David Levien - Where the dead lay

It made him want to give it up, and not just these matters, but maybe the profession as a whole. He didn’t know how to do anything else though, and shining his flashlight on the doors of a Costco in a night watchman’s uniform didn’t seem like much of an alternative.

His mind was chewing itself into a pulp, and perhaps that was why he found himself, in the fading light, driving through the gates of South County Municipal Landfill. He was desperate, and this latest hit on a house was in the ’hood, and no one he knew knew the ’hood as well as his friend Terry Cottrell.

Behr parked and got out of his car to see Cottrell standing on a dirt mound pumping an air pistol, which he then raised and fired. Satisfied with his shot, he turned and saw Behr.

“Huh-heh, Large,” Cottrell said.

“Big-game hunting?” Behr said.

“Rats around here qualify,” Terry said, and spat some steel pellets, the extra ammo stored in his cheek, onto the ground. They shook hands and chest bumped. It was a silly action, and not something Behr engaged in with anyone else. They began walking through the low stink. The refuse was well spread out at South County, but the heat intensified the odor into a potent cloud of fecund rot that surrounded them. Behr wondered if getting Cottrell the job overseeing the facility years ago, which had moved the man off the streets and out of a life of larceny, was going to hurt him worse in the long run due to the exposure to carcinogens.

“Let’s get inside,” Cottrell said, seeming to read his mind, “I got the AC kicking.” Behr followed him to a doublewide.

It was air-conditioned cold and dark in the trailer, the only light coming from a too-big flat-screen television freeze-framed on a black-and-white image of a man in a trench coat lighting a cigarette.

“What you been up to?” Behr asked. He cast his eyes about as they adjusted to the low light and saw that several stacks of books had been moved from their shelves to accommodate a large DVD collection.

“Been watching,” Cottrell said. “I’m on a New Wave and noir kick: 400 Blows, Rififi, Le Samourai, Le Cercle Rouge, ca va?” Cottrell blazed a Newport in the disaffected way Behr had seen in the few French films he’d caught with girls back in college. “You know Elevator to the Gallows?” Cottrell asked.

“That what this is?” Behr asked of muted, soulful trumpet music that was playing in the trailer.

“Yeah, Miles Davis did the soundtrack. Brother laid it down live to picture. He had a flap of skin that came loose on his lip but kept playing. That’s what gives it that muted quality.”

“That’s fascinating, buddy,” Behr said. He would’ve been mocking Cottrell if it weren’t so interesting. He’d tried listening to jazz a few times, but it made him feel like he was eating dinner at an airport hotel, and today he just didn’t have the time. “I’m on something that has to do with pea shake and was wondering if you knew anything about that?”

Cottrell’s eyes narrowed for a moment, then relaxed and filled with mirth. “No, but I heard there’s some broad-ass shit being pulled over at the Flackville Bingo game-” Cottrell cut himself off with his own harsh staccato laugh: “Hah heh-heh-heh-heh-hey.”

“Come on, man,” Behr said.

“Okay. You don’t want to know about a major league skim, don’t matter to me…”

“Do I look like I’m playing?” Behr said.

“You never do.”

“So tell me what you know.”

“Folks in the community still like the numbers, that’s all I can tell you,” Cottrell said.

“When grandma has her dream you gotta put your dollar down on it.”

“Damn skippy, you Richard Pryor motherfucker…” Cottrell shook his head. “But there’s plenty out there playing pea shake too, I guess. Then there’s your folks, but they mostly play Cherry Master, don’t they.” Cottrell was referring to the legal video gambling machines that licensed, mostly white-run and patronized bars, were able to install. The inequity and potential racism of the system was an oft-debated topic in the paper and on the Web.

Behr saw a few days’ worth of the Star sitting on a side table. “You read about that shit over by the fairgrounds?”

“I mighta glimpsed it,” Cottrell said. “Angry Latinos.”

Behr shook his head.

“No?” Cottrell blew out smoke.

“Some kind of a move on a shake house,” Behr said. He looked at Cottrell, almost thirty now, still lean and wiry, pulling away from his youth out on the corner with grace. Despite his distance from that world, and working the straight job for the last several years, Cottrell still seemed to know most everything that went down in the projects and their surrounding strata.

“Someone’s running a Trafficante play, huh?” Cottrell said. Behr knew he was well read in crime, both fictional and true, and recognized the mobster’s name, but he didn’t get the reference. “Old Santo rounded up the bolita business down in Tampa-the Cuban and Sicilian part of town, Ybor City. Made himself rich off it.”

“Is that what’s going on here?”

“I don’t know what all’s going on here. I didn’t know shit about it until you just told me.” Cottrell stubbed out his cigarette in a half-full ashtray. “Just saying it’s a traditional way to build a power base, at least for La Cosa Nostra, ha-heh-heh-heh-heh-hey.”

“Glad you find it such an interesting social study. And so amusing,” Behr said. There was no Indianapolis Mafia as far as he knew, so it wasn’t much help. “Could you work it for me?” Behr asked.

“He-ll no!” Cottrell said. “I don’t do that.”

“Would you be so kind as to let me know if you hear anything about it then? I’m looking for a pair of missing investigators, they were working it for an outfit called Caro. Could be big for me if I can locate ’em.”

“Yep, I’ll go ’round the way asking a bunch of questions, and when the homies ask why, I’ll say some ex-cop I truck with wants to know. Cool?” Cottrell said, and Behr rode a fresh wave of his laughter out the door.

Behr crossed the lot to his car. As he got in he glanced back at Cottrell, framed in the doorway of the trailer, lighting a fresh cigarette, and could swear he saw his friend’s face pinched in concern, or maybe it was just thought, but he was too far away to be sure.

Night had come and Behr was near home and debating whether or not to get something to eat when his cell rang with a number he didn’t recognize.

“Is this Behr?” came a voice.

“Who’s this?” he asked back.

“Kid McMurphy. Pal’s-”

“Where you been?” Behr asked.

“That guy, you know, the one I told you about. He was away for a while, but he’s back,” McMurphy said.

“He ready to tell me something?”

“Well…,” McMurphy said, then seemed to drift off mid-conversation.

“Where is he? We’ll figure it out,” Behr said.

“Can you, like, do it without me? I’ll just tell you what he looks like and-”

“No. Where are you? I’ll pick you up,” Behr said, and stepped on the gas.

McMurphy was sitting alone in a booth in the dark rear corner of Vic ’n’ Vitos. He had a gigantic half-eaten thin-crust pizza pie cut into diagonal slices resting in front of him. Behr slid into the booth and saw that the guy was still in his dusty black suit, but now he wore a white shirt under it with two different shades of lipstick smeared on the collar. He was using his slender musician’s fingers to pluck spicy homemade giardinare from a massive jar and arrange it on a slice of the pizza. McMurphy gave him a nod hello and started in on the slice with small, mincing bites. He was skinny as a rail but seemed to eat full-time, not to mention that Behr had tried the giardinare at Vic ’n’ Vitos, and just a taste of the pickled vegetables was enough to burn a hole clean through a stomach.