Memory Lane

by Laurence Gough

  “Uh…” Ross’s mind was a pinwheel, firing off sparks and smoke, making plenty of noise, spinning in circles, going nowhere.

  “C’mon, it’s your turn.” Kelly’s eyes bulged, spittle flew. He yanked Ross’s pistol out of his pants and thrust it into his hand. “Like they say, Just do it!”

  Ross leaned over the counter. The grocer’s chest was a mass of blood. His white shirt had been scorched and peppered by the muzzle blasts. His eyes were wide open. A little disappointed. The bleeding had stopped. He didn’t appear to be breathing, and no wonder.

  His hair needed combing. He was quiet as a watercolour.

  Dead, for sure.

  The revolver made a double click as Kelly drew back the hammer. He screwed the gun’s hot muzzle into Ross’s ear. “Him or you, partner.”

  Ross leaned over the counter. He pointed the gun straight down, shut his eyes and pulled the trigger. Click. He pulled the trigger again. Another click. Kelly said, “You gotta rack the slide, you wanna get noisy.” He snatched the pistol out of Ross’s hand. Ross turned his head and opened his eyes, observed how Kelly drew back the slide and let it snap forward, stripping a round from the magazine and pushing it into the breech. The pistol’s hammer was back. “Try it now, junior gunsmith.”

  Ross took the pistol, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The gun jerked in his hand. The shot deafened him. Kelly held up two fingers. Ross stared at him, bewildered, and then realized Kelly wanted him to shoot again. He squeezed off several more rounds.

  Kelly grabbed his arm, relieved him of the pistol. “Take it easy, killer. Them nine mils cost seventeen-ninety-five a box, plus tax.” He slapped Ross on the back. “Get his wallet.”

  Ross gave him a look that said no.

  “Hurry up, asshole!” Kelly poked Ross in the belly with the revolver, poked him hard. Ross went around behind the counter. He tried not to step in the blood, but there was too much of it, and it seemed to be everywhere he put his feet. The grocer had a roll of cash in his back pocket thick enough to choke a giraffe. Kelly had wandered over to a display rack and was stuffing his pockets with Mars bars.

  “Get you something?”

  Ross shook his head.

  “You ain’t hungry?” Kelly signalled mild disapproval by making a soft clucking sound. He grabbed a handful of breath mints.

  On the way out, Kelly helped himself to a big tin bucket full of bunches of white roses at $6.99 per half-dozen. He unwittingly left a trail of candy bars all the way to the getaway car. Ross, following along behind, scooped up most of them. They climbed into the Datsun. Kelly dumped the candy and bucket of roses on the backseat. He shoved the key in the ignition, started the engine, put it in reverse and stomped on the gas. The Datsun was no muscle car, but it had horses enough to shift the dumpster. The big steel box moved slowly at first, but quickly picked up speed. As they reached the mouth of the alley, Kelly slammed on the brakes. The dumpster shot into traffic, with predictable results. Kelly shifted into first gear and punched it. The Datsun’s tires slithered and then grabbed hold. At high speed, they fled the scene of their crimes.

  Some few minutes later, Kelly glanced in the rear-view mirror. What he saw caused him to spew the kind of language Ross hadn’t heard since prison. He turned and looked back. The bucket had overturned, flooding the backseat. There were roses everywhere.

  “Clean that up! Get rid of it!”

  Ross rolled down the back window. He tossed the bucket onto the road, threw out handfuls of flowers. Most of the candy bars seemed okay. Several bunches of roses had escaped with their stems intact, so he kept them. There was nothing he could do about the drenched backseat.

  They were, by Ross’s calculation, about halfway home when Kelly pulled the semiauto. He handed the pistol and several loose cartridges to Ross and told him to reload the thing. It wasn’t a difficult task. Ross had a feeling that most if not all guns must be fairly easy to operate — if only because the simple-minded criminals who used them would be helpless if faced with even a reasonably complicated mechanism. Not that Ross was inclined at that moment to underestimate Kelly’s intelligence. The man might not be overly bright, but he was ruthless as a tick.

  He tried to insert another round into the magazine, but it wouldn’t fit. He replaced the loaded magazine in the handle of the gun, felt a tiny spasm run through the weapon as the magazine clicked home.

