“The explanation was unnecessary,” I said.
“Was it, Boo? Was it?” Junior flipped me off and shut the bathroom door just as he ripped a long and tremulous fart.
“You okay?” I said quietly to Ollie.
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“Even removing my sudden and unexpected outing, this is all a lot to process and swallow.” The toilet flushed, and Ollie lowered his voice. “And if you make a gay joke right now, I’m going to punch you in your stab wound.”
“Stab wound?” Junior said, wiping his hands on the front of his jeans. “You got stabbed?”
“By Ginny,” Ollie said.
“Why the fuck did Ginny stab you?”
“He stabbed her too,” Ollie said, wiggling the eyebrows of his hastily re-applied overreaching hetero-male façade.
I slowly gave Ollie my deadliest stink eye. “Thanks, Ollie.”
Junior’s jaw dropped. “You banged Ginny?”
“Hey! None of this has anything to do with anything right now!”
“Other than the fact that she stabbed you.”
“That was an accident.”
“Oh, yeah,” Junior said. “She accidentally stabbed you after she banged you. I’m gonna go ahead and assume the banging was also accidental.”
“She stabbed me first.”
That shut them up.
For about six seconds.
“Kinky,” Junior said.
“Yeah,” Ollie said. “Why does that make it better somehow?”
“Wait. Why was it worse? Don’t answer that.”
“So we can count her out for Mexico, then.”
“The fuck are you talking about Mexico?”
“Let’s pick up Miss Kitty, grab the loot, and drive straight the fuck to Tijuana.”
“You don’t care at all that it’s not our money? You don’t care that people are getting killed for it?” Even as I somehow found myself on the high road, I couldn’t help but think about a beach and piña coladas and sunshine. Away from junkie bandleaders, dead button men, living button men, Euro-trash drug dealer club owners, and the foot of snow outside the window.
Man, it sounded good.
“First off,” Junior said, “if we got the money, it’s our money as far as I’m concerned.” He notched off a finger on his hand. “Secondly, there’s a great big pile of fucks I don’t give about whose money it is or how butthurt they wind up over us spending it on tacos.” He notched off another finger. “Thirdly, even if we find out who it belongs to, there’s no guarantee that we’re gonna be able to prove that we didn’t do it. We still have a better than even shot at going down for this, either way.”
“So…”
“So, fourthly, gimme the loot, gimme the loot!” Junior said.
“Please don’t.”
“Gimme the loot, gimme the loot!” Oh god. Then he started to dance a little.
Kill me.
“I’m not telling you where the money is,” I said.
“Dick.”
I went up the stairs to Phil’s apartment and rapped on his door.
Sophie opened the door, naked but for a tiny pair of pink panties. “Yo.” A thick cloud of Class B smoke smacked me right in the sinuses.
“Uh…yo.” I looked up toward the ceiling. “You always open the door like that?”
“Why, you going to knock more often?”
Okay. The weirdness kept getting weirder. And a whole lot more uncomfortable. My eyes drifted down to hers. Then back to her boobies.
Hey, I tried.
Then, with an effort that nearly gave me a hernia underneath my eyeballs, I made eye contact again.
She gave me what I have only heard described as a coquettish smile. Would have helped if I had any idea what coquettish meant. “Phil still up here?”
“Yeah. He’s taking a shit.”
Ollie had hid his sexuality for twenty years, but in my world, it was perfectly okay for people to discuss their bowel movements. Twice in a half hour. Really? This was my reality?
A toilet flushed, and Phil hurriedly made his way into the hall wearing a loose blue-and-white kimono. “Dammit. Why did you have to tell him that?”
Sophie put her hands on her hips and adopted an impudent stance. “Is that or is that not what you were doing?”
“That’s not the point!”
“Well, I think it’s part of a point.”
“Excuse me,” I said.
“I don’t need anybody knowing what I’m doing in the bathroom,” Phil said.
“Why are you so embarrassed by your body?” Sophie asked, arms wide to display her own naked glory.
