Louis Shalako: New York

The pounding from above started up, Man-Child as he was known, totally oblivious to anything in the outside world as people like that often were. Amy desperately struggled to get a hand into O’Hara’s pocket, looking for the key. He was a bit overweight and the polyester slacks were tight. He was laying on his side, out like a light.

With a rope no longer around his neck, Mark was practically dancing in rage. The urge to kick that slightly-pudgy face, lying face-down on the floor was practically overwhelming. Would he ever like to bust that cocksucker’s ribs.

I really should be able to do it…it was a personal failure.

She pulled out a key ring. Holding it up, she looked at Mark in horror. O’Hara’s body twitched and they both stepped back.

“Shit. It’s a real small one—hurry, try it.”

He turned around and she grabbed at his wrists.

“Shit. Shit. Shit. Fuck—” It was the third one she tried, and then both of Mark’s hands were free.

She threw the cuffs aside.

O’Hara, after a few initial twitches, had subsided into a low moan, his hands pushing feebly at the floor but his eyes were still unfocused. They were unfortunately open again, which meant bad news in anybody’s book.

The right arm moved just as Mark was going forward to pull the gun off the guy. Mark couldn’t see the gun, it had to be under him somewhere. He was a big, heavy guy, and moving again.

Mark stepped back in panic.

O’Hara made another little snuffling sound. The head came up off the floor and gave itself a little shake.

“Come on.” He grabbed Amy’s hand and pulled her towards the door. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Remembering the cat, Mark shoved Amy out into the hall.

“Go up to Duke’s—if he’s not home, Maude lives down the hall on the same side. She’s right at the back.”

She nodded.

“What—what are you going to do?”

“The cat—the fucking cat.”

Amy seemed to understand, and so did he. She backed off down the hall, turning and sprinting upon hearing another low groan from O’Hara.

Mark wouldn’t have much time, but the window was open and the cat was smart enough when you got right down to it.

Theoretically, he really should call the fucking cops…

***

Amy wasn’t being left behind. Duke pulled the clip on a Beretta nine-millimetre pistol. He took another look and then inserted it. Snip, snap, and the thing was all set to go.

It seemed like Duke had a pretty good idea of how to use it. Mark nodded and opened the door after a peek through the peephole and a long listen.

Cocking the gun, Duke led. He went through first, all set to shoot. The three of them crept down the stairs, ears straining for any sounds of O’Hara. No one came out or up or down while they were in the stairwell. Duke checked around the corner. Mark’s hallway seemed relatively quiet, just the usual sounds of television coming from behind the usual doors. The east end of the hallway was very quiet, but that guy worked afternoons somewhere and the lady on the other side was a real church-mouse.

The apartment door was closed—and O’Hara was armed.

Duke moved to the far side, gun leveled. Mark, keeping Amy way back, reached, turned the knob and gave the door an awkward shove inwards. Using the ultimate extension of his wrist and his hand, the door frame ensuring a short throw.

He stepped back, realizing that Amy was just in the way, and yet she wasn’t leaving the two of them either. He gently pushed her back some more—

Nothing happened.

Nothing happened, an unexpected outcome, and yet what they had all been hoping for. Duke took a quick look, standing with some protection from the doorframe. He pushed the door in and stuck the gun in and had a good look.

“Where was he?”

Shit.

“Laying right there on the floor.” Mark risked a look.

O’Hara was gone. The rope was gone. The knife was gone. There hadn’t been much else there to begin with. The chair was still in the closet. The closet door was still open.

The cat, on the other hand, had come out of hiding and was sitting there with an expectant look on its face in the dead centre of an otherwise empty living room.

Thin cotton curtains billowing on the front window sort of implied a method of escape. They’d been away long enough, that O’Hara might have just as easily taken the stairs. Of necessity, Mark had been forced to explain as best he could before Duke could sort of see the need to get involved…which he would have much preferred not to do. There was just no way. Duke never would have let Mark have the gun and go off on his own with it. Not for any reason. For one thing, it was registered in his name, necessary for concealed-carriage of a firearm.

In that sense, he was just being a responsible person.

Mark had few words.

“Fuck. What—what do we do now, Duke?”

With an imperative jerk of the head, Duke indicated that they should all go back upstairs.

Mark nipped in and grabbed the cat before it could get away again, and this time grabbing his wallet and the keys. Interestingly, the knife and what was presumably his suicide note were gone.

“Mark—my purse.”

“Right.” He grabbed it and tossed it in her direction, with Amy making a good if hasty catch.

The door was locked when he left.

