A Crime
Painted Red
a story
in the Barstool AU by Setcheti
Disclaimer:
I don’t own the characters from Mag 7, or Doc and his ‘keeper’, but
Roxy’s is all mine. This story
rated FRT:MV,MP.
As luck would have it, that night I just couldn’t
sleep.
I was just walkin’ the streets and thinking about
nothing much at all when I noticed the light on in the back of the bar. There was a different sign up above the
door, a shiny flashy thing with a name on it I couldn’t even pronounce, and it
bein’ about
So anyway, I decided to go check things out and make
sure Ez was okay, and when I got close I saw that over that fancy shiny sign
someone in a hurry had slapped on paint that said Roxy’s. It was red paint, and the way it had run
all over the place made it look like the sign was bleeding - and maybe to Ezra
that was how it felt to see some fancy-shmancy name up there instead of his
wife’s. But it gave me a bad
feeling all the same, because it wasn’t like Ez to do something like that. And when I dodged the falling paint to
knock on the door it just swung open, unlocked. So I felt for my gun and eased my way
inside…
…and then forgot the gun and ran to the bar to grab the
body hanging from the noose hooked to the ceiling. He was still swinging and I figured he
must have pushed off just before I showed up. He was as limp as a rag doll and it took
some doing for me to get him down, but lucky for Ez there’s a trick to hanging
yourself and he hadn’t known it because he was still breathing and his neck
wasn’t broken. I just laid him down
on the floor there by the bar and listened to him wheeze for a few minutes while
some of his color came back, and then I stood up and had a look around. Sure enough, there was a note tacked to
the top of the bar next to a little white box, and what I read on it made my
blood run cold; guess I was right about the bleeding sign after all. Damn Maude, and damn all the people
around here who should have backed him up – and damn me too for having gone to
ground right when he needed a friend most.
I was damn well here now, though. And I’d have to say that right now he
needed me even more.
I got the noose down and stuck it away where I was sure
no one would find it; I’d burn it later, but right now there wasn’t time for
that. Suicide is against the law,
you see, and Larabee and the boys might be in my corner when push came to shove
but it wasn’t a sure thing that they’d look the other way where Ezra was
concerned and I figured right now he had enough problems. The note and the box went in my pocket
and the tack went back in the cork, and then I hefted Ez up over my shoulder
like a sack of potatoes and carted him upstairs to his room. I had to kick the door open, but it
wasn’t locked either so I just scuffed up the wood a
little.
His room gave me another chill; it was as clean as a
whistle and everything he owned was stacked up neat as you please and labeled to
be given away, even his clothes.
One suit was laid out on the bed with another note pinned to it that said
he was married in it and wanted to be buried in it, and I shoved it off onto the
floor to put him down. Then I took
it to his closet and hung it up and shut the door, putting that note with the
other one. There was still one
piece of evidence that needed to go, though, and I wasn’t sure I should leave
him alone to take care of it – but I sure as hell couldn’t leave it up there,
either. I finally figured that he
was still out cold enough for me to run back downstairs and yank down that
bleeding sign from over the door, and once I got done taking out my feelings on
it in the alley there wasn’t a piece left bigger than my hand. The paint that had dripped would have to
wait for morning, but I’d get that too or make someone else do
it.
Back upstairs Ez still hadn’t moved an inch and I was
glad, hadn’t wanted him to come out of it all alone in that spit-shined room
with his last memory being hanging from a rope over the bar. Come to think of it, I didn’t really
want him to come out of it with me here and all his stuff sitting out like it
was either, so while I waited I pulled the labels off everything and put it all
away as best I could. Probably
wasn’t the way he’d had it, but at least the room looked pretty much normal
again – enough to fool anyone else who got in, anyway. The labels got torn up small and dumped
in his wastepaper basket, so except for what was in my pocket there wasn’t any
evidence left of what he’d tried to do.
