“Winter again.” He shakes his head. “This fucking town.”
“I hear you,” I say, and run a towel over a glass that’s already dry.
He nods, starts to step away.
“Hey Lester, you got a second?” I try not to sound anxious, but I can tell it creeps into my voice by the way he narrows his eyes. He turns back, rests his forearms on the bar. He knows something is coming. You don’t get where Lester is without an eye for desperation.
I set the towel down, take a breath. “I was wondering if I could talk to you about a loan.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“There’s a…” I sigh. “My daughter.”
“She okay?”
I think about telling him everything, the cokehead, the locket, everything, but I know it’s the wrong move. Lester may hang around after hours, but that doesn’t make us friends. He’s a big man, a player, a very dangerous guy. If I tell him the situation, it’s the same as asking him to help directly. A bad play for a couple of reasons. First, he wouldn’t do it. Second, I couldn’t afford it if he did. Third, and most important, Jess. If something went wrong…
So I just hold my hands open and look him in the eye. He finally bobs his head. “How much?”
I force myself to say it. He stares at me. Sizing me up. Wondering if I’m for real.
I stare back. My daughter, my daughter, my daughter. The bar noise goes away.
After a minute, Lester scrunches up his mouth. “Frank, you know I like you. But ten grand?”
“I’m good for it.”
“Say I give you a friend rate, call it seven and a half. Almost a grand a week, and that’s just the juice. You stop eating, stop smoking, give me your whole paycheck, it’s what, five? So you owe a full grand the week after. One and a half after that. Just in juice, you understand, I’m not talking principal.” Lester shakes his head. “Sooner or later, I’d have to send someone to put your fingers in a car door. Can’t do it. I like you too much.”
I pick up the rag, start wiping the bar. Truth is, I knew what Lester was going to say. But I had to ask. Now there’s only one option. The one thing I said I’d never do again.
My daughter, my daughter, my daughter.
I rub the same circle over and over. “What if I worked it off?”
“Doing what?”
I shrug. “Whatever you need.” I look up.
Lester meets my gaze, starts to smile like I’ve told a joke. Then something creeps into his eyes, but I can’t tell what it is. He breaks the stare and looks away. “Come on, Frank.”
“I’m serious. You’re always saying you need good people.”
He turns back, and I realize what I saw on his face.
Embarrassment. Lester White is embarrassed for me.
“When I say that, I’m just, you know. Blowing smoke, playing around.” He shrugs. “You were a serious man back in the day, but now…” He waves his hand, and doesn’t finish the sentence, which was probably meant as a kindness. Except that I can fill in the blank: Now you’re a fifty-one-year-old bartender. That’s all you are. The days when you were anything else-an earner, a husband, a father-those days are gone.
There’s a lead numbness in my stomach that I’ve only felt a couple of times. When the judge stole five years of my life away. When Lucy told me the doctors had found a tumor in her head. When my little girl called me to weep into the phone and I couldn’t do a goddamn thing about it.
Lester is clearly uncomfortable. He breaks the spell by downing the rest of his scotch, then pulling his roll from his pocket. “Look, don’t think I’m a bad guy, though,” he says. “Let me help you.” He flattens a wad of money a half-inch thick, and snaps off three crisp hundreds. As an afterthought, pulls off two more. “Here you go, pal.” He smiles at me. Then he sets his empty glass on the bar and gives the tiniest nod towards it.
And, sick to my stomach, I reach for the bottle and do what a bartender is supposed to.
Usually a couple of guys would stay after I lock the doors, but tomorrow is Friday, so tonight I kick everybody out. Then I pour myself four inches of Jim Beam, light a smoke, and sit on one of the stools in the dark. Through the front window I can see the snow falling. When the El clatters overhead, orange sparks spray out to shimmer amidst whirling flakes of white.
I’m short ten thousand dollars, and I have until tomorrow morning to get it.
I get off the stool and walk behind the bar, punch open the register. Maybe two dozen twenties, twice as many tens and fives, and a thick stack of singles. Call it a thousand dollars. If I’m lucky. Taking it means losing my job, but that doesn’t matter a damn.
But it doesn’t matter, because a thousand dollars isn’t ten.
I crush my square and light another. Suck hard, picture the smoke twisting and curling into my lungs. I tap my lighter against the bar and I take a belt of the bourbon and I think about the way my feet feel like someone is scraping barbed wire across my heels and I watch the sparks and snow mingle and none of it helps relieve the thought that I’m about to let my baby girl down again, maybe for the last time.
And before I can think too much about it, I lean down, grab a couple of paper clips from the junk cup beside the register, take the bat from beneath the counter, and head for the front door.
Three in the morning, snow whirling from a sky stained pink with reflected light. The city sleeps.
I try not to think about what I’m doing. If I think about it, I might back out, and if I back out, I lose everything. So I just focus on Jess and the road.
It takes half an hour to find the right block. The house is somber against the sky. A thin layer of snow drapes the porch. I’d like to circle back to take another look, but I can’t be sure that someone isn’t watching. So I keep my speed steady, go two more blocks, then swing into the alley and kill the engine.
There is no silence like the middle of the night in the midst of a Chicago snowstorm when you are about to do something truly stupid.
I take a breath.
I take my Louisville Slugger.
I get out of the car.
I rifle through the trunk for the ski mask I wear to shovel the car out. Putting it on does nothing to muffle the sick-sweet odor of trash. I stick to the side and move carefully. The air is sharp. Snow crunches under my boots. My fingers are cold, the skin waxy and thin. After two blocks, I’m right behind the house. And sure enough, Lester was right.
Kids these days aren’t worth a goddamn, because there’s still no security cage on the back of his stash house.
Taking delicate steps now, careful not to disturb the broken bottles and chunks of concrete that line the sides of the alley, I move to the building. There’s no screen, just a solid-core door with a metal kick plate. The cold of the wood is startling when I press my ear against it, but I can hear music. Someone is awake. Figures. Twenty-four-seven, people want what Lester sells.
The door is locked, of course. But you don’t go down for a robbery beef without knowing a thing or two about locks. I bend one paper clip into an awkward tension wrench and the other into a scooped pick. My tools are clumsy, and it’s hard to work with numb fingers, so it takes almost ten minutes. But finally the cylinder of the deadbolt gives, spinning counterclockwise.
My heart is hammering my chest hard enough I’m afraid my ribs might crack. There’s no way to know what’s on the opposite side of this door. I could be walking right into the barrel of a shotgun. Even if I’m not, there will definitely be two or three guys in the house, definitely armed and probably jacked up. Tweakers aren’t known for trigger discipline.
Trying to remember the words for a Hail Mary, I turn the knob, pull the door a scant inch, and press my eye to the crack.