Crumbtown

by Joe Connelly

  Tim had just found out he was going to be rich, he and his brother Tom, richer than if they’d been killed by a car, or even paralyzed. Brian Halo Productions was about to start shooting their show, The Real Adventures of Robin Crumb, to be written and directed by Robert Landetta, and based on a story by Tim and Tom. This last part was still a matter of contention, at least to Brian Halo’s production manager, Miss Delouise. She’d offered them a consulting position at five thousand per, but had refused to discuss the life rights to the story, the real money, and hadn’t taken their calls in three days. Tom wanted to avoid the lawyers if they could help it, Tim was with him on this, but if Miss Delouise didn’t pick up that phone soon, she’d be getting another call, from Quibblebee and Fecklewitz, the assassins from 1-800-SHYSTER.

  He finished his fourth beer and went out for a walk, to talk over some more numbers with his brother. Tom wanted to ask for half a million. Tim reasoned they were worth more. If the rights to his ankle cost twelve thousand, what were the rights to his life? He had two ankles, only one life, but a man’s life, if measured only in size, was over one hundred times an ankle, not to mention that a man could live without an ankle, but an ankle wouldn’t last long without a man—six hundred thousand was a conservative estimate for himself, another four hundred thousand for Tom—he was smaller than Tim—made an even one million. If they were worth one million, Tim reasoned, they should ask for five.

  He made a right onto Low and took it over to Van Brunt, trying to guess where Ten Thirteen was shooting that day. Tom worked part time for the show, parking cars. Tim had worked part time there too, he’d worked part time for every show shot in Crumbtown, and had been fired from each, drunkenness, mostly, and napping on the curb. The production manager for Ten Thirteen found Tim sleeping in Dyan Swaine’s trailer one day, and had his actors throw Tim off the set. Which was ridiculous; she’d practically invited him in on several occasions, one of the five most beautiful women on television. He’d given her cigarettes when she was trying to quit.

  He made a right onto Dyre, and three blocks later he found the principal actors’ trailers camped in a line down Delinquency. Tim stayed in the street, along the backs of the trailers, until he got to hers, the second biggest on the set. He pulled himself to the little window, the space in the curtain, Dyan in her blue bathrobe, Tim’s favorite.

  He knocked on the glass with his forehead, “Dyan, it’s Tim,” his fingers slipping off, clawing back up. “They’re making a show about me and I want you to be in. You’d be so perfect to play my wife Loretta.”

  Dyan held up her hand. The curtain closed.

  “I’ll come around front,” Tim said. He had to get down from the window anyway, his fingertips were about to break off, and there was a car pulling up, security. Tim dropped to the street and tried to crawl under the trailer, the sound of the car door slamming. Anthony King pulled him out by his legs. “What did I say?” King said, before kicking Tim hard and grabbing his shirt, shoving him up the street. “What did I say,” he said again, and ran back to the car and got in and drove up to where Tim had fallen, kicking him again, “I was going to do to you if I caught you here again?”

  Tim remembered when King was a ten-year-old fat kid who used to park Maury’s cars for a dollar. Now he was head of Ten Thirteen security, driving a new Fort Worth, wearing that ridiculous eye patch when he could see perfectly. Tim raised his cane while limping away, “You better watch out,” he said, “I’ve got my own show now.” King went back to the car and revved the engine, just loud enough to make Tim fall down. Then he grabbed some towels from the backseat and began mopping up the latte that spilled when he was braking.

  12

  Dyan Swaine closed the curtains and continued her pacing, back and forth in the tiny trailer she’d been given. “They’re killing me, Brian Halo,” she said, “going to shoot me in the street like I’m a criminal or something.”

  Brian Halo sat respectfully in his suit, sipping tea in a chair of plastic wood. “This is the news that I heard,” lowering his eyes to each side. “That’s why I came.”

  “It’s all right there,” she pushed the script across the table. “Scene thirty-seven. Captain Palmer runs from the store. The terrorists shoot. She’s hit in the back. A lot of blood. She sinks to her knees. Captain Palmer dies.”

