B009XDDVN8 EBOK

by Lashner, William

  “My God, I thought he’d be in jail. I guess putting up drywall in Pitchford beats doing time, but not by much.” I picked at the beer label with my thumb. “What’s he up to other than drywall?”

  “You remember the Stoneway?”

  “The stripper joint on the hill.”

  “Tony works there nights as a bouncer. Dates one of the girls.”

  “Everybody’s dream.”

  “It’s Richie’s, for sure. He almost single-handedly keeps that place open. But it’s sort of funny, J.J., you being suddenly so interested in Tony Grubbins after spending all of high school running away from him. Why the sudden curiosity? Maybe Richie’s right after all.”

  “Richie’s not right,” I said, “about anything.”

  “Another beer?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Getting drunk with you is like drinking alone.”

  “I didn’t know that’s what we were doing.”

  “It’s a Wednesday afternoon. What did you think we were doing?”

  When she came back from the kitchen with a fresh beer, I was standing. “I can’t stay,” I said.

  “Oh, come on, J.J., stick around, have another drink with me. Don’t you want to say hey to Richie?”

  “Richie’s an asshole.”

  “That asshole is my husband.”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  “He showed up, J.J. Where the hell were you?”

  “Do you need my help, Madeline?”

  “Don’t you have enough troubles of your own? What about the guy with the tattoo on his neck?”

  “I already took care of him.”

  “My tough little man. So you’re going to rescue me now?”

  “Maybe it’s time to rescue yourself.”

  “You’re not so nice anymore, J.J.”

  “I don’t hit women.”

  “You might if you were married to me.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. I loved you.”

  “I was pretty, wasn’t I?”

  “Breathtaking.”

  “You were always so nice. I’ve wondered what it would have been like if you showed up in front of the library that time instead of Richie. I even imagined what it would be like if you showed up just like this on my doorstep.”

  “Did it live down to your expectations?”

  “Every damn one.”

  27. The Stoneway

  THE STONEWAY, SET high on a rise over the Pitchford strip, stared down at my old suburb like a Romanian pimp, scarred and hard faced. For a Pitchford brat growing up in its shadow, the Stoneway had been something like a dare. It was the promised land of adulthood, a place to smoke, buy drinks, watch women who stripped naked and licked their nipples just for you. Disneyland for horny teens. The three immortals had each, in turn, climbed that hill and tried to slip inside with an Augie-special ID and each, in turn, had been turned away, and not so kindly either. A slap of the head, a kick in the rear, an arm wrenched if we tried to sneak by while the bouncer’s attention was elsewhere. The Stoneway had remained a distant dream, unfulfilled by any of us before I left Pitchford for good.

  Augie had eventually made it, though. While he was still living at home and watching his father die, he had become a regular at the Stoneway. From what he told me in our weekly phone conversations, he got drunk there, got high there, sold drugs there, got blown there. I always worried that he was slipping our hot hundreds into even hotter G-strings (and for all I know he was, which might explain the getting blown there), but for Augie the dream never died and the Stoneway seemed to become the very model on which he based the rest of his disastrous life. I suppose the best thing that never happened to me was getting into that joint.

  But there has to be a first time for everything.

  I dimmed the interior lights of my car as I made the turn up the steep drive to the club. My neck strained nervously as I checked out the bouncer at the solid front door. Huge, and hard, and black. I took a deep breath, pulled the car to the far corner of the half-filled lot, and parked. The bouncer barely looked at my Edward Holt ID as I hunkered down in the collar of my golf jacket, paid my ten-buck cover, and passed through two doors and one bead curtain into the forbidden pleasure palace of my youth.

  It was not as big as I had imagined—Hagia Sophia would not be as big as my teenaged self had imagined the Stoneway—but it didn’t disappoint in its utter seediness. The walls were purple and plush, the ceiling was black, the music loud, the carpet stained. Running up the entire left side were alcoves, each with its own curtain that could be taken off its hook and spread across the alcove’s opening for privacy. A woman in a bikini came out from behind one of the curtains, fixed her top, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. A woman without a bikini worked the runway to the right, two poles and a disco ball for your viewing pleasure. The runway led directly to the wide bar, where two other naked women danced on either side, panning for dollars. Hot and hot-running girls at the Stoneway, so long as you like tepid.

  Inside the bead curtain I looked around for a familiar face, found none, and, relieved, made my way to the corner of the bar, a long strip of wood for drinks raised a few inches above a four-foot-wide dance parquet. The plan was…well, the plan was to come up with a plan. I needed to find Tony, that was what my disturbing visit to Madeline had been all about, and I needed to find out if Tony was behind the bastards who had killed Augie and come after me. He had set the motorcycle goons on my ass twenty-five years before, leaving my throat scarred for life, and he was the most likely to have set Clevenger on our trails. If he was the one, I had to turn the tables or make a deal. And to do that, I needed to learn what I could about his life now.

  “What’ll it be?” said the barkeep.

  “Huh?” I said, staring up at the woman gyrating on the bar just to my left. Black hair, breasts gloriously false, long legs, red high heels close enough that I could have licked them clean if I were so inclined. She looked down and smiled. I bit my lip. She gave me a hip pop and shimmied away.

