Fiddle Game

by Richard A. Thompson

  “Then do it not exactly. Use a go-between. You want me to do it for you? While I’m at it, I’ll accuse him of rape. You’re staring, by the way.”

  “You don’t have any evidence. And of course I’m staring. Don’t you want me to?”

  “Sure I do. I have plenty of evidence of sex. Beat me up some, and then I’ll have a rape case, too.”

  “I wouldn’t do that, Rosie.”

  “You’re not supposed to enjoy it.”

  “Staring?”

  “No, beating me up. It’s okay to enjoy staring.”

  “You’re crazy, you know that?” I gave her a very brotherly kiss on the end of her nose.

  “That’s me, all right.”

  “What happened to admiring good sense?”

  “I admire that in you, not in me. Any time I completely quit being crazy, I feel dead.”

  “You definitely don’t look dead.”

  “Well, I was. Very dead. People like you can be sane and logical and practical without being dead, but I’m not wired that way. That’s why we’re a natural pair.”

  “Oh, now we’re a natural pair, no less. Where are you going with that?”

  “Not where you think. Tell me why you can’t rat out this cop, directly or indirectly.”

  “Because I can’t have people looking into my business too deeply.”

  “Too many connections?”

  “Too much history.”

  “That damn stuff.” She tried to throw the empty bottle out the window, but it bounced off the junker next to us and came back. It bounced around the steering wheel for a while, until she caught it by the neck. “We all get that, don’t we? But I thought a bail bondsman had to have a clean record.”

  “They do. And I do. But if you look back enough years, you’ll come to a blank page. I can’t have people trying to fill that page. Sooner or later they’ll find an open arrest warrant. It doesn’t have my name on it, but the file attached to it has my prints. That’s why I can’t ever go back to Detroit.”

  “Maybe the statute of limitations has run out.”

  “There is no statute of limitations on murder.”

  “Wow.” She threw the bottle again, this time reaching an arm out the window to toss it backwards over the roof. It landed someplace behind us with a hollow “plonk” sound and stayed put. “You’re wanted for a lot of murders, for such a sensible type. Some people would say you hang with the wrong crowd.”

  “Be careful whom you malign.”

  She laughed. I was starting to like that laugh. “Got me,” she said. “I want you to know, though, that you were wrong about the abortion.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Back at the café, you said I went away to Chicago for an abortion.”

  I had forgotten it almost as soon as I said it. It’s a common enough reason for a young girl to go running off to the big city, especially if she’s not otherwise stupid.

  “It was a guess, that’s all. But I didn’t attach any…”

  “You were wrong.” The laugh and the smile were gone now, and she stared intently into my eyes.

  “Okay,” I said

  “Don’t humor me, Herman. I’m serious.”

  “I said, ‘okay.’” I didn’t back away from the stare.

  She turned away first, and in the glow from the yard lights, I thought her cheek looked wet. “Tell me about the Gypsies,” she said.

  It seemed like a good idea to change the subject, so I told her the salient points, and I hardly lied about any of them. By the time I had finished, it was after four.

  “You need to see my friendly bartender,” she said.

  “This time of night?”

  “Trust me.”

  I did. We put our clothes on, put the car back together, and headed into the city.

  ***

  Someplace south of the Loop, we parked at the curb on a narrow street where you wouldn’t want to walk after dark alone and unarmed. Maybe not in the daylight, either. Rosie confirmed that impression by putting a nine-millimeter in her purse before we got out of the car, and I took the hint and pocketed my new three-eighty. We locked the car and headed out, and I felt like John Paul Jones, telling the Congress, “Give me a fast ship, for I intend to take her in harm’s way.” So of course, they gave him an under-gunned, worn out tub that steered like a lumber barge with the anchor dragging. He made history with it. I wasn’t feeling that lucky.

  “The street looks deserted,” I said. “Are you sure this is going to work?”

