Most of the men were already stirring when Sautin pushed through the door. It was obvious some planned on clearing out soon from the backpacks and duffel bags sitting like fat, damp mushrooms on many of the bunks. Some of the druggies were still deep in their narcotic dream worlds but the drunks were up and edgy, already itching for that first drink. Again Sautin fought at the burgeoning ghost of disgust that had been bunching around him lately. Maybe this is what you’re gonna get, a nasty voice deep inside his head traitorously suggested. Nothing but a deadbeat like the rest of these motherfuckers. He set his jaw and walked through the room to his bunk. A metallic hum which filled the room like a hive of bees spoke of the intercom having been recently clicked on. The sounds of breakfast preparation clanged from the kitchen through the uneasy partition of swinging doors far off to the left.
He sat down on the bunk and reached for one of the shitty cigarettes. Darrell was in his corner, already up and rummaging around in what was left of his duffel bag. The Army was less packed than it’d been when he came in several days back, so getting a seat next to the patsy would not be the hard part. Sautin’s mother used to say he could sell an Eskimo ice water (this during infrequent cookie sales in junior high), but he’d never had the time to develop this supposed talent in any legitimate way. He figured it to be that he didn’t care enough about people to make it totally believable. But with Darrell, he didn’t anticipate a lot of trouble. After all, it only took a bone to get most fucking dogs. That, of course, or a cigarette as the case may be here.
He watched as the men queued up after the metallic screech made an all-call. Darrell hung back a moment and this time Sautin unconsciously crushed the butt of the cigarette on the floor. There would be hell to pay if one of the workers saw it or the ashes (they could be real pricks here about certain things), but he didn’t care. For good or ill, this morning was the last he’d spend at the Army. The punk had promised him four hundred dollars and that’d be enough to get him started.
He waited until the head of the line ran through before getting up. As he’d figured, Darrell did choose to eat alone, stuffed far back in a corner so no one could sneak up on him apparently. Wise move, Sautin thought. Only your trouble won’t be creeping up from behind, pal. It’ll be me, just a helpful guy with a pack of Dorals.
***
Outside, later, Sautin wanted to laugh at how easy it’d turned out. Darrell, the self-proclaimed ex-guitar player from some fucking dead-head metal band, stood puffing away on his fifth Doral and talking a blue streak. Jesus, after awhile it was like a monkey chattering from a tree. And even with the ice broken, things weren’t much easier; here he was listenin to this dickhead and he could’ve cared less about anything he had to say. But as the boring diatribe continued he never took his eyes from the animated though slightly spacey stare. He just kept shaking his head in agreement whenever the story slowed down.
All Darrell knew for certain was Sautin needed someone to take a fall in an antique’s store, and if done right, that someone would make a hundred bucks. His eyes made it look like a million. Sautin wondered idly what kind of loser fucking band would have taken on a guy like this in the first place, but hell, he’d seen a lot of shitty bands in his days too. Regardless, all Darrell had to do was make the fall.
Listening to his contradicting babble (now he claimed to have been outside Thibodaux pulling a stretch on the oil rigs since last June or July, obviously he‘d forgotten about The Big Gig he‘d pulled in City Park during that same period), Sautin grimaced his way through another Doral, pausing to check his watch again before tossing the rest of the pack to the patsy. Darrell’s face registered inordinate surprise with the motion, as if Sautin had just given him half pay for the job instead of a few cheap cigarettes.
The thought of the young punk he was due to meet in less than an hour brought a mean streak of bile high into Sautin’s throat, and he looked away in fear his eyes would paint a different picture than the one his tongue had provided. Clouds were high, even though they were piling in from the southwest. Tropical depression in the Gulf, according to what he’d heard from some old pair of crones earlier. That would be just fine too, because he had a little storm of his own to brew up, and if the two chanced to meet it would only add to the chaos of which he intended to use to every advantage.
Before he left for the meeting, he gave Darrell the address of a governmental building not far away. The antique’s shop would be somewhere close, it had to be. The punk didn’t strike Sautin as being the sort of person who'd stray often or far from his territory. He’d made allusions to knowing some of the more ‘regular’ drunks in the area, and Sautin figured it was because the punk had used them on other occasions. Only this one demanded a little something extra, and the punk had found it staring at him from across the street. But there was an awful lot the street punk hadn’t seen beneath the surface, and that fact alone was gonna end up costing him dearly.
