Hot Scores

by Bud Connell

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “And that way we won’t have to sneak around.”

  “Yeah, and we’ll all have dinner this week.”

  I hated the plan. It gave me a sinking feeling. It just didn’t feel right.

  32 – Does It Smell Smoky in Here?

  “So, Joe, what do ya do in Detroit?” Darragh Cahoone, a bulky man that reminded me of a New Jersey politician, put his knife and fork down on his cleaned off plate and leaned back in the chair at the head of the table. We’d just eaten a large chunk out of a catered stuffed goose. A cooked goose, yeah, I was thinking about the humor in that and how if I don’t give just the right answers I could end up a dead duck.

  “S’cuse me,” Katya scooted her chair back. “I’ll get our desserts. We’re having triple chocolate fudge brownies.” It was a bad time for Katya to leave. She needed to hear everything to keep her stories straight.

  “What the hell other kind of brownies are there? They’re all chocolate fudge.” Cahoone leaned toward me, “Women over-explain everything.”

  Not a nice guy, I thought, even if Katya was out of earshot; but that was one of the things I was afraid of, she might over-explain me and get us both in deep doody. Like I said, there are no easy answers.

  “So, Joe, what do ya do in Motor City, huh?”

  “Oh, sorry. It’s hardly Motor City anymore. I’m not there, I’m here now.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. You’re sittin’ right here in front of me. What am I, blind? So, what d’ya do?”

  “Uh, record promotion.”

  “You mean like phonograph records?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, CDs now. Some of us older guys still call ‘em records.”

  “I thought the kids now downloaded all that garbage.”

  “They do, but they gotta know what they want to download and my job is get the songs known–heard on radio stations so the little fu… uh, so the young people want to download ‘em.”

  “You’re like an advance man, a promoter.” Katya returned as he said that and daintily set down the three desserts.

  “I’ll bring the coffee, go ahead, don’t wait on me.” She left again.

  “Yeah, I’m a promo man, that’s what they call me.”

  “Hey, does it smell smoky in here to you?”

  Oh, God help me. “Naw, it smells normal. It’s probably just the cooked goose, or the goose cooking.”

  “It was catered, pal,” Darragh Cahoone belched. “You know, I could use a good promo man.”

  Shithouse mouse. Here we go again. I smiled, waiting for the next surprise.

  “Hey, honestly, Cousin Joe, doesn’t this place smell like smoke?”

  33 – Future Dismemberment & Gooey Death

  I could hardly refuse to take the job, especially since I was now trusted Cousin Joe, and especially since my entire promo world had blown up with Kodi Graws and the rest of my worldly contacts– and more especially, since I needed to be closer to the knowledge of the when and where of my likely forthcoming future dismemberment and gooey death at the hands of one Darragh Cahoone.

  I still had faith… well, some. But, I gotta admit, since I learned what I was going to be promoting, my faith was stumbling around on the rocks down by the riverfront.

  “Drugs, Joe, drugs. Everybody uses ‘em. Few people promote ‘em and sell ‘em. I need a good promo man, and if you’re good at promotion of that jackfruit called music, rap, whatever, that nobody with more than half a brain really likes, then you gotta be great at promoting what everybody wants and uses. Am I right or what?”

  Oh baby, oh baby, oh baby, what’s going down. “Right, Darragh.” Here I sit, already on a first name basis with a big time drug importer and in the hole to him for a foot-long box of hundreds, not to mention the sure death sentence for doing Katya.

  Keep listening, keep agreeing, stay alive. “What do you like to push the most?” I asked attentively.

  “Whaddya mean, push? We’re not pushers. We promote legitimate imported drugs to legitimate businessmen. Gotta watch how we say things in this market!”

  Well, learning that little tidbit was the relief of reliefs. I might even be able to actually go to sleep tonight instead of staring at the ceiling wondering how much time I have left on my life clock. No, hell, I’d still lie there wondering what Katya was doing in bed with Cahoone.

  +++

  I left Katya’s smoky-smelling condo and turned my cell phone back on as soon as I got in the Toyota. There was a call from none other than Ramon himself. He said it was a Capital E emergency, and to call him back no matter what time it was. That’s weird because Ramon had never called me before. I’d called him plenty of times, but this was the first from him to me.

