Past Due

by William Lashner

  Tell me we’ll be together forever, he says.

  Together, she says.

  Promise me, he says.

  Forever, she says.

  Promise me, he says.

  I promise. You and me, Jesse. Together forever. I promise and now you promise too.

  I do, he says. I promise.

  And so it is asked and answered, promised, sealed. The crucial most difficult steps have been taken with remarkable ease. The rest are mere details. Details, where, according to the sages, both God and the devil reside.

  Let’s go somewhere, he says.

  Okay, where?

  I don’t know. California maybe.

  They are lying on the bed, the morning sun is now slanting in the window, a soft cloud can be seen floating by in the distance. His arms are behind his head, the future rolls ahead of my father like a long lazy river to be savored and explored together with this girl, this naked girl in his bed, their love the raft keeping them dry and buoyant.

  California sounds nice, she says.

  San Francisco, or maybe Los Angeles.

  Hollywood? she says.

  Sure, Angel, anywhere you want.

  Hollywood then. Anywhere, really, so long as it’s away from him.

  The cloud drifts across the sun and the room suddenly darkens.

  Who is he? he asks.

  Nobody.

  So why does he matter?

  Because of who he is.

  And who is he?

  He is rich, greedy, grasping, she says. He is a soulless spider. And then she tells my father of how she became entwined in his web.

  “Her mother had been sick,” said my father, fighting now for breath as he struggled to explain. But he didn’t have to struggle so hard. As soon as the sick mother was marched to the fore all the other elements fell in behind her. The financial need, the golden opportunity, the lifesaving stream of income, the financial dependence. And once the dependence was settled upon her shoulders like a yoke, the more unusual secretarial requests. The personal letters. The inventory taken side by side on the large dining room table. The late hours. The working dinners. And then the rainy evening, the roads awash. You mustn’t try to go home in this weather. It isn’t safe. I insist you stay the night. I simply insist. And so there she was, tossing awake in the big iron guest bed, as the sounds assaulted her from every side. The lashing of the rain against the windows, the wind scraping the tree limbs across the stone facing, the old house settling down upon itself. And then something different, the creaking of the floorboards, the whispered entreaty, the low whine of the door as it slips open, only the long bony fingers visible at first. “Her mother had been sick,” said my father, which was explanation enough for all that followed, the gasp in horror, the calm voice of age and authority, the tears, the sobs, the ultimate submission as the old man rutted atop her like a bearded billy goat, while she stared at nothing and thought only of her mother, her sick, old mother, and the medical bills that were piling against their door higher and higher with every visit to each new specialist.

  My father had always been quick to anger, anger being his natural state, so it wasn’t hard to imagine his reaction, the bile flowing through him at the thought of the old man taking advantage of his love, the old man turning his love into something ugly, something unclean. “I wanted to kill him,” my father said and of that I had no doubts. He wants to smite him as the defilers were smote in the olden days, to stone him to death for what he did to her, to his love.

  No, she says. You can’t. No. Let’s just go away.

  What about your mother?

  She passed away, her illness, she was too weak even with the specialists.

  When?

  A month ago. Maybe two.

  So why are you still with him?

  Where was I to go? I had no place else. No place else, Jesse, until I met you.

  She would have kissed him then, kissed him hungrily, urgently, sucking the air from his lungs. And I knew how he would have reacted, how her kiss would have dissolved his anger, banished his questions, how it would have stiffened his devotion, I knew all of that without him telling because he and I were of the same blood.

  All right, he says, the sweat pouring off of him, her taste like an opiate on his tongue. All right, let’s just go, go away somewhere. Let’s go.

  Okay.

  To California.

  Hollywood?

  Sure.

  Okay. Yes. Let’s go.

  I love you, he says. I’ll love you forever.

  Yes, she says. Me too. Yes. But first, before we go away, we have to go back.

  To the old man’s house?

  Everything I own is there. All my belongings. We have to go back.

  Forget them.

  All I own is there, and more. He owes me, Jesse, don’t you see? There are unpaid wages…and there is more. He owes me. We can’t get started, she says, we can’t live the way we deserve until we get what he owes me.

  “What he owes me,” said my father, from his bed, his voice now merely the softest of whispers riding over his wet sucking breath. “Only what he owes me.”

  He was right, my father, once again. He wasn’t getting better. The new antibiotic wasn’t any more efficacious than the old one, and his lungs remained flooded with poison. They would have to try something new, some other wonder drug to cure his infection, though I sensed as I watched him fall into a pained sleep, with the words “What he owes me” on his lips, that there wasn’t any new wonder drug that could cure what was truly ailing him. Maybe I had been right before when I had suggested they pump him full of Iron City beer, because that was what he had been using all these years, I recognized, to keep these memories at bay. But they were coming out now, one after the other, pulled from his throat like a rope of knotted kerchiefs, as if he were some second-rate magician and I an audience of enraptured schoolkids. And as each one passed it left its own virulent strain of bitter disappointment in his blood that no antibiotic could ever hope to destroy.

