Ken Douglas - Dead Ringer

“Hey,” someone shouted as she fell. She hit her head on something hard, but she didn’t have time to worry about what it was, because she was tangled up with a man. Rancid breath, hairy. She pushed away from him and sprang to her feet.

“I’m guessing you came here looking for safety.” Laughter. Maggie turned. It was a black man, wiry hair akimbo, beard to his chest. He smelled like he hadn’t bathed, ever.

“Men after me.” Maggie panted. “One has a gun.”

“We know,” the man she’d tripped over said. He was white, but you could hardly tell through his dirt covered face. His hair stuck out like he’d been electrocuted, his great beard was matted. There was a smell here, Maggie could easily imagine it coming from that beard.

“Come on out of there,” Virgil said. “We ain’t gonna hurt you.”

“Yeah, right,” Maggie muttered.

“Get under there and get her,” Ferret Face said.

“I ain’t going under there.”

“Come on.”

“You go,” Virgil said.

“Come on in. We’re waiting.” The black man’s quiet voice was like a gunshot through the night.

“Shit,” Ferret Face said.

“Bring yourself on in. We haven’t eaten yet,” the white man said.

“Fuck, there’s two of ’em,” Horace said.

“Let’s go,” Virgil said.

“Yeah.”

Maggie held her breath for what seemed like forever.

“They’re going,” the black man said.

Maggie exhaled. “Thank God.”

“A lady shouldn’t be out alone after dark,” the white man said.

“But I’m not alone.” Maggie Laughed. “I’m with you.”

“You look like you could use a drink.” The black man handed her a bottle.

“Thanks.” Maggie took a swig. “Shit, that’s awful.”

“Ain’t it though.” He laughed as she handed it back.

“Thanks, you guys were great.” Maggie dusted the sand from her Levi’s.

“Darley.” The black man extended his hand. “Darley Smalls.” Maggie took the hand. Hard, calloused, but gentle too. He didn’t have anything to prove any more.

“Theo Baptiste,” the white man said. “It’s French.” He held his hand out as Darley had.

“Maggie Nesbitt.” She took it. He had a firm grip, but not as firm as it could have been. He could have crushed her with his giant paw.

“Pleased to meet you,” Baptiste said.

“You guys weren’t afraid,” Maggie said. “Those men had a gun.”

“Gun or no, they were cowards,” Darley said. “We weren’t worried.”

“How could you tell?”

“They were chasing a woman,” he said. “Real men don’t have to do that.”

“No, they don’t,” Maggie said.

“They were gonna take you,” Theo said. “They had that van parked and waiting. It was you they wanted, not just any pretty woman happened to be out after dark. They set you up.”

“I saw them earlier today, then the one with the gun later, at the Lounge up on Second Street. I thought he was a policeman because I saw the gun.”

“He was no policeman,” Darley said.

“I guess not.”

“You live with that news guy. Maybe he was poking his nose in a story where it doesn’t belong,” Theo said.

“How do you know who I live with?”

“We rest here after dark,” Darley said, “but we have to be gone by sunrise or the lifeguards run us off. So we spend the days wandering the alleys, poking through the trash, checking out what people like you toss away. You’d be surprised what we find and what we know. Show us a face and we can put it together with an address. We’re not your average bums.”

“How do you live?”

“We got places to sell the stuff we find,” Theo said. “We get by.”

“I gotta get my shoes.” All of a sudden Maggie wanted to be home. These men could be every bit as dangerous and the men they’d scared off. She backed out of the dark.

“You get in trouble. You remember us. We don’t take to men chasing after a woman,” Theo said.

“Not at all,” Darley said.

“I’ll remember,” Maggie said. Then, “I gotta go.”

“I think we’ll walk you back to those shoes,” Darley said and they followed her out from under the pier.

They walked the distance in silence. Maggie’s impression had been that these men might be dangerous, but they didn’t seem so now, not exactly safe either, but she didn’t feel threatened by them.

“That them over there?” Darley pointed.

“That’s them.”

“You’ll be okay now,” Theo said. “They’re gone.” And without even a goodbye, they turned and started back toward the pier.

Maggie walked into the Whale out of breath. She took a quick look around, spotted Gordon sitting in one of the booths by the pool tables, playing chess with one of the two men sitting across from him. It was obvious the two were a couple. Good. Gordon hadn’t found anyone yet.

“What happened to you?” Jonas, the Swedish bartender, was a big man, sometimes gruff and closing on sixty. But despite the appearance he tried to give off with his plaid shirts, work jeans and lumberjack boots, his heart was as big as he was and it kept his wallet as thin as a beggar’s.

“I fell down while I was running on the beach.”

“Bummer.” He pierced her with his water blue eyes. “Nick go home early again?” Sometimes on their walks home from the Lounge, Nick came in with Maggie and Gordon, sometimes not, as he had to get up early on Sundays for his magazine program, “Newsmakers with Nick.”

“I’d rather not talk about Nick. Just give me a rum and Coke and let me wallow in my misery.” She climbed up on a barstool, reached for a bowl of pretzels, pulled it to her, took one out and licked the salt off it as she stared into those blue eyes that saw everything and missed nothing.

He nodded, ran a hand through his thick hair. Like most Swedes, he was blond and old as he was, he had no grey. He pulled a bottle of Bacardi Select off the top shelf behind the bar. Reaching the bottle would have been a problem for Maggie, not Jonas. He was a tall man.

Maggie looked around the bar while he made the drink. Poster size black and white photos adorned the walls. John and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Mohammed Ali, others. Jonas owned the bar and it was clear where his politics lay.

Both pool tables were busy. Five or six people clustered around the two pinball machines. Real machines, mechanical, the kind you could get to know, not the computer kind. Gordon loved them. Maggie was starting to.

“On the house, because you look like you need it.” Jonas set the drink in front of her.

“Do I look that bad?”

“You look like you went ten rounds with him.” Jonas pointed to the picture of Mohammed Ali. “If that’s what running does for you, maybe you ought to seriously think about giving it up.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.” She looked over at Gordon. “He doing okay?” She wanted to change the subject.

“As good as can be expected, for Gordon anyway. A couple of good looking guys hit on him, but he blew them off.” Jonas picked up a glass, dried it, did another. He had several to go.

Gordon turned, as if he knew they were talking about him. He waved, then came over. “What happened to you?”

“You too? I must look pretty awful.”

“Go wash your face, then come back out here and tell me about it.”

“What about your game?”

“It’ll take ten or fifteen minutes for them to figure out what they want to do next. Go clean up. I’ll be here when you get back.”

She nodded, went to the woman’s restroom and gasped when she saw herself in the mirror. She looked like a street urchin from some third world country. Her hair was disheveled, her face blotchy with dirt and she had an egg-sized welt on her forehead. She ran water in the sink, grabbed some paper towels and washed the dirt off, gingerly dabbing the area around the bruise.