Authors: Wallace Stroby

The Heartbreak Lounge (2 page)

BOOK: The Heartbreak Lounge

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“Good thing you called ahead,” the man said. “Getting ready to shut down for the day, go hit some golf balls. You would've been out of luck.”

Johnny waited, standing.

“You look like your picture,” the man said. “I have to give you that. No sense asking for ID, I suppose.”

He opened a desk drawer, came out with a legal-size manila envelope. He put it on the desktop, left the drawer
open. Johnny knew there would be a gun inside, in easy reach. He came closer, picked up the envelope.

“Don't know who I'm doing this for,” the man said. “Or why. But I know how to follow instructions. It's all there.”

The flap was sealed. The man slid a silver letter opener across the desk. Johnny used it on the envelope, looked inside, counted. There were twenty fifty-dollar bills.

“Supposed to be more,” he said.

“You'll have to take that up with someone else. A grand, that's what I was told.”

Johnny looked at him, the letter opener still in his hand. The man scratched his elbow. His eyes flicked toward the open desk drawer.

“You'd never make it,” Johnny said.

The man looked at him, said nothing.

Johnny set the opener down on the blotter, left the office. The woman was still on the phone, but she watched him as he went out the door.

He drove five blocks, found a coffee shop. He sat where he could watch the car and ate a steak with french fries and green beans. It was his first real meal since leaving Glades. He ate slow, washing it all down with swallows of sweet tea from a red plastic glass. When he was done he put one of the fifties beside the plate, went to a phone booth in the back.

From his shirt pocket, he took out the piece of paper with the ten-digit number on it. He fed in coins, dialed the number, waited while it rang. When the pager on the other end beeped, he punched in the number of the pay phone, hung up.

He waited there until it rang back.

“Yeah?” a voice said.

“It's me.”

“Where are you?”

“St. Augustine.”

“You get it?”

“I got it. It's shy.”

“I had some second thoughts. We can discuss it when you get up here.”

“This is a bad way to start.”

“We'll talk about it later. I can't stay on. This isn't a secure line. Let me call you back from someplace else.”

“No need. I just wanted to let you know.”

“Let me know what?”

“That I'm on my way.” He hung up.

Forty minutes later, he was at the airport in Jacksonville. He watched for signs, steered the Buick into the long-term parking lot. He got a ticket from the machine, waited for the automated gate to open. It took him five minutes to find an empty spot. He pulled the Buick into it, killed the engine, got the duffel from the backseat.

He took a white T-shirt out, used it to wipe down the inside of the car, the cigarette case. When he was done, he got out, hipped the door shut, wiped the outside latches, then the trunk lid. He put the T-shirt back in the bag, the envelope already in there.

He locked the doors with the remote, tore the ticket up, let the breeze take the pieces. Slinging the duffel over his shoulder, he started walking toward the terminal, heat shimmer rising off the blacktop around him.

There were buses waiting at the far end of the terminal. He would get one into town, catch a train north. Two, three days at the most and he'd be there.

Near the bus stand, he stopped, got the key chain out. He stripped half the keys off the ring, dropped them through the grate of a storm drain. He found another grate twenty feet away, dropped in the rest of the keys, stepped on the remote and kicked the broken pieces of it in after them. He kept the rabbit's foot.

The week after thanksgiving and it seemed like winter was already here to stay.

Even back here, in the cooler, they could hear the sleet rattling the plate-glass windows of the liquor store. The space heater at their feet glowed orange, but Harry could barely feel it. He knew they'd be there for hours, so he'd dressed accordinglyâflannel shirt with T-shirt under it, boots, jeans with long johns beneath, black windbreaker with the RW Security logo front and back in white lettering.

Gray metal walls on three sides, cooler doors on the fourth. They'd assembled a makeshift table out of four cases of Miller Lite and a half sheet of plywood. On another case sat the closed-circuit monitor that was hooked up to the store camera.

Errol drew a card from the deck.

“Dealer takes one,” he said. His breath misted in the air.

Harry looked at his own cards. They were playing five-card draw and he'd had a pair of queens to start with, had taken three cards, picked up a pair of threes and a five.

There was two dollars in change in the pot. Errol put in another quarter. Harry matched it.

“Call,” he said.

Errol turned his cards over one by one. Queen of hearts, six of hearts, four of hearts, two of hearts. Harry didn't even wait to see the last card. He dropped his face-down on the table.

“Got lucky on that one,” Errol said. He swept the change toward him, gathered up the cards and began to shuffle again.

“Going to stretch my legs,” Harry said.