  “They shut off the lights and pretend they’re closed at two,” she said, “but the show goes on all day and all night. After hours, you just have to go in the back way and don’t act like a cop or a social worker. It’s actually the safest time. No rough crowds, just hardcore drunken oglers and the occasional pimp who’s trying to recruit.”

  “Sounds wonderful.”

  “Nothing around here is wonderful. But if my Gypsy friend still works here, this would be his usual shift.”

  With the neon signs off, the street barely had enough light to navigate by. Marquees with names like The Bronze Beaver, Sex City, and Hooter Heaven were all totally dark, as were the smaller banner-panels with their understated headlines like, “Real, Nude, Naked, Live Girls, On Stage!!!” That about covered all the possibilities, I guessed. A few glassed-in stage pictures on the walls were still lit, like windows in the night. The photos looked ancient and yellowed, the girls in them, underaged and prematurely tough. They had names like Crystal Bryte, Ginger Snatch, and Betty Boobs. We walked past the front of a place called the New Lost City and turned into a narrow alley, by a picture of a blonde. It was a three-quarter rear shot, fully nude, with the poser looking over her shoulder at the camera. She had a splayed handprint painted on her ass in red. The name scrolled across the photo was “Third Hand Rose.” I started to do a double take, but Rosie pulled me away, saying, “You’ll never know.”

  Halfway down the alley, there was a door with a single lightbulb above it and a sign that said SERVICE. I bet.

  “What now? Do we peek in a little door and say, ‘Joe sent me’?”

  “Nothing that fancy. We just walk in, and if we look like trouble, somebody throws us out again. If not, they collect a cover charge. Funny you should say that, though. Joe is the guy we’re going to see.”

  The door was one of those metal-clad bombproof jobs that weighed about half a ton, but it swung away easily enough. We went into a blue-lit corridor, passed some restrooms and empty booze cases, and emerged into a large club room. If it had a decor, it was too dark to tell. Dark enough for the patrons to play with themselves or each other, I guessed, while somebody like Crystal Bryte did her best to inspire them. Mostly, what it had was space. It had a long, glossy bar on one wall that was lit, and a large stage with a runway and a couple of brass fire poles that were bathed in hot red and orange floods.

  Some kind of grinding R&B tune was blaring on the PA system, while a young woman on the runway was doing some grinding of her own, getting a lot of mileage out of her ample hips. She was peeling off pieces of wispy costume and tossing them to three middle-aged business types at a front table. Even in the colored light, she looked ghostly pale, and I decided she used a lot of white body powder, accented by very dark eye makeup and lipstick, for a sort of vampire look. Her customers looked more like real vampires. Not pale, but definitely hungry, though a few of them looked barely conscious. Now and then, she would do a gyrating squat by a ringside table, and some of them would get up and stuff money into her g-string.

  “She’s running out of places to stick that stuff,” I said.

  “She’ll make a pass around the far end of the runway and hand it off to somebody behind the curtain pretty soon,” said Rosie. “Then she’ll come back and give them a little reward. She’ll toss the g-string and hump up to the brass pole a bit. If she likes them, she might even let one of them cop a pinch or a feel.”
>
  “Whaddaya, tourists? Out slumming?” The voice was sandpaper basso, and I turned around to see a figure that would have blotted out the sky, if there had been any sky. I thought of asking if his name was Joe, but I wasn’t sure I wanted it to be.

  Rosie took the lead. “My husband’s bored, thinks I should learn some new moves.”

  “Yeah? Well, you wanna watch, you gotta sit down and pay, like everybody else. You gotta buy a drink, too.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Anyplace? How about at the bar?”

  “You too cheap to tip the waitress? Don’t matter. You still gotta pay the cover. Twenty bucks.”

  I reached for my wallet.

  “Apiece,” said the monster. Rosie gave me a frown, but I couldn’t tell if it meant the bouncer was lying or that I shouldn’t make trouble.

  “That’s crap,” I said, “and we both know it. Tell you what, though: how about if I give you fifty and I don’t see you any more?”

