Now They Call Me Gunner

by Thom Whalen

  * * *

  On Thursday morning, the latest new guy was waiting for us show up and unlock the doors. Mrs. Everett hadn’t fired him. Nor did she tell Randal to do it when we came in. That was progress of a sort.

  I figured that, if he was going to be around for long, I should get to know him as a person, not just as someone to train. His name was Gilles but he called himself Gil. He had a bit of an accent so I think he might have been a bit French. Maybe French Canadian.

  I set him to work on the prep, as I had for the first three days he’d been here.

  He was chopping the onions a bit faster and considerably more uniformly than before. Maybe there was hope for him.

  When Katie came through, tying her apron, she gave a cheerful, “Hello,” to both of us.

  Then a hitch. As soon as the prep was done, Gil disappeared. I didn’t notice for a few minutes because I was busy with the mashed potatoes. When I finished, I saw that Gil hadn’t cleaned up the slicer or the rest of the prep area. That’s a mistake. It’s easy to wipe down the slicer when the food is still fresh, but it needs a full washing if it’s allowed to dry and bits of lettuce are sticking to the blade and carriage. I looked around the kitchen but he was nowhere to be seen.

  I heard a male voice laughing in the front.

  Gil was out there, leaning on the end of the counter, talking animatedly to Katie. She was leaning close to him and laughing lightly at his anecdote.

  I opened the kitchen door and leaned out. “Hey, Gil,” I called. “The kitchen’s in here. The prep area needs cleaning.”

  “Yes-sa, massa,” Gil replied in an exaggerated minstrel show accent. Katie laughed. He was encouraged. “I’ll git on that ra-ight sooon, massa.”

  “Right now,” I said. “Not right soon.”

  “Yes-sa, massa.” Gil said. But he didn’t move. He just smiled at Katie. She smiled back.

  I retreated into the kitchen. Gilles was going to have to go.

  When lunch was over and Gil had left for the day, I asked Randal, “What do you think about Gil?”

  Randal shrugged. “He seems okay. Better than the last two. What do you think?”

  “He’s okay when he’s working, but he’s spending a lot of time bothering Katie. This morning, before he cleaned up the prep area, he was out in the front, talking to her.”

  “Tell him that kitchen staff doesn’t go out to the front during business hours.”

  “I did.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He called me massa.”

  Randal chuckled. “He’s got that right. See if you can get him straightened out. If not, let me know and I’ll tell Mrs. Everett to let him go.”

  “Okay.”

  “But try to get him straightened out first. I’d like to find someone that we can keep for a while and he’s the best we’ve seen so far.”

  He was right about that. The last two had been useless.

  Katie didn’t join me on my break.

  On Friday morning, Gil rushed through the prep, cleaned up proper, then disappeared into the front again.

  I opened the door to tell him to get back in the kitchen, but Gwen beat me to it. She snapped at him. “Get out of here, Tadpole. Don’t let me catch you out front bothering Katie again. She’s got work to do. You hear me?”

  He jumped up and turned toward the door. He was too smart to answer Gwen with a wise crack. She’d take his head off.

  Then Gwen turned on me. “You keep your rabble back there where they belong,” she said. “We got no use for you guys out here where customers can see you.”

  “Bitch,” Gil muttered as he walked past me.

  I smiled. It was good to have a bitch on my side.

  When I closed the door, Gwen was dressing Katie down for wasting time.

  After the lunch rush, when Randal and I were alone, he said, “They searched my place, yesterday.”

  “Who?”

  “The cops. Albertson. He had a warrant. He left a copy. Like I’d want it for a souvenir.”

  “Did they find anything?”

  “Nothing to find. I don’t know if they took anything. They tore the place up pretty bad. Making a point. I haven’t got it all put back together yet. I won’t know what’s missing until I do.”

  “What about your knife with the bamboo handle?”

  Randal froze. Then he said, “I don’t know. I’ll have to look for it when I get home. I’ll bet you’re right. I bet they took it.”

  He thought about that for a minute.

  “They’re going to arrest me soon,” he said.

  I was afraid that he was right.

  “You think Wanda killed Billy?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “He stole her marijuana.”

  “Yeah. She couldn’t let that slide. She’d have had to do something about it. She’d have been looking for him for sure.”

  “You think he came up to Wemsley to hide from her?”

  “Maybe. She probably had a bunch of reasons to kill him. Wanda’s number one on the list of suspects, but the case isn’t closed, yet. Everyone agrees that anyone who was in business with Billy would have reasons. We still got to find out who all Billy was dealing with.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “Go into business with Wanda.”

  “I don’t want to be a drug dealer.”

  “Me neither. But I don’t want to be a convict, either. That doesn’t look good on the resume.”

  I recalled that Randal had already served three months in Buffalo for assaulting some guy. But three months was a long piece from serving life for murder.

  Gwen called out an order for chicken and Randal went to cook it.

  I took my lunch break at the end of Katie’s shift. Today, she joined me.

  “You want to go to a movie on Tuesday?” I asked.

  “No.”

  This was it. She was breaking up with me. I gritted my teeth and waited for her to say that she’d rather date Gil than of me. He made her laugh. I didn’t know much, but I knew that women liked that.

  “You know what I want to do?” she asked.

  Maybe she wasn’t breaking up with me.

  “What?”

  “I want to see the motorcycle gang’s clubhouse.”

  “What?” My shock sounded in my voice.

  “What do they call themselves? Rattlesnakes?”

  “Road Snakes.”

  “Right. Road Snakes. You went to a party at their clubhouse, right?”

  “Right. Last week.” Though so much had happened since then that it felt like last year.

  “I want to see where they party.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not a good idea. Really not a good idea. I told you that.”

  “No, you told me that it wouldn’t be a good idea to meet them. Okay. I got that. But I’m not asking to meet anyone, just to drive past their place. Come on. It’s no big thing. I’m not asking to go to a party or anything. Nobody will ever know we were there. I just want to see where they hang out. Besides, they won’t even be there during the daytime, will they?”

  “Probably not.” They hadn’t been around when Randal and I first scouted the place. We’d met Bucks and Jimbo there in the morning, but only because they’d made a special trip. “It’s locked when they’re not there. I don’t have a key.”

  “I don’t want to go inside, silly. I just want to drive past. Not even stop. Just see it on the way by. You can do that for me, can’t you? Drive past and point it out to me.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m just curious, is all. I hear you talk about it with Randal and I want to see what you’re talking about. Please.”

  Lord save me, I was powerless to refuse. Powerless. Especially when Gil was hanging around, trying to snatch her away from me. He made her laugh. All I could do was show her that I hung out with bad boys.

  “Okay,” I said. “But we just drive by. We don’t stop. And we sure don’t talk to any Road Snakes. We d
on’t even see one.”

  She grinned. “Okay. This is going to be great.”

  “Yeah. Great.” I figured that earlier would be better than later. “I’ll pick you up at nine on Tuesday morning.”

  “I can hardly wait.”

  I could hardly breathe. But at least Gil couldn’t do this for her. I had that on him. I needed all the edge that I could get.