Lush Life: An Artie Deemer Mystery

by Dallas Murphy

  “The day after Trammell disappeared. Look, I’ll make a deal with you. I don’t care about the money either. You leave my uncle alone, and in return, I’ll find him and ask him about the money and anything else you want asked. Then I’ll tell you. But you have to leave him alone. What say?”

  Norm fast-forwarded, thinking. “Okay, Crystal, you’ve got yourself a deal. We still have to watch all these Mayhews. The thing could be right here.”

  By dark, I’d had it. “The Mayhews,” episode after episode flashing by on fast forward, were making me crazy. I began to feel like a child again; nameless boyhood anxieties turned the room dark and dreary. It was time to stop with the rum fizzles.

  Crystal had gone to bed hours ago. I went in to make sure she was breathing normally. I kissed her. “I hope Trammell’s alive so I can kill him,” she muttered before she turned over and went back to sleep.

  Trammell as a rock-and-roll drummer. Trammell as a child fashion model. Trammell as an actor. Trammell as a rocket scientist. Trammell as a country and western singer. Calabash was asleep at the dining-room table. Every now and then he twitched. “Come on, son, we’ll get that engine going yet.”

  There were four episodes on each tape. When one finished, Norm would stick in another, but the unseen pile seemed never to diminish.

  I took Jellyroll to the park.

  Norm ordered Chinese food, but the Mayhews had killed my appetite.

  At some point in the evening, Norm, watching Trammell, a young businessman selling lemonade in the Valley, try to wipe out his competition, said, “You wouldn’t have any idea where Trammell would go if he had to disappear, would you?”

  “No.”

  “No special place he had?”

  “We didn’t have that kind of relationship.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “The day before he—you know. I saw him at the poolroom. He came to rent Uncle Billy’s boat. We spoke two sentences apiece. Before that, I hadn’t seen him for twenty years.”

  “Want any more moo shu?”

  “No.”

  “Mind if I—?”

  “Go right ahead.”

  Long after Norm had eaten the moo shu pork, the phone rang. I took the phone into the bathroom so as not to wake Crystal. A couple of candles still burned.

  “Hey, babe, Chet Bream here. Innocent bystanders, you told me. Nothing to do with it, you told me. Now here you are hanging out with Norman Armbrister?”

  “This isn’t a good time, Chet. You promised you’d leave—”

  “Yeah, but that was before I knew you were pals with Norman Armbrister. He’s after the tape, isn’t he? Lemme come up and talk to him—”

  “No! Don’t you dare! Look, I’ll talk to him, see if he wants to meet you. If you barge in, he just might kill you.”

  “You got a point there.”

  “I’ll talk to him and meet you at the poolroom tomorrow. How’s that?”

  “Okay, when?”

  “About noon.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just tell me this. Is he after the tape?”

  “Yes.”

  “I knew it! I knew that tape would shake the shit out of the trees!” He was giggling as he hung up. He was probably slathering on ChapStick.

  EIGHTEEN

  JELLYROLL WOKE ME next morning with a wet nose in the eye.

  “Hi, pal.”

  I scratched Jellyroll’s neck while I propped myself up against the headboard and watched Crystal sleep. I was filled with love-song sentiments. Birds seemed to sing. She slept on her back, her left arm up over her head, her right folded across her stomach. I had read somewhere that people who sleep on their backs tend to be open and emotionally available. I sighed with pleasure at the sight of her sleeping. She caught me watching. Her eyes were clear.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi. Do you feel better?”

  She stretched as if to find out. “Yes, I do. I guess Crazy was right. It wore off. But I feel like I just walked away from an airplane crash. What were you doing?” she asked coyly, pulling the covers up over her nose.

  “When?”

  “Just now.”

  “Watching you sleep.”

  “Why?…Because you love me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m glad.”

  I slid under the covers with her. But we hadn’t walked away from the crash yet. We were still strapped into our seats, yet I moaned with abandon when she touched me.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Think we can make ourselves some kind of reservation?” Crystal asked.

