One for My Baby (Phoenix Noir Book 4) (6 page)

“Fuck, Mark, I’m sorry,” Tony said.

Mark told Tony his address. “Will you remember that? If I don’t contact you, will you make sure my cat’s okay? His name’s Pangur Ban.”

Tony nodded, and repeated the address, then wrote it on a napkin.

“Thanks for helping me out,” Mark said. “You’re a friend.”

When Mark had left with the men, Tony stood looking at the keyboard he had played. He looked at the stool Mark had sat on while playing. He went to the restroom, bent over the toilet and retched, but nothing came up.

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T
he floor
was concrete. The room was cool, so the walls were probably thick, but that didn’t matter because the place wasn’t close to anywhere there might be people who would hear anything.  Mark wasn’t even sure which direction they’d driven in—he knew it was to the West, but didn’t know if they’d gone North or South. Phoenix  is on a grid, so you always have some idea of where you are, but fear had shut down the part of his brain that could process such information. As they got out of the car, he realized they were on the edge of some kind of industrial district.

The room had no furniture aside from some metal chairs. When Casci and Fitzgerald brought Mark in, Linda was sitting on one chair, and Rankin on another. Linda was exactly as she’d been in the photo they’d shown Mark, handcuffed to the chair, looking a decade older than she was. She looked at Mark, but her face didn’t change and she said nothing.

“How was the show?” Rankin said.

“The boy can sing and play the piano for sure,” Casci said. “So now it’s the after-party.”

“These chairs are damn uncomfortable,” Rankin said.

“Sorry about that. I usually stand when I’m here. This place really isn’t a lounge. And stainless steel chairs are the best, because you can just wipe the blood right off of them.”

Rankin looked admiringly at Mark’s suit and Fedora. “It’ll be a shame to get blood on those threads.”

“He won’t need them,” Casci said.

“I used my only pair of cuffs on her. Do you want me to take them off her and use them on him?”

“No need. Since his music and dress sense is so old school, we’re gonna do this in his kind of style. Show him, Fitz.”

Fitzgerald reached inside his jacket and pulled a 12-inch beaver-tail sap. He swung it at Mark, and, even though Mark saw it coming and tried to dodge, it landed on his shoulder and he went to the floor, shrieking in pain, clutching his shoulder and curling into a ball.

Fitzgerald and Casci grinned at each other. Rankin looked grim. Linda didn’t seem to register what was happening.

“See?” Casci said. “A little tap with a traditional tool and you don’t need to worry about handcuffs. The cops in the old days knew that.”

“This sap belonged to my gramps,” Fitzgerald said. “He was a cop.”

Casci looked at Linda. “Got anything to say to him, since you missed your chance with Joel?”

Linda said nothing, seemed to be looking at something very far away.

“She’s a real femme fatale, this one,” Casci told Mark. “You’ll be the second one who’s died for her this week. Don’t worry, she’ll be following right behind you. Proceed, Fitz.”

Mark tried to roll away from Fitzgerald, but he was in so much pain it was hard to draw enough breath to make the effort. Fitzgerald raised the sap to hit him again, and it fell on Mark with an explosive sound, the sound of Rankin’s service weapon as he shot Fitzgerald in the face.

Mark lay there, deafened by the noise, trying to understand what had happened, what was still happening. After a while—seconds or minutes or more, he couldn’t tell—he managed to roll over onto his side, and found himself looking into the face of Fitzgerald, who had a small hole just beside his nose and a big hole in the top of his head out of which dark blood pumped and red meat sprouted. It occurred to Mark that it looked as though Fitzgerald had hemorrhoids sticking out of his head. That seemed funny, and he thought he heard himself laughing, and then he realized it wasn’t him.

It was Linda. Handcuffed to her chair, she was giggling like a little girl, staring at Fitzgerald’s corpse.

Mark sat up and looked around. Rankin was holding the gun he had used on Fitzgerald, but now he had it pointed at Casci.

“You’ve just gotten too crazy, Serge,” he was saying. “I mean, your fucking bartender, and now the girl? Come on. If it had just been this idiot, I wouldn’t have minded, but you’ve gone off at the deep end. This isn’t business, it’s turning into serial killing.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Casci said. “What do you think you’re going to do? You think you can just walk away from this?”

“I’m winging it, but I think I had to kill you and Irish to rescue these two unfortunates whom you were about to kill. I’m just heroic that way. Is that a story you can get behind, Sharpton?”

“No objection from me,” Mark said, his voice shaking.

“How about you, Linda?” Rankin said. “You’re good at lying to cover up crimes.”

Linda kept giggling, but didn’t speak.

“It sounds like she’s lost it,” Rankin said. “Better take her outside so she doesn’t have to see this. Can you stand up?”

“I’m trying to,” Mark said.

“You’re all fucking pathetic,” Casci said. “That cackling bitch might be the sanest one of you. You really just gonna kill me, Owen?”

