The Hard Bounce - Second Chapter

Chapter Two

      We were both soaked from the rain and did our best to dry off with bar napkins.
Junior kept smirking, looking like he had something else to say.
      “What?”
      “He’s not gay, he just likes fucking dead things?”
       I held it as long as I could, then we both exploded into convulsions of laughter.  Junior doubled over, howling like a hyena on nitrous.  My ribs started aching from the force of my own guffaws.
      Junior wiped away a tear and looked back at me and we started up again.  Each time we’d get ourselves under control, one look and the whole process would start over.  It took an entire band set to get ourselves under control.  The music stopped once more, which meant that the kids would be roaming again.  We needed to get our game faces back.  It wouldn’t do to have the two bouncers cackling like a pair of old ladies.  It was easy to cut the giggles when we realized that one of us had to clean up the pile of shit outside.
      “Rock, paper, scissors?” 
      “Of course.”  If it was good enough to settle negotiations when we were eleven, it was good enough today.
      “On shoot.  One, two, three, SHOOT!”
      Rock.
      Junior made paper.
      Shit.
      “I’ll get you the shovel, garbage man,” Junior said.  He hooted evilly as he trotted to the utility closet.  I really hate it when Junior hoots, evilly or not.
 
      An hour later, the show closed and I was only about a third done.  The crowd that exited the building my way covered their faces and made disgusted sounds as they passed.  They were all smart enough not to make any comments.  I had a shovel.
      My mood continued to sour as the cleanup left me glazed in vinegary old beer, ashes and some viscous crap that I didn’t even want to attempt identifying.  By the time I was down to the last shovelful, the storm went from drizzle to summer downpour, leaving me drenched and reeking as a wet dog.
     Carefully, I pulled a cigarette from my pocket, mindful not to contaminate the filter or any other part that was going into my mouth.  This smoking ban was for the birds.  Big Brother claimed he was saving me from secondhand smoke related diseases in twenty years.  Thanks, assholes.  Instead, I get to die of pneumonia immediately.
      I flicked my lighter and got no flame.  Weatherproof my ass.  I was just about to let loose with one of the longest, loudest and most profane curses in the history of language when I heard a woman’s voice from the doorway behind me.
      “Excuse me, Mr. Malone?”   
      I turned, wanting to see who was speaking before I answered. 
      “Are you William Malone?” she asked.
      My first impression was that she was lost.  She looked like she belonged at The Cellar about as much as Courtney Love belonged at the Boston Opera.   I quickly gave her the once-over.  Too small to be a cop.  Usually only cops call me Mr. Malone.  “That’s me,” I said, staying right where I was.
      “Kelly Reese,” she said, extending her hand in a sharp, businesslike gesture. 
      I didn’t take her hand.  “No offense, but I wouldn’t do that right now.  Not unless you plan on getting some serious vaccinations later,” I said, trying to wring rain and muck out of my shirtfront.
      She didn’t get it at first.  Then the wind downshifted and she caught a quick whiff of what I had been dealing with.  To her credit, she managed to cover her reflexive gag with a demure cough.  “Oh,” she said through watering eyes. 
      “What can I do for you, Ms. Reese?”
      “I’d like to talk to you about possibly hiring your firm.”
      My firm?  
      “I don’t know what you’ve been told, Ms. Reese, but we’re not lawyers.”  My sarcasm just confused her. 
      “Maybe it would be better if we spoke inside.  You’re getting wet.”  I could tell she wanted nothing more than to pinch her nose from the violent nasal assault.  She subtly made with the scratchy-scratchy motion instead.  Classy chick.
      “I am wet.  Can’t really get much wetter.”
      She nodded sickly in agreement.  “I’m sorry,” she said and covered her nose and mouth, unable to take the stink anymore.  I guess class can only hold out for so long.
      “After you,” I said.  I could feel my ears burn with embarrassment as I turned and followed her up the stairs. 
       By my best estimation, she was about my age, maybe a bit younger.  Everything about her screamed ‘out of place’.  For starters, she was in a dark blue suit that looked like it cost more than the combined wardrobe of everyone else in the bar.  Her dark, curly hair was cut in a perfect bob.  Most of our regulars looked like their hair was styled by a lunatic with a Weed Whacker.
      In other words: The Cellar’s clientele is of a certain type.  And she wasn’t it.  For fuck’s sake, she was in a suit.
      Whatever color your collar might be – blue or white – in Boston, you stick with a crowd that shares your wardrobe.  The city's got a class line as sharp as a glass scalpel and wider than Paris Hilton’s legs.  The old money, reaching back generations, live up on Beacon Hill and the North End.  They summer in places like Newport and the Berkshires.  For the rest of us, summer isn’t a verb.  They don’t mix with me and mine. 
