The Mammoth Book Best International Crime Page 55

  So anyway, I looked around and everywhere there’s something chipped or faded or falling apart: plastic liquor signs that light up, even neon in the windows writing the name of an American beer backwards. It’s a really low place and the people in it . . . let’s say that it’s not where you expect to find ladies with pearls and twin sets, if you know what I mean. This is 159th Street after all: the last chance. You get all types here, millionaires and crooks. They say the mayor or former mayor used to come here all the time. One time Shirl told me that the guy she’d introduced me to owned half of Miami. Now, Benny, you know what I think of Miami. If it wasn’t for the Canadian winter, they could give it to Castro. When you look at them all sitting there talking over their drinks you can’t tell the crooks from the millionaires. And you know me. I couldn’t care less which is which. Every crook Shirl ever introduced me to treated me like a lady. Anyway, I always talk to men in bars. You know, I tell them I’m from Canada and that I’m visiting friends in Miami and very soon we’re talking. And so I was talking to this tall man in the gray suit with the eyes I was telling you about.

  That night the orchestra was not great. In fact it was terrible. I was only listening with half an ear until it started playing “Windmills of My Mind.” The guy with the eyes was humming into his drink. I leaned over and said to him, “That’s from Don Quixote, isn’t it?”

  “What?” he asks.

  “The music: ‘Windmills of My Mind.’ From the musical.”

  “Oh,” he says, and I look into those stone eyes of his.

  “That’s Cervantes.”

  “Naw, that’s Voltaire. Candide,” he says, “I’d know it anywhere. You’re thinking of The Man of La Mancha. That goes different. It’s a better book. Longer, but better. They both got a lotta giggles in ’em.” And I can’t get over it; in a place like that to be having an intellectual conversation with the man with the stone eyes. So, anyway, I don’t agree with him about the music, naturally, but I ask him where he went to university. He looks surprised and smiles and says that he didn’t even finish high school. Well, I don’t tell him that I dropped out in junior fourth, but I compliment him on his reading.

  “Ask me any question,” he says.

  “Is this a game or something?”

  “Naw. Just quiz me about stuff. Try me on the Bible. I specialize on the Bible.”

  “Who was Malachi?”

  “It means ‘messenger’ and he was the last of the Minor Prophets. He wrote a whole book. That was easy. Try me again.”

  “Who was Lazarus?”

  “Trick question, huh?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “ ’Cause there were two of them. One in the parable of the Rich Man and the other one gets raised from the dead. Right?”

  “How am I supposed to know? I just asked the first thing that came into my head.” I asked him where he got his education and he started laughing.

  “I did twenty years of reading in one stretch when I was in prison.”

  Well, I could have fallen right off my stool – like the time I broke my coccyx and Charlie Wilson from General Motors picked me up and called a doctor. I guess he could see my surprise. I think I let my mouth go slack.

  “You got lots of time for reading in prison,” he said. “I guess I’ve smoked more Bibles that most people have read.”

  I looked him over, but there was nothing of the jailbird about him except that his hair was cut shorter than you see nowadays. But that doesn’t mean anything. His clothes were as good as your father’s. So, I try to stop staring at him and ask him what he’d done to get sent to prison for twenty years.

  “Name it,” he said. My mouth was open again and I snapped it shut. “I guess I’ve done just about everything one time and another,” he said. Then he told me that one of the things he’d done was kill his wife. So there I am sitting and laughing and talking about Candide, Don Quixote, and the Bible with a wife-killer. I go into a trance and when I hear what he’s saying again he’s talking about guns. “. . . too much respect for them to carry one. I hate wearing one under my coat in the heat. And you can get into a lot of trouble with guns. I’m all for gun control, you know. I heard about one old-timer with bad kidneys from Louisiana. His relatives riled him up so bad he took a few warning shots at them with a handgun. When it went off it severed the tube from his dialysis machine and he bled to death. I know another guy who thought he saw a prowler at the foot of his bed and shot his own pecker off. You’ll have to forgive my language.” I tried to show him that it was all right this time, but that I wasn’t used to that kind of talk.

