Tom Piccirilli - The Last Kind Words

“You’re melancholy and you’re pining for an old girlfriend, right? The one that got away. The one that you’d give anything to be with.”

“That’s not a bold guess, Flo. Everybody in here is pining for the losses of his youth. Including you.”

“Not me, hon. I’ve got no sentiment left in me.”

“You were going to talk about my brother,” I said.

“Was I?”

“Yes. Did you know him? Collie Rand?”

“Everyone knew Collie.”

I sat up straighter. “Were you here that night?”

“Which night?”

“The night he was arrested.”

“Why don’t you buy me a dirty martini?”

“Why don’t you answer my question first, Flo?” I grinned at her. I hoped it looked like a john’s drunken smile. The pulse in my throat began to burn. I leaned toward her as if she was beginning to arouse me.

“I can make you forget, you know,” she said.

“Let’s stay on topic, Flo. Collie, my brother. The night he was arrested.”

“You won’t even remember her name after me.”

She reached for my wrist and held on. I didn’t want to be touched. I wondered about these people who thought they had some kind of a right to put their hands on you, to pull and pluck at you. I felt a surge of anger. “How about if you quit working me like I’m a lonely-hearts drunk with a wife who won’t suck my pud and answer my fucking question, right?”

She pulled her hand back. “You’re an abrasive son of a bitch, you know that?”

“Yeah, I know that.”

I pulled a twenty out and slapped it down in front of her. She snatched it away and tucked it into her bra.

“You got a bad temper,” she said. “Just like the other one. We can’t even sit here and have a friendly talk?”

It was a cheap shot but it hit home. I tried to let the tension out of me but it was a losing game. The waitress appeared and I downshifted to beer. Flo watched me expectantly. Jesus Christ, the corners you could get backed into.

I said, “Fine. And you can have a dirty martini.”

The waitress nodded and went to get our drinks.

“Look, about my brother-”

“I was here,” she said.

“Tell me what happened.”

“He was around, then he left, then he came back and he said for somebody tligk mo call the police. The cops came and they busted him. Didn’t even have to wrestle him, he just laid flat on his face on the floor.”

“Think you can go into deeper detail than that?”

I’d shown too much interest. She thought if I started getting the answers I needed then she could hold out on the rest of the facts and reel in more cash. Her greasy eyes were full of hunger. She repeated the story and tried to flesh out the scene with minor specifics, but she couldn’t remember much. I got the feeling she had been bored. Collie hadn’t done much that was noteworthy. He put the gun on the bar, drank his Corona, and laid down. It was barely a ripple in her night.

She finally realized I wasn’t going to turn over any serious cash, and she slipped back to the bar and found herself a new guy to hang on to.

I was too swilled to be disappointed that I hadn’t gotten more out of her. I opened the file again, then closed it, then opened it. I hissed, shut it, and got to my feet. My stomach twisted with the alcohol. I headed for the door. I wanted to go home to my bed.

Why did it matter to Collie now five years too late, and why the hell should it matter to me?

Maybe it was in the blood, this thing that made us so bent, so wrong. The veins in my wrist ticked away, black and twisted.

I knew I’d have to talk to Gilmore eventually. I didn’t expect him to come around the back of my car in the Elbow Room parking lot and give me a left hook to the kidneys.

The pain forced me to my knees. I puked up the liquor and nearly went over but managed to keep my face out of the asphalt. I made a noise that sounded like an animal about to start gnawing its leg out of a trap, then I vomited again. I’d tossed my cookies more in the last two days than in the twenty years prior.

Gagging, trying to catch a sip of air, I looked up and saw Gilmore standing over me. He wore a sorrowful grin even while he sucked on a cigarette. His eyes were dancing pinpoints of dejection. His hair was short and chopped across the front, messy but still fashionable. His face had some alcoholic bloat to it.

Maybe he’d been following me and had seen me duck into the Elbow Room. Maybe he watched as I turned pages, and he recognized the photocopied files. Or maybe the old man from the archives had left a message on Gilmore’s voice mail and given him shit for circumventing protocol. Gimore would question the guy and eventually put it together. Who else would grab Collie’s jacket except me?

My father had said that Gilmore had no edge to him now that he’d lost his wife. I couldn’t quite agree with that.

I crawled forward a bit and tried to stand. Gilmore gave me another shot in the same place. He grunted a little like it caused him pain. It hurt me ten times worse than the first punch and I went down flat on my face.

He lit another cigarette and leaned back against the trunk of my car. He stared off in the distance like he couldn’t bear to look at me.

“Terrier. Didn’t think you’d ever come back. Been keeping your snout clean out there wherever it is you’ve settled?”

Cars drove by. The front door of the Elbow Room opened and closed. I heard hushed voices punctuated by mean girlish laughter. Gilmore took me by the armiveil an19; and got me to my knees.

A few of the other patrons walked by on their way to their cars. Gilmore acknowledged them and said, “Evening.”

I deserved what I’d gotten. I accepted it the way I’d accepted the beating from Big Dan’s boys. I took my chances with my eyes open.

Still, I thought Gilmore was overreacting a bit. It was a petty move. He knew I’d never punch a cop, not even in self-defense.

He tried to help me to my feet, but I was still too wobbly. He left me kneeling on asphalt and patted my back tenderly.

“You know, Terrier, you broke your mother’s heart.”

Jesus Christ, I thought, here it comes.

He toed the paperwork scattered across the ground. He said nothing about it.

“I always liked you. You and your whole family. From the start, or nearly so, we understood each other. There are lines you cross and those you don’t. Your grandfather knew that, your uncles, your father. But it got crossed up when it came to you and your brother.”

I wanted to tell him I was nothing like Collie, but I still couldn’t speak. The pain was lessening. I breathed deep. As I listened to him talking quietly behind me, I couldn’t stop picturing him pulling his piece and popping me in the back of my head, execution style.

“I wish you would’ve called me. I wish you would have asked. I deserve that much respect, no matter what you think of me or cops in general.” He rubbed my back again, took a deep drag on his cigarette, and let the smoke out over my shoulder. “I thought you were the bright one. I thought you might be going somewhere. I had hopes, Terry, I really did. I figured you and Kimmy would get out of that house and go your own way. You’d leave the life behind and raise a family. It would’ve been a good thing. I knew you had it in you.” He sighed. “But then you ran out on everyone. You showed a real lack of character there, you know?”

I knew.

“You got a wife wherever you been living? Kids?”

I coughed and shook my head.

“That’s too bad.” He flicked his cigarette butt away, lit another. “Did you really come back just to stir up trouble?”

“No,” I groaned.

“Well, that’s good to hear. I’m happy to hear that. You still on the grift wherever it is you’ve gotten to?”