  “A drink,” said the bartender. “You want a drink, pal?”

  “Why else would I be here?” I said, still staring at the woman.

  “No idea.”

  “How about a vodka martini? Use the Belvedere. And are your olives any good? Do you have Manzanillas from Spain?”

  The bartender was kind and didn’t laugh, he just stared for a moment as I let the surroundings seep in. I was no longer at the taproom of the Patriots Landing Golf Club. “Use whatever and throw in a twist of lemon.”

  “Nine seventy.”

  I pulled out a hundred, slapped it on the bar. The dancer’s head snapped to the sound; her eyes focused like lasers on the bill. She smiled broadly at me as she made her way back.

  When the change came, along with the drink, it was all in fives. It took three bills, two in a red high heel and one in a G-string, before the dancer slid away again. And suddenly I wished Augie and Ben were there with me. They would have made it a party, Augie egging on the girls, Ben holding cautiously on to his money, Augie ordering a round of lap dances, Ben shying away, Augie pushing us all into going way too far and then one step beyond, the three of us laughing about it all with some reefer back in the woods. God, I don’t think I’ve laughed uproariously since high school.

  “Is Tony in tonight?” I said when the barkeep came over to make me another drink.

  “You a friend of his?”

  “We went to school together.”

  “I didn’t know that knucklehead even went to school.”

  “He sort of checked in at lunch and checked out after study hall,” I said, as if Tony and I were the best of buds back in the day.

  “I don’t think he’s working tonight, but he usually comes in anyway at some point.”

  “I hear he’s dating one of the girls.”

  “For a while now.” He nodded toward a tall blonde woman in a bikini and leopard high heels chatting with a man at the far end of the bar. “Chastity.”


  “I bet she is. She seems sweet.”

  “They all seem sweet,” said the bartender.

  “Nice shoes, though,” I said. “When you have a moment, can you send Chastity over here? I’d like to buy her a drink.”

  It wasn’t long before she was by my side, her body taut and powdered, her breasts barely contained by a bikini top. She was older than I had first calculated from a distance, almost my age, but with abs like in an infomercial, and she smiled at me as if she had always liked my type, whatever type I was. It always amazes me how attracted women are to me in strip clubs, as long as the women being attracted are strippers.

  “So you know Tony?” she said.

  “Old friends,” I said.

  “What’s your name? I’ll be sure to tell him you came in.”

  “Augie.”

  “I like that name.”

  “He ever mention me?”

  “Not so as I recall.”

  “It was a long time ago. What are you having, Chastity?”

  “Champagne cocktail, please.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” I said as I spun my finger to the bartender and pointed at her. “So tell me about good old Tony. I haven’t seen him for a while. Still humping that drywall?”

  “For now, but you know Tony, he’s always got things percolating.”

  “He’s a doer, all right,” I said. “Anything specific?”

  “Tell me about yourself, Augie,” she said as she took her drink from the bartender, ginger ale in a champagne glass, no doubt, for a mere $12.50. She dipped a long red fingernail in her drink and ran it lightly on the upper flesh of her breast. “What do you like?”

  “I sure like that,” I said.

  She licked her teeth. “You want to find a little privacy? We could rent ourselves one of the pods.”

  “Pods?”

  She nodded toward the curtained alcoves.

  “I really only want to talk.”

  “We can do whatever you want in there, sweetie,” she said, running her nail lightly over my cheek.

  “How much is a pod?”

  “Twenty-five for fifteen minutes, fifty for the half hour.”

  “I can do the math.”

  “Plus.”

  “Plus?”

  “You said you wanted to talk, right? We’ll talk about the plus once we get in there.”

  “It’s going to be an expensive half hour.”

  “Oh, it will be worth it, I promise you.”

  “Go ahead, Frenchy,” said a voice from behind me. “It’s only money. Better enjoy yourself while you can.”

  I felt a fission of fear fizzle up my nerves at the sound of my old nickname. My neck tensed and my hand twitched as I turned around slowly. The man who had spoken was leering at me. Tall and sloppy, relentlessly middle-aged, a bad shave, a bad comb-over, owly glasses, his two front teeth dementedly twisted. At the very sight of him I felt an anger rise in me, something old and young, something lovesick and postadolescent.

  “Or maybe better yet,” said Richie Diffendale, “why don’t we talk business before you stain your pants.”

  28. The Pilot Fish

  LET ME GET this straight,” said Richie Diffendale, resentment riding like a surfer along the extended vowels of his Pitchford accent. “You thought you’d show up after all these years like a pizza delivery boy and grab yourself a quick piece of action with my wife. Was that the idea?”

  “It stinks to see you, too,” I said. Diffendale had sent off Chastity so we could talk privately, downgrading the view considerably. I was leaning both elbows on the drink shelf now, trying to control the anger I was feeling while Richie spewed his irate gloat, along with his spittle, into my ear.

  “Boy, did you ever pick the wrong house,” he said.

  “Let me buy you a drink.”

  “You want to keep it friendly, is that it? You try to make my wife and you want to keep it friendly?”

  “Do you want the drink?”