  Kelly held out his hand, palm up. Ross gave him back his gun.

  *

  Shannon ignored the roses. You’d think she was allergic. Glaring hard at the blood-spattered sleeve of Kelly’s jacket, she said, “What the hell have you two idiots been up to?”

  “Zellers’ customer-relations folks teach you to talk like that?” Kelly smiled crookedly. He said, “I took my partner for a test-drive, see how he’d work out.” He studied the splash pattern on his jacket as if noticing it for the first time. “Resistance was offered. Things got a little loud, a little messy…”

  “You shot somebody, didn’t you.”

  “Well, yeah. But he asked for it.”

  Shannon’s eyes were small and bright. “You are such a fucking idiot.”

  “Ain’t she the sweetest?” Kelly sauntered over to the fridge and yanked open the door, peered inside, grunted in triumph as he located the beer.

  “Ross, did he really shoot somebody?”

  Ross shrank before the heat of Shannon’s anger, the fierceness of her gaze.

  “We both shot somebody.” Kelly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “How it went — I shot first and then it was Ross’s turn. Slippery seconds, and he just wouldn’t stop, kept pulling the trigger. Because he liked it, I guess. Or maybe believed he needed the practice. Which is true.” He tilted his head, made a gurgling sound as he drank some more beer. “Wisdom in mayhem. Ask any cop — dead men make unreliable witnesses.” He slapped Ross heavily on the shoulder. “Right, partner?”

  “You betcha,” said Ross amiably. His head ached and his throat was dry. He went over to the sink and drank from the cold-water tap.

  Shannon said, “We talked about this, Kelly. And we agreed we could do this without killing anybody.”

  “You agreed that’s what we could do. I didn’t say nothin’ about it either way, if you check your notes. You expect me to trust somebody I don’t know for sure is gonna stand fast under pressure, hold his ground and not fuck up or screw me around? Or spill his guts in a minute, if the cops get their hands on him? I had to test the man’s mettle, Shannon. Get him involved. Think about it. Think about it for just one minute, you’ll see how right I am.”

  Shannon stood there in the middle of the kitchen floor beneath the overly bright fluorescent ceiling lights, not looking at anything in particular. Hardly showing any signs of life at all, really, as if the situation were so repugnant to her that she had withdrawn deep inside herself, shut down all her systems. Denial. But then, as quick as that, her eyes cleared and she focused on Ross, gave him a weary look, a you-let-me-down-and-I’m-tired-of-you look, resigned but flinty-hard, cold as a snowball’s heart. In a voice so devoid of emotion it might have been computer-generated, she said she needed a drink.

  There was a bottle of red on the counter. Ross found the corkscrew in the top drawer, next to the Ikea stainless-steel knives and forks. He opened the wine, opened cupboards until he found the glasses. He poured two glasses full, handed one to Shannon and kept the other himself.

  “Toast,” said Kelly. He stepped forward and hoisted his can of beer. Ross lifted his glass. Kelly banged the can against the glass. He put his arm around Shannon’s waist and touched his beer to her glass. “To success,” he said. “To happy endings!”

  Ross drank some wine. It tasted pretty good. He drained his glass and went over to the counter and poured himself a refill. As he stood there, bottle in hand, he happened to glance up. Kelly was staring at his sister, and she was staring right back at him.

  Ross witnessed a swift exchange of data. An iris-to-iris exchange betwe
en brother and sister of line after line of intense, silent-movie dialogue.

  Kelly told Shannon that, like it or not, she was going to do exactly what they’d agreed she was going to do.

  Shannon replied that she didn’t like it one goddamn bit.

  He told her it was almost over, that they were this close. There was no backing out now. They were committed. The die was cast.

  She caved in, let him dominate her. Acquiesced.

  Then they were smiling at each other, eyes full of mirth and conspiracy, dark secrets.

  Ross thumped the bottle down on the counter, breaking the spell. She asked him to fill her empty glass. As he poured he said, “So, when’re we going to visit Nancy and Tyler?”