Well, except for the rope burn around his neck, that
is. I thought fast, then made
another run downstairs to get some things just in case. It sure was a good thing I’d trusted my
gut, because it wasn’t a quarter of an hour later that I heard big heavy feet
coming up the back stairs and Josiah’s big deep voice calling Ezra’s name. He sounded kind of panicked and I
figured that wherever he’d been he must’ve just got back and seen the missing
sign and what was left of the dripped paint. So I went to the door of Ez’ room and
played it up, shushed him hard enough to scare him some more, then shoved the
bowl of cold water I’d just brought up into his hands and told him I needed more
hot.
And damned if he didn’t figure it out anyway the minute
he walked back into the room. He
took one look and kind of froze on me for a minute, then he gives me this
suspicious look like he’s not sure which way I plan to jump. “Where is it?” he
asks.
I started to play dumb, but I knew what he was talking
about and he knew I knew, so I went over to the hook I’d hung my coat on and
pulled out the two notes and the white box. I held them where he could see them but
I wasn’t ready to hand them over just yet.
“What’s it to you?”
He looked like he might want to get mad at me, but then
he dropped it all at once. “You
know what’s in that box, Tanner?”
I didn’t, but him asking made me look at it a little
closer; that’s when I noticed the cardboard had been sealed with wax and the box
top was sealed on the same way.
That didn’t sit too right with me for a minute, but then I figured it out
and even though I’ve been around more than some it kind of gave me a shake to
know what I’d been luggin’ around with me.
Josiah didn’t make a move to take it from me, he most likely didn’t want
to touch it either. “It goes in the
top drawer of his nightstand,” he said real quiet. “Might as well put it back. I’d like to read that note, though,
before we burn it.”
Now that was what I wanted to hear. I handed over the two notes and tucked
the box back where it was supposed to go.
Couldn’t quite stop myself from wiping my hands on my pants when I was
done. “I’m guessin’ the cops think
that little piece of evidence got lost along the way, don’t
they.”
“They think he buried it with the rest,” Josiah
grunted. He looked at that note one
more time, almost like he was memorizin’ it for later, and then he walks over to
the wastepaper basket. “You have a
match, brother?”
Now I don’t smoke – can’t afford to, for one thing,
never did much care for the taste for the other – but I’ve found it pays to have
a couple packs of matches stashed around, if for no other reason than so you
have something to write on. I
fished one out for him and stood and watched him burn those notes to a cinder,
then we dumped a little water into the bottom of the basket to make sure we
hadn’t caused a bigger problem with the cinders that were left. Once that was taken care of, though, I
decided it was time to start moving fast again; we were going to have to outrun
the sun to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes, and even with an extra pair of
hands it was going to be a close shave.
“Josiah, I’m going to stay here with Ezra. I want you to run down and get Doc McCoy
and bring him back here before we set to work on that
paint.”
He nodded but I didn’t like the look in his eyes. “He needs tending, I agree. But I know Brother Nathan is
home…”
“‘Brother Nathan’ ain’t no doctor,” I snapped. Jackson and Sanchez are friends, but
that didn’t cut any ice with me right now.
“Doc McCoy knows how and when to keep his mouth shut and we can’t afford
any slips; or did you forget that now the both of us are in this almost as deep
as Ezra?” I reached out and flicked
a little piece of ash off the front of his shirt and saw that he got my meaning
loud and clear. “Now take off,
we’ve got two hours if that and that damned paint is getting harder by the
minute.”
He tried to out-stare me and found out he couldn’t, so
he took off like I’d told him to; it had occurred to me that he might run to
It was about five minutes later that he started to move
around a little, but he didn’t start to moan until I saw him try to
swallow. “Don’t do that again if
you can help it,” I told him in a low voice, not wanting to startle him
any. I had a cup with some cool
water ready and gave him a few sips, and he started to look a little less
pained. “Doc McCoy is coming, Ez,
he’ll get you fixed up right as rain.”
He blinked at me, but I couldn’t tell from his look if
he was agreeing or if he just didn’t care so I let it be and gave him some more
water. “Sanchez is back,” I told
him while he drank. “Him ‘n me, we
put things back right so you won’t have any trouble from the boys in
blue.”
Okay, now this look I
could read and I wished I couldn’t.
“Or the boys in white?” he rasped.
