48 – Bobo by the collar

 

 

Mike answered the door with a pistol in his hand, yanking Dan and the others in by the arm. He looked scared, and peered out through the peep hole the minute he'd locked the door again, pressing himself against it with a heavy sigh.

 "The pigs were here," he said finally.

 "What for?" Dan exploded.

 "Eviction," Mike said. "They didn't come to the door, but I heard the old lady downstairs arguing with them. She called them on some other pretext, and they told her she needed a city marshal. But she's peeved and didn't want to hear any of it."

 Dan glared at Lance. "You didn't pay fucking rent?"

 "No money," Lance said. "I've been looking for work. But you know how that's been going."

 "Ah shit!" Dan said, banging the wall with his fist. "Now we're all going to wind up on the street."

 "I could get you money," Bobo said, drawing Dan's angry stare.

 "You could, could you?" Dan said. "Like the million dollars in freshly marked bills, perhaps?"

 Bobo blushed. In the lamp light, he looked even more ordinary than he had on the street, a slightly overweight middle class man, lost in the strangeness of drug dealing. His face and expression seemed utterly trustworthy, just the kind of man a child might come up to with some problem. Even Lance found himself attracted to his demeanor when Bobo's innocent stare went from face to face pleading his case.

 "I don't have that money any more," the round man said.

 "Then I'll take the drugs."

 "I don't have them either."

 "You're contradicting yourself, Pal," Dan said. "If you sold the drugs then you have the money-- and I want it."

 "I reinvested the money."

 "Then uninvest it."

 "I can't. It's out of the country."

 "Bullshit!"

 "No, honest. I'm waiting on a huge shipment even as we speak."

 "Of what?"

 "Heroin."

 "What? Since when have you become a heavy weight?"

 "And since when would any one put up the cash up front?" asked Mike.

 "This is different," Bobo said, untangling himself from Dan's grip. "This is a special deal."

 "Like hell," Dan said.

 Stalemate! Lance thought-- One face pressed against the other, nose to nose without hope of resolution. Like war. Or the steps leading up to it.

 "Can we just sit down or something," Lance said, the smell of drying blood around him like bad perfume.

 "No time," Mike said. "I need the keys to the van if I'm going to meet with Buckingham."

 Bobo turned, his smug expression vanishing into a mask of utter horror, the trusting eyes widening, the unmoving lips sputtering: "Buckingham? What on earth would anyone want with him?"

 Mike's brows folded forward as he studied Bobo more closely. "Nothing you'd be interested in," he said in a low voice. "Unless, of course, you are Buckingham."

 "Me?" Bobo said, looking honestly shocked. "What ever gave you that idea?"

 "Rumor," Dan said. "It seems to be all over town."

 "Then rumor's wrong this time, Danny-boy," Bobo said, sagging a little. "If anything, the dude's out to kill me."

 "Oh?" asked Dan.

 "At least someone's tried twice, and from what I've heard, this Buckingham has been butchering dealers from here to St. Louis."

 "You have other enemies," Dan noted. "Like the ones you've been ratting on to the pigs."

 "I know it all looks bad, Dan," Bobo moaned. "But I thought I could handle things. I thought once I got rid of all the filth we could set up a more equitable system."

 "We?" Dan said, leaning towards the man, his moustache dusting the man's twitching cheek. "I don't think I had any part in your extended plans."

 "But I contacted you, didn't I?"

 "Only because I have something you want."

 A slow, boyish grin spread across Bobo's pudgy face, changing him, the trust vanishing into something more impish. "I did hear you had some drugs, Danny-boy."

 "And you would like some, I suppose?"

 Bobo licked his lips and glanced around at the others before nodding at Dan. "That was the whole point of the meeting."

 "Then why the hell did you call in the cops, asshole," Dan yelled and would have grabbed Bobo's throat again if Mike and Lance didn't hold him back.

 "I didn't, honest," Bobo said. "You think I would have risked showing up there if I known it was a trap?"

 Dan pondered this a moment, seeming to cool a little in the process. "I have to admit you have me there. But if you didn't call the cops, who did?"

 "Who else knew?" Mike asked. "I mean besides us and Billy."

 "Free Press Bob knew," Lance said.

 "But he wouldn't call the cops," Dan snapped.

 "Maybe he would," Bobo said. "The man doesn't like me very much."

 "He doesn't like anybody much, but the cops even less. Maybe they snagged his messenger."

