Saratoga Payback

by Stephen Dobyns

  “I didn’t say who it was. I’m trying to find Dave Parlucci. You know where he lives?”

  “Like I said, we wasn’t close. Anyway, he moves a lot. He told me it was cheaper than paying rent. He pays first and last month, then stays till he’s booted out.”

  They talked about how Charlie might find Parlucci as Eddie leaned on his rake. “It could be anywhere. Now, if you wanted to know where he worked, that I could help you with.”

  “Tell me.”

  “He’s day bartender at the Greasy Mattress, a biker bar over by the harness track.”

  —

  It wasn’t Dave Parlucci who stood behind the bar of the Greasy Mattress, but a barrel-shaped woman in an army camouflage T-shirt and a black leather vest with silver studs placed at close intervals along the seams. A black leather cap with “Harley-Davidson” printed in red across the brow was wedged on her tomato-shaped head. If she had hair, none showed, and Charlie suspected that her head was shaved. Snake tattoos traveled the length of her arms, disappearing beneath her short sleeves, and as the woman washed and dried a row of beer mugs, the snakes seemed to dance. Two longhaired men in jeans and T-shirts were playing mumblety-peg nearby and their knives made dull thuds as they stuck point-first into the wooden floor. All three paused when Charlie entered and stared at him as if he were compost.

  Charlie knew the bartender as a woman known as Bad Maud, which led him to wonder if another bar, or maybe a pastry shop, employed someone called Good Maud. As for the men, Charlie thought it likely that he’d jailed their grandfathers thirty years before. No one spoke as he walked to the bar. There was another thunk as a knife hit the floor, and one of the men extended his leg to touch the mark, then drew the knife from the wood. Both men wore black boots with chains across the instep.

  Charlie sat down on a stool and tried to sound agreeable. “I thought Dave might be working today. You know where I might find him?”

  Bad Maud studied Charlie’s face. “Dave?”

  “Dave Parlucci, he works here. I thought I might be able to find him.”

  There was another thunk, but this time the knife struck the floor by Charlie’s stool. He glanced at it quivering in the wood, scratched his head and turned back to the woman. “I heard he was looking for me about a business deal.”

  “I don’t know where the fuck he is. He didn’t show up today.”

  One of the men retrieved the knife. “You know where he lives?” asked Charlie. The knife once again hit the floor by Charlie’s stool and he ignored it. “Dave moves around a lot and I don’t have his present address.”

  Bad Maud kept washing the mugs. “What makes you think I know?”

  “This is your bar, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “And Dave works for you, right?”

  “What of it?”

  “Then you should know where he lives, not just for tax purposes, but he serves alcohol and so the police must have his address.”

  “Then talk to them.”

  Again there was a thunk as the knife hit the wood. Even though Charlie’s feet were resting on the bottom rung, the knife had still stuck in the wood about five inches from his shoe. Shifting his weight, he dropped down so his foot pressed against the hilt. There was a snap as the blade broke.

  “Whups,” said Charlie.

  “Jesus fuckin’ Christ!” said one of the young men. “What’d you do that for?”

  “It’s a game,” said Charlie. “I thought we were playing a game.”

  “We’ll show you a game,” said the other man. The men moved toward him.

  Nearby on the bar were several empty Budweiser bottles. Charlie grabbed one by the neck, smashed it on the edge of the bar and raised its jagged edge toward the men. “Don’t,” he said. Even as he engaged in this bit of melodrama, a voice in his head told him he was still being motivated by nostalgia and a hankering for old times. It had been years since he’d pretended to be a tough guy.

  The response, to Charlie, was unexpected. “Damn!” said Bad Maud. “You’re our kind of people.” Though she spoke with more irony than sincerity, the two men paused. Bad Maud waved them away. “You made your move. Now back off and let the man tend to his business.”

  “Dave Parlucci,” said Charlie, turning partly away from the men behind him.

  “You’re not a cop, right.” It wasn’t a question. Bad Maud filled a mug with Bud Light and pushed it toward Charlie. “I seem to remember you’re a private dick.”

