SK01 - Waist Deep (13 page)

She reached for the money, but I closed my fist over it again.

“Where?” I asked.

She met my eyes, then looked back at the corners of the twenty sticking out between my fingers.

“The Hole,” she told me.
“You can find him there, if you’re stupid enough to go inside.”

I opened my hand and she snatched the bill and made it disappear.
Then she gave me an appraising look.
“You shoulda let me blow you first.
You woulda been glad you did.”

The hardness in my jeans had slipped away.
I gave her a smile as fake as all of hers had been.

“That’s not what Dookie said,” I told her.

Her eyes narrowed and she snorted.
“What does that little faggot know?”

I didn’t have an answer, so she turned and stomped away.

24

The Hole was a dive.
That much I had expected.
I hadn’t expected it to be so dark inside.
Or nearly empty.
Out here on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, I figured business would be brisk, even at three in afternoon.

Coming from the light outside to the darkness inside gave everyone a chance to check me out before I could even be sure how many people were inside the bar.
I noticed the fat guy behind the bar immediately.
An old man who was no doubt a regular sat at the far end of the bar.
In the corner, a skinny black kid who couldn’t have been old enough to be in the place sat whispering
to
a
blonde woman in a Raiders jersey
standing next to him
.

I moved to the bar and saw that the fat bartender had a sour-puss for a face.
He looked at me for several seconds from his position half way down the bar, as if he were considering whether or not to serve me.
Finally, he stepped over, looking incredibly put out.
He put both hands on the bar and leaned toward me slightly.
A slightly misshapen “USMC” was visible on his forearm.

“Getcha?” he muttered, still unhappy at moving.

I wasn’t supposed to drink, ever since it became a problem for me.
The drink and the tranks.
But I beat both and I could have an occasional beer and not go crazy.
At least I figured I could, unlike those pathetic addicts I’d met in all those meetings I had to attend.
They had no will power. Besides, I knew I wasn’t going to get far in this place ordering club soda.

“Labatt Blue?”

His eyes narrowed.
“You want Canadian, I got Molson.
Otherwise, it’s Heineken or Budweiser.”

“Molson, then,” I said.
“In the bottle.
No glass.”

If he cared that I didn’t want to drink from a glass in his place, he didn’t show it.
He pulled a Molson from the cooler and popped the top.

“Five bucks,” he said as he slid it in front of me.

That was steep and I knew it.
I also saw that he didn’t have his prices posted, like he was supposed to.
It was a good bet he was hitting me for at least an extra dollar and would pocket the difference.
That is, if he was just tending bar and wasn’t the owner.
If he was the owner, he was just raising his profit margin.

I put a ten on the bar and he quickly made change.
I didn’t figure he got too many bar checks from Liquor Control agents.
Not with his volume.
They would be tied up with whatever new place downtown was drawing all the hot women, and hence all the guys chasing them.
Those places would do in a night what this former Marine did in a week.
So they got the attention and he got to play his little games with the Molson or whatever else he felt like doing.

I left the five ones on the bar and took a slug of the Molson.
It was cool and crisp and the taste of it immediately made me want to drink it down and order another.
Instead, I sipped it a second time and put the bo
ttle back on the bar
.

The trick was to act like I wasn’t interesting at all and that should get everyone interested.
I knew I didn’t fit in.
The bars I belonged in had well worn bar stools,
maybe
some repairs made with colored duct tape, but the tears in the seats weren’t left alone like
they were
in this place.
The people who came to The Hole didn’t bother combing their hair in the morning and no one noticed.
Or cared if they did.

I’m poor
but clean, I thought, suppressing a smile.
I hoped that my long walk had served to dirty me up a little.
I’d pu
rposely tousled my hair some
before coming inside.
The jeans I had on were simple Levi’s and were well worn.
The T-shirt underneath was a plain blue.
Neither one would raise an eyebrow, even in here.
My jacket might, though.
It was the dark brown leather jacket that every American male owns, a knock off of the World War Two bomber jacket.
I imagine my generation probably wore the jacket more due to Indiana Jones than those heroes of the air, but either way, every guy seemed to have one.
Mine had belonged to my
dad
.
God knows where
he got it or why he kept it, but it was the only thing of his I had
.

If I’d known I was coming to The Hole, I’d never have worn it.
Of course, if I’d known how much walking I was going to do today, I wouldn’t have worn my cowboy boots, either.
At least they were heavily worn and a scarred dark brown that didn’t suggest wealth of any kind.

I sat and sipped and waited.
The sourpuss bartender made a point to ignore me, standing in what must have been “his spot” with his arms crossed.
The old man at the end of the bar showed no interest, either.
He sat and stared down at the shot glass in front of him and every so often, he’d lift it with shaking hands and take a small sip.
Sometimes he’d cough and it was a horrible, phlegm-filled sound that reeked of death.
After each coughing fit, he brought a wavering hand to his lips and puffed on his cigarette.
The smoke curled up around his face.
I knew if I sat there long enough, he’d ask me to “buy an old man a drink.”

