“We’re on duty,” said the junior cop, gangly and barely old enough to shave.
“Just beer then?” Sammy grinned. Young cop cracked a smile.
“You seen Pookie O’Hara?” asked the older cop, tough-looking bullet-head, little to no neck.
Sammy searched the ceiling as if that was where he kept his memory. “Big as a house, nose like a road map, suit looks like he’s been sleeping in it since before the war?”
“That’s the one,” said the young cop.
“Never heard of him,” Sammy said.
Bullet-head hitched up his gun belt. “Listen, wise guy—”
Sammy grinned, held up his hands, big smile. “Just kidding. Yeah, he was in here, I don’t know, four–five days ago. Had a short one and was in the wind.”
“He say anything?”
“Yeah, he gives me a nice tip and says to tell Sal he stopped by.”
“That’s it?”
“I bought breakfast and a paper with the tip.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“Nope.”
“Is this Sal around?”
And here Sammy suddenly had an idea that flashed in his head like flickering, dying neon, and also made that annoying buzzing noise, but he pushed through and said, “Nah. Ya know, Sal said he was going to take off somewhere—up north I think, and I think Pookie was going with him. That’s why Pookie was looking for him, I think.”
“Up north, where?”
“Don’t know, but Sal had me open late today, didn’t work his shift—he usually opens in the morning. Maybe they’re fishing or something.”
The two cops looked at each other, looked at Sammy like he had just farted. “Fishing?” said bullet-head.
“I don’t know,” Sammy said. “I’m just the night bartender. I’m just trying to help.”
Bullet-head nodded. “We’ll look into it.”
They started to go and then the younger cop stopped at the door. “Hey,” he said. “You know a thin guy, walks with a cane?”
Sammy stopped breathing. All the regulars in the place, who were concentrating on minding their own business, stopped breathing. Sammy shook his head. “Lot of thin guys walking with canes since the war. You got anything else? Age? Hair color?”
“Nah,” said the young cop. “Witness thought they saw a guy clocking Pookie with a cane couple of nights ago.”
Sammy stared into the bin of bottle caps by the opener, like he was thinking hard. “Check down on Third Street, by the soup kitchen.” Sammy was thinking: This witness must have been corned-up to the gills if he sees a skinny guy with a cane but misses completely the enormous black guy in a penguin suit who actually rings Pookie’s good-night bell. Sammy said: “You can’t flick a butt down on Third without hittin’ a guy on a cane or crutches.”
“Yeah, thanks for nothin’,” said the young cop. Bullet-head pushed through the door, disgusted. They were gone.
Sammy turned to check on his customers and everyone was looking at him. “What? It wasn’t me.” A couple of dozen eyebrows went up. “It wasn’t. I don’t even walk with a cane anymore.”
Bunch of guys coughed politely, lit smokes, waited.
“A round on the house!” Sammy exclaimed, and everyone started talking and calling out drinks and telling lies and a good time was had by one and all.
* * *
A half an hour after the flatfoots left, I followed through with my plan by calling Sal’s wife, who I met exactly one time, when she came into the bar one day to get cash from Sal for groceries. She seemed okay.
“Hello,” she said. She sounded peeved.
“Mrs. Gabelli, this is Sammy down at the bar. Sorry to bother you, but Sal asks me to give you a call.”
“Yeah, why?”
“Well, he was running out to go fishing with some friends and he’s going to be gone”—I tried to figure how long I could push this, how much time I could buy—“at least until Monday.” Gave me two more days.
“Yeah, I know,” said Mrs. Gabelli.
“You do?”
“Yeah, but he told me it was camping. Yeah, right, the douche bag wouldn’t know a sleeping bag from a soda bottle. So he told you to tell me it was fishing? Good for you, kid.”
“Could have been camping,” I said. “You know Sal . . .” Sal’s wife even called him a douche bag? I’m thinking maybe the snake did everyone a favor.
“If I need him I’ll just call down to Mabel’s, they’ll pretend he’s not there, and he’ll be home in a hour.”
“Okay, Mrs. Gabelli, he just asked me to call you.”