      They see me and mine as a pack of low-class mooks.  We see them as a bunch of rich bitch pansies.  Kelly Reese’s collar was so white it glowed.  Still, it didn’t keep me from checking out her ass as she walked up the stairs ahead of me.  Ogling knows no economic boundaries.
      “Want to sit down here?”  I indicated a table at the end of the bar.
      “Is there anyplace quieter?  More private?”  She asked, wincing at the volume of the Dropkick Murphys track bellowing from the jukebox.
      “Don’t worry about it.  Nobody else can hear us over the music.”  As it was, I could barely hear her.
      “This-- This is fine, then.”  She looked around the room like she’d found herself on the wrong side of the fence at the zoo. 
      I sat in the gunslinger seat, back to the wall.  She rested her hands on the tabletop but quickly pulled them back and placed them on her lap with a sick expression.  The table was sticky and dirty, but there probably wasn’t a cleaner one in the place.  Princess would just have to make do.  She wasn’t a fish out of water.  She was a fish on Jupiter.
      “Would you like a beer?” 
      She smiled nervously.  “Uh, sure.  Bud?”  She said Bud as though it were a new foreign tongue.  I waved at the waitress. 
      Patty gave me the one-minute finger as she downed a shot with a table full of middle-aged punk rockers, then walked over to us.  “Whatcha need, hon?” 
      “Two Buds and a shot of Beam.” 
      Patty wrinkled her nose and looked around.  “Christ, what the hell is that stench?”  She leaned closer, following her nose down to me.  “Damn, Boo.  You been washing your clothes in a toilet again?”  She waved the air away from her face dramatically with her checkbook.
      “Yeah, Patty.  Thanks.  Thanks for the input,” I said, as she walked off to get the drinks.
      Ms. Reese raised an eyebrow.  “Boo?”  Was it a tiny smile or a smirk that touched on her face?
      “Long story.”  I said and quickly got up from the table.  Mostly because I didn’t feel like explaining my life story right there and then.  “I’ll be right back,”
      Fast as I could, I ran up the flight of stairs to the 4DC Security office.  And by ‘office’, I mean the space next to liquor storage, complete with desk, separate phone line and one dangling light bulb.  All the comforts of home - if home was a Guatemalan prison.
      In our desk, me and Junior kept spare sets of clothes just for such emergencies, though our usual emergencies involved bloodstains. 
      I stripped out of my foul clothes and into a clean pair of jeans and black t-shirt.  I still reeked, but the change of outfit managed to cut it down significantly.  I made up for it with an Irish shower.  Junior kept a pint of Drakkar in his drawer and I splashed a little on for cover.  I hate cologne.  I was trading in smelling like a bum for stinking like a whore, but it was a step up.  For final insurance, I cracked a bottle of Creme de Menthe and gargled, spitting into the wastebasket while quietly resenting Ms. Kelly Reese for making me give a shit.
      When I walked back into the bar, I saw Junior doing his best seductive lean-in on Kelly. 
      God have mercy on our souls.
      I hurried over and caught the tail end of one of Junior's knee-slappers.  “And the farmer says, ‘That’s the fourth faggot rooster I bought this month!’”  Junior cracked up while Ms. Reese tried her best not to look completely horrified. 
      “Good one, Junior,” I said and clapped him on the back.  “I’ll take it from here.”
      “Huh?  My bad.  Didn’t know I was stepping on toes here.”  Classy as always, Junior winked at her with as much subtlety as a bear on a unicycle.  Kelly gagged on her beer, albeit daintily.  She wouldn’t have lasted another minute in that bar by her lonesome.  “By the way, Boo, we need another bottle of Johnny Blue at the bar.  It just came in with the Bud,” he said, nodding to the bottle in Kelly’s hand. 
      Well, pinch my ass and call me dimples, but Ms. Reese just got a whole helluva lot more interesting.
      There was no Johnny Walker Blue sold at The Cellar.  It would have been like offering Kobe beef at Taco Bell.  Johnny Blue was our code word for police presence.  Wherever the bottle was needed was where the cop was.   In other words, Junior just informed me that our little Ms. Reese wasn’t alone.
      I didn’t have to look at the bar itself.  From where I sat, I could see the entire room reflected in the long mirror running across the far wall.  He blended better than the prom queen across the table from me, but I still knew right away who Junior was talking about.  Big guy, roughly in his fifties.  He sat nursing a beer and stared straight ahead, all the while watching our table out of the corner of his eye.  I might not have noticed if I hadn’t been alerted to the fact.  He had a white beezer haircut and an old black nylon jacket on despite the heat, which also told me he was packing.  His air was ‘don’t fuck with’.  Old school tough.  What the hell was going on?
