Jake's 8 (10 page)

‘AUTHORIZING’ flashed once, ‘AUTHORIZING’ flashed again then the third ‘AUTHORIZING’ was interrupted by a ‘DECLINED.’ I was irritated. I pulled out my credit card. I put it in the slot and got ‘AUTHORIZING… AUTHORIZING… AUTHORIZING… DECLINED.’

I was getting pissy and ready to throw a fit over my slight inconvenience. I popped inside.

“Your card reader is fouled up,” I said. “Can you run my card in here?”

A middle-aged guy with pumpkin teeth took them both and played the AUTHORIZING-DECLINED game with both my cards.

“We take cash,” he said a bit sarcastically.

I looked at my wallet. It looked back empty. That twenty I gave the waitress was all the cash I had on me. “I’m tapped,” I told the guy and went out to my car.

I called my bank first. My balance was pennies. Their screw up, I knew, but I was panicking. Some perfunctory bank service rep couldn’t have cared less. She let me know a check went through that morning for almost exactly what I had on balance. I swore. She matter-of-factly offered to do an inquiry. No dice on getting me some cash now though. I called my credit card company. I’d been maxed out.

I got a bit pathetic. What’s going on, I whined to myself. I was stuck and what rhymed with stucked. I turned the car over and started to drive. If I didn’t make it I’d call… I didn’t know who I’d call. All my college buddies disappeared in the haze of scandal when my father’s business collapsed. I’d been fired from most jobs and never stayed in touch with the guys I met at them. I hadn’t talked to my sister in two years. Dad was in the ground and mom was worse off living in Florida. I suddenly felt lonely.

So I drove.

I came up five miles short. My Motown beast shuttered then sputtered. I jerked the wheel side to side trying to splash gas into the fuel pick up. I must have scored because she went another one hundred feet into a gas station parking lot then petered to a stop.

I sat there angry. My phone rang. It was Miss Matter-of-fact from the bank.

“This morning we cleared a check,” she said and gave me the amount. It wiped out my balance. She said she had a scan of the check. It wasn’t for twenty-five hundred but for almost exactly what I had in there.

“No it wasn’t,” I yelled.

“Sir, I’m looking at an image of it right now.”

“I’m telling you it’s not right,” I said.

“Then possibly the check has been altered. We can look into that if you wish.”

“Oh, I wish. I wish,” I said. “Look into it now. I’m stuck in a gas station in Cold Spring, Kentucky with nothing but pocket lint.”

I hung up the phone, took a breath and it rang almost immediately.

“Yeah,” I said. It was my credit card company.

I’d been maxed out with several telephone and online purchases.

I know I’m a dunce, but it took that long for it to hit me. Sheila. I’d given her that check and handed her my plastic to pay for drinks at Japp’s. That’s all she needed. I dialed her up.

Electronic sounds then an automated voice told me the number had been disconnected. I dialed again. The same. I went into my phone’s text folder to check the number from when we’d had a sexy back and forth. I had the right number. A dead number.

I dialed again. More electronic spam and then the same message.

I yelled an expletive and although my windows were rolled up tight, a middle-aged woman shot a glare of indignation my way.

I gave myself five minutes to tamp down my pride.

Then I called Mr. Carmichael.

On the phone he seemed more confused than annoyed, but forty-five minutes later, when I saw his Audi nose into the lot and him step out, he looked to be what I’d call mad. But I wouldn’t know. I’d never seen him mad. He was always calm. I had no reference.

I got out and walked to him sheepishly.

“Thanks for coming,” I said.

He only nodded.

“I’ll push my car to the pump,” I said.

He nodded again and walked a few steps to the pump island in his three thousand dollar suit, waiting to buy my beater a tank of gas.

I’d never felt more like a teenager since I was a teenager. He bought me a full tank and asked me to meet him at the office. I drove into the city hating life. I parked my car in my garage then quick stepped it the seven blocks to the office. I tried Sheila a few more times. I got zilch.

“How much did she get?” he asked.

“Between my checking account and my credit card about thirty-five thousand.”

He didn’t react.

“You reach her by phone?”

“Disconnected.”

“Go to her home?”

“I don’t know where she lives.”

He raised his graying eyebrows.

“It’s easy enough to find out,” I said.

The eyebrows lowered but in a way that didn’t make me feel good.

