I was near a little light over the door to the poker room, but he was in the shadows, an arrangement he’d contrived. He offered me a cigarillo, I declined, and he lighted up the little cigar, and regarded the rear expanse of the Giovanni kingdom. At three-thirty A.M. on a Wednesday, the graveled lot was damn near full. A big-hair hooker in a pink spandex minidress was leading a biker like a lamb to the slaughter (or maybe to the slattern) toward one of the eight little trailers that lined the lot at right and left.
“What do you want to talk to my father about, Jack?”
“I mean no offense not telling you, Jerry G. I don’t mind if you accompany me. But I need to talk to him in person.”
The amber eye of the lighted cigarillo stared at me. “What about, Jack?”
I had a feeling I better take a shot. I took it. “I used to work through a middleman, not directly for your friends in Chicago. There was always insulation. You know about insulation.”
“I know about insulation.”
“So maybe you can figure out what kind of work I used to do.”
The cigarillo looked at me; somewhere behind it, Jerry G was looking at me, too. “You don’t have the size for a strongarm. You’re no pipsqueak, but I wouldn’t hire you on as a bouncer, that’s for fucking sure.”
“I’d get a nosebleed up on those boxes. No, my specialty wasn’t handling problems or convincing people not to be problems.”
“Your business is removing problems.”
“Used to be.” I held my hands up in surrender, my empty hands. “I retired. I made a lot of money, and I retired.”
“So you just happened to be in Haydee’s Port.”
“I heard a good time could be had.”
“Got that right. So, then…you just want to pay my papa your respects? I don’t think so.”
I shook my head. “No. I want to tell him about somebody I saw over at the Paddlewheel. Somebody I recognized.”
He settled a hand on my shoulder. Gently. His smile emerged from the darkness, Cheshire Cat style. “Jack, you’re going to have to tell me. The only path to my pop is through me. I’m the gatekeeper, capeesh?”
I capeeshed.
“I saw a guy I’d worked with once in the old days,” I said. “He was a specialist in hit-and-run. You know, ‘accidents’?”
The hand came off my shoulder, the smile disappeared, and the cigarillo tip stared.
“I believed he was casing that guy Cornell, who runs the Paddlewheel-”
“I know who Cornell is.”
“And I think Cornell was his mark.”
“ How do you know, Jack? Did you talk to this old pal of yours?”
Improvising like a jazz solist, I said, “I only worked one job with him, a long time ago, and that was before I had my face worked on.”
“You had a plastic surgery job? That good, was it?”
“My mother wouldn’t know me. Anyway, I didn’t want any part of it. No skin off my ass if my old ‘pal,’ as you put it, takes Cornell out. My experience is, anybody with a target on his back probably mostly put it there himself. Fuck the guy.”
“All right,” Jerry G said.
He’d liked the sound of that, I thought.
“Anyway, last night, or I guess this morning, I was in my car in the Paddlewheel parking lot. I drank too much and fell asleep in the back seat. Something woke me, and I realized it was daylight, and I saw a couple of Cornell’s security guys grabbing Monahan. That’s his name, Monahan, the hit-and-run specialist.”
“What do you mean, grab?”
“Well, more than grab. One of ’em smashed his head into the steering wheel. Then another shoved him over, and took off out of there, and the other Cornell security guy followed in a second car.”
“Disposing of the body…”
“Obviously.”
Silence.
He dropped the cigarillo, crushed it under his heel, and stepped into the light. “And what does this have to do with my father? And me?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I can see who around Haydee’s Port would want rid of Cornell. If a hit on that guy has gone tits up, I figure you guys would want to know about it.”
“Just out of the goodness of your heart.”
“Not really. I thought your papa might think the information was worth a buck. Or maybe…well, I should save this for him.”
He thumped my chest with a finger. Lightly but the threat was there. “No, Jack. Give it to me.”
I shrugged. “I thought you might need somebody else to step in, and take care of Cornell.”
“…But you’re retired, Jack.”
I grinned at him. “Yeah, but I retired early. I’m still healthy enough to pick money up in the street.”
His tan puss split into a white grin. He and Cornell were two fucking peas in one fucking pod.
He slipped an arm around my shoulder and said, “Let’s play cards.”
We played cards. I continued to play conservatively, hanging onto my stacks of chips, which were the envy of the others. I continued not to bluff. When my wristwatch said it was nearing six, I finally asked how late we were going to go.
I could see from the expressions around me that the others would have gone on till either hell froze over or they’d won their money back. Neither seemed likely, and our host knew it.
“Once more,” he said.
He dealt a simple game of five card stud. I’ll cut to the finish, which may be of interest. I had an ace of diamonds up and otherwise bupkus. Jerry had two kings up. We each had two cards down, Jerry having dealt the first and last cards that way. The others had dropped out, and along the way, not a single other ace had been on the board.
Time to bluff.
I had the bet, and tossed out a blue chip.
Jerry G gave me the snort laugh. “You want me to think you’ve got an ace down, Jack? I don’t think you do.”
He raised me a blue chip.
So I raised him another blue chip. “It’s only five hundred to find out.”
He was frowning. I didn’t think it was unfriendly, just a deep, thoughtful frown. He was losing. Down maybe three grand.
“Fucker doesn’t bluff, Jerry G,” the surgeon said.
Jerry G snorted another laugh and threw in his cards. Because it was the last round, though, he gathered all the cards, and I noted him discreetly checking my hand, to see what I’d had. He flinched, but resisted the urge to let everybody know I had indeed, finally, been bluffing. He hadn’t bought the right to see those cards, after all, and that was bad manners indeed.
Jerry G cashed everybody in. I was up six thousand and change above the five thousand I’d brought along. Hands were shaken all around, the little barmaid provided everybody with coffee and sweet rolls (the coffee in Styrofoam to-go cups to prevent the group from lingering), and soon Jerry G and I were by ourselves.
“Let’s talk outside,” he said.
I followed him, and two guys grabbed me. One was the big bald black bastard and the other was the limpnose prick from the dance club. They dragged me out of the lot and into an alleyway between the Lucky Devil and some other dive, and Jerry G followed along. I have no idea how he set it up, other than maybe enlisting his goons by way of a whispered command he’d given the barmaid. He’d risen from the table to do this more than once, and she’d slipped out several times, presumably for supplies, and now I was up against a brick wall, the black guy holding onto my one arm, the noseless guy onto the other, doing my Jesus on the cross impression.
“You’re working for Cornell,” Jerry G said, grinning at me, and it was a vicious thing, a horsey look worthy of a stallion getting ready to kick your head in. “You were seen there, you were heard there, and I gave you a chance to play it straight, but you thought you’d fuck me, didn’t you?”
“I did talk to Cornell! I hadn’t finishing tell you-”
“No, you are finished.”
And Jerry G walked away, into the dawning day, while in the darkness, the two bouncers took turns. I felt a fist rattle my teeth, and another bash my nose, then my belly played punching bag first for one, then the other, while I coughed and gurgled on blood. I wish I could tell you this is where I came roaring back, but the truth is, I fell to my knees and then my face found the filthy brick floor of the alley and I got used to the taste of blood while they kicked me in the ass and the ribs, and finally the toe of a shoe caught the side of my head.