Somehow, Phil was getting out-hippy-ed. “Excuse me,” I said with more volume.
“And you’re freaking naked!” Phil finally noticed.
“Oh, now you’re embarrassed by my body too?”
“Phil!” I yelled.
“One minute, Boo,” he said, then turned back to Sophie. “Just because I don’t want to share your body with my neighbors doesn’t mean I’m embarrassed by it.”
“Oh, now my body is yours to decide who I get to share it with.”
Ouch. This was turning into a bloodbath for poor Phil. “Sorry. Can I just grab those van keys?”
Without thinking about whether or not handing me the keys to his van was a good idea—and to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t—Phil plucked the key ring from the hook by the door and handed them to me.
“Thanks, buddy,” I said, and ran down the stairs. “Let’s go guys. Quick, quick, quick, before Phil comes to his senses.”
Junior and Ollie put their coats back on and hustled out the door as I started the van. They hopped in the back just as I heard Phil’s window open. Apparently sense had cut through both his irritation with Sophie’s generous nudity and his high. “Uh, Boo?” he yelled from the sill.
“Thanks, Phil!” I said, waving up to him.
“Where are you taking my car?”
“Owe you one, Phil,” I yelled as I drove slowly away in the thick unplowed snow. I knew there was no way the Omni would make it through the storm. One wrong sideways gust of wind could knock that clown car over.
“Boo? Where are you taking my car?” Phil sounded sad the second time he asked.
I gave him back a complicated series of broad mimes to indicate that I couldn’t hear him, but added a sunny smile and wave as we turned the corner.
“So what’s the plan, Stan?” Junior asked.
“First off, we need to get the cell phone cracked, see who that asshole was calling. Gonna pick it up at The Cellar, and drop off Ollie at his place.”
“Yeah, been meaning to ask. Thought we were keeping you out of this, Ollie. How in the hell you wind up back in the mix again?”
Ollie looked to me.
“I needed him to get the phone info.” I said a bit too hurriedly. I was not nearly as good as Ollie was at both the speed and casual nature of the lying. Even though what I said was mostly true, it came out in a panic. “Unless you think you can crack it.”
“Maybe with a hammer,” Junior said.
“Different kind of cracking, brudda.”
“Huh. Okay. Where’s Twitch?”
“Yeah, where is Twitch?” Ollie was more than happy to take the line of questioning off himself.
“That I do not know,” I said. Although I was beginning to wonder.
The streets were mostly empty, huge windblown drifts on the south side of Comm Ave. held the few cars into one slow lane.
“What kind of phone am I looking at again?” Ollie asked.
“IPhone,” I said. “Same as Junior’s.”
Ollie chewed on his lip. “So, once I get in there, I’m going to go ahead and look for any calls on the phone to either Blue Envy or Raja. If we’re lucky, Summerfield himself might have left a voice mail, but there will be at least a call log. Maybe I can hack the provider faster than I can crack the phone.”
Th
e car in front of me started to fishtail on the slick road. I slowed down even more, but felt the van’s tires start to shift on the ice. Man, the roads were bad.
Wait…
What the fuck had Ollie said?
“What did you just say?” I said.
“Didn’t we discuss this already?” Ollie said.
“No! What the hell are you talking about?”
“I thought that was why you were at Blue Envy in the first place. I mean, why we went there.” Ollie and I were already starting to stumble over the poorly constructed web of lies we’d only begun to build.
Junior blinked at us. “What in blue blazes are either one of you talking about?”
“I don’t know!” I said, a bit louder than was appropriate. “What does Summerfield have to do with any of this?”
“He owns Blue Envy.”
Boom.
The sudden piece of the puzzle jarred me so hard that I almost lost control of the van. We skidded toward the median.
“Heyheyhey!” Junior yelled.
I got the car back under control. “Why didn’t this little chestnut come up already?”
“I don’t know,” Ollie said. “I guess I was assuming we were on the same page.”
“I don’t know that bar,” Junior said.