  “Retired. This is no legal thing. Dave and I go way back.” He took a mouthful of beer to be polite.

  “Dave has a room over on Van Dam. Second floor.” Bad Maud gave him the address. “He said his last place didn’t allow pets. He’s got a python.”

  “I appreciate it.” Charlie put a twenty on the bar and headed toward the door.

  “Hey,” said one of the young men, “what about my knife?”

  Charlie gave him a friendly smile. “Think of it this way, just the experience was worth the price.”

  —

  Dave Parlucci no longer lived in the room on Van Dam. He had moved two weeks before, taking his python with him. Now the room was rented by a middle-aged woman with a nose as red as a caboose lantern. She sipped a little glass of something as she spoke to Charlie in the doorway.

  “I tell you, when I think of that python creeping around under my bed, it gives me the shakes. Twenty-five feet some of them are. I read it in a book.” The woman’s name was Lucy. She wore a blue terry-cloth robe and her bleached blond hair rose up from her scalp as if she’d stuck a bobby pin into a wall socket. “Sometimes when people move, they say they’re taking their snakes, but they really leave them behind. My girlfriend found a six-foot corn snake in her sock drawer. If that creature’s still here, he’ll try to squeeze me in the night.”

  Charlie shook his head sympathetically. “D’you know where Dave moved to?”

  “He bailed on his rent and left no forwarding address. I guess I’m lucky to get a place with windows on two sides. Some people will die for cross-ventilation.”

  “Any mail come for him?”

  She shrugged. “I gather he wasn’t a big letter writer.”

  “There’re bills.”

  “Hell, d’you think he’d pay them? I bet the companies gave up trying. You want to come in for a snoot? You look like a jolly kind of guy.”

  Charlie stepped back into the hall. “No thanks, I think I’m coming down with a cold. You watch out for that snake.”

  As Charlie descended to the first floor, he heard a lock turn, and a door opened about two inches. “Hey,” said a voice.

  Charlie paused.

  “What you want to see Dave for?”

  “He owes me some money,” said Charlie.

  The door opened another two inches, revealing a face like waxed paper in need of a shave. “How much?”

  Charlie took a step toward the door. “Hundred bucks.”

  “You give me ten and I’ll go get it for you.”

  “Don’t give me that,” said Charlie. “You don’t even know where he lives.”

  “Sure I do, sure I do, it’s not so far.” The man opened the door a little more. He looked about seventy, thin as a fence post and with gray hairs poking out above the top of his T-shirt. From inside came the smell of cigarettes and an overloaded cat box.

  “I don’t believe you. It’s hard work renting a room when you’ve got a python.”

  “He keeps it in a trunk. Landlords never know.”

  “Yeah, so you say.” Charlie turned away toward the front door.

  “I’m telling you, he’s just over on Adams Street.”

  Charlie took ten dollars from his wallet. “What’s the address on Adams Street?”

  “You think I’ll tell you for a measly ten bucks?” said the man.

&nb
sp; “Then forget it.” Charlie again turned toward the front door.

  “Hey, hey, can’t you take a joke? What about twenty?”

  —

  It was five o’clock when Charlie left the rooming house. The drizzle showed no signs of stopping, a fine gray mist that filmed over his glasses. Once in his Golf, he drew out his cell phone and then stared at it, trying to make up his mind. At last he punched in a number that he knew better than his own. After two rings, a voice said, “Saratoga Police Department.”

  “May I speak to Lieutenant Hutchins, please?”

  “Who shall I say is calling?”

  “Charlie Bradshaw.”

  The woman’s voice gave no sign of recognition. “And this is a police matter?”

  “You could call it that.” It struck Charlie that everyone he’d known on the police force when he was a sergeant was either dead or retired. There was no reason for the secretary to recognize his name. He was history.

  Hutchins came on the line a moment later. “So have you decided to talk?”

  “I already told you: I know nothing. I just wondered if you’d made any arrests.”

