CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ONCE AGAIN, THE AUTO shop was locked down. The radio had been silenced, and the lights around the two vehicles upon which Willie and Arno had been working were now extinguished, the cars standing raised in the gloom on their hydraulic lifts like forgotten patients on a pair of operating tables, abandoned by the surgeon for more deserving cases. Willie and Arno were in the small office at the rear of the premises, surrounded by invoices and scribbled notes and oil-stained boxes. There was only one chair, which Willie was occupying. Arno squatted on the floor, small and thin, his head slightly too large for his body, a gargoyle evicted from its pedestal. Each had a cup in his hand, and a bottle of Maker’s Mark stood on the desk between them. If ever there was a time for hard liquor, Willie supposed that this was it.
“Maybe it’s not as bad as it sounds,” said Arno. “They’ve been in trouble before, and they came out of it okay.”
He didn’t sound as though he entirely believed his own words, even if he desperately wanted to. Willie took a sip of booze. It tasted terrible. He wasn’t sure why he even kept it in his filing cabinet. It had been a gift from a grateful customer, although not one grateful enough to give a better bottle as a token of appreciation. Willie had been meaning to give it away for, oh, at least two years now, but he kept holding off just in case it came in useful for something. Tonight, it just had.
“After all, it’s not like we can call the cops,” said Arno.
“No.”
“I mean, what would we tell them?” Arno’s brow briefly furrowed in concentration, as though he were already trying to construct in his mind a plausible yet entirely fictitious explanation for some imaginary law enforcement officer.
“And it’s not as if we can go up there and help them either. You can use a gun, but I never held one in my life until last week, and that didn’t go so good. I nearly killed you with it.”
Willie nodded glumly.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Arno continued. “I’ll do whatever it takes to help them, up to a point, but I fix cars for a living. For what we’re talking about here, that’s not going to be too much use to anyone.”
Willie put his mug aside. “I hate this stuff,” he said wearily, and Arno wasn’t sure if he was talking about the booze or something else. Willie rested his elbows on his desk, cupped his hands before him, and buried his face in them, his eyes closed, his fingertips almost touching across the bridge of his nose.
Arno watched his boss with an expression of tenderness on his face. It would be true to say that Arno loved Willie Brew. He loved him completely and devotedly, although had he ever chosen to say so out loud Willie would have had him committed. Willie had given him a place in which to work that was as much a sanctuary as Arno’s cluttered, paper-filled apartment. He respected Arno’s skills, even if he was scrupulously careful never to demonstrate that respect through either word or deed. He was Arno’s closest friend, the one to whom Arno had turned when his beloved mother died, the man who had helped him carry her casket, walking alongside him with two anonymous undertakers behind. He was the finest mechanic Arno had ever met, and the most decent of men. Arno would have done anything for Willie Brew. He would even have died for him.
But he would not die for Louis and Angel. He liked Angel, who was at least friendly at times in a vaguely human, nonthreatening way. Louis, though, he did not like. Louis scared him to hell and back. He knew that this was a man whom he should respect, someone of power and lethality, but Arno respected Willie more. Willie had earned his respect through his actions, through his humanity. Louis required respect in the way a panther did, because only an idiot wouldn’t respect something so potentially dangerous, but that didn’t mean you wanted to spend any more time in the panther’s cage than was absolutely necessary.
He recalled how Willie had spoken to him the morning after that first meeting with Louis. Willie had bought coffee and doughnuts, and the smell of them had been wafting from the office when Arno arrived for what he fully expected to be his last day in the auto shop. Willie had told him of Louis and his offer, and of how he felt that he had no choice but to accept it. That was how he put it, Arno remembered: he would take the loan, but only reluctantly. Willie was too wise to the ways of the world to imagine that such gifts came without conditions both acknowledged and unacknowledged. At the time, Arno had just been grateful that they would be able to continue in business, and he didn’t care if the guy offering the loan had cloven hooves and horns coming out of his head. That changed once he met Louis, and saw the physical form that was about to cast a shadow over what had previously been a regular business. Angel had lightened that shadow a little, but for many years Arno and his beloved boss had still been forced to work under it, and Arno was human enough to resent that fact.