For all the good that would do.

***

Duke’s apartment was only going to be so safe for so long. What O’Hara might do next was open to guesswork. It was a safe bet that he wasn’t going to take it lightly. He’d just been about to kill a man, and surely now that Mark had escaped, he must do something.

Surely Mark would call the police and freak out. O’Hara would do something.

The only real question was what. And when, and how. As to why, that was almost irrelevant.

“The fucker was trying to kill you.” Duke was finding it hard to accept. “This is just nuts.”

He had only his faith in Mark and Amy’s corroboration to go on. It was Amy that had convinced him—her being real smart and all of that.

“Yeah. It is nuts—maybe there really is no other motive.” Cop goes nuts, starts killing people.

For no reason at all, other than some severe and undiagnosed mental illness of a sort that left your faculties intact and no one around you remarked upon—and of course cops could get around on the public dime. They had all sorts of mobility.

It could be just as simple as that. It would make a wonderful headline for the tabloids, or a cheap psychological police procedural…

Shaken as they were, Mark and Amy needed a plan. The apartment was off-limits…probably forever, thought Mark with a horrible sinking sensation. There wasn’t much there to hold him—a couple of horns and some clothes. A toothbrush.

“What are you thinking, Mark?” Amy had a good point.

“You and I have to get the hell out of here.”

Duke nodded sharply.

“Yeah—I might be all right. But you guys definitely got to go.”

It was right about then a female voice, coming from somewhere in the building, up above on the next floor by the sounds of it, began screaming in a hysterical fashion.

Duke strode to the door, opening it up, gun in hand. The first thick tendrils of smoke came in and somebody right about then pulled the fire alarm.

Duke closed the door with a quick slam.

“Shit. Where’s that fucking cat?” The thing had leapt out of Amy’s arms and bolted into the inner rooms.

Duke shoved the gun down the rear waistband of his pants.

He’d rather lose a buttock than a testicle…or worse.

As Mark and Amy tried to corral a suddenly-skittish animal, Duke went through the place in a quick flurry of precise, no-nonsense maneuvers. Money went into one pocket, a large bag of dope in another. His best hash-pipe went into the bag, and a pair of jeans, a favourite shirt. There was a silver-framed picture of an elderly woman, presumably his mother…

A half-finished pulp novel. He had a few small things. It all fit into a gym bag. A look of sadness crossed his face and he fell into a chair for a minute. After thirty seconds he put on some shoes, got up and pulled on his jacket. There was smoke coming in from under the door.

“Fuck.”

“Shit.”

“Oh…”

They only had so much time.

“All right. Let’s get the hell out of here. You guys better take the fire escape. Do that now. I have to check on Maude, then there’s that old lady on the fifth…good luck. Run, guys. Run and don’t come back. Don’t stop running until you get to the coast.”

Mark’s mouth opened to protest, and then Duke’s hand went to his pocket. He pulled out the wad of cash, forcing Mark to take it.

“I want you guys to promise, okay. You too, Amy. Even if you’re safe, he’ll be watching you—you can almost count on it.”

Amy began to sniffle, nodding.

Mark stood there, unable to speak.

Everything was changing again—fuck.

Duke handed Amy an envelope, picking it up off the table beside the door where he kept the keys.

For some reason they weren’t in a big hurry. The building was all masonry, although the smoke would be death if they didn’t get going.

“What’s this?” She was mystified, besides, they needed to get.

“My draft notice. Don’t worry about me, okay? Maybe we’ll catch up someday.”

Duke gave Amy a strong shove towards the window. There was definitely a lot of smoke coming in, getting pretty heavy now.

His draft notice. Of course. Mark suddenly understood the life-style. It was all about denial—

Only when she was halfway out did Duke turn back to Mark.

“Let’s swap wallets. Please. Just trust me on this one.”

Mark sure as hell didn’t have any great plan. He handed over his wallet, accepting Duke’s in return.

“When you get so far, just dump it in a ditch, okay?”

“Sure, Duke.”

“I’ll be in Canada if you need me—and I’ll be careful to lose your wallet in Montreal. Something like that—capiche?” If he left it behind in the right place, some responsible person would find it

The right thing to do, would be for them to turn it in to the police—a nice touch.

“Wait. Wait.” One more inspiration.

Duke whipped off his leather bomber jacket.

“Here. Let’s swap coats. That fucking cocksucker’s probably right outside, you know that, right?”

The roar and crackle of flames was right on the other side of the ceiling.

“Shit.” Mark stripped off the parka even as the temperature climbed and the air was getting real bad.

