A Dead Issue Read online

  “And what if I don’t want you on the payroll?” I asked, tucking the bills into my own shirt pocket.

  The deadeye look was back, and with it a hardness about the mouth—muscles flexing in his jaw. “Then you go to jail, motherfucker. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. You ever been in Lewisburg? Graterford? Ever do time?”

  He knew that I hadn’t, but the tone of his voice reaffirmed that he had.

  “No get-out-of-jail-free card for you. Just hard time. The hardest damn time you ever gonna do.”

  His shoulders relaxed as he got control of his anger. He pushed himself away from the table, rose to his feet, and stood over me. “Maybe I should explain a few things to you.” Suddenly, he had become overly patient like he was talking to a child.

  I stood also—nothing threatening or challenging. I didn’t want him talking down to me.

  “Explain what?”

  “Life—on account of you’re the dumbest fuck on this planet,” he continued. “You don’t know the value of money, and you don’t know the value of freedom. So how are you going to know how much money to spend keeping your ass out of jail?” He looked at me, letting that sink in. “What you need is a lesson on how it is. First of all, you go to jail, they going to eat you alive. You’re just too damn white. You’ll be somebody’s bitch the first day. You’ll be waddling around with a size 14 asshole—bend over in a breeze you can join a jug band.”

  I tried to show no emotion and listened quietly.

  “And then, you’re too damn easy.” He shook his head as if dismayed by my lack of understanding. “You’ll fall for every con they run at you.” He smiled and snorted. “Look what just happened. I come in here with a bullshit story about Phil and Dex wanting hush money. Total bullshit. And you bought right into it—on my word! Christ. Then you sign your check and take an envelope full of money that’s hardly worth shit.”

  He smiled again at the look of confusion that crossed my face.

  “Those fifties,” he explained. “Don’t you read the paper? Al-Qaeda is flooding the world with phony fifties, trying to ruin our economy. They look good—all those anti-forgery measures, special paper with threads, color images—they’ve got them all covered, but they had to get in our face. They put Osama bin Laden in the clouds behind the Capitol Building. Hold it up to the light you can see him.”

  I pulled one of the fifties out of the envelope and held it up to the light. I saw the clouds and a face that looked like Grant, but nothing that looked like—and that’s when he punched me.

  I never saw it coming. One moment I was backlighting a fifty-dollar bill and the next moment I was doubled over with the wind knocked out of me, midsection on fire with the pain from a punch to the stomach. Cash must have bruised his knuckles on my backbone. I held myself—mouth gaping and eyes staring at the floor. I saw a blur that was a knee coming up to my face and I couldn’t react. It caught me square on the nose with an impact that I heard rather than felt. The delayed burst of pain exploded across my face as I hit the floor, cupping my hands over my nose and rolling into a defensive ball. I was unable to breathe. My mouth filled with blood and the overflow trickled down my throat, joining the torrent that flowed from my sinuses. Cash kicked me in the kidneys and a new pain exploded in my back. I sucked in air and a lungful of blood. I choked, drowning in my own blood. I rolled over to my knees, still bent double. With a controlled effort, I took in enough air to cough out some blood. The next breath cleared some more. I heard Cash’s voice and tried to focus on it, still fighting through waves of pain.

  “This is what it’s gonna be like in jail. How much you willing to pay to avoid this shit, Waldo?” He touched me with the toe of his shoe and I flinched as if it contained a live current. “This worth a few hundred dollars? A few thousand?”

  Ribbons of bloody slaver poured out of my mouth. I concentrated on not inhaling more blood, eyes pinched shut, spitting when I could gather strength and letting the pain subside.

  “The scary part is I like you. Imagine what this would be like if I hated your sorry ass.”

  I opened my eyes to a pool of blood on the floor, and I pushed myself up and away from it so that I was now on my hands and knees. I coughed and sprayed blood. Cash talked and circled me, his words barely registering.

  “And the one thing you got to understand . . . the one thing I got to teach you is this. Just when you think it can’t get any worse—it does.” With that, he kicked me—his foot driving up between my legs.