  Just then the girl behind the bar with blue spots showing through her pancake make-up comes over with a drink for me. I tell her that I didn’t order it and she tells me that he ordered it for me. I explain that I couldn’t accept it, and she leans over the bar and tells me that in the three years this guy has been coming in here every night regular, this is the first time he’d ever bought anyone a drink. So, being me, I naturally accepted. He’d spent twenty years in prison for killing his wife and God knows what else he’s done, and who ends up on the bar stool next to him? Me! Oh, I know, I’m terrible. But I can still picture those stone eyes of his and remember talking about Cervantes and Voltaire. Isn’t that the limit? I mean, look: he could have gotten very ugly with me, you know. You accept a drink from some of these guys and they think they own you. One rye and water and you’re bought and paid for.

  So, anyway, your father and Dave came back around then. They saw me sitting at the bar and I waved to your father and said: “Manny, come over here, I want you to meet a friend of mine.” Dave saw who I was talking to and went over to the table where Shirl was still talking to the owner. Manny and Stone Eyes shook hands but didn’t exchange names. After that we left. I think I have a feeling that Stone Eyes knew Dave from someplace. I’m not sure. I know that Dave has never done time. Somebody else would have asked my educated ex-con all about his life in prison but not me. He would have expected that, and I always do the unexpected.

  So anyway, after that we go back to Shirl’s and Dave’s place, which is right there off 159th Street, and have a few more drinks and a few laughs. It’s a nice place with patio and pool, and Shirl has fixed it up real cute with lamps she’s made from kits you can buy for making colored plastic lampshades. That’s about as artistic as she gets. I tried to get her interested in art once when she lived in Grantham, but she thought that the man taking the class was queer. Generally, if they don’t have hair on their knuckles, she thinks they’re queer. So we have a drink and a few laughs, like I say, because we were trying to cheer her up, take her out of herself after everything she’d gone through, what with the robbery and then the probation thing. Don’t get me wrong, Benny, she didn’t get probation for a robbery that she’d committed. I know they have some pretty strange friends, but apart from the numbers, they’re very careful, Shirl and Dave. She isn’t really any different from the girl who used to work in your dad’s store in Grantham. You should meet Shirl again. She always liked you. Your father says that Shirl and Dave are very careful about the numbers, too. Shirl didn’t tell anybody she was mixed up in it. The first few winters we came to Miami we didn’t know anything about it. It was only after we heard about her being out on probation, we got to wondering about the big apartment, the pool, and everything. And she had to tell us when we asked her what it was she was on probation for. Then we remembered about the suitcase every Thursday and Saturday, how she was always taking it to a different motel to count out money and tally lists of numbers.

  Well, your father, who as you very well know would never hurt a fly, was fascinated by this. He remembered how he’d carried the suitcase for Shirl on a couple of occasions and how sometimes he’d help her add up the accounts. To him it was no different from doing his books at the store. But I didn’t want any part of it. I wondered whether it was the Mafia, but Shirl said it was an independent group. But she gave the Mafia its due. If you want anything done
in Miami, including protection, you have to get it from the Mafia. The police, she said, are just a joke. Why when we arrived in Miami this year, what with Shirl being depressed and everything, I have to give her Mafia connections their due. At the airport your father couldn’t rent a car anywhere. We phoned Shirl and she said that she’d look after it. Inside of half an hour we had a rent-a-car, and not only that, but the guy turned back the speedometer about two hundred miles so that in the end we had the car for the whole two weeks and it only cost your father eighty dollars. If it wasn’t for the saving and a few other things I’m going to tell you about, I’d be putting all this down in ballpoint in a letter instead of on a cassette. You know how I hate writing letters. Your father writes a beautiful letter, but you and your brother take after me. Remember how the camp counselor used to threaten you with no swimming if you didn’t write home?