  Brian Halo covered his eyes. “I can’t understand. They’re doing this because of money?”

  Dyan walked to the door-sized mirror next to the sink, and with a fistful of tissues wiped a mole off her cheek. “It’s not about the money,” she said, “it’s about half a million dollars, the same amount they’re paying Lieutenant Gates. That’s all I ever asked for, equal pay.”

  “You’re worth more, Dyan.”

  “I know, right, I’m the captain. He’s just a lieutenant. I’ve got sixteen web sites. But it’s not about the money and I told them that, just pay me the same as him and I’ll come back, and what’s their answer, they have me kidnapped.” She grabbed a blue towel from the rack and wrapped it around her head, pushing under the loose strands of blond hair. “For two months they have me tied up in the back of this little store. That terrorist gang I busted last year. It’s so humiliating.”

  “They’re animals,” Halo said, “you deserve better.” He opened his briefcase and took out a script, Dyan pulling it close so she wouldn’t have to squint, the wrinkles under her eyes that started last winter, the day she turned thirty. “It’s not a cop show, is it? I’m sick of cops.”

  “It’s a Robin Hood story, about these bank robbers who give away their money.”

  She went back to the sink, bending over to brush her teeth. “I want to rob banks,” she said. “I want to give to the poor.”

  “You play the Maid Marian character. Rita. She’s smart, she’s beautiful . . .”

  “Don’t tell me that,” she spit. “Tell me I’m Rita Hood. Tell me I do everything he does.” She rinsed and spit and brushed some more, her teeth that were always too big. “Who is he?”

  “Who?”

  “Who’s Robin Hood?”

  “You’re going to love him.”

  “Who?”

  13

  Ava unlocked the door and pushed it open with her shoulder, and felt for the light. No light. “Eddy?” she whispered, flicking the switch down and up. “Eddy? Come and get it, Little Eddy.” She opened the door further, stepping into the apartment, saying to the dark, “The light’s out,” then screaming when something pulled at her arm. The door closing. A gun pushing against her cheek, pushing her inside, down the two short steps to the living room.

  “Don’t you move or make a noise,” a voice said. “I’m here to help. Got it. But if you scream, I’ll blow your head off. Okay.”

  She took one of the man’s fingers into her mouth and bit down, hard enough for him to yell. She found the lamp and turned it on. “Eddy, you scared me.”

  “Pretty good, huh.” He put the gun on the table and grabbed her pocketbook and turned it over, shaking out everything.

  “Don’t do that. Justwaitaminute.” She grabbed her purse. “And listen to me, nobody puts the gun against somebody’s cheek like that. What are you going to do, blow my teeth off?”

  “It would hurt. You got to admit, and don’t call me Eddy. Call me Don, like the character.” He frantically separated the items on the table into plastic, metal, and paper. “All right, where is it?”

  “I mean it, Eddy. If you’re gonna act like a guy who robs banks you got to know these things.” She took off her jacket and draped it over Eddy’s head, watching him as he blindly searched through the pockets. “Are you hearing this?”

  One of his hands went through the lining, up to his elbow in the pocket. “Okay, where is it?”

  “Oh Jesus, Eddy, what are you doing? You gotta just take a second and look at yourself here. Gimme gimme gimme.”

  Eddy threw the jacket at the kitchen and sat down and slapped the couch. “What did I say about that.”

  �
�Ah baby, I’m sorry.” She came back with the jacket. “I didn’t mean to say that. Here you go.” She pulled out a piece of foil the size and shape of her eye and spread it open across the scraped glass of the table. “Is that better, Little Donny?”

  He grabbed one of the blunt razor blades by the dictionary. “All that technical shit with the gun can wait,” he said. “Everybody’s got their own way of doing things. That’s why I got to know Don’s head first, got to get it right up here, inside, then you know how he holds his gun.” Eddy sawed the powder into thin lines, measuring each with his middle finger. “You know they’re getting him out of prison just to talk to me, to help me with the role, but I gotta be ready for that, I gotta already know how I’m going to play him before I meet him. Because seeing the real person can really throw you off sometimes. Like maybe he’s different now, prison changes people, who knows, maybe it ain’t even him anymore. Or maybe he’s playing a part too, that he wants people to see, or he’s trying to be who he thinks I want him to be. That happens all the time. It’s why I need to concentrate. It’s all I’ve been thinking about.”

