The Concrete River

by John Shannon

  Jack Liffey turned to Bobby O'Connor, whose face was hardening up again. “Where's your hat, Snakeskin?”

  “None of your beeswax.”

  “If that'd been the question, you'd've just flunked, wouldn't you?”

  Jack Liffey was astonished that he was carrying it off. Something inside him was running on freewheeling.

  “Here's your Groucho question, Snakeskin. Boston and Philadelphia—if they can be in two places at once, how come you can't be in two places at once?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Jack Liffey uttered a honk. “Wrong. You should never have messed with me, or the woman.” For some reason he wouldn't use her name in their presence, it would have been like sullying her. “You could have done your job without messing with us.”

  The Cowboy's good eye was getting skittish. “Hey, man, I never got a clean shot here.”

  “Sure you do,” Jack Liffey said, even noticing the pun, and he shot the Cowboy three times. The first was in the head and messy, causing a blood-curdling shriek that rang up through the flat hard planes of the room. The next shot may have been in the head, too, because it cut off the noise. The third probably missed entirely as he was collapsing like a sack.

  Al Butera had backed away to the wall. He was looking longingly at his shoulder holster.

  “Don't think about anything but me and staying alive,” Jack Liffey said. He found he was breathing far too fast and he tried to slow himself down. Light swam through the room, and a moment of dizziness came and went.

  “Jesus, you just shot him down like a dog. Jesus.”

  “I chose you because I think you're smart enough to bring this off, but not so smart you feel you have to outwit me. Here.”

  Jack Liffey lobbed the Dreyse at Al Butera and the man, startled, caught it in both hands. He fumbled it around and found out right away it was empty. By that time, Jack Liffey had his .45 out.

  “You see what I mean. Now you've got your prints all over it. You got a family, kids? Put the pistol on the table. Do it now.”

  “I got no family no more.” He leaned in to set the pistol down gingerly, his eyes radaring around to get a glimpse of the Cowboy on the far side. “Jesus.”

  “I'm gonna cut you loose.” Jack Liffey fought a drowsiness that threatened to knock him right off his feet. “Just give me your full attention. Forget your pal, forget your gun, forget what you want. This is a mess, but together we're gonna get over. Where you from?”

  “Huh?”

  Jack Liffey picked up the Dreyse with his baggie and slipped it into his pocket. “Where were you born?”

  “Vegas.”

  “I didn't think anybody was born there. I thought Vegas was a place people went.”

  “My dad was in security.”

  “You mean skimming.”

  “I don't know nothing about that.”

  “I think maybe I saved the right guy. Now, listen up. You're gonna go back to the guy you work for and convince him I'm out of it. I don't care how you do it. You can say you had some trouble with a guy but he's sleeping in the river. Whatever. I'm out of it, my friends are out of it. We'll never hear from each other again.”

  Al Butera just stared back heavily, squinching his eyes regularly.

  “Because if anything happens to me or my friends, anything at all, this gun is going to the police with a big tag on it saying, I belong to Al Squinty Butera of Las Vegas. And your prints are all over it.”

  “Man, this is tough.”

  “It's a lot better odds than you gave me.”

  He scowled down at his hands. “I don't know what to tell them.”

  “You've got a better sense of the big picture than me. You know who's in charge, you know what it's all about. Believe it or not, I haven't got a clue and I don't want to know. Your pals can't help you out of this one because your pals don't know where this gun is going to be. This is between you and me, not you and me and Vegas. You're on your own. You know, that's what America's all about, Squinty. Rugged individualism.”

  Jack Liffey was getting tired of sounding like he was on top of things. It took a lot of effort and he was getting sleepier and sleepier.

  “Don't make me think I'd be better off canceling your ticket, too. It's still a possibility.”

  Al Butera raised both palms. “I'll think of something.”

  “Good. Now you can walk out into the middle of the field there. You come back when I'm gone and do whatever you feel you have to. You can even dump your pal down the same hole where you put me for all I care. He'll turn up one way or another. Beat it now.”

