Allan Leverone - Postcards from the Apocalypse

“Aren’t you forgetting a couple of important details?”

“Hmm. I don’t think so. Like what?”

“Like the fact that you will be dead and the bad guy will be in possession of the critical piece of evidence against him?”

Brick stared at me and grinned and I suddenly got a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew what he was going to say before he said it. Hearing it out loud didn’t make me feel any better.

“That’s where you come in, sonny.”

I sat at in a corner in The Little Devilz, having arrived early so that I could secure a table which would allow me the most complete observation of the enormous room. Every now and then I sipped from an eight dollar ginger ale, wishing it was sour mash but figuring it might be a good idea to keep my wits about me.

The Browning Hi-Power semiautomatic pistol my uncle had given me sat heavy and portentous in the leather shoulder holster under my jacket as I sweated rivers around it. He had slapped a magazine filled with rounds into the handle, explaining the basics of its operation before carefully engaging the safety and handing it to me hesitantly like he feared I might blow his head off or something. I felt completely exposed, like everyone in the place was watching me, although I knew that was nothing more than rampant paranoia on my part.

On the stage, a succession of young women, all gorgeous but tired-looking and old beyond their years, danced lethargically to music with a thumping bass track that poured from the enormous sound system. Each one flounced out from behind an enormous velvet curtain to an introduction by an artificially enthusiastic DJ worthy of a Celtics playoff game, shaking her assets for a few frenetic minutes before being replaced by another girl cut from the same sexy but hardened mold.

I wondered what the odds were one of them was Phoebe Simpson. I hadn’t heard the announcer use that name, but all of the girls went by aliases like “Skye” or “Silky” or “Angel” so how would I know? The irony of a girl using the name “Angel” at a place called The Little Devilz was not lost on me and I wondered if it was done intentionally; like calling a fat guy “slim.”

Probably not. Nobody seemed to have much of a sense of humor here; you could practically smell the loneliness and desperation wafting through the smoky air; a mood projected by the dancers and the customers alike.

A young woman dressed in the skimpiest red devil outfit I had ever seen came along and smiled at me. Red satin horns protruded from her auburn hair and she carried a plastic pitchfork along with a small round tray of drinks. “May I freshen you up, sir?”

I returned her smile. “Thanks, but this is as fresh as it gets for me.”

She did a lousy job of hiding her disappointment and I could almost see her mentally revising downward her estimate of the night’s tip income. Ah, what the hell. Easy come, easy go. “On second thought,” I said as she turned to go, “I will have another ginger ale, thank you.”

Her face lit up like a little girl’s on Christmas morning and I felt an incredible sense of sadness for her as she scurried off to fill the order. Allison and I had never had any children—thank God, that was something we had done right in a marriage that was mostly wrong—but I tried to imagine how I would feel knowing my daughter was slinging drinks to horny men in a strip club and I found myself hoping Brick would hurry up and get here and do his thing; this place was more depressing than I had ever imagined possible.

On the stage the girls twirled and pranced and showed strangers parts of their anatomy that most people reserve for the privacy of their bedrooms, pretending to get off on their time under the harsh glare of the spotlight, and finally, off to my right, my uncle strolled through the front door and into the semi-dark club. He was dressed garishly in a powder-blue suit with wide avocado tie straight out of the seventies; an outfit that would ensure he was noticed immediately.

He paid the cover to the goon at the door and walked straight across the big room to the bar, calling one of the bartenders over and asking him a question I couldn’t hear. The man looked at him for a moment in undisguised amusement, as if trying to decide whether Brick was serious, and then shrugged and pointed to a closed door located at the far end of a shadowy hallway to the left of the stage.

Brick skirted the front of the stage looking, as always, like he hadn’t a care in the world. I couldn’t say for sure, it was too dark and he was too far away, but I would have sworn he flashed a smile and a wink to the chick currently grinding and making creative use of the stripper pole a few feet away. Knowing Brick, she was probably a friend, or at least a friend of a friend. He rounded the stage, no one paying the slightest attention to him except me, and disappeared down the hallway.

This was my cue to leave. We had scouted the building earlier and I knew there was a single service entrance leading out the back of the club. It seemed unlikely the designated muscle would lead the potential murder victim out to his death through the front of the club in front of dozens of potential witnesses, even if their attention was on other things, so my job, for now, was to get to Brick’s car and stake out that rear entryway.

It didn’t take long, which was ideal for me because thinking about the role I was supposed to play in this little adventure was making me feel a little like I did on my wedding day. I was nervous and shaking and hoping I would be able to perform. I hoped this turned out better than my marriage, for Brick’s sake as well as my own.

I had been seated in the Mercedes for maybe ten minutes, parked in a darkened corner of a used car lot under a huge maple tree which left me a clear and unobstructed view of the strip club’s service entrance next door. The moon was full but the shadows thrown by the tree’s bulk enveloped Brick’s car like a gossamer blanket.

The door to the service entrance swung open and my uncle exited the club, followed by an almost comically large man pressing the barrel of a handgun into his back. Held in Brick’s hand was an object I assumed was a bottle of liquor—cheap whiskey, probably; he had said they would likely make him drink some and then spill the rest all over him to make it look like he got drunk and depressed and decided to end it all—where had I heard that before?—and I found myself wishing he could toss it to me so I could slam down a slug or two myself.

The large man with the gun opened the passenger side door of an inconspicuous-looking Chevy Caprice and Brick bent down and entered, sliding across to the driver’s side, while the other guy followed him in and closed the car door. The brake lights flashed once and then the car was moving, creeping along the side of the club to the street and turning toward downtown.

I started Brick’s Mercedes and followed, wondering if I would ever see him again alive.

When I started doing this job, oh, way back, let’s see, must be three weeks ago now, I was inept at tailing people, either on foot or in a vehicle. It’s something that seems like it should be easy but isn’t, at least for me. I might as well have tapped them on the shoulder or held up a flashing neon sign saying, “Hey, you, I’m following you! Yes, that’s right, you!”

I shared my concerns on this score with Brick after he told me our plan—the one I had had no input on. I told him I was afraid I would tip off the man kidnapping him and get him killed. Predictably, he told me not to worry about it. “You need to learn how to relax. The guy is going to be amped; getting himself mentally prepared to push me off a building. He’s not going to be worried about an eighty year old man, especially once I make sure he finds the recorder.