crackled from somewhere behind me. Some animal. A deer, maybe. I thought briefly about turning to snap an artsy shot to piss off Taffy but decided to stay the course and remain focused for once in my life.

  I waited and watched.

  A squirrel ate a nut.

  I watched and waited.

  The chimney stopped puffing smoke.

  I dozed off for a moment or two, simply to rest my eyes.

  There was a muffled sneeze.

  I snapped my head up, unsure if I heard the sneeze or only thought I did. The second sneeze made me sure. I turned around and standing there, close enough for me to smell the crazy coming off him, dressed like a soldier storming the beach at Normandy, was Bartell Rightly. No wonder the chimney smoke had stopped—no wood left to burn. Which meant he’d been lurking behind me for some time now.

  He raised the rifle he had at his side. I stared down the barrel. It didn’t look friendly one bit. The bayonet crept towards my throat. I swallowed and felt the tip of the blade against my Adam’s apple. One twitch from Bartell and I’d be skewered, blood spurting, a stuck pig. But Mr. Crazy had other intentions. He swung the rifle around, connecting the stock with the side of my head. My world went pitch black and murky and—

  11

  —church bells are ringing.

  A mother and her son walk along Pender Street. The kid is four, maybe five. Combed hair, rosy cheeks. Tiny suit jacket and tie over slacks and shiny black shoes. The mother is department store fashionable. Well shod lower class in her Sunday finest.

  The mother takes big, hurried steps.

  The kid skips to keep up, laughing as he goes.

  The kid is an idiot.

  He doesn’t know shit from shinola, his ass from a hole in the ground. He doesn’t know yet how a seamstress and a dockworker aren’t a match made in heaven. How love can fade. How a father can’t take it anymore, the nagging, the routine, the “family man” label. How a man can up and leave, scurrying off in the dead of the night like a rat between restaurant dumpsters, low to the ground and quick, so quick.

  Another thing this kid doesn’t know is how fast the walls can come crashing down, literally. How a city can look at a thriving blue-collar neighbourhood like Vancouver’s Ward Two, a section of land between Seymour and Cambie and Pender and Davie, where the kid lives, and see parking lots and retail storefronts. How a city can change zoning laws and choke the life out of a neighbourhood with barely a tighten of its pudgy, greedy fingers. How eviction notices will only be tacked to the door so many times before the locks are changed.

  And mother and son will move so many times over the next years that the addresses blur together, streets and avenues, basement suites and third floor walkups, another bedroom, another bed. Another of his mother’s boyfriends, another surrogate father. A butcher, a dentist. Another, a warehouse manager.

  One, a private detective, who picks him up from school in the middle of the day in his new car and lets him sit on stakeouts as long as he promises not to tell his mother. And to wake the P.I. when he sees the man leave the woman’s house. It’s always a man and the woman is always younger. And the client’s always the wife, paying for evidence of infidelity.

  But the private detective goes the way of the butcher goes the way of the dentist goes the way of the warehouse manager. Leaving the son to wonder if his real dad was such a lowlife like his mother says why is it so hard to replace him. And how can his mother smother him so effectively, so completely without mercy, leave him gasping for air, for space, and yet keep him at a distance at the same time?

  As a strategy, he chooses the path of least resistance. Learns from the master. They coexist until he can’t take the push/pull anymore and takes off, age nineteen, his father’s son after all. With only what he can carry, at night, so if he catches sight of himself in a window reflection he won’t have to look in his eyes. Off to find adventure, to ride the rails. Job to job, train yard to train yard. Blind to the fact that he’ll return ten years later, ready to grow some roots and rediscover those he cut, only to find his mother gone, disappeared. Off on her own trip, her own quest. No forwarding address, no note left with the neighbours.

  No, the kid skipping down the street in his shiny Sunday-best shoes can’t see any of it, the forest for the trees.

  And the church bells are ringing.

  And tears stream down the mother’s face, truth stabbing at her insides with each step:

  A respectable woman has a home.

  A respectable woman has a husband.

  A respectable woman is never late for church.

  She runs, now, half dragging the kid with her.

  The kid stops laughing, thinks about it, then bursts out in tears, too.

  Now he understands:

  This is life.

  Life is this.

  Your arm pulled off and the tops of your patent leather shoes all scuffed up even though you don’t understand why and you haven’t seen your father today and your mother hasn’t said a thing about it but you’d better wipe the tears off your cheek and blow the snot from your nose and toughen up, kiddo.

  Because the church bells are ringing and—

  12

  —water splashed on my face.

  “Wake up, shamus,” said a voice, not unfamiliar.

  I opened my eyes and found myself in a musty garage, chin on my chest, soaking wet, tied to a plastic lawn chair and hooked up to a car battery, little alligator clips feeling like they were attached to my earlobes. The janitor stood over me, dressed in the same overcoat and scowl he wore at Jim’s funeral.

