Only the Strong (2 page)

Guts laughed. “Not feeding the ducks this morning. If I get too close to the water, sit on a bench, watch the ducks, I won't feel like doing anything else. And I got places to be. So I'm just allowing myself a brief visit.”

Crusher nodded. “We all got to do shit that we don't want to do. Got to squeeze the quiet moments in where we can.”

“Damn, Crush, nobody told me you were a philosopher.”

“I think I read that on a cereal box.” Crusher continued to stretch. “I saw your boy the other day.”

“My boy?”

“Yeah. Nifty.”

Many unfortunate souls who'd crossed Guts had paid for it in blood and pain, but Nifty Carmichael was an exception. Guts had sentenced him to a lifetime of servitude in exchange for the privilege of walking the earth intact. Nifty was a fool and a crook, but he kept an ear to the ground. As long as his information was good, Guts let him keep breathing. Guts wasn't particularly concerned with Nifty. He knew where to find him when he wanted him. He feigned interest out of sheer courtesy. “Yeah, what was he up to?”

“Talking to Sharps.”

“Sharps?”

Crusher grinned. “Got your attention, right? Saw them having coffee in Stormy Monday's. Looked like they were having a good ol' time. Figured you should know about it.”

Guts tried to keep his contempt for Sharps under wraps, but apparently Crusher had sniffed it out. He wondered how many others had.

It was not quite eight a.m. when Guts pulled up beside Frontier Barbershop. Except for the Bona Fide gas station and Kirkwood Cleaners, all of the other businesses along that stretch of Vandeventer Avenue had yet to open. In minutes there would be a crap game going behind Wilma's Tavern and music blasting out of Pierre Records, something like “Baby I'm For Real” by the Originals or “ABC” by those kids from Gary. But right now it was as peaceful and empty as it ever got. A woman left the cleaners and strode purposefully to her car, her cleaning over her shoulder. Guts tipped his hat to her, then waved at the sign painter Reuben Jones, who was at the gas station getting two dollars' worth of regular for his Rambler wagon, his ladders strapped to its roof. Guts noticed that Sharps had left Goode's New Yorker unlocked. Sloppy.

Barbershops traditionally closed on Mondays, but Rudolph Fisher, the tall, pious proprietor, had opened just for Ananias Goode. According to word on the street, Goode had provided the initial down payment for Fisher two decades before, but Guts had never been able to confirm it. At any rate, Fisher had been Goode's personal barber since way back when. Guts waited while Sharps took his time letting him in.

“Finally,” Sharps said. He had features to match his name, and his choice of clothing accented his slender angularity. His hat, hiding a full head of processed hair combed straight back, was—like his tie, suit, and alligator shoes—a dazzling shade of lemon yellow. His sunglasses, worn indoors and out, were dark green. Cologne wafted off of him with every movement. Guts marveled that Goode could ride in the New Yorker with Sharps without passing out.

“It's eight straight up,” Guts said. “Now, you can step aside or I can walk over you. Make your choice because Mr. G. is waiting.”

Sharps paused as long as he dared. He grinned, revealing teeth as pointed as the rest of him. He stepped aside with a dramatic bow.

Guts ignored him.

“My dear Mr. Tolliver,” Goode said. “So glad you could join us.” He was dressed in bankers' pinstripes as usual, and the gleam on his custom boots was bright. Goode, though bigger than most men, was not nearly as large as Guts, but his personality and confidence were expansive enough to fill any space. He removed his cigar from his mouth and held it out expectantly. Fisher rushed to remove it to a nearby ashtray.

Guts said good morning to Goode and asked Fisher how he was feeling this fine day.

“Praise the Lord,” Fisher replied before draping a smock over Goode and fastening it behind his neck with an efficient flourish. Each day brought another customer announcing his abandonment of the close-cropped “quo vadis” haircut in favor of the long, bushy “natural,” but Fisher was adapting and staying afloat. Goode, like Guts, kept his head shaved.

“This is a change,” Guts said.

“How so?”

“Fish used to come to your house.”

“Sharps talked me into it,” Goode said. “Suggested a change of pace.”

“The boss needs more sun,” Sharps said. He pulled up a chair and straddled it backward. “It's healthy, plus he can keep an eye on things.”

Guts stared at Sharps. When he was Goode's driver, he never would have sat with his back to the door. He wouldn't have sat at all.

“He's got people to keep an eye on things for him, and you're supposed to be one of them,” Guts said. “Folks are crazy. No need to make them think they have an opportunity.”

Sharps smirked. “Who'd be stupid enough to go after Ananias? You talk like he's Al Capone. He's a businessman. You're thinking about guns and gangsters when we're talking about stocks and bonds.”

Guts turned and looked at Goode. Never, not once during their long association, had he ever called the boss man “Ananias.” But Goode seemed to take no notice of Sharps's brazen informality.

Guts began slowly. “That may be so. Still, I'd think about changing things up. Maybe next time, say, come on a Wednesday, before the start of business hours.”