Now Angel and Louis were in trouble, and while Arno knew that they had acted in response to what had occurred earlier, that they had no choice in the matter and their own survival, and perhaps even the related survival of Arno and Willie, was dependent upon their actions, Arno wasn’t so naive as to believe that, in the normal course of events, men with guns just arrived out of the blue to kill people because the mood struck. This was payback for something that had been done by Louis. Arno didn’t want to see Angel and Louis dead, but he could understand why someone else might want to.
Willie stood and began rummaging through the papers on the desk. Eventually, after a box of nuts and assorted unpaid bills had tumbled to the floor, he found what he was looking for: his battered black address book. He thumbed through the pages, stopping at N–P.
“Who you gonna call?” asked Arno, and then added, in a misplaced attempt at humor:
“Ghostbusters?”
A strange smile appeared on Willie Brew’s lips. It made Arno even more nervous than he was already.
“In a way,” said Willie.
Arno saw him pick up a pen and begin writing down a number: first a 1, followed by 2-0-7, and Arno then knew to whom they were turning for help. He poured himself another shot of Maker’s Mark and added a little more to Willie’s cup.
“For luck,” he said.
After all, he figured, if the Detective was involved then someone was going to need it. He just hoped it wouldn’t be Willie and him.
Willie went down the block to Nate’s to make the call. He was concerned that the feds might be tapping the line in the auto shop. He had even been worried for a time that they might have planted a bug in his office, but despite the filth and the general clutter of his workplace Willie knew every inch of it intimately, and the slightest change in his environment would have been immediately apparent to him. The phone was another matter. He knew from watching HBO that they no longer needed to stick little devices in the receiver. This wasn’t the Cold War. They could probably tell what you had for lunch just by pointing a gizmo at your belly. Willie was particularly cautious about cellphones, ever since Louis had informed him of just how easily they could be tracked and their communications intercepted. Louis had explained to him how a cellphone acts like a little electronic beacon, even when powered off, so that its owner’s position could be pinpointed at any time. The only way to render yourself invisible was to take out the battery. That bothered Willie more than anything else, the idea that his every move might be tracked by unseen watchers in a bunker somewhere. Willie wasn’t about to head off to Montana and live in a compound with guys who watched Triumph of the Will to get off, but equally he didn’t see any point in making things easier for the government than they already were. It wasn’t like Willie was a spy, it was just that he didn’t much care for the idea of people eavesdropping on anything he might have to say, however inconsequential it might be, or monitoring his movements, and his involvement with Louis had made him realize that he could become, however tangentially, a target for any investigation that might focus on his business partner, so it paid to be careful.
Nate raised a hand in greeting to Willie when he entered the bar, but Willie merely grimaced in response.
“What can I get you?” asked Nate.
“I need to use your phone,” said Willie. There was a crowd of loud young women at the back of the bar, where the public phone stood close to the men’s room, and there was something in Willie’s voice and expression that told Nate this wasn’t the kind of call you wanted someone to overhear.
“Go in back,” said Nate. “Use my office. Close the door.”
Willie thanked him and slipped under the bar. He took a seat at Nate’s desk, a desk that, in its general neatness and sense of order, bore no resemblance to his own. Nate’s phone was an old rotary dial model, adapted for the modern age but still requiring the judicious application of a forefinger to make a call. The one time Willie was in a hurry, and trust Nate to have a phone that Edison could have built.
First of all, Willie called the answering service and left a message for Angel and Louis, repeating verbatim what the man named Milton had told him to say in the faint hope that one of them might pick it up before all of this went any further. Next he called Maine. The Detective wasn’t home, so Willie decided to try the bar in Portland where he was now working. It took him a while to remember the name. Something Lost. The Lost Something. The Great Lost Bear, that was it. He got the number from 411, and the phone was answered by a woman. He could hear music playing in the background, but he couldn’t identify it. After a couple of minutes, the Detective came on the line.