“Whatever you want—I’ll hang onto this for you.”

Duke looked at him.

“Sure.” He swallowed. “Good luck, buddy.”

That would have to suffice. There might even be some wisdom in it. As for Mark, he was plumb out of ideas. He was losing his friend.

Duke might turn out to be the best friend he ever had—

He and Mark shook hands quickly. With a nod in the direction of the window and the fire escape, Duke opened the door and went out, bent at the waist and feeling his way along the wall. That was the last thing Mark saw before slamming the door. After some initial yelling and the pounding of feet on stairs and fire escape, it was terribly quiet out there. It was just smoke, lots of thick, billowing smoke of a highly noxious nature. The air was hot and billowing up from below.

The cat, the cat.

The God-damned cat.

Mark’s face was inches from Amy’s feet.

He wanted out of there real bad, and going down that damned fire escape in the middle of the night was going to be something else. His heart was really going. So far it had kept going…

The cat struggled in his arms and he was ever so grateful when she reached in and took it from him.

Let her handle the damned thing for a while.

Sooner or later, if this kept up, the way things were going, Mark Jones was going to get angry.

Very, very angry.

(End of Part Twenty-Four.)

Thanks for reading.

***

Phuque.

>>>

Sunday, April 3, 2016

# 99 Easy Street, Part Five. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

Being with Duke was frankly terrifying for someone out on his best behaviour. Four years in the institution, being declared no longer a danger was one thing. But his treatment there was ordered by a court—and as a responsible adult, theoretically cured, (or at least stable and competent), he was now technically responsible for his own actions. To screw up was to go back inside for three more years. It would be a jail instead of a cushy old insane asylum, which, while it had its drawbacks, was far preferable. He had to stay out of trouble, which wasn’t all that much of a stretch. All he’d ever cared about was his music and where his next gig might come from. He’d never seriously worried about where his next meal was coming from. In that sense he’d had it pretty good. There had been one or two persons of interest of the female variety along the way…always temporary of course.

Competent.

What kind of a fucking word was that?

No one is more incompetent than me, not in this town and not at this exact moment in time.

He’d be even worse off almost anywhere else in the world, though. At one time, he’d understood New York, in the same way he’d once understood the Corn Belt.

You’d have to be dead, to be much more incompetent than Mark Jones…a proven madman with violence on his rap sheet. All he wanted to know, was where was his next meal coming from and that would be sufficient unto the day.

There had to be a soup kitchen around there somewhere.

They would also be keeping some kind of regular, if restricted hours, and if you missed the bell, you were shit out of luck.

It had been a long time since Mark walked down a sidewalk with a buddy. A friend. What a puzzling thought that was.

Is Duke really my friend?

How in the hell did that happen?

Is this guy as desperate as I am?

Am I his next victim?

There was really only one way to find out.

So be it.

Time reveals all truths.

Someday he would write that song—again.

Three blocks away, Water-Beds Galore was a glitzy little storefront, with sharply-dressed salesmen ushering prospective customers out into a much larger storeroom behind. Like the showroom, there was bright overhead lighting way up high. The formerly grubby brick walls had been studiously sandblasted clean, showing a nice, ruddy salmon colour with white mortar at the joints.

There were stacks and stacks of unassembled beds in boxes, with a demonstrator set up in front of each side-aisle for the more popular products.

“This one’s our top special this week.” The bed in question was in a pale, stained knotty pine.

The bed was off the floor, up on a plywood pedestal.

“It’s actually going for one-thirty-nine, but since you’re a friend of Duke’s I would let you have that one for ninety-nine-ninety-nine, and that includes everything. Tell you what, that comes with the comforter.”

There would be sales tax on that. He’d be making payments, and there would be some kind of interest rate. They’d get their forty bucks back and then some, in Mark’s opinion. The trouble was that he needed a bed.

“What about the lamp?”

Ed, their salesman, looked owlishly at Duke through pebble-thick granny glasses, love beads and amulets clanking around his neck substituting for a tie. It wasn’t just the Jesus beard, it was the Jesus boots as well.

White socks in brown sandals.

Mark’s personal style was somewhere else. These people were all aliens or something.

“Sure, why not, man.”

“Groovy, baby.”

Mark could have kicked Duke, but the sales guy nodded.

It’s not like he cared either way. Waterbeds were hot and he could sell them all day long. If these guys didn’t buy one, the next person probably would.

It came with a heater, a headboard with some integral shelving, and a heavy cardboard liner to protect the actual water-bag as Mark perceived it.