  Al Butera didn't even look back. He waddled heavily down the two steps and then walked out into the desolate mudflat.

  “Count two hundred steps,” Jack Liffey called. “Then you can stop.”

  He looked over the office quickly but there was nothing of him there. Around the corner of the desk, he saw a motionless gray hand, cupped toward the ceiling. There was a dark pool that looked like chocolate pudding gelling up. Okay, Bobby O'Connor, he thought. You're the guy who killed Consuela Beltran, and God knows who else. The courts do not have a monopoly of justice.

  For some reason he felt a wrenching nausea, as if he'd just betrayed someone he loved. Outside, Al Butera was a tiny figure in the wastes, still walking, and Jack Liffey headed for his car.

  EIGHTEEN

  A Loose End

  A rolling mop cart was on the landing outside his office, where it shouldn't have been, and it gave him a chill. He stared at it from down below for a while and then hobbled up the steps anyway. By all rights, he'd used up his share of surprises.

  From the dairy, he'd gone straight to the big mail terminal at Florence and Central, where the Goodyear plant had once stood, and mailed the Dreyse to Art Castro's private box. He'd run the car through a car wash on general principles—it was good to get anything at all clean—and then he'd parked on the far edge of a supermarket lot and slept fitfully for fifteen minutes. Now he felt just as bad, but he wasn't as sleepy. The three bullets had kicked something loose in his psyche. In fact he felt so bad it gave him a curious sense of invulnerability—the feeling that he was so far gone now he didn't give a damn. It was a dangerous way to be, but he didn't know what to do about it.

  “You shouldn't be doing this, Marlena.”

  “Somebody got to give a hand.”

  She'd transported the litter of papers from the floor into irregular piles on the desk and credenza, and she was mopping down the scarred green linoleum.

  He felt a wave of affection toward the large rump in the tight black skirt that was bent over in front of him, but he refrained from patting it as he went past.

  “I didn't try to put nothing away, just get it up.”

  “Thanks. This is above and beyond the call.”

  “You ever find out what happened to that woman?”

  For just an instant he wondered whether someone had set her to asking. This is what it meant to cross the line, he thought: there was no longer any trust, no longer peace. He took off the shoulder holster, then he hunted around and found the Oxford Companion to English Literature and put the .45 inside.

  “I think it had to do with gambling and guys with Italian names. I'll never be able to touch them.”

  “They did this mess, too?”

  “Probably.”

  “And your ankles?”

  It took him only an instant. “Nah. That was clumsiness. I've always had weak ankles.” Don't beat it to death, he thought. Just let it lie. He figured he ought to get a rag off the mop cart and make a show of helping, so he hobbled to the door.

  “You're not going to do nothing?”

  “I can't fight Al Capone.”

  From the landing he saw the car pull up below. It was one of the Cahuenga cop cars with the beige stripe, the designer police straight out of the barrio.

  Even foreshortened down there he recognized Zuniga and Millan as they got out. Lt. Zuniga looked up and saw him. The big cop raised a hand
overhead and made a little arcing stab motion that seemed to be telling him to stay put.

  “Marlena, I think I've got guests.”

  She planted the string mop in the pail and looked over the railing.

  “They're cops,” he said.

  “Catch me later, querido. I gotta sort the mail.” She kissed his cheek and her voice got husky. “I wanna rub a part of you against Brown Betty.”

  That gave him a little charge, but he didn't have time to think about it. Lt. Zuniga came up first, eyeing Marlena suspiciously as he passed. Sgt. Millan was puffing badly after only the first flight, halted on the landing with his face going florid.

  They went in and Lt. Zuniga didn't seem surprised.

  “Things are bit messy just now,” Jack Liffey said. He thought of asking why they had left their jurisdiction, but they would tell him, or they wouldn't.

  “I hear a couple guys from Vegas did this.” Zuniga prowled around, poking at the piles of papers and folders. “It's a definite rumor,” he added. “You've come to be a real rock in our shoe on this Beltran matter.”

