I drove off, my quivery foot mashing the gas pedal. Each heartbeat vibrated the joints to my skeleton. My thoughts grappled for the reason why a pair of .22 caps, my signature MO, had killed Gwen. I knew I hadn't worked in a good while. I got my .22 handguns clean, did my deed, and often heaved them from the coupé while crossing
Key
Bridge
deserted in the wee hours. The other times I returned my fired .22s to Mr. Ogg for their meltdown. Or so he assured me.
My misfiring nerves kept shorting out, and I'd given my Blue Castles to Mr. Ogg. As I debated on where I'd buy a new carton, my beeper chortled. The phone number displayed was a mystery. I dashed into the near full parking lot to the washerette operated by a Korean dude whose surname I couldn't pronounce much less spell even if I could remember it. He'd chased off the phone company techs who came to confiscate his coin phone. He was that fond of it.
The rows of dryers and washers made it as stuffy as it had felt inside Gwen's townhouse. Three tattooed ladies waiting on the parson's benches chattered on their cell phones, and just one spoke English. I bought my pack of Blue Castles from out of the cigarette machine. No queue formed at the public phone where I slotted in two quarters (the same cost since '01) and dialed the number given on my beeper.
Cautious, I greeted my beckoner. "Hello…?"
"Tommy Mack Zane?" He was a brother. "Is that you?"
"Who is this? Where did you get my number?"
"Be easy, Tommy Mack. You’ve got D. Noble."
"D. Noble." I stared straight into the crypt-like darkness of the opened drum door to the nearest dryer. "D. Noble Yeatman?"
"The one and only. I took a chance and hit your old beeper."
"Can't be. Just can't. You're dead. From AIDS. I talked to your mamma three hours ago. Oh-oh, wait there. Hold on. Don't tell me I've got a ghost on the line. My nerves can't deal with any supernatural shit, not after the kind of morning I've had."
"Ghosts don't talk on the phone, home slice."
"She lied? Is that what you're laying on me?"
"Bad word choice. Mama screens my calls and uses the AIDS fib as my cover. You can't be too careful."
"Are things that rough for you?"
"Well, I'm keeping together body and soul."
"Ain't we all."
"What's on your mind?"
"Before your alleged demise, I wanted to say hey is all."
"Right back at you. Long time, no see. Too damn long. What's your hustle now?"
"Same one as before."
"Say what? That was a temp thing to tide you over."
"Right, well, I still prefer to view it that way."
"The money and hours must be unbeatable."
"No major beefs. Where are you?"
"I'm in Philly where I’ve been staying with my, uh, cousin."
"Your cousin must be F-I-N-E fine."
"Put it this way. They don't come any finer."
"You be making it back this way anytime soon?"
"Could be. You be needing a hand, Tommy Mack?"
"Well, you see, this situation has come up…"
"Say no more. My ass is in the south wind. Be looking for me tomorrow."
"Rendezvous at the
Lincoln
's Dog Tavern. Just hang there, and I'll be by in the same coupé."
"I remember your ghetto sled well."
"Or just beep me when you hit town."
"Beep you hell. You got a cell phone?"
"Nope, I don't believe in them."
"Still? Uh-uh, we can't have that tired shit. I'll get you fixed up."
"Just get down here. I'm in a tough jam."
"Hang in until I do. Later, Tommy Mack."
I returned the phone receiver and fingered the return coin slot. Pocketing a quarter and discarding the found zinc slug rewarded my diligence. Hearing my friend's voice helped to steel my droopy mood, and any time speculating why he'd set up the death-by-AIDS ploy with his mamma was pointless. I also relied on a few ploys, and I figured D. Noble's troubles paled when stacked up against mine.
My hope was his loyalty for his old homey in D.C. trumped his addiction to the new poontang in Philly. We'd see. My analysis gave me a better than even coin toss he'd show. D. Noble was fearless and reckless, volatile traits when blended, but I wasn't picky about the personality quirks of my few allies.