“Jazz club,” I said quickly. I turned back to Ollie. “I went to Blue Envy to talk to Byron’s band, to see what they knew.”
“Why am I three steps ahead of you here?” Ollie said.
I shot him a look for an answer. I had one, but I was sure Ollie didn’t want Junior to hear it yet. Then the weight of all we’d done, seen, and been through these past couple of days hit me like a thunderbolt. Almost all of which could have been eliminated had I not cut Ollie out in the first place.
Holy Hell.
Ollie went on. “The guys who grabbed you are the bar security. The guy who popped you with the bottle is the club manager. They all work for Summerfield. I thought that was why they attacked you in the first place.”
“You got attacked again?” Junior said.
“I…I’m really goddamn confused right now. Did those guys…are they IronClad Security?”
“I don’t know,” Ollie said. “I know they work at that bar all the time. I figured, once you told me about the money, that it was somehow connected to Summerfield. That guy—the one who got killed…” Ollie was getting better at the playing-dumb game.
“Byron.”
“Yeah, Byron. Didn’t you say all this happened after he came back from Amsterdam?”
“Yeah.”
“Lot of designer drug traffic coming in and out of The Netherlands. Maybe this guy was a courier.”
“As well as a jazz musician,” I said. “Makes a fine cover.”
“And also a douche,” Junior said. “But that don’t make no sense. Why would he have money and not product? That seems like the logistical way for it to work here.”
Had Junior just said logistical? I was pretty sure he meant logical. I went on. “Either way, it would make sense that it ties in somehow. Maybe something zigged when it was supposed to zag over in Europe and the deal didn’t happen, or Byron got cold feet. Something.”
“Something doesn’t make sense,” Ollie said. “But it’s a direction to look when I open the phone.”
“My head hurts,” said Junior.
Then I was warm. Warm in my heart. For the first time in my life, I understood musicals. Didn’t know if it was the drugs or that I’d just been handed Summerfield’s ass on a platter, but suddenly I knew why people could break out into song.
“Fly Me to the Moon” was screaming in my head at a volume of eleven.
This.
This was joy.
We got the rare space right in front of The Cellar, because, you know, awesomeness. I parked, then leapt out the door with a joyous whoop.
“He’s happy,” Ollie said.
“Oh yeah,” Junior said. “Nothing would make that man happier than putting it to that limey prick.”
“What’s your beef with Summerfield, Boo?” Ollie asked
“He’s fucking my ex-girlfriend!” I said, clapping Ollie on his shoulders.
“She was never your girlfriend, you deluded douchecanoe,” Junior said flatly.
“Shut up, Junior!” I said. “I think I’m going to do a snow angel. You guys! Do a snow angel with me!”
“You’re freaking me out, man,” Junior said.
“It’s the drugs,” Ollie said. “But I’ll do a snow angel.”
“Please don’t,” Junior said.
“Meh,” Ollie said. “I’m a little doped too,”
“I shouldn’t have been driving!” I said.
“I’m going inside,” Junior said. “You two Marys can come talk to me when you finish doing your snow ballet.”
“That’s somewhat hurtful,” Ollie said to me after the door closed behind Junior.
“I know, brother. We’re gonna work on that.”
Then we made snow angels.
***
The Cellar was as empty as one would assume during a blizzard. There was a trio in the darkened back corner huddled over their drinks. Audrey sat at the end of the bar watching some George Clooney movie on her laptop, idly feeding Burrito olives as he sat on the bar. Flogging Molly’s “Another Bag of Bricks” blared through the speakers.
My beloved pooch looked up and gave me a snaggletoothed snarl when he saw me, ready as always.
I slipped a dollar into the jukebox and tapped in the numbers for Hank the Third’s “Pills I Took.”