“Yeah, if you see him, tell him I said to piss up a rope.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
So compared to getting Sal into the ice machine, consoling his widow seemed like a piece of cake.
So, my career in crime away alertly, as they say in horse racing, it was around midnight when I decided that I would perpetrate my first robbery. Moo Shoes and I needed to raise numerous ducats with which to pay upkeep on our kidnapped flatfoot. Since it seemed unlikely that Sal would be requiring operating cash, I decided that he was going to donate the contents of the cash register to Pookie’s upkeep, but as I counted down the drawer a couple of hours before closing, and eyed the few drunks still in the bar, I realized that we were going to come up short by several sawbucks, and I guessed that Uncle Mao would not float us the difference.
After I booted everyone out, I proceeded to look for the remaining funds. As any experienced robber will tell you, if you are going to lift a guy’s wallet, it is wise to do so before you pack him under numerous buckets of ice in a snake crate, because when you return several hours later, you will find that the ice has melted into a somewhat solid block, which requires quite a bit of attention with an ice pick before the wallet is liberated. Although more or less blue, Sal appeared as fresh as when he was first packaged, discounting minor blemishes caused by a few less-than-precise plunges of the ice pick. And boom, I had enough money to pay Uncle Mao and pocket a few ducats for myself, a soggy driver’s license, and a lifetime membership card to the Knights of Columbus, which will come in handy if I ever need to sit around and smoke cigars with a bunch of ancient goombas.
The clock was creeping up on three. I was supposed to catch up with Moo Shoes at Club Shanghai, but I couldn’t do it. Not without checking on her.
Fast as I could, I packed Sal back in ice to his crown, and before I put the lid back on the snake crate, I admitted to Sal that he was right about buying a military-grade ice machine, because without it, none of this would be possible.
I left my other side work undone, stepped into the alley, and locked the door. The bakery down the street was proofing their bread and you could smell the yeast in the air along with a hint of cinnamon, which must have come from something else they were fixing up for the morning. It was clear out, but cool, which I was grateful for, because before I got halfway up the stairs to the top of Telegraph Hill, I had my overcoat over my shoulder and my shirt was steaming with sweat.
The whole climb and half the way down I was practicing groveling in my head. The closer I got to the top of the hill, the more desperate and panicky I felt. What if she said no? No second chance? Would I beg? Maybe I wouldn’t start with begging, but I’d get there quick. Or maybe she’d give me a break and it would start with a big backbreaking smooch and we’d be off to the races again. Or maybe I’d get there and she’d be doing the razzmatazz with some other mug, and I’d stand outside the window as pieces of my heart broke and fell on the little stepping-stones in the garden. No, even thinking that made me want to collapse and roll down the hill and just fucking die like a dog in the dirt.
When I got to her place there were no lights on at all. No sound from inside. I listened at the door for a second, caught my breath, then knocked, softly-like.
“Stilton?” A whisper. Another light tap. “C’mon, Toots?” Couldn’t help it, I smiled, thinking she might be smiling inside. But she wasn’t. Five
or six more tries, tapping with apologies, then I tried the knob. Unlocked.
Without her in there, her little dug-out apartment felt like a grave. The bed was made. It looked like a kid’s bed, small and neat and unruffled, a white chenille bedspread looking like it was fresh off the line, like it would be undisturbed forever—like the bed of a kid who drowned that was being kept just like it always was, like a bed for a kid who would never come home.
Holy shit, I had to get out of there.
There was a book of order tickets on her little kitchen table, and a pencil in a cup. I left her a note. I’m sorry and I’m sorry and I’m sorry, and I want to see you, and I signed it I love you, Sammy. And I was out of there and down her side of the hill to Kearny Street as fast as I could go without tumbling ass-over-teakettle and breaking my neck, although right then I was thinking maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad move, given my situation.