So, inwardly satisfied with the lonely, hang-dog look on the patsies’ face, Sautin went over instructions again, making sure to go slow through the part about where he should be at four-thirty that afternoon. The patsy repeated it, but just to make sure, Sautin reached into his wallet and placed twenty of his last twenty-five and change in the patsy’s hand. Perhaps only at rock-bottom could one truly expect salvation, whether from Heaven or Hell. And with time running out, it was indeed ripe for a pivotal moment.
***
Leaning against a lamppost not far from the address he’d given Darrell, Sautin looked at his watch again. It was fast becoming habit, but at least by so doing, by having a schedule, he again felt purpose he’d long missed. He’d watched Darrell shuffle up ten minutes before, seen him sit down on the bench. The guy wasn’t much to speak of, but then again, neither was Sautin even though he’d tried to clean up as best he could earlier that morning.
When he’d passed the antique’s store twenty minutes earlier he’d seen only two people inside. The streets weren’t that busy (he could thank the gloomy weather for that), but there was really no telling how the thing would go. Especially with Darrell. Sautin had told the patsy only what he had to know, what he had to do, and everything else was up to the roll of the dice. Well, he hoped, great things came from great moments. And from the way it looked, Sautin was just about out of opportunity. Turning back was no option. This thing had crawled under his skin; it burned with some indefinable imperative. A smell, the smell of opportunity.
He shook down his sleeve and started for the corner of the building.
Darrell sat off by the curb, on a bench crammed beneath two scraggy iron-wood trees. He looked nervous and Sautin tried to lighten the tension with a great, confident smile as he walked over and sat down next to the man. He wasted no time. “The place is right down the street, about three blocks. Don’t look like much traffic today. Won’t be any trouble. Simple in and out.” Then he paused and looked hard at the ex-guitar player. “Ain’t nothin but opportunity and cash.”
Darrell managed a thin smile. The butts of four Dorals littered the concrete around his feet. There was none in his hand now, so Sautin figured he’d already finished the pack. Tough shit, Sautin thought. No, it looked like those four cigarettes were the last of a long line.
“Like I said,” he continued softly. “Just look at all the pretty stuff for five minutes or so until you get a feel for the place, and the numbers are low. Go down when I give you the sign, and make a fuck-load of noise doin it. I’ll handle the rest.”
“You’ll handle the rest,” Darrell repeated in monotone.
“I’ll handle the rest,” Sautin answered reassuringly. He actually patted the slime ball’s knee. “Doan worry. ‘S’no sweat. We’ll be in and out in a flash.” Sautin grinned at the nervous man and, eventually, Darrell tried to return it. The chain is only as strong as its weakest link, Sautin knew. However, he could do little to stack additional odds in his favor. In another hour it would either be done or he’d be dead too. He’d come to the poi
nt where he wouldn’t settle for anything less.
Chapter 7:The Job
The bell dinged lightly against the doorjamb when he entered the antique’s shop. Darrell had gone in nine minutes before and Sautin had endured those most important minutes in the alcove of a po-boy delicatessen twenty steps up the block. A little more thunder grumbled in the distance but the clouds didn’t look like they were going to let go anytime soon.
While he suffered through the interminable nine minutes (he’d told the patsy ten, but who the fuck was countin?) every number of catastrophes visited themselves upon his racing mind. What if he’d misread and the fucker simply folded? What if the shop was full? What if he fucked up the dive? What if…what if…what if? What if the whole thing blew up in his face? “Then that’s just how it fuckin ends,” he’d mumbled, pushing away from the alcove. It wasn’t the end of the line for nothing.
Entering the shop, his pulse slowed. No wailing siren greeted his entrance, no frantic, pointing fingers pinning him in the doorway. Darrell was busy nosing through a shelf of old magazines at the back near a staircase that undoubtedly led up to the loft, and at the moment (aside from Darrell and Sautin) there was only an old man fumbling idly at a phone book behind a heavy, wooden desk and an even older couple apparently discussing the virtues of one of many crude oil paintings hung in conflicting rows against the right wall. Sautin assumed (rightly, it turned out) the old man behind the desk was the one due the ass-whipping.
