At the far end of the club, Kyle leaned against a booth. Ronny waved to him to cover the door like they’d talked about. Kyle pushed off from the booth and wound his way past them, his eyes taking in Frank—or whatever his real name was.
Mr. B’s booth still sat empty, his coaster from Mandalay Bay the only evidence that he’d ever been anywhere near it. He hadn’t shown his face on the club floor for nearly a week now. Ronny checked to make sure Frank followed. Silent as a bug, the thug in his Sunday best shadowed him.
Mr. B would be in his office. Ronny threaded his way through the crowd toward the back, past the booths, past the bar, past the private rooms with Mr. B’s Andy Warhol prints flashing their colors. The restrooms marked with male and female symbols were the last public parts of the club. He pushed through the unmarked door and into the hallway leading to the kitchen in one direction and an alleyway exit in the other. Before him was Mr. B’s office door with a sign that read PRIVATE in gold block letters.
He stopped outside the door. In the old days, he would walk on in. But now it would be locked.
He turned to the guy who called himself Frank. “Listen. I don’t care what your real name is. But what I told Mr. B—this is what you need to go along with—I know you from before. We used to run together in the city. San Francisco. Can you remember that?”
Frank’s expression didn’t change. It was as if the scar that angled up his forehead made him unable to register anything. “Why’d you tell him that?”
“Give him confidence in you. You want a job, right?”
“Depends. I’ll meet the guy.”
One of the waiters came out of the kitchen and made for the door to the restrooms. Once the waiter got a look at Frank, he moved a little more quickly past them.
Ronny waited until the door swung behind the waiter.
“Look,” Ronny said, “this will be quick work. Good pay.”
“I’ll listen to him.” Frank leaned past Ronny and knocked on the door to Mr. B’s office.
“Who is it?” Not Mr. B’s voice. Garrett’s.
“It’s Ronny. I brought the guy I told him about.”
Ronny waited. Back in the club, Patti Smith’s voice moaned out “About a Boy.” A Nirvana song would be next. This place was so ironic.
Finally the door unlocked and opened. Garrett stood there trying to block them out while he used the eye that wasn’t puffed closed to look over the new guy.
“Who’s been beating everybody up?” Frank asked. He pushed inside. Garrett winced as Frank brushed against him.
Mr. B sat at his desk, wearing the same tired-eyed expression Ronny had seen on his face for the past week. His eyes might as well have been punched out for the darkness of the circles underneath them. Raccoon man—that’s what he was.
He looked at the new guy. “Yeah, I see what you meant, Ronny. Come on over.” Mr. B stood, a cigarette trailing smoke from his fingertips like a lit fuse. He held out the other hand.
Frank didn’t shake it. “See what?”
Raccoon man grinned, eyes slitting. “Nothing. Here, you want a drink?” He pointed at the vodka bottle sitting on his desk. “Get him a glass, will you?”
Garrett turned for the cupboard.
“I don’t want a drink. Just tell me about the job.”
“Sure, sure. All business. I like that.” Mr. B lifted his own glass off the desk and took a shot, refilled it, and went to the sofa across the room while he inserted the cigarette between his lips.
The new guy pivoted, effortless as an electric fan. Ronny had the impression that this one could crouch into a boxing stance anytime.
Mr. B dropped onto the sofa. He looked like he was about to ask the guy to sit, but thought better of it. “You need a job, huh?”
“What I need is cash.”
“Right. Sure. That’s the point, isn’t it?” Mr. B liked this guy. Ronny saw it in the attitude of Mr. B’s shoulders, the way his shadowed, red-rimmed eyes held on the new guy. “See, I got this problem, and my guys can’t seem to deal with it.”
“That why they’re walking around with their faces tattooed?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Tattooed faces. That’s a good one.” He tried to get Garrett or Ronny to go along, but Ronny didn’t think it was such a good one.
“So what’s the problem?”
Mr. B sat back. His knees bounced. A few drops of vodka splashed onto his pants. “Five nights ago, this guy comes in looking for me. I never seen him before. I don’t know who he is. But he’s got some kind of problem with me. Garrett here comes in, tells me the guy wants to see me. I don’t know him, so naturally I tell G to get rid of him. You see what happened.”
