Shoedog (13 page)

“Come on,” Constantine said. “Let’s sit down.”

The men pushed two four-tops together and took seats. Polk entered the room with his arm around Charlotte, the two of them laughing.

“I ordered us a round,” Polk said loudly, limping to the table. “Connie, how about one of them smokes?”

Constantine tossed the deck of Marlboros to the center of the table.

“Hey, Polk,” Randolph said. “You know the man behind the bar?”

“Yeah,” Polk said, lighting a cigarette off the table’s candle. “I’ve seen him around.”

“He’s an Italian,” Weiner said, nervously touching his beret. “Am I right?”

Polk shook his head, let smoke stream from his nose. “He’s a Greek.”

Randolph said, “I’ll take that twenty, Weiner.”

“God-
damn
it, though,” Weiner said, reaching for his wallet. “I was close.”

A short, young Latino walked into the room carrying a round of drinks balanced on a bar tray. He sorted them out, served them, and left with a careless bow and a gold-toothed smile. The party lifted their drinks to Weiner’s toast. Charlotte and Polk returned to their private conversation.

“Well, anyway,” Weiner said, holding the bill out in his hand, “I can afford the twenty tonight. I hit at the track today. I hit pretty good.”

Randolph took the twenty, folded it neatly, and slipped it into the inside pocket of his sport jacket. “So I guess that means you’re buyin’, too.”

Weiner shook his head. “Actually, I spent half of my winnings already.”

“Spent it on what?” Randolph said.

“A gift for my lady friend,” Weiner said, his eyes reflecting wet from the flame of the candle. “Well, not exactly my lady friend yet. A young lady I met in the record store.” Weiner hit his drink.

Randolph nudged Constantine. “I do believe our man here’s in love.”

Constantine pulled on his vodka, ignoring Randolph. He said to Weiner, “What’s she like?”

Weiner smiled. “Like the girls I used to know, the ones I told you about. The ones who used to hang at Coffee and Confusion. She’s real hip, this one. Not beautiful, exactly, I know that. But she has it.” He looked into his drink, spoke quietly. “It’s been a long time since I’ve known someone this … clean. I’ll give you odds, she barely has a smell to her. I swear to God, if I could just touch that pussy, just touch it one time”—Weiner put his palms together, as if in prayer—“I’d die a happy man.”

The bar’s front door swung in, and a small bell sounded above it. A woman with pale complexion entered, looked around, and bounded down the two steps into the room. She wore a short black cocktail dress with a plunging neckline; her stockings were black, and her black hair had been teased and brought forward like the curl of a wave, frozen in the last quiet seconds before it hits the shore. She moved forward quickly, winking once at Charlotte, her purplish lips twisted into a warm, crooked grin, her arms outstretched.

Randolph looked first at the woman’s eyes, then he checked out her shape. His appraisal stopped at the black pumps on the woman’s feet: seven, maybe seven and a half.

The woman fell into Polk’s arms as he stood to greet her.

“Hello, Polky!” she said.

“Hey, Phil,” he said, kissing her roughly on the edge of her mouth. “How the hell’s it goin’, sweetheart?”

“It’s goin’,” she said, punctuating her two-pack-a-day laugh with a slap on her hip. “I looked in the mirror this morning and saw that it was going fast. So someone better take advantage of it, real quick.” She smiled, her dark eyes lighting on Randolph.

“The name’s Randolph,” he said, extending his hand. Constantine noted the velvet in Randolph’s voice, the same velvet from the sales floor, earlier in the day.

“Phil,” she said. “Short for Phyllis.”

Randolph ran a long finger along his black mustache. “Don’t look like you’re short on a
damn
thing,” he said.

Phyllis said to Polk, “I like your friends.”

“That’s Constantine,” Polk said. “The man in the cap is Weiner.”

Constantine and Weiner nodded at Phyllis. She tilted her head pleasantly and returned her gaze to Randolph.

“Come on, honey,” Charlotte said, rising to her feet and grabbing Phyllis by the arm. “You’re way behind. Let’s go into the bar, have a coupla shooters. We’ll come back in, join the party.”

“I’m ready,” Phyllis said, thrusting out both fists and doing a brief cha-cha, two steps forward, two steps back. She pointed at Randolph and smiled. “Don’t go anywhere, boys.”

Polk got up, followed Charlotte and Phyllis back into the bar. Weiner stood and said, “I think I’ll join them.” Constantine and Randolph watched him walk away.

“Looks like you got a date tonight,” Constantine said, “if you want it.”