  Now I don’t want you to get me wrong. Your father and mother have not turned to a life of crime. God forbid. And you may not remember but Shirl is just about the most giving and wonderful person on earth. She’s the best friend a girl could have and she’s always thought the world of your father. But, to tell you the truth, she has run into a lot of unsavory characters. Even Dave. I once saw Dave shake her, right up against the wall of the patio of her apartment, and demand to have half of the money they got from Lou for not mentioning his name at the trial. Lou has always been good to Shirl. He’s the guy who looks after the apartment and her other expenses. I think he was at one time sweet on Shirl. I wouldn’t be surprised. Lou gave them fifty thousand for taking the rap for him.

  When they got the fifty, Shirl and Dave went through it so fast you’d think that they knew it was going to be discontinued. They spent it like it was sea water. And they both used to live pretty high on the hog even in the old days. It took them less than four weeks to rip through that bank roll. They bought a second color TV with all sorts of Atari games. They got a Polaroid camera, you know, all that stuff. And Shirl got a new mink coat. In that climate! Two mink coats! The old one wasn’t three years old and she didn’t even have to trade it in.

  I don’t want you to get us wrong, Benny. The first time we went to Miami, as I was saying, we didn’t dream about the numbers. I mean, when I think of all the clues there were: Dave and Shirl were always so careful about being followed, driving around the block to see if there was anybody parked by the apartment. That sort of thing. And, of course, not only did your father help out with the tallying, he even went around with Dave to all those black bars collecting bets and then delivering the money afterwards. How can I defend us to you, Benny? We had no training for getting involved, that’s all. Your father has kept books all his life, so naturally he became a little suspicious when he saw books with no names in them. In case you’re shocked, let me tell you that we were too. Only we just woke up and found ourselves right in the middle of it.

  Oh, they’ve had the numbers in Florida for years. This bunch was run by a gang from Detroit. The numbers were on short slips of paper, about two inches by four, in bunches held together by elastics. It’s all on the up and up. There’s no way you can cheat on it because the numbers are a combination of who won the first race at Jamaica or the last race at Santa Anita, or something like that. It’s all in the open, and if you win, you know it, and if you don’t, you’re down two, three bucks. For a two-dollar win, you can get maybe two hundred more if it’s a special combination win. It’s like slot machines or the lotteries. Most of the time you lose, but if you win, Lou and his bunch can go down a couple of hundred thousand. Dave said once a few years ago Lou was borrowing cab fare one day and he owned the company a week later. Naturally, most of the time they don’t lose, but they don’t cheat at it. I mean you can’t fix all those horse races, can you? For a racket, it’s as honest as you can make it.

  The robbery and Shirl and Dave taking the rap for Lou when the apartment was raided happened last summer. As she said, we missed the fireworks. We missed the court case, too. All the excitement. When we got back to Miami things were a lot different, more creepy. Dave gave me the willies. Manny liked Dave, but me, well, to be honest, I never much liked the look of him. He was like most of Shirl’s men: big, dark fellows. Mediterranean types. They always looked like they were carrying guns under their jackets, but most of them weren’t carrying anything more than maybe fifty pounds overweight.

  Anyway, after the court case, Shirl and Dave got off. I don’t know why they didn’t deport Shirl. I don’t understand how she stays there. It’s this lawyer they’ve got. I can see why she wouldn’t want to leave that place of hers; it’s really a beautiful place. And she’s got a toy poodle, Maggie, a wonderfully cute, dear little fellow. I adore Maggie, and you know about me and dogs as a rule: we can’t stand one another. They know it and I know it. It’s never been a problem. But I was telling you about the apartment. Wasn’t I? The apartment? It’s a palace, that’s all. Five bedrooms, patio, pool, and a view over, well, I’m telling you that it wouldn’t make it very hard for Manny and me to pack up and move down here and that’s for sure. And if you want something, anything, Shirl or Dave or Lou knows somebody who can get it. Oh, it’s just marvelous.