“Tattoos.”
“Right. Ronny jumps in, but they still can’t handle him between the two of them. Plus I got a bartender with a broken arm. He can’t pour drinks. Anyway, the guy finally leaves, but he’s back the next night.”
“Bad for business. What time does he usually come in?”
Mr. B leaned forward again. He pointed at the new guy with two fingers scissoring the cigarette. “No nonsense. Just get to the point. See that, fellas?”
“Yeah, we see,” Ronny said. It was fine. Let him like the new guy.
“No set time. Usually after midnight.” Mr. B switched his glass to the cigarette hand so he could look at his watch without dumping vodka onto his lap.
“What do I get paid?”
Mr. B looked to Garrett, then to Ronny, then back to the new guy. “We haven’t even talked about what you’re going to do yet.”
The guy who called himself Frank took a step forward. For some reason, seeing the work boots on the Persian carpet reminded Ronny of some of the punkers he’d known—guys who wore the heavy boots and spiked their hair and had pierced noses and ears and tongues. But Frank had no decorations other than the old scar on his face.
“You don’t want this guy coming around anymore. It’s not hard to figure out.”
“Yeah, but—”
“What do I get paid?”
“People have seen him in here. Anything happens to him, it looks bad on me. That’s the tricky part.”
“Nothing ties you and me. You pay me, you don’t have anything to worry about. He’s gone. I’m gone.” He glanced at Ronny. “You don’t even know my name. I’m just a guy who happens to be in your bar and pops off on this troublemaker that comes in.” For the first time, he raised his hands. They were big hands, unnatural. They could have come out of a blacksmith’s tool chest. He brushed the palms together twice and lifted them outward as if it was already a finished transaction.
Mr. B’s fingertips came up to his chin. Cigarette smoke snaked into his eyes, narrowing them.
“All I want to know is how much you pay me.”
Mr. B glanced at Ronny. Took a drag. “I’ll give you two now, another two in a month when he doesn’t come around anymore.”
“Two what?”
“Two thousand.”
The new guy stared at him. “That all this is worth to you? Holed up in here like a scared rabbit? You got a family?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“He comes around here, what keeps him from showing up where you live?”
“Yeah, I thought of that. They’re out of town for a while.”
“You got to get your life back to normal. That’s worth more than four thousand for a guy like you.”
Mr. B sucked the cigarette down to the filter, winced, and stuffed it into an ashtray. He stood and found the pack on his desk, shook out a fresh one, and got it lit with a lighter that he had to use two hands to hold steady. “I’ll make it six.”
“I’ll do it for eight. Four now. Four when Ronny here tells you your life’s back to normal. It won’t take a month.”
Mr. B drew on the cigarette like it gave him life instead of the opposite. Smoke came out of his mouth in staccato puffs. This Frank guy really had him twisted up. Or was it what he was agreeing to?
“
All right. Okay.” He sat in his desk chair and leaned over to get to the floor safe. In a few seconds, Ronny heard the lid clunk back onto the floor, the shuffle of paper bills, and then the slap of the lid closing again. Mr. B straightened up, a wad of hundreds in his hand. “I don’t know you. You don’t know me. You come into my place a couple of times, then you get into a fight with this guy. That’s all I know. You’ll get your second four from Ronny.”
Mr. B put the bills on the desk and reached for the vodka bottle. The stuff gushed into the glass, and when he set the bottle on the desktop, it rattled on the wood. He took the glass and his cigarette back to the sofa without looking at the new guy again. As if by not looking at him, he could forget he knew him.
The new guy who called himself Frank took the money and stuffed it into his pocket. He left the office without bothering to close the door behind him. Through the open doorway Kurt Cobain’s voice shouted, “Stay away. Stay away. Stay away.”
29
“What’s this scary monster look like?” Flip asked Ronny. He could barely hear his own voice with the music so loud. All these people shouted at each other or leaned close to try to hear and be heard.
