The Barkeep (42 page)

“Just a guy,” said Derek.

“I think I know someone who lives near here somewhere,” says Cody.

“A friend?”

“Sort of.”

“That is nice.”

“This guy inside. What did he do?”

“He has money,” says Derek, taking the slim pack of tools out of his pocket. He runs his finger along the slot of the lock and then picks out a wrench that fits the hole.

“But what did he do to deserve what you’re going to do?”

“Vern makes that decision. I just do the job.”

“Vern, huh?”

“He tells me what to do. He plans the jobs and takes care of the money and takes care of me. I need Vern, or someone like Vern.”

“You said the money was inside.”

“For Vern.” Derek takes his eye off the door and looks at Cody, jiggling in the street like he has to pee. “But you can have it if you want.”

“Then what about Vern?”

“You would be Vern,” says Derek. He turns back to the door, looks at the lock for a moment, and then puts his hand on the knob. It turns sweetly.

“Uh oh,” says Derek.

“What?”

“It was not locked.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he is waiting for me.”

“Maybe we should go.”

“No, it is okay. Vern said I needed to talk to him to get the money.”

“And then you’ll go.”

Derek puts a finger up to his lips before he opens the door just wide enough to slip inside. He waits for Cody to follow. Cody eventually does.

“What do you do now?” whispers Cody.

“Find the job.”

62.

MAD MONK

J
ustin, sitting cross-legged near the back wall of his tiny third-floor room, about ten feet from the stairway, felt something stir downstairs, something so slight it was less a stir than the thought of a stir. He wondered if he imagined it, but even so, he lifted his hands from his knees and put them in the pockets of his loose silk robe. With his right hand, he fingered the grip of the gun.

This wasn’t the first time his nerves had sparked at a scrap of sound. He was trying to maintain his cool, the cool he’d need in the coming confrontation, but he was failing. Three days ago he would have been better at it, would have let the fear and the fret flow out of the pool of his being, leaving nothing but his barkeep’s level affect to deal with the coming confrontation, but three days ago he still believed in the tooth fairy. He had lost the equipoise he had been pursuing since he had been handed the book in the asylum, had lost the very notion that his being was a pool, had lost it all and was glad. For he knew now there was evil in the world, just as there was evil in his blood, and no placid little pond was enough to fend against its awful hand.

It was the photograph in the lawyer’s office that showed it to him plain, once he allowed himself to accept the truth of it.
It wasn’t a strange and remarkable coincidence that his father and his mother’s murderer were in the same prison at the same time. It was as natural as breathing, because they both were one and the same. And what of Birdie Grackle? He was merely a rancid figment of his father’s deranged imagination. He was bait leading Justin to find an alternative suspect to present at the precious motion for a new trial. And Justin, always the sucker, took the bait like a hungry marlin and towed that boat right into the harbor.

But Justin’s father was still stuck in jail, which left Justin with Vernon Bickham to deal with. Vernon Bickham had been up for release and thereby held something of great value that Justin’s father might never know, freedom. And so Justin’s father had sent Vernon Bickham out into the world to wreak all kinds of havoc in order to win Justin’s father’s freedom. And it didn’t matter who Vernon mauled in the process. Uncle Timmy? His changed story was enough to get the motion for the new trial heard but not granted; his newfound lie would have fallen apart on the stand, so he had to go. And Janet Moss? She was doomed as soon as Justin found her, because as a suspect, she was first-rate until the cops looked closer, so Vern had to stop the cops from looking closer. And Justin? He was first tempted by the ghostly Birdie Grackle and then beaten and warned to stop looking into his mother’s murder, all so he could be duped into searching the ruins of his past for his father’s answer.

Cody had mentioned that the man he knew as Birdie Grackle was going to hit it rich on some insurance scam, and Justin could very well imagine exactly what he had in mind. One million dollars, the insurance payout on the death of Eleanor Chase, denied by the insurance company because of Mackenzie Chase’s conviction. But it would have to be paid if he was
found not guilty. And the benefits would be signed over, immediately, either legally or extralegally, to one Vernon Bickham if all went as planned.

Son of a bitch.

But the extra ten thousand, that wasn’t Justin’s father’s idea, that was Bickham’s own little play, to tide him over until the million came through. Justin could see it on his father’s face in the prison visiting room, the disbelief and then the anger when he realized this whole brutal attempt to get himself out of his life sentence could founder on the shoals of the greed of his own fictional character, Birdie Grackle. Because if the cops got wind that Janet Moss hadn’t really killed herself in grief over what she had done, but had instead been murdered for maximum evidentiary impact, the ruthless cavalcade of lies and death would all be for naught.

So now Vernon Bickham was coming. Or Vernon’s muscle that Cody had warned him about, no doubt the homunculus that had delivered the brutal warning in this very house, was coming. Or maybe both of them were coming. But all that was important was that someone was coming. Justin had made sure of it, by telling his father about the fingerprints and the plan to go to the police, leaving this one night as his father’s one chance to nip the destruction of his carefully laid plan in the bud. Justin’s father would unleash his hound, and someone would be coming, because there was too much at stake for him not to come, and Justin would be ready.

