The Barkeep

by William Lashner

  Derek is now inside the little house where Vern has sent him, sitting on the couch on the first floor. The lock on the back door had not been much of a challenge, and there is no alarm, which did not surprise Derek once he got inside. There is not anything in the house worth stealing. It is a nice little neighborhood off a nice little square, and the house, tiny as it is, should have been crammed full with nice stuff. But there is an emptiness here that Derek likes. The top floor has nothing but these greenish mats; the second, a bed on the floor; the first, just the couch and a table. And there is no television.

  Rodney loved television. Every night in their cheap motels, he would watch whatever was on, anything that blared and snorted. Derek would wake up in the middle of the night from some noise or other, and the television would be on even though Rodney was asleep and snoring. And whenever Derek turned it off, Rodney would snap awake. “What is it? What happened?” And then it would go back on as some late-night infomercial tried to sell something to clean the house that Rodney would never dream of buying.

  Derek likes this little house more than anyplace he has seen since he left home. As he sits on the couch set beside the front door, he can imagine living here with a dog and a bird, maybe a horse out back, sleeping in the quiet of the second floor, washing his pants in the kitchen sink, practicing the Korean-style violence that Tree taught him on the mats on the top floor. And no television to blare at him through the night. The house is very tidy. He likes the house as much as he hates the untidiness of the job he has been given.

  Vern told him the man would go out sometime in the day to run, like he did every day. So Derek waited until the man left. Vern also told him the man would come back within an hour or so to get ready for work. That was when the job would take place. Vern went over it again and again, as if Derek had not heard him the first time. Lately Vern has been acting as if Derek is deaf. Derek does not like when people act like he is deaf.

  Derek thought Vern was a cool customer, but lately Vern has been losing it, acting almost as nervous as Rodney. Derek can tell that things are coming to a boil, even though he has no idea what those things might be or what the boil might consist of, other than that he will be a big part of it, like always. And then Vern gave him this untidy job and loudly repeated the details again and again. Derek does not know what to think about it, so he does not. Think, that is. He just sits and waits and rehearses the lines that Vern has given him to say. But he is not as calm as usual before a job. It is the untidiness that is getting to him, especially in a house as empty and clean as this. He wants to go to the top floor and practice his violence, stick his foot through a knee. He wants to slam open a skull with his elbow. He wants to kill. That always calms him down. There is nothing as tidy as death.

  That was what Rodney discovered, finally, in Baltimore. The job was a woman. Rodney was a wreck as they waited in the second-floor apartment for her to come home. Rodney was worried that she might not be alone when she came home. He was worried that if she brought a man with her, the man would have a gun. He was worried that the man would start shooting before Derek could do anything about him. Rodney paced around the apartment, spitting and snorting, touching everything, eating from the fridge and putting the half-eaten pieces of meat back inside. He even made a call from the phone to make sure everything was still on. When Derek told him he ought to be more careful, Rodney told him to go wash his damn pants and shut up.

  The woman in Baltimore came home alone. By the time she realized anything was wrong, Derek already had an arm around her neck. And then Rodney insisted on playing with her a bit, like he liked to. He said it was part of the job, to throw the cops off as to the reason, but Derek could tell that Rodney did it just because he liked to. The powder made the inside of Rodney’s head as untidy as his clothes. When it was over, Rodney decided they should leave by the window that led to the alley instead of by the door. He was worried that someone would see them leaving from the front. Derek just shrugged and followed along. That was what he always did in his jobs with Rodney, shrug and follow along and pick up on all the mistakes Rodney made. Derek went out first, hung onto the sill, and jumped down. It was not a long drop, it was not a big deal. But when Rodney tried it, something slipped and he fell, hard. He grabbed his broken leg and screamed louder than the woman when Rodney had diddled her.

  And in that moment Derek decided that Rodney needed some tidying up.

  Footsteps. Derek stops remembering about Rodney and starts remembering about the job. Footsteps echoing on the narrow street outside. Derek waits for them to pass, but they do not pass. They stop at the front door of the house. Derek stands and silently slips into a darkened corner of the room. A jangle from outside. The turn of the lock. The opening of the door. When the man steps inside, his back is to Derek.

  Derek waits motionless, breathless, until the door closes.

  12.

  SNAKEBITE

  The blow on the back of Justin’s head was so sudden and sharp it barely registered before a thick fog cloaked every sensation. As he found himself inexplicably falling, he had no idea what had happened. The crack of his cheek upon the floor jerked him out of the mist and gave him a pretty good idea.

  “What the hell—”

  Something hard and ferocious kicked into his side, knocking out his breath and the words at the same time, but when a crushing pressure slammed his face into the floor, he knew the answer just the same. He was being mugged, brutally, he was being robbed. Which was a joke, really, because he owned nothing worth caring about and he cared about nothing he owned.

  “Take anything…everything,” he gasped out. “There’s some money…in a drawer…in the kitchen…Take it…Go ahead. I won’t stop you.”

  “There is no TV,” came a voice close to his ear. The voice was strange, a little slurry, with every syllable evenly stressed.

