9
It was just after five on the evening after my return to Portland when I arrived at the Great Lost Bear on Forest Avenue. The bar was buzzing, as it always was on Thursdays. Thursday was showcase night, when the Bear invited a craft brewery to let folk taste its wares, always at a discount and always with a raffle at the end. It really didn’t take much to keep customers loyal, but it always amazed me that so many businesses couldn’t work up the energy to make the minimal extra effort required.
I found Dave Evans, the Bear’s owner, marshaling the troops for the assault to come. I hadn’t worked there in a while. Like I said, business had been good for me in recent months, maybe because, like the Bear, I tended to go the extra mile for my clients. In addition, some ongoing litigation relating to the purchase of my grandfather’s old house on Gorham Road had been settled in my favor, and a lump sum had found its way into my accounts. I was solvent, and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Still, I liked to keep my hand in at the Bear, even if it was only once or twice a month. You hear a lot from people in bars. Admittedly, most of it is useless, but the occasional nugget of information creeps through. Anyway, my presence would allow Dave to take the rest of the night off, although he was strangely reluctant to leave.
‘Your buddies are here,’ he said.
‘I have buddies?’
‘You used to. I’m not sure if the word still applies where those two are concerned.’
He indicated a corner of the bar which was now looking significantly smaller than it used to thanks to the addition of two massive men in polyester jogging suits: the Fulci Brothers. I hadn’t seen them since Jackie Garner’s funeral. His death had hit them hard. They had been devoted to him, and he had looked out for them as best he could. It was hard for men so large to keep a low profile, but somehow they’d managed it in the months since Jackie’s death. The city might even have breathed a bit easier for a while. The Fulcis had a way of sucking the oxygen from a room. They had a way of knocking it from people too. Their fists were like cinder blocks.
Dave’s concern was understandable, therefore. But despite their appearance, and an undeniable propensity for violence that seemed resistant to all forms of pharmaceutical intervention, the Fulcis were essentially brooders by nature. They might not brood for very long, but they did tend to take some time to consider which bones they might enjoy breaking first. The fact that they’d stayed away from me for so long meant that they’d probably been considering the fate of their friend with a certain degree of seriousness. That either boded well for me, or very badly.
‘You want me to call someone?’ said Dave.
‘Like who?’
‘A surgeon? A priest? A mortician?’
‘If they’ve come here to cause trouble over Jackie, you may need a builder to reconstruct your bar.’
‘Damn, and just as the place was coming together.’
I worked my way through the crowd to reach their table. They were both sipping sodas. The Fulcis weren’t big drinkers.
‘It’s been a long time,’ I said. ‘I was starting to worry.’
To be honest, I was still worrying, and maybe more than before, now that they’d shown up at last.
‘You want to take a seat,’ said Paulie.
It wasn’t a question. It was an order.
Paulie was the older, and marginally better adjusted, of the two brothers. Tony, his younger sibling, should have had a lit fuse sticking out of the top of his head.
I took the seat. Actually, I wasn’t too worried that the Fulcis might take a swing at me. If they did, I wouldn’t know a lot about it until I woke up, assuming I ever did, but I’d always gotten along well with them, and, like Jackie, I’d tried my best to help them where I could, even if it meant just putting in a word with local law enforcement when they stepped over the line. They’d done some work for me over the years, and they’d put themselves in harm’s way on my behalf. I liked to think that we had an understanding, but Timothy Treadwell, that guy who was eaten by the grizzlies he’d tried to befriend, probably felt the same way until a bear’s jaws closed on his throat.
Paulie looked at Tony. Tony nodded. If it was going to turn bad, it would do so now.
‘What happened to Jackie, we don’t blame you for it,’ said Paulie.
He spoke with great solemnity, like a senior judge communicating a long-considered verdict.
‘Thank you,’ I said, and I meant it, not only because my continued good health appeared assured for now, but because I knew how important Jackie was to them. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d held some residual grudge against me, but there would be none. With the Fulcis, it was all or nothing. We had a clean slate.
‘Jackie done something very bad,’ said Tony, ‘but that didn’t mean he should have been shot down from behind because of it.’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Jackie was a good guy,’ Tony continued. ‘He took care of his mom. He looked out for us. He—’
Tony choked. His eyes were tearing up. His brother patted him on a muscled shoulder.
‘Whatever we can do,’ said Paulie, ‘whatever help you need to find the man who did this, you let us know. And any time you want us to step up for you, you just call. Because Jackie would have stepped up, and just because he ain’t around no more don’t mean we ought to let these things slide, you understand? Jackie wouldn’t have wanted that.’
‘I hear you,’ I said.
I reached out and shook their hands. I didn’t even wince, but I was relieved to get the hand back.
‘How’s his mom doing?’ I asked.
Jackie’s mother had been diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease the previous year. Her illness was the only reason Jackie had committed the acts that led to his death. He just needed the money.
‘Not so good,’ said Paulie. ‘Even with Jackie she would have struggled. Without him …’
He shook his head.
Jackie’s insurance company had invoked a clause in his life policy relating to criminal activity, arguing that his death had resulted from participation in a criminal enterprise. Aimee Price was fighting the case on a pro bono basis, but she didn’t believe that the insurance company was going to modify its position, and it was hard to argue that it didn’t have a point. Jackie was killed because he screwed up: he was careless, somebody died, and vengeance fell. I made a mental note to send a check to Jackie’s mother. Even if it only helped a little, it would be something.
The Fulcis finished their drinks, nodded their goodbyes and left.
‘You’re still alive,’ said Dave, who’d been keeping one eye on proceedings, and another on his bar, in case he didn’t get to see it again in its present form.
‘You seem pleased.’
‘Means I get my night off,’ said Dave, as he pulled on his overcoat. ‘Would have been hard to leave otherwise.’
I enjoyed that evening in the Bear. Perhaps it was partly relief at not having incurred the wrath of the Fulcis, but in moving between the bar and the floor I was also able to empty my head of everything but beer taps, line cooks and making sure that, when Dave returned the next morning, the Bear would still be standing in more or less the same condition as it had been when he left it. I drank a coffee and read the Portland Phoenix at the bar while the night’s cleanup went on around me.
‘Don’t tax yourself,’ said Cupcake Cathy, as she nudged me with a tray of dirty glasses. ‘If you strained something by helping, I don’t know how I could go on living.’
Cathy was one of the wait staff. If she was ever less than cheerful, I had yet to see it. Even as she let off some steam, she was still smiling.
‘Don’t make me fire you.’
‘You can’t fire me. Anyway, that would require an effort on your part.’
‘I’ll tell Dave to fire you.’
‘Dave just thinks we work for him. Don’t disillusion him by making him put it to the test.’
She had a point. I still wasn’t sure how the Bear operated, exactly: it just did. In the end, no matter who was nominally in charge, everyone just worked for the Bear itself. I finished my coffee, waited for the last of the staff to leave and locked up. My car was the only one left in the lot. The night was clear and the moon bright, but already there was a layer of frost on the roof. Winter was refusing to relinquish its hold on the northeast. I drove home beneath a sky exploding with stars.