The Witch Tree, page 8
One and the same he’d seen over at Little Earth? But, no, he’d been – substantially heavier, hadn’t he?
“Da! Speak up!” the woman at the register sang out. “Can’t hear from you behind counter.”
The midget winked at Buck, then stepped in front of him. Fucking little – Brick-skinned, his hair was dark with silver streaks in it. And his eyes were too large, all queer and watery, like a baby’s, or… really, a woman’s. He pointed into the display case, under the lights cheese Danish, crullers, and pecan rolls. In him… some likeness to whoever it had been at Little Earth the day he’d come into town – and the midget pointing to one thing, and then another.
“You order,” the woman behind the counter demanded, “make up mind, people waiting.”
The pastries glowed in the case. Lemon Bismarck. Apple strudel. Donuts, plain and glazed. Coconut. Buck’s mouth watered. His stomach knotted. “Ah, for Christ’ssake,” someone said.
“He wants the coconut,” Buck said, the closest to the midget’s circling, indecisive finger.
“You want coconut?” the woman asked.
Buck thought to sweep the midget up by his neck and smack his head into the pastry case.
“Coconut,” Buck said, “three of ‘em,” and the woman put the donuts into a bag and set it on the counter.
“Take – the fuckin’ donuts,” Buck said. He threw a bill on the counter. “They’re on me, got it?”
The midget didn’t. He made a come hither motion with his hand, and when Buck stooped, he whispered, “Dupont and 33rd.”
Snatched up the donuts, and moving crablike, but efficiently, he shot out the door. Gamboled on his left foot. Dodged the rushing cars to the side opposite, where he turned, saw Buck watching, and threw him a kiss.
In his gait, proof positive – here was the character who’d been in Eli’s unit at the projects.
And the address on Dupont? He could only guess what might be waiting for him there. Though, most likely, it would have something to do with Ruben and what he’d stolen.
The midget a fence. Or worse.
Moments later, he retuned to the shop, happily swinging a bag of donuts in one hand. Only, stepping into the raucous maw of the Paradise, he stopped. Arrested by a thought.
Could the midget want something to do with Lester’s business? Was Lester testing him?
“Hey, Chief! Break’s over. We’re on!” Ambrose called out of the darkness to him.
It was then he realized he’d forgotten his coffee.
A cable broke just before closing. He took it as good luck, they could call it quits for the day, he thought, then realized the cable would have to be repaired, and now. He stood with Ambrose beside the machine.
“Goddamn it!” Ambrose shouted, and slid under.
Buck stood behind the controls. A pull of a lever and the rack would drop on him, Cadillac and all. One down, only four to go – Dr. Miller, Lester, and the twins. Why not?
It was a real temptation, especially granted Ambrose had done everything in his power to get him to quit.
Which, granted the way things stood, he wasn’t about to.
Then the day was over, and he and Eli headed up Franklin, driving home. The radio played oldies. It was dark out, the traffic ahead a blur of taillights, headlights flashing in the lanes opposite.
“Yeah, yeah,” Eli said. His low beams had burned out and he was driving with his highs.
It was too close in the car, and Buck rolled his window open, the cool air buffeting his face. Outside the businesses on Lake Street slid by, glaring red and blue neon, massage parlors, and pawn shops, and second hand places, now punctuated by fringe foreign dining, their names, like hopeful, exotic incantations splashed across false façades – Sawatdee, and Priya, and Mykonos – their tattered patrons rushing here and there, hands thrust in their pockets against the cold. He hadn’t been so tired since – spring training, he thought, down in Florida and, Eli driving, and frustrated as he was, he let his mind wander to those Orlando and Ft. Meyers palm trees, and beaches and the pretty girls, his days playing scratch games under blue skies, and always on fresh mown grass – that’s what had brought it all back, he realized, his face in the open window, someone had mowed nearby – and the smell to him, of cut grass, a kind of happiness, in it his youth, and the promise of it, though, caught up inextricably in it, too, was one painful thing he didn’t let himself think on.