He had left the doors to his house open and had left the lights dim, except for the bright light burning on the third floor, all to lead his killer up to him step-by-step. Resting on the tatami mat in front of Justin was the envelope, the money fanning out of its opening in an eye-catching display of the most delicious mint green. And in the pocket of his robe,
opposite the gun, was a voice recorder, ready to be flicked on as soon as Justin heard the inevitable footfalls rising up the stairs. No matter who showed, he would refuse to give the money to anyone other than Birdie, because with Birdie, there would be a moment of conversation before the violence flared, Justin was sure of it. The Birdie Grackle who had stepped into Zenzibar, no matter how unreal, couldn’t resist a little crowing, a tall tale or two, the deranged aphorism. And Justin would let him talk. Justin wanted the world to hear what Birdie Grackle had to say, he wanted the world to be certain beyond certainties about his father’s guilt.

And then Justin would kill him, and in so doing, kill his own father’s hopes dead.

Another sound from below, just as faint as the first, as much a ghost of a stir as anything else. But it was enough to let him know. The fingers that were tapping on the edge of the gun’s grip now wrapped around it. The first bullet was already chambered. He turned on the voice recorder with his left hand and placed his right forefinger on the outside of the trigger guard.

Derek is not happy. Vern said the back door would be locked, but the door was not locked. Vern said that the job would not be expecting him, but something in the small house gives Derek the sense that he is very much expected. The lights on the first floor are dimmed, but not off, so that Derek can conveniently make his way through the kitchen without banging into the stove or table. And there is a brighter light bouncing down the stairs, as if a sign.
I’m up here, expecting you.
Vern told him the job would not be armed, but if Vern is wrong about everything else, he might be wrong about that, too.

Derek backs away from jobs if they feel wrong to him. If something does not match the information he has been given, or if something starts making Derek afraid, he will walk. There have been enough close calls in his time for him to want to avoid any more, even if the people who take care of him get mad. Sometimes very mad. But he simply says, “You do it if you want,” and they shut up. Usually they work out a new plan and Derek then does what he has to do. But one time Rodney beat him over the money they lost by Derek’s backing away. That was just before their last job together in Baltimore. But by then, Derek had already met Tree.

Derek wants to back away from this job, things do not seem right. But Cody is with him now and he does not know if Cody will give him another chance. And the money that is waiting for him is what he needs to get Cody to go with him when he leaves the city. He is done with Vern, wants to be with Cody, and does not want to do what he will have to do to Cody if things go wrong. So he does not turn around like his head is telling him to. Instead he turns to Cody and whispers.

“The money is upstairs.”

“Do we have to do this? This place smells familiar.”

“Were you here before?”

“No, never. But…”

“But what?”

“I think we should go.”

“After we get the money.”

“But you’re not just going to grab the money, are you?”

“He saw me.”

“That was his crime?”

“It is like the girl in that house,” says Derek. “My Grammy always told me to clean up after myself.”

“We’re going to hell.”

“I thought Kentucky.”

“Kentucky?”

“Someone told me there are horses in Kentucky.”

“Yeah, there are horses in Kentucky.”

“And no one in Kentucky will hit you in the face.”

“I suppose not,” says Cody.

“Derek is going upstairs for the money. Will Cody wait?”

“I guess.”

“Good,” says Derek before heading for the light. He reaches the stairwell, stops, looks up and listens. Nothing to see and not a peep. But someone is up there, he can tell. He remembers the house, the first level, the second level, the empty third level with the soft green floor. The job will be there, on the third level, waiting for him. Derek hopes the job does not have a gun. It will be so much easier if the job does not have a gun. He thinks of just turning around again, but Cody is behind him. And Kentucky is in front of him. And the job is the only thing in the way.

Slowly he starts climbing the stairs.

Justin heard a shuffling static downstairs, as if someone had turned his TV on to a distant UHF station. Except he didn’t have a TV downstairs. He gripped the gun a little tighter. Vernon Bickham hadn’t come alone.

This wasn’t a surprise, but it wasn’t welcome either. First it meant that he might be outgunned, which was a sickening thought. But even more sickening was the possibility that he might have to kill a second man. Justin was shaky on this whole kill thing. He had a gun, yes, and he meant to use it, yes, but on Birdie Grackle only, a cackling figment of his father’s
imagination. Vernon Bickham was the actor intoning Grackle’s lines, true, but it was Birdie he was out to kill. Shooting Birdie would be like shooting a piece of his father’s rotten soul; killing Birdie Grackle would be the same as killing dead his father’s dreams of freedom.

But what about this other guy? A lug, no doubt, hired muscle, just a tool being used by his father’s tool, and by the sound of the voice none too bright. Justin used to watch James Bond movies and wonder how Bond could so casually dispatch all the hired hands manning the missile launch sites. Dr. No was evil, sure, but what about the saps who signed on for the cash? Maybe just to support their families. Shooting them, one after the other in an orgy of stoolie death, to Justin seemed a bit harsh justice-wise. But at least Bond had the fate of the world to consider; what was Justin’s excuse for dispatching some hired hand?

A creak of the stairs answered his questions: self-fucking-defense.

He took the gun out of his pocket, no need for subterfuge now. He aimed the muzzle at the opening to the steep and narrow stairs, and put his finger inside the trigger guard. If there were two, he couldn’t wait. The narrow stairway was his best chance. He’d have to go all Thermopylae on their asses.