The Concrete Pearl (20 page)

“You go first,” I said. “Just like I told you.”

“You sure about this?” he said. “Could be a tough crowd in there.”

“I’m a construction project manager, Spain. I’m used to tough crowds. ‘Sides…”

“Besides what, Spike?”

“Things get rough, I’ll protect you.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Anything else you might wanna say that will make me feel sufficiently castrated?”

I grinned.

He frowned and led the way through the door of the Thatcher Street Pub.

Exactly as I planned.

The place was dark and subdued. It smelled like a cross between old beer and twenty-four-hour-without-a-shower armpits.

To our immediate left a couple of bikers dressed in black leathers were shooting pool. To our right, about half the bar stools were occupied with solitary drinkers hunched over bottled beer and whiskey chasers. I knew that once Albany Development had its way, this hole-in-the-wall would be torn down to its foundations to make way for a high-end casino. The bikers and barflies would have to find another topless juke joint to pickle their livers.

We approached the bar at the far end closest to the door and sat down on two free stools. When a young woman came out of the kitchen at the bar’s opposite end, it became immediately apparent she was not Natalie. This woman was a small but well-built Asian, long smooth black hair draping her chiseled face. She wasn’t topless but she wore a skimpy baby blue string bikini, the material of which would have fit inside my right fist. She took notice of her new customers and approached us.

“What can I getcha?”

When she smiled, I couldn’t be sure if it was out of politeness or how out of place we looked. I guessed the latter.

Spain went to work playing cop, pulling out a false cop badge he kept in his wallet, flashing it.

“I’m inquiring about an employee,” he said. “A bartender named Natalie. Maybe you know her.”

He couldn’t have made a more convincing cop if he’d become the real Elliot Ness.

I took a glance around the bar, at the leather and denim-clad patrons. I didn’t recognize anyone from the previous evening. Not even gray-beard was there. Maybe he didn’t show up unless Natalie showed. I guess it didn’t matter. Everyone was keeping to themselves. You might think a couple of strangers like us would be the object of their fascination. Maybe even ridicule. But rather than expose their faces to a cop, the sparse crowd laid low. One guy went so far as to bury his face in his arms, feigning booze-induced sleep.

“Yes of course I know Natalie,” the bartender said. “I’m filling in for her tonight.”

“And your name is?” Spain asked.

“Leesa,” she smirked. “No I, two e’s.”

“Natalie couldn’t make it tonight?” I barged in.

Leesa without an “I” looked at me.

“Who the hell are you?” she said.

“I’m the bad cop missy,” I said. “By the way, you old enough to be working in a place you show tits and ass? Maybe I should be asking for some real ID rather than that fake shit you been showing the owner.”

The place went dead-zone quiet. The attitude on Leesa’s face melted away.

“Natalie never showed up this afternoon for her shift,” she said.

“That common for Natalie?” I pressed.

She shrugged narrow shoulders, pursing her lips.

“Not common. But not uncommon. If you know what I mean.”

“No Leesa,” Spain said. “We don’t know what you mean.”

“Well sometimes people party too much the night before. Can’t make it in the next day.” She laughed a little, cocked her head like,
Shit happens
.

“Natalie a big drinker?” I asked.

“Come to think of it. Not really.”

“You know if she’s on the pill?”

Leesa blinked.

“What?”

“She use rubbers, she take the pill, use a diaphragm, an IUD or all of the above?”

“What’s it to you?”

“It means something, trust me. You guys work together and I know how women think, so I figure birth control must have come up in conversation one way or another.”

Another shoulder shrug.

“Condoms I think,” she said. “She smokes. The pill was gonna give her a heart attack sooner or later or some shit like that.”

I shot a glance at Spain. I knew we were thinking the same thing. The used condom that littered the stream bank now tucked away in his jacket pocket along with a spent cigarette butt.

“You know what brand cigarettes she smokes?” I said.

She cocked her head.

“Marlboro Lights I think.”

“Any idea when she’ll be working again?”

“She’s on schedule for tomorrow, two to eight.” Another grin. “I’m kind of hoping she doesn’t show again. I could use the extra hours.”

“Good tips,” Spain said.

