Victor Gischler - Gun Monkeys

“Okay, okay.” He sat still, faced forward.

I hit the accelerator, darted between a couple of cars, and cut off a jeep full of college kids who gave me the finger. I took a hard left from the wrong lane, leaving a wake of horn blasts and squealing tires behind. I did the zig-zag routine through a residential neighborhood, and by the time I found a major road again, I was satisfied we’d thrown off our tail.

I said we’d better ditch my car for a while. They knew what it looked like. Lou agreed and suggested I go to the regional airport and find a rental counter. Good idea. Avis had what we needed.

I used a stolen MasterCard and a fake Arkansas driver’s license and rented the car under the name Borris Freeman. I wanted an LTD or something comfortable, but Lou had his own idea.

“You can’t go slugging around the swamp in some big-ass pimp-mobile.”

“I’m not slugging anywhere,” I said. “I’m taking the Interstate.”

“Four-wheel it, man. Let’s ride high in that Suburban.” Lou pointed at a ridiculously oversized sports utility vehicle in the fenced rental yard.

“Fuck that.”

“I’m a big guy. I need a big ride.”

“The thing drinks three miles to the gallon,” I said.

“Man, you’re renting the car. I got no problem springing for gas.”

I gave up. “Fine.”

“Righteous.”

Idiot.

He didn’t look so happy when he filled up the truck in Ocala. Forty-two fifty for regular unleaded. We’d left the Interstate and were heading down State Road 200. Lou stuck a cigar in his mouth, lit it and filled the cab with a thick layer of gray-blue smoke.

“Will you roll down the fucking window? I’ve only got the two lungs.”

He laughed. “Can’t take it, huh?” But he rolled it down.

He found a country station on the radio and turned it up a notch too loud.

I turned it back down a little. “Let’s take it easy, okay?”

“You don’t like the twang?”

“The what?”

“The twang. Country music has that twang.”

“Could you clam up for a while? I’m trying to think what to do next.”

He shrunk into his cigar, taking slow, sulky puffs.

We drove around withoutmuch of a plan, the Suburban gulping gas like a kid sucking back Kool-Aid. We went into a dozen clubs that advertised live music. I got fed up halfway through the search and started sending Lou inside while I waited in the Chevy. We broke for dinner, didn’t rush through our meals. We got back on the road just as aimless as before.

Finally, I steered us into a convenience store, and Lou ripped a phone book out of a booth. We sat in the car and flipped through the listings.

“Dewey’s Deck and Landing.” Lou showed me the ad. “Says live music.”

“Call them.”

“Here’s the address. It’s close. Right off 200.”

“The phone’s closer.”

“It’s been a long day, man. I’ll buy you a beer.”

Good point.

Dewey’s was tucked in behind a Pizza Hut and near a small grocery market in a ratty little plaza. The gravel parking lot overflowed. We parked on the grass and had to pony up five bucks each to get in. The cover was for the band, but we found out quick it wasn’t Spanklicious.

For one thing, I actually liked the music. I’d never heard Spanklicious, but I didn’t think they’d be covering an Ella Fitzgerald tune. The gal on stage wore a long black dress, velvet gloves up to her elbows. Her voice was beautifully dark and raw. The four guys behind her knew what they were doing: horn, bass, guitar, upright piano.

“This ain’t them,” said Lou. “You want to leave?”

“Let’s hear a song,” I said. “Let’s have a drink.”

The music shifted into a hot swing number, and college kids decked out in vintage dresses, pinstriped suits, and wide ties flooded the sunken dance floor in front of the stage. The bar crowd looked wrong. Mixed. The dressed-up kids were there for the music. The frat guys were out of place, and there were a lot of them in white baseball caps, Greek letters on their sweatshirts. They were there just to get drunk, and they were good at it.

Lou muscled his way to the crowded bar. He squeezed between two of the frat kids, jostling them out of the way. They turned to give him some lip, saw his size, and decided to pay closer attention to their drinks.

Lou handed a plastic cup back toward me, and I took it. I tilted the contents back between my lips. It went down cheap and wet, cold and perfect. It had been a long day. A long, hard, bad couple of days. I made a mental note to call Ma later. And Marcie.

The college kids were giving Lou a wide berth. The giant leaned back with both elbows spread along the rough wooden bar like he owned the joint, taking up more than his fair share of space considering the crowd. There’d be trouble soon. I knew Lou’s type. He wouldn’t start anything, but he’d throw his weight around until a drunk-enough kid took a poke at him. He needed to turn some kid’s lights out to feel better, like he was in control of something, like his life hadn’t just taken a nosedive. That was the type.

“I’m going to ask around,” I told him and moved away into the mass of kids.

“About what?” he called after, but I just nodded pretending I’d heard him wrong.

I finished my beer as I reached the far end of the bar. It took me a minute to get the bartender’s attention, but he spotted me as the band finished a song I didn’t recognize heavy on the horns.

“You know a band called Spanklicious?”

“That’s Smoke Up, Johnny.” He pointed at the stage, shouting over the racket.

“I mean another band.”

“No. You want another?”

“Yeah.”

He didn’t ask what I was drinking, which was fine since I didn’t know. He brought it back too foamy, and I tried again.

“Other places around here have a band tonight?”

“Hell if I know,” he said.

I drank, ordered a third, drank it, and ordered another.

I was thinking about the restroom when the girl onstage announced the band was taking a quick break. I circled the dance floor, plying my way through the crowd, found the men’s room. The single urinal was mercifully free, so I unzipped and let out some beer.

Someone flushed in one of the stalls. The girl singer came out, fished a lipstick out of her purse and put the purse on the narrow shelf under the mirror. “Don’t mind me, hon .”

I usually only let sixty-year-old waitresses at truck stops and really fat table-dancers call me hon, but the singer was pretty, and I liked her voice, so I said, “No problem at all, doll .”

She glanced at me sideways. Her lips curled into a little smile before she applied her dark lipstick. Her nose was a little too pointy, gave her a hawkish look. “The line for the little girls’ room is murder. I had to hold my bladder all the way through Tommy’s horn solo.” She shook her head like it was the saddest thing in the world. “Nine minute fucking horn solo.”

She left as some frat boys came in, and they paused, looking at the front of the restroom door to see if they had the right one. She was gone by the time they figured it out.

I straightened my tie in the mirror, decided I wasn’t impressing anyone, and pulled it loose again. I looked at my eyes. Red. Too much beer and not enough sleep.

The singer’s purse was still on the shelf. I grabbed it and left the restroom.

On my way back, I spotted Lou still guarding his territory near the bar. He was chatting up a busty coed in sorority letters, the frat guys still glowering over their shoulders at him. It wouldn’t be long now.

I had another beer, remembered I had a purse in my hand, and found the singer on the steps that led up to the stage. She was on her way back up, and I asked her to wait a minute.