  “Earl,” I said, “if this is heaven I’m disappointed.”

  Earl laughed. “Nice to see a man have a sense of humour, even in tough times.”

  “You like that, I’ve got this one about a plastic sheep.”

  “Maybe later.”

  “He give you much trouble?” I said, nodding towards Bartell, who was lying on the garage floor, hogtied and unconscious. The look suited him.

  “Not really,” said Earl. “No matter how nuts, a penny-filled sock to the temple will still knock a guy out.”

  “You make sense.”

  It took Earl a moment but he got it. “Right, ha ha. Now, onto bigger and better things.”
>
  “Like untying me and driving me back downtown?”

  Earl shook his head. “Not exactly. Like being rewarded for our diligence. We almost lost you when you tried to shake us after the racetrack. How’d you make us anyway? Barney ordered a book on spook techniques from the back of a comic book last year and we followed the instructions to a tee.”

  I felt watched and dirty. And unschooled. A little private eye training could’ve probably gone a long way. At least far enough to outwit some janitors with a DIY-spy guide. I looked over, now seeing the three other men eyeing me from the doorway, one of them apparently named Barney. “So that was you in my apartment.”

  Earl, Head Geek, nodded. “Smart man. We tore your place up good but didn’t find anything except for a dead plant and an address book with one name inside. You should get out more, shamus.”

  So, that was how they found me. The name and number was Taffy’s. Earl confirmed it. Said the woman who answered, a Mrs. Pook, told him that I’d called not that long ago to meet her husband who was headed to the track to gamble away their life savings. So much for Taffy’s alibi. Seemed the wife knew all along. “I’m thankful you did, Earl, since you saved me from being a P.O.W., but what’s with the car battery?”

  “That was nutso here,” said Earl, tapping Bartell’s leg with his foot. “You were hooked up to this thing when we arrived. We’re just taking advantage of the situation.”

  “And why the tail in the first place?”

  “Don’t play dumb, Fitch. Because Jim was onto a pile of cash and so were you. I could tell as much at the funeral. So it got me thinking that Jim wasn’t bullshittin’ and maybe there really was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You know what I think now?”

  “I’m trembling with anticipation.”

  “That you and your crazy partner here found Jim’s money and that’s why he pulled the rifle, knocked you out and tied you up in here. You must know something he wanted to know.” Earl unfolded another lawn chair and sat down in front of me. He had two cauliflower ears I hadn’t noticed before. He cleared his throat, said, “And we want to know, too” and reached for the dial hooked up to the car battery.

  Lightning bolts of agony arced through my head. The pain was a machete trying to split my head open like a coconut.

  “Faaaaaa,” I said.

  Earl flicked his wrist. The pain stopped. I was drooling. My mouth tasted like copper and death. I spit blood from where I chewed my cheek.

  “Wowee,” said Earl, eyes wide. “And that was level one.”

  From the doorway of the garage, one of the janitors spoke up, voice shaky. “Uh, you sure about this, Earl? Serious business. Not what we had planned.”

  “Yeah, Earl,” I said, “you sure about this?”

  “I’ll tell you all what I’m sure of. That I’m fuckin’ sick to death of buffing floors for rent money and barely a dime left over. And a man needs a dime or two to feel human, know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “But nothing.” Earl said no more. He looked resolute and I knew I’d tell him everything. Only I’d have to take another jolt to sell it good and proper.

  I blinked my eyes. I stared at the wall. I hummed a tune.

  Earl nodded okay then, have it your way. For a janitor he made a good sadist. The little smile, the glint in the eyes, the quick flick of the wrist.

  Electricity flowed.

  The machete chopped, chopped, chopped.

  Coconut juice spilled out the jagged split until—

  The pain stopped.

  Blurry-eyed, I spit more blood. I said, “Stop, please” and meant it. The tears, too.

  Earl moved in. His breath was bourbon and rot. “This can end, shamus.”

  “You were right,” I said. “The money’s close.” I nodded at the shovel with fresh earth on it standing in the corner of the garage. “We buried it in the forest last week, only I didn’t trust him, so I moved the money two days ago. He had the same thought, to move it, only he didn’t find it when he dug it up. And it made him angry.”

  Earl licked his lips. “How much?”

  I stared him in the eyes. This janitor had the money fever. I recognized the look from the mirror. “Enough you’ll never have to wring out another mop you don’t want to for old times’ sake.” I told Earl that I figured where better to move it to than right under Bartell’s nose. “Start at the tree stump in the yard,” I said. “Ten paces north, five west. Buried about three feet down. Six coffee cans, stuffed to the brim.”

  Earl clapped his hands with glee and stuck out a palm to the side. One of the janitors handed over the bourbon. Earl took a long swig and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “Wise choice, Fitch. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “Sure you didn’t. I was just in the way.”

