One phone call and the whole night turns to shit.
It's
Saturday and I'm doing the family thing. Got T-bones sizzling on
the grill. Got a couple DVDs from Blockbuster. Got my wife
and little girl in the kitchen, whipping up brownies. Orange
daylight dips below the horizon and a breeze sweeps across my backyard,
gentle as a kiss. Life is perfect.
Then
the phone rings.
“Yeah?”
I say. Should be more polite, but the old neighborhood is hard to
shake.
“Tommy,
this is Cain.”
The
voice sends all my blood on a slow, cold drain to my feet.
“Hey
Cain,” I say. I'm putting on the friendly tone, the
happy-to-hear-from-you tone. But inside, I'm cursing every saint I
can think of. “How are you man?”
“You
remember number thirty-two?” he asks.
“Sure
Cain, I remember. What's going on?”
“Go
to a pay phone and call thirty-two.”
“Sure
Cain. But what's this…”
A
click on the other end cuts me off.
*
The
old neighborhood is 3,000 miles away. Not far enough. Eight
blocks from where I grew up, sits a dim sum shack on the outskirts of
China town. Next to that shack is a payphone. Number 32 we
call it. I remember the digits like they were my own.
Everyone in the Adrastos crew knows the number by heart.
I
find a payphone outside a Circle-K. Jab at the keypad. Cain
picks up on the first ring.
“You
remember Irish Bob?” he asks. No hellos. All business.
“Of
course,” I say. “He flipped for the feds a couple years ago on
the Diego laundry thing. His testimony almost put Mr. Adrastos
away. But the accountant ended up taking heat instead. Went
down for three, am I right?”
“Good
to see you keeping up with the trade news,” says Cain. “After
Irish did his bitch-squeal, he turned ghost on us. Went fucking poof
and disappeared. We figure the feds got him in Witness
Protection.”
“Sounds
reasonable,” I say. “So what's this have to do with me?”
“He
just called us.”
“What?”
“Irish
Bob just called. Liquored to his eyeballs. Says he wants to
settle up. But he's not looking for forgiveness.”
“When
did this happen?”
“Forty-five
minutes ago,” says Cain. “Way it sounds, the guy's leaning
over the edge and wants a push.”
“Jesus.
You sure?”
“He
told us where we could find him. Told us to fucking come and get
him. Like he's Al Pacino in Scarface or something.”
I
imagine Irish Bob on the phone, a bottle of whiskey close by, a Glock in
his hand. “Cain,” I say, “I still don't see what this has to
do with me?”
“Irish
called from a bar. The place is ten miles from your house.
Small fucking world, huh?”
“Cain
I can't…”
“This
ain't no request,” says Cain. “Our nearest guy is two hundred
miles away. By the time he gets there, Bob will sober up and
disappear. So it's you, amigo. Your retirement is over.”
*
Irish
Bob never was much of a drinker. More often, you'd catch him in
some warm corner of a coffee house, sipping tea and reading a paperback.
“Don't like to reinforce the old stereotypes,” he'd say.
“Drunk Irishmen and all that.”
But
now, Irish is a changed man. He's at the bar, lining up shots of
Jagermeister. Drinking them down--one, two, three. Slamming
the empty glasses on the bar top. Makes me cringe just watching
it.
The
place is packed tight with twenty-somethings. Beautiful kids,
drinking and laughing the night away. Bob looks out of place
sitting at the bar with them. He's got a red Irish face, weathered
like old tomato. He's got knuckles, big and punch-worn. He's
got hair made of steel wool.
Some
techno crap hammers out from the sound system. I must be too old,
because it's too loud. I'm in a booth, eighteen paces from the
bar. Should be outside waiting in a nice, secluded parking lot.
But this place has too many exits, and I can't afford to lose him.
So
I sit, sipping my Coke, watching the man do a slow motion self-destruct.
And I'm praying to Christ or Buddha or anyone else who'll listen that he
hasn't spotted me.
Five
minutes pass and I find out God's not hearing prayers tonight.
Because there's Irish Bob, eyeing some chick strutting by, turning
around on his stool in my direction. He spots me right off.
Squints across the smoky room, not sure at first. Then a hard
smile stretches across his face.
I
slip the Smith & Wesson Airweight from my waistband and hold it
under the table. It's a .38 special with a mean, stubby
barrel--looks like a bulldog. Only holds five rounds, but I've got
a speed loader in my pocket. Just in case.
Bob
does the alcohol mambo off his stool and swaggers over to my booth.
A gust of air conditioning catches the edge of his Hawaiian shirt and I
glimpse iron in a shoulder rig under his arm. A big automatic.
I see the gun, and I think about those steaks on the grill I abandoned.
I think about my wife and daughter and the brownies they were baking.
“Small
fucking world,” he says. We've got a table between us and he has
to yell to be heard over the music. His voice is thick with the
Jager. I hear a little of his old brogue creep out.
“Second
time I've heard that tonight,” I tell him.
“You
alone?”
“I'm
the only one they could find.”
His
head bobs up and down. At first, I think he's nodding at my
response. Then I realize he's bopping in time with the techno
beat. I look into Bob's eyes. They're red and puffy, like
he's been to a 24-hour party. Or he's been crying.
