Bryan Gruley - The Hanging Tree

“Wow. I think I’ll take that other beer now.”

Wally went around to the fridge again, plucked out two Blues. “What’s your article about?”

“I don’t really know yet,” I said. “Knobbo apparently has some business interests up our way.”

“Better be careful what you write, eh?”

“Yeah. He only played that one year?”

“He got hurt, man. Old Meat cut him.”

“Meat?” I said.

Wally’s door swung open and a woman ducked her head in. “Hey, boss,” she said. Wally swiveled his big body around.

“What’s up, Claudia?”

“Got to get Annie up to Fraser.”

“Fraser? That shithole? What’s the matter with you? Rinks around here aren’t good enough for your little girl?”

“The sacrifices we make for hockey.” She grinned and pointed at Wally’s Labatt bottle. “Getting an early start, are we?”

Wally spread his arms wide in supplication and nodded toward me. “I have a guest. Meet Gus, an old hockey bud down from up north.”

“Hey there, Gus.”

“Nice to meet you, Claudia,” I said, but all I could think was, Meat? Jason Esper knew Jarek Vend? Could it be that there was no coincidence in Jason returning to Starvation not long after Gracie had?

“Don’t forget to punch that clock on your way out,” Wally said.

She chuckled. “Right on, boss.”

The door closed. Wally said, “Mark my words-her kid’s going to be the first babe to stick in the NHL. Great kid.”

“You talking about the same Meat I know?”

“Meat? Oh, yeah, Jason… Jason… Esper-yeah-he played with me on the ’Fitters. He was just a beanpole back then.”

“Yeah. He’s living in Starvation. What’s he got to do with Knobbo?”

“You don’t know?”

The Wonders were playing Big Bill’s from Inkster, Wally said. During a scrum at the net, a Bill’s center named McSween slashed Knobbo across the forearm. Knobbo went down just as Jason came zooming in with his stick up around his elbows, aimed at McSween’s forehead. McSween ducked. Jason went flying. As he catapulted over the pile, one of his skate blades sliced through the right side of Knobbo’s neck.

“I swear, man, I almost lost my lunch,” Wally said. “The blood shot up this high”-he held a palm flat at his shoulder-“and Knobbo was rolling around and screaming like he was going to die.”

“But he didn’t.”

“Nope. Meat, man, Meat saved his life. He cut him and then he saved his life. He got down and jammed his hands down on Knobbo’s neck until the ambulance came. It was lucky we were close to the hospital.” Maybe I imagined it, but I thought Wally went a little pale. “I can still see Meat in the dressing room, blood all over him, shaking like a leaf.”

“And that was it for Knobbo?”

“Yep. For Meat, too. Next time I saw him-the last time I saw him-was at one of Knobbo’s clubs, working the door.”

“No shit, bouncing? When?”

“Last fall?” Wally looked sheepish. “I mean, I don’t go to those places usually, but Poke had a bachelor party. Meat didn’t look all that glad to see us. We didn’t stay long.”

“Good old Meat.”

“Yep.” Wally sneaked a look at the clock on his desk. I stood up, set my second bottle on Wally’s desk.

“I better get going.”

Wally pointed at my half-full bottle. “Alcohol abuse, man.”

“What can I say? I’m a wimp.”

Wally deserved his good life. I wondered what he would have said or done if I had told him about my life, how I was just trying to hang on to my job and my girlfriend. He stretched out a hand. “Good to see you, bud.”

Jason Esper had cut Jarek Vend. Then he had saved his life. Then he was working for him. Then he came up north and married Darlene. But something was missing. His life went to shit and drink and video golf.

He left Starvation, went back downstate. Back to Vend. They were brothers bound by spilled blood. Now Jason was back in Starvation again, supposedly cleaned up. I was betting he and Knobbo were bound by something other than just blood. Probably not something pretty.

Philo had left me a message. I scribbled the Prospect Street address for Trixie the Tramp-a.k.a. Patricia Armbruster-on the side of a foam coffee cup. Not bad, Philo, I thought. Not bad.

Then I dialed Darlene. I just wanted to hear her voice. My phone died in the middle of the first ring.

“There’s no need for you to see anything here,” she told me.

“But isn’t this-”

“What happens here is none of your business.” She gave me a prim smile. “My car’s out back.”

Trixie Armbruster did not look like a tramp, or at least the sort of tramp her nickname brought to mind. Taller than me, she carried her boxy frame in a baggy cotton dress. The dress was printed with tiny flowers that had all faded to the same shade of pale lavender. On our way out to the muddy lot behind her building, she wrapped herself in a worn brown bomber jacket. The zipper didn’t work so she clipped the jacket together beneath her bosom with a safety pin. Her gone-white hair stuck out over the jacket collar in a stiff, wavy perm. She walked with purpose, two steps ahead of me, limping with each step, favoring her left leg.

All I knew of Trixie’s past was what I had heard on Philo’s short phone message: She was once a prostitute and heroin addict. She had broken free somehow and started the center for abused women, mostly abused prostitutes. She called it Trixie’s Place for Tired Women and Girls. The name helped get her some publicity, a few grants, some pity donations from a rich liberal or two, a little extra police protection from the city. When I heard it on Philo’s message, all I could think was, Gracie, what did you get yourself into?

Trixie had sounded oddly expectant when I’d called her from a pay phone outside a party store to ask if I could drop by. I suppose that someone who did what she did was always ready for anything. I had explained how Gracie had been found dead in the shoe tree, how she was extended family, how I had come at the behest of my mother, Gracie’s favorite aunt, to see if I could gain a clearer understanding of how she had lived her life, why it had ended.

“I don’t know,” she had said. “I don’t see what good it would do.”

“Maybe Gracie told you-”

“Yes, I’m aware that you’re a newspaper reporter. If her aunt sent you, I suppose I can show you a couple of things.”

The center was in a dreary brick building that looked like it might once have been a corner store or a bar, tucked into a neighborhood not far from the Ford factory across the river. The only thing identifying the center was a semicircular plaque hanging on the front door and carved with the words “Trixie’s Place.” Beneath the plaque hung a plain wooden cross painted along its borders in gold.

I had pushed the doorbell and immediately a buzzer had sounded and a woman’s voice had come over an intercom: “Step inside, please. I’ll be out in five.” I’d waited in a space barely bigger than a closet, gazing down at a floor of muddy tile. There wasn’t a sound until I’d heard footsteps descending stairs inside and then the jingle of keys. The inner door had opened and I had presumptuously begun to step inside when Trixie blocked my way, closed that door behind her, and pointed me to her car.

“Thank you for meeting me,” I said.

Trixie was steering her Honda Civic through another neighborhood of snug bungalows. I tried to watch the street signs to see if we had wound up back at Vend’s house. Trixie was taking rights and lefts and rights again, seemingly doubling back. I thought we’d gone down the same block twice but couldn’t be sure because the houses looked alike. I thought maybe she was trying to make it so confusing that I couldn’t find my way back.