  “I don’t…There isn’t one…I don’t have one.”

  “Good.”

  “What?…Why?”

  A slap across the top of his head forced an explosion of air into his ear. Through the ringing, he could just make out the strange voice saying, “Rodney watched too much TV.”

  “Rodney?” said Justin, sucking in breaths as fast as he could manage. “Who’s Rodney?…I don’t know a Rodney.”

  Justin struggled to rise from the floor, but he felt a huge presence, inhuman almost, spidery yet strong, pressing him down. When he fought to raise his cheek off the floor, his head was grabbed by the hair and smashed back down.

  The pain birthed an anger in him, dark, growing exponentially, welling up inside like a huge, fetid bubble. He closed his eyes and tensed the muscles in his arms, in his back, in his legs, tensed each of his muscles as if to somehow explode the attacker off his back, whatever the cost. It was futile, he knew it, the attacker had the weight and the leverage, he knew it, but still, damn it, he wasn’t going to take this. He was going to do something. He was going to kill this bastard, to throw him off his back and stick a foot in his neck and kill him, kill him, kill—

  In the midst of his struggle, he saw words as if writ in Sanskrit within the lids of his closed eyes. Be not terrified. Be not awed. Know it to be the embodiment of thine own intellect. It was all part of the same thing, this attack, at one with all that had happened and would happen, his mother’s murder, the sex he’d had the night before with Lee, his job as a barkeep, his brother, his father, his face, the floor, it was all part of the same thing, the same illusion. He felt his anger anew, felt it burn like acid, and then he let it flow out of him, pour out of him as from a broken jug. And as the anger flowed away, the tension in his muscles lessened, slowly. The tightness pulling at his bones loosened, slowly. His whole body slowly melted as the floor enveloped him, softly, lovingly, like a pillow. Everything in him eased, his bones were made of Jell-O, the pain in his body diminished. Until the pain was focused only on his cheek. And there it blossomed, brightly. Like a flower. Like a gift.

  “What do you want?” sa
id Justin with a new calm.

  “You need to stay away,” said the voice.

  “From where?”

  “What happened to your mother is over,” said his attacker as Justin’s face was pressed hard into the floor, and the flower in his cheek grew wild and lovely. The words were said in those evenly accented syllables, slurred and without inflection, as if they were being read off a paper without being understood. “Your father is where he belongs. If you turn over any dirt, you’ll only be digging your grave. Stay out of it, or else.”

  “Out of what?” said Justin.

  “You want it repeated?”

  “Yes. Please.”

  “You need to stay away,” said the attacker in that same strange voice. “What happened to your mother is over. Your father is where—”

  A knock at the door. And again. Loud knocks. Bang. Bang.

  “Who is that?” said the attacker.

  “I don’t know,” said Justin.

  “Say ‘Go away.’”

  “Go away,” Justin shouted.

  Bang. Bang. “Mr. Chase?” came a man’s voice through the door. “This is the police.”

  In an instant, the attacker was off Justin’s back and charging toward the rear doorway that led to the small fenced backyard and then to Panama Street. Justin didn’t have any desire to run after his attacker like he would have just a few moments before, when he was twisted dark by his anger. Instead he lifted up his head and turned his neck so he could catch sight of the man just as he reached the back of the house—a darkly clothed figure with short legs and broad shoulders, his wide back hunched and powerful, running quite quickly despite a slight limp, ripping open the door with massive arms, tearing out into the light, glancing back with a quick twist of his huge neck before jumping like a cheetah over the fence.

  Bang. Bang. “Mr. Chase? Justin Chase?”

  Justin, still on the floor, rolled over, put a hand on his bruised cheek, and said, “Come on in.”

  The door opened and the police officer stood in the doorway. He was an older African American, grizzled, squat of figure, with big hands and a curious tilt to his mouth. And curiously familiar. He stepped up to Justin and stared down at him on the floor for a long moment, as if trying to figure out what he was seeing.

  “Yoga?” said the cop finally.

  “Not quite,” said Justin.

  13.

  ZOMBIE

  Mia’s worst fears about Justin Chase were confirmed with a single glance. If she hadn’t known who he was, she would never have recognized him.

  The nervous law student with his pale skin and worried eyes, his soft face and body, his uneasy stammer, had been replaced by something far harder. It was the kind of physical transformation she had seen sometimes in meth addicts. His body fat had been reduced enough so that his cheekbones were sharp as scythes. With his dark flat eyes and long hair and aggressive sort of calm, he indeed looked more like a drug dealer or a motorcycle madman than the anxious, ambitious kid he had been. And the dark-red bruise on his cheek, speckled with fresh blood, made him seem all the more dangerous.

  Dangerous enough to have killed Timmy Flynn to keep his father in jail?

  “What happened to your face, Justin?” said Mia.

  “I fell.”

  “Detective Scott said that what he heard on the other side of the door sounded like a confrontation of some sort. Like there was a fight going on.”

  “I was mad at myself for falling,” he said evenly.

