Garbage (3 page)

The marshal comes in while we're sitting around a table eating and I say “Want breakfast? I know I can't touch mine,” and he says “No, I go home for dinner right after this—I got the moon shift, lucky me. But what've you guys got that's so hot?” and a policeman shows him the note the man left last night.

“This spit-stained napkin's supposed to prove something to me?”

“Well I didn't write it,” I say. “Besides, you don't believe me, the hell with you—I got to see my apartment.”

“Whoa, whoa. Lookit, not that I'm saying what I'm going to say happened or even implying you were any way in the wrong. But knowledgeably speaking, anyone could have written this napkin for you so you could get your insurance company, we'll say, to think your apartment fire wasn't paid for or invited by you.”

“I don't have apartment insurance. If I burned anything down it would be this unprofitable bar, but without first calling the police there'll be a fire, though maybe even there you think that's another ruse. Besides which I never hurt anyone except some dumb—wait a minute. You see a parrot in the apartment?”

“A statue of one?”

“Real.”

“No.”

“No parrot, live or dead or anything looking like a bird?”

“No, why, you had one?”

“Would I be asking? Maybe she flew away. I always kept the window open a little so she could get fresh air, though when it really matters to them, animals can squeeze out of anywheres. But I had my windows wide open last summer and she never flew away yet. And plenty of times had the chance, having picked open the latch with her beak or I let her free to fly and crap all over the place and me because I suddenly couldn't see her caged, though a fire's another thing.”

“It was a pretty serious one, so your bird's body could have gotten hid under the debris.”

“I'll just have to hope she flew away and someone caught her before she froze. But I never hurt anyone I was saying except some bum who was hurting someone else in my bar and wouldn't stop or with his big mouth causing all my customers to flee, and then I only hurt his feelings some if he still wouldn't go. Showed him the club and even used it on him light at times when he tried to rush me with a knife. Another thing: think I'd be fool enough to knock out the place I've lived in for fifteen years? And which to duplicate somewhere else, or even the same one, because they can charge me what they want once I'm burnt out and they put it back in shape—forget the cost to my soul if even one smelly puppy goes up in smoke because of me—I'd have to shell out three times the rent I now pay? Don't be stupid.”

“And don't shoot off your mouth like that to me.”

“I don't deserve to? Being accused by you, threatened by others, my apartment burnt out, parrot gone, a hotel to go to now—you're going to put me up?”

“Easy, fellas,” a policeman says.

“Then tell him to lay off. I've enough troubles.”

“Lookit,” the marshal says. “I know you've a good rep in your apartment building. Quiet and courteous and Mr. Joe Concerned Dogooder Citizen when you've the time to and so forth.”

“Oh please. Stop chopping and packaging the bullcrap.”

“That's what she said—your landlady and other tenants. And your record for arson or suspected with my department and your whole family line of bar licenses is bloodbank clean. I checked. But I have to think of every possibility what started the fire—that's my job.”

“Go to Stovin's then—you with these men. Show them the note. Don't be afraid. Show them it and say point blank they wrote it and watch their faces lie in their protests.”

“All we can do is go there, if these officers are willing, and question them about your charges and see what's what. I'm sure though that if anyone was intimidating you for the reasons you said, then with that fire he's stopped.”

The policemen and marshal go. I'm exhausted and because I never could get anyone to work for me steady, being every mopman and bartender I had the past few years turned out to be the worst sort of loafer, drunk or thief or all three, I close up for the first time in my barowning life when there's still daylight out, other than for my mother's funeral. A policeman's to stay in front of my place guarding it but I don't see one. Hell, let Stovin's burn down the bar. At least I'll get insurance on it, though I make sure to take all the cash I keep under the counter for the next day's change and things.

