Salamanders

by Pete Murphy

Chapter 8

The Wake-Up Call

Ollie’s Oilcan, Philadelphia, last year

I could hear them again, the rats inside the walls tapping messages to each other, scurrying up to the top plate and back again between the studs, trying to get into the room and tell the others, "Come on! Come on! I've found a way in!" There must have been thirty or forty of the bastards scrambling up and down the crumbling sheetrock tapping back and forth around the room like that: excited, anxious, louder than the roaches.

They'd been doing that for hours, trying to get at me. But I think: I've got them fooled this time.

I've moved into the closet, brought my books and beer in here with me. It's big enough for two mattresses. Wall-to-wall mattress motif. I was able to cut enough old mirror and glass to cover the walls and glue it up, grout the seams real good with epoxy and liquid nail. It looks a mess, but I know I've got them now. Let them try to chew through that.

They're still tapping, but louder now. Much louder than ever and only in the main room, concentrating mostly near the hall door at the top of the stairs, all out there now on the top step, given up on the walls and come up the stairs from the bar to eat through the door. Christ they're loud, banging like hell.

No. Quiet now.

Now a phone's ringing. Christ. Fuck they do, send a runt downstairs to call me up? Maybe they got a cellular. Let it ring.

It woke me up. Really was ringing. Shit. My head hurt. I rolled over, reached up for the knob, pushed the door open and crawled out. I grabbed the phone on all fours and collapsed back onto the carpet.

"This is a recording. Go away."

"Open the door, Oliver." Female voice.

"The check's in the mail."

"My name's Jessie. Connie sent me."

"Who?"

"Connie. You know. Connie? She sent me."

"No. Who're you?"

"Jessie! Now open the door! Please."

"I'm not getting up till Tuesday. My head hurts."

"I'll fix your head."

I didn't answer.

"I'll bring you a beer up. Ice cold."

Little bitch. I dropped the phone and got to my feet, managed to unlock the door and collapse into the chair before my coughing started. The chair was really more stuffing than fabric. Lotta stuffing. Nice chair. I was still hacking when she came in.

Pretty, in a beat up way. Rough around the edges, but the eyes were nice, hair past her shoulders if she'd let it hang, dull-blonde silky hair pulled back behind her ears with small red clips.

That was the first thing I noticed. The second thing I noticed was her little pink butt under the thin knee-length dirty-white cotton dress.

I rubbed my face with both hands, got in there real good with my fingers around the eyes, wiped out the tears built up from choking. Woke up, took another look.

About thirty. Sweet little thing about five foot tall. Petite. Little pert boobs. Nice legs. Sneakers.

Sneakers? Christ.

She picked the phone off the floor, hung it up, looked around the room. "You can go back to sleep now, Oliver. I'll move you if I need to."

"Fuck you doing here?"

"Connie sent me."

"Really. Why?"

She poked around, pulled the sheets out of the closet, tossed beer cans into a garbage bag, knelt on the couch trying to open the windows, gave up, checked my closet again, shook her head. "To rescue you."

"From what?"

"From yourself, I guess." In the bathroom now.

"I'm free enough. Go away."

She said "bullshit", filled a bucket, rummaging around in there now real good with a lot of noise. "Where's the soap?" she yelled, too loud.

I whispered, hoped she wouldn't hear me. "What kind of soap would you like?"

"Any kind. Something to clean this place with."

"Don't have any."

"Jesus." She came out shaking her head. "Gotta get somethin'. Connie what'd you do to me? Like it or not I'm cleaning this dump."

"Knock yourself out. You one of Connie's orphans?" I closed my eyes, heard her go down the steps to the bar. After a while she was back with a broom and a mop, another bucket, soap, rags, letting it all clatter onto the floor as she made the last step.

"I thought you said I could sleep."

"Ain't stoppin' you. Go to your closet."

I stayed were I was.