  “Right, exactly.”

  “And now that I’m not?”

  Earl looked at his friends. They nodded. Earl looked back at me. “We could let you go. But there’d have to be an agreement. You get no part of the money, for one.”

  “And for two?”

  “You’d need to not be too sore about this. Count yourself lucky we’re letting you go at all.”

  I played disbelief. “What, me sore for being tortured and electrocuted?”

  “Or, we could bury you in the hole we take the cans out of. Your choice, Fitch.”

  No choice, I saw that. But there might be a chance for a little revenge. “How about letting me tell the plastic sheep joke. It’s a doozy.”

  “Fine, you want to tell a joke tell a joke.”

  I searched for the not-at-all-funny plastic sheep story in my addled brain, figuring it would at least be good for a few minutes of distraction while I figured out a game plan, but I had trouble coming up with the plot. I rewound the memory tape, pressing stop right before the conversation with Moyer, when I first learned Jim had drowned. And pressed play. And remembered something important I’d forgotten about. “The morgue,” I said, mostly to myself.

  “The plastic sheep’s in a morgue?”

  “No, but Frankie is.”

  “Who’s Frankie?”

  “You don’t know him.”

  “So why do I care?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You get dropped a lot on your head as a kid, Fitch? Because I’m beginning to think that might not be a bad idea.”

  “Pretty tough aren’t you, Earl, menacing a guy tied to a chair.”

  “You’re sayin’ what? That if it wasn’t for the rope it’d be different? I’ve been around, can hold my own. Wrestled varsity in high school.” He pointed to his ears. “Wasn’t born with these, shamus.”

  “I wrestled a bit, too, in elementary school. Maybe you give me a chance to feel tough myself. We go fair and square and no matter what happens I leave you and your friends alone. The money’s yours. Spend it in good health.”

  Earl considered the matter.

  “Do it, Earl,” said a janitor, the same one who’d spoken up before. The other two mop jockeys must’ve been deaf mutes. “You can take him.”

  Earl backed away as the one janitor untied me. I took a few minutes to get the feeling back in my hands and the life back to my legs. I asked for a swig of the bourbon. The booze burned against my chewed cheek. I stood up, swaying. Earl smiled.

  “You sure about this?” he said.

  “As I’ve ever been about anything,” I said.

  Earl put his hands up, wrestling style, and shuffled his feet, moving quick for an old guy. So, Earl had some knowledge. Well, I had a little, too. And what I knew was learned the hard way, in train yards at midnight, next to oil barrel fires, dead squirrels on coat hanger grills and piss drunk hobos with gap toothed grins. Fighting over nothing and everything. No referees. No bell. No rules.

  We circled, locked up. Earl grunted. The janitors cheered. My plan was this: shock and awe. I dropped my shoulder and Earl took the bait. He moved
in. I grabbed him by the shirt and kneed him in the stomach, hard. The air left Earl’s gut in a whoosh and his knees shook, but he stayed upright. He bent to protect his belly, but I was done with the low blows. I went high and bit into a cauliflower ear and clamped down, like the circus dog on a car tire. Earl screamed. I screamed and pushed him away, setting my jaw and neck. Felt the cartilage rip.

  Earl went to his knees, moaning. He put his hand to the side of his head and it came away crimson.

  I turned around, part of Earl’s ear in my teeth. I grinned at the spectators.

  They stopped cheering.

  As a penny-filled sock dropped to the ground.

  13

  Dark and drizzling when I got back to the city and the rain had Gastown smelling like a wet washcloth. I breathed in deep, happy to be breathing at all. It’d been quite the day and the dank air cleared my head as much as possible considering the lump on my noggin and the aftertaste of voltage on my tongue.

  After I spit Earl’s ear out onto the floor, I walked right past the janitors and they didn’t try to stop me. I made a move for one of them, startling him, but it was only to snag the half empty bourbon bottle out of his pocket. I swished a big gulp around in my mouth and spit out on his shoe. He couldn’t even look at me.

  Out on the road, Taffy’s sled still wouldn’t start so I hoofed it to a bus stop more than a few kilometers away. Three buses and several hours later and wouldn’t you know it, Harry was at the wheel of the last bus I had to take. I was exhausted, spent, a half-dead lake trout gasping for breath on the deck of a fishing boat. But somehow Harry looked worse, like he’d already been clubbed in the head and thrown in the cold box. He grunted hello at me as I paid my fare and took a seat at the back of the bus. Neither of us were in the mood for conversation. I leaned my head against the window glass and nodded off a few times, always waking up, twitchy, janitor laughter echoing between my ears.

  When the bus got close to Gastown, I rang the bell and stepped off a few stops short to walk and clear my head. Four blocks later, there was a flicker of movement in my peripheral vision and it may or may not have been a black Buick idling on the side of Cordova, just past Main, at the edge of a streetlamp glow.