“You really think we’d hand you over to the laughing
academy?” I asked him. “Damn,
Standish, just because I wasn’t here to help you out doesn’t mean I wouldn’t
have been with bells on if I’d known what was going down. Sanchez and I will be getting rid of
that red paint on the sidewalk just as soon as he gets back, you aren’t gonna
have any problems from this if we can help it,
understand?”
He blinked at me again, then looked away; his hand went
up to his throat. “I’m…surprised
you are even…willing to speak with me.
Surely my…display of cowardice…”
“Now you hold it right there!” I wasn’t really mad, not at him, but I
couldn’t let him hang onto that one.
“A man can only take so much, and God knows you’ve had more than your
fair share this round. And you know
me; if I thought you were a coward I would have just let you
dangle.”
That shocked him, but then part of the shadow cleared
out of his eyes. “Thank
you.”
“Quit talking,” I scolded. “You don’t thank someone for cuttin’ a
noose down from the ceiling except by promising not to make them do it again,
got it?” His eyes widened and he
started to say something, but a sharp look from me and he shut his mouth and
just nodded. “Good. As long as we’re clear on that, you and
me are okay.”
I heard footsteps, two sets of them, on the stairs then,
and since only one of them was heavy I knew Sanchez had used his gray matter and
not stopped off at
Now old Doc McCoy is an odd duck and no mistake. He showed up downtown at one of the
shelters a few years back, sick and out of his head, and about a week later some
friends of his caught up with him there.
Word is that one of them fell head over heels with the woman that ran the
shelter and the two of them hitched it up together and are off doing the family
thing someplace, but McCoy and the other guy stuck around like they had no other
place to go and they’re still here.
You don’t see too much of his roommate, but I’d say it’s a fair bet the
man stuck around to be the doc’s keeper; McCoy’s carryin’ something around with
him, see, the biggest damned load of guilt I’ve ever seen a man try to haul, and
a lot of the time he tries to lighten it up by wetting it down, if you know what
I mean. He’s a great doc and a fair
headshrinker when he’s not potted, though, and if anyone can manage to fix Ez
inside and out it’ll be him.
He came in with Sanchez behind him and his bag in his
hand, and he spared me a nod before going straight to Ez and looking him dead in the eye. He just stood there like that for a
minute, and then he sat down on the side of the bed and lifted up that warm rag
I’d put across the rope burn, and he shook his head. “I think this boy is comin’ down with
pneumonia,” he said in his raspy voice and just like he meant it. “Must’ve been that couple of days he
spent in jail, damn place is as damp as fresh tomb. Got into your throat, too, hasn’t
it? Don’t answer that, son, you
don’t need to be doin’ any talking for a few days.” He looked up at me and Sanchez. “You two gonna look out for him while
he’s gettin’ over this?”
“Don’t think either of us would be leaving with him
under the weather,” I said.
“Sanchez and I aren’t going anyplace, Doc.”
“Glad to hear it.”
He meant that too. “I can
give him some medicine, but as far as beatin’ this thing the old ways are still
the most effective,” he told us.
“He’s got to stay in bed a week, warm and covered, especially his
throat. What you’re doing here is
good, but I want him in flannel pajamas buttoned up to his neck and on a soft
diet.” His blue eyes were sharp,
but they got sharper all of a sudden.
“He’s out of his head with it right now, could’ve done anything, and
he’ll likely be in and out for a few days more. Don’t let anyone visit him if you want
him to get better, understand? I’ll
get him settled and do my part of things right now, so why don’t you two go down
and clean up that mess; he was out of his head and not responsible when it
happened, but if it stays there there’s gonna be excitement and I don’t want any
excitement coming into this room for a while if we can help it. Now get to it, come back up when you’re
done and I’ll give you some more instructions.”
We got to it.
I hadn’t intended to do any of the scrubbing myself if I could get out of
it, but I knew Doc McCoy wanted to have his own private talk with Ez, shrink his
head a little, and he couldn’t do that with me hanging around – that, and even
though Sanchez could talk off a tin ear he can’t lie to save his life, so if we
wanted to pull this scam off I’d be needing to stick close to him for a while
and do his talking until I was sure he knew how to answer a question. So I shucked my coat and stood on a
chair to scrub that bloody paint off from over the door while Sanchez got down
on his hands and knees to scrub it up off the sidewalk. When I got down to get the drips off the
door I asked him, “Where the hell were you?”