She kept talking while she worked. And kept talking, telling me "...thing of it is is that Connie figured, that is, me and Connie figured, that if we couldn't rescue you that we could at least try to rescue the apartment from you..." and on and on, that it really was a disgraceful act for a man "well into middle-age" what I'd done to this place and maybe they could embarrass me into leaving it alone and then maybe I might feel bound by this apparent fear of eternal life to punish myself by at least visiting the poor restless souls doomed to live every day of their pitiful lives outside my door forever, together, without the company of some "hermetically-sealed-middle-aged..."

"You pissed at me?"

"Everybody's pissed at you."

"What for?"

"Last night. Your birthday party. Downstairs." She looked at me. "You don't remember."

"No."

She kept on, moving the couch away from the wall to sweep, finding all sorts of stuff, saying something about a "middle-aged man still making the scene with magazines", throwing them all out with the beer cans, telling me to get my ass out of the chair so she could move it and being a general pain in my eternally doomed middle-aged ass.

Shit. Another phase. A woman with a phase.

She stared at me.

I told her to put the seat back up if she used the toilet and went back into my closet.

She yelled back I looked old, "prob'ly sit down when you pee!"

Sweet.

I shut the door and sprawled across the double mattresses face down, tried to remember the party. It would only come to me in pieces. A dark room packed solid with people half my age. People I'd never seen before. Loud people noise melting with loud music noise I'd never heard before. Shoving. Slamdancing. Broken glasses and bottles. A mirror shattering onto the floor, slippery with melting ice and booze. Broken lights. Shadowed faces. Pink hair. Purple faces. Maybe it was pink faces and purple hair. Strange people. And me cowering in my booth trying not to see any of it, trying to shrink, no one letting me, people with purple hair laughing while I cringed, not letting me shrink, falling into my booth laughing at my getting pissed at it all...

I fell asleep wondering what it was I'd gotten pissed at.

Ah wilderness.

#

I woke up, opened the door and froze.

Plants were everywhere: on the windowsills, the coffee table (fuck that come from?), hanging from the ceiling, on the nightstand. Three, no, four on the floor around the room in big plastic tubs, another one hanging above the bed in a heavy clay pot...how'd she do that?...another one over there. Fuckin' jungle. Everything clean. Scrubbed. Shiny things. Christ. Never knew I had baseboards. Place smelled like...Cranberries. Cranberries and lemons. The late afternoon spring air rolling in through the open windows felt cool on my skin and I realized I'd been naked sitting there talking to my little sweet maid. Shit. Well...probably enjoyed herself. Gone now.

Not my type.

I pulled on my dungarees, tee-shirt and deckshoes, went into the bathroom, sloshed some Listerine around my mouth to get rid of the cotton and was splashing water on my face when I looked in the mirror and realized a new thing about last night: I'd cut my hair off.

It was now only about two inches long with patches of crew-cut and near-bald here and there and a couple clusters of shoulder-length on each side. A big clump at the top stood straight up like a little worn out whisk broom. Made me look kind of...beat up, terrified. Puzzled. Taller?

I shook my head, found the scissors and tried to straighten it out the best I could. It was late afternoon. Sunday. I had to go downstairs.

See if I had a bar left.

I made it down around the tight dark staircase to the bar. That was as far as I wanted to go. My head hurt. I noticed, thankfully, daylight had crawled from the open door and into the vacant garage across the street. Little sweet-bitch was still here, sitting cross-legged in the display window with more of her plants, playing with charcoals and a huge sketchbook that overwhelmed her space. A few of the people taking the back-streets home looked in absently, but didn't seem to notice her in the window. Digger was mopping the floor. Charlie Pearle sat at the end of the bar near my new orphan, his long lean shoulders and back stretched in a tight arched stoop that bent the pony-tailed head back at an awkward angle toward the TV. Jim Lehrer spoke to him from the screen high in the corner:

"Noriega was charged in Florida today with being involved in international drug traffic. The fifty-one year old Panamanian army general was indicted in Miami on charges of accepting a 4.6 million dollar bribe to protect cocaine shipments, of laundering illicit drug money, and of providing safety for key drug smugglers from Columbia."