“That’s the plan.” Rankin put a hand in his pocket and pulled out handcuff keys. He tossed them at Mark, and they landed on the floor beside him. “Here, take the cuffs off Linda, and both of you go outside.”

“Okay,” Mark said. He got slowly to his feet. His left arm was numb from shoulder to fingertips, but his right felt okay. He bent down and reached for the keys, reached past them, picked up Fitzgerald’s sap, turned around and laid it across the side of Rankin’s head.

Rankin went into a seizure as he fell. Mark stumbled backward, tripped over Fitzgerald’s corpse and fell. Casci let out a shuddering breath of relief and started to walk toward Rankin. Mark crawled after Casci, threw his arm around his legs and pulled them from under him. Casci cried out in pain as he hit the floor, but the sound of it was drowned out by Linda’s giggles. Mark crawled past Casci, got Rankin’s gun, rolled over, pointed it at Casci.

“What now?” Casci said.

“I don’t know. Do you?”

“No. Why did you brain Rankin? He was letting you go.”

“I don’t like him. He let your fucking goon hit me with the sap before he shot him. I don’t trust him to fix this.”

“I think he might be dead.”

“Good. If he isn’t, one of us should kill him.”

“Us? What does ‘us’ mean? I don’t like you. I don’t like you at all.”

“I don’t mind if you like me, dislike me, or scream my name during orgasm. I’d like to shoot you right now, but I think we should call it even and work something out.”

“Why?”

“Because if I shoot you, all I’ve got is three dead bodies and a woman having a breakdown. I can’t make all that disappear, but I’m sure you can.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“I don’t shoot you.”

“You think you could? You ever killed anybody?”

Mark turned the gun toward Rankin and shot him in the head, turned it back on Casci as the sound of it bounced off the walls. “I have now.”

“If I agree to call it even, how do you know I’ll leave it at that?”

“I don’t, but it’s the best deal I’m going to get. I’m hoping you’ll see reason. We’re both businessmen. It’s the invisible hand of the market.”

“Oh, don’t start that, you goddamn hypocrite. If you believed in the free market, you wouldn’t rob independent businesses.”

Linda stopped giggling. “I’m fucking sick of listening to you ignorant, arrogant, stupid plebeians. Learn to fucking read, both of you.”

Casci said, “What now? Who the hell are you—?”

“I’m somebody with a doctorate in philosophy who has to listen to morons like you two talking shit all the time. Whichever of you has the gun, do me a favor and shoot me. Or else shut the fuck up till you get yourself an education.”

Mark felt absurdly wounded. “You know I’ve read
The Wealth of Nations
,” he said.

“If so, you’re either a hypocrite like he says, or you’re too stupid to understand it. It’s not about having carte blanche to be a robber baron. Smith argued that the market should be regulated. Fucking Reagan made the same mistake you make.”

Casci laughed, and it had a similar note to Linda’s giggling. “I have that book. I’ve got the nice Everyman edition, but I’ve never read it.”

Linda closed her eyes. “Well, you should. Maybe you could explain it to this idiot after you do.”

Mark said, “I didn’t have to be here. I could have gotten away. I came with them because they had you. I wanted to try to help you.”

Her eyes remained closed, and when she spoke she sounded as though she might be falling asleep. “Well, one hell of a fucking job you made of it.”

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T
hree weeks
later, Mark was driving Casci to Phoenix Sky Harbor.

“When will you be back?” he asked him.

“I don’t know,” Casci said. “I could stay. They’re never going to find Rankin, and they don’t care about the others. But I prefer not to be around for awhile until I’m sure they won’t imagine some connection between me and him.”

“Makes sense to me,” Mark said.

“But I
will
be back,” Casci said. “And, now that I’ve found somebody I trust to run my business, you
will
work there a full year if you want us to be even. I don’t know if I’ll be back during that time, but I promise you’ll be making the biggest mistake of your young, dumb life if you even miss a day’s work without permission.”

“I understand.”

“I hope you do. Don’t get any ideas about running. There’s no hiding place for someone like you.”

“I believe you.”

“It’s like you said. We’re businessmen. And the market decides who wins and who loses, who swallows who, who works for who, who’s the big guy and who’s the little guy. It’s America.”

“Fair enough.”

“Take care, little guy. Say hi to Linda if you talk to her.”

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W
hen he
left the airport, it was mid-afternoon, and he had a few hours before he had to go to work. He went to his apartment and decided to take a nap. Before he did, he texted Linda:
“I miss you. Any chance we could hang out sometime?”

When he woke two hours later, he read her reply:
“Hey. I don’t think so. I hope you’re doing okay. p.s. Try reading Marx.”

It was what he’d expected, but it still hurt.

He drank some coffee, ate a grilled cheese sandwich, showered, put on a suit, striped tie and Fedora, and drove to Green Life. Ryan, the new manager, was behind the bar. He smirked at Mark as he walked in. “Hey, piano man. Nice to see you’re on time. Plenty of customers already. Go tickle those ivories.”

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