About two steps up from a bordello. Most nights.
I won the lease for this place in a poker game a few months back, so I reckoned I might as well occupy the apartment that sits on top of it seeing as I’m already paying for it. The previous leaseholder lived elsewhere but kept the apartment up as what he tenderly referred to as a fuck pad. You can bet your last nickel that I brought in a team of industrial cleaners to steam the shit out of that place before I moved in, but I held on to the waterbed and a Jacuzzi, which is coin operated if you can believe that. I bet if Mike knew about the Jacuzzi coin box he’d want a slice of that too. I realize protection is a necessary evil, but these guys don’t seem to realize that there is a recession on.
Zeb is not sold on the whole Jacuzzi idea.
Fucking jizz pools, he informed me one night when he actually scored a classy lady in the club and I gallantly offered the two of them a handful of change for a whirl in my deluxe power bath. What do you think goes on under those bubbles? And how often do you clean the pipes? That pearly gunk has probably made its way into the water system by now. We’re all down here chugging down some guy’s tadpoles, smacking our lips and saying yum yum.
I guess you don’t have to be smart to be a doctor.
I try to stay positive about Slotz but it’s hard because of the specter of shitholery hanging over the joint. This place has been a dump for a decade and a craphole for twenty years before that, but we’re trying to change things. Me and my business partner Jason Dyal.
Jason is doing most of the work, to give the guy credit. Jason has been a revelation and a godsend. And if that reads a little over the top, it’s because Jason is gay and I tend to overdo the praise thing just to show how cool I am with that. I get embarrassed when he starts bandying around words like queer and homo, but he says he’s been holding it in for so long that he feels entitled to queer it up a little now.
I’m a queen in a safe environment, Danny, he told me a couple of months back. So you’re getting an eyeful of the real me.
Fag away, I said, trying to get into the swing, which stopped him dead in his tracks.
I’ve stayed out of the swing since then.
So anyways, Jason has been my partner for several years since we started bouncing this place. I always knew he was a tough-as-nails kind of guy, but I did not know that he also had natural business acumen and could handle a toolkit, which is not a euphemism. I stood in a porch with the guy for the best part of a decade through the rain and snow holding doors for addicts and perverts and knew damn all about him. Then again, he knew the square root of damn all about me. But now that we’re business partners we got a stake in each other’s future, so mutual trust has entered the equation. This feels good on a day-to-day basis, but it the long term it’s bad, because now Mike has someone else to punish for my sins.
So that’s Sofia, my kinda girlfriend on her good days.
Dr. Zeb, my peacetime buddy from the Lebanon war zone.
And Jason, my tool-swinging business partner.
Three friends now. I’m turning into Miss Popularity.
Jason spots me coming in the front door and he climbs down from a stepladder and hails me.
“Hey, boss man. You came home, I was worried sick.”
“Less of the sarcasm, J. And we’re partners now, remember?”
Jason looks like a linebacker in dungarees and a hard hat, and I know if Zeb was here that he’d ask Jason if he was going to a club with the rest of the Village People and Jason would laugh his ass off. I aspire to that level of nonchalance.
“Yeah, partners. I do all the work and you grace us with your presence when the day is nearly done.”
“Sorry, J. Won’t happen again.”
Jason tugs a Post-it from his helmet where Marco, his boyfriend and our head barman, probably stuck it.
“Here’s the to-do list for today.”
I hang my leather coat on the stand. “Gimme the summary, J. I gotta wash and go. Mike trouble.”
Jason snarls and I can see the diamond twinkling in his incisor and I don’t think there is a soul on this earth would use the term queen to describe him right now.
“That Mike guy is a thorn in our side, Dan. Come on. We got skills, I think we could call in a few people and take him.”
Jason knows plenty about accountancy and remodeling spaces, and maybe he can crack heads pretty good, but he doesn’t know shit about going tactical, and I don’t just mean pulling the trigger, I mean living with yourself afterward.
“No one’s taking anyone, J. I gotta run an errand for Mike. You keep banging away here.”
Jason pouts, which is new. “It’s a bit more than banging away, Danny. This dump is going to be a palace by the time we’re through. This whole area will be open plan. I swear I could pull down these partitions with my teeth, and the sweet part is we don’t even need a permit because the walls are not even on the original drawings.”
Being made partner has given Jason a real shot in the arm. He goes at everything with the enthusiasm of a five-year-old wired on Skittles.
“That’s great. So what have we got on today?”