“I’ll get on the phone with the banks and try to figure it out. See what I can get back.”

“They’ll need you to press criminal charges. They need it to become a criminal matter so they can go after her and make you whole. That’s their process. If you don’t press charges, they won’t help you.”

“I have no problem pressing charges.”

“I do.”

“Excuse me?”

“This business of ours is a trust business,” he said. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought. I’ve heard this before. He went on: “We handle people’s investments, but it’s more than just money and a number on their quarterly statement. It’s their dreams for the future. It’s their security in old age. It’s their legacy after they’re gone. If it gets out that my right-hand man can’t even keep from being defrauded by a sexual acquaintance, we’re going to lose that trust that I’ve built up over my career and potentially lose them as clients.”

“But if I’m to get my money back.”

“Yes,” he interrupted.

“If I’m to get my money back, I’ll have to press charges.”

“You do what you think is best, but if you do then I’ll have to terminate your employment. I can’t have this larceny and carelessness associated with my office. It may cause some distrust.”

“That’s not acceptable,” I said.

“That’s the alternatives you have,” he said. “You took the risk of taking into your bed a woman you knew so little about—that you don’t even know where she lives. You wrote a check and handed over your credit card on no other basis than she made you feel good. Even if you knew where she lived, I’d suggest you didn’t....”

He was still talking sense when I got up and left. I’m sure he was angered by the rudeness. Those two lays were great but not worth thirty-five grand.

I walked home with my head hung. I went to my apartment and grabbed five twenties out of a stack of fifty twenties I keep locked in my desk at home then headed down to Japp’s.

Molly spotted me, smiled and understood that I wasn’t up for gabbing.

“Anything but a Sazerac,” I told her and straddled a bar stool.

She pulled out a bottle I didn’t know.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Honey syrup.

I sighed.

She put ice into her Boston shaker, tossed in one ounce of the honey syrup then two ounces of gin then squeezed half a lemon into it. She slapped on the shaker’s mate, lifted both above her head and gave it the what-for. She strained it into a Champagne saucer.

“It’s called a Bee’s Knees,” she said.

I took a sip. The gin’s earthy juniper was still there but sweetened with the honey and brightened by the lemon. Perfectly balanced. I tried to give Molly a smile but failed, and she’s smart enough to know when to skip the chit-chat and move on to helping the next guy down the bar.

I sipped my Bee’s Knees and thought of Sheila.

She was a Sazerac.

She was strong and exotic. She seduced me with her flavor and fed my yearning for more. She made me feel good and made me feel strong. That’s when a Sazerac takes a man by surprise. He drinks too much and it lays him out cold. It stomps him and leaves him. He recovers but it takes time.

She touched my arm then pointed to the right. I pulled the Kawasaki to the side of the street and let it idle. We were in a residential area high above the city. All the homes stood empty. The women and children were sent away after the incident of May 1. The men left when rebels were spotted near the city. The finely trimmed lawns and heavily structured landscaping had already become shaggy and overgrown. The jungle looked ready to reclaim it.

“Look,” she said. She was pointing down into the city.

The central plaza overflowed with people. The crowd seemed to surge back and forth across the square. The wind carried the chanting and shouting to us. To the west, a column of black smoke rose up from the east wing of the presidential palace. I looked to the harbor. I’m told that before my time, banana boats and fishing vessels littered it. In my time, it was clogged with oil tankers and cruise ships. Recently, those were replaced by U.S. and British naval vessels. Now, it was empty. Any seaworthy vessel had been used for escape over the last month. The harbor had become the large lagoon it once was.

Gunfire cracked nearby.

“We need to go,” I said.

“This was my city. My home.”

I said nothing.

“Go,” she said.

I drove down the mountain and avoided the
Centro
district. I biked through the once busy financial sector. It stood empty. The banks had been nationalized and the people left along with the cash. Economic collapse followed. All that remained were empty, gleaming, modern buildings built at the height of wealth and promise. I saw our reflection ripple against their tall glass facades. I did not recognize myself in torn pants and dirty shirt. She had untied her black hair and it danced in the wind, obscuring her face.

My wife describes this as the sexiest cocktail she’s ever sipped. The Blood and Sand cocktail is sweet and full-bodied. There is something… sexy about it. We normally reserve these for the winter months, but that’s not a hard and fast rule. Here’s how you make it.