I pulled beer from the tap, took a mouthful, threw the rest out and got a milk from the cooler. Connie's orphan smiled at me from the window seat and continued her casual rubbing. Her fingertips were black. Digger shoved a stool across the floor loudly with the mop. Charlie Pearle didn't move. The place smelled like pine-oil.

I gave Charlie another beer, threw his empty at the trash can and missed. It clattered into the corner. Nobody spoke. My brain was trying to crash out through my temples. The orphan smiled again. I ignored her.

I let out a deep, loud sigh, reached for a can of beer and rubbed my head. Felt like an old cat.

"I've been around the block too many times."

Nobody spoke.

"Where's everybody?"

I slipped into one of the six booths. Charlie Pearle's head moved just enough to speak over his shoulder. His eyes stayed on the newscaster.

"You kicked them all out last night. Told'em don't come back."

"Good for me."

"You bore me."

"Hang out someplace else."

"I like it here."

"Then what is it?"

"A hundred thirty bucks. I'm drinkin' free."

"What's that mean?"

"Mean's you got new glass in the front door again. Wired glass this time. I'm tired replacing it. You pick up the pool table and throw it, maybe you'll break the wood this time. I doubt that. What are you, a hundred maybe forty pounds, six foot? Last night was a fluke. Booze strength."

"One fifty-five," I said, looking at the new door. "What happened to the door?"

He shook his head. "You don't know? You're losing it, Oliver."

I rubbed my head again. "Yeah. Losing something."

Charlie Pearle's head turned back to Noriega's army. "No wonder you've got no friends left. You need a cave to live in."

Silence.

"Must be something I drank," I offered.

Digger belched from the back room.

Silence.

I got up and moved behind Charlie, watched the screen. "Just didn't know anybody," I said, and stared at his back a moment then went behind the bar, got two more beers, gave him one, looked at him a moment more and went back to my booth.

Charlie Pearle pushed gently with his knee against the bar and went into a slow spin on the stool, pointed at me with the beer can.

"You know what you did? You wrecked this place. You threw a guy at the door. Busted it all over the place. Bloodied the guy."

"Didn't like his hair. Maybe he had purple hair."

"You were running around screaming 'Where do I belong? Which part's winning the race, my insides or my outsides? Where do I belong? Where do I belong?' 'Bout five minutes you were doing that. Finally the guy says you belong in a home and you grab him by the balls and the throat and throw him at the door. Shit, Oliver. Hit head first."

"I don't remember that. Thought it was a mirror."

Charlie stared at me.

"What the hell's all that 'where-do-I-belong' shit, Oliver?"

I sighed, drank my beer, watched Digger mop into the next booth. Charlie Pearle shook his head. "Guy was a contact," he said.

"A contact for what? F'chrissakes, Charlie."

"A contact. Somebody to know. He knows some people. Someday you might realize this ain't what you really want. You might need a few phone numbers. A few friends might not hurt you."

"More clutter."

"You give a shit about anybody? Who you got?"

"Pearlie, tribal loyalty sucks. People bleed on you. Relax. Quit looking for what's never been. This is it." I grinned. "This is it. Ollie's Oilcan. Forty five and still alive. Settle down. You gotta stop pretending."

"Pretending what?"

"To like the people you pretend to like."

Digger sloshed past me. I put my feet up.

"Digger, don't we have anything that smells better?"

"This smells clean." He didn't look up.

"Oh."

He shoved the mop hard under my table.

"You swept up the glass, Digger?"

"Yeah."

"Good ol' boy."

He sloshed harder.

"I need to get another beer."

"Yer stuck here."

"Digger, you're fired."

"Okay." He mopped toward the back room. Charlie Pearle turned back to the TV, stretched his shoulders back.

"Give us a pearl, Pearlie."