“I had to go see someone who was…sick.” He didn’t sound too sure about it,
though. “I could ask you the same
question.”
“I was on the run,” I told him flatly. He wasn’t getting out of it that easily,
no sir. “I find out you knew about
his mother and the cops, Sanchez, and you’d better not walk down any more dark
alleys in this city for as long as you live.” It’s got to be kind of a joke around the
neighborhood that the poor sap is carrying a torch for Ezra’s mother, and once
in a while when she comes around she gives him just enough attention to keep him
going, keep her son guessing which side his bouncer will come down on if push
comes to shove. But if I get wise
to the idea that he knew more about this than he should I’ll beat his head in –
even if I have to stand on a ladder to do it.
He had to look up at me to figure out what he thought
about that one, and what he saw was the truth so he shrugged it off. “I wouldn’t have done that to him and
you should know it.”
I took his shrug and shot it back at him before I went
back to scrubbing paint. “I know
you’ve got the hots for his mother is what I know, and I know they’ve got a
snake down at the zoo that’s more of a lady than she is.” He really didn’t like that but he didn’t
try to argue with me either, which makes me wonder if he’s an even bigger sap
than I thought; bad enough to get sucked in by a pretty face and a swish, but
it’s even worse to just keep making a fool of yourself over a woman you know is
playing you. I don’t care enough
about it to ask him, though, and I figure if he really was that dumb then
cleaning up this mess might have wised him up some.
And I’m not just talking about the damned red paint
we’re scrubbing, either.
We get done with the paint not too long before the sun
would have put a spotlight on it and scoot back inside, making sure everything
is right in its place and not a hair out of it. Doc McCoy is waiting for us, but Ez is
asleep and the doc takes us outside into the hall to keep him that way. “He’s got it bad,” is what he says once
the door is mostly shut. “For the
next day or two we can’t leave him alone for a minute, you understand? Not even when he’s
asleep.”
I just nod, since I hadn’t figured on leaving Ez on his
own for a while anyway; no matter what little bit of sense I got into him when
he first woke up, a man who gets up enough nerve to take himself out ain’t gonna
lose it all at once – especially not when you add embarrassment to whatever load
he was trying to dump. “Anything
else?” I ask.
McCoy doesn’t quite smile. “If I think of anything, you’ll be the
first to know,” he tells me, then fixes a cold blue eye on Sanchez. “And no preaching at him from you, Mr.
Sanchez, and I mean it. What ails
that boy can’t be fixed with a sermon, and what’s inside his head already is so
screwed up that I don’t need you poking around in there and making it
worse.”
Sanchez frowns.
“But Brother, religion can be a comfort…”
“Only if the recipient is willing and able – which my
patient isn’t, so I’ll thank you to save any preachin’ you feel you have to do
until the next time the Salvation Army comes rollin’ by.” The cold look heated up when he saw
Sanchez wasn’t buying it. “The only
thing that boy needs to be saved from right now is the evil other people do, and
you won’t get that fixed by telling him some higher power is behind it all but
loves his poor worthless self all the same. Not unless you want him back on the end
of a rope somewhere down the road, anyway.
Do we understand each other?”
There just wasn’t anything Sanchez could say to that
except yes, and I kept my smile to myself until he went downstairs to get things
ready for business. Then I took off
my coat and settled in with McCoy to play some cards until Ez woke up again.
It was a few days before I felt all right about leavin’
Ez, but after a few days I knew I was going to have to go pound the pavement for
a while if I wanted to keep playing penny-ante with the doc, not to mention that
I’d come up with something else that needed doing and it couldn’t wait. Or at least, I couldn’t. So I waited until McCoy showed up for
his daily head-shrink with Ez, saw that the replacement bartender was where he
was supposed to be and Sanchez wasn’t doing anything he shouldn’t, and then I
took off with a plan to show up in the wrong place at the right time so I could
arrange a little run-in with the wrong people.
