Now either he, Rita, or both had crossed me. Picked up for questioning by the police was getting serious. Now Bang watched me, so I had to fly arrow straight, or next time I'd do the frog's march into his 4'x8' rat cage. Skipping town, or better yet the Lower 48, dominated my thoughts. My next step, then, was to see the master forger I knew to gin me up a passport.
Back in the coupé cruising the infernal streets of
Old
Yvor
City
, I'd half a mind to swing back to the mailbox and take my sawed-off 12-gauge out of storage. Next to the
Lincoln
's Dog Tavern, I braked for a red traffic light. A homeless bum in a tattered field jacket and skully thumbed the crosswalk button, a waste since the buttons were fakes. The bum waltzed into my headlight's direct beams.
He toted a cracked plastic bucket and squeegee, and I saw through his scam. He hustled up to the coupé, set to clean my windshield for a fee. He dribbled the water off the squeegee onto the windshield glass and squeaked the squeegee over its surface. I leaned over in the seat and pecked my bent knuckle on my side of the windshield glass.
"No reason to do that," I said. "Just go on your way."
He waved me off and sloshed on more water and took a second longer swipe of the squeegee. I felt tempted to put on the wipers and squirt the washer fluid to get rid of him.
"Hey there, brother, I've got no spare money, and I can't pay you. Hear me?"
He canted his chin and grinned at me.
"What the—"
Before I could utter the rest of my sentence, the bum pitched aside his cleaning tools, whipped open the door, and flounced down in the passenger seat.
I gave him a stern warning. "Man, one of these days…"
"Chill out," said the bum. "Did you forget about me? Didn't you leave on your beeper?"
"Look, D. Noble, I've been a little busy tonight."
D. Noble Yeatman, my old pal back home from visiting his "cousin" in
Philadelphia
, wiggled out of his field jacket and skully disguise and tossed them over his shoulder into the rear seat. He'd been waiting around at the
Lincoln
's Dog Tavern like I'd asked him to do until I showed up.
"We be cool. Just drive us, James. What's with the
Kobe
shaved coif?"
I rubbed my bald scalp. "I like it cut this way. Less maintenance."
"I see. Now what's buzzing again?"
"Po-po."
"Already? Man, I told you to hang loose. Who?"
"His name is Bang. Claims he's got it out for me and is watching. Frankly, I think he's full of shit."
"Yeah, Bang. I know about him. He's just a blowhard with a badge. Now what's this 'situation' you brought up?"
Giving D. Noble the digest version, I laid out what had gone down over the past two eventful days. He never interrupted me until I finished, and he snorted.
"Mr. Ogg is dog shit. Period."
"Agreed but he's well-guarded dog shit."
"We'll keep rubbing out his dark suits until we can get to him and finish it. How many does he use?"
"Six or seven, more if his boss in
Baltimore
sends them down."
"What's that?" D. Noble's tone sharpened as his look over fixed on me. "I thought Mr. Ogg is the boss."
"Uh-uh, he's just the boss here."
"He's connected. Is that what you're laying on me?"
"I thought you knew that already."
"I'd no idea. Are we taking on the mob?"
I shrugged. "Do they still go by that name?"
"They bring numbers, but we've got just you and me."
"Don't lose it, D. Noble. We'll just keep a low profile out of his sight. Now who all knows you're back in the city?"
"My mama is it."
"Good. Keep it that way."
"Whatever you say. Now I want to know did you ever hit it?"
"Gwen?"
"Who else? I'm asking if you shagged her."
"She was fine, and I jumped her bones this once. What's your point?"
"Lust gives the cops a possible motive for your murdering her."
"I told you they've got nothing on me. I also got us some more help. Esquire should be at home."
"Nope. That's it. Drop me at my mama's house. That faggot ain't getting my back."
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't this 'faggot' save your ass more than once back when?"
"Just the one time, so yeah, he did."
"He spared you from pulling loads of slammer time."
"Yeah, I guess that's so. More or less."
"I think it's more, and now you talk smack about him. That's gratitude for you."
"The truth is I don't trust Esquire. Have you seen him with his dude lover?"
"Esquire's dude lover has a name: Hermes."
"Dumb name. Have you met this Hermes?"
"Just to hear Esquire talk of him."
"Talk is all. I'm of the mind he makes up this shit for getting attention. At school he wasn't gay, and he scored twice the ass I ever did. Then he takes it into his mind that he swings the other way."
I shrugged. "So tell Esquire. I take him at his word. Call him a liar, and he'll rearrange your body parts like Mister Twisto's."
"If we get into a sticky spot, Esquire will be our go-to guy. Can you live with that compromise?"
"You bet your ass I can, sweetheart," I replied, imitating Esquire.
"Up yours, Tommy Mack," said D. Noble.
I
n all the jobs I finished over my tenure, I suffered just the one gunshot wound. It wasn't a serious hit, since the .22 slug just grazed my shoulder, leaving a scab and later a faint half-moon scar. Believe it or not, the .22 slug was mine, an errant shot ricocheting off the concrete wall. But the injury goaded me to slow down a little and take stock of my vocation.
In a fair fight, say in a pistol duel, I speculated if I'd be the last man standing after the smoke cleared, and the dust settled. Not one of my targets had been armed by a weapon more pernicious than a PDA. I never gave them a chance to mount any defense. In fact, the lion's share never knew what hit them. Was I a coward and monster? A few might argue I was, but I didn't hold myself in such contempt. Surprise was vital because without it, my perfect record was impossible. My skill left me feeling proud if not a bit vain.