He drank his beer, pointed up at the TV. "Noriega's got the money, boy. Now they'll kill all the pawns, anybody who's ever, even unknowingly, had some small part in his network here. Twelve dead in Miami already. Three in California. Eight here in Philly. There's a hard scramble goin' on in this country, boy. In the network. It won't stop till there's nobody left with a finger to point at anybody. That's a bomb about to go off, boy."

"Where, Pearlie?"

"Here."

"In the potato chips?"

I could tell he was grinning. He spoke to me over his shoulder. "What're you, validating yourself?" He looked at Jessie. "He's a sensitive bastard. Cries watching the Donahue show. I've seen him." He spun back to me. "Here! America! The guy's got his teeth all over the country."

"It ain't here, Pearlie."

"Well, it's here. You know what I mean."

"Pearlie, you're paranoid. You got eyes in your soup. You got to quit passing nickel bags to bag ladies. The Panamanian army's got no interest in a middle-aged hippy. A little plant girl who wears sneakers. An ungrateful old nigger. Right Digger?"

Digger smiled, kept mopping. "Yeah, you ri' massah."

"Don't you see it, Pearlie? This is it. Capitalism. Servants. Sex. Conversation. Cable TV. Once in a while you feel something peaceful. That's what life is. Occasional peace."

Jessie smiled, watched the sun go down, rubbed her sooty fingers over the sketchbook.

Pearlie sniffed, shook his head a little. "We're part of each other, I've heard you say. Like it or not there are little parts of each of us in each other. That's what keeps us from killing each other, the each other part. That was you talking."

"Years ago."

"You cut your hair off f'chrissakes! You got that late-night-wet-head-at-the-diner look. No wonder all those old friends you used to think about so much ain't here. They wouldn't know you. Some people practice being old. You're past it. You're an old man already, Locke. On your way to dying."

"We evade ourselves."

No one spoke. A commercial came on the screen. Charlie Pearle was quiet. Digger watched me.

"Pearlie."

"What."

"It's a great life, if you don't weaken."

"Like laying down. Like death. Christ, Oliver. Aren't you just a little tired being poor? Don't you ever wonder about next year, and the next? I sure as hell hope I'm not sitting around here when I'm forty-five and still alive, hiding in a closet."

I rubbed my face hard, massaged my eyes, looked at him. "Too much hope'll drive you crazy. I'm just tired being tired is all. I just need to stop now, see what's here. I've never taken time to look. It's time now. Digger, you happy?"

"Could use a new mop."

We all laughed then, even Charlie Pearle as he went and reached up to the TV and turned it off and stretched again looking at the street begin to empty. We sat quietly for a long time and breathed the stillness of the day, tested the evening as it came to us, gentler now in our pine oil and our smoke.

I remember that. And remember soon after wishing I had somehow stuck ourselves in that. Pieces of my life had already started to die.

One by one...

#

Dalby

"You want something to eat?" Jessie asked.

I looked at her sneakers. "Like a spam casserole?"

She ignored me. Somehow she'd managed to cook something using the hot-plate and toaster-oven behind the bar and set me up in the last booth, far from the door. She knew where my office was. I sank into the cushion.

"Lima beans?"

"Eat."

"Lima beans?" I started beating up the pork chops. "Something's living in my mashed potatoes."

She fixed a virgin mary for herself and sat next to Charlie Pearle. We'd had no customers yet. This had been a non-profit organization for two years now. I saw no need to worry over it. I got the rent paid. It felt strange, comfortable. I hadn't needed to check life from the corners of my eyes for a long time. Spot-checking my backside was not a way of life for me now. It was a habit of the past.

Two guys drifted in, bought beers and moved to the little room behind me to play pool on the old table. The fan circled slowly overhead, whirred at us, bounced the evening air in slow motion eddies against the walls and back out the open door.

I raised my empty can and belched, stared at my plate. The beans were probably going to win.

That's when I saw him.

I had to grin. The olive-drab suit did it. Tailored well. A nice tie. Regimental stripe. Definitely class. Well-scrubbed. Pretty hair. Thin. Fuck's he doing here?