I go home. Home's a burnt-out two rooms but a john which still works. I take a last pee in it, retrieve what I can which isn't much but shaving and tooth-cleaning things and a pure pewter beer mug of my grandfather's for a sausage-eating contest he won a hundred years ago and which is almost still too hot to touch, and give a last look around for the parrot before I choke to death. I find her half dug in by her beak and claws to my one floor plant. Sara wasn't originally mine but a gift, though her owner said “on loan,” in lieu of six months of unpaid bar bills. But I grew fond of her and she of me and I liked to talk to her when I got home from work or Sundays when I couldn't by law open the bar till noon. “Got a match?” she'd say from the previous owner every time I walked in the door and I'd say, hanging up my coat, “Sara, how you doing? Don't you know by now I don't smoke?”

“No match?”

“No ma'am, I told you, I no smoke.”

“No ma'am I no got a match.”

“So now you no smoke.”

“No smoke?”

“You and I no smoke.”

“I so now you no smoke got a match?” back to me or something and so on till we somehow wound up at the beginning and then I'd stop.

I pull out the plant, put Sara in the hole and cover her with earth, feel sad about it, stick a pen up in the pot as a headstone, finally let a few tears go for the loss of my place and mate, wash the singed feathers and fronds and blood and smell off my hands and leave.

A fireman's outside my door drinking coffee when he wasn't there before and says “Nobody's supposed to be in there and what do you have in that bag?” and I say “It's all right, I'm family.”

I say goodbye to the landlady, check into a hotel nearby and sleep a few hours and reopen the bar, since I've nothing else to do and it's not only my livelihood but where I see just about every social contact I know. Same woman in regular clothes is still in a private car in front of my bar and drives away talking into a two-way the moment I unlock the door, so I guess she was my police guard.

The marshal calls next day and says “We've no proof whatsoever that Stovin's had anything to do with your fire. Maybe it was someone in your apartment building who wanted you moved out or just a bar customer with a grudge.”

“And the police, what do they think?”

“Agree a hundred percent. But they did tell me to tell you, as they're very busy today and knew I'd call, that they've removed the taps on your phones.”

“The one on my home phone wasn't too tough to remove, was it?”

“I'm fire, they're police, so I wouldn't know.”

“Listen. You're ever around the bar for a drink, drop in.”

“I've wives to slide home to, pal, but thanks.”

“Free, on me, all you can guzzle and eat, because you've been all right.”

“Different story then. I might drop by tonight.”

“I once wanted to be a fireman,” I tell him that evening. “But after whiffing for the first time what an apartment fire was like and seeing my poor bird turned into a crow, I'm glad I followed the family tradition of owning a losing bar.”

“My father and only older brother died in the same fire once,” he says. “Yeah, after that happened they made a law saying no two family of the same members, of the same immediate, brother-in-laws and cousins excluded—you know what I mean.”

“Yes.”

“Can serve in the same fire station or even district. We're famous as a name in fires. It's called the Dibbeny Law which is our name and is now almost coastwide.”

“Must've been some blow to you, losing both.”

“It killed me. It was arson.” He's now crying. “Maybe the only good thing it did was get me out of the navy as a hardship case at the start of my hitch to support my mother and brother's kids. I'm still trying to find the guy who did it twenty years later, but of course know that's crazy, which is only between you and me.”

“Which leads me—mind if we talk some more about it?”

“Go on. I told you, I'm really dead.”

“What are the chances of finding the ones who burnt me?”

“If they're pros, zero. If they're not, give it ten percent. Even me, who's a crackerjack investigator for eight years now and took no bribes yet to digress me, my success story is no better than sixteen point five percent and most of those were jealous rage ones, so easy.”

He gets sloshed and breaks down at the bar again but this time doesn't recover and starts coughing like I never heard anyone and muttering “Brudder, fudder—ah rats, oh crap, tap me again, Shaney, zap zap,” and I have to pry the glass out of his hand and put him in back to rest and call his sons to pick him up.

“He's not supposed to drink,” one of the sons says as they walk Dibbeny out. “Because of all the smoke he ingested over the years his insides got messed and changed and maybe his brains, so don't do us any more favors by serving him, you hear?”