  “This is police business, Charlie. Just tell me how it concerns you.”

  Charlie watched a yellow dog dash across Van Dam in front of a UPS truck. “A man gets his throat slashed on my front walk and I want to know if you’ve caught the killer. Of course it concerns me.”

  “No arrests have been made, if that makes you happy. You sure you’re staying out of this?”

  “I retired,” said Charlie. “Concern for me and my family is as far as I go.”

  “Actually,” said Hutchins, “there’s one detail that might interest you. It’ll become public knowledge pretty soon anyway.”

  “What’s that?” He expected another bad joke, but he was wrong.

  “Mickey’s tongue was cut out. There was no trace of it at the scene. The perp probably drew it out with a hook and sliced it. You know why someone might do that?”

  To himself Charlie said, Because Mickey talked too much. To Hutchins he said, “Your guess is as good as mine, Lieutenant. Anyway, I’m out of the business. I don’t ask that sort of question anymore.”

  “That’s what I like to hear, Charlie.”

  Charlie closed his cell phone and started his car. The thought of a man slicing out Mickey’s tongue made him queasy. It suggested something about the nature of the killer, something about anger and ferocity that made Charlie hope he was done with his work. Parlucci’s address was three blocks away on Adams Street. The gray day was drawing to a close; streetlights were coming on.

  Five

  The house on Adams was similar to the one on Van Dam, an oversized white Victorian in need of paint, which had been broken up into rooms and efficiency apartments. During the summer it was full of men and women who worked at the track, grooms and maintenance people. During the winter there were probably a few students, older women who worked at Walmart or Lowe’s, people down on their luck traveling through town, people getting by on Social Security. It seemed to Charlie that he’d prowled the hallways of a hundred such buildings, seeking people who never wanted to be found. Even this building was one he knew he’d visited, though he couldn’t recall the circumstances or when it had been.

  On the porch by the front door were ten mailboxes with names beside half: Rodriguez, Overbeck, Lucini, Skoyles and Gerstenburger. Any of them could be Parlucci. The front door was unlocked and Charlie entered into a long hall with yellow walls. On a card table were envelopes marked “Forward” or “Moved.” The hall didn’t so much smell of food as of vague organic substances of a semi-edible nature. Antique food and Lysol. Charlie had once thought he’d end up in such a place with his books, old records and old-guy clothes. He’d said as much to Janey, who had given him an angry poke in the ribs, saying, “You kidding? I’m going to hang on to you till it’s time for you to be stuffed. And if I go first, you belong to the girls.” Since then Charlie had sometimes wondered how he’d look stuffed and what he’d be wearing. Perhaps he’d have his own glass case in the museum in Congress Park, sitting at his old oak desk or peering from behind a plastic tree wearing a deerstalker hat.

  Charlie approached a door with the numeral 1 painted in black on the upper panel and gave the door a jaunty knock: shave and a haircut, two bits. Then he listened as a pair of slippers slid and scratched their way across the linoleum.

  “Who is it?” It was an old woman’s voice—hopeful and anxious—someone so lonely that even a robbery might be seen as credible human contact to reduce the emotional murk.

  “Hi, my name’s Charlie. I’m looking for a pal a mine who moved in last week. Can’t remember if he’s on the first or second floor. Name’s Dave.”

  “Dave?”

  “Yeah, a young guy, midthirties—we go way back. But he’s footloose, know what I mean? Always packing his bags.”

  There was no answer. Charlie thought he heard the mutter of a TV. The sadness in such buildings felt like the damp found in old cellars. “You still there, ma’am?”

  “Try Room Seven,” came the voice. Then the slippers shuffled away across the linoleum.

  Duplicity, thought Charlie, thy name is I don’t know what. Did I get this from Victor or have I always had it? But he didn’t have to articulate the answer; he’d been born with it.