I switched hands for my fork, propped my right elbow on the table, leaned my head into my palm, shaded my eyes, buried a bean in the potatoes, patted it carefully. This feeling did not come easily anymore: Something bad was about to happen. I didn't like it.

My floozy friend came over with the beer. He passed behind her and into the poolroom.

"Maybe he's a chalk salesman." She wiggled away, giggled at her little joke.

I took a gulp of beer and strode the five quick steps to the bathroom door, slipped inside and secured the latch. It was smaller than my booth. I suddenly felt trapped and had to pee, turned to the toilet, finished, waited.

Somebody tried the door.

Her sing-song air-head voice oozed through it. "Prob'ly oc-cu-pied!"

I splashed a little water on my face, blotted it with a paper towel. The pile spilled onto the floor. I took a couple deep slow breaths. The anxiety faded. I was being foolish, decided five minutes was long enough.

It wasn't.

A fat greasy man in a baggy suit was leaning back against the table eating my pork chop. He grinned, pointed the bone at me. His teeth seemed too big for his mouth.

"You still hidin' out in johns, Locke? You wrap the wrong fish again?"

I pushed past him, shoved myself into the booth. "Fuck you doing here, Dalby? Looking to buy the place? Gonna open a boutique? Nice suit."

He cackled through his nose and stuffed himself into the booth opposite me, pulled my plate closer. He had an ugly grin, shoving his upper lip as high up under his nose as he could and letting his tongue slip like a dead snake between his teeth.

I lit a cigarette and watched the afternoon grays crawl to black.

He stabbed at the beans. "Ain't heard from you, Oliver."

I leaned against the wall, one foot on the seat.

"I went downtown to see about you,” he said. “You left your methadone program."

"On my own. I'm clean now. On my own. Go away."

"Nobody's clean, Locke."

"You're in the wrong part of town, Dalby. You lost?"

"This place ain't you, Oliver." He shoveled potatoes into his mouth. Dalby never had pretenses. He flaunted slob. "I figured bigger things for you. You were always a class act. Thought you'd make a good detective. I'd have helped you with the license thing you know, if you'd asked me."

"Well, I'm gonna open a new wing off the courtyard in a month or so. Chorus girls. Sinatra. Why are you here? Dalby..."

He cackled again. My orphan came over, stood looking at us. I motioned her away.

"I been missing you. You and your boys. Good crew. Smooth." Beans spilled out with the words. "Couldn't find you. Needed help, Oliver."

"Fuck you want, Dalby?"

He cackled, started to choke. I hoped it was the buried lima bean.

"Look, Dalby. My 'boys', as you call them, are guys I grew up with. Friends. They're not around anymore. I haven't seen them in years. I'm here, alone. I like it that way. You used to be somewhere else. Why don't you go do that again?"

He pushed the plate away, wiped his face with a sleeve, sucked on his teeth. "But I need you again, Oliver."

An incredibly stupid looking dog trotted into the bar, strutted to our booth, stared at Dalby a moment, then moved behind us and lapped water from a pot. He bounced back toward the door and stopped to look at Jessie a moment and wag his tail. He smiled. Jessie smiled back. Satisfied, he trotted out, skipped a little as he walked. When he moved too fast his left rear leg pawed the air three times quickly before hitting the ground, like a pumphandle. The other legs somehow paid no notice. He was deaf. We called him Crank.

"Listen, Thaddeus." I stretched the name out and watched him redden. "Six years ago I'm on parole to you for six months. You cook my capons real good and feed them back to Judge Zell."

"I got you off."

"Christ, Dalby, it was you got me on."

"So I squeezed a little. All's fair. I needed help with that West Philly thing. You did good with that. O'brien got eight years. Smooth. Put a real shine on my socks. Took you six days and you were off the hook. Favor for favor. You didn't have to visit me anymore. I missed you, Oliver."

