David Putnam - The Replacements

With his mouth in a straight line, he brought a drunken hand up and waved me off. “Freddy. That’s who. My best friend, that’s who. You black bastard. I know what you’re doing. I know you’ve been talking to these assholes about me. So you want to know the rest of the ugly truth? I’ll tell yeh, you black bastard.” He swayed on his stool. Waved his hand in a wider arc. “I’m not like these other pussies here, these spineless little chickenshits with their petty white-collar crime bullshit.”

In the six months I’d known him, Jake had never opened up like this, never used such strong words. I realized, in part, this came with his new South American persona that included an accurate portrayal of a harmless nerd, a geek. But now he was shedding that skin, revealing the real man. I had awakened a sleeping ogre. I was getting old and rusty and had not seen the signs. Here was a street-smart crook, and I had pushed his buttons. I wasn’t afraid of him; I was forty-five to his sixty-five, and I outweighed him by thirty pounds. And I was sober.

Though another major consideration, Jake had on a light linen jacket that could easily conceal a weapon. I remembered what Robby Wicks, Barbara’s husband, used to always say, that God created men, and Samuel Colt made them equal. Robby had died by those words. My next thought was, what would Marie and the kids do if this wrinkled, bag-of-bones of a man threw down on me, shot me dead?

In the last nine months since I’d been in Costa Rica, I had allowed my instincts to wane. I would never again disregard my street sense and let it fade away like that.

I straightened up and pulled my shoulders back. I did what I used to do while working the streets on the Violent Crimes Team for the Los Angeles County Sheriff when confronting a rabid predator: I returned his stare the same as you would with a vicious dog.

“If you’re going to tell us, old man, get to it. We’re not getting any younger.”

Jake’s mouth dropped open and his eyes probed mine, trying to figure me out. His tongue whipped out, lizard like, and wet his dry lips. “All right, you black bastard, I’ll tell you.” His head jerked to the right to see his pals, “And if any of you cocksuckers rat me out, it’ll be the last thing you ever do. You can bet your ass on that. You hear? You hear me? You sorry sack of pussies.”

No one answered. They were all too scared. Jake had never talked to them this way. He’d always been quiet, calm, told quaint anecdotes of urban living. Ansel Tomkins, the CPA to the movie star he’d ripped off, one of Jake’s three pals sitting at the bar on his left, looked away, brought a shaky hand up and scratched his cheek to bleed off a little tension.

In a bizarre mood shift, Jake seemed to decompress and took the situation down a notch. While we all watched a little stunned, Jake slowly spun his stool around until he faced the bright blue ocean capped with white, blown up by the afternoon breeze. When he talked again, he used the same harsh words, but his tone had lost the hard edge, gradually melting back into the Jake we knew, the quiet, mild-mannered old man everyone liked to drink with.

“Those Mexican assholes, they were the ones did it. I did it, sure I did. But it was those chili-eatin’ Mexican assholes was the cause. They were makin’ cheese in the bathtub next door. I know it sounds damn silly to start off a horrible story like this with bathtub cheese, but that was the way it all began.

“The smell…damn, you boys should’ve taken a whiff of that rotten smell, you’d a done the same. The whole damn neighborhood reeked like Mexican dirty socks, a million of ’em. Sure, I called the code enforcement boys. They came and raided the house. ‘But it was only cheese, after all.’ That’s what the code enforcement supervisor told me when he went ahead and walked across my yard, right up to my door. Burned me to those chili-eaters, sure as God made little green apples. The code enforcement boys took all their cheese and issued them a summons to go to court. A summons, for cripes sakes, and nothin’ more.

“That’s when it really started. Sure, right then.” Jake hesitated, his eyes lost on the blue horizon. The boys at the bar exchanged glances. Ansel seemed to recover from his fear and shrugged at the others.

Jake swallowed hard, in profile, his tan and prominent Adam’s apple rose and fell against the bright blue, cloudless sky. “Them assholes decided to put in a fence to wall me out from their front yard. ‘Okay by me, bring it on.’ That’s what I yelled when they started diggin’ the ditch for the foundation. Sure, I said it just like that, ‘bring it on, you assholes.’”

He hesitated again. And we waited. I had a feeling I knew how this story would end. I was glad I no longer worked the streets of South Central Los Angeles, so I wouldn’t have to deal with domestic disturbances in person ever again. Including the news I’d just heard. Though compelling, Jake’s story still could not entirely push out the kidnapping and the image of Barbara Wicks on the television.

Jake continued on. “Couple a days later, my best friend Freddy came over. We sat on the porch and had us a few beers. That’s when Freddy said it. He was the one that lit the fuse. He said, ‘Jake, look at that, would yeh?’”

“‘What’s that, Freddy?’ I ask.”

“‘They come right over on your side a the property line. Look, look.’”

“I got up, walked out to the street and checked that little line-marker doughnut thing in the sidewalk. Sure as shit, Freddy was right. Those shit-assed brown bastards had crossed the line. Well, we got into an argument, me and Freddy and two of them Mexes. We started pushin’ and shovin’. That’s when the cops showed up. They broke it up. But the assholes threatened me right in front of those cops, said for me not to go to sleep or they’d burn down my house.

“Me and Freddy, we went into my house and, when it got dark, we put guns by all the windows and doors and we watched. We were ready for ’em, you can bet. We were ready, sure we were.” Jake’s voice trailed off again.

“Long about midnight-I was godawful tired by then, and I admit a little irritable waiting for them chili-eaters to attack-Freddy-my best friend Freddy, he said, ‘Think I heard a noise out back.’ Freddy, he was covering the back door, I had the front. I said, ‘Well, dammit, man, you got the back, go on out and check on it.’ I didn’t think nothin’ of it, thought it might be ghosts in old Freddy’s head.”

Jake’s voice broke as tears came in earnest now. “Them Mexes came right then. Knocked on my front door. I’d been ready all night, tense and tight as a wound spring. I yanked open that front door and said, ‘Okay, you sons of bitches.’

“I shot the.44 Magnum. The noise and flash…it…it stunned me. I wasn’t ready for it.” Jake swallowed hard. “Freddy, my best friend, stood on the porch in front of me holding his chest. His eyes…his eyes pleaded with me to take it back, to take back what I had just done. He wanted to live, and I had stolen his life.

“You see, Freddy, he’d gone out back and the door closed, locked him out. And he’d come around the front.

“I cried like a baby.”

John Booth muttered low, “Jesus H-”

“Before he fell off the porch, dead, I yelled, ‘How come you didn’t say it was you, Freddy? How come you didn’t say?’”

Ansel reached over to put his hand on Jake’s arm.

Jake jerked away. “It was his fault really, I guess.”

Oh, God, what a terrible story, and I had been responsible for him telling it. The poor man.

Jake slid off his stool and ambled a few steps down the beach before he turned back and pointed a finger at me, his eyes squinting from the sun. He lifted his thumb, his hand now resembling a pistol. For a long second he held it, pointing in a threatening manner right at me. He turned and continued down the beach.