“It’s Willie Brew,” said Willie.
“How you doin’, Willie?”
“Uh, up and down, up and down. You didn’t see the papers?”
“No, I was out of town for a while, up in the County. I just got back this morning. Why?”
Willie gave him a summary of all that had happened. The Detective didn’t ask any questions until Willie was done. He just listened. Willie liked that about him. The man might have made him nervous for reasons that he both could and could not put his finger on, but there was a calmness about him at times that reminded Willie of Louis.
“Do you know where they went?”
“Upstate. The guy who warned us mentioned somewhere near Massena, someone named Arthur Leehagen.”
“Are there procedures in place for when something goes wrong?”
“There’s an answering service. I leave a message, and then they can pick it up. They’re supposed to check it every twelve hours when they’re away. I’ve done that, but I don’t know when last they called to check in and, y’know, it doesn’t seem right just to wait around in the hope that it’ll all work out.”
The Detective didn’t even bother to ask about cellphones.
“What was that name you were given again?”
“Leehagen. Arthur Leehagen.”
“All right. You at the shop?”
“No, I’m down at Nate’s. I’m worried that my phone might be tapped.”
“Why would someone tap your phone?”
Willie explained about the visit by the feds.
“Hell. Shout me the number of where you are.”
Willie gave it to him, then hung up the phone. There was a soft knock at the door.
“Yeah?”
Nate appeared. He had a snifter with two fingers of brandy in his hand.
“Thought you might need this,” he said. “On the house.”
Willie thanked him, but waved the glass away. “Not for me,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a long night.”
“Somebody die?” asked Nate.
“Not yet,” said Willie. “I’m just trying to keep it that way.”
When he returned to the auto shop nearly an hour later, Arno was still sitting in the office, but the bottle of Maker’s Mark had been put away, and instead there was the smell of brewing from the Mr. Coffee machine.
“You want some?” asked Arno.
“Sure.”
Willie went to a shelf and removed a Triple A road atlas. He opened it to the New York page and began tracing a route with his finger. Arno filled a mug with coffee, added some creamer, then put it by his boss’s right hand.
“So?” Arno asked.
“Road trip.”
“You’re going up there?”
“That’s right.”
“You think that’s a good idea?”
Willie thought for a second. “No,” he said. “Probably not.”
“The Detective going too?”
“Yeah.”
“Driving?”
“Yeah.”
“Couldn’t he fly? Wouldn’t it be quicker?”
“With guns? He’s not Air America.”
Willie considered removed his bib overalls, then decided against it. He was happier wearing them, and anything that lightened his current mood wasn’t to be dismissed easily. Instead, he shrugged on an old jacket over them.
“You stay here,” he said to Arno. “In case they call.”
“I wasn’t going anyway,” said Arno. “I told you. I’m not that kind of guy.”
“I just thought you were going to offer, like in the westerns.”
“You kidding? You ever see a Scandinavian western?”
Willie tried to remember if Charles Bronson had been Scandinavian. Actually, he thought that Bronson might have been Lithuanian. He was an -anian anyway, that much he knew.
“I guess not,” he said at last.
Arno followed him to the rear of the auto shop, where Willie’s old Shelby stood in the yard. It looked like it wouldn’t go two miles without shedding parts and oil, but Arno knew that there wasn’t a better-maintained automobile this side of New Jersey.
“Okay.” Willie nodded at Arno. Arno nodded back. He suddenly felt like the little woman in the relationship. He was tempted to hug Willie, or straighten the collar on his shirt. Instead, he contented himself with simply shaking his boss’s hand and advising him to be careful.
“Look after my place, now,” said Willie. “And, listen, if all this goes to hell, you close up and walk away. Contact my lawyer. Old Friedman knows what to do. I put you in my will. You got no worries if I die.”