  She laughed with her head bent back over the chair, “Oh, that’s all you were thinking when I was out.”

  “Yeah, and you know what?” Eddy let the straw dangle out of his nose one second before applying it to the glass. “I think this guy likes to do coke.”

  14

  Since seeing the warden that evening, Don had done little more than roll in his bed, pretending sleep, through mealtime and the riots of lights-out, rolling over what the warden had told him: a parole from the governor. Freedom in the morning.

  He couldn’t stay in his bunk any longer; he needed to get up, take a walk to clear his head, three steps up, three steps back. If it wasn’t for his cell mate Poppy, all the questions, everything that would have to be said. Slowly Don moved toward the edge, waiting for the sounds of his cell mate’s breathing, the sinister rhythms of Poppy dreaming. When Don was sure it was asleep, he peered over the side, Poppy’s eyes open wide.

  “It’s awake, sí, but does it talk,” Poppy pulled himself up, head bent against the top bunk, always speaking out of a bald spot. “You gonna tell me now what this is.”

  “I got parole.”

  “What?”

  “I’m getting out in the morning, couple hours.”

  “Your hearing’s next month. You can’t talk to me?”

  “It’s not parole exactly. It’s TV.”

  “You got TB?”

  “Television, Poppy. They’re making a show about robbing banks. I’m supposed to be a consultant.”

  “Shit, I heard about this. What happened to Witherspoon. You know him. Same thing.”

  “Car’s picking me up at seven.”

  “Same thing, man. Car picks him up. Then like one month later, send him back.”

  “I’m not coming back.”

  “I know that. I don’t want you to go. Okay. TV people.”

  “They sent him back?”

  “Oh yeah, man, he had that lisp, you know, his teeth sticking all out, they wanted a safecracker man but not one lookin’ like that.” Poppy bent down and punched the bed. “This happenin’ too fast. Supposed to be next month. What am I gonna do? Ow, shit. Come here.”

  Don lowered himself to the floor, Poppy’s half of the cell. “They say I got to stay in Crumbtown until the show’s over.” He sat on the far end, the mail-order pillows from Puerto Vallarta. “What if it’s never over?”

  “You got to be there anyway, right, take care of the business.”

  “I’m on parole, Poppy, I can’t just start shooting people.”

  Poppy punched himself in the chest. “They ran on you man, those twins, you never let go of that. It’s what keeps you strong. Twenty-five years I’m strong.” He punched himself again. “Why they making a show ’bout you. Should be making the Poppy show.” He stood and punched the wall. “Don’t you come back. You hear me. You never come back. I’ll kill you if you do.” He sat on the bunk and wrapped his arm over Don. “I don’t want you to go.”

  15

  Loretta parked behind the morgue truck and walked down the well-lit path to 43 Holly, an Upper Dodgeport prewar that she’d kill to live in, apartments the size of tennis courts, lawyers and doctors and television anchors. She’d yet to sell a listing up here, too high on the hill for her clientele, but that didn’t stop her from getting out of bed in the dark, the red lights of four o’clock. For herself she did this, and for the kids, the day when she crossed that bridge for the last time, the new office she was going to open. This was the Loretta that was moving here, taking with her only two daughters and a mink coat. One of those new buildings on the slope, a doorman that said yes ma’am, who’d never let in the kind of person she’d been, the Loretta who had married Tim.

  She’d hire someone to work the Crumbtown office, the steady commissions of Russians and Chinese. Her new place she’d start on a street like this, or one of those little garden lanes off Washington, walking distance to the old factories by the station that were being turned into condominiums. The changes happening so quickly, every time she crossed the bridge she noticed. Big money moving in, legitimate companies, insurance and advertising, the Internet kids from New York—you’d have to be an idiot not to rake it in.