The good end of town around here is a pretty bad place
to be if you’re not either Family or just nobody, and especially if the
Carlucci’s know you as someone they wouldn’t miss all that much if you were to,
say, take a walk off the pier wearing concrete galoshes – and I knew there were
a couple of boys hanging around the organization who’d be more than happy to fit
me for a pair, too. But this was
for Ez, so I got uptown and found a good spot in a little Italian place I
shouldn’t have been showing my face in, ordered some coffee and cannolli and
waited. Sure enough, I was just
down to the bottom of my cup when one of the wrong people I’d been hoping to see
walked in: Tony Carlucci, one of
the big don’s lieutenants – and one of his favorite grandsons to boot. Perfect. I waited until he’d gotten settled in,
then waited a minute more until he decided what to do about me being there where
I didn’t belong. It didn’t take
long. “Thought you knew better than
to slouch around down here, Tanner,” he said. “You private dicks don’t last too long
in this part of town.”
“Oh, I’m not here to work.” I finished my coffee, paid for the
cannolli and told Luigi’s daughter to tell him it was great – which it had
been. Then I moseyed over to Tony’s
table and sort of lounged there, looking down at him. “I just wanted to see what I’d been
hearing about, you know how it goes.
And here you are, large as life.”
He didn’t quite know what to make of that, so he did a
good job of acting like I was a fly he was too bored to swat. “You got somethin’ to say, Tanner, spit
it out. You’re botherin’
me.”
Tony Carlucci isn’t too bad of a guy in a regular
situation, but this setup wasn’t regular and I knew I had to appeal to his
Family pride if I wanted him to jump in the right place without him thinking he
was doing me any kind of a favor – favors from a Carlucci I don’t need, I’ve got
enough problems. I slid into the
seat across from him and made myself more at home than I felt. “Okay, Tony, I’ll give it to you
straight; you boys screwed up and out of the goodness of my heart I figured I’d
point it out to you before any more people started to
laugh.”
That perked him right up. “Who’s laughin’?” he wanted to
know. “Ain’t nobody laughs at Tony
Carlucci…”
“Not just you, all of you,” I corrected like it was no
big deal. “You boys screwed that
Standish deal all to hell, you know that?
That’s what you get for not checking your facts before you ice somebody;
that gold-plated bitch you were trying to shake down used you to get rid of Roxy
Standish so she wouldn’t get her own hands dirty with it, and now she’s playing
you against the cops to run her son out of town if not straight into the
laughing academy or a hole in the ground.
Since when do you guys dance to someone else’s tune,
Tony?”
I waved that red blanket in front of him and damned if
he didn’t charge right after it, just like I wanted him to. “The Carlucci family don’t do no one
else’s dirty work,” he snapped, coloring up. “I should take you out just for
suggestin’ that someone could play us.”
I leaned forward and lowered my voice, keeping it just
us. “Somebody did, you dumb
sap. You made an honest mistake,
though, I’ll give you that; most people wouldn’t suspect that a woman’s life
ambition would be to take out her own son.”
He’s a little slow on the uptake, Tony is, but I was
using words he could understand and he finally caught on. “That Maude woman is out to get her own
kid?” He sounded horrified and he
most likely was; he’s old school and they don’t play things that way around
here. “You sure about this,
Tanner?”
“Wouldn’t have said anything if I wasn’t,” I told
him. “She used her connections with
you to steal that bar out from under him, and now she’s using the shadow Roxy’s
murder left on him with the cops to rub his nose in it – she had him hauled off
to jail for three days after their last game of change the sign, made a fool of
him and then he got sick from being in the tank on top of all of
it.”
“Sick?” He
gave me a look; Tony had all four cylinders firing now. And no matter how fast we’d made that
red paint disappear, there would have been people who’d seen it. “Been out of his
head?”
I nodded.
“Yep, that’s what the doc says.”
I gave him a look of my own.
“We’ve been keeping him up in his room, he can’t hardly talk with his
throat all swollen up like it is.”
“Probably best if he stays out of the bar until that
clears up, yeah.” His eyes had
narrowed. “Doc McCoy looking out
for him, is it? He say Standish
will get better?”
