| When the fire started nobody
knows
But they suspected a redhead in an overcoat
A malicious smile, a rumble below
The walls are shaking, she’s starting to blow
A shot rang out, a young girl cried
It’s a force of nature, it can’t be denied
It’s a full moon howl, a hoot owl screech
If I said I loved you,
I said it in a dream
I was standing in the alley where I shot the kid in the mouth. Over there
was the place where his teeth sprayed against the wall like tiny dice,
here was the spot where his head smacked the pavement like a ripe melon.
The blood and brains pooled and left a dark stain that lasted for weeks,
despite the rain and grease and late spring snow. Months later, Girogio,
the Greek who owned the little market on the corner, sprinkled lye on
the stain and scrubbed it down. The spot was gone, but I kept coming back.
I wished I hadn’t shot the kid in the mouth, but as the old gunfighters
used to say, he didn’t gimme no selection. Five years ago, but the
memory still fresh. I could run it over again in my mind, just like one
of the new talking picture films: The movie would begin with flickering
images of a day pretty much like today, the air crisp and cool, the streets
muddy from snow and slush. The shrimp boats going out from the wharf,
freighters blowing their horns as they cleared the shoals outside the
bay. Mailmen walking their routes, being chased by dogs, dogs and cats
being pecked on the ass by mockingbirds guarding their nests. It’s
all about territory, where you belong, where you don’t, and how
you navigate it.
Back then, I was just getting established, and people still called me
by my real name, John X. Turner. I had an office over on 10th Street downtown
and a license that said I was a private investigator. I even took a legitimate
case or two now and then, but most of my income came from a small fleet
of trucks I owned, and drivers who didn’t ask questions about the
cargo they hauled. I also managed a few lounge singers and booked the
talent at a couple of clubs.
It was early evening and I was walking down Salt Street on my way over
to the Alibi Lounge on 13th Street. The corner of 12th and Salt marked
the dividing line between the part of town run by Alex the Greek, and
the south side, ruled by Mal Fortunado. I always took extra care when
I was in Mal’s part of town. Mal’s boys tended to be on the
aggressive side, just like their boss. Alex was tough, too, but he was
a guy you could talk to. I did business with both guys -- I worked at
keeping things in balance. It was one of the keys to surviving as an independent.
It also kept things interesting.
Tina Bellaire was singing a happy hour set at the Alibi Lounge that night.
Tina sang just like Billie Holliday and she was a knockout goddess. If
Tina and the Queen of England both jumped in my bed at the same time,
and the Queen of England was the second hottest babe in the world, I’d
still kick the Queen out on her ass. I didn’t want anything coming
between me and Tina.
I heard the off-key echo to my footsteps as I crossed 10th Street. I took
the .45 automatic from the shoulder holster and slipped it down the front
of my pants and buttoned my coat to keep it hidden. Just before the alley
near 12th and Salt, I picked up the pace a little. The kid rushed to keep
up. If I hadn’t already suspected he was an amateur, he sold the
notion by the way he initiated the fight. First he snatched a hunk of
my coat, then he made some weird noise down the back of my collar. I didn’t
know whether to take it as a threat or worry about him puking down my
neck.
“Step into the alley, Turner,” he snarled. “We got bidness
to take care of.”
“Sure,” I said, and ducked to my right and whirled around.
Bum luck, the kid was a lefty and whacked my right elbow with a gun before
I had a chance to adjust to the situation. Then he jammed the barrel of
an old German Mauser machine pistol into my gut and steered us into the
alley, nudging me against the brick wall. I’d taken a few of those
Mausers off dead Germans in France during the Great War. I made a few
bucks selling them stateside, too.
The kid couldn’t have been a day over nineteen, but was a good six
feet tall and shaped like a beer barrel. He jabbed me with the pistol
a couple more times and got in my face, breathing heavy. His breath stunk
like cheap beer and rotten teeth.
“You trying to kiss me?” I said. “Get the fuck outta
my face.”
“Asshole,” he sad, gritting his gums like a bad dog. But he
did move back a few inches.
“Thanks,” I said. The extra room was all I needed. I’d
wait to hear his spiel before making my move.
