Joel Goldman - No way out

“A week ago you were probably right. But things he never thought would happen did happen. It spun out of control, and now he’s in way over his head.”

“What things?”

I told her about Crenshaw’s gun, about Cesar Mendez and about Brett trying to rob his father’s store. She stopped crying, her face hardening, defiant.

“You’re wrong. He couldn’t have done any of those things,” she said, not convincing me that Brett was innocent but confirming for the first time how much she really loved him.

“Where is he?”

I heard Kate’s car door slam before she could answer. I looked at her, her head cocked to one side, asking me a silent question-what should she do. She knew what I was going to tell Roni, had seen her reaction, and was waiting for me to signal whether to join us or give us room. I waved her toward us when Lilly Chase appeared on the porch. Terry Walker was right behind her.

Roni turned toward Lilly, crying again. Lilly hugged her without knowing why, giving me a look that said she blamed me for whatever had happened, shepherding Roni inside. Kate followed them.

“What happened?” Terry asked.

He’d neither lent a hand nor offered sympathy. He was flinty-eyed and calm in the way of men who’d seen enough sorrow not to be moved by it, knowing that others were better suited to the task of giving comfort. He was, like me, more interested in the how and why, more focused on cause and consequence than passion.

“Somebody killed Nick Staley, shot him to death inside his grocery store.”

“That’s it? That’s all you know?”

I had shared with Roni my answers to those questions but saw no reason to bring Terry into the loop until I knew more about him and whether his questions were born of natural curiosity or whether there was a more useful purpose to his inquiry. He’d said that he had come back to Kansas City to see who was left from the old days, that he’d seen Lilly on the porch and remembered her red hair. That was enough to get him into Lilly Chase’s house but not into my business.

“All I know for certain.”

“And you know better than to flap your lips to somebody you hardly know. Don’t blame you, but you can’t blame me for asking.”

“I don’t. Roni is in pretty bad shape, but I’ll let her tell you about it when she settles down.”

“She won’t know anything. If I’m going to find out what happened, I’ll have to get you to tell me.”

“Why do you think I know so much about it?”

He snorted. “Let’s cut the crap. Lilly told me about Roni shooting that fella at the barbeque joint and the rest of it, how somebody finished him off at the hospital. And Roni told me how you’ve taken such an almighty interest in her welfare, which she says was kind of sweet at first but is really chapping her ass right about now. So, I figure if anybody knows what’s what, it’s you.”

“Chapping her ass? She said that? Doesn’t sound like something she’d say.”

“My translation. She also says you’ve got something wrong with you that makes you shake. Is that so?”

The tics arrived on cue, a quick flurry ricocheting from my sternum to my chin and back again. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Maybe not when you and I are just passing the time, but I’ll wager it’s tough in a crunch. How’d Roni say you put it, that you shake when you should shoot? Now that’s a rough way to be when a bad man is coming after you. All of a sudden you’re jumpin’ and jukin’ and the next thing you know, you’re down and out. No wonder the FBI let you go. Can’t count on a man that can’t count on himself. Too bad, I say, but all we get is the chance to play the game, not make the rules.”

He said it as if my fate were as certain as tomorrow’s sunrise. I didn’t want to tell him he was right, that I often woke up in the middle of the night, sweating and trembling, certain that one day his prediction and my nightmare will come true. I was used to shaking in front of other people, letting it pass as if it were nothing more than a sneeze or cough, but this time was different. When the next flurry struck, whipping my head up and back, Terry’s quick, satisfied smile and measured eyes made me feel exposed and weak.

One of the curious things about my disorder was that talking about it, especially with someone I didn’t know well, could trigger the symptoms. I changed subjects, hoping to regain control.

“Why are you so interested in the details?”

“I’m no different than anybody else. An airplane falls out of the sky or a pitcher throws a no-hitter, good or bad, we all want to know how in the world something like that happened.”

“That’s what newspapers and cable TV are for.”

“Man, you are a tough nut. I’m just an old man looking for a little excitement in my old neighborhood, and you’re acting like I need a top-secret clearance to find out how a man died.”

“You need a better reason than that.”

He pursed his lips, nodding, looking past me, down the street and back, taking a breath and letting it out with his slow confession.

“My family lived down the street in that house,” he said, pointing to another down-at-the-heel mansion two doors away. “It was a boardinghouse. The Staley family lived there too.”

“When did you leave?”

“Fifty years ago, the night of the Electric Park fire.”

“What’s Electric Park?”

“It was an amusement park at Forty-sixth and Troost, all kinds of rides, games, and pretty girls. I was there when it caught fire.”

He got a faraway look in his eyes, the memory coming back to him, nodding as the images came into focus.

“Man oh man, you should have seen it! That fire was a beast, chewing up the park. Hell, the whole place wasn’t more than a bunch of kindling glued together. You ever been in a blaze like that?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Well, trust me brother, you don’t want to be. Even the air was on fire, and the noise it made, I swear it was the devil’s own voice hollering Look out ’cause I’m coming for you. And the people running wild trying to get away wasn’t nothing but a mob the cops couldn’t control any more than the firemen could the fire.”

“What did you do?”

He smiled again, this time softly, shaking his head. “That devil voice, it was calling me, telling me it was time to chase the darkness, and I couldn’t do nothing except answer. But, I’ll tell you what, it taught me one of life’s most important lessons. One man’s trouble is another man’s chance if you’ve got the steel to take it.”

“I’ve got a feeling you’re not talking about picking up quarters someone left lying on the ground.”

“No sir. I was just a dumb kid couldn’t see farther than the end of my dick. Hated my parents because my old man beat my brother and me, and my mother didn’t give a shit so long as he didn’t hit us with any of her whiskey bottles. They was so beat down all they could do was beat someone weaker and smaller. I swore to Christ I wouldn’t end up like them. I was seventeen, and there were only two things I ever thought about: getting laid and getting out.”

“And the fire gave you a chance to get out.”

“You’re damn right it did. The smoke was so thick, I couldn’t see where I was going, and it didn’t help that no one else could either. I stumbled into the park office. The clerks had taken off, and the day’s receipts were just sitting there waiting to be burnt to ash, three thousand six hundred seventy eight dollars, a lot of money in those days and more than I’d ever seen or thought I ever would see. There was a satchel on the floor, and I stuffed it full of cash and took off. Had my stake and never looked back.”