Chill your glass and fill up your shaker halfway with ice.

Put in it ¾ ounces of pulpy orange juice. Fresh squeezed is always good.

Follow that with ¾ ounce well-stored red vermouth. Please see my prior notes regarding vermouth being well-stored.

Next, add ¾ ounce of a blended whiskey. This is not the time for that over-priced peaty single malt you say you drink but never really do. This is the time for a nice blended Scotch. I like Teachers.

Finally, the key ingredient that uplifts this cocktail—Peter Heering Cherry Liqueur. I’ve tried this cocktail with other cherry liqueurs. It doesn’t work. It’s okay, I guess, but it isn’t transcendent. If you can’t find the Peter Heering, skip this cocktail.

Shake all the ingredients well. A good shake will really help that pulpy O.J. blend up. Strain the mixture into your now empty, but chilled, cocktail glass. It will have the somewhat unpleasant visual effect of blood soaking into sand, hence the name. The inventor, I believe, was thinking of a bull ring after the kill.

For me, the blood-in-sand effect sparked the idea for
Haunt,
which I wrote while sipping a Blood and Sand on a cold, wintry night. Enjoy.

– Howard McEwen

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Mr. Carmichael asked.

His question surprised me. Mr. Carmichael is a practical man who asks practical questions. Ghosts are not practical. Besides, I was lost in thought, thinking on a girl.

I was supposed to have been listening to Mr. Carmichael review the next week’s schedule, but my mind had drifted to my date later that night with a curvaceous brunette I’d been courting for the past month. She was an olive-skinned beauty with dark hair and darker eyes and spoke in deep, smoky tones that were calibrated pitch perfect to be uttered while prone. The problem was that tonight was to be our fifth date and the physical progression of our romance had stalled out at a point where my fourteen year old self wouldn’t have bragged about to his fellow freshman.

The problem was religion. Her’s. I have none. She considered herself a spiritual girl whose soul was marred by the stain of original sin. Desperate to earn redemption she had dedicated herself to a curious blend of exsanguinated Christianity and a catechism of left-wing political dogma. With every proclamation of her’s that Jesus was the original Socialist, I felt a snowball’s chance in Perdition that I’d ever attain a piece of earthly Paradise off of her.

“Excuse me?” I asked Mr. Carmichael. “Ghosts?”

I was thrown further off guard not only because my thoughts were on the hesitant brunette, but that the question was, beyond impractical, personal. We don’t do personal at ‘The Offices of Prescott Carmichael.’ Mr. Carmichael did a too-close-for-my-comfort background check on me before pitching the offer for this job. He knew more about me than any prior employer had, but I still never volunteered anything of my private life. He doesn’t either. A man’s view on the existence of spooks, spectres, wraiths, geists and ghosts is telling about the core of that man. Belief is a matter of faith. We keep it formal here at ‘The Offices of Prescott Carmichael.’ Hence my surprise.

“Do you believe in ghosts, Mr. Gibb?”

I pondered the question a long moment. Ghosts are not something I’d ever given thought to.

“No,” I said.

“You don’t find that limiting? An inability to believe in something you can’t comprehend or prove?”

“No. Not so far in life.”

“So when you hear of intelligent, sensible people speak of hauntings and poltergeists what do you believe in?”

“I believe in old pipes rattling. I believe in furnace timers clicking loudly in the quiet of the night. I believe in homes settling. I believe in tree branches blown softly against windows. I believe in the power of the human mind to create vivid visions of things not there. However, I do not believe in ghosts.”

Mr. Carmichael smiled his slight smile.

“Why do you ask?”

“Mr. Sumner called me earlier today,” he said. “He’s spooked by spooks he says show up at his home every night. He wants to change houses. He’s not a huge client… he’s burned through much of his wealth, but his family name still carries some weight in this region. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to provide some client service and maybe sit with him tonight. Reassure him. It might save him the trouble of moving from his home.”

Here we go again with Mr. Carmichael’s ‘client service,’ I thought. Working for Mr. Carmichael is a cakewalk except those times when he believes in extending ourselves past managing our clients’ portfolios and into solving problems in their non-financial lives. Those times, he says, are when we build trust and trust is what our business is based on.