Meantime I drove off on my new quest. By now I suspected my boss, Mr. Ogg, was framing me for the homicide rap of his niece, Gwen. Christ. I wanted to puke. Ferreting out the information to be doubly sure of it was new for me. Usually I got the target's name up front, no mystery. I might run a tail job over a few days to plot his routines and patterns. That gave me an edge when shaping up my plans on when and where to whack him. No big deal.
After stopping by a Greek joint, I ordered their jumbo gyro and greasiest platter of shoestring fries on this side of the truck stop. If I faced switching a new lean diet to rein in my high cholesterol, then I'd splurge on my old diet while it lasted. By the time I paid the cashier and left I knew I better recheck something. When I sat again in the coupé, I leaned over the seat, and thumbed open the glove compartment. The black velvet drawstring bag kept my 9-mm.
It weighed as heavy as my meal did, and a sweat ring seeped out along my scalp. My heartbeat lurched, creating the wobbly flutters bound to upset Dr. Izellah. The 9-mm, the tool of my trade, was equivalent to a pimp's bling, a magician's wand, or a junkie's spike. The 9-mm had no life of its own, but in the wrong or right hands, depending on your point of view, it cancelled—
pop, pop
—human life. Still the 9-mm exerted a dark mystical hold over me; like Macbeth's trio of witches did over him.
My fingers untied the drawstring and unlimbered it. They probed the velvet bag, pinched the grips, and slid out the 9-mm. Its solid heft filling my palm felt righteous. Peering at it, I waited to see what happened next as I held my breath in anticipation.
"Damn! I don't believe it! Not again!"
I dropped the 9-mm and jiggled my gun hand, but it was true. The same scarlet rash had attacked my skin like a virulent outbreak of the German measles. According to Mr. Ogg's quack dermatologist, my skin reacted from coming into physical contact with the gun steel that had grown toxic to my system. My disbelieving glare had speared her.
Barbers contracted similar skin allergies, she said, from using steel scissors and had to quit their occupation to take up a new career field. There was no cure. Impossible, I told her. I was too old—54—to break into a new hustle. Wasn't there a treatment—even an experimental one involving steroids, boric acid, or laetrile—available? Short of attaching an artificial hand, just grin and bear it, she’d replied with a straight face.
I picked up the 9-mm, what over the years of regular use had fused into an extension of me. Was the rash a plague sent to punish me for not living right? The longer I palmed the 9-mm, the uglier and redder the rash grew until the raw blisters buckled open on my knuckles. The splinters of pain ached as if I sat grit-blasting the flesh off my hands. When it grew too agonizing, I crammed the 9-mm back into its velvet bag, cinched the drawstring together, and slung it into the glove compartment.
In a matter of seconds, the rash vanished right before my eyes. Nothing, not even the pockmarks or scabs, marred my skin. An amazing phenomenon, you bet, except I'd hotter priorities to occupy me, you know, like staying alive. I torched a
Blue
Castle
and downed the coupé's window before I put on the rebroadcast of Kojo Nnamdi's NPR talk show, a favorite pastime of mine.
Surely, by now the tidings had reached Gwen's next of kin. Her older sister Rita was a level-headed, fair-minded lady, and by the time the
Blue
Castle
was left as just a cherry ember, I decided to reach out to her. I flicked the hot butt out the window while sorting through my brain's Rolodex of the public phones. The city fathers had razed the nine-pins alley for luxury apartments, so I trashed that card.
Gas-N-Sips always yielded the best chances. So, I hit the nearest one and cursed at where the phone company had struck. A topless steel pedestal with a few stray wires marked where the coin phone had once stood mounted. My consolation on the next block was a phone still on its steel pedestal before a chiropractor's clinic. I thought of treating my old sciatica as I dialed up Rita. The street noise to the passing car engines in one ear counterpointed the tinny rings in my other. A lady's snobbish mewl answered.
