Small Crimes (28 page)

He
took the twenty bucks off the bar. When he came back, he brought me my drinks
and twelve bucks change.

'Look,'
I said, 'if this is about the affidavit, I have no hard feelings about it.'

'Why
should you? I swore on the Bible before I filled that out. You think I perjured
myself?'

'Cut
the crap, okay, I know you made a deal with Junior.'

'You
calling me a liar?'

A
vein along his neck was twitching and the muscles in his arms and shoulders had
bunched up. He had a look in his eyes that I had seen a couple of times in the
past. Once, right before he cracked this guy's skull who was shooting off his
mouth about different crap. Another time before he nearly beat two guys to
death for harassing one of his girls. On a good day, I'd be able to hold my own
against him, but as weak as I was feeling I knew he'd kill me.

I
took the whiskey in one swallow and then followed that up with a healthy drink
of beer. Earl stood frozen in malice, his vein still twitching away. I held the
beer bottle so I could use it if I had to, although I didn't think it would do
me much good.

'I
swear, Earl, I don't have a clue what this is about.'

'One
of my girls died today.'

'Yeah,
I heard. I'm sorry.'

'Yeah,
thanks. You know, that's why we're so crowded tonight. Everyone wants to pay
their last respects. Is that why you're here, Joe?'

I
didn't say anything. I just kept watching his vein, watching as it beat faster
than a rabbit's heart.

'It's
funny,' he said. 'I never knew about Susie and that DA until today, but what
I've been hearing since is that this had been going on for six months. Funny
thing is Rooster doesn't get a call till you've been out of jail for... how
many days? Three?'

'Four,'
I said.

His
lips separated from his teeth, revealing a thin, bare-fanged smile. 'Yeah, four
days. Why do you think that is?'

'I
swear, Earl, I had nothing to do with this.'

'Why
don't you guess anyway?'

I
shook my head and gave a half-hearted shrug.

'No
guess, huh?' He edged closer towards me. 'Hey, man, you want to know something
else that's funny? Whoever called Rooster left his name as Joe.'

That
sonofabitch.
That was all I could think.
That
sonofabitch.
I could just picture Dan chuckling to himself
over that one.

'You
think I'd be that stupid?' I asked, trying to look as dumbfounded as possible.
'You think I'd call and leave my name?

Come on, Earl, use your brains. You want to know
why this happened a few days after I got out of jail? Because whoever did this
waited until I got out of jail before calling.'

He
had been edging towards me, but that stopped him in his tracks. A perturbed
expression crossed his face, and then he slowly started nodding to himself as
he thought over what I said. I guess he decided to give me the benefit of the
doubt. He showed me a sheepish grin and refilled my shot glass.

'Hey,
man,' he said. I could've killed you a minute ago. Damn.'

My
hand shook as I picked up the shot glass. I got most of the whiskey down my
throat, and only a little of it down the front of my shirt. I signaled for
another shot and Earl obliged.

'Okay,
so that's what's behind your affidavit,' I said. 'I can understand that, and I
can understand Junior offering you a break, but you know what you wrote's a
load of crap. Any way you can back out of it, claim you were coerced by
Junior?'

'Hey,
man, I'm not talking about that paper. I can't do anything about it now.'

'You
know it's bullshit.'

'I
don't know nothing like that. I'm sorry about it, but I'm not saying another
word, man. Sorry.'

I
started to open my mouth. I was going to say something else, but I saw it was
pointless. The whiskey had taken a tiny bit of the edge off, not much, but a
tiny bit. I still badly wanted the coke.

I
sighed. 'Well, how about those lines, then. How much?'

He
thought about it, but shook his head.

'Can't
do it, man,' he said.

'Why
not?'

'I
have this rule. If I fuck someone, I can't give them a chance to fuck me back.'

'Wait,
what you're telling me is because you
screwed me with
that
affidavit, you're going to keep screwing me?'

'Sorry.'

A
couple of guys had come over to the bar to change their tens and twenties into
singles. Earl turned his back on me.

My
hands were still shaking and my head was now throbbing. I got off the stool and
took a couple of steps towards the exit and stopped. I remembered Toni, how she
had no problem scoring coke the other night. Any of the girls could. I turned
and started towards the stage area when someone grabbed my arm.

'Hey,
Joe, just the man I wanted to see.'

I
looked down and saw Scott Ferguson. He was wasted, his eyes barely able to
focus on me.
He
pushed himself to his
feet, and held onto my arm for support.

'I
need to ask you more about Vassey,' he said.

I
had no choice. I walked him back towards the bar where we would have more
privacy.

'It
don't make any sense,' he said. 'Why would Vassey's kid kill Billy? If Billy
had the money he owed, what would be the point? It don't make any sense.'

'Maybe
he was stubborn about giving up his money.'