“Got you, son.”

Next afternoon an envelope's dropped through the bar's mail slot. No stamp, just my address and initials on it, and inside a typewritten note saying “From Shaney to Shaney: written on my typewriter as a reminder night before I had a bosomy friend set fire to my apartment: answer phone!”

Phone rings right then. There's a phonebooth across the street but nobody's in it. I lift the receiver.

“It's Pete, sweetie, how's tricks?”

“I was wondering when.”

“Today, sweetie, today. But no time for amenities. I just want to direct and you listen and act.”

“I don't know what your amenities means.”

“Social intercourse. Nice blab-blab. ‘How's you? What's new? Kill a gay? Fornicate today?' But you haven't a customer now, as that's not how it was planned, so don't use that as an excuse you can't do the following what I'm about to say.”

“I want to see you guys about my fire.”

“What it is is this. Go with a thousand dollars—I know you can get it from your bank in ten minutes, and there's no line right now—to a phonebooth on Second and Prescott. You'll find a strip of thick adhesive tape taped under the phone shelf. Stick the thousand, which you'll have stuck in an envelope to that tape, and fly back to your bar and make yourself an assuager sooner than you're used to. The tape's quite gummy so don't worry about bringing your own tape or your envelope falling off unless it's made of concrete. Bills to be large, naturally aged, of our nationality and denomination, ten of them to be precise, so decide what kind that is on your way to the bank. Do this now. Lock up, go. We're watching you. Call in the cops and next time it'll be two thousand we ask for and each time you bring cops in and stall us, a thousand more. But you're not getting away from us till your dues are paid. We let one get by like you the rest might think ‘Hey, that's the way!' and next there could be open rebellion in the dumps and streets and then where would the free enterprise and great civilization system be? We're being extremely lenient with you and you're getting off light, though no other storeowner will, in case they ask you. That thousand you pay, or two thousand if you delay, is what we'll deem the termination of our garbage contract which we think you thought was finished with just one charred apartment,” and he hangs up.

I have my drink now, another one, chase them with ale, chase that with another scotch, man comes in and I grab my club and say “You from Stovin's?” and he says “No, just want a beer,” and I say “Well go, closed, I'm sorry but I'm in no kind of mood to serve,” and he goes and I call Stovin's and say “This is Shaney Fleet please, let me talk to Pete.”

“What Pete?”

“Any Pete. Pete the bum, Pete the thief. You have a Pete, get him.”

“No Pete.”

“Then why'd you say ‘What Pete?'”

“That ‘Pete' and ‘please' of yours and ‘Fleet' and talking so fast. You got me confused.”

“Hell I did. Then Turner then. Get me any Turner you have there and don't tell me you haven't one.”

“We don't.”

“Manure no Turner or Pete. You have a Stovin, right? Tell me you don't.”

“We do. Two. Which one? Mister or the boy.”

“Some boy, I'll bet, oh some boy. And he must be very proud of his pop too, or maybe the opposite's true. And you must be of both. Everyone must. Whole joint. Well get me either. No, just the elder. Tell him Shaney Fleet of Mitchell's Bar and Grill. He knows of me.”

“Hold on.” Comes back. “I'm afraid no one heard of you here or your grill. What do you want? You new? We didn't collect your trash yet today? If you're on the Northside, Mr. Fleet, it's because we had two unusual broken axles in our main trucks in one day, so we're far behind. Later we're making a double run.”

“Listen, whoever you are. Who are you, just so I get a name?”

“Jennifer.”

“Well you take steno, Jenny, right?”

“No, I only receive here and answer phones.”

“But you can write, right? So if you please, get a pen and put this down to elder and boy and copies to Turner and Pete and whatever other upper-ups above your bosses if there are any. Ready?”

“No Turner and Pete. And I can't write fast. What I'll do is type, while you speak, though it's not my job, but okay: shoot, but short, as I got to also answer phones.”