  “Soon,” said Kelly. He smiled. “That quick enough for you, killer?” He glanced at his watch, manufactured a yawn. “It’s late, and I’m tired. I’m gonna hit the sack.” He grabbed another beer from the fridge, sauntered over to the basement door and opened it wide. He tossed Shannon a wink that, to Ross’s eye, was licentious and perverted. “Sweet dreams, kids.”

  The door squeaked as he pulled it shut behind him. His boots thumped down the stairs, fading into silence as he slowly descended. Soon enough, the only sound Ross could hear was the quick rasp of Shannon’s breathing.

  She gave Ross a brittle grin, and slipped her arm through his and leaned against him. He was acutely aware of the weight and warmth of her breast, soft but firm as any breast could be. She looked up at him and whispered that Kelly was right. It was getting kind of late.

  “Time for bed?” said Ross, hating himself.

  She wriggled a little closer. “Time for a shower, then bed.”

  Ross nodded. No argument there. In the kitchen’s bright light he had noticed tiny teardrop-shaped speckles of dried blood on his fingernails, the backs of his hands, his wrists. There must be near-invisible splashes of blood all over him. He was a walking abattoir.

  Ross thought that they must need him an awful lot. But not for long. He could hear Kelly moving around down there in the dark basement almost directly below him, making loud unidentifiable sounds. Raw fear sucked every last drop of moisture from his mouth.

  Shannon showered first, and then it was his turn. He dawdled beneath the spray as if it might be the last shower of his life. By the time he walked into the bedroom, she was sleeping soundly. He eased into bed and turned out the light.

  Downstairs, the basement door creaked. A few moments later Ross heard the refrigerator door slam shut, and a few moments after that the hiss of Kelly’s beer as he cracked it open. Ross listened, tracking the sounds as Kelly made his way down the hall from the kitchen to the main-floor landing at the bottom of the stairs.

  Ross lay there, listening hard, hearing nothing but the hum and crackle of his own blood twitching along his veins.

  Minutes slipped by, until an hour and more had passed. He drifted off, snapped awake. Eased out of bed and went over to the window. It was about a twenty-foot drop straight down, to the sidewalk. He tried the sash. Nailed shut. He slipped back into his nice warm bed.

  Downstairs, Kelly shifted his weight and a floorboard creaked. A faint hiss signalled that he had cracked open another can of beer.

  Or maybe that snaky sound had leaked out of him.

  Shannon rolled over on her side so she was facing him.

  In the yellowish near-darkness, Ross crept towards her inch by inch. Downstairs, Kelly had turned on the stereo and was singing along, off-key and out of tune. Ross needed to be loved. His mouth grazed upon Shannon’s warm flesh. She sighed contentedly. He moved a fraction closer, until there was a gentle collision that reverberated through his soul. He settled himself clumsily upon her.

  Carpe Tart Diem.

  Chapter 26

  Alicia told him every time he got it cut, had been telling him ever since they’d been married, that it was time to lose the afro, it was a stale joke, made him look old — she told him whatever she could think of that might motivate him to get a proper haircut. But there was no way in this big old world that George ‘The Man’ Hoffman was going to lose the ’fro. The way he saw it — and he knew damn well he was right no matter what insults Alicia hurled at him — the way he saw it, that beehive-shaped thatch of greying hair up there on his roof served notice that black people, Afro-Canadians, had a history, a recent history, of standing up to be counted.

  The afro was a statement of intent, a warning. Hoffman sneered at his fellow blacks — professional basketball players and the like — who wilfully shaved their heads bald. He believed his aggressively unstylish haircut conveyed a message that said, “Mess with me, you know you gonna be hurt.”

  Well, maybe. But more likely it was Hoffman’s enormous size — he loosely resembled a hirsute Shaquille O’Neal — that intimidated the never-ending stream of paroled convicts and lifetime losers whose very presence soiled the sacred turf of his office.

  When his door swung open, Hoffman glanced up from his fried chicken with the baleful countenance of a disturbed grizzly. He was on his lunch hour, goddammit all to hell. When he saw that his unscheduled visitors were cops, his scowl deepened. He tore the last shred of meat from a wing, noisily sucked the marrow from the bone.

  Willows flashed his tin.