If I staged my hit as a mugging gone south, I swiped an item of value—say, a camera, wallet, purse, or watch—to make it look real. But I ditched the stolen swag rather than hocked it at a pawnshop. After all, I'd been paid—half before and half after—so running the risk to pocket some extra money was bone-headed. If I strayed into stupid and got collared, I deserved what lumps I had coming to me. Things didn't always run smooth as silk because once or twice I hit a snag.
One knucklehead, Copperthite—99.9% of my jobs cancelled out such low rents of one ilk or the other—had been skimming off the top of Mr. Ogg's collections. Deceit like his riled the bosses, the vindictive Mr. Ogg in particular. The lure of the long green must've scrambled Copperthite's brains like crystal meth did to its hard-core fiends. After shadowing him over three days, I plotted his patterns, and I X'd the ambush site in a short-cut alleyway he often liked to use.
Then, on the lights out Sunday, he got this sudden itch to take a detour. It almost knocked me off-kilter, but I resorted to my fix-it-on-the-fly mode. He signaled his turn at an animal hospital on Draco and scuttled around to park in the rear. I nestled the coupé between a nearby tanning salon, karate dojo, and electronics shop where everything was closed on a Sunday.
By the time I'd hoofed it over to him parked behind the animal hospital, I observed he was no longer alone. A mop-headed, bottle blonde was going down on him in the front seat for a little Sunday morning delight. An eyewitness like his whore could finger me out of a police six-pack, so I waited, and she proved efficient. He paid her, and she strutted off in candy red stilettos to Draco and left in her idling pimp's convertible she'd fetched.
Copperthite rested his forehead against the steering wheel's upper arc as if absorbed in prayer. Stealthy as a mongoose, I skulked out of hiding and over to his car, clutched the door latch, and juked into the rear seat before he could snap out of his trance. Before I could fire my .22 twice, he whipped around his head. He knew me, why his eyes enlarged and nostrils flayed. His Adam's apple toggled up and down before he used a rusty cadence.
"Hey there, Tommy Mack."
Small talk only delayed the inevitable. "Yo, Copperthite. What's doin', my man?"
"Oh, you know how it is. Just taking care of business."
"But not in the prescribed manner, huh? You jacked the boss's money."
"Who me?" He gave an innocent headshake. "You got the wrong information. I go by the rules. I’m a company man, through and through."
"I don't think so. That's why I'm in your heap instead of my bed."
He twisted around in stovepipe jeans and propped his pointy-toed shoes up on the other bucket seat before he pasted on a conspiratorial grin. "Okay, you got me. But I've salted away thousands, Tommy Mack. Let's make a deal."
"Deal?"
"I cut you in on the action; I vanish into blue limbo; and Mr. Ogg is satisfied that I'm out of the picture. Win-win-win. Dig?"
Leaning forward, I acted as if I was intrigued. "I dig. What's my cut?"
Copperthite the wheeler-dealer shrugged. "Name your price."
"More than you got."
"Don't be so sure."
"Here's the fatal flaw in your terms. Mr. Ogg expects to see a corpse. Yours."
"Oh. Well."
"If not yours, then it's mine, and you lose every time in that scenario."
"We go back, Tommy Mack. Way back. Fudge this one if just for old time's sake."
"Too late. Old times can't save you. Not even a miracle can."
"Wait, I've also got some dirt on Mr. Ogg."
My arcing gun hand halted in its taking aim. "Dirt?"
"Got your interest, eh? Well, I'll lay it out for you."
"You got two minutes. Speak."
"I know Mr. Ogg keeps a little, blue book. I found it."
"Quit busting my balls. How? He's blind as a newt."
"Not always he wasn't. He knows how to print. It ain't pretty, but it's legible, and I read it front to back."
"You roach. Who he boinks is his personal affair, not mine."
"Is that what you think it is?" Copperthite laughed, a strangled croak. "Mr. Ogg has got you
by the short hairs, dude. It's his list."
List
. Fear shoved its lit road-flare up my anus. All button men abhorred "The List" being lorded over their necks like a bloody guillotine blade. Why? The list of different hit jobs sealed our doom if it fell into the wrong hands. But I'd a hunch Copperthite would sing out anything to delay me. "Say your last Hail Mary," I said.
"Hey, wait. Mr. Ogg kept a tally on you. He named names. Places. Dates. Times. Asterisks…"
I squirmed on my seat of nails, and my voice squeaked as scratchy as Copperthite's just had. "Asterisks…?"
"They break down Mr. Ogg's inventory of the pieces—
your
pieces—he keeps stored in a safe deposit box."
That part of Copperthite's claim smacked of the truth. Lately I'd turned the murder weapons back into Mr. Ogg who smelted them down and sold them for scrap. Or that's what he'd told me, and dumb me believed him.
"Here's one from the list," said Copperthite. "You went to Alamo
Rex
,
Texas
. Mr. Ogg ordered you there to take care of a police snitch. He recorded the date and who you whacked. Or go back to your first job that’s recorded. Your mark was a rich lady living in
New
Yvor
City
. You used a .22. Guess what? He kept the .22 you returned to him, and it earned an asterisk. He's flagged you with a dozen asterisks. Do you see now why I say he's got you by the short hairs?"