“Your drivers have been picking up booze down at Deadeye Point,”
he said. “It’s a sweet deal. Your boats bring it in, your
trucks pick it up, and you slip through the back door.”
Deadeye was a little inlet on the south end of the bay. It was hemmed
in by flooded marshland, alligator and snake country, so perfect for smuggling
we called it the back door into town. A few of us knew about an old Indian
trail through the marsh. The trail hooked up with a farm road that sneaked
into town on the southwest side. The marsh was beyond jurisdiction of
the city cops, and the sheriff’s department came cheap, so it was
a sweet deal all the way around.
But last week a certain wharf rat named Filthy Phil sent some punks over
to my office. They were under the impression that Phil was entitled to
ten percent of my last run.
“You look too young to understand business, kid,” I said.
“I tip waitresses and such when they’re entitled to it, but
I don’t pay any extra taxes to anybody.”
“Haven’t you heard?,” said the kid. “The Deadeye
is a toll road these days, and everybody has to pay.”
“Your boss sent two boys the last time,” I said. “I
laughed in their faces and threw ‘em down the stairs. Normally I
don’t strike children, but you’re starting to irritate me.”
“Go ahead on, Turner,” he said. “You’re just making
me look forward to doing what I came to do.” He flicked his wrist
and a shiny six inch blade dropped into his right hand.
“Better be careful, kid,” I said. “You might accidentally
fall on that thing and end up carrying your guts home in a bucket.”
He warped his upper lip and showed me the gap between his teeth. “You
gotta pay Phil, or else you can’t use the road. Wasn’t but
a jungle rat’s trail through that swamp till us and Phil scraped
and cleared it.”
“You did a lousy job,” I said. “My trucks busted more
than one axle bouncing down that piece of shit. And if you’re gonna
cut me, you better just kill me, because if you don’t, I’ll
damn sure kill you.”
The kid made his angry baby face again and gave the gun barrel another
twist. “You don’t scare me, Turner,” he said. “Mr.
Fortunado’s looking out for Phil and his guys. You’re not
gonna risk pissing off Mr. Fortunado.”
“Bullshit, kiddo” I said. “Mal wouldn’t hire a
geek like you to carry out his trash, or Phil, either. If Phil told you
he and Mal are hooked up, he’s lying.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said, leaning in close again.
“You’re just trying to talk your way out of the cuttin’
up you got coming.”
“There’s one thing you should hear first,” I said. “You’ll
get a bang out of
“No, you’re gettin’ cut, Turner,” he said. “I’ve
had enough of your---“
I fired the 45 through my coat, aiming for his gun hand. I felt the Mauser
recoil sideways as his trigger finger jerked and a jolt of white heat
seared my belly. The kid grunted and reeled back. The knife clattered
on the ground. Cinders flew from my coat. One of the gunshots, probably
his, had set it on fire.
I must’ve banged my head in his face, because he toppled backward
as I slid down the wall. The next thing I knew he was looming over me
with that pistol in my gut again, blood running down the back of his hand
and down the gun barrel, acrid smoke billowing from the burnt fabric and
flesh, blood oozing between his teeth and split lip, and the muzzle of
my 45 at the side of his mouth as I swung it up and fired.
His teeth sprayed out as he tumbled over, head whiplashing back and pulling
his body down like a dropped anchor, skull smacking hard and bouncing.
Then he lay there twitching, bloody gums flapping against each other,
eyes staring up at nothing, blood and brains oozing out, crotch of his
pants darkening as a broad lake formed between his legs and ran toward
the sidewalk. It was the free and voluminous discharge of a dead man’s
piss.
___
“How ya doin’, Turner?” said Girogio. The fat little
Greek had his apron tied round his fat little waist, standing a respectful
distance away in the mouth of the alley. He was one of the few people
I knew who called me by my real name.
“How you doing yourself, Giro?” I said. A native of Athens,
Greece, Giorgio Antony Anapolis came over in steerage aboard the Mauretania
in 1910. When he landed on Ellis Island, an astigmatic clerk misspelled
Giorgio’s name on his immigration card. Giorgio didn’t mind.
If America welcomed him to her shores as Girogio, then so be it, that
was his name.