“Take it.”

“What?”

“Take it.”

Mark could hem or haw, he could say yes or no or maybe, but whatever. He must make up his mind.

“Sure. Yeah, I’ll take it.”

“What about delivery?”

Ed nodded.

“Yeah. Ah…yeah, okay, sure.”

They went back up to the front of the store to fill out the paperwork. Other patrons, unsure of themselves or looking for something a little more special, filed up and down the bare, polished concrete aisles.

“Mark’s going to need a sheet, at least, and what about some kind of comforter?”

The salesman brightened up.

“Oh, yeah, dude. We got all that. I’ll tell you what—”

***

“Okay. Wait here—and give us a whistle if you see a cop.”

“Huh?”

From an image by Billy Halton, (Wiki.)

Duke was already jogging down the alley, the dark shadows and glaring bright zebra-stripes of light making him flicker in and out of existence as if perception were indeed reality. He had a purposeful air about him.

“Shit.”

Mark was burdened down by a brown paper bag full of quart bottles. Stroh’s this time, the carefully-folded receipt or contract or whatever in his pocket. He wondered what it was this time.

The bag had gotten wet and it wouldn’t last much longer. Duke seemed to know his way around and as a bonus, just about everyone who was anyone (or nobody) within a ten-block radius.

They’d taken a couple of alleys and a zigzag course to get this far.

Wheeling and dealing. He was beginning to get a better idea of what that meant. Mark figured on playing dumb, plus the fact that he didn’t have anything on him. That might just keep him out of serious trouble—Time Magazine had been all over the drug scene for quite a while now. When one considered how much reading he’d done, he was as well-informed as anyone.

That wasn’t much comfort right now. It was no substitute for experience. He wasn’t so much locked-up as locked-in. They were just moseying along, taking their sweet time about it.

Mark had always marveled to turn one corner and see another fifty blocks of high-rises, apartment blocks, and cars, cars, cars. The day was fairly warm and he was sweating again.

St. Louis was big, but New York was vast. It was like you could never run out of city. Once it got into your blood, it was over. It was a metaphor for a lot of things.

So far, they’d cut through from one block to another via a long, narrow pool hall with doors on each end, picking up a pack of smokes for thirty-five cents from a vending machine in the lobby.

Duke knew half the guys in there. He was making a few dope sales on the way through, surely with the knowledge if not the connivance of a Greek proprietor. Mark knew that from the thick, bristling black mustache, sticking straight out for a good inch at first glance.

There was just something Greek about the guy. He wasn’t stupid, he couldn’t be, and yet he was looking every which way but here.

It was an interesting observation.

Mark was feeling pretty good. There was nowhere to run anyways, and freedom was a hell of a lot more fun than captivity.

Or maybe he could run.

At one time, he must have been capable of it.

***

Duke came back with a pillowcase over his shoulder. It was bulging with square shapes, hard corners and heavy objects.

“Here. Take this.” He slung it across but Mark still had the paper sack.

He set that down for the moment.

“Oh.” It was heavy too.

Duke took the beers and Mark spurted up into a walk again. They turned the last corner and stopped dead again as Duke ran into yet another person he knew.

“Hey.”

The girl, a willowy blonde with a spacy look to the eyes, gave Mark a curious look.

“Hello.”

She wasn’t bad looking with the thick, wavy blonde hair, halfway to her ass and the little granny glasses.

If nothing else, she had some shoes on her feet and the jeans clung very nicely.

“I’ll meet you up there.” Duke, half a head taller, gave him a little shove with his elbow.

“Ah—I still don’t have a key, Duke.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not that heavy.”

From an image by Fletcher6, (Wiki.)

In other words, beat it.

All Mark could do was to shrug, ignore anyone who took an interest, and half a block later, mount the stairs as if he owned the place. There were still two guys sitting on the steps. The same two guys, although this time they sort of acknowledged his existence, with a focused look, rather than beside or beyond or above, perhaps even half a nod from the leaner one.

They probably lived somewhere in the building but he wasn’t in the mood to introduce himself just yet. He was already starting to recognize people and that was good. You needed to know who was who and who was what. You needed to understand your operating environment. At some level they would need to know him as well. He was a part of their environment, whether ally, resource, or hazard they wouldn’t quite know yet.

Whatever was in the bag had some damned sharp corners. Mark was dreadfully out of shape after years in a hospital. It was easily forty pounds.