Which he did, anyway. Evelyn. Evelyn Giancono, who was just now… where? he wondered.
To stop himself, he turned his thoughts, once again, to the Paradise – there wasn’t going to be any quick rendering of justice there, an easy undoing of Dr. Miller’s dirty business.
No, what he needed was proof of how it operated and who was in it, top to bottom.
And maybe the midget – and he was a shinob – had given him a lead? After all, what had he been doing in Eli’s unit at Little Earth? Or, was he just part of Lester’s operation?
Eyes on the street?
15
At the apartment, Jen sat in her wheelchair watching television while Eli fussed in the kitchen.
“Dinner’ll be ready in a few,” Jen said, and smiled. “Why don’t you come here and sit?”
She was wearing a gauzy, floral print blouse, and black pants she’d cut to fit over her leg, still swollen. Her neck was exposed, and he could see bruising there, too. Eli dropped down onto the sofa, an arm’s length from her, held up a coffee, and she shook her head.
“I need to stretch my legs,” Buck told them, and before they could reply, he went out the door.
It was an Eldorado, all right. A yellow one. He glanced at the signs over the intersection: 33rd and Dupont. He was in the right place, too. A tail of smoke rose from the back of the car, the car idling, and the windows fogged. It couldn’t be Sally, though, he thought, but he had to see. He crossed the street, sidled up and around the car, someone there at the wheel.
Auburn hair, and fine-boned, oval face. He stood under the streetlight, dumbfounded. It was Sally.
He would give her a good talking to, he thought, about camping out on, of all streets, Dupont. He would tell her – what could he tell her? Dupont was no place for a cupcake like her? But worse, she’d been linked to crime that had gotten someone killed recently? And being here with no money?
“Hey,” he said, and knocked on the driver’s window. Sally, startled, hit the locks. Ca-chunk!
She played with the radio, then picked up the book she’d been reading and stuck her face in it. As if she could avoid him that way, and he went around to the front and let air out of a tire. It made a harsh, high-pitched hissing, and she dropped the driver’s window the space of a hand.
“I’m sorry,” she called out to him, “but I don’t have your money, I had to use it to get one of my windows repaired.”
She had parked in such a way she couldn’t get out, a truck squeezed in behind her, a car in front.
“Stop it,” she said. “Please? Can you just–”
He stooped at the left rear and started on that tire. He let very little air out, but she didn’t know that.
The window came down further, and Sally put her entire head out, her alarmed face there.
“Stop it. Please? Could you please stop doing that?” she said, then added, “I’m going to scream.”
When he let out more air, she screamed, a long, high-pitched scream. It wasn’t much of a scream, coming from inside a big, heavily-upholstered car. Not so much as a shade stirred in a window.
“You could just–” he said, from where he was crouched, “–open the door, can you? I’m cold.”
Ca-chunk! she hit the locks, and, setting his hand on the trunk, he vaulted over the back so she couldn’t crush him between her bumper and the truck behind. It was what he would have done, no two ways about it.
Inside, he slapped his arms, shoved his hands into his pockets. It was cold in the car and fusty smelling.
“So,” he said, “we meet again.”
Sally yanked a Kleenex from a box between the seats and touched the Kleenex to her eyes.
“Somebody bothers you while you’re parked here,” he said, “you crush ‘em with the car, okay?”
Peering up at him, she said, “I’m so sorry I took your money,” a sliver of self-mockery in it. “I was even going to return some of it, really, I was, but then – somebody broke the rear window, and….”
Buck let his head drop back, the headliner brushing his nose.
“Weird,” Sally said.
“What?”
“You finding me.”
“I didn’t find you,” he told her. “Not that I didn’t try. I looked for you all over near Augsburg.”
“You did?”
“I did. It was your little friend who pointed me here.”
“Friend?” Sally’s brows knitted, confusion there, and then she nodded. “Oh, you mean Shorty.”
“Yeah, him.”
