Cold Florida Read online

  The place dated back to the cool-cooler sixties when everyone referred to it as a go-go, and it was set up with a sort of 1920s look; bent wood chairs, flapper dresses nailed to the wall, a mirror ball, just like in Chicago nightclubs of the bygone era. Currently, in the seed-seedy seventies, the joint was much the worse for wear. Tougher locals would hang out to drink, gamble on pool, and then whack each other with pool sticks. I knew about the place because the guy who ran it was a good cook.

  It didn’t take me long to get there, but I was wishing that I had the coffee I left on Jody’s table because my chill had returned. Then my stomach complained because thinking of the coffee reminded me that once there were donuts, and now there were none.

  So I was very happy to clank into Pete’s because the place was very warm, and there was a smell of cooking onions. I headed immediately for the bar.

  Pete’s was pretty much like a lot of joints in that part of Florida, or a lot of bars anywhere, I guess. The smell of stale beer and too many cigarettes would have been overpowering if drinking and smoking did not clog up most noses. Add the smell of onions, and I didn’t mind it so much. The floor was always a little sticky, but it was old wood: dark and somehow dignified. The place was a big cube. You walked in the door and the bar was on your right, dining tables on your left. About halfway back, the bar and dining area ended, and the rest of the place was littered with pool tables. Those tables were not in any particular order. They were willy-nilly. The ceiling was twenty feet from the floor, and so dark that it was impossible to see, especially in the dim light. The bar had brightly colored, backless, spinning stools. It was supposedly a replica of the bar in the Cotton Club in Harlem in the old days. I knew this because it said so on a big sign behind the cash register. Otherwise, anything that might suggest an air of the Roaring Twenties had been expurgated, or tamed to a very dull roar indeed.

  It didn’t look like the kind of place where a pregnant junkie would hang out, and there was no young girl in evidence at all, so I began to wonder why Jody would have sent me there.

  Behind the bar was a guy called Fat Tuesday. He was called that because he came from New Orleans and his name was Martin Craw, but he went by Marty, so that his name sounded like Mardi Gras, which anyone would know was the French way of saying ‘Fat Tuesday.’ This seems like a long way to go to get a nickname, but I never said so because a person known as Foggy ought not to throw stones.

  Fat had three strands of hair, which he was careful to arrange across the top of his otherwise bald head. He was a fairly large individual, but he had thin, delicate hands. As long as I’d known him, he was always dressed in the same blue T-shirt and black jeans that were both covered by the World’s Messiest Apron. It actually had those words written on it.

  I slid on to one of the few untattered stools at the bar.

  ‘Foggy,’ said Fat the barkeep, sauntering my way.

  ‘Fat,’ I replied. ‘I am looking for Lynette Baker.’

  ‘Who?’ he mumbled.

  ‘OK, in that case,’ I said quickly, ‘I have got to eat something fast.’

  ‘I have just the thing, already prepared.’ He leaned forward. ‘You know good brisket when you see it?’

  ‘Do I know good brisket?’ I asked him. ‘Me, who had Shayna Moscowitz for an aunt, whose every Shabbat was occupied by the best brisket in five boroughs? Are you actually asking me if I know brisket?’

  ‘I’m asking if you know good brisket,’ he insisted, ‘because I wouldn’t want to waste this last little bit that I got on anything less than a connoisseur.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, as seriously as I ever got, ‘a brisket must be braised, and it must take several days to cook over the lowest possible heat, and it must be moist enough to fall apart when you try to get it on to your fork. If it’s not like that, do not taunt me with it.’

  ‘Oh,’ he assured me, ‘it’s like that.’

  ‘Wait,’ I added, ‘I’m not finished. I hope it is cooked with the onions I am smelling.’

  He nodded.

  ‘And it must be sliced so thin you can see through it.’

  ‘I could read the newspaper,’ he claimed, ‘through the thickest piece I got.’

  ‘And!’ I held up a finger. ‘It must be sliced against the grain!’

  ‘Please,’ he snarled. ‘Now you’re insulting me.’

  I sat up straight, elbows on the bar. ‘I prefer a sweet sauce.’