  “That’ll work.” It was hard to tell in that light and with his face so high up, but I think he smiled. “Don’t be makin’ no trouble for the artistes, though, or I’ll be on you like holy on the Pope.”

  “Hey, you said it first—we’re just out slumming.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Just don’t say you wasn’t told.” He moved off into a dark cave somewhere, pausing on his way to whisper in my ear. Up on the stage, the writhing vampiress had ditched her wad of bills, just as Rosie had predicted, and she was working herself up to a finale. I pried my eyes away long enough to look over at the bar, which was being tended by a short, dark guy with a white shirt, black bow tie, and sleeve garters. He had a wedge-shaped face, sort of like Stroud, the phony detective, with a pencil moustache and slicked-back hair. His eyes seemed too big for the rest of his head, and he looked sort of fidgety, as if he were wired too tight for the job. Kevin Kline, trying to do a low-key role.

  “Is that our man?”

  “That’s Joe, all right. I caught his eye when we came in. If we sit down, he’ll come over. What did the bouncer say to you?”

  “Tell you later.” I fondled a chair in the dark to make sure it didn’t already have anybody on it, then motioned to her to sit.

  “Tell me now,” she said.

  I patted down another chair for myself and sat down opposite her. “Here comes our waitress.”

  The waitress looked young and out of place, not sexy enough to be up on the stage or tough enough to be down on the floor, and definitely not comfortable with the skimpy uniform of tight, shiny short-shorts and an abbreviated leather vest with no blouse under it. Susie Sorority, trying to work her way through Sociology 101 at some community college. She took our orders and fled.

  “She didn’t seem to recognize you,” I said.

  “She’s not an old-timer.”

  “Doesn’t look like she’s about to become one, either.”

  “That’s for sure. What did the bouncer say to you?”

  “You won’t like it.”

  “Tell me, already.”

  “He was warning me. He thinks you’re a cop. Or a decoy.”

  “Why would he think that?”

  “Because you accessorize your sexy cocktail dress with shoes that have rubber soles and arch supports.”

  “That asshole! I’ll kill him.”

  “Hey, he’s just giving a tip to another guy.”

  “If he’d shut up, you might not have noticed.”

  “You’re right, I wouldn’t have.” And wouldn’t have cared, if I had.

  “I’ll kill him, that’s all.” She drummed her fingers on the table and glowered.

  I’ll never understand what some people take seriously. While Rosie fumed, the bartender at the far wall put a couple of drinks on a tray, waved the nervous waitress away, and headed over to our table with them himself. When he got close, he started talking to Rosie’s back.

  “Looks like some people just don’t know when they’re well off. That is you, isn’t it, Lisa?”

  Lisa? Rosie turned in her chair and said, “Hey, Joe. How’ve you been?” Well, she did tell me she had used a lot of names.

  “I’ve been here,” he said. “What else do you have to know? Been down so long, it looks like up to me. Who’s your friend?”

  “He’s good people, Joe. He rescued me from a fate worse than death. Joe Patello, this is Howard Jacobson.”

  God, it was a compulsion with her. I held out my hand and said I was happy to meet him.

  “No offense, Mr. Jacobson, but I don’t shake hands. It’s a hygiene thing. It’s also not a good idea if I look like I’m getting too friendly with the customers. Believe me, you do not want to get thrown out of here.”

  “I heard that,” I said, and took my hand back. Joe put the drinks down in front of us, collected another wad of money from me, and sat down next to Rosie. He did not exactly have the attitude of an old friend.

  “What brings you back to the No Lost Titties, Lisa? I assume you’re not here to audition.”

  “Howard here needs some information about Gypsies, and you’re the only one I know.”

  “Does he now? Why? Is he a cop?”

  “No,” I said.

  “A victim, then. Looking for some payback?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because only cops and victims have any interest in Gypsies. And they have no interest at all in you.”

  “Are you sure?” I said. “Maybe I’m a writer. Maybe I’m about to make you rich and famous.”