"Rita? Rita Ogg?" I said.
"This is she. Who is this, may I ask?"
"Tommy Mack Zane."
"Oh.
You
."
I winced at her snarky tone. She'd heard, and I was cast as the villain. Before she flew into a rant, my words clipped out. "Look, I'd nothing to do with Gwen's death. Somebody has framed me."
"Fat chance."
"What reason did I have? Tell me. What's my possible motive?"
"Motive?" Her icy laugh could freeze a flow of red molten lava into glacial ice. "Since when did your ilk ever need a motive to kill?"
"Your uncle ordered me to check into her problem, so I went to her townhouse. When I arrived, she lay dead on her brass bed."
"Why did you go off and leave her that way?"
"My shock understandably panicked me." I made my plea. "At least give me the decency to fully explain my side."
"Decency." Her same spine-tingling laugh pealed out. "What do you know about decency, Tommy Mack?"
This was breaking down as a quarrel I couldn't win, at least not with Rita. "You're making a big mistake. I did
not
kill your sister. You have to believe me, Rita. I've got no cause to lie to you."
"Methinks, you doth protest too much, asshole."
"Bear with me. Analyze it like the homicide cops will do. Did Gwen make any enemies? Did anybody stalk her? Did she cross anybody? Did she have a recent feud? Had she gotten death threats or obscene phone calls or emails? Those are the right questions to ask and smoke out the guilty culprit. It wasn’t me."
"You're just blowing sunshine up my ass."
"No I’m not. Others in my trade must use the two-behind-the-ear technique."
"Good bye and good luck. You're going to need every bit you can scrounge up, I expect."
I hated it when the other party got in the last word and hung up the phone in my ear. My callback got a busy signal. It didn't take an Einstein to dope out who she'd called. Pretending to be enraged, Mr. Ogg would seek his revenge. The irony of the hit now being contracted to make on the hit man prompted me to laugh.
T
he infamous killers fired bullets of various calibers to fell their prey. In ascending order, Malvo shot a .223, Chapman a .38,
Cunanan a .40, Billy the Kid a .41,
Son of Sam a .44,
Guiteau a .442, and
The Zodiac Killer a monster .45. My point was each size of caliber, small to large, killed mortals just as dead. I didn't equate any of those assassins to me, but I'd studied their MOs, usually on what errors not to repeat since most died young or went in stir. Zodiac, the exception, must've retired to a condo village in
Boca Raton
to paint his watercolors of sad clowns and fortunetellers.
A .22 cap had snuffed out Gwen's brief candle. If I had to choose a favorite caliber, I'd pick the deuce-deuce. A .22 with a silencer add-on performed the best, and its teardrop-sized slug pinballed inside the victim's cranium. Some clandestine bastard—my pile of blue chips had gone on Mr. Ogg's square—knew my MO. He'd copied it to set me up for her cold-blooded murder.
I veered off the main drag, prowling down a gravel side lane and saw the Vietnamese delicatessen and Nigerian tune up garage had closed since my last visit. Damn lousy economy. Next up, the auto upholstery shop sported an Art Deco theme—splashy reds, yellows, and blues—and I docked in its shade. At the sight of my old hanging post, my nerves lost some of their jitters since I'd shared lots of hearty laughs inside where I ambled through the door.
The neat's-foot oil used for leather treatment was the pervasive odor. My shoes squished over the tufts of high-density, yellow foam strewn over the buff concrete floor. The nicotine coat on the white paint gave the sheet metal walls and ceiling a jaundiced tint. The 16-foot work bench held a jumble of dowel rods, glue tubes, wooden mallets, and odd carpet remnants. A toolbox rolled off to the side brimmed over with staple lifters, magnetized tack hammers, gooseneck webbing stretchers, and I don't know what all tools. I'd watched Esquire use the curved and straight needles to sew on the replacement upholstery by hand.