  ‘I make mine with Coca-Cola, ketchup, honey, and red wine.’

  ‘I think I might cry.’ I closed my eyes, like I was praying. ‘This is almost exactly what my aunt used to use.’

  ‘All the better people do,’ Fat Tuesday said softly. ‘I deem you worthy of my cuisine. Comes with little round potatoes and a dinner roll.’

  He launched himself away without another word, lumbering toward the kitchen. I took the opportunity to amble toward the pool tables. There were three guys talking very quietly, not playing pool beside one of the tables. There was another guy asleep on top of another table. Otherwise, the billiards business was nonexistent.

  When the unholy trinity saw me coming their way, they shut up and looked confused for a moment. Then one of them grabbed a pool cue like he’d been playing all night.

  As I got closer, I could see that these were just kids. None of them was over sixteen. One seemed scared, the other two did everything they could to look tough.

  I was more afraid of a teenage boy than anyone else in the world, because I remembered quite well what I was like as a teenage boy. I’d been willing to demonstrate my anger to nearly anyone, and in the most decisive manner. The problem was that this anger was unmodified by experience. That is to say, a boy of sixteen doesn’t realize that whacking a person really hard with a pool cue might actually kill that person. Said boy would also not realize that, if the whacked person does not die, he would be in a mood to reciprocate. Either way, someone was bound to get hurt. A slightly older person would know this and would be somewhat more judicious.

  So I hoped to obviate any pool cue whacking whatsoever by saying, ‘Jody sent me.’

  This was a gamble, because maybe they didn’t know Jody.

  After the briefest possible pause, one of the kids said, ‘Jody who?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I answered him, ‘I usually like a knock-knock joke too, but I’m in kind of a hurry. If Lynette’s baby doesn’t get its medicine in a little over two hours, it’s going to die.’

  This was a better gambit, I thought, because even if they don’t know Lynette, what kind of a person was going to hear that a baby might die and not do something about it?

  ‘Yeah,’ the kid with the pool cue in his hand said, clearly hopped up, ‘well that’s crap, man. Lynette’s in the hospital.’

  One smiled. The other two nodded, like they had me over a barrel.

  ‘OK,’ I said, turning back toward the bar and the smell of brisket. ‘You told me what I wanted to know. You do not, in fact, know where Lynette is. She absconded from the hospital several hours ago. Jody thought she might be here. I see that she is not. I’m going to have my brisket in a hurry, and then I am going to find Lynette and her baby.’

  ‘Lynette left the hospital?’ I heard one of them ask. ‘Why’d she do that?’

  But I didn’t answer because Fat was bringing the brisket from the kitchen.

  FIVE

  Seven minutes later, the brisket was gone. I motioned to Fat, without speaking. He came to stand before me.

  ‘You ate that too fast to enjoy it,’ he whined.

  ‘I’m in a hurry,’ I told him. ‘But I hope you’ll accept the following sentence by way of apology. If you had a little more facial hair and a little less Christianity, you would actually be my Aunt Shayna. This is the extent to which your brisket achieved perfection.’

  Fat blinked, and I thought he might be blushing. ‘I’m honored.’ He was genuinely moved.

  Before I could go on to tell him just how much I regretted rushing through his fine cookery, I
noticed Fat’s expression change, and I tensed up. A second later, I was aware that someone was standing behind me, and almost instantly after that, I was flanked on my right and left by two members of the Caucasian Boys’ Club trio. The one to my left did the talking.

  ‘We don’t like it that you’re looking for Lynette,’ he said, trying to make his voice deeper than it actually was.

  ‘Yeah,’ the one to my right affirmed.

  I felt a distinctive metallic punch in my lower back. I had felt such a sensation before. It was a pistol.

  Fat rolled his eyes. ‘Boys,’ he said, in a very soothing tone, ‘leave the nice man alone. He’s digesting.’

  ‘I said,’ the kid to my left told me, ‘we don’t like it that you’re looking for Lynette.’

  I nodded. ‘Fat,’ I said philosophically, ‘I must apologize for what is about to happen.’