 "Or maybe Demetre's a mind-reader," Mike mumbled, pacing the room, still holding his pistol. "I don't like any of it. Too many cops getting shot, making things impossibly hot for all of us."

 "Well, I didn't shoot any of them," Bobo protested.

 "No," Dan said. "But it was your deal."

 "And ours," Mike said. "Eventually, people are going to start tracing some of this back to us. We've got to settle things and get out of sight."

 "Out of sight where?" Dan moaned. "We're not going to even have this place left if the old lady downstairs get hold of a city marshall."

 "She won't," Mike said. "Not tonight anyway. My concern is Buckingham. Bobo says he's not him. It might be true. Or it might be a ploy to get the dope back."

 "It's not. I'm not him."

 "Well, I have a way of finding out."

 "How?" Dan asked.

 "We keep hold of him while I keep my rendezvous with Buckingham. If no one shows up..." Mike spread his hands. "Want to come with me? I could use back up."

 "What about him?" Dan asked, hooking his thumb at Bobo.

 "Lance and Marie'll watch him."

 "Me?" Marie moaned from her bed of pillows in the corner. "You're not leaving me behind again!"

 "It's too dangerous, Marie," Mike said, his face tightening as if remembering some dark vision.

 "But you said no one might be there."

 "I know what I said. Just don't argue. Come on, Dan. I don't want to be late."

 Dan hesitated, his fingers gripping and ungripping the handle of his pistol as he eyed Bobo-- the full conflict spread across his face in twisted lines and the deep-red complexion of a resisted cough.

 "Watch him carefully, Lance," he said, but stared at Bobo. "You lose him and I'll be pissed."

 The door slammed behind them. Bobo smiled, his expression again unconcerned.

 "So you're my jailer. How nice," he said, looking around for a seat, finally settling for a position on the pillows next to Marie. "Got a joint?"

 

Hip Cities main menu


email to Al Sullivan

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

19 – Reluctant friends

Image
    The van bucked slightly as it climbed up out of the ravine, the dirt road turning into gravel, then asphalt. The jeep in front of the little caravan blinked out each turn like a command. Behind the van, a half dozen other jeeps followed, soldier green, nearly invisible in the darkness.   "A lot of help you were back there," Chris said, seated beside Dan in the front. Mike and Marie sat on the bed in back, like buffers to the battle of silence between Lance and Sarah. "I expected the pacifist to stand by and watch, but you?"   Dan glanced sidewards at the cruel twist of Chris' mouth. She reminded him of his ex-wife, making his ache worse. He hadn't been laid since the road to Denver, and then only a quickly with a hitch-hiking hippie chick. He missed the regularity of L.A. and the parade of mid-west girls from which to pick. But his ex-wife had always been able to turn him on, in the mood or not.   "You expected me to charge out into the midd...
Read more

4 – A million dollar debt

Image
  They were back there somewhere-- though the rear-view mirror showed only the passing glitter of Denver suburb street lights, like stars glowing from a bowl of water. Dan Newhaul gripped the wheel as the van followed the winding road up and out of it, circling the belly of the mountain like a lopsided belt.   Back there riding the curve behind him with their headlights off. He tried to picture their grim faces and grey suits, wondering if they would break his legs or toss him off a cliff. He glanced forward in time to swerve away from the guard rail.   Calm down, boy! Don't do their job for them.   The grade increased sharply, and Dan downshifted. The weak Volkswagen engine struggling to keep up speed. It hadn't been built for mountains like these. And the thin air effected its fuel mixture. It coughed and grunted. The additions he and Lance had built into the thing weighing it down. Like the wood bed frame and the boxes of clothing. They swayed with each ...
Read more

26 – The Old Man

Image
    They drove northwest. Reservations infested the region like amusement parks, encircling Phoenix as if around a circle of wagons. Mike remembered the details of the road though he had come there only once. Over and over he had travelled it in his head, each time imagining himself begging the Old man's forgiveness. Now the wheels of the silver Pinto kicked up the dust, bounding over the dirt road like a real steed.   "Are you all right?" Marie asked, touching Mike's hand on the wheel, polished nails shimmering in the light like tiny knives.   "No."   "What's wrong? You never said."   What wasn't, he thought, but mumbled: "Nothing."   He had no way to explain the feeling, the ache inside his head when he sensed something wrong. The whole affair with Gil had left him more confused than when he'd come-- and slightly empty. He lacked Chris' loyalty to clan upon which to lean during hard times. The rituals of his ...
Read more