      “You got this covered?”  Junior asked, tipping his head back towards the bar and the cop.
      “Yeah.”  I nodded.  “Somebody’s gotta be downstairs.  I got it up here.”
      “You sure?”  I knew he was only about a third concerned about the actual situation.  The other two-thirds were curiosity and just plain nosiness.
      “I got it,” I said, a little bit firmer.
      Junior muttered as he headed back towards the basement.  All I caught was something about ‘little bastards’ and of slapping the shit out of them.
      I checked the cop one more time before I turned my full attention back to Ms. Reese.  A casual observer might not have read cop, but Junior and I had tells that we honed from years of keeping lookouts.  For one thing, cops and mobsters tended to walk the same way.  They both strut with an ‘above the law’ posture.  Other tells differentiate the two.  No mobster I’d ever met would be caught dead in that jacket.  They were both trouble - but in my world, cops were power trip tyrants with badges.
      I sat back down, my interest in the situation elevated.  “So, do you own a bar?”
      Her eyes widened.  “Excuse me?”
      “You said you wanted to hire us.  We do bar and club security.  That’s what people hire us to do.”
      “No, I don’t own a bar.”
      “Club, then?”
      “No.”
      The game of twenty questions was wearing thin.  “So assuming that you haven’t mistaken us for a ballet troupe, what is your business with us, Ms. Reese?”
      “Kelly,” she said, ignoring both my sarcasm and attitude. 
      “What?”
      “Please, you can call me Kelly.”
      Even that small offering sounded patronizing.  She seemed to be torn between disgust, condescension, and sheer horror since she walked in the place.  It was all probably unintentional, but it was crawling under my skin like a fat tick.
      “Okay, Kel, what’s your business?”  A little passive-aggression ought to do the trick.  Aggression-aggression is a bit more my style, but like Junior says, when in Rome, eat fuckin’ spaghetti.
        She fidgeted at my casual butchering of her name.  “My employer would like to hire your services.”
      “And just who might your employer be?”  I said, popping down my bourbon.
      “I’m not at liberty to divulge that at this time.”
      “You’re not...” I laughed loudly.  Intentionally a little too loudly and glanced in the mirror.  My outburst made a head turn at the bar. 
      Gotcha, sucker.
      “Let me explain something to you, Kel.  I don’t know whether you’ve seen too many spy movies or just have a hard-on for old noir, but I don’t work for phantoms and this cloak and dagger bullshit you’re feeding me is going right up my ass.  So you can cut the shit and talk to me straight or you can go piss up a rope.”  I stood from the table, ready to walk.  It was one part my shitballs of an afternoon and another part poorly repressed class rage.  Either way, it felt good to let her have it. 
      She kept it quiet, but she’d had enough.  Her voice shook a bit when she said, “I’m sorry Mr. Malone.  I’m just following my employers’ wishes at this time.  I didn’t mean to get you angry.”  She looked much younger then my assessment right then. 
      On the table in front of her was a small pile of napkin bits.  She’d been nervously ripping pieces off and rolling them into little balls.  She wasn’t just being snobby.  She was legitimately scared to be there.  And of me. 
      As abruptly as I’d gotten angry with her, hot shame filled my chest in its place.  Again.  Not something I felt too often, much less twice in an afternoon.  Can’t afford that luxury when you’re hired to be the house thug.  But this time was different.  I suddenly felt like a bully.  “Listen, I-- I’m sorry,” I said.  “You didn’t deserve that.”
      “No need to apologize,’ she said coldly.  Her eyes didn’t leave the table.
      “I’m not having the best day, as I’m sure you can smell.”
      Her lips twitched upwards.  Was that a small smile cracking the ice?  “I’m just here to find out whether or not you’re available for hire.”
      “For what?”
      “My employer's daughter has been missing for a week and a half.  He would like you to try to find her.” 
      I drained the last of my beer.  “I don’t know who you or your employer have been talking to, but that’s not what we do.  Like I said, we do club security and every now and then we’ll pick up a bail jumper for shits and giggles, but that’s it.  Hell, more often than not, we know the guy we’re picking up.  Missing persons usually go to cops like your friend at the bar.”  I tipped my empty shot glass at the cop.  The cop saw my gesture and closed his eyes, disgusted.
      She pursed her lips and smiled.  “Touché.  However, my employer knows that going to the police could mean getting it leaked to the media.  Unless it becomes absolutely necessary, he would like to avoid that.  My friend at the bar is just here to keep an eye out.” 
      “For what?  For me?”
