Sugar Pop Moon (8 page)

“You're right. But we can't pawn that stuff off on somebody else. That's just asking for trouble.”

“Fine. Just help me figure something out.”

The door opens and in walks a tall character with a thick black woolen overcoat and dark brown fedora. He's got a long face with a hooked nose and his eyebrows are bushy, like hairy slugs. He could be trouble, so I walk over as Diego pats him down.

“Welcome to the Pour House,” I say.

“You Snowball?”

“Depends on who's asking,” I say, as if anybody else in the room is pale enough to carry that nickname.

“Denny Gazzara,” he says.

I wanted this but I'm shocked as shit that I'm getting it. I nod to Diego to let him pass. Diego shoots me a concerned look, but it doesn't matter because the hood isn't waiting for an invitation. He walks into the dining room, well beyond earshot of Diego.

“I hear you made a bit of noise in Philly,” he says.

“What can I say? It's a quiet town.”

“We want to keep it that way,” he says.

He's not smiling, but neither am I.

“I've got a problem with Gazzara,” I say.

“That's obvious. You've also got a big mouth.”

“Let me guess. A bartender with nuts the size of cranberries went running to Gazzara screaming, ‘Daddy, a weird-looking man was bothering me.'”

“Something like that, yeah.”

I try steering him toward the bar, closer to Santi and Larch, but he doesn't budge.

“That bartender was right,” I say. “I really rode him. You want to know why? Because I knew a thug like you would show up and start asking questions. So now I've got some questions of my own.”

Before I can spit them out, Larch walks over, a full Rob Roy in his hand. I've never been happier that we pour the guy for free.

“Things okay here, Snowball?” Larch asks.

“Yep,” I say. “This gentleman and I were just coming to get a drink.”

“Oh, good,” Larch says. He takes a hard look at the hood before heading back to the bar. “I'll be waiting for you.”

The hood doesn't say anything. He walks past the empty tables and stands beside the pocket doors, next to the fireplace. I wonder if Larch will notice we never made it to the barroom.

“What's your problem exactly?” the hood says. He's smiling and nodding at me, trying his best to make us look like two old buddies reminiscing about the joys of grade school.

“Why don't I piss into a bottle of shine and show you?”

The smile leaves his face. “I'll ask again,” he says. He's agitated, but I'm starting not to give a shit. “What's your problem—”

I cut him off. “Save your energy. Gazzara sold me eighty cases of sugar pop moon. You ever hear of it?”

“Keep going,” he says.

“Seventy are as drinkable as furniture oil.”

“You got your facts wrong,” he tells me. “Gazzara doesn't sell his sugar pop moon by the case. His regular moon? Yeah. His sugar pop moon? Never. You want it, you gotta buy it by the glass, like one of those Rob Roys that tin badge was drinking before. Sugar pop moon is his, his alone, and he ain't selling it to the likes of you.”

“If that's the story, why don't you buy back the seventy cases of sugar pop piss
he already sold me
.”

“You don't get it, pal. If Gazzara wanted to take you, you'd know it.”

“He did take me and I do know it. What are you trying to say here? I should just drink his swill and thank him?”

Santi walks over from the bar. He's carrying two drinks on a metal tray. The hood stops talking.

“Sidecars,” Santi announces, smiling. I can tell Santi's up to something but I'm not sure if Denny's boy realizes it. Maybe he's like Larch and thinks drinks are free at the Pour House.

Santi takes two more steps and trips over a dining room chair. He regains his balance, but he's not able to stop the two cocktails from flying off of his tray and crashing to the floor at the thug's feet. The scent of cognac wraps itself around my nose as Santi takes a bar rag from his apron and gets on his knees to wipe the floor.

“You sprayed my cuffs,” the hood says.

“Many apologetics.”

The hood bends down to wipe the side of his shoe.

“Sorry, I dampened your wool, too,” Santi says, wiping the side of the hood's overcoat.

Santi's going to pick the guy's pocket, I'm sure of it. He doesn't need my help, he's the best dip in Harlem, but I focus my eyes on the shining light fixture until they start shaking—and then use them to distract the thug.

“What's your point?” I ask him, staring him down.

“Simple,” he says, a confused look on his face. “Stop shooting off that mouth of yours. Next time I won't be this nice.”

He doesn't wait for a response. He walks to the door as Santi wipes the last traces of cognac off the fireplace hearth. I trail the hood to the front of the room.

“Be sure to give my regards to Gazzara,” I tell him, not sure why I can't keep my mouth shut.

“Don't worry about it, I will,” he says without turning around. He walks out into the blustery cold, leaving the door open for Diego to close.

“I don't like the look of that guy,” Diego says as he shuts the door. “I'm sure he was packing heat but I let him slide like you told me to.”

“It's okay, he's gone now.”

Diego nods, but I can see he's still worried. I scoot to the back room because I don't want him to see that my hands are shaking.

Santi's back behind the bar, spiking steins of beer for three out-of-work locals who are cursing Hoover for ruining the country. I walk over and tell them that the next round is on the house. We're in the red, but I won't take anybody's last pennies.

My nerves are still hopping from the run-in with Gazzara's messenger so I grab an open bottle of bourbon and walk to the end of the bar. Taking the corner stool, I pour myself a double shot and down it. Then I put my empty glass on the bar and wait for my throat to cool.

Santi walks over and joins me. “I don't know what that guy wanted, but he likes the holidays.”

He hands me a business card that he lifted from the hood's pocket. It reads
Christmas Tree Farm at Princeton
and has a drawing of a tree next to a slogan:
Holiday Cheer Year ‘Round
. It's missing a name and phone number.