* * *
By the time I got to Club Shanghai the doorman had gone home and I just waltzed in like I was dragon of the walk. Eddie Moo Shoes was at the host station alone. He looked up, gave me the just a minute finger in the air, then called something into the cocktail lounge. Suddenly Lois Fong was on him like a gold lamé anaconda, wrapped around him like the long golden evening gown was wrapped around her, which is to say, quite snugly. Lois smooched him mercilessly, causing Moo Shoes to have to steady himself against the host station. Just as I was thinking, Well, she’s going to do it, she’s going to give him the old razzmatazz right up against the wall, Eddie twisted out of her clutches, kissed her quick on the temple, and patted her bottom to steer her back into the cocktail lounge, where she wiggled in a most disappointed and unsatisfied manner, very much on the pout.
Eddie looked up at me and grinned like a complete idiot, then quick-stepped down the hall to join me.
“What’s the haps, paps?” he said, still grinning.
“Don’t act like that didn’t just happen. And you got lipstick over your goofy mug.” I handed him a handkerchief I kept in my overcoat and he wiped away as we headed out.
“I know,” he said. “Can you believe it? Ever since you told her to buzz off she’s been on me like white on rice.”
“In my defense,” I said, “you also told her to buzz off.”
“Like I said the magic words,” said Eddie. “Guys always tell me that dames love that, but I don’t believe them, but now . . .”
“I am not an expert, but I do not think it works with all dames. Still, I do not want to stand between you and your good fortune. I can handle this if you want to go tend to Lois’s wants and/or needs.”
“Nah, you can’t handle this. And I don’t want to press my luck. Besides, if she puts the chill on me again, I’ll just tell her to buzz off again.”
I nodded. “You are an operator, Moo Shoes, that is what you are.” As we made our way down Grant and swung a left onto Pine, I said, “I got the money for Uncle Mao.”
“Uncle Ho,” Moo Shoes corrected. “And good, because that’s where we’re going.”
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, I know that.” I did not know that.
Soon we were in an alley with less than adequate lighting but with more than its share of garbage odor and creatures scampering in the dark. “How’s your foot?” Eddie asked.
“It’s fine. Hurts a little, but I am distracted by other matters.”
“You okay without a cane?”
“It would appear so,” said I.
Before I could elaborate, we were knocking on the steel door and Uncle Mao let us in. Eddie said some nonsense to him in Cantonese and then said to me, “Give him the money.” I did and the old guy counted it, then led us through the dimly lit opium den to the bunk where we stashed Pookie. He pulled back the curtain and there lay Pookie O’Hara, curled up like a little piggy on his side, naked except for a pink silk kimono that was too small for him in all dimensions. There was more of Pookie than I ever cared to see, and if I had not spent my whole day strengthening my resolve by packing and unpacking a stiff, I would probably have blown lunch at the sight of the cop.
Uncle Mao said something and Moo translated. “It’s easier to take care of him and clean him up this way.”
“Fine,” I said. “But we’ll have to take his clothes for my plan to work.” Then I told them both the plan. I talked and paused, talked and paused, to give Moo Shoes a chance to translate for Uncle Mao.
We would get Pookie right to the edge of never waking up, then we would drive him and Sal’s body out into the country somewhere, where there are woods, but we would make a note of where we put them. We would lay it out so it looked like Pookie offed Sal, then we’d give Pookie one last dose, pour some liquor on him so if anyone found him they’d think he was drunk, then we’d call the cops, anonymous-like, say we saw two guys fighting by the side of the road and we think one of them is hurt. When the cops showed up, there would be Pookie, out drunk, and Sal, still dead, but it would appear at the hands of Pookie O’Hara.
When I finished, and Moo finished just behind me in Chinese, they both looked at me.
“So it looks like Pookie killed him?” Moo asked.
“Yeah.”
“With a snake?”
Uncle Mao said something. Moo said something back. I realized I might not have thought the plan through as completely as I should have.
“So we gotta make it look like Sal is killed in a way that Pookie would kill him.”
“How would that be? Beat to death?”
“I don’t know. Wake Pookie up and ask him.” So I smacked Pookie lightly on the cheeks to wake him, the way you bring a drunk to who has dropped his head on the bar, but it didn’t work. So I pushed the cop over on his back and his head lolled to the side, then I gave him a good slap.