  Where was I? Oh, the apartment. That’s really one for the books. You have to see it. Anyway, the point I was making is that after the robbery, they, Shirl I should say, just let it go to rack and ruin. She lost heart, poor girl. Well, I guess, after all she went through, I mean. It must have been hell. A woman can get frightened of things a man doesn’t have to worry about in a situation like that. Oh, the kid went through hell. And Dave? Not a scratch. He wasn’t even there. I never trusted Dave. He looks like those movie torpedoes, and he acts like that’s the way he wants to look. Tough, he-man. Not that Shirl ever went for the choirboy type. Like I said, she always went for the dark, brawny type with size eighteen necks. And most of them had a mean streak. Not like that boy from out Pelham Road she married out of Commercial. He had a real sweetness about him, but Shirl put him on the worry wagon with a vengeance. She preferred the flashy type: she couldn’t help it. When they were loaded, Shirl’s men always spent freely. They like Cadillacs in the drive and convertibles, if you please. One, two, make it three. Like Shirl and her minks. Same thing.

  The numbers were always collected and counted in a new place every time. Shirl first got to use the apartment because it was used as one of the places. Then they didn’t want to have anything in the apartment overnight. Wasn’t it a big surprise that the Feds knew about the first time in months that there was stuff linking them to the numbers in the place. That can’t have been just bad luck. It’s like what it says in the mystery stories I read all night, somebody “shopped” them. Now, not only did they lose the money they were holding, but they are having to fight the tax people, you know, Internal Revenue, who want to count the numbers money as income, and undeclared income at that. I mean they had hundreds of thousands with them and none of it was theirs. There must have been a leak of some kind, because Lou and his cousin before him had been running numbers there without anything happening for years and years.

  After the trial came the robbery. Shirl thinks there was something fishy about that too, and I don’t blame her. When we came back this winter, Shirl was a different woman. She’d lost her – what’s the word? Specialness? The thing that made men turn and look at her. You know I’ve known Shirl for years and we’ve been very close. We’ve gone through rough times together. So there was no fooling Manny and me when we got off that plane.

  Shirl thinks the world of your father, Benny, and God bless him, he’s not one for sitting around when there’s work to be done. Anything before talk. That’s your father. So, right away he starts cleaning up the place. She’d let it go downhill quite a bit, though who could blame her after what that kid has been through. I looked after Maggie, the poodle. Manny loves gardening. Me, I have a black thumb, can’t make anything grow except that ivy I’ve been trying to kill off in the kitchen. Wouldn’t you know it: if I wante
d it to live, it would have died off years ago. But your father has a talent, as you know, and he started in on her place, trimming the hedge and cutting back the rubber plant, and cleaning the dead plants out of the place.

  Manny bought some annuals. They have annuals all year round down there. He made a proper garden for the patio like we have at home. Oh, your father’s wonderful at that sort of thing, while I sit back with a rye and water. Ha! That’s my style. Especially when it comes to work. Shirl adores Manny. Always has, not that she’d try anything. Much more likely that he’d look too far into those baby-blue eyes of hers and fall in. I trust your father, but he’s only human. Everybody loves Manny. Everybody. There’s something sweet about him. You can smell it on his skin. Me? Well, they think I’m pretty special too, but oh, they all love your father.

  Well, he cleaned out the pool, scrubbed it, vacuumed it, and replaced the burnt-out lights in the bottom. When at last the place started to look like something again, Shirl started coming out of herself. You know how she can sound tough, but she didn’t have to act that way with us. Not ever. We were always special for her and she never put on a show for us. One night she turned on the night lights in the pool and we all went for a swim. She still looked beautiful in that turquoise light, although she wouldn’t wear a bikini any more. When we were all dried off and having a drink I had enough courage to ask her to talk about the robbery.