He got up from the wooden folding chair, checked his watch. Nine-thirty. They'd been here three hours. The store would close at eleven and they'd stick around another hour until the money was counted, then ride along for the night deposit. Already, his left elbow ached. It had been broken a little over a year ago, and cold and damp brought the pain back, along with the knowledge it would bother him the rest of his life.

“No one's going out there tonight,” Errol said. “Not the way that shit's blowing. Black folks don't like this kind of weather.”

Harry wandered over to the racks, looked past six-packs of Michelob, through the thick glass of one of the cooler doors. Chaney, the old black man who owned the place, was behind the counter ringing up a bottle of champagne for an enormous woman in Capri pants and a waist-length cape. This was Harry's third night here and he'd yet to see a single white customer. Chaney's nephew Lyle, a heavy, slow man with a lazy left eye, passed by, pushing a broom.

Harry dug into his jeans pocket, came out with the small twist of aluminum foil. Inside was a Percocet, broken into quarters. With his back to Errol, he slipped one into his mouth, dry-swallowed it, closed the foil again.

“What I still don't understand,” Errol said, “is what the hell you're doing here.”

Harry turned to him. Errol was one of a half dozen black cops Ray Washington employed in their off-duty hours. He was in his early thirties, fit and lean, with close-cropped hair and coffee-dark skin. He wore a thick commando sweater beneath his windbreaker, thicker still for the Kevlar vest under it. A Smith & Wesson .380 automatic in a clip holster rested alongside the monitor.

Ray had given Harry a weapon as well, a short-nosed blue-steel Colt .38. It was holstered on his right hip, a familiar weight beneath the windbreaker.

“Honest work,” Harry said. “Just like you.”

“You know Ray, what, ten years?”

“Closer to fifteen.”

“You on the state police with him, right?”

“We were in the same class at the academy, worked the Turnpike together. He went on to MCU and I followed later.”

“Major Crimes. Not many black men in that. I thought about taking the test once. For the state. But I hear they can still make it tough on a brother if they don't like him, even if he's lucky enough to get in the door.”

“There's good people there. Bad ones too. Like everything else.”

“But both of you quit.”

“Different reasons.”

“I know about Ray, all that bullshit he had to put up with. How about you?”

“I got shot.”

Errol looked at him, said nothing.

“Can I use your cell for a minute?” Harry said.

“Sure.” Errol took it off his belt, handed it over. Harry opened it, dialed his own number. When the machine picked up, he cut it off, punched in his security code. The tape rewound, hissing, stopped. Three hang-ups, one automated mortgage solicitation. Nothing from her.

He clicked off.

“Thanks.” He closed the phone and handed it back. Errol set it on the table.

They heard the door chimes ring, looked at the monitor. Chaney had his coat on, was going out the door, Lyle behind the counter now.

“Coffee run,” Errol said. “Right on time. Be a nice change, he ever asked us if we wanted anything.”

He was feeling the Percocet now, the pain in his elbow fading. Errol picked up the cards, began to shuffle again.

“In or out?” he said.

“In.”

Harry took the chair, turned it around, straddled it. He adjusted the holster so it didn't dig into his hip, picked up the cards he was dealt.

“Five-card draw again,” Errol said. “Deuces wild.”

Harry looked at his hand, eights and aces and a hanging six. He put a quarter in the pot to get started.

“So, a watch commander and two patrolmen are walking down the beach,” Errol said. “And one of the patrolmen finds this lamp in the sand, you know, like an old lamp. Arabian.”

“Got it.”

“So the one patrolman rubs it, and this big, black genie comes out, dressed in genie clothes, and he says, âI've been trapped in that motherfucking lamp for two thousand years, and now you've freed me, so I'll give y'all one wish each, anything you want.' So the first patrolman thinks and he says, âYou know, I'm tired of sitting in a unit, freezing my ass off all winter. I want to go on a cruise in the tropics, all expenses paid, luxury accommodations, with a bunch of fine supermodels. And all we'd do is fuck all night and lie in the sun all day.' So the genie says, âOkay, you got it,' and in a puff of smoke the first cop's gone.

“So the genie turns to the second patrolman and says, âYour turn, bro. Anything you want. Say it and it will be yours.' So he thinks a little bit and he says, âI want a big old house on top of a mountain in Jamaica, where it's warm all the time and I can just sit around, watch the sunset and smoke reefer.' And then
poof,
he's gone too, just like that.

“So, finally, the genie turns to the watch commander and says, âYou get one wish too. What do
you
want?' And the watch commander says, âI want those two assholes back here
right now.
'”

Harry laughed, looked at his cards. Errol said, “Check out this shit.”

Harry looked at the screen. Lyle had taken a pint bottle from beneath the counter. He unscrewed the cap, took a sip.

“Now, do you think that ignorant motherfucker does not realize we can see everything he does?” Errol said. “Or does he just not care?”