  “If I believed that, which I do not for a minute, it would move you from uninteresting to unwelcome. We may be the only people left in America who don’t want that.”

  “Getting rich?”

  “Getting famous. Having our culture strip-mined for some half-assed book or movie.”

  “I’m not a writer. That was just a ‘maybe.’”

  “Maybe you should tell me what you really do for a living, before I get totally pissed.”

  “I’m a bail bondsman.”

  He sat back for a moment, looking stunned, as if I had just changed the rules and he needed to think up a new game plan.

  “I haven’t needed a bondsman for a long time,” he said, “but that could make you very interesting to the familya or the kumpania. Maybe even the rom baro. But I don’t have their ear anymore, so I can’t help you.”

  “Ro…I mean Lisa, said you were excommunicated, or something.”

  He smiled for the first time, showing a row of teeth that would make my dentist, the one with the ceiling-pictures, proud. “Is that what she called it? It should be so easy. I’m marime, is what I am. For your Gadje ears, that means unclean.”

  “Gadje just means us,” said Rosie. “It’s not an insult.”

  “Depends on your point of view,” said Joe.

  “Maybe I can help you.” I had no idea how, but it seemed like a good thing to say.

  “You?” He gave what could have been a laugh or a snort. “That would be like a coal miner offering to clean your linens. Nobody can help me. Our court, the kris, has found me marime, and there’s no getting rid of that, ever. Are you from a farm background?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Rosie. “As far from it as I can get.”

  “I’ll tell you a little rural humor. It’s not the sort of thing a good Gypsy would tell, but since I’m unclean anyway, it can’t matter much. You can stick a few bricks together with some mortar, the saying goes, but that doesn’t make you a mason. And you can pound a few nails, but that doesn’t make you a carpenter. But get caught in the barnyard with your pants down just once, and you’re a pig fucker for the rest of your life.”

  “That’s very colorful,” I said. “I hadn’t heard that before. Is that what happened to you?”

  “Worse than that. The pig I got caught with—and all Gadje are pigs—was a man.”

  “Am I supposed to blush now? This is almost the end of the twen
tieth century, already.”

  “Not in the familya, it isn’t. Probably never will be. Gypsy society has the most traditional, absolute moral code in the world.”

  I thought about it for a minute. Rosie was playing with her swizzle stick, looking bored. She had apparently heard it all before, but it was news to me.

  “Nothing personal,” I said, “but everybody I talk to says Gypsies are a bunch of…”

  “Thieves, liars, con artists and cheats,” he said. “All true. And we’re very good at it. But that’s all.”

  “Excuse me?” Isn’t that enough?

  “In all other things, we are the most moral people who ever lived.” I must have looked skeptical, because he went on. “I’ll tell you a story, Mr. non-writer. It goes back to the year zero.”

  “As in the Garden of Eden?”

  “Not such a nice place, and not that far back. Think ‘Roman calendar.’ Originally, the Gypsies were blacksmiths. One day some Roman soldiers came to a Gypsy blacksmith and ordered him to make four nails, for the crucifixion of Christ the next day. He didn’t know who Christ was, but you can bet he made the nails. You didn’t argue with the Romans back then.” He leaned forward.

  “But one of the nails kept glowing, long after it was out of the hot forge. That night, an angel came to the blacksmith and told him that the glowing nail was meant to be driven into the heart of Jesus. That was just too damn much of an atrocity, even for what was supposed to be an atrocity. So she told him to steal the nail and run away, which he did. Later, he was on the road, wondering what to do next, when the angel came to him again. From then on, the angel said, his people would always be nomads, without a land to call their own. But because of his service, they would always be free to steal whatever they wanted. And they would always be lucky at stealing.”

  “But in everything else, they were super-moral.”

  “Well, sure. I mean, what would you be like if one of your ancestors had worked for an angel?”

  I’d probably be shopping for an asylum. “That’s quite a story.”

  “It’s our touchstone: who we are and what we do.”

  “Do you also do murder?”

  “Never. Weren’t you paying attention to what I just said?”