  “That’ll be Calabash. At least I hope it’s Calabsah.” He had spent the night in Jerry’s apartment…What if it wasn’t Calabash? After Norm had left at dawn with his library of Mayhew tapes, before Calabash went to sleep upstairs he left me a gun, a black and nasty automatic. He had shown me how to cock the thing by pulling back the slide mechanism—I had seen idiots on-screen do it numerous times—and he said, “Start low, aim at de guy’s knees and jus’ keep shootin’. De recoil’ll bring de bullets right on up de body.” I pulled on a pair of khaki shorts and a white T-shirt, picked up my gun, and went to the door with it. Calabash. He asked how Crystal was doing while he petted Jellyroll hello.

  “De police came wid a warrant for dat Jerry fellow. I didn’t answer de door. Is it jus’ me or is dere an unusual amount of crooks in dis town?”

  I made him scrambled eggs and coffee.

  “I been dreamin’ about dem fooking Mayhews all night.”

  I felt warmly indebted to this enormous man and told him so.

  “You don’ need to keep thankin’ me. I kinda enjoyed it. Besides, you did some nice t’ings for de kids on Poor Joe.”

  “That wasn’t me, that was Jellyroll.” Last summer, he built them a preschool with playgrounds and an aquarium. I made double-strong coffee, the way Calabash likes it. Jellyroll kicked his empty bowl. I decided to try him on the New & Improved formula.

  “Artie, dot spook said a t’ing troublin’ to me. He said dot de crooks put all de stolen money in Bahamian banks. My uncle Fergus, remember him?”

  “Sure.” Poor Joe Cay lay a hundred and fifty watery miles from the government in Nassau. Places as remote as Poor Joe, Calabash had told me, cannot expect much hands-on help from Nassau. Those places tend to form unofficial governments run by the wisest, the best, and the brightest on the island. Uncle Fergus ran Poor Joe Cay.

  “Uncle Fergus don’t like our banks taking de white man’s crooked money. He t’inks it corrupts us all, even while de common people don’t get shit outta de deals.”

  I remembered Uncle Fergus. He was about five feet tall, but he had wild eyes that made him seem bigger even than his nephew. “What do you want to do, Calabash?”

  “I gonna look into dat money.”

  “Will you stay around for a few days?”

  “Sure. Dis ain’t over.”

  “No.”

  The phone rang.

  “Artie? Is it really you?” It was Shelly, Jellyroll’s agent. “What, you don’t return messages anymore? Does he have a new agent behind my back? Am I Shelly non grata?”

  “No, Shelly, I—”

  “The R-r-ruff idiots are semifrantic. They’ve been trying to get you for days!”

  “I’ve been busy, Shelly, I—”

  “Wait! I’ve heard that before, that ‘busy.’ Is it a woman? I had to tell them JR was under the weather, you took him to the vet. He probably had a little stomach thing, that’s why he didn’t eat the food, I told them.”

  I glanced at Jellyroll’s bowl. It was empty! “He ate it, Shelly.”

  “What? The new R-r-ruff? Really? Terrific. I’ll tell that fool Fleckton. You got a shoot today, remember?”

  “Tell him I can’t make it today.”

  “Did you just say you can’t make it today?”

  “Tell them Jellyroll still has a little stomach thing. Tomorrow, he’ll be fine to
morrow.”

  “Artie—”

  “Tell Fleckton he’s eating it, and we’ll be there tomorrow.”

  “How about this evening? Could he do it this evening?”

  “Okay.”

  “Artie, I say this for your own good: you’re getting to be an eccentric hermit.”

  “Thanks, Shelly.”

  “For your own good, Artie. Okay, gotta scoot. Love to JR.”

  Crystal came out of the bedroom. She was wearing my clothes. Calabash stood up. “Good morning, Calabash.”

  As I poured her coffee, I placed a note on the table between them that said, “Bugs!?”

  They both nodded. This was no way to live.

  “Is Calabash your real name or a nickname?” Crystal asked.

  “A nickname.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  “Oswald.”

  “Oswald?” I said. “You never told me that.”

  “I don’ go tellin’ dat to everybody.”

  “So I’ll start callin’ you Ozzie.”

  “You can, but den I snap your leg bones off.” He wasn’t smiling.

