Tough Baby (Martin Fender Novel) (22 page)

He nodded. I’d known it already, but having it confirmed

didn’t make it go down any better. “Bingo visited Retha at the motel,” I said. “She deposited another five hundred dollars in her account last week. You think it came from him?”

“I suppose,” said Vick. “Stingy bastard, gave her less than I did. But why, you reckon?”

“She stumbled onto your secret, maybe she stumbled onto one of his. Maybe he tried to kill her because she wanted more money.”

He shrugged. “Nah, he ain’t like that, I don’t think.” He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Well, maybe . . .”

“Have you paid him back the twenty thousand yet?”

“Fuck him. He ain’t gonna get paid, neither.”

“Why?”

“He’s an asshole, that’s why.” He bounced on the bed, frowning, then reached for the Cuervo bottle and took a long drink. “You don’t seem too worried about it.”

He just giggled. I looked away. Something caught my eye— a sliver of light peeking through one of the painted panes of glass where it was scratched. I heard Vick giggle again.

“You’re not worried about being a big fat target for a double barrel shotgun?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean one of the guys who picked up the twenty thousand had one.”

“I still don’t get you.”

“I mean, you don’t seem to be scared of a guy you have every reason in the world to be scared of. He’s a guy who’s not known as a big fountain of patience and goodwill, yet here you are, going around to Antone’s with money just flying out of your wallet, buying drinks for people, and he hasn’t asked you to pay it back yet.”

“Way I recall it, you didn’t tell him exactly when I’d be able to,” he said.

“Don’t bullshit me, Vick.”

“You’re the one blowing smoke up my ass. You got something to say, whyn’t you go on and say it?”

“OK,” I said. “I’m saying that Bingo hasn’t asked for the repayment of your loan yet because it was him who hit you up for the twenty grand to begin with. I’m saying it was a dry run. I’m saying that he knew you were getting the hundred grand. That’s what he wants, and he thinks he can get it.”

“You saying it was all a ruse, to set me up for when I
did
have the cash, to see if I was ripe for blackmail?”

“I know it was, you know it was, and you know I know it was. First, it was too easy to talk him into loaning it to you, a guy he hasn’t spoken to for three years. Then, he plays ignorant about how well your artists have been doing, and one thing Bingo Torres is not, is ignorant. But what really gives you away is the fact that after you get the money from the record deal, you don’t seem to be too worried about paying him back, because you know he’s not really out any money.”

“Well, I didn’t know.”

“To hell with you, you knew.”

There was a sound, like a car door being shut. Ed went over to the window, peering down through a cracked pane. He said, “Why don’t we ask him? He and Roberto are walking up to the front door now.”

“Fuck him,” said Vick. “Fuck him and his twenty grand blackmail bullshit.”

“Roberto has an ax handle,” said Ed. “We might as well let them in or they’ll smash the door.”

Vick put one hand on his heart and the other on the Cuervo bottle, saying, “Oh, Lord, move over. Fat man coming through.”

&&&

We went back down to the guitar room while Ed let Bingo and Roberto in and led them back. Bingo looked around disdainfully, as if he were trying to determine the source of a bad smell. Roberto stood at his side, tapping his palm with the ax handle. Bingo polished the nails of his right hand on his lapel, then rested both hands on his hips.

“Well, Martin,” he said, “your girlfriend from LA is hanging in there. Who knows, she might pull through.”

“You’d better hope so,” I said.

“I didn’t touch her,” he countered, indignant. “She called me and told me strange stories that she heard around town. She told me she was going to testify in court that I was friends with this
puto,
this pervert with his nasty little hobby,” he spat. “And that would embarrass my family. It would also make my lawyers very unhappy. But . . . that’s not what we’re here to discuss, if you don’t mind, Martin.” He shot a glance at Roberto, who stopped tapping the ax handle in mid-stroke.