“I might,” Randolph said.

“You like them like that?”

Randolph shrugged. “I just like ’em.”

The busboy came back into the room with a round of drinks balanced on his tray. He put a double vodka rocks in front of Constantine and a cognac with a side of ice water in front of Randolph.

“Hey, amigo,” Randolph said. “We didn’t order these.”

“You fren,” the busboy said, grinning.

Randolph shrugged, sipped his cognac as the busboy walked away. “I’m way past my limit,” he said. “You could stand to slow down too.”

“I’m drunk,” Constantine admitted. “But I don’t want to slow down.” Constantine lighted a cigarette off the table’s candle. “If you slow down, you get hit. Can’t hit a moving target.”

“Yeah, you the king of the drifters,” Randolph said softly, looking Constantine up and down. “And if you had a brain in your head, you’d drift the fuck on out of this town—tonight.”

“
You’re
in this thing. Polk’s in it.” Constantine blew smoke at the table. “I’m in it too.”

“We
have
to be in it,” Randolph said. “You don’t. Not yet.”

Constantine drank deeply of his vodka, swallowed, felt the cool sting of the alcohol in his chest. “Earlier today—you said Grimes had something on everybody.”

“That’s right” Randolph said. “Valdez and Gorman are losers. They stay around ’cause they got nowhere else to go. Jackson, he’s a loser too. Owes Grimes on a card debt. Weiner, he’s locked in on an old gambling beef as well.”

“And with Polk it’s the money.”

Randolph shook his head. “I don’t think so. I used to think, you know, it was that thing with his foot.”

“What do you mean?”

“Polk and Grimes,” Randolph said. “They were in the same outfit, C Company, in Korea. Got into some serious shit during the Korean offensive, east of the Chosin Reservoir. It was colder than a motherfucker there—Siberian cold. Subzero. The company got stopped at a blown bridge, at the base of Hill Twelve Twenty-One, on the way to Hudong. That’s when the Koreans attacked. C Company, Chosin—all that shit is legendary, man, the old-timers were talkin’ about how fierce that shit was when
I
was in the service. Well, Grimes and Polk made it over that hill, made it to the other side, and kept right on going, crossed that frozen reservoir to a place called Hagaru. By then Polk had the frostbite bad. The way I heard, Grimes carried him most of the way across the ice.” Randolph swallowed water, put the glass back down on the table. “They air-lifted Polk, took off damn near half his foot. But if Grimes hadn’t looked after him…”

“That doesn’t sound like the Grimes I know.”

“Friendship and loyalty. It means something, when you’re young.” Randolph sat back in his chair. “But Polk paid his debt a long time ago—he’s been in on these jobs, going back near twenty years. It doesn’t explain why he’s still here today.”

Constantine swirled the ice around in his glass. “What about you?” he said.

Randolph looked into Constantine’s eyes, then looked away. “When I first came up here, in the early seventies, I got a job as a stockboy, at this shoe store on Connecticut Avenue. My cousin was a salesman there at the time, and he hooked me up. Over the years, you know, I got to be a salesman myself, and a damn good one. My cousin, though, he just got further into that street bullshit, till finally he was into the heroin thing and out of a job. At the time the company was really doin’ it—we had ten stores, and we were moving some inventory. The owner, he wasn’t declarin’ most of the cash money that was coming in, and the way he turned it was to do cash deals with the New York vendors, for a discount on his purchases. He did this every second Thursday of the month. My cousin knew about it—he knew when the owner brought in the cash, and where he stashed it the night before.”

“Your cousin knocked the place over,” Constantine said.

Randolph nodded. “Grimes bankrolled the job. My cousin’s dealer—he owed Grimes a favor—hooked the two of them up.”

“What happened?”

“It was a night job. They came in through the skylight, at the office above the Connecticut Avenue store. They got away with it, too. The owner couldn’t even report the theft—all that cash.” Randolph closed his eyes, tilted his tumbler back, and sipped cognac. “Anyway, I knew about it, and I didn’t do a damn thing to stop it. The man was my cousin, understand? The thing is, he died two months later, anyway. Overdose.”

“Grimes is blackmailing you.”

Randolph lowered his voice. “I come from a little tobacco farm, Constantine, outside of Wilson, North Carolina. If you could see the place I’m talkin’ about, compare it to what I’ve got now, my life now, at that shoe store…”

“I understand,” Constantine said. He butted his cigarette, smiled at Randolph. “That skinny kid, at the store—”

“Antoine.”