  “Hell yes. You sure as hell can afford it.” He scratched his ear. “Rum and Coke. The good rum, too.”

  I waved to the bartender and ordered a Bacardi and Coke for Richie and another vodka martini for me. The barkeep looked at me, at Richie, back at me, as if he were offering some sort of assistance, as if Richie Diffendale were the kind of regular who often pestered guys at the bar whose only offense was trying to get quietly soused as they looked at a little nookie. I nodded to the bartender that it was okay and he went off to make the drinks.

  “I knew it was you that did it,” said Richie.

  “Is that so?”

  “I looked around and wondered who were big enough assholes to steal that much money, and the answer was easy. On the asshole meter, you and your two pals were always at the top.”

  “You’re such a clever one.”

  “Clever enough to cage your girl, huh? I bet that always ate you alive. Maddie was out of my league until she started up with a frog like you. You teed her up for me.”

  “Another thing I can feel guilty about for the rest of my life. So what are you up to these days, Richie? Still cleaning Tony’s ass?”

  “I’m in sales.”

  “Toupees? Gym equipment? What?”

  “Plumbing supplies.”

  “Toilets. Perfect.”

  “You know what it was that clued me in for sure? You guys always acted as if you knew more than the rest of us, as if you were granted some special knowledge. Those arrogant grins.”

  “We were high, that’s all it was.”

  “So when the money disappeared and everyone was looking for it behind every damn door, to understand what was really behind those smiles of yours didn’t take a genius.”

  “Which meant you were perfect for the job.”

  “It was the unfairness of it more than anything that got to me. I was Tony’s pal, I was in that house all the time, but it was you guys who ended up with the cash. All I ever wanted was my share.”

  “What are you complaining about? You won, Richie, you got Madeline.”

  “Oh yeah? Don’t get me started on Maddie. There’s a reason I’m here every night, let me tell you. But see, I was never the type to just sit back and get pissed on. I see angles a pool shark would miss. Like when those motorcycle freaks were buzzing the neighborhood after the money disappeared.”

  I turned and looked at his ugly face. “What about it?”

  “I pulled one of the freaks over and made an offer.”

  “You made an offer?”

  “I had my sights on Maddie, and on a piece of the money you assholes heisted, and so I took a combination shot.”

  Just then the bartender brought our drinks over.

  “Cheers,” said Richie, lifting his drink in a mock gesture of friendship and gratitude. I closed my eyes and took a sip and let the burn slip down my throat and mix with the something ugly and sick within me. It had been there from my visit to Madeline, had risen when I recognized his twisted front teeth, and it felt just then that it would explode in my chest, as if the vodka was mixing with nitroglycerine.

  “It didn’t work out quite like I thought,” said Richie. “They didn’t find the money on you, so I only pocketed one ball, on the rebound, you could say. I thought that maybe I had been wrong about you after all.”

  “You were wrong.”

  “That maybe it was the cops that actually scored the cash.”

  “It probably was.”

  “So I let it go, but it nagged at me. I had been so sure. And then, all these years later, that guy Holmes with the tattoo appears at the house and suddenly I knew I was right from the first. I mean, why else would a hard case like that be looking for a winkle like you? He put a price on your head, too, did you know that?”

  “Dead or alive?” I said.

  “Alive, unfortunately. After that I was just praying you’d show up, and I must be doing something right in the Big Guy’s eyes because here you are.”

  “So how much am I worth to you, Richie?”r />
  “See, that’s the thing. I figure you can beat his price to keep me quiet. That’s my new angle. What with all the cash you took all those years ago, and with the stock market climbing like it did in that time, I bet you got yourself a seven-figure bundle by now. I only want six.”

  “Six dollars?”

  “Six figures.”

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Cash.”

  “You’re dreaming.”

  “Sure I am, I’m dreaming big. But whatever I get, it will be less than that guy with the tattoo will take off you. By the look of your face, he already started the job. You can bet that next time he’ll finish it.”

  “So it’s a bargain is what you’re saying.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “One I can’t afford not to take advantage of.”

  “You’re smarter than I remember.”

  “You have me in a vise.”

  “That’s right.”

  “A hundred thousand dollars in cash, just like that. As if I had it sitting there in the trunk of my car.”

  “A hundred thousand is just the starting point. We’ll negotiate the details later.” He took out his phone. “I already called the number, said I might have you spotted. The guy on the other end, a guy named Clevenger, said he could have someone on-site in ten minutes if I give him a location. Do I make the call or do we have a deal?”

  “What’s my alternative?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Other than putting a gun to your head.”

  Something ugly slipped out of his eyes just then, his unwarranted arrogance fell away, replaced by uncertainty. He looked at me and took a long gulp of his drink and then, as if the rum and Coke had suddenly increased the size of his balls, tried to smile his way out of the threat. “Don’t pretend to be something you’re not, J.J. I’ve known you too long.”

  “See, that’s the thing, Richie, you’ve never known me at all. Normally I’d just ignore you, like I’d ignore a piece of dog shit in the street. But it turns out you’re the one who gave me the scar on my neck, making you a piece of dog shit on my shoe, which is a lot harder to ignore. And then there’s Madeline.”