“Yeah, he says he should be okay – as long as he doesn’t
do any more painting at night or spend any more time in the lockup,
anyway.” I stood up. “Well, I’d better get going. You’ve got things to do and so do
I.”
“That I do,” he agreed seriously. “See you around, Tanner.” He didn’t offer me his hand and I
wouldn’t have taken it if he had, so a nod did for both of us and I went on back
to Roxy’s.
The place was empty when I got there except for the
fill-in bartender. “Doc upstairs
with Ez?” I asked him, sitting down in my usual
spot.
He nodded but kept on cleaning glasses. “Dr. McCoy says Mr. Standish is much
improved,” he told me. “Your errand
was successful?”
I didn’t ask myself how he knew what I’d been up to,
he’s just spooky that way and I wasn’t going to drive myself off a cliff trying
to figure him out. “Yep,” I
said. “Everything should be right
as rain soon.”
“Good. Mr.
Standish is very fortunate to have such a good friend.” He meant it, I could tell, but there was
just a touch of bitterness coloring his deep voice that made me wonder who
hadn’t been a good friend to him somewhere back down the line. It wasn’t McCoy, I knew that, but it
could have been that buddy of theirs that took off. That could be it, I guessed, especially
if he’d had something to do with this guy getting messed up; he wears his hair
long to cover the scars, but if that had been an accident the top of his head
would be missing and not just the tops of his ears. I never dug into it because I’d always
had a gut feeling I shouldn’t, but I’ve wondered a few times if the ‘Jim’ McCoy
mentions when he’s drunk sometimes was messed up with the mob or something. I hoped not; there’s just too damn much
of that going around right now, we don’t need any
more.
I was back on my stool and McCoy was sitting next to me
drinking coffee when Larabee came in looking like he didn’t know which way was
up the next day. He marched right
to the stairs and wasn’t too happy when I got in his way. “Doc says…” I
began.
“I have to talk to him,” he interrupted. I narrowed my eyes. He was steamed, yeah, but I got the
feeling it wasn’t Ez who had him heated up this time. “You can come with me, but I have to
talk to him and it can’t wait.”
McCoy peeled himself off his stool and ambled over. “All right,” he said, surprising me and
Larabee both. “We’ll all go,
then. But if you light into him
I’ll throw you down the stairs.”
Larabee nodded agreement, and the doc led us both
upstairs and knocked softly on Ez’s door before opening it. “Ezra, you’ve got some company,” he
said, sticking his head in. “You
feel up to it? I think it’s someone
you should see.”
It was obviously okay, because McCoy stepped into the
room and let us both in behind him.
Ez was sitting up in bed staring out the window, the flannel wrapped
around his neck making him look paler than he should be, and when he turned his
head and saw who was with us his eyes got so round and frightened that I wanted
to shove the detective out of the room myself. For Larabee’s part, he looked more than
a little shocked to see Ez looking so worn down, but what surprised me more was
that he looked guilty as well.
“Standish, I…” he began, and then cleared his throat and started
again. “There’s something I need to
say to you.”
For the first time – well, okay, the second time – since
I’d met him at that
Crazy Eddie is a cousin to Tony and a hophead to boot,
and his only saving grace is that unlike most other hopheads I’ve seen instead
of turning him into a rabid dog the weed just makes him silly. Eddie goes way beyond a Family
embarrassment, but they can’t ice him even though when he’s all hopped up he’ll
tell you everything he ever knew and then some – rumor has it the old man owed
Eddie’s mother a favor and her little hophead’s continued existence was it. “So just what kind of song was he
singing today?” I asked.
Larabee snorted.
“All of them – he must’ve got a whole sackful of the stuff somewhere, we
finally had to gag him to shut him up.
But that was before he started singing about…Standish, do you know where
your mother is right now?”
Ez flinched, and McCoy moved right in. “Detective, that subject is upsetting to
my patient.”