  Fat stared me in the eye and seemed to understand. ‘OK,’ he told me affably. ‘But don’t make too much of a mess. It’s been a long night already.’

  ‘I completely understand,’ I said.

  Then, without further discourse, I jabbed my fork into the trachea of the boy to my left.

  Before he could figure out what had happened, I twisted my left arm behind me, grabbed the barrel of the gun in my back, turned it, and shoved off from the bar with my feet. I pushed so hard that I flew up and backward and came down hard on top of the kid who was behind me holding the pistol. Meanwhile, the genius to my right was gawking, trying to understand what had just happened. Before he could do anything else, Fat cracked his head with a baseball bat produced from behind the bar.

  So, to sum up: the kid to my left had a fork in his throat, the jackass underneath me had the wind knocked out of him, and the one to my right was a fountain of blood, teetering precariously toward the barroom floor.

  I jumped up fairly quickly for a man previously referred to as dad. I had in my hand a .44 Auto Mag Pistol, which was a surprise.

  ‘Look,’ I said to Fat, whose baseball bat had already disappeared. ‘This is an AMP.’

  ‘It is?’ He stared.

  ‘This is unusual,’ I said. ‘They only made – what? – three thousand of these things a couple of years ago. Then the company went bankrupt.’

  ‘Huh.’ He studied the gun. ‘Where did junior get a thing like that?’

  ‘I’d like to know that.’ I looked at the kid with the head wound. ‘What do you think made these kids so playful? Is it me?’

  ‘Boys will be boys?’ Fat suggested.

  I nodded. ‘P.S. You know I could have taken care of this by myself, right?’

  Fat smiled. ‘I don’t like people disturbing my dinner trade.’

  ‘OK.’ I leaned over and jerked the fork out of the kid’s Adam’s apple. Blood gushed. Before I had to ask, Fat produced a couple of bar towels. I took one and wrapped it around the kid’s neck.

  ‘Here,’ I said to him, taking his hand and making him hold the towel on his throat. ‘Just hold that there for a little while. You’ll be OK. Although you might not talk so good for a while.’

  I turned to the one with the head injury. He was a mess. Fat got another towel and gave it to that kid.

  ‘Put it to your head where it hurts,’ he said very loudly to the kid.

  The kid took the towel and then fell down hard on the floor.

  ‘But seriously, what makes three perfectly nice neighborhood kids act in such a reckless fashion?’ I asked Fat. ‘These particular assailants, they’ve been in here before?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ he told me. ‘Nearly every night.’

  ‘Are they always this much trouble?’

  ‘It’s the times,’ he told me, haplessly. ‘In a world where Richard Nixon can get elected to a second term, anything rotten can happen. I believe that these youths got no hope.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ I said, staring at the pistol in my hand, ‘but they’ve certainly got the fire power. This thing? Short recoil, rotary bolt – designed to give you a lot of power in a semi-automatic. The question I’m asking is less philosophical than your answer. I merely wonder why high school kids need this kind of artillery.’

  ‘Oh.’ That was all he said, and then he reached for the phone.

  He dialed only three digits, and after a second he said into the receiver, ‘It’s Marty over at Pete’s. Yes – again.’

  He was silent for a moment, then looked at me and winked.

  ‘Bar fight,’ he said. ‘Three high school kids. Two of them need an ambulance, I think. Nobody else in the place. It’s closing time.’

  I pocketed the AMP and headed for the door.

  ‘No,’ I heard Fat say as I touched the handle. ‘Just them three. It’s been a slow night. What? Yeah. Probably the weather.’

  SIX

  The weather was indeed something to make a person cranky. The chill in the air, the general dampness of all things, and, to be honest, the month – they all combined to make any citizen moody. Tourist season was long over, so the stores that depended on them were rarely open. This meant that the owners of these stores, and their employees, were beginning to wonder how far the wolf was from the door. It had always been my observation that when it was cold and wet, a lack of money was a double curse. I was certain that when April came, and it started getting warm and sunny, things would pick up, and the world wouldn’t seem so glum. But not everyone shared my effervescent optimism.