My back was against the window and Vick and Ed were more or less in the comer by the office door. Vick sat on a square red Marshall speaker cabinet. Light from the waning moon poured in over my shoulders, getting soaked up by the whites of Bingo Torres’s eyes and his white linen suit. Roberto wore the same electric blue suit, black shirt, and turquoise necklace, and I was thinking back on how I’d thought of him as a caricature of a ’50s East Side low-rider tough guy. But now he was a caricature with an ax handle, and that was a whole other matter. They would also both have guns and knives, but Bingo was too classy to walk around with his out unless he deemed it absolutely necessary. Or if he was in the mood. The rack of hanging guitars at their backs made strange shadows on the back wall, looming large and elongated, like hanged men.

Bingo extended his arms, drinking in the moonlight, addressing us like a CEO at a board meeting. “That is not what we are here to discuss. We aren’t even here to discuss anything, we are here to collect.” Roberto’s ax handle came down on the guitar display, hard, and wood cracked. “We are here to collect money.”

“Fuck you, Bingo,” said Vick. “Fuck you and your twenty grand bullshit.”

Bingo laughed. “I had to know you were ready to pay. You must have felt just a little bit of guilt, didn’t you, making all this money because of records I paid for, you perverted asshole.”

Vick snorted. “Whyn’t you cut your own deal with a major label, then, you think you’re entitled to it? Instead of trying to cut yourself in on this thing.”

Bingo puffed out his chest and sneered. “Because, it’s not a good time for me to have a big profile in the music industry. And, I am not after the twenty thousand dollars. I want all of it.”

“You’re outta your mind,” said Vick.

“All of it,” repeated Bingo. “I know you’ve got it here, or close by. You never did like banks, did you, Victor? Too bad for you, convenient for me. Are you going to give it to me, or do I let Roberto give you a taste of your own medicine?”

Roberto was ready, stepping forward, ready to swing at Vick. Vick cowered, wheezing, and Ed looked ready to do something, no one knew what. I cleared my throat, lightened my waistband, and came up with the 9 mm.

“It’s cocked,” I said, “and I’m pissed.”

“You wouldn’t shoot me,” said Bingo, laughing sardonically.

“You’ll sound funny trying to repeat that with your lips stitched shut and your veins full of embalming fluid,” I said.

I must have sounded convincing, because after a minute of hard glares and some spitting on the floor near Vick, they walked backward out of the store, got in the black Mercedes, and peeled out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“YOU LIED TO ME, YOU SONOFABITCH,” I screamed. “You lied to me, you lied to me, and I told you that you better not lie.”

Ed the Head looked bored, lurking again, rolling his dark marble eyes under his concrete brow. Vick lay nearly prostrate on the speaker cabinet, staring up at the ceiling, sweating buckets, breathing heavily.

“You knew Bingo was fucking with you and you used me to fuck with him back. You knew Retha Thomas was ready to talk about your little hobby with anybody who would listen, with the people who are prosecuting Bingo and with the IMF crowd too. You bought her silence with a measly eight hundred dollars and didn’t bother to tell her that Bingo wouldn’t be so easy to deal with.”

“I think I’m gonna have a heart attack, Martin. Don’t be hassling me like this. I’m a living time bomb.”

Ed scuffed along the wall, staring out the window, running his hand down the long ledge, stirring up the dust he’d neglected on his cleanups.

“This means I get the store, you know,” I said, realizing how petty it sounded. I kicked a speaker cabinet so hard it tumbled over. Vick whimpered with shock.

“I really think I could stuff both of you in a trash dumpster and set it on fire and not look back or lose any sleep. The whole reason I’ve sullied myself with you two is that I wanted to know what happened to Retha Thomas. I had this feeling that you tried to kill her, or got someone else to do it, or knew who did. I had this feeling that I could find out if I just kept digging away at the manure pile of your existence. But what do I find out? You guys didn’t do it, or you say you didn’t do it, and I half-ass believe you because none of you sincerely seem to give a good goddamn about her one way or the other. Ed the Head tried to poison her with one of his goddamn elephant downers and he even fucked that up. Bingo hates your guts on principle and wants your money because he thinks you sort of owe it to him and because he thinks you’re so despicable that he’s entitled to it anyway, like the neighborhood bully taking away a wimp’s lunch money.”

“Whyn’t you just lay off?” droned Ed.

“I really feel bad, Martin,” said Vick between gasps and burping sounds. “I think I might have a bleeding ulcer, too.”