Darrell did look up momentarily when Sautin opened the door but thankfully went back to his business with only half a glance. None of the others even gave him that much. He moved into the shop, playing for all the world (he hoped) like just another junk-seeker in search of a bargain. And this, indeed, seemed the place to find one, more junk-shed than antique gallery, really, replete with everything from used clothing to lopsided, second-hand furniture.
He cut along the left wall, weaving in and out through a montage of tie-dyed T-shirts and bellbottom hand-me-downs. Against the far wall (the one behind where the old man still thumbed at his ragged phone book) the more pricey items were displayed, but even here there didn’t appear to be an alarm system. Of course, that didn’t mean there wasn’t one, Sautin just couldn’t see it. But if what the punk had said was even half-true the old man fronted with this store while pulling in most of his money through backdoor drug traffic. Having no alarm system suggested the old man figured himself capable of handling any problem that happened to wander in through the front door. He shouldn’t forget that, Sautin reminded himself.
He picked up an old US Marine bedroll, pretended an inspection of the stitching. The old couple, apparently tired of discussing the merits of the oils tacked to the walls, now crept over and busied themselves with a hand-carved, cypress coffee table dredged up from some God forsaken swamp. The old man had swiveled around in his chair by now, kicked his feet up on the filing cabinet behind his desk and continued talking in low whispers to whoever was on the other end. Darrell looked at Sautin. Sautin nodded and the two men radiated farther away from one another, Sautin cutting a swath through the mess of tangled clothing displays while Darrell sidled along the far wall to the front of the store. At least he had that part right, Sautin thought, his mind already ticking away the seconds. He glanced to the stairway, judging it no more than fifteen-twenty steps to the landing. Supposedly the drugs were up there. What Darrell didn’t know and wouldn’t was that not only had Sautin scoped the place from the front, he’d also traversed the alley in back, scanning the upper floors for a possible escape route. And as he’d hoped, two fire escape ladders clung rigidly to the back of the two-story building, one of which (Sautin was willing to bet all the hair on the hog) providing access to the old man’s apartment.
As he watched the ex-guitar player position himself for the fall, Sautin sent out one wish that the old fucker would hang up the phone. Of course, it did provide added distraction, but it also let someone else in on the action. At least the knife in his boot provided a reassuring presence, a hardness of purpose that brought the reality of the situation home.
He stared at the old man, swiveled around and talking with his eyes to the wall. Then over to the old couple, still animatedly engaged but closer to the door, and that wasn’t so good. He backtracked around, running his fingers over a dusty rack of Soul albums, until he was back between them and the front door.
Then he coughed loudly, once. And the show began.
In a startling display of acumen, Darrell reeled back in a startlingly pronounced parentheses, both his hands gripped bone-white upon the rack of clothes before him. A thin wheeze began down deep in his throat and his eyes bugged forward in the throes of some violent seizure. Sautin, for a moment, stared transfixed at the ex-guitar player, buying the whole goddamn thing like a hot item off the TV set. The old couple gasped in unison off to his right. The old man said something loud into the phone and spun around, eyes wide, the curse already on his lips. Tough old fucker, Sautin reminded himself for the second time.
The wheeze ranked up to a ragged, gagging scream, and Darrell suddenly fell back, taking the whole rack of clothes with him as he went. He hit the floor with a thump that rebounded from the very walls around them, and then, in the split-second silence that followed, went into a full-blown epileptic fit.
Sautin yelled, also on cue, “Guy’s havin a fuckin seizure!” and the moment shattered like raw-blown glass. Surprisingly, it was the old man of the couple who let out the next squeal of surprise as his companion started forward, forcefully pushing her way between two tight racks of second-hand jeans before Sautin had a chance to collect himself. He cut his eyes to the proprietor, glad to see the phone on the hook as the old guy hurried around the desk.
But the look in his eyes said trouble.
