The upshot of all this is that I don’t smile now unless someone I like says something to me that they think is funny. One of the people I like is too young to get my humour and the other is missing presumed dead.
It doesn’t really surprise me that no one is on my tail.
Still too early, I tell myself. Macey Barrett hasn’t been gone more than half a day.
Which hasn’t stopped Irish Mike sending a dozen texts wondering where his employee has gotten to. They start civil enough.
Hey, M. What’s the story?
Deteriorate a little.
M. You trying to be funny? M.
And by the end are openly hostile.
You report in, Barrett, or I’ll cut your forking head off.
Forking? Predictive text.
I don’t read any more after that.
I get to the club early, but hang back for almost an hour, see if anyone is making enquiries. Nothing suspicious. The only dangerous-looking Irish guy around here is me, so I push through the black leather doors. Jason is at the coat check shooting the breeze with Brandi, one of the older hostesses. I say older, but Brandi is barely thirty, which is just out of her teens as far as I’m concerned. Brandi has been angry at the world for about a year, since she had to hang up her stripper’s G-string and downgrade to a hostess job at Slotz. Forced retirement at thirty.
Jason is leaning on the counter with that fond faraway look in his eyes that tells me tonight’s subject is childhood memories.
‘I remember getting pissed on by my old man,’ he says dreamily.
Brandi shoots me a look like maybe she should hide in the coats.
‘Yeah, Jason,’ she says, rolling her eyes at me. ‘That sounds swell.’
Jason catches the tone. He’s big, but not stupid. ‘No. Nothing like that. It was a game we had, you know, two of us at the bowl, pissing as hard as we could. A race. Dad always let me win, even if he was blue in the face holding on. Sometimes there’d be spray, you know.’
‘Those were the days,’ I say sincerely, passing my coat to Brandi. Any good memory is a valid good memory.
Jason tears the foil from a protein bar, bicep bulging in his sleeve. ‘You got anything, Dan? Any good memories of your pappy back home in Ireland?’
‘Yeah. There was this one day when he beat me with his hand because he couldn’t find the shovel. I’ll never forget it, still brings a lump to my throat.’ I try not to be bitter, but it’s hard.
People are usually embarrassed when I start in on my father, but Brandi has heard a million sob stories in her years on the podium. ‘Jesus, Dan, lighten the hell up. This place is gloomy enough with Connie scaring away all the big tippers.’
Some of the girls are not opposed to getting frisky in a booth if it means an extra few bucks. Most of the guys, too.
‘Come on, Brandi. Guy licked her arse.’
‘You can say ass, Dan. You’re in America now.’
I sigh. ‘Arse is the last piece of Irish I have.’
I decide then and there to give half of Macey Barrett’s wad to Connie. Her kids could probably do with a weekend away; maybe they’d take me along. We could toss a baseball.
I’m clutching at straws now. Never look out the window in a diner.
‘Where is Connie? She in yet?’ I’m already seeing myself making the gesture.
‘No sign,’ says Jason, checking his teeth in a tiny mirror on the back of his phone. ‘She better get here soon, Victor’s due.’
Vic’s favourite pastime is docking the staff. Any excuse he can find. A while back he put a timer on the staff washroom, which lasted about ten minutes before someone set fire to it and took out half the rear wall. Still, gives you an idea of the kind of person he is.
‘Yeah, that Vic, what a prince,’ says Brandi with a sneer.
Everybody’s on the same page on the Victor subject.
Then the man himself stumbles in. Victor Jones, the world’s oldest white rapper, fifty-five, resplendent in a Bulls sweatsuit and cap, wraparound shades and gold ropes up to his chin. More than a stereotype; a cartoon stereotype. Simon Moriarty could spend the rest of his life analysing this guy. I’m surprised Victor doesn’t get beaten up on a daily basis.
Matter of fact, he looks like he got beaten up tonight. There’s a drool pendulum swinging from his chin, and what looks like puke in little triangular pools between the laces of one ruby sneaker.
Ruby sneakers? I mean, come on, man. You’re mid-fifties from Hunterdon Country. Have some self respect.
Brandi is all over the boss, plumping his shoulder with a boob. ‘Hey, Vic, honey. What’s up? What happened to your shoe?’
Hypocrisy is a survival skill in Slotz. Five minutes ago she was spitting on Vic’s name.
Victor bends over, wipes his chin.
‘In the. . fucking. . out in the. . I don’t fucking believe this. .’
He pukes on the other sneaker.
‘Hurghhh. . fuck it. . fuck.’
I am not too upset. To be honest, seeing Victor doubled over is kind of amusing, takes my mind off my own gangster trouble.
‘Get it out, Mister Jones,’ I say, winking at Jason. ‘You’ll feel better.’ And then I add, ‘Bejaysus.’ To let Victor know I’m being Irish and charming.
‘Yeah, get it out, boss,’ adds Jason, smiling so wide I can see the little diamond in his fang. ‘Musta been one of those kebabs.’ He shoots a few seconds of video with his phone.
‘Shut the hell up the both of you,’ gasps Victor, spitting into the puddle between his feet. ‘We got work to do.’
He’s up straight now, wiping the tears from his scheming eyes.
‘Okay, McEvoy, make sure there’s nothing sub-v going on in the club. I mean nothing. You find someone holding, toss ’em. Any of the girls doing side business, tell ’em to zip it up. Jason, I want you to make absolutely sure there’s no disk in the security camera’s recorder. If there is, wipe it. Wipe them all. I want us squeaky clean before the cops get here.’
Brandi is snuggling his elbow again. ‘What can I do, baby?’
Vic shrugs her off like a wet jacket. ‘You, baby? You can clean up the puke.’
Kissing arse doesn’t get you anywhere with this boss.
Then I register what Victor said.
Before the cops get here.
Why would the cops be coming here?
Connie generally parks her old Saturn out back and slips in through the delivery entrance. She’s not ashamed of herself, just her job, and she doesn’t want any of the cling-ons to doorstop her at the front sidewalk. The police eventually cordoned off a ten-metre square around the Saturn with yellow crime-scene tape. But not before I ignored Victor’s instructions and rushed outside.
Connie lay dead beside her car. One shot through the head it looked like, between her arched eyebrows. She’d struggled some; her blouse was ripped and her right shoe lay apart from the body.
I felt numb; it was too much. Sensory overload. My brain steamed as though it was packed in ice.
I’ll feel this later, I thought.
I was right.
Generally I’m not much for scenery. I don’t slow down to gaze at the stars, never rise early to watch the sun pulse over the skyline, but sometimes a picture gets etched on to your brain and you know it’s there for good. Always the violence, shit and misery. I barely remember my own baby brother’s face, but every night dear old Dad haunts my dreams. Three-quarter profile, hooded eyes, tacks of grey stubble, and me falling away from his fist, left eye filling up with blood.