  Hoffman dismissed the need for official identification by casually stirring the air with a plump chicken leg. Crumbs of deep-fried fat sprinkled his desk, but this was a matter that could best be attended to in privacy. “What can I do for you? And please don’t look at me like that. I could’ve been eating ribs.” He guzzled half a can of Coke as Parker unfolded Ray Waddington’s much-travelled sketch and laid it on his desk.

  Willows thought for a moment that Hoffman’s sharp inhalation signified the shock of recognition; but no, he was merely attempting to extract a fragment of meat caught in the wide gap between his teeth.

  “Nice work. Who’s the cartoonist?”

  “Know him?” said Parker, tapping the sketch lightly on the nose.

  “Nope.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Yeah, positive.” Hoffman glanced longingly at the leg he held in his left hand. Though he was tempted, he did not fold. “I never laid eyes on the guy — not in this life, anyway.”

  “Maybe with a moustache? Or five years younger? Different haircut? Take your time, George.”

  “Hey, I’m on my lunch break. Like it or not, the answer is no. Sorry, folks, but there it is.”

  Parker said, “One of your cons started work at Brillo’s a few days ago. We talked to his boss last night.”

  “Yeah, Ross. Started and finished, what I hear.”

  “What can you tell us about him, George?”

  Hoffman tossed the chicken leg back in it’s red-and-white striped take-out container. “I can tell you what I know. His full name, date of birth, what he did. But, you ask me about the bile roiling around deep down inside him that defines who he really is, what he’s capable of, well, I got no idea about that. My gut instinct, I don’t believe he’s one of them baaad boys. Why, what’s he done?”

  “Something to attract our attention,” said Willows.

  “Ross Andrew Larson, that’s the joker’s name in full.” George drank some Coke. “He seemed okay, really. I cut him some slack, let him stay with his mama, ’stead of a halfway house. He made parole about a week ago.”

  “You got him the job at Brillo’s?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Hoffman smiled. “Scrubbing pots.”

  Parker said. “That was a nice thing for you to do, George.”

  “Well, I’m a nice person.” Hoffman’s long black fingers vanished into his hair as he scratched industriously at his scalp. “You got a problem with that?”

  “Not at the moment, George.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean? You come waltzing in here, I’m eating lunch. Look at my chicken. It’s getting cold. How d’you think Colonel Sanders would feel about that?” Hoffman leaned back in his chair.
“You folks accusing me of something?”

  “No way, George. It’s Ross we’re interested in, not you.” Hoffman leaned back in his chair, assumed a thoughtful pose. “It’s one of those short, unhappy stories. Larson beat some guy half to death, claimed the dude propositioned his sister in what you might call excessively graphic terms. Sis denied it. The victim was hurt bad. Larson’s defence cut no gravy with the jury. He caught eight to ten, despite the fact that until then he’d kept his sheets nice and clean.”

  “No previous offences?” said Parker.

  “What I’m saying, ma’am.”

  “Detective Parker.”

  Hoffman nodded, drained his Coke, tossed the empty in his wastebasket, slid open the bottom drawer of his desk, came up with a fresh can. He popped the tab. “A couple of weeks into his sentence, some guy, a biker, came at him with a shank. Why was never established. Anyway, Larson turned the guy’s own knife on him, wounded him mortally. All the investigation did was wipe his ass. Self-defence. Except for that one incident, he was a model prisoner during the entire five years he spent in the joint.”

  “Prime material for a dishwashers job.”

  “Yeah, that’s the way I saw it. Want his mother’s address?”

  Willows nodded.

  Hoffman pushed away from his desk, the wheels of his chair squeaking as he crab-walked across the cramped office to a black metal file cabinet with magazine pictures of Abbie Hoffman and Bette Midler taped to the side. He yanked open a drawer, pulled a buff file folder. He crab-walked back to his desk, opened the folder and wrote Mrs. Larson’s address and telephone number down on a sheet of yellow paper. He tore the paper from the pad, handed it to Willows. “Don’t get your hopes up, Detective. The old lady’s been calling me five, six times a day, wondering what in hell happened to her wayward son. He spent his first night of freedom at home, then skipped. Never said a word of goodbye.”