Across from him in the booth, Ronny didn’t touch the glass of club soda sweating onto the tabletop in front of him. After a second he leaned forward. “You’ll know him when he comes in. Big. Shaved head. My height. Got about thirty, forty pounds on me. Looks like a guy you’d see in a nuthouse. Got tattoos on his face, a tattoo around his right arm, up here.” He pointed to his bicep. “And some other tattoo on the left arm I never got a good look at.”
“All you got a good look at was his fist, huh?”
“I can’t wait to see how your mouth runs when he comes in.”
Flip sipped his coffee. It had cooled, but the taste wasn’t too rotten.
Nobody in the place looked anything like the guy Ronny described. They were all dressed for the party, dangling beer bottles or clutching glasses, circling one another like packs of hyenas around a kill. Flip tried to keep his eyes pinned to the front door, but they kept drifting to the clubbers, the way they faked interest in one another, their real motives so obvious.
The front doorway filled. A man’s frame blocked the blackness of the night. He stood hunched, the top of his head too high for the door, surveying the room. Moving in now, the tattoos on his face masked him. Flip couldn’t make out the words stenciled there, but the uneven bursts of olive around the brow and eyes told him the tats were homemade—prison-made.
Like something from an enlarged world, Tats moved through the crowd. He was too big to slide between the groups of littler people crowded around, but he didn’t seem to have any interest in moving between them anyway. He knocked three people aside before a guy spoke up. The big man wrapped his hand around the guy’s face and shoved him to the floor.
People started for the door.
Flip knotted his hands together under the table and popped his back. His hands felt shrunken. He said to Ronny, “On your toes, bouncer boy,” and slid out of the booth.
Without another glance at Tats, Flip headed for the back. Ronny called after him, but he didn’t answer.
The office door was locked again. He pounded on it.
“It’s me. Let me in.”
A couple of clicks echoed in the hallway, and the door opened. Garrett looked out past Flip’s shoulder. “What?”
Flip pushed past him. Mr. B leaned forward in his office chair. Flip had the four thousand in his hand. He slapped it onto the desk. “Deal’s off.” He turned to leave.
“Hey. Wait a minute. What do you mean, deal’s off?” Mr. B’s voice reached a pitch Flip hadn’t heard before.
Flip faced him. “Job’s too big. Eight’s not enough. There’s your four back.” He turned to Garrett. “You better get busy. He’s out there.”
Shouts came from the front. Glass shattered. Garrett shifted his feet, looked to Mr. B. “I’ll make it ten. Ten thousand.”
Flip grinned at him. “You’ll make it twenty, or he’s going to be standing where I am in about three minutes.”
Mr. B’s lips clenched. His eyes shifted to the doorway. “All right. All right. Twenty.”
A crash from outside. That would be Ronny getting taken out.
“I’ll take ten now,” Flip said. “You better hurry. About a hundred yuppies are calling 911.”
“He’s always gone before the cops get here.” Mr. B scrambled for the safe under his feet and came up with six to add to the four on the desk. “Hurry up.” Flip scooped up the cash and left the room.
The slam of the office door almost caught his heel. He heard it lock behind him as he made for the rear exit.
In the alley, he leaned against the wall. Tats would probably be on his way toward the back by now.
Ten thousand for watching a big guy shove into a bar.
Not a bad night’s work.
Or, he could face him for another ten.
The alley ended at a side street. It would run back up to Venice Boulevard. That would be the smart thing. Just take the ten thousand and call it a night.
But Flip’s blood pumped hard. All the old feelings swept through him, feelings from other streets, from the yard at Lancaster. From the room behind a bar a long, long time ago. It charged him, fed him.
He shoved away from the wall. At the end of the alley he circled up to Venice. The guy who’d taken Ronny’s place at the front of the club was long gone. Nobody was around. Flip leaned inside.
Ten minutes ago the place had been packed. Now it was empty. Except for Ronny, sprawled unconscious across broken lumber that used to be a table. The music that had been so loud before was silenced. With the place deserted and the music gone, Flip had the sense he was walking into a bar in a ghost town.
In back, he heard a muffled crash. That would be the door to Mr. B’s office splintering apart.