He looked behind the seat. Blankets neatly folded, a ruffled pillow, and a space heater.
“Electric,” Sally said. “But they cut it off now.”
“Who?”
“Over – there. 143.” She pointed to a ramshackle apartment. “I was using their outlet, see? I was doing okay. Shorty set it up. But then the guy in the apartment said his landlord’d get wise to all electricity he was using, that with the water, too, since I showered there.”
Well, that was bullshit. She wouldn’t sleep with him – or something. That’s what the story was.
“When?” he asked.
“A few days ago.” She shrugged. “All I’ve got now is enough gas to get the car started tonight.”
He checked the gauge. The needle was all but on empty.
“I’m trying to get myself together. Really, I am,” she said, “and maybe, later, I can pay your back?”
“Uh-huh,” he said, taking in Dupont. The houses around them were mostly Victorians. Clapboard-sided and peeling, porches warped, and roofs needing repair. No happy, well-kept gingerbread here. It was a neighborhood down-on-its-heels, though not as tough as Eli’s; but, close enough – just less rot and peeling paint, and no iron bars over the windows.
But that she hadn’t gone running home, said it all. She was trying, and he’d do what he could.
When he glanced over at her, he felt his eyes go wide, Sally grinning at him, in her mouth enormous, Chiclets-sized teeth. She reared back, laughing and, when he saw they weren’t her teeth, he laughed, too.
“Jesus!” he said, “where’d you get those?”
She pulled the dentures from her mouth, then set them on the dash and said, matter-of-factly, and with a modest pride, “I- got- a- job–” she widened her eyes and wriggled her fingers “–in the exciting world of–” she threw up her hands “–Dental Prosthetics!
“I get my first paycheck Friday. If I’m careful, I can just about–” she scrunched up her shoulders, nearly closed one eye, and trained the other on him “–make it, if I don’t pay you back… all of it just… now?”
“So, what do you have now?” he asked.
“Fourteen dollars and ninety five cents – and this tank of gas,” she said. “Or, I did have a tank of gas.”
He could see the disappointment on her face, Sally thinking he wanted her to give it to him.
“You eat today?”
“I had a hard-boiled egg for breakfast,” she said. She smiled again, this – young woman, arrested in girlhood. “If I only eat once a day, I’ll take off the weight I put on when I was…. – well, you know, on the meds, they make you fat. And your face all… bloats up, too. Yuccchhh.
“And, anyway, if I take the weight off–” she held her hands at her sides, as if she were modeling a dress “–my new wardrobe will fit.”
“You’re joking,” he said, “right?”
She turned to her window, and where it had steamed up, she drew a flower. Then, as if holding it, turned to him.
“I’m so glad you asked me to the dance,” she said, and mimed pinning it to his jacket, patted him there, over his heart.
They sat, side by side, oddly comfortable in each other’s company, and the stars over the car cutting through the clouds that scudded by on the horizon, and the moon a beacon.
“Like my new coat?”
He did. A Navy pea coat, a Ragstock find, it set off her shoulder-length auburn hair. He thought, again, how pretty she was. Her features so fine, and a splash of freckles across her cheeks and nose. He’d told himself it was about his masinaigan, his debt to her, but he realized, now, no, from first there’d been… something about her that just got to him.
Or, was it, really, just proximity? Their being together, in trouble?
She turned to him, her eyes widely spaced, as if in a permanent state of astonishment, or reverie.
“So,” she said, “did you? ‘Save the world’?”
“No, but I’m working on it,” he told her, then added, “And, anyway, that was a joke.”
“No, it wasn’t,” she said.
She looked off up the road, where a car swerved toward them, its lights temporarily blinding.
When it had gone by, she reached up with her hand, touched the side of his face. The skin of her palm cool. He hadn’t been touched like that… since… he couldn’t remember.
“I see you,” she said, her eyes searching his, and he got out of the car, determined to do something for her.
Later, turning the corner onto Dupont, he was wishing she would be gone – for her sake. Because being linked to him – and she was, or how could the midget have known she was here? – could be dangerous.