“Business OK?” I said.
“It’s OK,” he said. “Family OK, everything OK.
You OK?”
“Couldn’t be better,” I said, slapping him on the back
as I stepped out on the sidewalk.
“That’s what you say all the time,” he said. His thick
black eyebrows met in the middle as he frowned.
“You don’t stay alive in this town by telling people your
sorrows, Giro,” I said.
He nodded sadly. “Sure,” he said. “You let the music
do it for you, don’t you, Johnny?”
“You know me too well, Giro,” I said. I gave him a couple
of my business cards with “admission & two cocktails”
scribbled on the back under my signature. “I got Ria Quatro at the
Tropicale this week, and Lola Delio at the Haute ‘n Taut Room Tuesday
and Thursday. Check ‘em out if the wife will let you out of the
house.”
He smiled and took the cards, patting me on the back with a brotherly
cluck and a shake of his head. “Everything’s not OK, is it?”
“You haven’t seen Lola today, have you?”
“No,” he said. “I’ll tell her you’re looking
for her if I do.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Be careful, Turner,” he said. “You know Alex, he’s
got a terrible temper. It’s not healthy.”
“No,” I said. “Not for anybody.”
Girogio was frowning when I walked away. The little man had the blackest
eyebrows I’d ever seen.
___
Ria Quatro had the happy hour crowd lulled into submission with her smoky
voice and see-through outfit. It was a wild, exotic thing that tied up
her breasts in black mesh and made jeweled volcanoes of her nipples, while
more strategic rhinestones made a thundercloud sprouting silver lightning
of her pussy, and more shiny costume jewelry dribbled from her wrists
and fingers. The Tropicale was a dark little speakeasy just off Salt Street,
around the corner from the place where the Alibi Lounge used to be. After
the Alibi burned down, a retired Quaker whaling captain put up an apartment
building where he ran chippies and put up his old salty brothers on the
cheap.
I managed Ria but I didn’t know her that well. She knew me well
enough that after seeing me come in, she bumped the set list around and
sang my song. I’d never requested it, but all the girls sang it
for my sake anyway.
When the fire started nobody knows
But they suspected a redhead in an overcoat
A malicious smile, a rumble below
The walls are shaking, she’s starting to blow
A shot rang out, a young girl cried
It’s a force of nature, it can’t be denied
It’s a full moon howl, a hoot owl screech
If I said I loved you,
I said it in a dream
The story was, the song came out on an RCA Victor 78
by Johnny Lang and the Heartbreakers. They said Lang wrote the lyric in
1929, after his girlfriend was killed walking down Broadway in New York
the day of the stock market crash. Some banker jumped out the window of
his tenth floor office and landed on the poor girl like a ton of bricks.
According to rumors, Lang recorded the song and then one night a couple
of weeks later he went backstage after a gig and ate his gun. The title
he gave the arrangement was “If I Told You Something,” but
nobody called it by that name. “Johnny Heartbreak” was a lot
easier to remember and that was the name that stuck.
The reason they called me by that name was a little more complicated.
I liked Ria’s singing but I liked Lola’s better. As Ria sang
and I nursed my beer I pictured Lola in my mind, her plump lips and looming
eyes and wonderful breasts, her voice soaring slow and graceful as a big
bird on an updraft spiral into the sun. I remembered last night watching
Lola cradle the microphone and pull it closer to her lips, and thinking
about her putting me inside her mouth and driving me insane. Nights with
Tina had been that, too, like running mad through some dark jungle, tap
dancing on alligators’ backs, playing jump music on a trumpet for
a basket full of cobras. Watching Ria made me think of Lola, and being
with Lola made me think of Tina. It was a vicious cycle, but it was a
workable relationship, and a guy could do a whole lot worse.
Lola almost never spent the night at my place. It wasn’t safe. She
was Alex’s mistress, and even though Alex had a good Greek wife
and five kids, a gang boss couldn’t stand for anybody screwing his
mistress. Some kid he hired for a driver happened to remark one day that
Lola had nice hips. The kid woke up in an alley with broken hands and
feet.