  “And then I heard footfalls,” said Scott. “Like someone running away from the police.”

  “Who was running away, Justin?” said Mia.

  “That was just me, pounding the floor in frustration,” he lied. And he lied with such a perfect calm that Mia felt a shiver roll down her spine. Was he as accomplished a liar even before this sad transformation—like, say, when he came into her office that first time to point the finger at his father? “What is this all about?” said Justin.

  “Timmy Flynn.”

  “Uncle Timmy? He just died. So?”

  “How did you know Mr. Flynn died, Justin?”

  “My brother told me.”

  “Frank?” she said, surprised. She remembered how bitter the feelings had been between the two brothers at the time of the trial. Frank fully supported his father, while Justin was convinced of his father’s guilt. The scenes in the courthouse between the two were brutally tense, once almost coming to blows. “Do you see Frank often?”

  “Not really. But he found me the other night and told me about Uncle Timmy. The funeral is tomorrow.”

  “Are you planning on attending?”

  “I haven’t seen the guy in years, and he was sort of a loser.”

  She looked at Justin and said nothing, trying to pull out more with her silence.

  “The drugs, I mean,” he said.

  “What about your drug use?”

  “I don’t,” said Justin.

  “You’ve lost some weight since I last saw you.”

  “I run.”

  “Had you been in touch with Mr. Flynn since the trial?”

  “No.”

  “Had he been in touch with you? Did he call you or ask you for anything?”

  “No.”

  “Did he tell you he was changing his testimony about your father? Did he tell you that his whole story about your father asking him to help him find someone to kill your mother was made up because of police pressure?”

  “How could he have told me that,” said Justin evenly, “if we hadn’t been in touch?”

  “I just told you a major witness against your father had changed his testimony and you don’t look shocked, or angry, or even like you need time to process the information. You look like you knew it already and had known it for a while.”

  “My brother told me that, too.”

  “The same night he told you Mr. Flynn was dead.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Busy night,” said Mia, looking at Scott. He nodded at her in indication that he would check things out with the brother right after the interview. She looked down at the file on the desk and softened her voice as if the next question were a throwaway while she figured out what she really wanted to ask. “How’s your father doing?”

  “He’s in jail.”

  “Yes, I know, I put him there. But some inmates deal with incarceration better than others. Some even flourish. How’s your dad doing?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t see him.”

  “When was the last time you talked to your father?”

  “Before he was arrested.”

  Mia lifted her head and stared at Justin. “And not since then?”

  “He killed my mother, Ms. Dalton.”

  “So you haven’t forgiven him.”

  “Is something like that forgivable? And truthfully, I don’t expect he gives a damn whether I forgive him or not.”

  She recalled the old Justin Chase, how hurt and bewildered he had been, and she softened. “I seem to remember seeing your name on a list of graduating law students.”

  “Yeah, how do you like that? They let anybody graduate law school these days.”

  “Not from Penn they don’t. Where did you pass the bar?”

  “I didn’t.”

  She just stared at him.

  “I never took the test. I only finished law school because it was easier going through the motions than actually quitting and finding something else to do. But after my mother, I didn’t want to do the lawyer thing anymore.”

  “So what thing do you do now?”

  “I tend bar.”

  Mia stared and waited for some sort of explanation.

  “The public has a thirst and I’m the man to quench it.”

  “Nothing wrong with the job, but it’s a bit of a shame. You would have been a damn good lawyer.”

  “Do you think?”

  “Yes, I think. Part of the law is about convincing a group of jurors to see the world the way you se
e it. Being persuasive might be your special skill. It sure worked with me.”

  “What worked?”

  “You convinced me that your father killed your mother.”

  “I thought the evidence convinced you.”

  Mia saw something working on Justin’s hard new features just then, something she hadn’t seen yet in the interview, and it took her a moment to figure out what it was. Fear, that was it. You would think a kid brought in by a cop to the DA’s office would be scared, even a bit, but not this kid. He had been strangely nonplussed by the whole thing, until now. She glanced at Scott to see if he had noticed it too, but he was too busy looking at her. As if she had said something wrong or revealed too much.

  “Yes, of course,” said Mia, turning back to Justin. “It was mostly the evidence. Including Mr. Flynn’s testimony. But you were a part of convincing me, too. We can’t deny that, can we, Justin?”

  “I assumed you had more to go on than me. I noticed your new title on the door, Ms. Dalton. Chief of the Homicide Division. That’s a nice promotion. Convicting my father didn’t hurt your prospects.”

  “Your father is asking for a new trial. Did Frank tell you that, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “How does that make you feel?”

  “I try not to feel too much now. But I suppose I would prefer he just sit back in his cell and rot.”

  “You sound like some prosecutors I know,” Mia said with a slight smile. “So what did you and Mr. Flynn talk about?”

  “Talk?”

  “When he called you. The night he died. And you two chatted.”

  “I told you I hadn’t talked to him in years.”

  “He called your phone,” said Detective Scott. “We have the records from Verizon. They’re quite detailed. The two of you talked for three minutes and forty-three seconds, according to the records.”