Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Alphabet Endgame

Matt wrenched the wheel, screeching, hard right into the side parking lot of a closed-down dry cleaning store, and put the car in Park.

He charged out of the idling car, slamming the door behind him as the other car followed him into the lot and stopped.

“What the Hell are you doing tailgating me?” Matt demanded. “I’m not falling for any scratch-and-dent scam. Get off my tail, buddy.”

The man got out, slowly, not expecting this. “ You were following me .”

Matt snorted. “Like I’d want to look up your tailpipe. Your junker is worse than mine.”

“What’s your game, buddy?” He squinted at Matt. “I’ve seen you somewhere. You look familiar. Somewhere poor dead Ox was. Wait! At the Lucky Stars nudie bar. Word is a new guy was with Woody… That was you, all cleaned up. I didn’t think much about it, ’cuz you looked so familiar in a funny way I can’t put my trigger finger on it. Yet.”

Not good. Had the guy spotted him at Woody’s house too? Matt hadn’t expected to encounter his prey face-to-face, standing up.

“Woody? You his errand boy?” Matt asked, aware his khaki slacks and beige leather loafers didn’t match the shabby jacket and cap. He’d have to hope his dishonest face would look different enough under mussy hair to throw the guy off.

The man suddenly leaned against his diseased fender. The arms on his faded denim jacket had been torn off, a tough blue-collar look, and common in the Vegas heat. The arms folded over his chest displayed unimpressive muscle, but a ton of tattoos.

Matt had maybe twenty-five pounds on him, but figured this guy wasn’t anybody’s muscle. He looked and acted like a born sneak who’d be useful for sleazy jobs, like following and threatening women. And…digging up dead bodies…and moving corpses…or even fifty-year-old murder weapons.

The sleeves of ink on both arms crawled to his neck, ending with a fat spider in a web under his left ear.

Why did so many dispossessed people, convicts or depressed teens, wear tattoos as armor nowadays? A sign they could endure some pain? A third finger stuck up at the world? Tattoos were too chic now to be seen as threatening.

This guy’s skin art was a crude and uninspired patchwork—except for his forearms. Snakes seemed a favored subject. The right arm showed the blue waves lapping and a set of serial blue-green humps of the Loch Ness monster in its most famous, and never duplicated, photograph. A small human figure with a headdress stood next to it. A fully seen serpent wound around his left arm in lurid colors, fighting some comic book hero with bulging muscles, ridiculously oversized, but…nude. What comic book superhero wrestled nude?

“You starin’ at something?”

“Uh, yeah. Righteous arm tats.”

“What would a Mr. Clean like you know about it?” The man lifted and turned his left forearm to acknowledge his major and prize tattoo. “Yeah, a beaut. Nothing canned. No one has a tat like this.”

Matt watched the arm rotate as he’d watch a cobra coiling for a strike. Another blood-run-cold moment, not welcome on even a hot day. The naked man entoiled by a large snake seemed to move with the guy’s rotating elbow, the point of having it on the forearm.

Man and serpent entwined, the exact image of the contested thirteenth (unlucky for him) sign of the Zodiac. Located in the constellation named Ophiuchus.

This same image had been discovered in his mother’s Chicago apartment, in a fireproof box along with other memorabilia of Matt’s late, most unlamented abusive stepfather, Clifford Effinger.

“Yeah,” the tattooed man was saying, “my old man traced it out of some book in grade school. It was a kind of banner with him, I guess. Didn’t go to school much past eighth grade. Had to work. But it’s like based on some classic nudie sculpture. Famous.”

Matt knew the sculpture well, the prize of the Vatican museums. “Laocoön and His Sons.” A man and his two sons in mortal agony under attack by venomous biting and constricting sea serpents, probably sent by some miffed Greek god.

Matt felt an empathetic shiver from the ironic fact that Effinger had two sons as well, but the tattoo had been simplified to man and snake only.

The guy was still admiring his arm art. “When I was a kid, it was on the refrigerator door with a magnet, you know? That’s when my uncle promised me I could get it tattooed on when I was eighteen.”

“It was your uncle’s refrigerator?”

The guy shrugged. “Them was still mob days. An Outfit capo needed my dad in Chicago. I never knew why. Anyway, he married some rich woman with a house and a snotty kid there. And bye-bye, Chuckie. So it was always me and my uncle here in Vegas.”

“Your mother?”

“Never knew her. OD’ed on drugs, I guess.” The guy’s Mississippi-mud-colored eyes sharpened. “Why are you asking all these questions?”

“Why are you answering them?”

“That’s because I was trying to figure it out, why you’re passing the time of day admiring my tattoos, and where I remembered you from.”

“That Lucky Stars fracas? I ducked out of there early.”

“So you were the new guy with Woody?”

Matt nodded, hoping the guy remembered his worn jeans, scuffed motorcycle boots, and faded Grateful Dead T-shirt topped with a plaid long-sleeved work shirt. “I have Chicago connections too.”

The guy started laughing, a humorless wheezing sound that ended in a cough. “You’re telling me? I’ve finally remembered what else was under a magnet on that refrigerator door, with a Chicago phone number. A photo of some sad, but not bad-looking woman, and this perfect little blond kid leaning against her.

“My stepmom and stepbrother I never saw, but who kept my dad away from me for over twelve years. That kid didn’t look too happy either, just the way you’re looking now.”

Matt knew he’d been “made”, but he needed to know more, everything.

“Cliff Effinger had a son in Las Vegas? You?”

“And a not-real son in Chicago. Matt, they called him.”

“And Cliff had a brother?”

“Well, he did, but Uncle Joe died too. I should say, was killed too. Nobody copped to either hit.”

Gold mine, Matt thought. Gold mine. How do I win over this guy?

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Chuck.”

“For Charles.”

“Naw, just Chuck. Chuck Effinger.”

“We should go somewhere and talk.”

“And what game are you playing, little Matt, with your fancy shoes and down-low cap? Yeah, I noticed. I’m not as dumb as I look. Lucky Stars okay?”

“No, not anywhere near that crowd, where someone could overhear. I think we’ve both been had.”

The nearest hamburger joint had a dated look involving lots of the color orange, Burgers ‘n’ Beers.

The tabletop juke-box music was loud, but there was an empty corner booth at the back.

“Two things we have to talk about,” Matt said, sliding into the vinyl-covered booth as his pants caught on some taped-over cuts in the upholstery. “The first and the last.”

Over greasy hamburgers and draft beer, Matt and Effinger’s son compared past and present grievances.

First.

“I hated your father for hitting my mother,” Matt said.

“And hitting you too, I bet. He knocked me around some before he left for so long. But he was my dad. And I don’t think he wanted to be in Chicago. He had to go, like someone here was after him, or he was sent away by the mob for knowing too much. Where was your dad?”

“He disappeared, never knew about me.”

Chuck nodded, lighting a cigarette. “At least my dad used to send me stuff. Comic books and toys. Even when I was getting too old for them. He’d come back from Chicago more often later.”