Ferguson
made a face. 'I'll tell you something about Billy,' he said. 'He was a pussy.
He would've paid in a second if he thought he'd get hurt. I've been asking
around, and from what I hear Vassey's kid worships his old man. He wouldn't try
ripping him off. So why in the world would he kill Billy?'

'I
don't know whether Junior killed your brother or not,' I said, 'but I told you
the other day,; the guy's a psycho. He gets off on hurting people, and if he
was collecting from your brother my guess is he got carried away.'

All
I could think of was getting free of him. Whatever I had to do to speed it up.
I took Earl's affidavit from my jacket pocket and handed it to him.

'Read
this,' I said. 'I talked to Earl and he admitted to me that he manufactured it
for Junior. As you can see, Junior's already trying to cover his tracks.'

Ferguson's
doughy features hardened as he stared at the affidavit. It took him a while, but
he got through it.

'How
come you're mentioned in it?' he asked, his expression turning more surly.

'Because
Junior's creating himself an alibi, and at the same time pointing the finger at
me.'

'Why
you?'

'I
guess he thinks it's plausible. I just got out of jail. People here in Bradley
don't feel all that favorable towards me, and I guess no one would really care
if I got charged with something like this. I'm as good a patsy as anyone.'

As
Ferguson mulled over what I said, I took the affidavit out of his hands and
slipped it back into my inside jacket pocket.

'Hey,
I wanted to keep that!'

'Sorry,
I need it.'

His
eyes narrowed and his lips compressed, and he looked like all the other drunks
I've seen over the years before they threw their first punch. He inched closer
to me, his breath smelling like an open bottle of bourbon.

'How
do I know there's not a good reason for pointing a finger at you?'

'If
there was, I would've had Earl fill out an affidavit for me long before he did
this one.'

He
thought about what I said, mumbled something that I couldn't quite hear, and
then seemed to lose interest in me. I watched as he staggered back to his
table.

I
walked around the room so I could get to the stage without having to pass
Ferguson again. There were
no
empty
seats,
so I squeezed in near
the loudspeakers. I took
out
a
twenty and
signaled with it. A
tall, skinny blonde was
now onstage.
She
spotted the twenty and came over. I started to slip the bill under her garter
belt, but she moved my hand so I would slide it in under her G-string. Up
close, she had way too much makeup on, and her face almost seemed to crack when
she smiled. She leaned over and whispered in my ear about us partying alone in
one of the back rooms when her set was done. I nodded. I didn't care who she
was or what she looked like. All I could think about was the cocaine.

She
lingered on, trying to give me my twenty dollars' worth, and trying to make
sure I'd stick around after her set was over. After she moved away, she kept
smiling over at me, even when other guys were slipping dollar bills under her
garter belt. When she moved a certain way I caught sight of a dark bruise along
the inside of her thigh. I wondered briefly what her makeup was covering up. It
didn't matter to me, though. I was still going to join her in a private room.
And if I had to screw her first to get the cocaine, I'd do that also.

I
felt a small hand rubbing my shoulder, and then a voice next to me yelling,
'Hey!' I turned and saw Toni grinning wickedly. She looked even more stunning
than the other day. She was also wearing less - only a sheer black negligee and
panties.

She
tried saying something to me, but I couldn't hear her over the music. She got
on her toes and talked into my ear, her breath hot against me. The touch of her
lips made my spine tingle.

'I
still owe you something from the other night,' she said. 'What do you say, Joe?
You want to go somewhere private and finish what we started?'

I
reached down to ask whether she could get her hands on more coke. The scent of
her made me dizzy. She told me she could. She took hold of my hand and led me
around the speakers and through the curtains separating the back hallway.

The
room we took was identical to the one we were in before. Toni locked the door
and told me to relax. I sat back on the carpeted bench. As she came towards me,
she was still grinning that same wicked grin.

'You
got the coke?' I asked.

'First
things first,' she said.

She
reached her hand towards me. I thought she was reaching to caress my cheek, but
she quickly brought her hand back and nailed me good. She couldn't have weighed
more than ninety pounds and her clenched fist was less than a third the size of
mine, but her punch snapped my head back. She must've got me with the side of
her fist - the fleshy part above the wrist - and I was damn sure she broke my
nose. She got in two more punches before I could stop her. One of them rapped
me in the mouth. After I pinned her against the wall, I checked with my thumb
and felt a tooth move. I was lucky she didn't knock it out completely.

She
was calm, but there was a white-hot intensity burning on her face.

'You should die for what you did,' she said.
'Yeah, and what did I do?’

‘You dirty bastard.'

'I
've been hearing that a
lot lately. So come on, what did
I
do?’

‘You bastard. You dirty bastard. You sent Paul
to that motel room.'

'Not
me. I had nothing to do with it.'

She
looked like she wanted to spit in my face. As I looked at her, I realized I
didn't care anymore. Screw her. Screw Dan. Screw all of them. None of it
mattered.

'I
know who did, though,' I said. 'He's a buddy of yours. Want to guess?'

Doubt
flickered in her eyes.