“I know, I’m sorry. But it’s important that we find
out.” He scrubbed a hand through
his hair, looking frustrated. “It
sounded like Eddie’d been sitting in a corner somewhere while some of his
cousins were having a chat about…well, about Miss Maude and how they’d figured
out that she used them to get,” he shot a sideways look at McCoy, “something she
wanted done, a couple of somethings, even.
We got the idea that they feel like she was playing them, and the next
time she sets foot in the city will most likely be the last time she sets foot
anywhere. And they know she’ll come
back over that damned sign.”
Guess I’d only thought Ez was pale before; a piece of
paper would have looked colored next to him right then. But he finally opened his mouth. “I don’t know where she is,
Detective.” He couldn’t have
sounded worse if he really did have pneumonia, sort of like someone had roughed
up his vocal cords with sandpaper.
“The last time she was here…I was not here when she left.”
Larabee actually winced, and before McCoy or I could
move he’d sat himself down next to the man he’d tried to bulldog so many times
and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Dammit, Standish, I am so sorry – about everything that’s gone on, I
mean it. I swear to you that I will
fix this mess we’ve made, even if what it takes is me repainting that damned
sign for you myself.” Ez couldn’t
quite manage to get out an answer to that, even though his mouth was working
like a landed fish down at the pier, but he managed a little nod and Larabee
patted his shoulder before standing back up. “You rest up, get better – place isn’t
the same without you.” He
winked. “And don’t tell anyone, but
that new bartender of yours gives me the willies.”
McCoy snorted and sat down in the chair beside the bed –
his way of saying that he was staying there and we were leaving. “He does that on purpose. He doesn’t like
you.”
Larabee looked him straight in the eye. “Well, that makes two of us,
then.”
I let them stare each other down until McCoy nodded,
then I found a smile for Ez and followed Larabee out. I guess I wasn’t too surprised when he
stopped walking halfway to the stairs.
“You burn that rope?” he asked.
I just looked at him, and he shook his head; he hadn’t
really expected me to come clean with him.
“I’m not going to say word one about it, Tanner, you don’t have to worry
about that.” He tugged at his
collar. “Buck burned
mine.”
Somehow that didn’t surprise me. I still wasn’t giving him anything,
though; he was feeling guilty today, but down the road he might not stay that
way. Something I needed to fish for
myself, though… “So what else did
Crazy Eddie give you boys? Anything
I need to know about?”
His eyes narrowed just a little while he sorted out what
I wasn’t asking him and what it probably meant, and then he shrugged. “Not that I know of, no – although he’s
probably still singing away if he managed to get the gag out. If he mentions anything to do with your
business, I’ll pass it along. ” He
started to say something else, then swallowed it and started walking again. “You’re sure there’s no
connection?”
Someone else might have thought that road had been awful
short when he asked me that question, but I know him better than that; Larabee’s
got the record he does because he checks out every little detail, which is why
he’s so guilty now that he knows he let himself slip up when it came to the
Standish case. And he knows he
can’t ask me straight out how much I had to do with him finding that out, so
he’ll ask me a question he knows I can answer. I shrug, knowing he’s watching me out of
the corner of his eye. “You think
I’d run my business out of his bar if there was? You ought to be more worried about me
telling the bartender what you said about him giving you the
willies.”
He stops again at the top of the stairs and looks
back. “You
wouldn’t.”
I grin at him.
“Buy me a beer or two and I’ll forget I ever heard it – and I’ll run
interference so he doesn’t look at you too hard.”
He starts downstairs again, and I hear him chuckle. It’s a little forced, but it probably
will be for a while; Larabee’s not used to being on the receiving end of wrong,
it’s usually him forcing it down someone else’s throat. “Blackmail’s a crime, Tanner. But I might be persuaded to look the
other way if you’d fill me in on what’s been going on with Roxy’s all this time
I’ve had my head up my ass. Over one beer,
just to keep your mouth from drying out.”
“Sounds like a deal to me.” Making a joke about him being on the
take isn’t something I’m stupid enough to do; that’s the kind of thing that gets
overheard and causes trouble, and that kind of trouble is no joke at all. And I know for a fact that the bartender
has ears like a bat and just heard every word we
said.
Including the part about him giving big bad Detective
Larabee the willies.