  But money alone did not mean success, all the investment shows she watched, they kept getting that wrong, you didn’t just write a check to become a new person, pretend like yesterday never happened. What would a new house do for her, a new car, if she was still getting late night calls from the bar. Talking to clients with Tim banging on the window, asking for another loan. How helpful would the doorman be with Tim standing outside her building, crying her name for every neighbor to hear. Nine years of this, kicking him out, then letting him back, enough times to know—the past could not be forgotten, only cut off.

  She stood at the entrance, ten names in a stainless frame; Harry forgot to tell her what apartment. A suicide was all he said, a divorcé, laid off, alone. She looked up at the windows, no lights, so she went down the list, the Greenes and Greenbaums and Kims, searching for the most likely candidate— Fitzgerald, 5A—about to push the bell when the horn started, a blue Meteor parked across the street, the big man inside. He’d been watching her all this time.

  Detective Hammamann leaned over and opened the passenger door. “They’ll be done in a few minutes.” He patted the seat, “Come on sit down Loretta it’s cold out.”

  Harry hadn’t forgotten to tell her the apartment. He wanted this scene, watching her at the door, honking across the street. She’d never seen him in a Meteor, had to add that to her list, the cars he followed her around with, the disguises he wore, the love letters he managed to deliver without her seeing, in her pocketbook, a dresser drawer, the windshield on her car. She liked this about him, the preparation he brought to a relationship. It was the follow-through she had problems with. Every man she met. She wasn’t getting in. “Which apartment Harry?”

  “Come on Loretta,” he pushed the door open further. “I want to tell you something.”

  “My ears are working.”

  He looked left, then right, “What we talked about,” his voice dropping. “About Tim. I’ve taken care of it.”

  She stood on her toes and grabbed for the door handle, trying not to shout, “You did it?”

  “Tomorrow,” he said.

  “Oh no,” she closed the door.

  “It’s all set. I promise. Loretta. Look. There’s something else I want to show you.” He pulled a blotted slip of blue paper from his jacket, pushing it through the half-open window. “It’s the suicide note, from the guy in 5A, a hanging. I found this in his pocket. You wanna read?”

  “5A,” she said, “That’s what I was gonna guess.” She reached for it. He pulled back. She crouched next to the door, her mouth on the top lip of the window. “Come on Harry let me see.”

  He handed over the note, watching her open it, her eyes recognizing the sc
ript, the wide square capitals, Harry’s writing, another love letter. DEAR LORETTA, she read. He’d set her up again. I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT YOU.

  Harry smiled, “It’s true.”

  She opened the door, sitting next to him in the car, his arm around her neck, “Oh Harry,” she said.

  ACT II

  Five

  SCENE 16

  Don signed more forms in the little gray office by the front gate for the release of his wallet and clothes, the free key ring and personal organizer. Then the guard pushed a red button and the gate slid apart to expose the small parking lot, empty except for a spindly maple shoved against the far edge, a man in brown aviators standing in its shade. The man held up a white board with the name “D Reedy” printed on the front. Don covered the sun with his hand, watching a car pass on the road behind the lot, the low ridge in back blanketed with new dirt, a bulldozer sleeping on the top. The man raised the sign high and waved it over his head, like he was standing in a crowd of much taller men. “Go on,” the guard said.

  His driver wore sandals with black socks, a batting glove on his left hand. “Let’s get out of this sun before it kills us. Ha,” he opened the back door of a black 10,000VTLr and pulled onto the main road that was mostly gravel. He kept pushing buttons to make the fan go louder. “There’s a binder next to you, with a white envelope clipped to the front. Open that.”

  Don pulled out the five twenties that were in the envelope. He looked in the binder; it held half a dozen folders: “A Halo for the 21st Century,” “Friends of Halo,” “Parole Guidelines.”

  “Don’t tell me how much is in there,” the man said. He drove for a few miles, quietly reflecting in the rear mirror. “Come on, really, how much?”

  “A hundred dollars,” Don replied.

  The driver turned around to look at Don, then went back to studying him in the mirror. “Yeah, right, who the hell am I.”