  The brown eyes rested on him thoughtfully. Sgt. Millan came in at last and sat in the stiff chair, trying to catch his breath. Jack Liffey wondered if Cahuenga P.D. required a physical for requalifying. Millan would never make it.

  “You got those uh-oh eyes,” Zuniga said.

  “It's just my normal sense of remorse at life.”

  “I hear you shot up their car pretty good. It's amazing how much of this stuff is just plain dis getting out of hand. They come in and disrespect you and you got to go over and dis them back. Life is getting to be like the McCoys and the Whatevers.”

  “Don't tell me you're gonna bust me for assassinating a couple of radial tires?”

  Lt. Zuniga shrugged. “Nobody ever signed a complaint. A secretary at a mortgage broker gave a pretty good description of you, though.”

  “I did it, sure. It was a .38 I took off one of the kids, and I just blew my cool. Afterward I threw it in the river. You're right, those guys got in my face, and then I had to get in theirs. It was stupid, but luckily that was the end of it. It's their turn to come after me, and they haven't.”

  Lt. Zuniga just stared. Sgt. Millan finally caught his breath and came up straight in the chair. “What a line of shit. We know you were at the dairy. And we know you're the one that capped that cowboy asshole.”

  “What?”

  “Nice try, not bad,” Millan said. “Surprise is a little more open mouth, though, more eyebrows, loosen up your hands. You been watchin’ too much Clint Eastwood, with all that underplay.” Millan sat back and cocked his head. “You ever see the one, he takes over a whole fuckin’ Montana town, jumps their women, makes ‘em come across with new clothes, then makes ‘em paint the whole place red, the whole town? Never cracks a smile. That's what I call chutzpah.”

  “High Plains Drifter,” Jack Liffey said. He wasn't sure Millan would pass the IQ test on the re-up, either.

  “Sure, whatever.” Sgt. Millan seemed to catch a look from his partner and wound down.

  “We know the Cowboy was a scumbag,” Lt. Zuniga said. “Probably killed Mrs. Beltran, probably would of got away with it. And that dope-dealer's Beemer deserves whatever wrecking it gets, no trouble there. What hurts us is the way you made so much disarray. Christ on a crutch, how you had the stomach for it. The human body is the temple of the spirit, you know. Looks like you cut the Cowboy's head open with a pair of pinking shears.”

  “What?” Jack Liffey felt a chill.

  “That was better,” Sgt. Millan put in, then subsided when the lieutenant glared at him.

  “What'd you think, we're too stupid to get you if you cut him open and retrieve your bullets? That just disses us, you know? We got the best case-clear record on major crimes in the east county. Besides you forgot the slug in the two-by-four in the wall, hardly hit him. Must have gone right through the fleshy part of the neck. Marks on it are real clear.”

  Jack Liffey said nothing. Had Butera actually dug the spent bullets out of his partner's head? It was a gruesome angle he hadn't figured at all.

  “You're under arrest for murder, Mr. Liffey.”

  His mind ran a mile a minute while they were explaining his rights and handcuffing him and poking around the office. He hadn't been so clever after all.

  “My piece is in that big blue book,” he said. “You'll want to check that. And the overalls with all the blood on them are in my car.”

  A hand closed on his upper arm, harder than necessary. “Don't be a wise guy. It's not worth it. We want permission to look around your house.”

  “Only if you'll cut me loose right away if you don't find anything.”

  “I guess we get a warrant.”

  *

  There was no comfortable way to sit in the car with his hands cuffed behind him. He pulled his wrists off center and watched neutrally out the window.

  “El-tee, you see that episode of Cops last night?” Sgt. Millan asked. Lt. Zuniga was driving. “The one they stop the guy and he stands there, grabs his Johnson like some colored rapper and gets in their face. They bleep a whole fifteen seconds of his mouth. Somewhere in Kansas, I think.”

  “Nah. I don't watch it any more.”

  They came to a stop behind a clot of cars filling a residential street. Lt. Zuniga honked once. Something was going on in front of a house.

  “There's like this cutaway. Another car arrives or something and when they're back, the guy's gone through a whole attitude adjustment, he's real pleasant to everybody, only he's got blood on his lip.” He laughed. “Man, I'd like to see the stuff they cut out.”