      “For anything.”
      “I see,” I lied.  I didn’t see shit yet.  Although my ego deflated slightly that I didn’t warrant the singular attentions of her bodyguard.  “But as I said, we really don’t do that sort of thing.”
      “He’s just asking you to try.”  She reached into her briefcase and pulled out a cream colored envelope and slid it across the table.  “Here’s a picture of her and a retainer if you choose to take our offer.”
      I opened up the envelope and pulled a smaller envelope out.  It was unsealed but clearly held more than a month’s wages in bouncer gigs.  I hoped my eyes didn’t do a cartoon bug-out.  “Okay then, we’ll give it a shot,” I said, a bit too quickly.  Money talks, brother.  And in this case it sang a rock opera.
      I pulled out the picture. 
      It was the girl with the unnaturally red hair.
      I leapt up from the table, knocking over the chair and ran to the door where she had just kissed me on the cheek less than two hours before.  Junior saw my frenzy and ran over.  “Yo!  Where’s the fuego?”
      I stuck the picture in his hand.  “This girl was just here.  Find her!”  No questions asked, he ran back down to the basement.  I looked around the street in front of the club.  Nothing.  I ran back through the bar and out the back.  A few kids were hanging out there in a cloud of acrid smoke and quickly hid their hands.  No girl. 
      I let out that long and profane curse that I was holding in.
      I stormed back into the bar and over to Kelly.  “All right!  What the hell is going on?  That kid was just here.  Who is she?”
      The cop decided he’d had enough of the silent partner routine.  He quickly came over to the table.  “What do you mean she was just here?”
      “What the hell do you think it means, Chief Wiggum?”  I smacked the back of my fingers across the envelope.  “She was just here.”
      Junior came in through the back.  “Nothing.  There’s a few band members and a couple of groupies downstairs, but not this one.  Who is this?”
      The cop said, “Where?  Who was she with?”
      “Who is this?”  Junior asked again.
      “I don’t know,” I said to them both.
      “Then why the fuck am I looking for her?”  Junior asked.
      “Where was she?”  The cop again.
      “Hey!”  I yelled at the cop.  “Step off!  Until you introduce yourself, you can blow me with the interrogation.”  His face darkened, but he shut up for the moment.  “Junior, go back downstairs.  Show that picture to everyone down there and ask them if they know her and if anybody does, where she went, and who she was with.”
       Junior threw his hands up and sighed.  “Fine.”
      I turned on the cop.  “You.  Who are you?”
      He pointed a sausage finger at Kelly.  “I’m with her.”  Kelly just stood at the table tense and unsure. 
      “I didn’t ask you who you were with, pal.  I asked you who you were.”
      Veins bulged on his forehead.  I fought the crazy urge to press one and see if he’d pass out.  “Danny Barnes.”  He said his name like it should have meant something.  It didn‘t.  “And you’d better watch your mouth, boy.”  He meant it.  I suddenly remembered that the man was a cop.  And according to his bulgy jacket, probably an armed one, even if he was on my turf.
      “Good.  Thank you.  Now that we’re all introduced, why don’t one of you fill me in on what the Passion of the Christ this is all about.”
      Calm restored itself and the three of us sat back down at the table.  We made for a strange picture.  A smelly bouncer, a debutante and a middle-aged cop having drinks and a chitchat.  Probably nobody noticed, but I felt like a spotlight was on our table.
      “Question number one,” I said.  “Who is this girl?”
      Barnes answered.  “Her name’s Cassandra.”
      “Cassandra what?  Just Cassandra?  Does Cassandra have a last name or is she like Madonna?”
      I thought I could hear Barnes’s teeth grinding, but I might have imagined it.  “As I’m sure Ms. Reese has explained to you, last names are out of the question at the moment.  We need to respect her father's request for privacy.”
      “Lemme tell you something, I don’t need to respect a goddamn thing.  Ms. Reese hasn’t told me a whole hell of a lot as of yet, so why don’t you, Danny?”  I didn’t bother waiting for the whole ‘Mr. Barnes’, ‘Call me Danny’ bullshit.  He didn’t seem to mind.
      Kelly shifted uncomfortably in her seat but stayed silent.  Barnes had taken control of their end of the meeting.  She seemed more than content to let him have it.
      “Look Malone, you’ll know everything you need to know when you need to know it.  Until then, you’ll just have to make do.”
      I laughed.  “With what?  A first name and a picture?  Are you shitting me?”
      Junior returned from the basement towing a protesting kid with dreadlocks and bad acne by the back of his Mudvayne shirt.  “This little jackass was smoking a joint in the downstairs bathroom.  He knows the girl.”  Junior pulled another chair over and dropped him in it hard.  The kid tried to shake it off with a defiant shoulder rolling.  Barnes and Kelly looked at each other, no doubt wondering exactly how much the kid could give away right there.