  The only answer was to pull it to the end, to get the entire story out of his gut, to tell it and maybe in the telling to free himself of the past, which was killing him day by day, and which had been killing him, I now believed, since long before I was born.

  Chapter

  23

  “HE’S LATE,” I said.

  “He works for the city,” said Beth, sitting next to me in my parked car.

  “But he is going to come?”

  “On his horse, most likely.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “What is up with that?”

  “He thinks he grew up in the North Country.”

  “North Kensington is more like it. It’s the name of the office that gets to them. Every little boy wants to grow up to be sheriff. But he’s generally reliable. What time is it?”

  “Three minutes later than the last time you asked. Why are we still doing this, Victor, if our client is lying?”

  “The CEO of our client is lying, true, but there are other Jacopo stockholders to consider. Kimberly, for instance.”

  “Ah, now I see,” she said.

  “What?”

  “And now I see why you agreed to let her accompany you as you look for Tommy Greeley’s killer.”

  “I had my reasons.”

  “She’s mighty pretty.”

  “Yes she is, but that’s not why I find her so interesting.”

  “Why then?”

  “Because Eddie Dean hired her. And because he seems overly concerned with her opinion of him. That lie he told night before last, I don’t think it was for us. I think it was for her.”

  “Is he sleeping with her?”

  “Gad, with that face I hope not.”

  “He’s dangerous, Victor. And so is that Colfax thug he’s got with him.”

  “Where do guys like Dean find guys like that anyway?”

  “You should ask him sometime.”

  “I will.”

  “What do you think he’s really
after?”

  “Maybe the suitcase.”

  “Stop it already.”

  “Answer me this, Beth. Why is there so much interest in something that happened so long ago, interest that would prompt a murder, maybe two if you count the unfortunate drowning of Bradley Babbage, a threatened disembowelment from Derek Manley, a warning from Earl Dante, and now Eddie Dean’s intricate and fabulous lie?”

  “You always believe money’s at the root of everything.”

  “And I haven’t been wrong yet. If everybody wants to take a look inside that damn suitcase, then I want to peek inside it too.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “Maintain the pressure on Derek Manley, dig up what we can about Tommy Greeley, and keep little Kimberly close.”

  “Like I said, she’s mighty pretty.”

  “Yes she is.”

  “You going to hit on her?”

  “Nah. She’s too young for me too—I don’t know—innocent?”

  “Maybe she’s not sad enough.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. Or maybe you’re just getting old.”

  “Tell me about it. But truthfully, the only desire she invokes is the desire to keep her out of trouble. And you want to know the sorriest thing? Whatever is going to come down, it’s going to come down on her, and I won’t be able to do a damn thing about it. Look sharp, here he comes.”

  The tow truck pulled beside us in the parking lot off Oregon Avenue, followed by a white Lumina with police lights on top and a Philadelphia Sheriff’s logo on its side. A short, wiry man with a uniform and a gun climbed out of the Lumina and hitched up his pants. His legs were splayed and bowed like he had just climbed off his quarter horse. Beth and I stepped out of the car to meet him.

  “Howdy, R.T.,” I said. R.T. stuck a cowboy hat on his head, pushed its brim up as if to survey the far prairie. “Victor,” he said, nodding at me. “Beth.”

  “Thanks for coming,” I said. “You’re looking spry this morning.”

  “Healthy living,” said R.T. “And soy curds. You guys got the paperwork?”

  “Yes we do,” said Beth, handing him a file folder.

  As he examined the papers he said, “The boss is having a little shindig next week. At Chickie and Pete’s.”

  “I love Chickie and Pete’s,” I said. “Especially the crab fries.”

  “Potatoes.” R.T. snorted. “It’s like mainlining sugar. You know why everyone and his brother is so fat these days?”

  “Potatoes?”

  “There you go. Potatoes and high-fructose corn syrup. You want to know the most serious problem facing this country?”

  “High-fructose corn syrup?”

  “Now you’re getting it. But the roast beef is good, so long as you chuck the roll. Call the office and Shelly will send you each a special invitation. And as always, your donations will be greatly appreciated.”

  I gave Beth a sad nod and mouthed the words “special invitations.” She mouthed back “donations.” Politics in Philadelphia is like politics everywhere else, except for the crab fries.

  “This all looks to be in order,” said R.T. Still holding the file, he turned to face the squat, windowless white building at the edge of the parking lot. The building’s sign rose above its roof like a great beacon to weary travelers. THE EAGER BEAVER. And beneath that, just so the weary traveler wouldn’t confuse the premises with, say, a diner specializing in roadkill, were the words: GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS.

  “You sure it’s in there?” said R.T.

  “So I heard.”

  “Where in there?”

  “We’ll find it,” I said. “Beth, why don’t you go around back with the truck. We’ll go in the front.”

  Beth nodded, walked over to the tow truck, climbed in the passenger seat. The tow truck pulled out of the lot.

  “All right, Buckaroo,” said Deputy Sheriff R.T. Pritchett, again hitching up his pants, rising to his role in the morning’s drama. “Let’s saddle on up and rope this doggy.”

