A Fatal Glass of Beer

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Jeremy moved to the window as Belcher disappeared.

  “Fire escape,” said Jeremy, careful not to expose himself. “He’s going up.”

  I went to the window. I could walk, but there was a strange feeling in my right foot. I looked down. The hole in my shoe was turning red with blood. I didn’t have time to think about it. I took a deep breath and stepped out onto the fire escape, hoping Belcher would be in too big a hurry to take the time to try to deal with us. I was wrong.

  Belcher was standing on the narrow, iron fire escape about five feet up, his gun trained on my chest. Before he could shoot, there was a loud boom from below us. Belcher hesitated and I went down on my knees. From below us in the alleyway, I heard Fields’s voice shouting, “Churl. Assassin. Thief.”

  Fields fired another blast from his shotgun. He was probably too far away to hit anything except a few innocent windows on the second floor, but Belcher started up the fire escape fast before Fields reloaded and another fusillade came. I flattened myself against the brick wall.

  While it wasn’t likely that a shotgun blast would carry up five floors, Belcher and I weren’t taking any chances. I knew Fields must now be reaching into the pocket of his kimono to reload for a second assault and that, if he decided to climb the fire escape and get a little closer, it might be as dangerous to me as to Belcher.

  “Hold your fire,” I shouted, getting up and listening to the sound of Belcher’s footsteps hurrying up the fire escape. “Don’t shoot.”

  “Drat,” shouted Fields from the darkness below.

  I got up, gun in hand, and started up after Belcher. I glanced back but Jeremy didn’t follow me through the window. I had no time to wonder why. I climbed. My foot was definitely hurting by now. I thought it was my toes, or one toe. I couldn’t tell. Up I went.

  I could hear Fields cursing and muttering loudly in the darkness below, and I could hear Belchers footsteps suddenly stop as he reached the roof. I ignored the throbbing of my foot and kept going, slowly. Belcher might simply be standing there waiting for my head to pop over the edge of the roof.

  With no plan other than to keep going and ignore the pain, I went up another two floors to the roof, took a deep breath, held my gun up, and stuck my head over the edge, aiming in all directions.

  Belcher was running toward the door to the interior stair. I fired. My shot went into the night sky. He turned to fire back. He came a hell of a lot closer than I had, even though he was running and I was standing still—well, as still as my wounded foot would allow.

  Belcher was at the door now and I was hobbling forward. He turned, stopped, saw that I was alone, and took the time to aim more carefully. I had the feeling that he would hit something more vital than my foot this time.

  Suddenly, the door behind Belcher popped open. He turned to see what was happening, and Jeremy Butler took a step forward, grasped Belcher’s gun hand, and slammed it against the open door. In the light of the open door behind Jeremy, I could see Belcher’s weapon fly into the stairwell and then heard it bouncing down the stairs.

  Belcher was big, tough, fighting for his life, and more than twenty years younger than Jeremy. He didn’t have a chance. He threw an elbow at Jeremy’s face. Jeremy turned his head aside. Jeremy released Belcher’s hand and turned him around as he had turned Knox. Belcher threw a punch. Jeremy blocked it with little effort. Belcher winced and took a step back.

  “Stop,” I shouted, gun leveled.

  Belcher paid no attention. There were only three ways down for him—past me, through Jeremy, or over the side of the building, eight stories down. He made a lunge at Jeremy, who ducked. Belcher folded over Jeremy’s shoulder. Jeremy stood, and Belcher, trying to catch his breath and looking like an insane ape, punched at the back of Jeremy’s head. Jeremy ignored the punches, lifted Belcher, who came in, at least, at two hundred and twenty pounds, over his head. Belcher didn’t give up. There was too much riding on this. He banged his fists against Jeremy’s arms and tried to lean over far enough to bite the wrists of the huge bald silent man, who walked past me with his catch.

  “You can put him down, Jeremy,” I said, but Jeremy said nothing and kept walking to the edge of the roof.