  “Ever since you hustled me for credit, I knew you were gonna be trouble, Joe. But now, you got a major, major problem. You’re holding a two-seven pal, and I’ve got a pair of aces on you. Your ass is grass unless you fix this and make it right, and I mean right now.”

  “Ramon, I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “Well, let me spell it out for you real slow, bisnero.” Ramon was talking bitingly serious and clipped like James Cagney in those old black and white late night gangster movies. “I’m out a cherry little red Porsche, and I’m sitting here with $30,000 cash of which twenty-five grand is money that Emilio says he got from you, Joe. It’s funny money. Whaddya think about that, Joe Oaks.”

  “Funny money? Funny money?”

  “Counterfeit, Joe. Counterfeit. Don’t tell me you didn’t know.”

  I had to take an abnormal pause on that one, and finally got up enough wind. “I borrowed it. Yeah, it’s borrowed.”

  “Nobody loans counterfeit C-notes, Joe. They’d be locked up for fucking life.”

  “––I didn’t quite borrow them. I sort of took ‘em on loan.”

  Ramon took the longest pause of the call. “You stole ‘em, didn’t you, Joe?”

  “No, I––borrowed––”

  “You stole ‘em. I knew it, damn it! And your problem is now my problem.”

  34 – Sweet-talkin’ Sugarcoated Candyman

  So, we’re sitting in Denny’s and I couldn’t tell Ramon that I was shagging Katya; that would complicate matters way too much. I just told him about being her cousin, and about her husband Darragh Cahoone hiring me to be a promo man for his pharmaceutical imports. Ramon listened, but after I said Darragh Cahoone’s name, he just dropped his head to the table and banged it lightly up and down. Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Ramon just kept banging his head on the tabletop at Denny’s, not hard mind you, just hard enough to irritate the truck driver type guy in the booth behind him. He just kept banging his head, over and over and over and over again.

  “Hey, lighten up on yourself,” I said.

  “I can’t. My life’s done and so’s yours. I just didn’t want it to be this soon. I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it. I can’t–”

  “Stop banging. What’re you saying? Tell me, my heart’s starting to go too fast.”

  “Take a deep breath, Joe.”

  I did.

  Ramon sat up straight and leaned in across the table. “Darragh Cahoone is the biggest Barnes Man in the country,” he said low and slow. “He brings in tankers full of shit, pallets of pot, coke by the truckload. He’s the guy at the top; my supplier gets his stuff from Cahoone.”

  All I could do was shake my head slowly from side to side in a near state of disbelief.

  “You wanted to get hooked up, didn’t you, Joe baby. You are now a family man.”

  “I’m… not, I’m–oh, Mother Mary Martin.”

  “But that’s not the worst of it. He’s also a beat artist.”

  “What? A who?”

  “A real pill zoomer, he sells fake real drugs all over the fuckin’ planet Earth. You wanna know why the little blue pill didn’t make your dobber go boink? Answer, candyman Darragh Cahoone.”

  “People can com
plain to the feds, or to the cops.”

  “What’re you gonna do, run to the police and say I didn’t get a hard-on from my illegally purchased medication? I don’t think so. What’s he gonna pay you?”

  “Plenty, plus I get a percentage of sales. I’ll pay you back from my first few checks, I promise. Please tell Emilio that everything’s okay and the money’s good, so he won’t be talking to the wrong people. Will you do that for me, Ramon?”

  “It’s guaran-ass-teed Emilio doesn’t know, ‘cause he knows I’d frickin’ kill him if he paid me in phony cash.”

  I was beginning to feel like Ramon was my only link to reality. He kept talking.

  “The only way I can get even is for you to work it from the inside, and I will get even. Have you put any more of this shit out?” He was talking about the funny money.

  I told him about Milagro and the clean-up crew, but for some reason I couldn’t tell him about the little brown box containing the remaining fake $740,000 in my hotel room safe.

  35 – Gimme the Jersey ‘Wha’?