I pocket the card with a fairly good idea of where I'll be going in the morning.

It's not quite eleven o'clock and I've already been in the Auburn with Santi for hours. We're on Route 27, almost in Princeton, and he's behind the wheel. It's always tough for me to be inconspicuous, but it's even harder today. Gales of icy wind whipped across 125th Street as if they needed to be back at the North Pole by noon. The cold stung like the dickens and I'm sure my cheeks look as though I tried warming them on a clothes iron.

I put on my fedora and wrap my scarf around my face.

“Santi, can you tell I'm albino?”

“You're something alright, but I have no idea what the hell it is.” He pulls a blade out of his boot and hands it to me. “Take this, you might need it.”

I toss it on the seat. “I'm fine without it.” I've already got my revolver tucked into my waistband and my knucks in the pocket of my overcoat. I'm out of hands.

“You sure you don't want me to go in?” he says. “You're going to stick out like a sore thumb.”

“You can't go in,” I tell him for the third time. “You don't know what Gazzara looks like.”

“You told me he's got a scar on his ear and two different colored eyes. Not exactly a tree in a forest.”

He's right, but I can't let him do my dirty work. As far as I know, Hector is sitting in there, waiting by the door, licking his chops.

I've got a plan and it's not all that elaborate. I'm going into the farm to see if I can spot Gazzara. If I do, I'll push him to buy back the moon. If he gives me a hard time, I'll tell him the message is coming from Jimmy McCullough. I just don't want his boys to spot me first because if he finds out I'm here he'll slip out the back. At least that's what I'd do if I had double-crossed a walking blister and he showed up looking for me.

Santi guides the car around a bend and we cruise alongside a tree farm to our right. A voice on the radio says that athletes keep fit by smoking Lucky Strikes and I wish I'd been indulging more often.

A store looms ahead, about fifty yards off the right shoulder of the road, and Santi slows down. The place isn't nearly as scary as I'd pictured it. It's a boxy cedar shack with a pair of sliding garage doors serving as an entrance. Two steps lead to a square wooden landing in front of the doors. On either side is a window that lets out a soft glow from inside. The parking area in front is nothing more than hard, frozen dirt that's been cleared for cars. A burly man in a black ski cap and woolen dock jacket is helping a young kid lift a Christmas tree onto the roof of a Plymouth parked in front of the landing. He's probably the boy's father. If he is, he's giving the kid something I haven't had since I started at the Pour House: a family on Christmas.

Santi steers the Auburn off the highway, between two utility poles, and onto the unpaved parking lot. The car jostles from side to side as it rolls into the spot next to the Plymouth; the sound of crunching gravel and dirt comes from under our tires as we pull to a stop.

“I'm going in,” Santi says, yanking the brake handle. “Two bucks says I find Gazzara.”

The little bullshitter is out the door in a flash. He takes the two wooden steps onto the rickety landing in a single jump and disappears into the place, sliding the doors shut behind him.

I get out of the car, light up a smoke, and take a deep drag. My heavy gray flannel pants and chesterfield are keeping me warm, but the cold air is biting into the exposed skin on my face and hands as if it's got teeth. The guy in the ski cap has the tree hoisted onto the Plymouth and he's tying it to the car with fat twine. The boy looks up at me; he's got some frozen crust under his nose but doesn't care.

He smiles at me and says, “Merry Christmas.”

I grin and say the same, wondering if his father knows how good they've got it right now.

The bright sunshine makes my eyes feel as though the Feds are holding a lamp to them, so I tug my fedora down to the middle of my forehead. The doc keeps telling me to wear sunglasses, but the damned things make it even harder to see.

I throw down my cigarette, crush it under my oxford, and head inside. I walk into an open, rectangular space that has a cashier's counter in the back right corner and roped trees displayed in bunches throughout the store. Three lights hang from overhead and I'm grateful that they're not especially bright. There's a half-dozen customers in the place; each will surely leave with a tree being that it's already the fifteenth of December. They're buzzing about—looking at trees, wreaths, and bushels of holly—and are providing me with a small measure of cover. I spot Santi at the back of the store; he seems to be asking a worker about a tree that can't be more than four feet tall. Above him, a smiling cardboard Santa holds up a White Rock ginger ale. It's starting to curl at the edges.

I walk over to a rack of wreaths and stand behind Santi. I keep my fire engine of a face turned toward the wall as I listen to his conversation.

“Nice place you've got here,” he's saying.

“It ain't mine, but thanks.”

“Ain't yours? Who owns it?”

“My boss,” the worker says.

Santi's doing okay without me so I do some investigating of my own, lobster-face and all. There are only two staffers in the place. I head to the one manning the till. Between me and Santi, we've got the place covered.

“Excuse me,” I say.

The cashier looks up from the till but doesn't seem concerned that my face is the color of the cardboard Santa's leggings. He's wearing a nametag that says his name is Frank. His look is easy to forget—medium height, not too heavy, brown hair—but his long, yellowing teeth seem one size too big for his lips.

“What can I do for you?” he says.

“I could use a Christmas tree,” I tell him. “But I also need to see the owner. Is he around?”

“I run the place,” he says.

I don't want to rile him like I did the tender in Philly so I make a point of using my friendliest tone. “Actually, Frank, I'm more interested in a stiff drink than I am in a Christmas tree.”

“Thirsty, are you?” His unshaven face breaks into a smile and he flashes those king-sized ivories at me.

“More than thirsty,” I say. “I'm parched.”

My eyes start shimmying again and Frank avoids them, choosing instead to look over my shoulder.

I lean toward him and lower my voice to a whisper. “I'd love to get my hands on some sugar pop moon, if that's possible.”