Bodan Tom — real name, Tomski — tried taking some of the weight off his feet by pressing his buttocks against the back wall of the closet. But this meant he had to shift back a pace and rise up an inch or two on his toes, and he could only hold that position less than a minute before the leg cramps came back and he had to sag forward and feel the necktie cut into his throat again. Funk, that bum, trying to kill him, trussing him up like this. Trying to strangle him. Hands tied behind him and his necktie turned back to front and knotted to the steel clothes bar at the top of the closet.
Bodan Tom got his legs under him and relieved the pressure on his neck again. Man, his thighs hurt. Every time he moved, wire coat hangers jangled in his ears.
He was wondering if his kid brother Joseph was going to show up tonight. Sometimes he did, and they’d go out together for some cabbage rolls, a little borscht, at an all-nighter they liked. And sometimes he didn’t...
This was a hell of a thing to happen. You didn’t expect this kind of treatment from somebody you’d been doing business with for — what was it? — nearly two years? So what had gone wrong?
It had to be the result of Bodan Tom’s being too nice a guy. When you were too nice a guy, there was always somebody jockeying to take advantage of your better nature. Like Funk in the middle of the room tonight, waving his arms around...
The last of the loaners had been and gone — some putz named Yocum, or Yokum, who didn’t remind Bodan Tom of the country singer but of the cartoon character, the guy always screwing up, this time beating a bad debt so bad they’d had to take the guy away from the pet shop he ran, sirens wailing, in an ambulance, the animals back in the shop going nuts, the dogs yap-yapping, the birds squawk-squawking, the goldfish going glub, glub, glub like they were gonna break out of their tanks and flop after Yokum and tear the butt out of his pants. And even then Yokum hadn’t got the vig. He’d had the nerve to show up at the office almost a hundred and fifty down.
Man, it was hard doing business in these times.
And then Funk.
This guy definitely a piece of work.
Funk at the door putting his head in and grinning like he was there to collect for the Policeman’s Benevolent Fund or something, this guy who truly did believe in the spirit of giving — to him. Always on the squeeze. The thing about Funk, he was like a pain you don’t talk about, right there where it gets you the worst, and no ointment for it. But what could a businessman do? It was the same everywhere. You tried to get ahead, and you were always getting stiffed by the man. Call it grease, call it taxes, there it was.
Bodan already in a nasty mood, and Funk going:
“So how’d you make out tonight, good buddy? Business booming?”
“All the time,” Bodan Tom said, wondering what kind of a crunching sound you’d get if you suddenly kicked the door shut with Funk’s smirking head poking through like that.
“Glad to hear it, good buddy, glad to hear it,” Funk said, coming uninvited into the room and dropping his coat over a chair. “Like, with all this recession, depression, whatever the hell it is, a guy don’t hardly know where he stands any more, does he?”
“Recession is good for my business,” Bodan said; then immediately regretted saying that, steering away from it, saying, “My street business, I’m talking about. A bar isn’t really worth running any more, the liquor taxes so high, the drunk-driving laws so tight a man’s got to oil the fenders of his car to slip home at night. I had to lay two people off. The government’s killing my trade.”
“Gover’ment looks out for itself,” Funk agreed.
“You think so? I’m not so sure. The government, the only way it stays healthy is to let money move and change hands. When it slows money down, it hurts its own self. But it’s lost track. It don’t even know where the money comes from no more. From working people like me. It lost track of that.”
“Speaking of money changing hands—” Funk began.
Now we get to it, Bodan Tom thought.
“—what I was wondering, isn’t it about time for a raise, good buddy? Hey, listen, I’m working my heinie off for you out there, you know? Making sure your operation don’t hit any snags, know what I mean? New rules and regulations every day you need help with. And, hey, I haven’t had a cost of living adjustment in six or seven months.”
Three months, Bodan thought. And he thought, Cost of living adjustment, like you’re an employee or something, huh? He said to Funk, “How much you want this time?”
Funk grew a face. “Come on, good buddy, don’t take it like that. It’s business, that’s all. Hey, wouldn’t you turn up the heat on me a bit if our places were reversed?”
I would turn up the heat on you so high you would explode like a fat garlic sausage, Bodan thought, liking the image, Funk on a gigantic barbecue with a skewer through his duff and the superheated juices jetting out of him.
Funk ambled over to the desk. The way this guy made himself at home. Man, it got to you. Now poking at the canvas night deposit bag Bodan Tom hadn’t had time to hide.
“This the take tonight, buddy?” Funk hefted the bag, grinning. “I’d hafta say you’re right, this darn recession ain’t touched you.”
It was too much.
“Put the bag down,” Bodan Tom said.
“Take it easy, buddy.” Funk grinning and grinning, the bum always grinning, you wanted to do something about that grinning, reach out and take some teeth out of the picture. Funk squeezing the bag now, going, “Yes, buddy, this has been a very good night for you, I think. Now what’re these lumps right here? Lemme guess. Bundles of twennies? Fifties? Or maybe even—”
“I told you to put the bag down,” Bodan Tom said with a steel edge to his voice, and he was surprised to find that somehow the little Iver Johnson.22 Pony had jumped into his hand, didn’t remember deciding to draw it, but here it was, like magic, pointed straight at Funk’s smirking horse-jawed face.
Funk glanced up, saw the gun, and lowered the bag slowly and gently to his side with the good humor bleeding out of his eyes. Steel-edged hostility there now. But holding onto the grin, though, like his face came that way.
“Good buddy,” he said. “Here now, good buddy. What’s this? What’re you aiming that little rat-poker at me for? I thought we were partners, good buddy. Hey?”
“Not any more,” Bodan said.
Funk stepped around the table.
“Holy doodle. Lemme unnerstand this. You saying our partnership is all washed up?”
“You’re saying it.”
Funk shrugged. “Well, if I’m saying it... then I guess it must be true.”
He feinted left by tossing the bag at the couch, at the same time making a sudden lunge for Bodan’s gun with his big right hand, Bodan backpedaling and barely managing to get off one, two, crisp shots at the other man, thinking the slugs went home but not completely sure about it, Funk not even pausing but closing with Bodan and knocking the Pony to the floor.
Funk’s left hand swept up then and pinned Bodan Tom to the wall by the throat.
“You little garlic sucker, you tried to kill me. I don’t believe it. I oughtta break your neck for that.” There was blood oozing from a wound under Funk’s ear, and he pawed at it like a bear, glancing down and seeing the smudge of blood on his thumb and index finger. “You come close, good buddy, but I think you’re gonna hafta get yourself a bigger gun. What do you think?”