  So here’s the jumbo burning question as I start my first day of work for Mr. Darragh Cahoone. Am I selling phony name brand drugs, or God forbid, real illegal drugs, or what? I know two things, I am scared, and I am promoting drugs; but I don’t know which kind, and I hope Mr. Darragh Cahoone doesn’t get in the mood to count little brown boxes resting in short stacks behind the paneled wall that my eyes seem to be fixed on as I sit restlessly on the guest side of his desk.

  “Joe, Joe, Joe. I’m so glad you accepted my little offer. If you can sell that crap kid music, you can certainly, we’ll say, ‘promote’ what most ev’rybody wants. Your big job will be to get the word out, to the right people of course, of who’s got the good stuff.”

  “I think I understand, Mr. Cahoone.”

  “It’s Darragh to you, Joe boy; you’re family– and, you know I travel a lot– so since you’re family, I want you to personally keep a watch over my little girl and take real good care of her, as I know you will.”

  The thought occurred to me, yeah, I take real good care of her now, and you’d kill me if you knew how good.

  “I’ll be happy to do that, uh, Darragh. Happy.” I nodded, with the resolve of a real ethical son-of-a-bitch. Good grief, the dike is bursting and I’m standing under it.

  “And, you’re gonna love this next part. If you do real good on selling my exclusive line to a select group of pharmacists and mail order gurus, you get to advance to the big time and travel to some pretty exotic places, a lot better than good ol’ Miami Beach here. Do you like that?”

  “Sounds good to–”

  “Now, as I explain things to you, you’re gonna get that this is a kinda high risk business, so I pay real well for you to follow instructions real well, get it?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Sir? Hell, man, I’m just your cousin-in-law, not your daddy. Just nod if you understand, and gimme the Jersey ‘Wha?’ if you don’t, okay?”

  I nodded. Cahoone became more Hoboken by the second.

  “So here’s the deal, I give you a thousand a day, five grand a week, against ten-percent of all the brand names and designers you sell. You take two days off a week to learn how to spend all that cash, okay? Isn’t that better than pushin’ rap music to radio stations?”

  I nodded. For a thousand a day, I’d sell Communion wafers to starving Catholics—or maybe not. I’m not quite that money-grubbing. The thought occurred to me though, that a thousand a day would rack up in a hurry, and I could replace that little box behind the panel wall with it’s full complement of eight-hundred grand inside, and I could do that real soon.

  But, and it was a mighty big but, I’d be putting sixty grand of real money in the box to replace phony money. That didn’t make sense. I had to think that one out.

  Cahoone yammered on and I was listening, but I was also thinking about my doll still asleep in the Master Suite, and I was wondering when Mr. Darragh Cahoone was going to take another flight out of town.

  “I’ll be leaving The Beach in about a week, Joe, just as soon as you understand what to do and how to do it. Now, do ya need any cash to get started? A little advance money, cousin?”

  Now that little reveal floored me, but I had to look like I was thinking it out even though I knew the answer immediately.

  I paused, looked down and from my inside coat pocket, pulled out my wallet and looked at my checkbook therein, and finally said like a big-time hood dealer, “Oh, about thirty large will take care of me.”

  Cahoone leaned back and took a long beat. “What are you, starting your own casino? Shit, man, I’m only gonna be gone for two weeks. I’ll give you ten. At least I know you think big.”

  Hey, I had to take the shot. I leaned forward and stuck out my hand and said in my most sincere businesslike manner, “Thanks, Darragh, that’ll be enough to keep me going ‘til you get back.”

  “Criminies, I should hope so. You fricking guys in the music business must make out pretty good.” He tapped a Marlboro out of the package and lit up. “That five large a week includes expenses, so take my girl out for a couple of dinners. Okay, cousin? Watch out for her and don’t let her get in trouble. When she has a couple o’ drinks, she gets a little frisky, but you, being her cousin and all, probably know she likes to have a good time.”

  I nodded and fixed my mouth like I knew exactly what he meant; and boy, did I ever know, first hand, up close and personal. Yabba dabba do.

  He took a long drag on the Marlboro and coughed.