  Charlie climbed the stairs to the second floor—rubber treads and a wobbly handrail. Room Seven was at the end of another yellow hall, looking out on whatever passed for a backyard. Charlie gave the door another jaunty knock and listened. There was no sound. He knocked again. Could he hear anything? He didn’t think so. A minute passed. There was a gap at the bottom of the door and Charlie got down on his knees to look. Although he could only see about two inches, it was enough to tell that a light was on. He got up and knocked again. “Dave?” Another minute passed.

  Charlie tried the doorknob. The door was locked but it rattled in a way that indicated the dead bolt hadn’t been set, while the lock on the knob was a simple button jobby. Charlie took a Visa card from his wallet and slid it through the crack. After fiddling for a moment, he pushed the door open. He stepped forward, then came to an abrupt stop and put out his hands to protect himself.

  Whether it was the blood he saw first or the python, he never knew for sure. Nor was he aware of the noise he made—a rasping groan as the ten-foot python slid toward him across Parlucci’s blood-splattered body so that the snake’s golden patches were wet with it; so it seemed not just the snake, but the blood itself was sliding toward him. As for Parlucci, his throat had been cut, the blade going so deep as to reach the bone. Worse, but not worse of course, only visually worse, his nose had been sliced from his face. Dressed in jeans and what had been a white T-shirt, he lay in his blood like a canoe in a narrow stream as the python shivered its way across Parlucci’s chest to the floor, till its tongue-flicking head was five feet from where Charlie stood and its tail was just sliding off the bed. Charlie leapt back and slammed the door. He drew out his cell phone, but it took a moment before he caught his breath. Then he double-clicked the send button to call the last person he’d spoken to.

  Lieutenant Hutchins picked up on the second ring. “What is it now, Bradshaw?”

  Charlie told him where he was. “You need to get over here. There’s a guy dead with his throat cut. And bring a snake handler.”

  —

  Hutchins had arrived in ten minutes, followed by two patrol cars. “Where’s the snake handler?” asked Charlie. But Hutchins hadn’t brought a snake handler. He had assumed Charlie was joking. As a result, when he opened the door to Parlucci’s room, the python slid swiftly into the hall.

  Later, when sufficient time had passed and Charlie’s own sense of horror had diminished, he was able to describe the scene to Janey with a certain levity.

  “Hutch had six cops with him. He yanked
open the door and the python must have been waiting on the other side. Do you know they can almost leap? Every one of those cops let out a bellow. And move? I’ve never seen cops move that fast, but it wasn’t to anyplace in particular. They jumped up or back or banged into the wall; two fell down. And right away ten feet of blood-smeared snake was in the middle of them. One cop drew his weapon and waved it around. He didn’t fire, but it kept everyone hopping. Hutch was shouting, ‘Put up your weapon, put up your weapon!’ Then the snake disappeared. It hadn’t been attacking them; it was just passing through. It got behind the wall somehow or into the attic. They still haven’t found it.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I told Hutch he should have brought the snake handler.”

  But on that particular evening, the awfulness had filled Charlie’s mind as he stood in the hall with Hutchins, staring through the doorway at Parlucci’s corpse. His red hair seemed part of the blood and his eyes were slightly open. “Too close together,” Victor had said. “Lobster eyes.” Hutchins shouted into his phone. “I need backup. We got to close down the area!”

  Time went by. Charlie sat down on the stairs to the third floor as police came and went. Crime scene guys from the sheriff’s department set up lights, took pictures, snooped around, put little bits in plastic bags, dusted for prints. The narrow hall was jammed with men coming and going. People in the building began to be questioned. Cops searched the rooms for the snake, and stamped or plodded through the attic, upsetting boxes. Other men looked for the snake outside. Yellow tape appeared everyplace. More time passed. Every so often Charlie was asked rather gruffly what he was doing sitting on the stairs.

  “Lieutenant Hutchins planted me here,” he said, which was true enough. Hutch had warned him not to move an inch from that spot. But now the rubber treads were digging into his butt, his stomach was growling and his legs were stiff. He called Janey to say where he was and briefly told her what had happened. It wasn’t until Parlucci’s body was removed that Charlie was taken back to police headquarters. By then it was past ten o’clock.