  The phone rang:

  “He’s eating it? Is he really eating it!” Hysteria nibbled at the edges of Mr. Fleckton’s voice.

  “Yes, he just ate it.”

  “Oh, merciful Father! Thank you! And you, too, Artie, thank you, thank you! You don’t know what this means to me. The assassins were on my tail! See you this evening at six?”

  “Okay.”

  “Thank you, thank you—” He hung up.

  Then the phone rang again.

  “Hello, Artie.”

  “Hello, Jennifer. Did you learn something?”

  “Yeah, but I need you to tell me the truth before I go into it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you have financial or other interest in Concom or any of its affiliates?”

  “Absolutely not!”

  “Good.”

  “Why?”

  “I spoke to a guy I know who used to work in the DA’s office back when the RICO law was first being used to go after organized crime. Remember?”

  “Sort of.”

  “My friend was involved in the Sammy ‘The Neck’ Randolucci prosecution. The cement case.”

  I remembered. Apparently the hoods had a piece of every pound of cement that got poured in this town, and during the eighties a lot of it got poured. You had to hand it to the hoods—they always picked the fundamental urban stuff to corrupt: cement, garbage, and, most recently, windows.

  “Well, my ADA friend said that Concom kept coming up in the investigation. He wasn’t free to go into much detail, but he implied things. He implied that Concom—there’s about a dozen permutations of the company—he implied that Concom had illegally acquired a string of banks and savings and loans here and abroad. One of the banks was laundering money in Miami for the wiseguys. Once the trail had led to this bank, every time they turned around there was another Concom subsidiary. He said it took his office four years before they even got to the name Concom, it was so deeply buried. While he was working on the RICO case, somebody else was working on a bunch of illegal arms purchases by Middle East countries, and this guy would ask my friend if he’d heard of such-and-such companies. They were all connected to Concom. Then the same thing’d happen with somebody else who was following the paper trail to big-time drug laundries. There’d be another Concom company.”

  “Did they ever bust Concom? It sounds like they had a strong case.”

  “Yeah, you’d think so. My friend thought so. But then his informant in the Randolucci case disappeared right out of the Federal Witness Protection Program. And then they found Randolucci’s bullet-riddled body in the Meadowlands. And here’s the punch line. My friend goes to his boss and says, ‘Look, at the bottom of all these unrelated cases, there’s Concom International Securities.’ Three days later both my friend and his boss were transferred off the case and out of the state.”

  “By whom?”

  “Good question. Somebody with bigger clout than the district attorney. Much bigger. My friend was pretty disillusioned. He was also a little scared. He thought people were following him for a while after he was transferred. You can’t repeat any of this. Okay?”

  “Sure. I promise.

  “So, who’s your friend?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Your friend. You said your friend had gotten into SEC trouble, and Concom had come up.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Is your friend a woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “You tell her to be careful.”

  “Thank you, Jennifer.”

  “Ah, Artie, you mentioned money when we talked—”

  “Sure. How can I help?”

  “Think Jellyroll could loan me a thousand dollars until things loosen up some? I hate to ask.”

  “He’d be happy to.”

  “You know I’m good for it.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “Just until I get a job.”

  “Sure, I’ll send a check right away. Jennifer, did any names come up for Concom? I mean, like owners.”

  “I asked, but my friend didn’t want to talk about that. I miss you, you know?”

  “Me too.”

  “So who’s Jennifer?” Crystal wanted to know after I hung up.

  I wrote another note: “Let’s go in the bedroom and talk.”

  While we fumbled with Crystal’s steering wheel, a Hispanic transvestite with hairy hands was ranting about Iranians. At least it sounded like Iranians. I was wondering if Norm had bugged Crystal’s car.

  “It’s loose,” Crystal pronounced when we were done affixing the wheel.

  We went back at it, got it right this time.

