Читать книгу The Painted Gun - Bradley Spinelli - Страница 13

7

I woke in the late afternoon and walked down to the Schoolhouse Deli to use the pay phone. Shelley had a name for me, Alan Punihaole—sounded more Hawaiian than Samoan—and a San Francisco address. I went home and waited out the evening.

I got out my World War II–issue .45 automatic pistol, a Colt M1911A1, and loaded it up, strapped on a shoulder holster, and slipped on a black blazer. I took a wooden box down from the top of the closet and found my first gun, a model 7 two-shot Derringer that I’d bought at a flea market many years back. It was a .38—a pretty big gun for a dainty little peashooter. I rigged it to my ankle with an old leather belt. I went rummaging in the kitchen drawers and found a box cutter—a simple razor blade in a small plastic sheath, the kind that you have to be eighteen to buy now that gangs are using them as weapons. I broke off the end to expose a fresh, sharp blade.

Around eleven I caught the last bus to the Colma station and rode the BART to Civic Center. I walked down 7th and onto a shitty industrial block past Harrison, almost underneath the 80 overpass. Punihaole was on the buzzer list, third floor. I rang the buzzer above his: Durkett. An elderly female voice squawked at me: “Hello?”

I tried to lower mine into a drawl. “Sorry, Mrs. Durkett, it’s Al downstairs, my key don’t work.”

“Asshole,” she muttered, but buzzed me in. Al seemed to make an impression on everyone.

I walked up the three flights and was happy to learn that his was the only apartment on the floor. I could hear a television humming quietly on the other side of the door. I peeked up and down the staircase one last time and drew my .45, then tapped the door lightly and stepped aside.

Fortunately, Al wasn’t a cautious kind of guy. He threw the door open and, not seeing anyone, stuck his fat face out. I shoved my .45 into his pug nose. “Get in, moron, and don’t make a fucking peep.” He didn’t. I shut the door behind us and locked it without taking my eyes or my gun off him. He was in his bathrobe but still started up tough.

“What are you, fuckin’ stupid? I know where you live.”

“And I know where you live, Punihaole. Shut up, and turn that TV up a couple notches.” He turned it up almost to blaring. Mrs. Durkett immediately started banging on the floor above us. “Not so loud, asshole, I don’t want Durkett calling the cops.” He shot me a wicked glare and turned it down.

The room was dingy, if not altogether filthy. The couch was folded out. There was another room in the back but I could see it was empty. “Where’s your roommate?”

“Kicked him out.”

“Why don’t you sleep in the back?”

He shrugged. “I like it out here.”

“That’s fine, Alan. Take off the bathrobe.”

“What?”

“You forget what this is?” I waggled the .45. “Take it off.” He dropped the robe, exposing Daffy Duck boxer shorts and a grayed wife beater. “Nice shorts, Alan.”

“Don’t call me—”

“What? Dead?” That got him. “Right. Drop the Daffys and lay down on the hide-a-bed.”

“What?”

“Fucking do it, Alan, I don’t have all night to sit around watching Seinfeld.”

“What are you, some kinda fag?”

“I bet you get by real well in this city with that attitude. You got it, Alan, I’m some kind of fag and I came over to blow you at gunpoint. Do it.”

His face was a pinched melon of embarrassment as he took off his boxers. The sagging rolls of fat just about covered his excuse for manhood. He lay down on his stomach, the couch offering up loud springy complaints. I put my right foot solidly against the back of his neck, holding the .45 steady to his nose.

“Put yer cock in my mouth and I’ll bite it off.”

“They teach you that in prison, Alan? Trust me, I have no such ideas. I’m just gonna cut yours off.” With that I took out the box cutter, snicked it open, and locked it in place.

His eyes grew wide as two moons and he was surprisingly silent.

“Now,” I said, reaching back with the cutter, “I can’t reach too well and still hold the heat on you, so please forgive me if I miss the first couple of times. Besides,” I grinned, “I’m a little clumsy with my left hand.” I pressed the blade to a fat thigh and he twitched and opened up.

“What do you want? Please please please, what do you want?”

“I want to cut your nuts off, you fat fuck. I don’t like being assaulted and I want you to remember that.”

“Please, anything.”

“Where’s Ashley, Alan?”

“I don’t know! You gotta believe me. I don’t even know who Ashley is!”

“Bullshit.” I made a clumsy swipe and grazed him, just enough to scare him. He was howling.

“I don’t know!”

“Quiet down. Who hired you to slap me around?”

“I don’t know that either! I swear it!”