“Pookie! How would you croak a guy?” I said. To Moo I said, “What about Pookie’s gun? We can blast Sal thoroughly, covering up the snake clue.”
Uncle Mao said something. Moo translated. “He says he sold the gun. You’re going to have to kill Pookie.”
I resumed trying to get Pookie’s attention with the flat of my hand.
SMACK! “Give it up, Pookie. Do you hear me? How would you off a guy?” SMACK!
Moo said, “Maybe we can just find a way to destroy his mind, make him forget everything so when he wakes up he just drools and has to eat strained peas and stuff that you don’t have to chew?”
“Yeah, that would be the humane thing,” I said.
“Good point,” Moo said. He stepped in, gave Pookie a smack. “C’mon, Pookie. You’re going to ice a guy, how do you do it?”
“Don’t say ‘ice,’” I said. “I have unpleasant memories.”
“Sorry,” said Moo.
Uncle Mao made a throat-cutting motion behind Moo’s back, pointed to Pookie.
SMACK! My turn. “Give it up, Pookie. How do you do it?” SMACK! “What’s your angle, flatfoot?” SMACK! But Pookie just gave a little smile, and even in the dim light of the opium den I could see his cheeks were burning red from being slapped, but he was not feeling it.
Mao made the gesture of putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger.
SMACK! “How would you kill a guy, Pookie?” SMACK! Apparently I had some residual anger at Pookie for attempting to ventilate Lone Jones with his .45 for the crime of being black, so I wasn’t as concerned with getting him to talk as I was with smacking him around.
Mao tied an imaginary noose, hanged himself to show his opinion.
SMACK! I hit him again. Then Pookie’s big paw came up off the little mattress and caught my hand. “No,” he said, his voice sounding like he was gargling marbles. “I wouldn’t hurt nobody never,” he said. Then his hand fell limp, his eyes rolled back, and he was off to dreamland.
“Well, you ruined him,” Moo Shoes said. “Now we’re going to have to kill him.”
Big grin on Uncle Mao, who gestured a dozen arrows hitting in the chest, made the zzzt-zzzt noise as each one hit, then mimed croaking, his tongue hangin
g out.
“We’re not going to kill him,” I said. SMACK!
“He’s not going to tell you anything.”
“I know,” I said. “But I’m probably not going to get the chance to do this again.”
“Good point,” said Moo, who took that opportunity to give Pookie a couple of good swats for luck.
“Tell your uncle to knock him out. We’ll need some time to figure it out. Let’s go get Milo’s cab and pick up Sal.”
As we walked to the door, Moo Shoes said some stuff to his uncle, and as the old guy gave his answer it did not take an abacus for me to figure out he gave us two more days. Then there was a long exchange in Chinese and I got the feeling that the meter was running as the old guy talked.
Moo Shoes turned to me. “He says he can help us catch the mamba.”
“I don’t have any more money.”
“He knows that. He says he’ll do it, but he gets to keep the snake.”
“We paid a lot of folding fodder for that snake.”
Moo Shoes gave me the inscrutable eyebrow that only Chinese guys can give you. I whispered, “You think he can do it?”
Moo nodded. “You know he’s only asking because I’m family. He doesn’t really need our permission.”
“Fine,” I said.
Uncle Ho said something.
“He’ll need some rats.”
“There’s a whole goddamn alley full of rats on the other side of this door.”
Uncle Ho shook his head, babbled some bullshit.
“Fresh rats,” Moo translated.
“Fine!”
Then Uncle Ho let us out and as we walked away shouted something at Moo Shoes through the little hatch.
“What’d he say?” I asked.
“He says we should kill Pookie.”
“Of course he says that,” I said. “Then we’d have two white devil bodies and Uncle Cat-Fucker would figure a way to extort us over it.”
“That’s probably true,” said Moo Shoes. “Let’s deal with Sal first.”
* * *
We got the cab from Milo, prying it away from him with a sawbuck and a promise, but when Moo Shoes and I got back to Sal’s and I opened the back door, Sal’s body was not there. The crate, the ice, all of it, gone.