  “You got to know they edit the shit out of it.”

  “Yeah, the people hit the cops, but the cops never hit the people.”

  Lt. Zuniga honked harder and craned his neck. Finally the oncoming lane cleared so he could pull around. Then he slammed on the brakes. Between stopped cars, Jack Liffey could see a Jeep Cherokee with its doors open up on the lawn, a big guy with a hacksaw engaged in cutting the station wagon in two. He was already through the roof and making headway on the rocker panel under the rear door. The hacksaw made a terrible noise.

  “What the hell…?”

  Lt. Zuniga got out and called to the hacksaw man. “Hey, partner, you got the paper on that car?”

  The guy looked up, his eyes inflamed. “Who the fuck wants to know?”

  “Police,” Lt. Zuniga said mildly.

  “I paid cash this useless sonabitch, cash up front, and three times it stops in the fuckin’ middle of the freeway, jams up the brakes, turns on all the alarms and horns and leaves me there with my thumb up my ass and people pointing at me, and the dealership won't do nothing, say they can't find nothing wrong—”

  “Go right ahead, sir. It's your property. The rest of you move out!”

  He climbed back in the car.

  “Out of our jurisdiction anyway.”

  The hacksaw noise started in again. Zuniga gave a little squirt of his siren as he drove past, but nobody seemed to be clearing away.

  At last Jack Liffey's mind settled enough to look at his situation calmly. He was lucky they'd found the third bullet. Nothing had changed, really. All he had to do was make sure Al Butera knew the cops had it, and that he still wasn't off the hook, despite all his unpleasant surgery.

  “You think the world's getting worse?” Sgt. Millan said. “Stuff like that, I dunno. Everybody's angry, everybody's got a grievance they can't put their finger on. I mean, hell, I got a house and two cars and a boat and I feel that way. It's like some disease of anger settled over us, coast to coast.”

  He looked around at Jack Liffey, as if just remembering he was there. “Citizen like this, looks calm on the surface but he's a mass of raw nerves. Ain't you?”

  “You guys get your hair cut by the Marines down in Pendleton?”

  Sgt. Millan glared, then laughed suddenly. “See what I mean? It's off the high side.”

  For
a moment Jack Liffey wondered if Millan was right. It seemed a sure bet that the world was in decline, but maybe the sense of decay was just an illusion, no different from all those fine hopes of the 1950s that things were getting better and better all the time, just motoring smoothly up the on-ramp of History. Some things got better and some got worse and it was a kind of megalomania to think there was an overall pattern. All you had was your way of judging each thing. You couldn't let go of that.

  They interrogated him for hours in a barren little room and he stuck to the story he and Eleanor had come up with. She'd fallen into the channel one night, and he had hurt himself dragging her out. Beyond that, he'd never been to the dairy and he hadn't seen the cowboy and his pal after shooting up their car. It wasn't too hard as long as he resisted the urge to embellish or give them a little lip. Curiously, things had become disconnected in his head and made it all easier. He had come to feel that the core of the crime was digging the bullets out of the cowboy's head, and since he hadn't done that, he could work up a little indignation at his innocence.

  They insisted on driving him across town and making him walk through the dairy, apparently working on some theory from Police Science 101 about criminals confessing when they had to confront the scene of their crime. Then he was forced to watch as they turned his apartment upside down. There was nothing illegal there, but he hated watching them put their hands on everything. They turned the sofa upside down and prodded into it with what looked like knitting needles. They popped open the air conditioner that he'd never used. Took the grill off the bathroom vent fan. Unrolled all his socks and fondled his underwear. It felt like a massive violation.

  Everything was left in a mess, and finally they threatened him again, half-heartedly, and drove off. He'd never actually been booked. It had all been a con to scare him.

  It didn't even make him angry, his thoughts were so dulled and ponderous. Passion had gone out of him. Would it leak back in through Eleanor? That's probably what she meant to him, a kind of access to whatever it was he had lost somewhere. He longed to see her.