He moved faster.
At the door past the restrooms, he listened. He opened it slowly and looked around the edge.
Garrett flew out and bounced off the hallway wall. He left a head-shaped dent in the plaster and slumped into a heap.
Flip moved in. He swirled his tongue around in his mouth. Dry.
Mr. B was trying to keep the desk between him and Tats. It wasn’t going to work. The big guy, his back to Flip, shoved the desk toward Mr. B.
The owner’s eyes shot around, caught Flip’s. “Do something!”
So much for surprise.
Tats looked over his shoulder. He was leaning over to grip the edges of the desk with both hands, his wide back strained at his black T-shirt. Another shove and he had Mr. B pinned to the wall.
Tats’s eyes held on Flip. “You going to try me?” The voice was absurdly high. It belonged to a dwarf.
Flip smiled. “How’d you get by inside with a voice like that? All those tats help? Or you just get used to getting turned out?”
The bald head tilted. Flip could now make out the face tattoo. The markings around his eyes looked like a child’s drawing of the sun. The words under the skin would put him in the segregation unit anyplace.
Mr. B struggled like a bug pinned to a kid’s piece of cardboard. He pushed against the desk, but Tats held it solid.
That high voice spoke again. Tats’s eyes were on Flip, but he was talking to Mr. B. “Why you bring me this lop?” He glanced to Mr. B, back to Flip. “Hang on, boy. I be with you in a second.”
Flip laughed at him. “I’m sorry, man. You sound like a little girl.”
“Keep it up, punk.”
Flip’s face leveled. He stepped in.
Tats turned his back to Mr. B and straightened up. He had a long neck. Flip liked the look of it.
Mr. B pushed the desk away. It hit the back of the big guy’s legs and for an instant threw him off balance.
Flip tensed his left fist. Tats grinned. Flip spun everything into a right aimed for the Adam’s apple.
He hit it flush.
Flip pulled back. H
e ducked to his right.
Tats tried to swallow. His eyes popped wide. He staggered. His neck muscles tightened.
Flip swung for the nose.
Tats slapped it away and came at Flip like a brick wall falling.
Close now, Flip could use the point of his elbow. He went for the neck again.
Caught it.
Tats’s face contorted. The tattoo around his eyes scrunched.
But he kept coming, choking.
Flip twisted, trying to get out of the way. Tats was too wide. A hand caught Flip’s shoulder and held him. The big guy tumbled toward him. Flip pushed back, but he was under a tidal wave. He swung, no target, no aim—hit something.
The floor rose. It slammed into him.
Crushed, on his side, Flip squirmed. His right shoulder was in a vise. Tats was sputtering, choking on his own windpipe. Flip shoved against the floor.
The big guy lifted a hand. Flip couldn’t get space to wriggle free. He threw an elbow, caught the big guy’s cheek. That hand was coming.
Flip tried to duck.
The fist landed like a sledgehammer on Flip’s forehead. Stars exploded behind his eyes. He slipped his arms up, covered his head.
But the second punch didn’t come.
The noises from Tats’s throat sounded like a kid coughing far away. That little girl’s voice wasn’t forming any words.
Flip rolled out from under him and scrambled to his feet. He needed the wall. One hand pressed against it. The wall kept wanting to drift away. Pinpoints of light floated around the room. Flip passed a hand across his eyes to wipe away the wetness forming there.
Stretched out on the floor, Tats’s feet scraped like he wanted to climb sideways. He took up the whole floor.
Mr. B came around the desk. He stared at Flip, chest heaving. “You . . . you . . .” He stood out of the big guy’s reach, feet dancing, and looked down at him. The big guy wrestled with his own throat. “Did you kill him?”
Flip leaned against the wall. No amount of blinking would clear his vision. “Give me the other ten.”
Mr. B ignored him. He leaned over, still out of the big guy’s reach. “She wanted it!”
Tats couldn’t respond. His gagging made Flip think he wanted to, but no other noise would come.
“Give me my money.” His own voice was a floating croak. The throb in his forehead gained power with the settling of his adrenaline.