  I heard a sound behind me and turned back toward the door through which Jeremy had come. There stood the kimono-clad W. C. Fields, shotgun in hand. Jeremy didn’t look back. He calmly carried the kicking and cursing Belcher to the edge of the roof, turned him over, and effortlessly dangled the killer over the edge of the roof, holding on with one hand to Belcher’s right ankle.

  “Don’t drop the son of a bitch till he tells us where my money is!” shouted Fields. “Drat. Don’t drop him at all.”

  “Jeremy,” I said. “Put him down.”

  “Don’t drop me,” shouted Belcher into the darkness of the alleyway.

  “What the hell is going on up there?” someone shouted from below.

  “I advise you to get out of the way,” Jeremy called back evenly. “A body may be coming past you in a moment.”

  “No,” screamed Belcher.

  “You killed three people,” Jeremy said softly. “You shot my friend in the foot. You are a thief and a disgrace to your profession, to humanity.”

  “I’m a good husband and father,” Belcher said.

  “I sincerely doubt that,” said Jeremy conversationally. “But the balances of human self and ego are constantly in flux and it is possible.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Belcher shouted.

  Fields was at my side. He looked me over for the wound Jeremy had mentioned and saw my bloody shoe.

  “The hell with the money,” said Fields.

  “No,” shouted Belcher. “I’ll tell you where the money is. Pull me up.”

  “First you tell us where the money is. We check to confirm it and then I pull you up,” said Jeremy.

  “You can’t hold me that long,” cried Belcher.

  “I’ll switch hands,” said Jeremy, “but even with that, you may be right.”

  “Car,” shouted Belcher. “Parked two blocks south in front of the hotel. In the trunk. Black Buick. I don’t remember the license number, thirty-four-something.”

  Jeremy nodded for me and Fields to go check while he stood calmly dangling Belcher. Fields, kimono flapping, shotgun in hand, was now moving a lot faster than I was. My foot was definitely in agony, but I followed through the door to the elevator which was waiting open, and down we went.

  “Think he can hold him?” asked Fields.

  “Jeremy’s only killed one person in his life,” I said. “And that was … a long story. He won’t drop him.”

  We reached the lobby and I glanced at the dumbfounded, nearsighted desk clerk, who shouted, “What’s going on? I’m calling the police.”

  “Then do it, fast,” I said.

  “You’re trailing blood across the lobby,” the clerk said.

  I believed him but I didn’t bother to look. We marched the two blocks. There weren’t many people out—a man walking two dogs, a soldier walking with a girl. They tried to hide the fact that they were looking at the weird pair—a fat old man in a silk robe and clopping slippers with a shotgun in his arms, and a limping man with the face of a pug and a bleeding shoe—who passed them.

  “Eureka,” said Fields triumphantly, pointing his shotgun at the car.

  “We forgot to get the key from Belcher,” I said, leaning against the car behind the one whose trunk we were staring at.

  “So we did,” said Fields. “So we did.”

  He aimed the shotgun at the lock of the trunk from about four feet away, and I ducked behind the side of the car I was leaning against. Dogs barked, people shouted, lights went on. I looked at Fields, who was grinning delightedly. The trunk was open and Fields was holding a black bag in his hand, a bag that looked like a doctor’s old house-call bag.

  I made the V-for-victory sign. I didn’t feel much like Churchill. I didn’t feel much. It was about then that I passed out.

  When I woke
up, I knew immediately where I was—a hospital room. Jeremy was there. Fields, clothed in a pair of checkered pants and an almost-matching jacket with a white shirt and no shotgun, stood next to the bed on one side. My brother, Phil, clean-shaven, rumpled suit, tie loosened as always, stood on the other side.

  “How long?” I said, my mouth dry.

  “A few hours,” said Phil. “It’s morning.”

  “My foot?”

  “You lost the little toe on your right foot and an inexpensive shoe,” said Fields. “Knew a dancing kazoo player. Italian. Couldn’t speak a word of English. Born with no little toe on either foot. Whole family. Walked perfectly straight. Ran faster than the baritone from Weehawken who chased him six or seven miles after the baritone caught the kazoo player in situ delicto with his wife, a voluptuous chorine of ample pulchritude but little talent. Kazoo player was running barefoot and bare-assed in the snow in Buffalo.”