Once in the building, he went and put the bag by his door. There was no note on the door from Olivetti or anything like that. There didn’t seem to be anyone around but that could change quickly. Nipping up the stairs, going out and around on the fire escape again, he crawled through the window and unlatched the door. Barely a minute had passed and no one had stolen the bag.

Mark sighed, pulling the sack inside. Duke would have been mad, of course.

But Mark figured he had some rights too.

He took a look, and then pulled it all out.

There was a pretty nice car stereo, wires hanging out the back, and a plug for the antenna as well.

There was an amplifier and a pair of small, very heavy and very expensive car speakers. Sort of triangular in shape, they were meant for the rear window deck. They would be lethal to passengers in a collision. No one ever cared about that. There were short bits of wire trailing from them as well. The ends weren’t bared, they were snipped clean off.

“Ah, shit, Duke.”

More small objects in the bottom revealed themselves. There was a set of needle-nose pliers with integral side-cutter, a couple of different screwdrivers, the knobs for the amp and stereo, and what had once been a coat hanger. Duke had cut it, putting shepherd’s-crook hooks on the ends. This was nice, soft but relatively stiff wire, folded up in four short sections. All of this would easily fit into a pocket, including the pillowcase.

He didn’t quite know whether to laugh or to cry. There were footsteps in the corridor, and Mark hastily grabbed the more incriminating items and stowed them in the bedroom. Closing the door, he was just in time to see Duke coming in without bothering to knock.

“Ah.” Mark nodded at the closed bedroom door. “Your stuff’s in there.”

“Good. That one’s a special order and hopefully the dude will be around to pick that up tonight.”

“Ah—”

“Beer?”

“Sure.”

Mark took the bag and stuck the other bottles in the fridge. When he came out, Duke was sitting on the window-ledge again.

“So, uh…you’re going to take that with you when you go, right?”

Duke nodded, taking a swig.

“Duke.” Mark’s stomach was rumbling again, and in one of the temporary lulls in traffic that sometimes occurred after lunch but before closing time in this town.

He was surprised Duke couldn’t hear it. Or at least guessed it.

Couldn’t take a hint, maybe.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for everything, Duke. But, as you can see, I still don’t have a few things.”

Supposedly he would have a bed by four-thirty or five, but Mark had some doubts about that.

It was getting too close to that time now. Why wouldn’t they do a credit check? It just seemed a bit implausible.

“Anyways, thanks for helping with the waterbed.”

He was still having a bit of trouble getting his head wrapped around that one—as a musician, on tour, out on the road with bands, groups, and Negroes among other things, he’d never even considered credit. They were going to ask what you did for a living, and laugh you out of the building shortly thereafter.

People knew you were moving on and it was strictly cash on the barrelhead. Musicians hung with all sorts of marginalized people.

But this was different.

It’s that government cheque, he thought, eyes going cloudy for a moment. That makes all the difference in the world. Theoretically, a government cheque couldn’t bounce, although they could be stolen.

Duke grinned as if reading his thoughts. He pulled out one of the fat cannons he’d rolled earlier, gave it a quick lick and sparked it with the trusty lighter.

“So what are you trying to tell me, dude?” Something snapped, sparks flew and Duke moved a leg to dodge a smoldering seed as it fell. “Fucking seeds.”

“I don’t know. Shit. I have to find Olivetti. I’m going to need a key to my own house. I could really use the rest of that cheque. I need to eat once in a while—and now I kind of have to wait around for the delivery people. Because I got this funny feeling they’re not going to want to crawl around on fire escapes.”

There was probably more, but he let it go.

Duke looked him carefully in the eye as he reached for the joint.

“Okay, so what you need is a plan, my young amigo. It might go something like this. I lend you ten bucks, and you go get a couple of things. I sit here until you come back…just in case your bed shows up.”

Duke made a habitual glance at the end wall, but of course there was no clock there.

“Do you have a phone, Duke?”

“No.”

Mark bit his lip.

Yeah. That’s what he needed—a plan. Otherwise it was just too easy to blow whole days away, moping about and feeling sorry for yourself. When you weren’t locked up in the hoosegow. His own worst enemy would be his own fear, his own inertia. Sometimes you just had to put yourself out there.

He took a hit on the demon weed in speculative fashion.

People were so down on it, what with dire warnings, documentary films, hysterical news reports, important magazine articles, and all of that.

People were full of shit, when you got right down to it.

Duke, on the other hand, was probably right.

(End of Part Five.)

Speak Softly My Love is available as an audiobook from Audible.

Speak Softly My Love is the fifth in The Inspector Gilles Maintenon Series, and the reader can find it free in serial form here on this blog.