It’s crazy; I’m making small talk like it’s an ordinary day when I’ve got two hundred large in prehistoric currency burning a hole in my pocket. It occurs to me that it would not be beyond Mike to send someone after me to steal his own bonds and put me in the frame with Shea. In one move he could extricate himself from this guy’s debt and get someone else to take the risk of sneaking up behind me.
Jason walks with me like we’re in the halls of power and I try to focus on what he’s saying. “Today, we’re breaking through from the back room to the roulette wheel. Practically doubles our space. I got a few of the boys coming over to help out. Throw on some nice green and yellow paint.” He eyes me pointedly. “You’re good with those colors, right?”
Shades of emulsion are way down on my list of concerns right now.
“Sure. Why not? And we’re still gonna be open by Friday?”
“Not completely finished, but we can open, sure.”
“Good. You the man.”
It’s true. Jason is the man. Without him and his goodwill network we couldn’t afford the new coat of paint for this job.
I am gonna allow myself to think positive for five seconds, so I fake punch and Jason fake blocks. “I got high hopes, J. We could actually make a living. All of us.”
“Fuck living,” says Jason. “We’re gonna make bank.”
I wince. It’s an Irish Catholic pre-emptive guilt reaction to any expression of optimism. Pride comes before a fall. The Jewish folks have it too, as Zeb puts it: You get too cocky, you get that cock cut off.
Like many of Zeb’s sayings it doesn’t bear scrutiny but gets the point across.
Plus even banks ain’t making bank these days.
I have a plan of sorts re the Mike/bearer-bonds situation. Nip upstairs to my apartment to clean up and put on my stomping boots. Swing by the bus station, select a gun from my locker stash and take the bus into the city. Maybe I’ll stop off at Spring and pick up a slice at Ben’s but that’s not a priority, and only works if I’m alive and the queue of tourists doesn’t stretch too far around the block.
This is a pretty slapdash plan but I figure I’ll have plenty of time to fine-tune it on the bus.
But the best-laid plans come undone, and the causal ones unravel even faster. My shower and change proceeds exactly as envisioned but the gun-bus-pizza portion of my strategy lasts precisely five steps from the club when I notice an unmarked cop sedan idling beside the hydrant opposite. I know the two cops inside by the shapes of their heads. Coupla knucklehead detectives called Krieger and Fortz, who Lieutenant Ronelle Deacon once informed me couldn’t find their dicks with mirrors and a dick-o-scope, which cracked me up at the time. Now that level of incompetence seems a little ominous. Fortz looks like he’s wearing a helmet and, with his long neck and slender skull, Krieger could have a lightbulb on his shoulders.
/> Maybe they’re not looking for me, I think.
Yeah, and maybe if Zeb’s Uncle Mort had a pussy and so on and so forth.
Krieger spots me in the mirror and attempts to exit the squad nonchalantly, which is tough to do when your partner has parked level with a hydrant. Krieger dings the door panel real good before he realizes he’s shut in there.
This would be a great jumping-off point for me if I wanted to get into some back and forth with these guys, but I’m feeling a little worn out with all the morning’s repartee, plus I got an envelope in my breast pocket with big denominations inside it, which I am pretty certain were not attained legally. With this in mind I decide to play it straight with these blues no matter how much klutzing they get up to.
Fortz slides out the driver side but keeps his distance. I guess the word is out that I can knock people over pretty good.
“Morning,” says Fortz, hiding his bulk behind the door. “Or is it afternoon?”
“Brunchtime,” I say, all cultured.
“Good one,” says Fortz, flopping his wallet open to give me an eyeful of the ID inside. “I’m Detective Fortz and that dummy trying to get of the car is Detective Krieger,” he says, a thumb hooked into his belt, keeping one hand close to his holster. “You’re McEvoy, right?”
Not much point in denying it. “That’s me, Detective Fortz of the force. What can I do for you?”
Fortz is living proof that evolution goes both ways. He’s got the aforementioned helmet-head look going on, with a skull that shines like a buffed bowling ball. The man is completely hairless as far as I can see and his features seem to belong to a much smaller face. It’s as if his head kept growing but his eyes, nose and mouth said screw it at about age fifteen. His tongue lolls a bit when he’s not speaking and another one of my doorman theories states that tongue lollers are quick to violence. Someday I’m gonna write all these nuggets down for future generations of doormen. Maybe I’ll attain guru status and get on Dr. Phil. I would love that, sitting on the chair opposite Phil, just close enough to smack that smug fucker in the chops. I probably wouldn’t take the shot, but little dreams keep a person going.
Fortz swaps his wallet for a phone and checks the screen to show me how in demand he is.
“Lieutenant Deacon wants to see you,” he says. “It’s important.”
“You’re running errands for the Troopers now?”