“I sure as hell hope you do, and I hope you’re enjoying the pain,” I said. “Somehow you two clowns are responsible for this whole mountain of shit, even though your denial-addled brains can’t admit it. You and your little hobby that supposedly doesn’t hurt anybody—look what happened to Retha. Look what happened to Leo, look what happened to Donald Rollins.”

“That wasn’t our fault, man,” said Ed, suddenly a chatterbox. “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” I shouted. “I don’t ever want to hear those words from you two assholes again. You got me?” Ed shrugged. Vick let out a raspy, phlegmatic sigh. “Nobody ever wants to accept any responsibility in this town for anything,” I said. “No wonder nothing ever gets done around here, this is the laziest fucking town in the world.
It’s not my fault
. . .
It’s not my job . . . It’s not a good day for me, I’m going down to Barton Springs to go swimming
... Someday the sun will decide it’s not its responsibility to rise here, and you’ll all fucking freeze to death. But you’ll die in bed because you’ll keep waiting for noon to come before you get up.” They weren’t even listening. I didn’t even care.

“You think they’ll come back, with guns?” said Ed.

I leaned my face against the window, feeling the cool glass, pressing it harder till the nerves didn’t register the temperature, only the pain. “I don’t know,” I said.

At four-thirty they called. Bingo asked to talk to me. When I took the phone, a female voice said, “Martin. . .” Then, nothing but screams. It was Barbra Quiero.

“You like this cunt?” said Bingo over the screaming.

“Don’t you dare.”

“You like her or a hundred grand better?”

“I like her,” I said. “I want her to live.”

“Drive out toward my house with the money in an hour or I’ll kill the cunt.”

“I'll do it.”

“Good boy. She won’t be here, so don’t get any ideas. Somebody’ll stop you on the road and make the swap. Oh, I almost forgot. You know, we didn’t leave Vick’s empty-handed. Can you see your car from where you are?”

“No . . .”

“Well, you’ll find out. You’ll find out especially if you don’t bring the money. You’ll get a very bad reputation with your instruments, Martin.”

He hung up. The son of a bitch had my bass guitar and he was going to beat her to death with it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“I’m not going to argue,” I said. They looked at me like I was the one who was crazy. “Where’s the money?”

“It ain’t here,” said Vick.

“Bullshit. You’ve been practically waving it in Bingo’s face, taunting him with it, throwing it around at the club, and he seems to know you well enough that he knew it would be here. So don’t lie to me.”

Vick roused himself just slightly, propping himself up on one elbow. His face was mottled, dripping sweat. He smelled bad. His hands shook, and the blubber that rolled over his belt jiggled like Jell-O. “Look, Martin, whyn’t we try and wait him out, see what happens? Maybe I could call him back, try to reason with that motherfucker?”

I cocked the gun.

“Fuck her,” said Ed. “I don’t know this chick, don’t know anybody around here who fits that description. You, Vick?”

Vick didn’t answer. He knew I wouldn’t back down.

“The money,” I said. “Where is it?”

“Uh-uh,” grunted Ed. “Ain’t no way.”

“Aw, Eddie,” whined Vick, “I think we got to go along with him. Maybe we can get it back after he gets the girl. We’ll call the cops after. They’ll help us get it back. It’s our money, goddamn it. It ain’t like it’s drug money.”

Ed grunted again. I moved up and let him see me flick the safety button off the “safe” position.

“
Eeeeddd-dddeeeEEEEEE
?’’ pleaded Vick, trying to muster a tremulous imitation of authority in his shaky voice. “We
will
go to the cops after, OK?” His tone was sing-songy, like he was talking to a small child. “I can fix things, Eddie. They know me down there.”

“Come on, Vick,” I said. “We don’t have all night.”

“It’s in the lock box in the office, Martin,” he sighed, “but Eddie has the key.”

Ed growled, baring his teeth in an animalistic smile, backing away against the guitar rack. A couple of vintage six-strings rocked as he bumped into them, causing the shadows that had reminded me of hanged men to dance wildly back and forth. “Come on, Head, be a good boy,” I said.