“Yeah. He called you ‘Shoedog.’ You gonna tell me now what that’s all about?”

“You might not understand, man. It’s about having some kind of direction in your life.”

“Try me.”

Randolph leaned over the table. “You ever see a dog, man, when he’s walkin’ across a bridge? Well, that dog, he doesn’t look left and he doesn’t look right. He keeps his head down, lookin’ at his paws makin’ a straight line, all the way. And the only thing he’s thinking about, the whole time, is gettin’ to the other side of that bridge.”

“So?”

“So this. You saw me today, on that floor. While those other boys were thinkin’ how to get the jump on me, or thinkin’ about the pussy, all I was concentrating on was doin’ my job. From twelve to two, that’s what the fuck I do. I put my head down, just like a dog, and I cross that bridge. And every single day, I’m the only one in that joint who gets to the other side.” Randolph sat back, pointed at Constantine. “I’m a shoedog, man. Might be time for you to be some kinda shoedog too.”

Constantine finished the rest of his vodka, put the glass down on the table. “Maybe so, Randolph,” he said. “But I never found that one thing—”

“Not yet.”

“No. Not yet.”

A few minutes later, the party moved back into the room. They grouped themselves around the table, stood over Randolph and Constantine.

“Let’s go,” Polk said energetically, his arm around Charlotte. “We’ll get a nightcap over at Market Inn.”

“Great piano bar,” Phyllis said, smiling at Randolph. “You boys up for it?”

“I could listen to some standards,” Randolph said.

“Come on, Connie,” Polk said.

Constantine shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’m comfortable here. I’m gonna hang out, have another drink.”

Weiner had a seat and said, “I’m with Constantine.”

Randolph stood up, moved smoothly to Phyllis, slipped his arm around her back, his hand resting on her waist. “Suit yourself, Constantine. I’ll pick you up in the morning, at your place. Eight
A.M.
We goin’ shopping, remember?”

“I’ll see you then,” Constantine said, nodding at Phyllis, then looking back to Randolph. “Have a good night, man.”

Randolph raised his brow. “Bet.”

“We took care of the tab,” Polk said. “See you fellas later.”

Constantine took his cigarettes off the table and tossed the pack to Polk.

The two couples walked toward the door. Charlotte broke away, came back, leaned over the table, and put her mouth close to Constantine’s ear. “Polk’s got plans for you,” she said. “He’s really impressed. For the record, so am I.” She kissed him on his cheek.

“Thanks, Charlotte,” Constantine said. “Take care of him.”

“Honey?” she said, standing straight and capping the movement with a broad wink. “I always do.”

She turned and moved quickly to the door. As she walked out, Constantine could hear their laughter over the blues shouter coming through the bar’s speakers. The door closed, and the laughter died.

Weiner looked over at Constantine. “Hope you don’t mind me staying with you. I would of been a fifth wheel in that group.”

“I don’t mind,” Constantine said.

Weiner looked around the room, touched his beret. “You want another drink?”

“Yeah,” Constantine said. “One more.”

Chapter
13

C
ONSTANTINE
and Weiner killed another round, then got up to leave. Constantine paid the tab and pinned a damp ten under his rocks glass for the busboy. The busboy chin-nodded Constantine as he walked with Weiner from the room.

On the landing, Constantine stepped aside as the big cop walked toward the head. The cop gave him a jittery, unfocused look on the pass. Constantine did not look him in the eye.

Constantine dropped quarters into the cigarette machine that stood on the landing, took his Marlboros from the long slot that ran along the bottom of the machine. He grabbed a blue book of D.C. Vending matches off the top of the machine and stuffed them into his jeans, pushing on the front door. He caught the toe of his shoe on the sidewalk as he walked out, stumbled, and stopped clumsily next to Weiner, who was standing on the edge of the street.

“You all right?” Weiner said.

“Yeah,” Constantine said, realizing then that he was irreparably drunk. “Where we goin’?”

“Across town for a quick stop,” Weiner said, motioning for a cab that was approaching from two blocks away.

“I don’t need any more to drink.”

“Neither do I,” Weiner said, as the cab stopped at the curb. “Come on.”

A soft-spoken young Arab drove them into Northwest. Constantine stared out the window, tried to focus on the buildings. At a stoplight, he saw a shadow of a man walk into the blackness of a storefront, his head down, his hands buried in the pockets of his jacket. Constantine looked at his watch, tried to focus on it in the darkness of the backseat. He could see only that the hour hand tilted to the right of midnight.