  CHAPTER 26

  Cash left me curled up in my kitchen. The door slammed. I was terrified that he had gone back to his car to get a baseball bat or something to finish the job right. I tried to gather the strength to get up and escape, but didn’t have much success. A car door slammed and the GTO roared off. I slumped back to the floor and curled up again. Sometime during the night, I filled a towel with ice cubes and staggered off to bed where I alternated between chilling my nose and my crotch. The ice melted, the towel turned pink with diluted blood, and everything became damp and uncomfortable. It didn’t matter. I slept until 10:00 AM.

  After a long, hot shower, I stood before the mirror and took an inventory of damages: nose stuffed with blood and tender to the touch. I’d be mouth breathing until I worked up the nerve to use a Kleenexa prospect fraught with the promise of pain. Upper teeth were tender but not loose. Stomach and kidneys sore but no broken ribs. I could breathe, but a sneeze was going to hurt. And my nuts held a sustained note of dull pain.

  Moving with slow deliberation, I went to the kitchen and sopped up my blood with wads of paper towels. Then I foraged for food—something to quell the acidic burn in my stomach. My refrigerator was nearly empty. I had cleaned out almost everything the day Devereaux stopped in for a visit. I had kept a few eggs, a stick of butter and bread—enough for a breakfast before moving out completely. If it hadn’t been for Jonah’s funeral and Devereaux’s tour of the scene of the crime, I would have been safely at the Cameron Estate, guarded by security devices when Cash came to collect. His ruthless, calculated attack pissed me off almost as much as it scared me. Cash holding the fifties up to the light—setting me up. The bastard knew what he was going to do before he left home. He also knew what he was going to take. I checked the bank envelope on the kitchen table. It was balled up like the beer cans, and there was no doubt that it was empty.

  I opened the oven and pulled out a cast iron frying pan the size of a tennis racket. It was crusty black and once belonged to my grandmother. I hefted it in my right hand, thinking of Cash. I turned the burner on low and dropped in a large square of butter and watched it slide to the low end. Then I went back to the bedroom to dress.

  The bloody clothes I had worn the day before were in a heap by my bed. I found the four $50 bills I had snatched from Cash in the pile. They were folded in half with blood dried to a dull brown along the crease. I smiled weakly at my “good fortune,” tucked the bills into my shirt, and surveyed myself in the mirror once more.

  If I stood perfectly still the pain subsided to a dull ache. Sudden movements brought sharp, stabbing pains that spiked and were slow to subside. I made up my mind to move as little as possible. Then heavy footfalls clomped up the stairs to my apartment—Cash returning to see if I needed another lesson and to collect the rest of his fee.

  I swung around, stupidly, looking for a hiding place and wishing I had locked the door the night before. There was no time to run into the kitchen. Instead, I closed the bedroom door, praying that someone had installed a deadbolt during the night while I slept.

  The pounding on the stairs stopped. There was a moment’s pause and I felt a jarring thud as if someone had dropped a bank vault at my door. Then there was nothing. I stood, petrified, straining to hear the faintest sound, and fully aware of my aches and pains as if they were separate entities protesting in fear at the prospect of being renewed. Someone had made a delivery—something heavy that made climbing the stairs difficult, so
mething that landed at my door. The messenger, once disburdened of his load, slipped off in silence.

  I calmed myself down and cracked open the bedroom door enough to peer down the long hallway, through my kitchen, to the front door. I waited for another moment to be sure, and then ventured out, never taking my eye from the bright rectangle of morning light streaming through the door’s window. Moving slowly, I reached the door. No one was there and I looked down to see what massive object awaited me.

  It was a rat—a dead rat, seven inches long, and flattened to a quarter of an inch. Sprays of blood fanned out in all directions from it as if it had fallen from seven miles up. Its jaw was scissored open, and a single eye stared up at me. And then two enormous boots came into my field of vision and straddled the rat. My eyes rose from the boots and as they traveled upward, I knew I was going to be looking into at least one eye of a monster named Stomp.