“Nice
little pub, eh?” he says.
“A
little young for me. Had my forty-second last month. If you
don't mind me saying, it seems a little young for you too Bob.”
This
earns a laugh from him, a mean grunting chuckle. “My boy
would've told me the same thing. He loved this place, my Keith
did. You ever meet him?”
“Just
that once. At one of the picnics Adrastos threw.”
“A
Good kid,” says Bob. “Kinda shy but brainy. Could've
been whatever he wanted. Had a real future. Nothing like
us.”
I
don't have anything to say to this, so I just watch his eyes.
Watch his hands.
“Keith
was the reason I flipped,” says Bob. “The old neighborhood
would've eaten that boy alive. So, I had to get him out.
Only Mr. Adrastos would've never let me go. Course, you know all
about that, don't you Tommy?”
I
keep quiet. Let him have his words.
“My
boy died right outside of here,” says Bob. “Run down by a
drunk driver in the parking lot. I buried him today. No one
came to the funeral but me and some strangers.”
“I'm sorry,” I tell him.
“Not
looking for your sympathy.” He steps back and stands tall,
rolling the kinks out of his neck like a prizefighter.
Blood
pounds between my ears, thumping louder than the techno. My
fingers tighten around the Airweight's grip. “Not here, Bob.”
“No,
not here,” he says. “Of course not. Someone could get
hurt.”
But
while he's talking, Bob's hand creeps up. Inching towards that
gun.
“Don't,”
I tell him.
“He
was all I had left,” Bob says.
Then
his hand flashes under his shirt, and out comes the gun. But it's
not just any gun. It's the gun that made the '90s roar. A
Tec DC-9 machine pistol, ugly as life.
No
time to aim. I pull down on him twice, the Airweight still hidden
underneath the table. The gunshots boom over the music. One
bullet goes astray. One tears into Bob's thigh, sending him
crashing to the floor.
That's
when the screaming starts. The bar crowd makes like a pack of
scared rabbits, running in all directions at once. I wrench the
Airweight up to finish Bob off. But he's still in the game,
sitting there on his butt, Tec-9 at the ready. Has me in his
sights.
I
scramble for my life, throwing the table up for cover. Doesn't do
a damn bit of good. Bob squeezes the trigger and the Tec-9 goes rat-tat-tat
and a storm of bullets shreds the table into kindling. I'm lucky.
I eat some wooden shrapnel instead of a bullet.
Crazy
son of a bitch.
Adrenaline,
molten hot, courses through my veins. I sprint across the barroom
floor, heading for a hallway that leads to the bathrooms. Behind
me the Tec-9 rattles off another burst. The sound is like someone
slapping a bucket over your head then doing a drum solo on it.
There's more screaming from the bar crowd, both girls and guys.
But it's all low ambient noise compared to the fury of the machine
pistol.
A
spray of crimson ruptures the air. A young woman goes down.
She's maybe twenty-two years old. She'll never see twenty-three.
I
dive around a corner into the hallway. Bullets trail behind me,
ripping up the walls. My teeth grit together. I crouch down
low. Listening.
The
gun goes, rat-tat-tat-tat.
Then,
click, click, click.
I
rush out from the hall and find Bob right where I left him. He's
trying to get to his feet, but his ruined leg isn't up to the task.
So he reloads instead, feeding the Tec-9 a fresh clip.
Three
quick steps and I'm on him, raising the Airweight. I fire twice,
but my hand is so shaky, I miss both times. My third shot catches
Bob high in the chest. Knocks him flat.
A
flick of the wrist and the Airweight's cylinder swings free, letting the
spent brass rain down to the floor. No worries about fingerprints.
The shell casings have been wiped, and the gun will soon find itself at
the bottom of a sewer.
I
reload, squint one eye tight, and take careful aim. Irish Bob
grips his chest as blood and puke bubbles out of his mouth. He
flashes me a sad smile, his teeth stained red like some guilty
cannibal's.
“Don't
come to my fucking funeral,” he tells me.
And
that's all he has to say. I put a bullet between his eyes and walk
out the door.
*
At
home, a cold steak is waiting for me in the fridge. I leave it and
walk to my little girl's room. A slash of light creeps in as I
watch her sleep from the doorway. I want to touch her hair, but I
keep my distance. Gunshots still ring in my head. I squeeze
my eyes shut and try to push the sound away.
Down
the hall, my wife is in bed with her back turned to me. I strip to
my boxers and slip under the covers with her. She doesn't stir.
She might really be asleep. Or she might be angry and faking it so
she won't have to talk to me. It doesn't matter. I slide my
arm over her and pull her close.
She
doesn't move away. And if she notices that my body is trembling,
she doesn't say a word about it.
Copyright 2006 by Mike Maclean
A teacher of
America's youth, Mike MacLean lives in Tempe, Arizona with his wife and
dogs. His work has been seen in Thrilling Detective, Thug Lit,
Plots with Guns, Phoenix Magazine and elsewhere. When not
teaching or writing, Mike gets kicked around on a regular basis
practicing Ja-Shin-Do.
If you're bored
or drunk or both you can write Mike at maclean7@cox.net
and tell him how you liked his story. If you didn't like his
story, keep it to yourself. Seriously, he doesn't need the
aggravation.