I pushed the .45 hard into his nose, so hard that he turned his face to the side, and I reached over and quickly cut him with the blade again, higher up. He started bawling like a little girl.

“Talk to me, Alan. It’s way past my bedtime and I’m getting cranky.”

“Conrad hired me! I don’t know nothing else!”

“Who the fuck is Conrad?”

“The guy from last night. He just hires me when he needs some extra muscle or he wants me to drive him around—coz he don’t drive.”

I tapped him on the side of the head with the gun and reached over again, but he was already flinching. “Doesn’t drive, Alan. What, is English not your first language?”

“Conrad doesn’t drive! Conrad doesn’t drive!”

“What’s his last name?”

“Jones, C-Conrad Jones.”

“And who hired Conrad?”

“I don’t knoooow!” He was starting to squeal and looked like he was about to wet himself. He didn’t know anything.

“All right, Alan. Pull up your shorts.” I drew back a bit so he could look at me. His pupils were pinholes as he wriggled the Daffys up his fat thighs. “Where can I find Conrad?”

“I . . . I don’t know.”

“Where does he live? What’s his phone number?”

“I don’t know. I shoot pool in the afternoons at Hollywood Billiards. He finds me there.”

“You’ve never picked him up at his house?”

“No, I swear it. He’s super secret. Jones ain’t even his real name, somebody tole me.”

So much for trying Shelley at the DMV. “What else do you know about him?”

“Just that he’s always eatin’ and he’s always skinny.”

I knew that much. We were done. “You did good, Alan. I’m real proud of you. I’m gonna let you keep that little pecker of yours.”

He exhaled deeply and sat up, swinging his feet onto the floor. “Thanks,” he wheezed, devoid of sarcasm.

“But I need two more things from you.”

“What?”

“Number one: you owe me a favor. I don’t know what it is yet, but one of these days I’m going to walk into Hollywood Billiards and you’re going to say, What can I do for you, Mr. Crane? Got that?”

“S-sure. You got it.”

“And the second thing: don’t you ever”—I leaned in and hacked him a good one through the Daffys—“fuck with me again or I will chop your balls off. You’ll get man titties that make these”—I nosed the gun at his chest—“look buff.” He grabbed his thigh, bit his lip, and gave me the look of a fat kid who just had his lunch money stolen. “You tell anyone I was here and it’s”—I whispered close to his ear—“snick snick.”

I moved to the door. He had one hand on his wound and one over his wet eyes.

“Hey Alan,” I said, “Conrad called you Samoan, but Punihaole? That sounds Hawaiian to me.”

“What do you care?” He was blubbering.

“Al . . . this isn’t personal. This is business. You fucked with me, I gotta fuck with you. It doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. I’m starting to like you.” He didn’t answer but seemed to calm down a little. “Seriously. Punihaole?”

“My mom’s name was Tuitama. She’s Samoan. My dad’s Hawaiian: Punihaole.”

I grinned at him. “So your dad likes big women, huh?” He didn’t say anything, but stifled a grin. “What’d you do tonight, Alan?”

“I—I stayed home and watched TV.”

“Good boy, Al. I’ll be seeing you.”

I let myself out.

* * *

I walked back to Market and down to Gough to catch a cab. No one saw me walk out of Al’s place and that was dandy by me. I felt good, almost too good, like I had gotten away with something but didn’t quite know what. I had crossed a line somewhere. I was in it now, there was no getting out. But since Ashley was painting creepy snapshots of my life, I guess I was always in it. The fact that I didn’t know what I was into no longer made any difference.

I sat on the left side of the cab and rolled down the window and looked out at my bay . . . I was becoming the part, I realized. I’d always been a quick study, and the way Conrad Jones—if that was his name—had worked me over taught me exactly how to get at big Al. There wasn’t a twinge of regret in my bones for the way I had frightened him, terrorized him, threatened him. Any asshole who hung around a pool hall waiting to get hired as a thug deserved what he got.

But I still had nothing. My only real lead—the gallery—was dead as Dalton. I didn’t know how Al and Conrad had caught on to me but it didn’t matter—Al didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground and Conrad wouldn’t be as easy to intimidate. He was clearly the brains of the team and wouldn’t crack easily. Al was just a big dope gone astray, but Conrad . . . something about the way he cut the canvas off the stretcher, the way he barked at Susan. . . He was the worst kind of man—one incapable of remorse.

I had the cab let me out at 101 and Grand Ave. and walked the rest of the way home. I chain-smoked until I was out, thinking about it all.