“Ching… It’s what it’s all about,” Leesa said.

I got up off the stool, fished inside my jeans pocket for a business card, set it down on the bar. Stealing a stubby pencil from the Lotto QuickDraw display, I wrote on the back of the card,
We need to talk
.

“Can you make sure Natalie gets this?” I said, replacing the pencil to the QuickDraw. “She can call me day or night.”

Leesa dug the card off the bar with black-painted stiletto fingernails that made the teeth on a backhoe bucket look small. She stole a glancing look at it.

“Thought you were a cop?” she said.

“I am,” I said. “That’s my cover.”

She squinted her eyes, not sure if she should be believe me.

“Natalie in some kind of trouble?”

“Not at all,” I lied. “Just need to ask her a few questions about one of her regular customers.”

I got up, tossing Leesa a nod. No smile.

Before we turned to leave, Spain took a good look around the room again; at the men hiding their faces.

“You boys can go back to your livers,” he barked. “And let’s not forget the child support payments.”

No one said a word. No one moved.

The PI was even better than I thought.

We made it to the door. He opened it for me. I stepped out into the night.

I didn’t take two steps towards the Jeep when a hand reached out and grabbed my arm.

I was thrown against the Jeep door.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone grab Spain.

The Jeep separated us, my back to the driver’s side, Spain’s back to the passenger side.

The man facing me was tall, weight lifter stacked, biceps bursting through a black T-shirt that had the sleeves cut off. Printed on the black T-shirt was “Black Cat Elliot.” I recognized the name. It belonged to a local punk rock band famous for its loud, fast, violent electric noise. The man’s head was shaved. He sported a black goatee and mustache. His tight Levis were stained with gray ready mix spatter. So were his work boots.

“Pouring a little concrete today?” I said. “Or were you just playing in it like a good little slammer?”

He glared at me, showing me his brown teeth. I could smell the booze on his breath and the concrete lime on his clothes.

“You know what happens to butch bitches can’t mind their own fuckin’ business?” he said.

“No, what happens, Slammer?”

Slammer reached into his back pocket, pulled out a sheetrock knife, thumbed open the razor blade, held it up to my face.

My right hand moving slowly, I felt for the driver’s side door. I managed to find the latch. I pulled it open, quickly reached under, grabbed the equalizer and yanked it out. Gripping it tight, I cocked the hammer back like I’d crush the slammer’s skull if he even attempted to touch me with that blade.

“Tell me Slammer,” I said. “What happens to butch bitches don’t mind their business?”

I felt my mouth go dry, my heart pounding against my ribs.

Slammer pressed his lips together. He ground his teeth.

“Get in the Jeep, Spain,” I said.

He did it. I heard the door shut.

I reached into my jacket pocket with my free hand, pulled out the keys, tossed them into the open-topped Jeep.

“Start it up,” I said.

Spain did that too.

The equalizer still poised in my right hand, I backed up and slipped in behind the wheel. Shifting the hammer to my left hand, I shifted into reverse and backed out of the lot, my eyes never leaving Slammer.

We didn’t say a word for what seemed a while.

Then Spain said, “Let me guess…Marino’s men.”

“Sent to throw the fear of God in us,” I said. “Those guys are used to hard labor twenty-four/seven. Then for fun they lift weights, get drunk, go to death metal punk rock shows…They wanted to fuck us up they would have fucked us up.”

Spain turned to me while I came to a stop at the stop sign.

“You scared?” he said.

“No,” I said. “I’m just really, really pissed off.”

He was quiet for a beat.

Until he said, “You know what happens if Natalie is a no-show again tomorrow?”

“Allow me to speculate,” I said. “We’ll have no choice but to look for two people.”

“Questions is,” Spain said, “are the two people going to be alive when we find them?”

Chapter 46

I hit the directional for hooking a right turn onto the Concrete Pearl.

“Go the other way,” Spain said.

“I live that way,” I said cocking my head over my shoulder.

“I’m shaking,” he said running both hands over a cropped scalp. “I need a drink.”