  I was, however, feeling a bit pinched by the clock. It was tough knowing that, if I didn’t step up my inquiries and find a nice conclusion fairly soon, this would be a very unhappy story.

  So I double-timed it back to the donut shop. By the time I arrived, it must have been nearly four in the morning. No one was evident in the shop, not even old Cass. But the door was open, so I let myself in.

  ‘Cass?’ I called out.

  There was a grouchy kind of moan from the back, and Cass appeared through the doorway between the kitchen and the counter. She was scratching her arm and yawning. Her donut shop hat was askew.

  ‘Why don’t you go home, for God’s sake,’ she whined.

  ‘I want to,’ I agreed, ‘but first I’ve got to find a baby – and also Lou, as it happens. I have to find Lou Yahola.’

  ‘What for?’ she mumbled.

  ‘Do you know where he is or not.’

  ‘I already told you,’ she groused. ‘I think he went home drunk or something.’

  I shifted my weight to one side. ‘Is there any chance that you’ll tell me where he lives?’

  ‘Do I know?’ she shrugged and headed back into the kitchen.

  ‘What are you doing back there?’ I called after her.

  ‘I’m trying to catch forty winks before the breakfast crowd, if you don’t mind.’ Her voice was already dusted with sleep.

  I took the liberty of slipping quietly behind the counter. I rummaged around in a space underneath the register and, after finding a knife the size of a broadsword and a club that could kill a horse, I found a hand-printed piece of paper that said Contack Sheet. I took that to be a misspelling, since it had Cass’s name on it. There was also a phone number on it, followed by several other such entries, including one for emergensees. One of them said Lou and gave a phone number.

  I reached for the phone behind the counter and dialed.

  The phone at the other end rang at least ten times. I stopped counting after that because I was fixing myself a bit of coffee while I waited.

  By and by, the phone made a very harsh sound and a voice said, ‘What the hell?’

  ‘Lou,’ I answered quickly, ‘it’s Foggy. I hate to wake you, but there’s trouble, and you’re in it.’

  I figured this was a way to keep him from hanging up.

  ‘Trouble?’ he sniffed.

  ‘I have to come over right now,’ I said, even more urgently. ‘Where’s your place?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Lou, would I be awake at this hour of the night if it wasn’t a matter of life or death?’
<
br />   ‘Life or death, huh,’ he said, but he sounded suspicious. ‘Well. Then I guess you better come over.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Baker,’ he answered. ‘Top floor, number seven, on the right, but the number ain’t on the door. You gotta count. This is about Maggie Redhawk, right?’

  What I said to that was, ‘Um.’

  ‘Right. Come on.’ And he hung up without further discourse.

  Baker Street was close by, but it was really more of an alley than an actual street. It got its name because it was at the back end of what used to be a large bakery in Fry’s Bay. It went out of business after WWII and the building had been entirely abandoned since 1952. Kids hung out there sometimes, mostly for nefarious purposes, though they were relatively harmless. Most of the real crime in Fry’s Bay happened in less obvious places.

  I shivered a little as I hit the narrow part of Baker, and picked up my pace getting to the only resident establishment in the area, a building that had the word Bread on it. The word was in big faded red letters, but some angst-ridden poet had filled in the B with black paint so that it more resembled a D making the name of the building Dread. I assumed they did it because it was harder to turn the word Bread into the word Lonely.

  I was inside the hallway shortly, and it was no better than being out of doors. It was just as cold and nearly as damp. It was a short hall with nothing in it but a long stairway up. I couldn’t even tell what color it was because the lighting was so bad.

  I ascended the stairs as quickly as I was able, but my legs were complaining about the lateness of the hour all the way up.

  At the top of the stairs, I found a slightly longer hallway, and it had doors. There were eight. I assumed that the last one on the right was number seven, as per Lou’s invective, and I trundled in that direction.

  Before I got there, Lou flung open his door and stepped into the hall. He was in a T-shirt, plaid boxer shorts, and thick grey athletic socks. And there was also a small silver pistol in his left hand.

  The pistol was not particularly pointed at me, but the fact that he had one at all gave me pause.