When she finished the song, Ria smiled at the applause, reaping it with
a scythe-like sweep of her red fingernails and sarcastic little bow, hugging
her breasts winking into the microphone.
“Me and the band’ll be back after a pause for the cause, a
tweak of the beak and a leak in the creek,” she cooed into the mike.
“Don’t go ‘way, now. OK?”
She came over to my table and waved at Butterfly Cash to bring us a couple.
She kissed me on the lips, raking her chest jewels against me before letting
go.
“Johnny Heartbreak,” she said. “Thanks for dropping
in.”
“You sound good and look good and smell good,” I said. “Have
you seen Lola?”
“Thanks for the preamble, Johnny, but it’d be nice if you’d
beat around the bush just a teeny bit more,” she said. “You
can beat around my bush any time you feel like it. You know that, don’t
you, babe?”
“Thanks for the offer, Ria. Seen her?”
“Not since you left with her last night,” she said, feigning
a pout. Butterfly set our drinks down and waved her hand, magically making
our bar tab disappear. “Been to her place?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Nobody there except the cat and he
seemed lonely.”
“Look who’s talking, Johnny Heartbreak.”
“How about Lola’s pals, like Minkie Meyer, Bonnie Everest,
or Boni Maroni?”
“Those are all working girls, Johnny.”
“Seen them?”
“They’re probably working.” She sipped her drink. “They
haven’t been in here, babe, that’s all I know.”
“What about Sally Twist?”
She gave me a hard stare, then looked down at her drink. “She’s
not in circulation anymore. You know that, don’t you?”
I nodded. Sally Twist was Mal Fortunado’s girl on the side. Like
Alex the Greek, Mal had a wife and kids. Mal also had Sally, nicely tucked
away in a top floor apartment downtown. “Seen her?”
Ria shook her head. “You sure sucked down that drink fast. Long
day?”
“Long and strange,” I said, “as a two-headed snake.”
“Care to share it with me?” she said, her nipples glistening
like tiny silver porcupines with quills made of light.
“Something would get lost in the translation,” I said. “But
thanks anyway.”
After downing another drink, I left the Tropicale and went down the street
to hail a cab. I walked just as far as the place where the Alibi used
to be. The place burned down a week after I shot the kid in the mouth.
___
My coat was still smoldering when I drove down to the docks and braced
Filthy Phil. He was in a corner of his shed sorting out scrap metal. He
ran a salvage operation.
He looked up at me and his mouth dropped open and funny little yelp came
out. He looked even more alarmed when the smell hit him. It was just a
flesh wound, but the heat had charcoaled a couple of square inches of
my belly.
“Damn, Turner, you look like shit,” he said.
“You fucked up, Phil,” I said. “You sent a boy to do
a man’s job.”
“Oh, fuck a duck,” he drawled. His skin was oily, his complexion
a greenish gray. “Maxey was supposed to take a couple of guys with
him. But you do owe me money. You can’t blame a guy for trying to
collect.”
“You’re not gonna collect shit from me,” I said. “Not
ever.”
“Hey, my boys scraped out that road and it took plenty of muscle,
believe me,” he said. “Snake bit, mosquito bit, alligator
bit, and terminal shits. Cost me near five hundred bucks scraping out
that trail, and now everybody’s making money off it.”
“Tough shit,” I said. “You gonna eat that five hundred.
I don’t wanna hear about it ever again, and if you fuck with me
again, you’re gonna eat something else, too. Just like the boy you
sent after me.”
Phil scratched his greasy head for a second. “Maxey, is he gonna
be OK?”
“He’ll be fine,” I said. “Just say a prayer he
doesn’t start some shit with St. Pete when he sees him, and maybe
he’ll get a pass through pearly gates after all.”
“Huh?” he said, his dark face wrinkled like an old boot.
“Here,” I said, taking Phil’s hand and pouring the kid’s
teeth into his palm. “See that his mother gets these so she can
put them in with what’s left of him.”
He looked down at his hand and it was trembling as if I’d dropped
a chunk of ice into it. He ducked his head down low and stepped back from
me, into the shadows. “He ain’t g-g-got no mother,”
he stuttered. “Just got a sis-sis-sister.”
“All the young murderers got it tough,” I said.
|
|