“¿Cuando
?” I asked tossing a little Spanish lingo Mr. Carmichael’s way. He didn’t so much as arch his eyebrow. I never can seem to amuse him.

“Tonight. He says these apparitions appear each night when the bells of St. Paul’s first strike nine and disappear on the twelfth chime of midnight. I would do it myself, but I have the gala for the S.P.C.A. at the Museum Center. Do you have plans?”

I closed my eyes a moment and ran my them along the visualized curves of the dark brunette then balanced that against another dinner where I heard the name Reinhold Niebuhr more than once and the likelihood of another cold, frustrated walk home with only a peck on the cheek to keep me warm.

“Nothing I can’t change,” I said.

“Thank you. I’ll call him and let him know you’ll be there… eight thirty?”

“Eight thirty,” I confirmed.

At four thirty in the p.m. I left our offices on Seventh street. I dialed up the olive-skinned brunette and cancelled our date. She took it in stride a bit too easily and, as I made my way to my condo on Main, she bent my ear about a petition she needed me to sign. We said our goodbyes as I hit my door. I striped my shoes, coat, pants, shirt and tie off in the living room and laid down in my underwear on my couch. I needed some shut eye if I was going to be charming and polite to a scared old man until midnight. I picked up a copy of Eric Felton’s
How’s Your Drink
, read a bit about Tiki cocktails then let myself slip into a doze.

I don’t dream. At least I don’t remember them if I do. Every night if I’m sleeping solo, I read a book, I nod off. Eight hours later I pop up well rested without the penumbra of a secret Freudian fantasy world ever disturbing my slumber.

Maybe it was the talk of spooks. Maybe it was a bit of undigested potato I had for lunch. But forty-five minutes after the sand man threw dirt in my eyes, I woke up in a cold sweat. I couldn’t catch my breath. It felt as if a weight was on my chest. I motioned to throw it off but only grabbed air. I fell off the couch. I couldn’t remember the details of the dream. There was screaming. There was cold. I was lost and something was clutching at me. Something malevolent with frigid, damp arms bound around my torso. It squeezed tighter with each breath I took. I tried to run but couldn’t break free and finally couldn’t breath.

I sat up on the floor, full of fear. I scolded myself for needing to stand and look behind the couch. No monsters be there, of course. I clicked on ESPN to give my brain something to gnaw on. My underwear and t-shirt was sweat soaked. I showered, put on fresh togs then headed down to my car. It’s a beater. I’ve got the jack for a new one, but I live on Main, my bar, Japp’s, is on Main. I work on Seventh. Most of my world is within a few city blocks. I started up the clunker and she gave an eerie groan that started from the radiator and seemed to work its way to the rear end before she turned over. I pointed her out the garage, north on Main turned right onto Liberty then jumped onto I-471 and across the Ohio into Kentucky. I took the first exit off the bridge then headed into the Mansion Hill neighborhood of Newport. A seven minute drive.

It was eight ten in the p.m. when I found Mr. Sumner’s house on East Fourth Street, off Park Avenue. I wasn’t eager for this night to begin. I clicked on the radio to a sports show to kill the twenty minutes until I was expected. That’s when I saw it. Two blocks down. A corner bar. I could just make out the sign. It read ‘Lafittes.’ The neighborhood was fin de siècle and the bar’s sign matched that. The bar could hold some charm, I thought. I checked my Rolex Air-King again and thought to myself, a quick one.

Fall was settling in. Dead brown leaves still clung to the trees. They blotted out what little light there was. The street was bathed in an inky blackness. The neighborhood was silent. I made a fast pace for the bar. The heels of my Doc Martens Frazier II wingtips clicked against the sidewalk, sounded against the stately, brick homes and echoed back to me. I opened the door and a classically dressed bartender nodded a greeting to me. He wore an apron around his waist and a burgundy vest over a starched white shirt with sleeve garters. His bow tie was black. The place was deserted.

“Slow night?” I asked.

‘Always is,” he said with a hint of a refined southern drawl.

I sat at the bar and after my eyes adjusted to the room they fixed on a bottle behind the bartender. It was dust covered but the filigree label and the color were unmistakable.

I pointed and said, “Is that...?”

He interrupted me. “Yes, it is.”

“Not a reproduction?”

“No. Authentic, sir.”

“You don’t have it hidden? Under lock and key? It’s just out there with the other bottles.”