But there she was, in her yellow Eldorado, and he keyed the lock and slid into the front passenger seat.
Sally was curled in back under a blanket.
“Jesus H. Christ,” he said. It was frigid in the car. He could see his breath. “Hey, you there?”
Sally peered up at him out of the dark. She’d bundled up her blanket around her head.
“I’m freezing,” she said, her teeth chattering.
“You got gas, use your heater.”
“Can’t. I have just enough to get to work.”
He got her tucked inside the sleeping bag he’d boosted at the Army Surplus up the block, a thick, quilted one, then pulled the mummy hood over her head and tied it under her chin so it framed her face.
“How’s that?”
She looked elfin. Her face beautifully heart-shaped. “Nice,” she said. Her eyes shone in the dark. He wanted, just then, to kiss her forehead. Make things all right. No matter what, he’d try.
“You okay now?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
She settled, “I’m under a down comforter, in a wonderful B & B, and my sweetheart’s here, and in the morning I’ll–”
He tucked two tens under her chin. “Get something to eat, laundry, shower, gas,” he said, “and keep your doors locked.” “Oh,” he added, “and you’ll have your electricity tomorrow, okay?”
Sleepy, she lifted herself on her elbow. “What?”
“I fixed your little problem with Stan in 143. You put out the extension cord, he’ll plug it in.
“I told him you’d be camping out here until you got yourself together to head to Seattle.”
She was blinking, left eye, then her right. “What’s to say he’ll really, you know, do it?”
“Oh,” he told her, “I think he will, either that or he’ll be missing his private parts.”
He pressed her keys on her. “Always. Keep the doors locked when you’re in the car. Okay?”
“You’ll be back?”
“Soon,” he said.
16
A week later, at the Paradise, Ambrose was still riding him – pulling tension on a cable too early, cutting with the torch when he was standing opposite so that he caught the molten splatter, which burned right through the sleeves of his monkey suit, scarred his arms.
He’d done it again now, and Buck took it as an excuse to stalk off to Lester’s office and give it a look-over.
Lester, perched at his desk like some dybbuk, as old Saul, would have said, was on the phone, jawjacking. He motioned for him to sit in the chair opposite, which he didn’t.
“You got the paint code?” Lester said, the receiver pressed to his ear, writing on a pad. “Uh-huh. That come with the trim?”
He stepped to the shop window. Gave Ambrose a look, and Ambrose, in his dark goggles, gave one right back.
Over the week, he’d seen Lester set the alarm before leaving at night; and he knew Lester was first to arrive, to disarm it. The switch was under the middle drawer of the desk. And there was the door into the office. If you didn’t pull it closed all the way, the latch didn’t go into the doorjamb.
Friction, alone, sometimes held the door shut; workdays, he’d seen it, a time or two, swing open. He could disable the latch; they’d pull it shut and….
A wiseguy in Cleveland had taught him that trick – how to set up a standard door lock, to break into a house later.
A scrap of matchbook cover did the trick – the paper was pulp, rough, so it was binding – and all you had to do was, slip it between the latch and plate, then depress the latch so it stayed in the door.
“‘n’ andiamo!” the wiseguy had said, “no broken glass or nothin’, you’re in, easy peasy.
“You can set it up, even standin’ there like you’re makin’ a house call or whatever, they’ll never notice.”
Facing Ambrose, he took in the office in reflection. In a locker, in back, was a floor safe; Lester’s desk was metal, and locking, too; and there were locking file cabinets along the walls.
Lester banged the phone down, but it rang again. “Paradise Autobody,” he said. “Lester.”
Ambrose, below him, hadn’t budged. The slightest motion, a raised eyebrow, or – and they’d be at it like dogs.
“Yeah, that’s right, it’s Wednesday,” Lester said, “we have you scheduled for 2:00…. Uh-huh.” And on it went.
Lester wrapping it up, he all but desperately scanned the office. Where would Lester keep “sensitive” documents?