  “Now, let’s talk about the nitty-gritty, how you earn your upkeep, and what I expect you to have done by the time I get back…”

  36 – Crapola, I’ve Got a Partner

  Ramon waited at his usual South Beach corner. The object of my meeting was to talk him into helping me communicate with open-minded Cuban pharmacy owners on backroom ways to increase their profit margins, and Cuban club owners who like to have a few high-markup recreational pills and tabs on hand for their all-nighters and special customers.

  I paralleled the curb and he hopped in.

  “I get half.”

  Well, crapola, just like that I had a partner, not exactly what I had in mind. I pulled out into traffic and let a few blocks pass before I opened my big mouth.

  “Yeah, I’ll get you paid back, then we renegotiate.”

  “Okay, ñaño. We just renegotiated in advance. I get half, Mr. Negotiator.”

  He had me by the nuts. Overall, not a bad deal. I get to keep my arms, head, legs, and fingers, and Ramon gets paid back faster. Besides, if Ramon can open up doors in a speedy fashion, maybe both of us can score and get comfortable in the process.

  “Okay, Ramon. You’re on.” You got to admit it when you have no bargaining power. “Now teach me some Cuban lingo.”

  +++

  Sixteen. Precisely sixteen words and phrases to be exact. All I needed to know to double-team.

  “That’s all that’s necessary,” he said. “No point in giving you more to screw up and maybe getting us both locked up.”

  I replied with one of my newest learnings, “Bueno, bien.” Good, okay.

  I was to walk in ahead of Ramon, point and gesture to him to get up front and center, and he’d take it from there. I was the boss, the headman. Ramon was my point man, the mouth. My job was to look all serious, dead serious and emotionless. If Ramon made certain moves with his hands or head, I was to look down, or switch my eyes back and forth, all serious stuff, and say the predetermined word or phrase that matched his gesture. We practiced about a hundred times, until I was thirsty and ready to have Tylerfrank pour me a big one. More important, I was needing Katya, Catherine; hell, I dunno what to call her. I got to figure out her preference so I do what makes her happy.

  Anyway, Darragh Cahoone took a flight to Mexico City this morning and will be gone at least a week. That’s time enough to rev up my blazing relationship with my doll, Miss or Mrs. Katya Cahoone; oh man, Catherine Lucille… last n
ame to be determined.

  37 – Sleeping With Cousins, No-No!

  Katya’s surf ‘n’ turf lay on her fancy plate, barely touched.

  I looked around Old Forge at the lizards and their trophy girlfriends. Nobody could hear us in our private little corner.

  “I can’t be sleepin’ with my cousin,” she said.

  “But I’m a play-cousin, not a real cousin.” I leaned over and kissed my play cousin doll on the forehead and a tear dripped down her cheek. Oh man, how I hate to see a pretty woman cry.

  “If I don’t treat you like a real cousin, I can’t keep track,” she said. “I’ll make a mess out of everything and destroy whatever future we have.” Katya knew her limitations. “And don’t kiss me in public; cousins don’t kiss unless they’re both girls.”

  I flashed on lesbian cousins doing their thing, continuing on into an elaborate red and purple velvet bedroom, and then I snapped back to reality.

  Future, she said. I hadn’t really thought about the future—mine, ours or anybody else’s. She had a point, though; but I had to put it out of my mind for now. Too much stuff was still on the table to be handled.

  I changed the subject and we traded a little small talk, the subjects of which I would forget before I hit the sack tonight.

  +++

  I took my doll home in my new rented Mustang convertible and was careful to let the doorman see me leave, just in case he was chummy with one Mr. Darragh Cahoone.

  I decided to stay clear of Tylerfrank and my usual haunts while I was on Cahoone’s clock. Tylerfrank didn’t need to know about my cousin scam either, so I purposefully kept Katya out of the lizard lounge at the Plage, merry-go-round and all, until some time into the future to-be-determined. And decisions like that also kept me from calling Katya whenever I had the urge, mainly ‘cause Cahoone could be listening, checking up on what Katya was doing, or me for that matter, especially since he was footing me a grand a day for other, shall we say, services, in addition to watching over her.