  Off to Sheepshead Bay—Crystal driving, Calabash riding shotgun with his knees under his chin, Jellyroll and me in the back—I wondered who was following us now. Billy didn’t answer his phone; maybe he was still off fishing, maybe not. The purpose of this trip was more emotional than practical. Crystal felt she had to do something concrete—like make sure he wasn’t dead in his apartment. Also, she needed clothes. I began to fantasize, heading down the West Side Highway, that we’d find Uncle Billy hacked to pieces. Or maybe Trammell. My imagination flew from one gory corpse to the next. Almost everybody I ever met was dead in that apartment, stacked up like Lincoln Logs. A lovely day in the neighborhood.

  Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, I noticed that Calabash and Crystal were also tense and silent. Crystal’s eyes kept darting from the road to her rearview mirror. These fuckers were pros. We could have a line of spooks back there the size of the Godfather’s funeral procession and never know it.

  “Why don’ you let me out near de place while you go around de block, like we don’ know each other. Den I can watch your back when you go in.”

  “Uh, actually, Calabash, you’d be pretty conspicuous in my neighborhood. It’s not like Manhattan.”

  “No?”

  “We’d better go in together.”

  Unlike at the Upscale Poolroom, where gamblers would still be going strong from last night, the Golden Hours was nearly empty. Players at the three active tables stopped and waved to Crystal. She greeted them by name, trying to seem friendly, normal. No corpses yet.

  A young woman with a long ponytail was sitting behind the desk. “Hi, Crystal, I haven’t seen you for ages.”

  “Hello, Sally, how are you?”

  “Pregnant.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Again.”

  “You’re pretty fertile, Sally.”

  Crystal introduced Calabash and me to Sally.

  “Say, have you seen Uncle Billy?” Sally asked. “The Coke guy was in yesterday. He says he won’t deliver no more till he gets paid. Also, there’s other bills.” She took a stack of business envelopes from behind the desk and handed them to Crystal.

  Her brow furrowed as she thumbed through them. “Look at the postmarks on
these,” she said to Calabash and me. “Some of them are two weeks old.”

  “Pardon me,” said Sally, “but isn’t that the R-r-ruff Dog?”

  Jellyroll was sitting staring up into Sally’s face.

  “Yeah, that’s him,” said Crystal.

  Sally clutched her face and squealed. “I love the R-r-ruff Dog! I heard he was here—can I pet him!”

  “Go see,” I said to Jellyroll. He and Sally smooched as we looked at postmarks. He followed us up the stairs while Sally tried to call him back.

  There were two doors at the top of the landing. Crystal went right and knocked on that one. “Uncle Billy—” No answer.

  “Is that your place?” I asked about the other door.

  “Yeah. You’ve never been there, have you? Uncle Billy—?” She put her ear to the door. Silence. She led us to the other door and unlocked it. The three of us gasped at the sight, and our gasps brought Jellyroll, sauntering in, to an abrupt halt.

  Crystal’s apartment was a cramped studio with a tiny alcove kitchen. I had wondered on occasion how Crystal lived when she was alone, but even as I looked, I still couldn’t tell, because her place was completely wrecked. Devastated. Wasted. Crystal began to whimper in the doorway.

  Calabash gently moved her aside by the shoulder as he pulled a gun and went in. Adrenaline surged as I watched Calabash look left, right, then go into the bathroom gun first. He came back out. We were alone with the wreckage. We stood silently staring at it.

  Drawers had been yanked from the dresser, their contents hurled around. The splintered remains of one drawer lay at the foot of the opposite wall, against which it had been smashed. Likewise, kitchen cabinets had been emptied, the contents broken. Shards of glass and utensils covered the black-and-white linoleum floor. The cushions from the convertible couch had been sliced open and disemboweled, tuft s of stuffing strewn about. The bed had been pulled out, its mattress gutted. Crystal’s clothes covered the wreckage as if blown there by a horrific wind. She began to cry softly. I put my arm around her shoulders.

  Calabash, thinking, pulled the door closed and bolted it.

  I tried to think, too. What kind of way was this to search for something? If I were searching someone’s apartment for a thing—a thing like Barraclough’s bankbook, say—I wouldn’t sling stuff around like this. I’d conduct an orderly search, area by area, take things out, put them back. The object I was searching for might otherwise get covered in the rubble of my own destruction…That was thinking…But maybe this wasn’t a search.