  “Belcher?” I said, reaching for the glass of water on the table.

  “Confessed,” said Phil. “Already has a lawyer who’s trying to save him from the executioner. I heard what happened. If I were Jeremy, I would have dropped him. He was a police officer, for God’s sake.”

  “The money?” I said.

  “Got it,” said Fields.

  “Since I know how you feel about Cawelti,” my brother said, “I thought you might like to know he’s already squirming about letting Knox pass himself off as an FBI agent without checking his credentials. With what Seidman already has on him, I’d say Cawelti’s going to get a promotion out of the Wilshire and downtown behind a desk. He’s got too much on too many people in City Hall to just get demoted. In two months in charge, he’s made more mistakes than I made in a year, and I thought I’d set the record.”

  This was close to the longest speech I’d ever heard from my brother. He patted my shoulder.

  A man in white, with glasses, white hair, and a stethoscope around his neck came in. “Awake,” he said cheerfully. “Good. I suppose your friends told you you’ve lost your toe.”

  “They told me,” I said.

  “Sewed up the wound, gave you some blood, painkillers,” the doctor said after listening to my chest and examining my foot. “Looks good so far.”

  “When can I go?” I said.

  “Well, the bleeding’s stopped. You’ve got color. No temperature. I’d say you should stay where you are for a few days, but you asked when you would be able to get up. Answer is right now, if you walk on your heel, but my guess is that it’ll hurt like hell.”

  I tried to sit up. Phil and Jeremy reached over to help me.

  “I’ve got a wedding to go to,” I said. “Two days.” I was dizzy.

  “Good luck,” said the doctor. “I spent a year in the Pacific on a destroyer. Saw men lose toes, fingers, and be back on duty in a few hours when they could have stayed in sick bay, probably could have gotten discharged. And I also saw men with little more than hangnails, saying they couldn’t stand.”

  “Clothes,” I said.

  Phil moved to the closet in the private room and got my clothes. The same ones I had on the night before.

  “I’ll get the papers ready,” the doctor said. “You can sign yourself out at the nursing station. I’d say you should see your own doctor in two days, change the dressing.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Kept your toe if you want it,” the doctor said, reaching into his pocket and coming out with a corked vial in which I could see a toe floating in clear liquid.

  “Yeah,” I said, reaching for the vial. “I think I will.” I handed the vial to Jeremy as the doctor left.

  “Let me see that,” Fields said, reaching out his hand.

  Jeremy obliged by giving Fields the vial. He looked at the toe, turned the vial around, held it upside down.

  “A memento par excellence,” he said. “What stories I could tell about this floating, slightly bent piece of humanity. I could leave it in my will to Jack Benny, who wouldn’t have the heart to throw it away or the stomach to keep it. I envy you your war trophy”

  “I’d rather have the toe where it was yesterday, on my foot,” I said. With Phil’s help, I dressed.

  “Paid the doctor and hospital bills,” said Fields. “Part of the expenses.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “And,” Fields went on, pulling a white box from behind his back, “I prevailed upon a nearby merchant to open his establishment a bit early.”

  He handed me the box and I opened it. It was a pair of black slipper-shoes, one shoe about two sizes too large for me, and another identical shoe my size.

  “Left one goes on the good foot,” said Fields. “Right, with padding, goes on the bad one.”

  “Let’s give it a try,” I said.

  Fields then produced a pair of white cotton socks from his pocket.

  “My own,” he said. “Fresh, soft as a baby’s behind.”

  Jeremy helped me put on the left sock and shoe. I was a little dizzy, but all right. The right foot was different. Putting the sock on hurt enough for me to clench my teeth and try not to groan. The slipper went on easier, padded with cotton Fields produced from another pocket. “Always be prepared,” he said.

  I stood up. It wasn’t bad and the dizziness was almost gone. Taking a step almost sent me toppling, but Jeremy caught me and stood me up. I was more ready for the second step.

  “It’ll get easier,” I said.