Even though the rack of clothes had spilled everything on top of him, Darrell was doing a fine job of clearing them away with his violently-kicking legs even before the old woman bent down and began throwing off double handfuls herself.
Sautin started forward, attempted to leap into the fray, but the woman stopped him, gripping his shoulder with no bullshit force, one knee still on the ground. The look in her eyes was a cold shock, like a flashlight in a cave. “I was a nurse for twenty-five years at Charity, boy. Call 911!” and dismissed him immediately. Her companion stood motionless against the wall near the cypress table, his mouth tightly shut, eyes wide open, and suddenly, irrationally, Sautin wasn’t sure the two were a couple after all. What had it been someone told him once? Nothing more sad than an old fag or some such shit. Well, there was no time to check the memory for truth now.
He turned, finding the proprietor suddenly at his side. The man’s eyes were livid with anger. “What da hell’s goin on?” he spat dangerously, his eyes glued to the kicking figure beneath the sprawl of clothes.
“Guy’s havin a fuckin heart attack, man! How the hell I know?”
What came next was a surprise. “Motherfucker picked a hell ova place ta have it!”
The old man pushed past and went down on one knee too. The nurse had already managed to clear most of the clothing away and Sautin was glad to see Darrell still in full tilt. Spittle bubbling from his open mouth, his eyes rolled back to the whites.
“Jesus Christ…” he whispered in amazement. For a moment he wondered if this was really just part of the act. Because if so, God help him, the guy had missed his calling. Hollywood paid a fortune for shit like this…
“What the hell’s goin on?” the proprietor repeated, louder this time, face-on to the retired nurse. She flashed a look that would have boiled ice, her companion still a mute block near the table. Darrell’s flailing died away and he began making a thin mewling gasp deep in the back of his throat.
“Like he just said,” the nurse began, flicking her head in Sautin’s direction, emphasizing every word. “This man’s having a seizure and someone, anyone, YOU, needs to call 911!” She bent closer and cradled Darrell’s head in her han
d. With the other she probed his mouth to keep him from swallowing his tongue. The proprietor shot back to his feet, his mouth squeezed into a rictus of anger.
“Of all fuckin shit,” he spat venomously. “The motherfucker…”
Sautin placed a hand on the sweating man’s shoulder and he spun around like a rattlesnake that’d just been stepped on. “And what the fuck you want!” the old man yelled.
Sautin stepped up until his face was inches away from the shopkeeper’s. “I want you to get on the horn and call a fuckin ambulance!”
The man looked as if he had at least one more thing to say, but the look in Sautin’s eyes decided the better of it. “Right, right! What the fuck ever!” he said in the same rancid tone, pushing past the younger and bigger man. Sautin cut a look to the nurse’s companion, satisfied the old fag was out of the ball game from the look of awed wonder on his face. The nurse was fretting with the gurgling Darrell on the floor. Sautin turned to follow the old man, his ears in high gear to catch the sound of the bell above the door. None came, hopefully, none would. The knife was a huge knot in his boot.
He made his move by the desk.
He’d grabbed a scarred-up hockey stick resting against another oaken end table on the way over and when the old man turned to snap at him again, Sautin let him have it in the temple just like the asshole deserved.
“Wha--?” he tried, but there was really nothing to do in the millisecond he had to react. The stick caught him just above the right eye and the sound it made in the now stultified quiet of the antique’s store ricocheted off the walls like a baseball being knocked out of the park.
The impact sent the old man reeling across the desk, clearing it of three-quarters of the pile it supported, and then out of sight on the other side to the floor, the chair spinning away madly in his wake. It was then the screaming began behind Sautin. He turned, the stick still tight in his hand.
Seemed the act was over. Darrell was now completely upright, having obviously just pushed the good nurse away with a little extra strength than necessary. Because now a higher, more shrill scream welled up from below, where the old woman lay in her own pile of clothing. Her leg was twisted at an excruciating angle (Sautin could see that even from here), and the screaming didn’t sound like it would stop any time soon. He was preparing to mop up the old man when he was tackled from behind, hard. You knew to watch him, the cold voice reprimanded him, almost with a disgusted sigh.