As the twanging guitar filled the room, I snatched Burrito’s fat Chihuahua ass off the bar and did my best two-step along the bar with him. Two steps into my two-step, Burrito went absolutely apoplectic in my grasp, nearly squirting from my fingers like a watermelon seed. I dropped him to the floor, and he blobbled away back to Audrey. If he’d had the ability to spit on my boots, I was sure he would have. And yes, I said blobbled. It’s the only word to describe the way that tubby prick moved.
Having lost my dance partner, I broke into an impromptu do-si-do with Ollie.
“Okay, lines are being crossed,” Junior said.
“Are you on drugs right now?” Audrey asked.
“Little bit,” I said. But I was pretty sure they were starting to wear off. Pain was working its way back into my various nooks and crannies.
Audrey waved and then dropped a sheaf of papers on the bar. “Everybody and their grandmother has been trying to find you.”
I stopped to flip through the messages. The first couple were from Junior while he was in the precinct. Then Underdog, Underdog, G.G. making several and increasingly violent threats against my anatomy for the consecutive nights of work he’d been forced into. Some detective whose name I didn’t know. Underdog.
Then one from Ian Summerfield.
Well, lookie, lookie.
“What did this guy say?” I held up the yellow receipt paper to Audrey.
“Is he English?”
“He is.”
“Ooh. I love that accent.”
“Great. What did he want?”
“He would like you to call him when you have the chance,” Audrey said in a terrible Brit accent, fluttering her eyelashes. “Very polite. Like getting a call from Doctor Who.”
And my afternoon just got even more interesting.
I looked at Audrey’s laptop. “Ollie.”
“Yeah?”
“Can you crack the phone on that? I don’t think we can drive any more in that storm right now.”
“Maybe.” Ollie pointed at the computer. “May I?” he said to Audrey.
“Sure, hon,” she said, turning the screen toward him.
Ollie focused on the computer like a laser beam. His fingers flew across the screen, tappity-tapping on the keyboard. “Might take a while, but I can do it. I don’t have any of the programs that I have on my computer, but I can download them. How’s the Wi-Fi in here?”
I shr
ugged.
“It blows, but it works,” Audrey said.
“Let me see what I can do,” he said. Ollie cracked his knuckles, readjusted the thick glasses on his face that weren’t there anymore, nearly poking himself in the eye. Then, mostly to himself, he said, “I’m fucking MacGuyver,” and began quietly humming the Mission Impossible theme as he typed.
“What can I do?” Twitch said.
I almost jumped out of my skin. “How the fuck do you keep doing that?” I yelled. “Why the fuck do you keep doing that?”
“So-rry,” he said. “I’ve been sitting in the back the whole time, you unobservant prick.”
I looked back to the one table with people at it and then noticed that the other two occupants at the table were the cleanup guys from Ginny’s apartment. They both held up their half-empty Coronas in salute to me.
“You’re still hanging with those guys?” I asked.
“What the hell else was I going to do but come back here and wait for your ass to re-appear? Benito and Manny were as bored as I was, so I figured we’d have some beers.”
“Let me go get the phone,” I said to Ollie. He just gave me a cursory nod, never taking his eyes off the computer screen.
I held the scrap of paper with Summerfield’s number on it as I took the stairs two at a time. I ran the potential conversation through my head, saying the lines out loud as I opened the office door. “Missing something, fucko? You lose something, asshat?” I couldn’t decide.
Grabbing the cell phone off the office desk, I took a quick peek behind the bottles of Dry Sack. As predicted, not even the dust had been disturbed around the trumpet case.
“I think I have something of yours. You got something of mine, Mr. Bean.”
Was that too much? How could I parlay this into him cutting Kelly loose? Was that messed up? It started to feel like it was. Like I was. Meh. Screw it. This might actually be fun, even if it was in the most emotionally immature, potentially deadly way. Still fun.
I heard the bar phone ring as I went down the stairs.
“BOO!” Audrey bellowed, nearly rattling the lead paint off the walls.
“Coming,” I yelled back.
As I rounded the hallway, she covered the mouthpiece and grinned. “It’s the man who sounds like Hugh Grant,” she said.
Record scratch.
Rough Trade Page 23