  Fields threw the empty white box in the air. It spun around four or five times and came down behind his back, where he caught it. “You never lose the touch,” he said, handing me a wad of bills. “Final payment and just a tad more. The tad more is a secret between those of us assembled. If word got out that I was being generous, it would destroy my carefully built image.”

  Fields walked to the door.

  “I’m in need of a bit of libation,” he said. “Our journey’s been a jolt to my growing complacency. I shall stand in front of a photograph I have in my health room of me and Jack Barrymore in profile, and I shall toast the relative success of his joke and Burton’s mission and tell the wide-eyed buzzard how much I miss him. I’ll not invest the money I’m pulling from the banks in Beefsteak Mines, but shall gather the cash and stash it where none but I shall know of its location. And if I chance to expire before I tell anyone, I give you permission to seek it, keep it, and spend it. One final discovery I’ve made, my friends, and with it I leave you. The meaning of the journey is not reaching the goal but the journey itself. The irony is that we are doomed not to recognize this truth as we travel.”

  He threw the white box at me. I caught it and when I looked up, Fields was gone.

  “Anne’s wedding?” Phil said.

  “Anne’s wedding,” I said, taking another step, this time on my own. It wasn’t bad at all, if you can call screaming agony an improvement over horrible torture. “Think I’ve got anything to wear to a wedding?” I asked.

  “No,” said Phil. “I’ll take you home. You can change. Tomorrow you can buy something at Hy’s for Him.”

  “I called Alice a short time ago,” said Jeremy. “I’m going home to work on your new office.”

  “What about sleeping?” I asked.

  “I meditated while you were being worked on and then while you were unconscious,” said Jeremy. “I am refreshed.”

  “Thanks, Jeremy,” I said.

  The bruise on his cheek was small, but definitely purple and slightly puffy.

  “Friends, true friends, are few” he said. “And they must be given whatever we possess.”

  Jeremy went out of the room and I was left with my brother.

  “I’ll be right next to you,” Phil said as I took more steps, each a little less painful than the one before, until I signed myself out at the nursing station and discovered that I was down to a continuing level of pain that I could live with, helped by the pain pills I had at home. They had been given to me by Doc Hodgdon for my back. The doc was seventy and beat me r
egularly at handball at the Y, though it looked as if I wouldn’t be playing for a while.

  I put a hand on Phil’s shoulder to steady myself as we went down the elevator. He drove me home. We didn’t talk much. We really didn’t have much to say. We stopped right in front of Mrs. Plaut’s Boardinghouse on Heliotrope. Phil started to get out but I stopped him.

  “I can make it from here,” I said. “You’d better get to the station. Cawelti might need some help packing.”

  Phil grinned at me. It was a real grin, not the kind I had been getting from him for years, the kind that meant I was about to go too far and he was about to erupt, but a real grin I hadn’t seen on him except when he was watching his children do something that got to him.

  “Best to Anne,” he said as I opened the door. “And remember we want you on Sunday for dinner, early afternoon.”

  “I’ll be there,” I said, feeling the pain again as I stepped out. “I’m still planning to take the boys to a movie. If I can’t drive, Anita will.”

  “I’ll tell them,” he said.

  I closed the door and he sat there watching me walk up the cement path. I made an effort to look reasonably normal. Under my arm was the white box from Fields. Now it contained my holster and gun and a corked and sealed vial with the little toe of my right foot.

  When I was on the porch, I turned and waved at Phil and smiled, which wasn’t all that easy. He drove away and I went into the house, dreading the flight of steps.

  Mrs. Plaut was standing inside the door, her arms folded.

  “That was your brother,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Saw him through the window. You’re walking funny.”

  “Someone shot off my right toe,” I said. “The little one.”

  She was wearing a plain blue dress, and I could see that she was also wearing her hearing aid, the one Gunther and I had bought her.

  “I don’t see the point of that,” she said.

  “He was trying to kill me.”

  “Bad shot?”

  “In a hurry,” I said.

  “You know the gun my Mister left behind when he went wherever he went when he died?”

  “I know it well,” I said, moving toward the long flight of steps. The gun was ancient, a huge six-shooter that looked enormous in Mrs. Plaut’s small hands. I had seen her with it twice. I didn’t want to see it again.