I figured
the woman in the Raiders jersey
to be one of Rolo’s working girls.
She wore a pair of stretch shorts and a long Raiders jersey that hung down almost like a skirt.
Compared to Tiffany, though, this one was a looker.
I
f it’d been her grabbing me behind the paint store, we would’ve been talking about more than forty bucks.

I put her out of my mind.
It was the kid I was interested in, the one that sat
next to her in the booth. Every now and then she leaned down and he whispered
with her.
He wore a light blue basketball jersey over a white t-shirt.
Silky black pants and oversized high tops rounded out his attire.
He sat on the very edge of the booth, both feet out from underneath the table.

It was t
oo dark for me to guess his age
.
Still,
he had to be
well under twenty-one.
He couldn’t be Rolo.

Could he?

I thought about how young some of the criminals had been when I worked the streets.
I remembered once that
Tom Chisolm
and I stopped a car with three Mexican bangers on their way back from an attempted drive by.
We’d held them there until a few more units were on scene and then brought them out one by one.
The third suspect came from the back seat and stood about four feet tall.
I swear to God, I thought he was a midget.
But he wasn’t.
It was eleven year old Esteban Guitterez, younger brother to Rueben and Benito.
They ran in some Brown Pride gang that was only local.
When we did our searches, it was the eleven year old, Esteban, who had two Star nine millimeters in his waistband.

Rueben and Benito had probably given him the guns to hold as soon they spotted us behind them, knowing that a juvenile wouldn’t get any serious time for a weapons possession.
That’s probably what happened.
Probably.
That was easier to believe than Esteban as the designated shooter in the
drive by
.

That happened over ten years ago.
From what little I paid attention to the news, it seemed to be getting worse, not better.
A picture of
sixteen
-
year
-
old Kris Sinderling, looking
twenty
if she were a day, flashed in my mind.

Could an eighteen
-
year
-
old black kid run whores out on East Sprague?

Yeah, maybe.
I just didn’t think so.
Maybe it was the old-school traditionalist in me, but I wanted a guy in a purple Cadillac, wearing furs and rings and a wide brim hat.
More likely, it was just the way the kid carried himself.
He had the edginess of one who serves, not the confidence of one who is served.

I sipped my Molson and waited.

25

I polished off the first Molson and sipped my way through most of another when my patience was rewarded.

The door swung open and light filtered in through the doorway.
Outside had grown considerab
ly darker since I’d come in.
I realized I’d be walking home in the dark.
I thought of the distance and the terrain and all the crack and gangsters and whores between me and home and decided right then that I’d take a cab.
I also started wishing I’d brought along my gun.
It would’ve been illegal for me to carry it in the bar due to state law but the
reassuring
weight of a short-barreled .45 would have been
nice
.

The man that sauntered through the front door
filled the door frame
.
He wore a tight afro
and a manicured beard. His Oakland Raiders jacket
was an off-blue, almost the color that the Seattle Seahawks wore.
He cruised in with a cane in his left hand, though I saw no sign of a limp.
He didn’t wear a hat, but I guess I got my wish for pimp attire with th
at
cane.
And who knows? Maybe the handle screwed off and he kept his stash of dope inside.

He made his way to the corner booth.
I watched his reflection in the cracked and smoke-dimmed glass behind the bar.
The hooker
cocked her hip at him as he approached
.
The skinny kid was out of the booth
and standing five feet away.
I was willing to bet that he’d been there before the front door was even half-way open.

“Hey, baby!”
the girl
said
.
“I been waitin’ for you.”

“Whattaya got for me, bitch?” the
pimp
said
when he’d reached her. D
espite his choice of words, his voice was affectionate.

There was a quick, almost invisible transfer from her hand to his.
The move would have become habit between them, so much second nature that even in this safe haven, it was how she handed off her earnings.

“Shit,” he said, eyeing the fold of cash.
“You are one
earning
bitch, baby!”
He slapped her on the ass with a massive hand, then kept it there, kneading her buttock.
The hooker all but purred.

“Usual, Rolo?” The bartender asked, reaching for a bottle.

“Inna minute,” Rolo told him and slid into the booth with his back to the wall.
The hooker slid in next to him and nestled her head onto his shoulder.
He whispered to her briefly and a sultry smile came over her face.
She slid down and disappeared beneath the table.

Rolo nodded to the skinny kid, who went to
the
jukebox and inserted a dollar.
I averted my eyes from both of them, ignored the wet sounds that were coming from beneath the table and almost echoing throughout the quiet bar.
I wished that the old man would have one of his coughing fits.

Rap music blared through the speakers a moment later.
It was only marginally better than listening to the suck sounds the hooker had been making under the table.
I figured the song was earlier rap, as there was still some semblance of a melody.
Then I realized it was a bastardization of one of the songs from
Saturday Night Fever
.

I kept my eyes fixed on the bottle of Molson Canadian and tried to watch everything out of the corner of my eye.
The skinny kid took up a position leaning against the wall with his back to Rolo.
The bartender, who had been a statue except for popping my two bottles and stealing my money, suddenly began cleaning glasses with his back to the corner where Rolo was getting serviced.
Only the old man remained unchanged, sitting still except to sip or puff or cough.