  “I hate rats,” he said in a flat tone that rumbled out of him, and he deliberately planted his right foot on the carcass and mashed it as if it were a cigarette butt. He opened the door and I sidestepped for him to enter. In two strides he was in my kitchen, leaving one bloody footprint behind him. Then he stood silently, filling up the room with his menacing presence and the smell of sweat and stale cigarette smoke. I had to walk around him to face him, his lizard eye tracking me until I stood before him. Then it drifted off.

  “Stomp. Right?”

  The giant stared at me with his focused eye for a moment. “Cut the shit. I want the money—now!”

  “What money?” I asked.

  “The money you took from Stemmy after you shot him.”

  “Honest to God, Stomp, I”

  He pushed me back into the stove, jarring the frying pan and making the butter sizzle as it sloshed on hot metal. With another stride and another bloody footprint he was on me, grabbing me by the shirt. The crackle of new bills startled him, made him freeze for a second. Stomp released his grip with a little shove. He reached into my pocket and extracted the fifties. I watched his face darken.

  “Stemmy . . .”

  “Stomp, you have to listen . . .”

  “You fuckin’ little rat bastard.”

  He was raging with anger now, and I knew that I was soon going to have a lot in common with the rat at my doorstep.

  “We didn’t shoot Stemmy,” I cried. “We tried to warn him!”

  “You knew he was going to get shot?”

  “No. We knew the money was phony.” Doubt and confusion clouded his face. “Don’t you read the fucking papers? The Arabs are trying to ruin our economy. They’re flooding the world with phony fifty dollar bills.” He glanced at the bloody money. “They look real good. Made with the right paper, best printing. You almost have to be an expert to tell, but the bastards had to get in our face—they put a picture of Osama bin Laden in the clouds. You can see him if the light is right.”

  Stomp looked down at the bills in his hand. There was a long moment as he considered the matter and then he unfolded one and turned it over to look at the U. S. Capitol Building on the back. He frowned at it and then turned to hold it up against the light from the door. I whacked him from behind with the frying pan.

  It was a two-fisted forehand with an impact that sounded like a flagpole being belted with a two-by-four. Hot butter sprayed in a wide arc around the room. I dropped the searing pan and it bonked into the corner. Stomp lurched forward in an awkward, high-stepping gait like a drunk with his tie caught in a taxi pulling away from the curb. The door didn’t stop him. He crashed through it, the hinge stripping partially away from the door jamb. He staggered out onto the porch with his arm looped through the broken screen. It caught his momentum and spun him around. More screws popped from the hinge and he broke free and pirouetted, hopping on one foot, backward to the rail to the right of the stairs. The railing flexed as he leaned into it, flipping him over. His feet disappeared over the edge in what could have been a perfectly executed backward swan dive. I expected to hear a splash. Instead, a thick whoomp came up from the sidewalk like someone had dropped a side of beef from a balcony.

  I raced to the edge of the porch. Stomp was stretched out on his back at the feet of Detective Frank Devereaux.

  CHAPTER 27

  Devereaux got down on one knee next to Stomp and peered into his face then hitched sideways to avoid the pool of blood spreading slowly from the back of his head. The detective snapped open his cell phone and I heard the words ‘ambulance’ and ‘backup.’ As he rose painfully to his feet, he pocketed his phone and cleared his jacket away from his body for easy access to the gun holstered far back on his right hip. He turned and looked up the stairs and his eyes met mine.

  “What happened?” he demanded.

  I descended as fast as I could, answering, “He fell off the porch.”

  “No shit. Now tell me what happened?”

  I swung my head back toward my apartment. The screen door was still attached by the last two feet of hinge and leaned over toward the edge of the porch, the screen hanging loose. I looked down at Stomp. I had to watch closely to see his chest rise and fall. For a terrible moment, I was sure he wasn’t breathing. His arms were extended and my eyes traveled to his meaty hands. I expected them to flex as Jonah’s had, but they were palm up in a relaxed curl. My initial impulse to lie gave way to the truth.