  It was a bright day, but you wouldn’t know it from inside the Eager Beaver. The lights were low, the music loud, the joint was practically empty and it smelled like soiled socks. Three men sat scattered at the round tables, drinking beer, all three scruffy as tomcats and evidently well practiced at wasting their days. A girl, no better at hiding her boredom than her breasts, was dancing slowly atop the bar. She was pretty enough and was wearing little enough and her shoes were high enough and her breasts were certainly big enough, but with the emptiness of the place, the smell, the tired pall of smoke, the humid heat, with everything, the scene was about as sexy as a root canal.

  R.T.’s uniform drew the attention of a squat hunched man with a battered fleshy face and false black hair, who slipped off the bar and waddled toward us. “Ain’t no cover this afternoon, gentlemen. You want a table close to the action?”

  “There’s action?” I said. “Where?”

  “We’re looking for a Derek Manley,” said R.T. “You seen him today?”

  “Don’t know him. But I’m just a greeter here. Greetings. You want me to shake your hand, I will. You want me to get you a seat close enough to Wanda over there what you can smell her, I can do that too.”

  “I can smell her from here,” I said.

  “If Mr. Manley’s not around,” said R.T., “we’ll talk to Mr. Rothstein.”

  “Rothstein?” The greeter scratched his head. “Don’t know him neither. Maybe he’s coming in for lunch.”

  “Cut with the act,” I said, “and tell him he has visitors.”

  “He ain’t in,” said the man. “He don’t come in much no more, what with his tax problems.”

  “You mind if we go through there?” I said, pointing to an open doorway loosely shielded by a curtain of beads.

  He held out his hand. “Patrons ain’t allowed in the back.”

  “We’re not patrons,” said R.T., taking a paper out of the file, handing it to the greeter. “Step aside, pilgrim, we got a right to be here. We’re looking for a 2002 Cadillac Eldorado.”

  The man laughed. “An Eldorado, huh? Well, if you want, you can look under them tables, behind the bar, wherever, but I don’t see no Eldorado. Who did you say you was again?”

  “I’m a lawyer,” I said, pulling a card out of my pocket.

  Without so much as a glance, he dropped it to the floor, ground it with his shoe.

  “Nice manners,” I said. “In Japan they’d behead you for that. Just be advised I represent Jacopo Financing, which is owed a hundred thousand dollars by Derek Manley.”

  “A hundred thousand dollars? That’s a lot of money. And you think it’s here? Hey, Wanda,” he called out to the girl on the stage.

  She was bending over now, bending away from us, her legs straight, hands on her ankles, jiggling. With her head upside down between her knees she screeched, “What do you want?”

  “This guy’s looking for some money. You got a hundred thousand dollars maybe stuffed in your top?”

  Wanda straightened up, turned toward us, pulled her straps forward so she could look down. “I don’t think so,” she said, and then she lowered the straps so that her breasts tumbled out like two soft, red-eyed bunnies. “But my boyfriend says these are worth a million.”

  “Can we seize those, R.T.?” I said.

  “Sorry, Victor,” said R.T., shaking his head. “Appealing as it sounds, I don’t reckon we can.”

  “That’s a shame,” I said. “According to Mr. Manley, he owns a third of this club.”

  “I ain’t no corporate lawyer,” said the greeter, “so I can’t tell you who owns what. But there’s no car and the club’s worth squat. You ain’t going to find a dime. Sorry, gentlemen, but it looks like you wasted your time.”

  Just then a dark-haired woman in a sheer robe and high heels stepped through the beaded curtain and came up to the greeter. With her hand on her hip and a strong accent she said, “We out of ice in back, Ike. Chou mind? And get the ai
r conditioner fixed, why don’t chou?” The woman looked at us, gave us a smile as quick as a wink, spun around and walked back through the beads.

  The greeter raised his eyebrows at us. “Bunch of spoiled brats, all of them.”

  “Ike,” I said. “She called you Ike.”

  “No she didn’t,” said the man.

  “You’re Ike Rothstein.”

  “No I’m not. I told you, I just work here.”

  “You know what the penalty is for lying to a public official?” said R.T.

  “Is that what you are?” said Rothstein. “A public official? I thought you was one of the Village People. Why don’t you both just park your asses here while I call my lawyer.”

  He turned and disappeared through the curtain.

  R.T., standing beside me, looked around the empty, dreary club. “You sure the car’s here?”

  “My man says it’s here, so it’s here. Somewhere. Let’s go in the back.”

  We headed toward the doorway where Rothstein had disappeared and pushed through the beaded curtain, walking smack into the woman with the sheer robe.

  “What chou want?” she said.

  “We’re looking for a car.”

  “Not back here chou not. This is private. Does Ike know chou back here?”

  “He told us to follow him.”

  “Cherk.”

  “Who, me?”

  “Ike. He knows he’s not supposed to send no one back here. There’s rules. And what about the damn air conditioner. It’s been broke for two week. You can’t dance when it’s hot like this. Everything, it rides up.”

  “Tell me about it. And the chafing.”

  “Chou got that right.”