“It’s only a spirit,” he said.

“Only a spirit?”

“Would you like a glass?”

“It still has some green. It’s not turned brown?”

“Of course not, sir.”

“Yes,” I said flatly. “I’d like to try some.” Mr. Sumner could wait, I told myself. The bottle was an 1870s Absinthe Edouard Pernod. This one had survived the horror of the absinthe ban and then the holocaust of prohibition. I didn’t care the price.

The bartender put a heavy reservoir glass on the bar in front of me. He picked up the ancient bottle and pulled the cork. He wafted some of the fumes to his nose and closed his eyes in pleasure. He then poured a measure. He put the bottle back with care then put a flat, triangular absinthe spoon on top of the glass and topped it with a cube of fine white sugar. His movements were full of grace.

“Water?” I asked.

He nodded to the end of the bar by the door. I hadn’t seen it when I walked in. There sat an ancient absinthe fountain full of clear iced water. It was resplendent with wrought flattened metal. Not a bit of dust on it.

“You can do this yourself,” he said in a way that said, that’s the way it’s done.

I got up and put the glass under the spigot of the fountain.

“I’ve not done this before,” I said. “Not with a quality Absinthe.”

“Just open the tap slowly and let the water drip onto the cube.”

“For how long?”

“You see the line?”

I bent down and gleamed a faint scratch etched into the glass. “Yes,” I said.

“It’s the drinker’s choice but I’d recommend until it reaches there.”

I did as he said. The first drop was soaked up by the sugar, but by the fifth the cube had started to fall apart, and it and the water spread across the spoon and fell into the absinthe evenly. Several more drops later, the absinthe turned from its faint yellow green to a milky white. Just before the water reached the line I gently turned off the tap. I took off the spoon and sat down in my seat again. I readied myself to take a sip.

“In your own time, sir.”

I smiled and sipped. A gossamer lightness overtook my soul as that bit of green essence passed my lips. It didn’t have the harsh anise blast of today’s post-ban nouveau absinthes. The flavor was faint but forceful. It danced. The bartender kept his gaze on me. It was a stare but not off-putting. The pleasure was a private moment, but he was not intruding. I took several more sips and I felt as if the green fairy of legend had maybe inhibited my body. It was a wonderful experience.

After I finished and had taken a moment to reflect on the rarity of what I’d just drank I thanked the bartender again.

“What do I owe you,” I said.

“It’s on the house, sir.”

“No, really.”

“You are my last customer, sir. After one hundred and forty years, Lafittes is closing for good tonight.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know that.”

I extended my hand and he shook it. His touch was cold. He’d been handling ice, I guessed. Before letting go, he said, “We sometimes are stood a free drink, but we always pay for our sins. Sooner or later.”

“Thank you,” I said a bit uncomfortably. I pulled my hand away and stuck it into my pocket. I pulled out my roll. I placed a hundred dollar bill on the bar.

“Not for the absinthe,” I said. “A final tip.”

“Thank you, sir.”

I put on my coat and headed for the door. I peeked at my watch. Good god, it was nine-fifteen. I’d been in Lafitte’s for over an hour. It felt as if only a handful of minutes had passed. I’d have preferred to have bathed in the pleasure of that drink, but that idea was gone. I double-timed it up the street to Mr. Sumner’s.

In that lost hour a harsh wind must have blown through Mansion Hill. The trees stood naked now. The leaves covered the small front yards and sidewalks and danced in little cyclones that flitted back and forth across Fourth Street. The moon shone bright in the sky, but none of its light reached that neighborhood.

Mr. Sumner’s old four story red brick house stood tall and intimidating close to the street trying to impose itself on any pedestrians that walked by. I skipped up the short walk and rang the bell.

A shiver ran through me front to back and I shuddered trying to shake it off. There was quiet in the house and my internal clock ticked. I counted two minutes in my head. I gave a thought to turning on my heels and heading home when I sensed soft footfalls from inside the house.

A shadow appeared through the glass of the front door. It stood motionless for a moment then the door opened.

“You’re late,” scolded Mr. Sumner.

“I apologize for that. I lost track of time down at Lafittes.”

“La-what?”

“Lafittes down the street there.” I jerked my thumb to the pub, but the barman must have given a last call after I left. No lights. I couldn’t make out the sign through the blackness.