The Palace Palms Motor Inn had no palm trees, and was the furthest thing from a palace Eddie could imagine. But the desk clerk took cash and didn’t make a lot of eye contact. The first night he stayed he pulled the Rattan chair to his solitary window watching the cars drive by, waiting with the pistol in his lap for headlights to shine through the blinds. He pictured a car full of heavily armed mob men spilling out and spraying artillery fire into the plaster walls.
He caught up with the blue Chevrolet outside the Julep the next morning. He locked the Buick a few blocks away and cut through the brickwork maze of alleys to a diner with a good view. Eddie sat nursing a mug of burnt coffee and a plate of runny eggs as the hours peeled away and clouds rolled across the sky. The shootout had reached the morning edition of the Tribune. It was staged as a stick-up turned ugly, catching Charlie Perkins in the chaos. Eddie could almost picture that chrome dome editor Fergus sweating out the details while his pockets were stuffed with Bernie Oliver’s cash.
Under the fold Eddie read the police were still on the lookout for him as a ‘person of interest' wanted for questioning in relation to the murder of Albert Jennings, more scare tactics from Oliver. The article printed a description but to Eddie all they got right was his name. The news jockey that sold him the paper hadn’t given him a second look so he either didn’t read or he didn’t care.
The Chevy eased to a stop in front of the Julep and the man from Eddie’s kitchen got out and stretched. He walked with his arm tight to his body, the telltale sign of a hidden shotgun. Eddie mopped up his yolks with a slice of bread and shot back the rest of his coffee. When he looked out again he saw a box truck with the Oliver Trucking logo pull in two spots behind the blue coupe. The Chevy driver stood under the awning smoking while a guy in a pea soup coloured suit scrambled down from the passenger seat. Eddie was sure he was one of the shooters from the night before, he could almost see the pockmarks on the guy’s face. The guy made his way under the awning and bummed a smoke. The driver of the box truck sat drinking coffee from a thermos, content to watch the rain beat against his windshield.
Eddie watched the two under the awning finish smoking and disappear down the same alley he’d bolted through the night before. He left the exact change and put on his coat.
Outside, Eddie snaked through a neighbouring alleyway and crossed the street a few doors down from the Julep, keeping himself stilted against the rain. The warmth from the diner evaporated into the smell of wet wool and last night’s garbage in the alley. He eased his way through the door the two men had disappeared into. Inside he hunkered back stage while he watched the two haul booze from the secret room behind the bar. Before leaving the Roadmaster he'd slipped the old Argus camera into his coat. Eddie centered the guys sandbagging crates of booze to the front of the bar and took a snapshot. He heard glass rattle as the guy with the bad skin and worse suit all but dropped his crate on the floor.
“Oliver hears you were mishandling his assets and you’re a ghost, Joe. Get the rest of this out to the truck, and try not to smash anything. Banner already cost us three crates when he worked that pinhead Perkins over last night.”
Eddie recognized the voice of the man who had been sitting in his kitchen. The guy was tossing orders around like loose change to beggars. Joe hefted his crate again muttering under his breath. “Yeah, right Bart.”
To Eddie, the name registered. Bartleby Francis, Bernie Oliver’s trigger finger. Eddie made sure to get him in the frame along with the writing on the crates. He replaced the camera and bled through the shadows until he was back in the rain making his way toward the Roadmaster.
Eddie followed the coupe to three more bars. The grime and dinge of downtown turning to glass and skyscrapers as he drove through the right side of the tracks. Buildings sneered at him through the windshield and Eddie felt like a sore thumb in his billed cap, second-hand vest, and open collar.
Bart pulled to the curb in front of Esposito’s Supper Club. Eddie found an underground parking garage and parted with an extra fiver to give the kid valet amnesia in case anyone came sniffing around.
Eddie leaned against a pole and watched another Oliver box truck pull in to the rear shipping doors. Beside the building, a green dumpster sat underneath a balcony. Eddie climbed on top of it and hoisted his way up gripping the wrought iron railing. He took his wet cap off and covered his fist with it, popping a jab that shattered a pane of glass in one of the french doors. He carefully reached in and unlocked it.
Esposito’s wouldn’t open until the early afternoon, so the place was empty except for the crooks running through it like rats. Eddie could hear voices through the wall answering phones and taking bets on football. The room he broke into was dark, the solitary wood desk empty save for an ancient-looking Underwood typewriter and pages of shipping orders neatly stacked beside it. Eddie bet the pages were doctored and the locked drawer at the bottom of the desk held the real books, the ones where the crates of illegal hooch were marked down.
Next to the office a service elevator took him to the kitchen on the first floor and then to a private room in the basement. It was a banquet hall closed off from the roulette wheels and dice tables beyond. Eddie pictured it full of wise guys playing friendly while keeping an eye on their neighbours' gun hand.
He heard movement and slunk behind the bar, drew the Colt and listened. He heard the door latch and shoe heels clicking off parquet He chanced a look around the bar and saw Bart and two new goons moving an area rug aside and lifting up a door set into the floorboards.
“Put it there on the table, I want to see everything first. Bart said. “Last time they sent us a bunch of American guns. Oliver says it don’t matter, that he'll take what he can get. I say let those bushwhacks at the stills have the cheap stuff. My taste is a little more discerning. Italian, German, hell I’ll even settle for French guns, we can get the cowboy stuff elsewhere.”
Eddie heard wood cracking and nails screaming out of timber. The metallic bite of gun oil tainted the air and Eddie watched them drop a pair of machine guns on the table with a clunk.