They watched him put the cap back on, replace the bottle under the counter. Errol shook his head, picked up the deck again.

“How many?” he said and Harry answered, “One,”
thinking for the first time he might have a shot at winning this hand, and then the chimes rang again and the door opened.

“Yo,” Errol said. Harry dropped his discard, looked at the screen.

His first thought was that it was a kid, a boy. He wore a puffy jacket, hands deep in the pockets, baseball cap pulled low. Even with the distortion of the camera angle, he looked half the size of Lyle. And then he took a hand out of his pocket and there was a gun in it.

“Goddammit,” Errol said and dropped his cards on the table, reached for the holster.

Harry got up, looked out through the cooler glass. The kid had the gun, a short-barreled revolver, pointed sideways at Lyle's head, and was yelling at him. Harry couldn't hear the words.

He looked at the cell phone. He knew the drill, what they'd been told. Call 911 first, get the locals on the move before taking any action. But Errol was already at the door of the cooler, the Smith & Wesson out and up.

The kid was still yelling, the gun unsteady. Lyle punched at the register, screwing up the keys and having to do it again, the kid getting impatient, the wavering muzzle closer to Lyle's face. The register drawer popped open and the kid waved Lyle back with the gun, then leaned over the counter and started grabbing bills.

Errol looked back at Harry from the cooler door, hand on the latch, said, “Come
on,
” and then Harry was behind him, moving on instinct, his hand on the .38.

“It's a kid,” he said, more to himself than Errol, and then the cooler door was open and they were hurtling through it. Errol was screaming commands, the Smith & Wesson in a two-handed grip, and the kid turned, surprise and fear on his face, and shot him twice in the chest.

The gun made a noise like firecrackers, two quick, unimpressive snaps. Errol sat down hard, crashed back against a promotional display of beer cases, said, “God
damn
it.”
Harry moved in front of him, shielding him, the .38 steady, pointing at the kid's chest, screamed,
“Put it down! Put it down!”
and the kid fired again, wild, and Harry heard the round punch through cooler glass. He yelled,
“Down! Down! Down!”
his finger tightening on the trigger, feeling the hammer pull. He had a clear shot, impossible to miss, less than ten feet between them. He looked into the kid's wide eyesâhe was fourteen, fifteen at the oldestâand centered the front sight on his chest, began to squeeze.

The kid dropped the gun. It clattered and flew apart on the linoleum floor. His hands came slowly to shoulder height, the bills still clutched in his left hand.

Harry let his breath out slowly, eased off on the trigger. There was silence. Then, behind him, he heard Errol say, “Mother
fucker.
”

“On your knees,” Harry said. “Slow. Hands behind your head.”

The kid was shaking now, confused, not processing what had happened. Lyle backed away, lowered his hands.

“On your knees,” Harry said again.

The kid's hands went higher, ear level, awkward.

“Relax, son. Do as I say and you won't get hurt.”

The kid laced his fingers behind his neck. Harry let the muzzle of the .38 drop, spoke clearly, slowly.

“Now kneel down. On the floor. Do it now.”

The kid started to obey and then, from the corner of his eye, Harry saw Lyle's hand go below the counter, reaching for the pint maybe, a drink to steady his nerves. Then the gun came up, a revolver, no bigger than a starter's pistol. The kid was still looking at Harry, not seeing the gun, and Harry only had time to yell
“No!”
once before Lyle leaned close and shot him in the head.

There wasn't much noise. A quick crack, the muzzle of the gun barely rising, and the kid fell instantly to the floor, everything loose. Lyle leaned his bulk over the counter, holding on with one hand so he didn't overbalance. The gun sparked and cracked again and the kid shook once and lay still.

Harry was moving now, closing the distance.

“Put it down,” he said.

Lyle looked at him, his face blank.

“Put the gun down.”

“Got that motherfucker,” Lyle said and set the gun on the counter.

The kid moaned, one leg kicked. There was blood on the floor, blood on his jacket, blood in his hair. The baseball cap lay a few feet away. Bills were scattered on the floor.

The kid's gun was in two pieces, bits of black electrician's tape stuck to them. Harry scattered them with his foot.

“Call 911,” he said.

Lyle didn't move.

From behind him, Harry heard Errol say softly, “Son of a bitch,” as he got to his feet.

Harry holstered the .38, looked at Lyle.

“Good shot,” he said. He slid Lyle's gun along the counter, out of reach.

“That nigga went
down,
” Lyle said and Harry nodded, raised his right hand.

“Man, what are you â¦” Lyle started to say, and then Harry leaned over the counter and hit him as hard as he could in the face.

BOOK: The Heartbreak Lounge

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