Arno smiled. “I knew that, I’d have killed you myself long before now.”
“Yeah, well that’s why I didn’t tell you. That, or you’d just be bitchin’ at me for your cut all the time.”
“Drive safe, boss.”
“I will. Don’t pay any bills while I’m away.”
Willie climbed in the car, backed out of the yard. He raised a hand in farewell, then was gone. Arno went back inside, and saw that Willie hadn’t even touched his coffee. It made him sad.
It was a long ride north, as long a drive as Willie had ever tackled without a proper break. He was tempted once or twice to stop for coffee or a soda, something with caffeine and sugar in it to keep him alert, but he had a bladder that was ten years older than he was and he didn’t want to waste even more time by having to pull off the highway to relieve himself twenty minutes after he’d finished whatever he’d had to drink. He listened to WCBS until it began to fade, then found a Tony Bennett cassette in the glove compartment and let that play instead. There was a tightness in his gut. At first, he wondered if it was fear, but then he realized that it was anticipation. He had been coasting for a long time, living from day to day, doing what he loved but never stretching himself much, never testing himself. Willie had thought those days were behind him, that they were part of his youth, but he had been proved wrong. He patted the Browning in his jacket pocket. It seemed too small and light to be of use, but it also felt as if it was radiating heat, so that he could sense its warmth against the side of his leg. He tried to imagine using it, and found that he could not. This was a weapon for killing up close, and Willie had never had to look a man in the face when he fired off a shot at him. As for dying, he didn’t believe that he was frightened of it: the manner of it, perhaps, but not the fact of it. After all, he had reached an age where dying had started to become an objective reality instead of an abstract concept. No, the thing that worried him most was the possibility of letting Angel and Louis down, or the Detective. He didn’t want that to happen. He wanted to do the right thing. He prayed for the courage to step up to the plate if the call came.
Willie reckoned it was six, maybe six and a half hours from Queens to where he was due to meet the Detective. At least it was highway most of the way, so he maintained a steady eighty for most of the journey, and it wasn’t until he turned off 87 that the landscape and the road began to change in earnest and he was forced to slow down. Not that he could see any of it, but he didn’t need to be a psychic to sense the change in atmosphere from the interstate to the county roads. The highway kept nature at bay: it was six lanes of fast-moving traffic, and Willie had only a limited degree of sympathy for any of the roadkill that he passed along the way. But when he left the interstate for the smaller roads, his mood and perspective changed. Here, nature was much closer. The trees crowded in upon him, and the only light that he had to guide him came from his own headlights and the warning reflectors occasionally embedded in the tarmac. It rained for a time, and the drops looked like starbursts exploding in his high beams. Something flew across his line of sight, so big and close that he was certain for an instant that it was going to crash through his windshield. At first, he thought it was a bat, until he realized that bats didn’t grow that large, not outside of B movies, and that it was in fact an owl on the hunt for prey. He felt strangely elated by the sight: the only owls he had ever seen before were on TV, or in the zoo. Even then, he could not have guessed how big and heavy they appeared to be when in flight. He was relieved that he hadn’t hit it at speed: the bird would have taken his head off. Willie was a creature of the city, and of New York in particular. It wasn’t that he considered green fields merely to be suburbs waiting to happen. He wasn’t entirely without sensitive feelings. No, it was just that New York wasn’t like other states: it was a place defined by its largest city in a way that nowhere else in the country was. When you mentioned New York to most people, either American or foreign, they didn’t think of the Adirondacks, or the Saint Lawrence, or of forests and trees and waterfalls. They thought of a city, of skyscrapers and yellow cabs and concrete and glass. That, too, was Willie’s New York. He could not equate it with its rural obverse.
He realized that Angel and Louis had probably come this way. He was shadowing them, driving in their tracks. The thought seemed to renew his sense of purpose. He checked his mileage and calculated that he had only an hour or so to go before he reached the place where he was supposed to meet the Detective. He felt his stomach tighten again. The gun was heavy in his pocket.
He drove on.