"Well, like I said, I'm out of it." I hated this conversation, lit another cigarette. I pressed my heel into a rip in the cushion and tapped the table with my empty can. My orphan went for another. Olive Drab drifted back into the doorway, then out again.

"Thaddeus, does he belong to you? He's going to get mugged out there."

"Tibbet? My new parolee. He's my boy, now. Like you were, Oliver. Does all right. Too young, though. Not as good as you were. About griftin' people, I mean. He does all right. You gonna buy me a beer for the road, Oliver?"

I signaled to my new barmaid, gritted my teeth. "I hate to tell you to drink up and go Thaddeus, but drink up and go. I've got things to do."

"Should I be honest, Oliver?"

"Don't get a hernia."

"Yeah. Well. What the hell. See, we drift apart, we drift back. Like that, see. But it's a damn shame about Billy. Damn shame."

My head jerked up.

"I was real sorry to hear about that, Oliver. I know you were close."

Jessie set the beers down and left. Dalby babbled on.

"...one of your best boys. Good actor. Smooth."

"What about Billy?" Blood pounded at my temples.

Dalby faked surprise. "Oliver! I really am sorry. Guess it ain't hit the news yet. 'Course it ain't much for news."

"Fuck off Dalby. What happened to Billy?"

"Found him upriver at the ice-house. Been beat up pretty bad. Real bad."

He drew it out. I wanted to push the beer can through his teeth.

"Had two fingers cut off."

"Where is he?"

"I guess at the morgue by now. Somebody'd hung him up in an abandoned slaughterhouse." He grinned. "Billy got stuck up in a freezer with fence wire..." He leaned closer. "...by the neck."

I felt sick. My neck stiffened. I ground my teeth hard and held my head in both hands to keep it from rolling onto the floor. Dalby continued to gurgle words into the beer can.

"...said it was a real fuckin' bloody mess up there...somebody up there with him must've cut him down and removed the wire...found another guy in one of the other freezers...somebody'd tried to cut that guy's head off."

Dalby paused, letting it all creep into me. "Name of Otto Frosch. Somebody was real mad at these guys. You know this Otto Frosch? That one of your boys, too?"

"Never heard of him. How you know all this, Dalby?"

"Kiefer called me. He remembered Billy, knew I had some background on him, told him I'd check it out. I'm checkin' it out. What do you know, Oliver? Was Otto Billy's boy?"

"Never heard of him."

I wanted to quit this conversation with a sharp kick to his groin but needed to know more. So far all I knew for sure was Billy was dead and it was a mistake, probably his own.

"Kiefer seems to think you guys've been into some of your shit again, Oliver. He'll be looking you up. What about it? Who killed Billy?"

"Kiefer misses me too, I'm sure. When did this happen?"

"Couple days ago, maybe noon. We don't know much."

Dalby said "we" like he was still a detective. Six years ago he'd been kicked over to parole officer. I never knew why. Some said his female suspects were getting more than a plea bargain.

"You're gonna help me on this, Oliver. I stir this pot and get my shield back before I retire."

"Stuff your shield, Dalby. Pin first. Why should I help you? I'm out of this. I've been out of it. I'm staying out. I've got no tribal loyalties."

"You're full of shit, kid. You care who killed Billy. You're into it. I know it. You know it. I need all the crap you get on this. You report to me, I get you what Kiefer knows."

"A cop captain with sore feet."

"Shit. He thinks you're in the middle of it. You fucked up and got your own boy iced, Locke. He ain't gonna let you hide."

Dalby folded his lip up under his nose. "You're gonna help me, kid." He pried himself from the booth, shoved the table hard into my ribs, sneered. "You're next doors' dog, Oliver. I'll be lookin' you up. Believe it. See ya' in church."

He waddled heavily from the bar, eyed Jessie up and down. Tibbet fell into pace beside him as he shuffled into the street.

I thought - only briefly - about how much I hated the bastard. Only briefly. My legs were shaking.

Billy was dead.

The sun was gone.

#

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