  “I hit him,” I admitted softly.

  Devereaux looked up the stairs to the screen door and then down at Stomp. He sized me up and down and glanced at the screen door again. “With what? A Buick?”

  I smiled as best I could while Devereaux stared at my battered face.

  “Did he do that to you?”

  I shook my head. “Unrelated,” I said, dismissing it as something he need not worry about.

  A siren sounded in the distance, saving me from having to explain further, and almost immediately an ambulance swung into the curb. It must have been around the corner returning from the hospital when the call came in. Devereaux ushered me to the side and I stood there as the paramedics took his vital signs, stabilized his neck, and strapped him on the gurney with his head packed in bandages. Another siren announced the arrival of a squad car. It blocked off the lane for the ambulance and Devereaux signaled the patrolman to direct traffic, which amounted to three cars that rubbernecked their way past the scene.

  The street was back to normal within twenty minutes, and Devereaux had not said a word. We watched the whole procedure like curious bystanders. It gave me plenty of time to consider my situation, and it wasn’t a pleasant one. If Stomp died I would be in trouble. If he lived I would really be in trouble. Then, with a casual salute to the patrolman, Devereaux turned to me. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  Once again, he lumbered up the stairs ahead of me. He paused once, as his eyes cleared the level of the floor, and I knew he was looking at the dead rat. When he reached the porch, he stood and examined the door until I caught up to him.

  “What’s this?” The toe of his polished shoe was tapping three inches from the flattened carcass.

  “It’s what I almost looked like.”

  Devereaux gripped the screen door and swung it in a small arc. The hinge screeched painfully. He stepped into my kitchen halting me at the door with his palm. He stood surveying the room, his shrewd little eyes darting around taking in every detail. When he was finished, he motioned me inside. I entered and stood next to him eying the room critically as he had, trying to determine if the evidence told more of the story than I was willing to share.

  “I’ve got two questions,” Devereaux began. “How do you know Stomp Jessup? And what’s with the rat?”

  Jessup? It made perfect sense for a cop to know a guy like Stomp, but Devereaux’s use of his last name startled me. It was too familiar, too casual. Devereaux probably knew more about Stomp than he did about his own mother—and that meant that Devereaux also knew about Stemcell and was eager to find out how I fit into the picture. He smelled a rat and it wasn’t the one p
osing as a doormat on my porch.

  “Dusty and I went to some seedy little bar in Easton. That guy was playing pool. Dusty knew him.”

  “The Belmont?”

  “Yeah, on top of the hill.”

  Devereaux looked back toward the door. “And the rat?”

  “I think it was his calling card.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Money.”

  Devereaux leaned over with great effort and picked up the four fifties that had popped out of Stomp’s fingers when I whacked him.

  “This your money? Looks like blood on it.”

  “It’s mine,” I explained and pointed to my nose. Devereaux scanned the purple skin around my nose and under my eyes. I explained how I quit McDonald’s and how Cash delivered my pay. “We had a little disagreement. I took a punch.”

  “When was that?”

  “Last night.”

  Devereaux looked around the kitchen, reviewing the scene before asking, “So what happened here?”

  I took a deep breath and launched into my tale starting with the slow, deliberate footfalls clomping up to my door and the sound of something large landing on my porch. I told him about the smashed rat and how boots appeared into my field of vision, and all the while Devereaux remained silent. But when I mentioned Stomp entering my apartment, he interrupted.

  “Did he knock?”

  I thought about it and shook my head.

  “Did you open the door for him?”

  I shook my head again. Devereaux gave a rolling hand gesture for me to continue. His eyes followed the footprints in rat blood into the kitchen as I described his approach, and he seemed to note the splash of butter on the stove when I told him I was pushed into the stove. He ran a fat finger through it and tested it with thumb and forefinger. He held his hand flat over the burner, then reached over and turned it off.