I stared out onto a desolate Pearl Street. I knew that if I went home, I would be up for hours thinking about Natalie, about the spent shell casing, about the used condom, about the five-gallon buckets, about my ten grand, about that sick little boy, about Marino’s thugs, about
all
the evidence that pointed to the fact that Farrell was into something a lot deeper than cheating on his asbestos removals. And that meant I was in deep too. Buried alive.

“What the hell,” I said, switching the directional for a left hook.

I pulled out onto Pearl and drove.

When I passed the now abandoned Key Bank building where Jordan took his final fall, I looked away and swallowed my heart.

At Spain’s suggestion, we headed uptown to a watering hole called the Lark Tavern. One of the oldest bars in the city, the Lark was a long, dimly lit place with the interior walls finished off in a glossy red and black paint. Almost every bit of wall space was covered with old memorabilia, old photos and posters from World War II all the way up through Nixon’s seventies to the eighties punk scene. A plaster Elsie the Cow’s head was mounted to the wall directly above the jukebox. No doubt it had been ripped off the exterior wall of the old abandoned downtown Sealtest factory.

Soon as we’d stepped on through the front wood door we were greeted by Tess, Lark Tavern’s long-time proprietor and owner. Rather, Spain was greeted by her. Tess hadn’t changed a bit since I last saw her back when I was still in my early twenties. She had long auburn-hair, deep green pools for eyes and milk-white breasts that looked like they were about to spill out of her long, black, velvet dress.

Spain kissed her on the mouth.

“Hello stranger,” Tess said, her voice deep, raspy.

He made a hand gesture at me.

“Tess, this is Spike.”

Her green eyes lighting up, she did something totally unexpected. She opened up her long arms, wrapped them around me, and hugged me tightly. She was all firm flesh and she smelled of roses.

“How is the goddamned foot these days, Spike Harrison?”

She had an elephant’s memory. Beauty
and
brains.

“God Tess, you are good,” I said.

“Honey,” she laughed, “in my business, you start forgetting faces, you might as well count the till for the last time.”

The long front bar was crowded just like I remembered it, with a mixture of young, middle-aged and even gray-haired uptown clientele. Coming from the back dining room, loud rock music. Tess must have noticed me noticing the band.

She said, “Those are my boys, The Blisterz, with a Z. They’ve got a perpetual Tuesday night spot on the back stage. You can tell the crowd digs their vibe.”

Taking me by the hand, she escorted us through the bar to a table in back positioned up against the far wall. It was the only empty table left. Probably reserved for V.I.P.s. We sat down and Tess personally took the drink order for us.

Spain locked his eyes on mine while the Blisterz kicked off into some fast punk melody reminiscent of the Ramones or the Clash. Bands I dug way back in high school and college. Bands I still dug. The bass, drums and electric guitar were loud, pounding. But the force of their loud melodic sound was a good thing. And the singer/guitarist’s raspy voice came through loud and clear and haunting.

Raising up his right hand, Spain tossed a wave at the lead singer—a tall, salt and pepper-haired guy who wore tan
surfer-dude
Capris that fell just below his knees, a cut-off T-shirt and Vans sneakers. His picking hand left his guitar just long enough to return Spain’s gesture.

Spain shot me a sly grin. It gave me the distinct impression that he’d planned all this; that his wanting to go out for an off-the-clock drink hadn’t been so spontaneous or prompted by Marino’s thugs and their threats.

Tess brought our drinks, along with a couple of menus. She didn’t bother to talk above the rock-n-roll. She simply puckered up and blew us a kiss before walking back into the bar.

We sat and listened to the Blisterz finish their set. When it was over and the quiet settled back in, I turned back to Spain.

“Something tells me you’re more than just one of Tess’s regulars.”

“That obvious, huh?”

He cocked his head, pursed his lips, and took a quick drink of his beer.

“Tess has connections,” he explained, gray eyes now peering out onto an empty stage. “On occasion she’s been known to help me out with certain bits of information I might not otherwise be privy too.”

“By legal means,” I questioned. But he let it slide. “And the house band? The Blisterz with a Z? They’re not the youth of the world. Let me guess, their day jobs aren’t the type to be reported to the I-R-S. They the guys you were talking to on the cell phone up at Lake Desolation?”