“We do. Two. Which one? Mister or the boy.”
“Some boy, I’ll bet, oh some boy. And he must be very proud of his pop too, or maybe the opposite’s true. And you must be of both. Everyone must. Whole joint. Well get me either. No, just the elder. Tell him Shaney Fleet of Mitchell’s Bar and Grill. He knows of me.”
“Hold on.” Comes back. “I’m afraid no one heard of you here or your grill. What do you want? You new? We didn’t collect your trash yet today? If you’re on the Northside, Mr. Fleet, it’s because we had two unusual broken axles in our main trucks in one day, so we’re far behind. Later we’re making a double run.”
“Listen, whoever you are. Who are you, just so I get a name?”
“Jennifer.”
“Well you take steno, Jenny, right?”
“No, I only receive here and answer phones.”
“But you can write, right? So if you please, get a pen and put this down to elder and boy and copies to Turner and Pete and whatever other upper-ups above your bosses if there are any. Ready?”
“No Turner and Pete. And I can’t write fast. What I’ll do is type, while you speak, though it’s not my job, but okay: shoot, but short, as I got to also answer phones.”
“Quote. Memo from S. Fleet to Stovin Private C.C. All you people will get back from him is trouble in the future if you continue hassling him which could mean broken windows in your garage, flat tires in your wheels, sand in your gas tanks and even a couple of cracks in your human heads. Because he’s mad as all anything — that mad. One fire in his apartment’s enough. One dead parrot in his ruins is too much. One almost burntdown building he lived in and several almost lost burnt lives is all there’s going to be. You getting this down, Jenny?”
“Most of it.”
“I’ll say this last part slowly. It’s the most important. And whoever’s listening on the extensions, steno this into your heads. Quote. Mr. Fleet likes his life all right but thinks it’s worth cheap. And you know he’s old enough not to go ‘Oh help I’m sorry but I’m dying’ or something or same time regret getting bopped around bad, but both for a good worthy fight if that’s how it has to be. Though he’s not such a dope to fight in a fight just to be in one, that you also have to see. So don’t tempt him please. Lay off. Do and he’ll about-face the police too. But that fire the other night is the next to last straw. He accepts that fire as the termination of the so-called garbage contract and nothing else, unquote, now you have that down or most?”
“The next straw. What was that?”
“Any way you want.”
“I have it all then.”
“Thank you. By the way, Jenny, if I can call you that, how can you work for such slobs?”
“You mean because we’re in garbage? It doesn’t come in here. We’re enclosed and the trucks are washed and disinfected every day.”
“I mean because they’re crooks.”
“They’re not. Goodbye.”
Police come an hour later. Different ones I’ve never seen before with a complaint against me from Stovin’s. “They say you threatened personal and property injury to them. What’s with you, Shaney? We hear nothing but great generous things from you at the precinct — from Brendon and Dom and Sergeant Lars. Stovin’s even has it that you had their receptionist type what you said were whole quotes from you.”
“Look at this.” I show them the note. “Then they phoned and demanded a thousand. You know what it’s about, right?”
“No.”
I tell them.
“So what’s it mean?” one of them says. “This your typewriter the note was written on and if so how come?”
“I could say no and you’d never know because that typewriter was in no better shape than my parrot and I’m sure they’re both now junked.”
“What parrot?”
I tell them. “But the typewriter’s mine all right. I recognize the marks. The i without the dot and the half of e and f, not that I used it so much. It was willed to me by a dead customer.”
“Hey Shaney, come here a sec,” one of the regulars says.
“Not now, Lance.”
“Not for a drink. What is it? You in a jam?”
“I said forget it, Lance, I’ll handle it okay. A misunderstanding.”
“You men are cops, am I right? I can tell by the way you’re sturdily built and your strong walk and hair combed down across your foreheads so neat and you plainclothes all seem to favor the more stylish synthetic leather belted jackets these days. I know. I’m in men’s clothes.”
“You’ve something to tell us, sir?” one says.
“No. Only there’s no misunderstanding between Shaney and me. He’s a great gallant — he’s the greatest finest most wonderfully thoughtful bartender there is — one from the old school, best they come. So anytime you need a backup for his good behavior or as a character witness, you see me.”
“Lance,” I say. “I said to stay out of it or get the hell out of here.”
“Shaney, what is this, what I say? I never heard you talk to me like that in ten years, and just after I said that about you to them?”
“Excuse me, officers.” I go over to Lance. “Look, I’m in trouble. Nothing I did but someone else to me. It’s related to the fire so shut up, mind your business, and here’s a free one even if you’re half-loaded already and they could pull me in simply for giving you another drink, just so you know there’s no animosity between us.”
“Never, Shaney, never. I told you he was the best,” raising his glass to them and sipping from it.
“I hate this trade,” I say to the policemen, “or am beginning to. I think all my father’s and grandfather’s frustrations and long hours and tiredness from the bar business, not to say bad marriages because of it, are coming out through me from their graves. Stale piss in hell,” and I pour myself a scotch. “I don’t normally do this, honestly, never till closing at least,” and I drink it down. “But today? Too many drunks. Too many Stovin’s punks. Too much lousy of everything. The works, the works,” and I pour another.
“So get out of it.”
“Where? And why my crying on you? And who’ll buy my bar with Stovin’s demands hanging over me and business this slow?”
“If it’s true, the business slow is one thing but don’t tell the buyer you sell it to the garbage part.”
“Can’t do. No heart to. My father would turn over. My grandfather would smack me twice a night in my dreams for life. My greatgrandfather — he handhewn and shaped the oak kegs that used to store the stuff — I never met him but I bet I’d see him glaring at me in God’s beard. I won’t even mention my lovely buried mother what she’d do. No. Once I get them off my back somehow or they traipse away and business picks up, though I don’t see why for either, I’ll sell, go around the world, get a job tending bar or on a ship — no, not that anymore, I’d get sick mixing drinks on the sea. Had it. I don’t know what I’ll do. Drive a cab. By the way, you fellows like a nip?” They shake their heads. “Don’t worry about Lance. That freebie locked his teeth. And I know how superclean police are expected to be today, and I appreciate and respect that fact, but you do work hard and dark hours and this is no bribe — you heard Lance. I’m old-fashioned, just my way — a drink or sandwich on me and you’re ready to go back on the street doing double your duty, or even some pickled hardboiled eggs? I make them like no one else. Maybe because nobody makes them anymore.”
“Double vodka for both of us, but in coffee mugs and with a little in it of that Mexican coffee liqueur to make it look and smell like black coffee.”
I make their drinks under the bar. “I won’t toast to you.”
“Good tact. Now, about this note. Why didn’t you phone us?”
“It’s my typewriter. What could I have told you that you’d believe? They got me going eighty different ways.”