Rolo clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back, closing his eyes.
I cast furtive glances at him in the mirror every minute or so, watching for the hooker’s head to pop up from under the table like a prairie dog.

The scratching and thumping rendition of
the disco song
ended and there was a painful moment of silence, punctuating by a low, growling moan from Rolo.
I focused on the squeaking sound the bartender made as he cleaned the glasses behind the bar.
Another song poured from the jukebox.
This one I recognized as an older song,
some classic soul singer from an eon ago.

I took another sip of beer, studying the bottle but not seeing it.
A gnawing doubt was growing in my stomach, asking if this was really such a great idea.
You’d think a beer or two would help shore up a guy’s courage and resolve any nagging doubts.
But the longer I sat there, the more I worried and
the soul singer’s
smooth voice did little to sooth my concern.

Relax, I told myself as I read
the import information on the beer bottle.
He’s a pimp, not a gangster.
That means he’s in it for the money.
He’s a businessman.

I shrugged off my worries and took another sip of Molson.
What else was I supposed to do?
If I wandered up and down Sprague showing Kris’s picture to hookers, Rolo would c
ome see me sooner or later, anyway. Except t
hat meeting would definitely be unfriendly.
Or I’d get stopped by a patrolman
which
was not something I wanted to deal with, either.

This might not be a great idea, but it was a better option than any other one I had.
Other than maybe calling
up Matt Sinderling
and telling him I quit.

As
the song
faded, the ski
nny kid appeared at my side. He
flicked my shoulder with the back of his first two fingers.

“Yo,” he said.
“The man wants to know who you are.”

I looked at him and then over my shoulder at Rolo.
The hooker sat next to him rubbing her jaw and drinking water.
He ignored her and stared directly at me.
I couldn’t read his expression at that distance in the dim light.

The kid tapped me again.
“Hey, you hear me?”

I returned my gaze to the kid and was suddenly furious at him.
I hated his North Carolina shirt, his baggy pants and his floppy shoes.
Most of all, I hated the smug look on his face.

“Yeah, I heard you,” I said in a low voice.
“And if you tap me like that again, you’ll be finished using those fingers for a while.”

The kid looked surprised and before he could recover, I slid off the bar stool with my beer in hand and brushed past him.
There was a rustle of movement behind me and Rolo’s hand rose up off the table in a “hold it” gesture.
The rustling stopped.

The sounds of
another rock song re-made as rap
filled the bar.
I put my beer on Rolo’s table.
He stared at it like it was a giant turd.
Then I slid into the booth across from him and looked him directly in the eye.

“I didn’t say you could sit there,” he said.

“I know.”

He raised an eyebrow.
“Bitch, you’d be making a big mistake if you plan on playing with
me
.”

“I don’t plan on making any mistakes,” I said.
“Hopefully, we can help each other out.”

Rolo studied me carefully.
He moved his lips slowly, pulling them inside his mouth, wetting them and then pursing the
m
out with a high-pitched sucking sound.
His eyes bore into me and for the first time I saw the mean intelligence in them.
Urban accent or no, career choice or no, Rolo was not a stupid man.

“I know you?” he finally asked.

I shook my head.
“No.”

He nodded, acknowledging my answer but still studying my features.
“You sure about that?”

“I’m sure.
I’d definitely remember you.”

Rolo broke into a practiced grin, but shades of it were genuine.
“I guess that’s true, ain’t it? I am one
unforgettable
motherfucker.”

I didn’t answer, letting him stroke himself.

His grin faded slightly.
“You said we could help each other out.”

“Yeah.
I think so.”

“I think we both know what I can do to help you out,” he said, giving the hooker next to him a nudge and a tip of his head.
“But you can get that straight off the street.”

“True.”

“But you came in
here
.
And sat at
my
motherfuckin’ table.”

I nodded.

Rolo leaned forward slightly, motioning me to do the same.
Our faces were less than an inch apart.
I could smell his odor and his cologne.
That close, I heard his slightly labored breathing.

“So what is it you think you can do for me?” he said in a hoarse whisper.

I pushed back.
“I need a little information.
That’s all.
And I’ll pay for it.”

Rolo’s eyes narrowed and he leaned back, crossing his massive arms in front of him.
I saw his street intelligence go to work behind his eyes.
He nudged the hooker.
“Rhonda,” he said, “Go fix your hair.
And rinse
out
your mouth before you come back here kissing on me.”

Rhonda showed no sign of hurt and slid immediately from the bar, walking toward the bathroom.

Rolo went back to working his lips, looking at me and thinking.
Then he said, “What do you wanna know, white boy?”

I pulled Kris’s picture from my back pocket and laid it in front of him on the table.
He didn’t look at it right away, but kept his appraising gaze on me.
Finally, he dropped his eyes to the picture.
There was a flicker of recognition that disappeared fast.

“Hot little bitch,” he grunted, with a shrug.
“What about her?”

“You ever seen her?”

“I just did.”