“Beautiful. Almost better than payday.” Bart marvelled. “Here.” He reached into the crate and pulled out a pistol. “I’m taking this one as a finder’s fee. I gotta call Bernie. You two keep sorting through these, make sure they ain’t bunk.” Eddie watched Bart leave while the two goons started sifting through the crate. Eddie tried to shrink against the bar. He shot a glance at the elevator. He couldn’t make a move without being spotted. He felt goose bumps break out and unloaded the camera for insurance, quietly tucking the film into his sock.
“Coupla more a those eighty eight guns.” One of them muttered.
“How’s that?” the other asked.
“You know, what turned that fairy at the Julep into Swiss cheese.”
“Swiss? Ain’t they neutral in all this?” The guy’s chittering laughter filled the room like a stink.
“Leo Gorcey over there.” His pal remarked.
The two lapsed into silence save for the odd whistle or argument over who was taking a certain piece. Eddie listened for Bart to come back, but all he heard was the floorboard creak. When he looked over he had just enough time to take in the pistol. The barrel stuck out of the body like some exotic bird’s neck. Bart’s face twisted into a mask of anger as he swung it to collide with Eddie’s cheekbone, spinning him into darkness.
When he started to come around his mouth held the sour iron taste of blood, and he could smell the earth-like rot of rust. Eddie turned away from it, tried to swim back into the blackness he came from, but he couldn’t move. Red starbursts exploded behind his lids when he moved his head, he snapped his eyes open to get away from them. It was the second time in two days he woke up tied to a chair. This time though they thought to chain his wrists. He was in an office, across from a man with puckered scar tissue snaking across his cheeks and neck. The face was twisted into a jack-o-lantern grin and had a fuzz of deep red hair cut close to his scalp. The guy’s teeth were as white as his pocket square. He wore a dark grey suit with black stripes. He sat behind a desk picking grime from his fingernails with an ornate letter opener. Flicking it at a picture window that overlooked an auto wrecker yard.
Eddie shook his head, grateful the memories had stayed this time. The man in front of him placed the letter opener on the top of his desk. He rose and walked around to where Eddie was tied, pacing and looking from Eddie to the other three from Esposito’s stationed around the room. He was built like Eddie’s General Electric but light on the heel. The more Eddie watched, the more he was sure the guy knew something about Margaret, and it wasn’t something Eddie wanted to hear.
I told you to leave it alone, warned you against coming back here. This won’t end well. Eddie thought.
The man paced a few more steps before stopping in front of him, giving Eddie a look like he was a cat that dropped a wounded robin on the kitchen floor. “You know who I am?” he asked.
Eddie saw the guy standing in a woman’s living room, Margaret's living room. Eddie straightened up and met the guy’s eyes. “My guess’s Bernie Oliver.”
“Bernie Oliver yeah, you guessed it. Cept you want to replace Bernie with mister. Anyone calls me Bernie well, let’s just say they better throw salt over their shoulder.” His voice was a steady drone that didn’t so much speak as mow through sentences. Oliver paced a few more steps, shooting Eddie that same look that pinched his eyebrows and wrinkled his forehead. “You some kinda invalid or something? What? Too many hits to that mug?”
Eddie didn’t know which question he was supposed to answer so he kept his mouth shut. Oliver kept pacing, his heels thudding off the floor filling the silence. “You know you’re the only chump I ever seen didn’t get while the getting was good, lucky for me I guess.”
Eddie saw a cream soda bottle spinning in the sunlight, smelled a pine-scented breeze. His brain worked double-time to piece together when he last saw Oliver, and at the same time bury the pain that came with it. He remembered shouldering through a beige door, the wood breaking under his bulk. He remembered a picture window looking onto a parking lot. He remembered it was night, and then it wasn’t. He saw Margaret’s convertible.
In front of him Oliver kept pacing, his brows together and his jaw set. Eddie missed the knuckle dusters until Oliver threw the first punch. They collided with his cheek and a red mist draped over Eddie’s vision.
“Answer my question God damn it!” Oliver said. “Has-been chump. You want to turn your nose up at me from that tuna can rat hole apartment? Then creep around my bar like some spider the rain washed in? You’re nothing Banner, a gnat. A fly on the bottom of my God. Damn. Shoe.” Oliver slammed the brass knuckles into Eddie as he spoke, moving them back and forth like he was ironing a stubborn collar. Eddie spit blood and a few teeth onto the floor. He felt one of Oliver’s goons grab him under the chin. Through a swelling eye he watched what could have been the knockout. But Oliver was gassing himself, he was throwing from his shoulder rather than his hip.
Eddie heard the chair snap as his body writhed against the punch. He willed the chair to break, to be able to open up on Oliver with the animalistic fury growing in him since he woke up senseless on the boat. The red mist closed the corners of his vision. This is what he was running from, what his memory was trying to hide from him, but the city had coaxed him back like it knew he could take a beating. While the red mist closed in Eddie’s frantic mind offered up one last memory. He was in Margaret’s apartment. Bernie Oliver and a couple of gun hands were already there. Out the picture window he saw her red Oldsmobile.
Eddie’s voice was a match scraping across sandpaper as he asked the question through blood and bile. He knew the answer, but he had to hear it from Bernie himself.
Oliver stopped his onslaught. Wheezing through his nose while he ran his hand through bangs slick with sweat and pomade. “What did you say?” he breathed.
“Where’s Margaret Hessen?” Eddie asked in that same graveyard pitch.
“What are you, two times stupid?” Oliver looked up at the two guys flanking Eddie like they would have the answer.
In his mind's eye Eddie saw the Oldsmobile explode.
“That skirt’s worm food. You saw it yourself.”
Eddie sucked air and started choking through wet coughs. The complete agony of the heartbreak would come much later. Oliver threw his last punch and the chains took Eddie’s full weight. Eddie spun into darkness again as he took the familiar knockout nap. He could almost hear the ten count.