      “What’s your problem, man?”  He said to Junior, feeling safer in the company of witnesses.
      “Look at me,” I said to him.  “Listen carefully.  You’re going to answer my questions and that’s it.  Now take a look at this guy.”  I thumbed at Barnes.  Barnes straightened up, confused at where this was going.
      The kid looked him up and down.  “Who, the cop?”
      Barnes frowned and went red in the ears.  I did my best not to chuckle.  Even Kelly turned to the wall to hide her smile.  So much for blending in.  Dumb fuck.  He must have really thought he was slick.  “Yeah, the cop.  If you don’t answer me, he’s going to drop your ass in juvie.”  I turned to Barnes.  “What will possession get a kid his age?  Three years?”
      Barnes finally caught on.  “Uh…five.  Minimum.”
      The kid’s fearless facade shattered.  “It was just one joint, man!  Please!  I don’t know anything about Cassie.” 
      Hell, just knowing her name, he had as much info as I’d been given.  “Relax.  What’s your name?”
      “Paul.”
      “All right, Paul.  How do you know Cassie?” 
      “I see her around the Square and stuff.  She was just here for the show.  What did she do?”  He meant Harvard Square, a traditional hangout for the young punk kids and skate rats.
       “No questions, Paul.  Answers.”  I thumbed at Barnes again.  Paul nodded quickly.  “Who was she here with?”  I opened my cigarettes and caught Paul looking hungrily into the pack.  Then I remembered the damned law again.  “I’ll give you one when we’re done.” 
 “I dunno.  I think she was alone. She wasn’t with that creepy dude she’s always going off with.”  If Barnes was a German shepherd, his ears would have shot straight up.
      “Who’s that?”  I asked.
      “I don’t know the dude.  He just gives me the creeps.”  Paul shuddered to emphasize those creeps.  “Y’know.  Slimy fucker.   Got that big snake tattoo around his arm.”
 “What else?”
       Paul thought about it.  “Real skinny.  He’s got greasy hair, black, that goes halfway down to his butt.  Looks like a rocker.  Nobody knows why Cassie’s hanging with that guy.”
      “Is he her boyfriend?”
      “Jeez, I hope not.  He’s like in his twenties.”  Paul leaned back in his chair, teenage cockiness back to full.  He realized that he had something we wanted and that information gave him an edge.  “Cassie’s a cool chick and all, but she’s a little flaky.  That guy’s just...I dunno.  Like I said, he creeps everybody out.” 
      “Good.  Junior?  Take him up to the office.”
      “Got it.  Move your ass, Weedy McTokesalot”
      “Get his number and address.”
      Paul panicked.  “But you said--”
      I put my hand on his shoulder.  “Relax.  It’s just in case we need to ask you some more questions.  Junior’s going to give you my beeper number.” 
      “A beeper?”  Paul looked at me, aghast.  “What are you, a Flintstone?”
      “We can still toss you in juvie, smartass.” 
      He mimed a key between his lips and turned it, but his pursed lips still held a smile.
      “If you see Cassie anywhere, and I mean at any time, you beep me.  Got it?”
      Paul snapped me a brisk salute.  “Got it.”
      “C’mon.” Junior walked off with Paul. 
      I looked over at Barnes.  “How much?”
      “How much what?”
      “How much are we going to be paid if we find the girl?”
      “There’s twenty-five hundred in the envelope to get you started.”  My heart did a somersault.  Twenty-five might not impress Bill Gates, but in my world, we were starting out on the right foot.  And that right foot was in a Gucci loafer.  “I’ll need to talk with my employer on a final amount.”
      “One more thing,” I said.  “I meet your employer.”
      “That’s not happening.  You deal with me,” Barnes said.
      “Ooh!  I’ve got an idea!  How about no?  I meet him before I do another goddamned thing.”  Barnes started to protest.  I cut him off.  “You tell him what you just saw.  You tell him we meet or he can go fuck a duck.  You know where I am.”  I got up from the table.  “I’m done.”  .
      Barnes and Kelly stood up.  Barnes didn’t offer me a goodbye handshake as he walked out.  I wasn’t hurt.
      Kelly said softly, “Thanks for the beer.”  
      She followed Barnes out without a second glance back at me.  I did the opposite and didn’t take my eyes off of her butt as she exited.  Then the low-watt bulb flickered over my dome.
      Sonofabitch.
      As I stared at her exiting skirt muffins, I realized that I’d just been had.
      Kinda.