Sharps chuckled. “That's a lot of thinking for a cab driver. What are you, one of them intellectuals?” The word sounded bad falling out of Sharps's mouth. “An egghead in dungarees, hard to imagine.”

Guts suddenly felt underdressed. Dungarees and work boots had been his standard uniform for as long as he had worked for Goode. The pair's contrasting styles drew a lot of whispered comments, but no one had ever dared to say anything within his earshot. And Goode had never complained. For a split second Guts pictured himself draped in yards of lemon-yellow fabric.

“A lot of things must be hard for you to imagine.”

“An egghead in work boots. What size you wear? Sheeit. Them some big-ass clodhoppers, son. Handy on a farm, maybe. But damn, you in the city.”

“I got one of them stuck in a man's ass once.”

Sharps looked liked he wanted to spit. But there was no place to do it. “Do tell.”

“Yeah. He reminded me of you. A skinny bitch in a shiny suit.”

“I got your bitch, fat man.”

“Too bad. I don't swing that way.”

Goode cleared his throat. By then Fisher had coated his generous jowls with a thick lather of shaving cream. Flashing his pearl-handled straight razor, he expertly drew the blade lightly along Goode's jawline.

“Gentlemen. Your repartee is beneath the dignity of our enterprise.”

Sharps frowned. “What?”

“Shut the hell up,” Goode said. “You too, Guts. Enough.”

Both men immediately stopped talking.

“Sharps.”

“Yeah, boss?”

“Go across the street and see if Stone Drugs is open. Grab me a racing form and a
Gateway Citizen
. Guts and me got business.”

“But—”

“Go on, now. Run along.”

Guts was sure that Sharps's eyes were welling behind his shades. Sharps stood, adjusted his tie, and left.

Guts crossed the room and locked the door. Fisher had seen Guts in action more than once but was still amazed that a man so huge could move with such unlikely speed and grace. Wisely, he kept his amazement to himself.

“You like Rip Crenshaw?” Goode asked.

Guts shrugged. “I'm more of a football guy, but you know that.”

“Still, you know who he is.”

Guts shrugged. “Yeah. Baseball. The home team can't do much unless he's in the game. And he's missed a few lately.”

“That's right, he's on the injured list. I need you to keep him company for a while. Drive him around, show him some friendly places, keep him from hurting himself.”

“Why does someone like him need babysitting?”

Fisher spun Goode around to face the large wall mirror. “You used to just go out and do what needed to be done, large or small,” Goode said, admiring himself. “Now you ask questions. Why are you all of a sudden so curious?”

It's not me you should be wondering about
, Guts thought. He was particularly proud of his ability to mind his own business. During much of the past decade, the boss had disappeared nearly every Wednesday afternoon. After they parked in front of Guts's car, Goode would politely dismiss him, move to the front seat, and drive away. Guts used the spare time to track down debtors reluctant to pay their bills. Never was he tempted to follow Goode, figuring every man had a right to keep some secrets to himself. He had been the soul of discretion. Now his motives were being questioned.

“Not curious. Careful,” he said evenly. “The streets are changing. No disrespect, but they're changing faster than you and I are used to moving. I just don't want us to be caught by surprise.”

“Hmm. Well, you're probably right. When I was a young man I barged right into situations and then had to fight my way out. Probably could have saved myself some scuffling if I'd gone in with my eyes open.”

Guts waited.

“Okay,” Goode said, finally. “As you know, Virgil Washburn and I are business associates.”

Guts wondered where this was going but his face betrayed nothing. He'd heard that Washburn, owner of the home team, had lately grown tired of his star player.

“Crenshaw's becoming a headache,” Goode continued, “a bad attitude with a big salary. What's worse, he's getting into trouble off the field. Picking fights, breaking the law, sticking his dick where it don't belong. But the team needs to keep Crenshaw in fighting shape or else they got no shot at the World Series. They want to get their money's worth before they trade him. Everyone would be better off if he kept his partying on the North Side.”

“That's all?”

“That's all.”

Guts nodded. “All right. Got his particulars?”

“He's got yours. He'll call you later.”

Guts waited until Sharps returned. He smelled him before he saw him. A cloud of perfume whisked under the front door, followed by Sharps's appearance. Guts studied him through the glass before unlocking the door.

Twenty minutes later he was heading down Vandeventer, the street now fully awake. Outside the Tom-Boy grocery, two men loaded the Volkswagen delivery van. Through the open door of the laundromat on Labadie Avenue, a slender young woman juggled dimes as she fed them into the slot of a spinning dryer. School kids hung around McCoy's confectionery, counting down the days until summer and freedom. At Sullivan Avenue, next to the shine parlor where Guts, according to legend, once used a shoelace to silence a loudmouth, the crossing guard shepherded stragglers on their way to Farragut Elementary. Guts could have hung a straight left at Natural Bridge, but he couldn't resist cruising through the park, barely accelerating as he looked around. His morning regulars were all gone except for the fisherwoman, still and regal in her metal lawn chair, her hat pulled down low over her eyes. Across the street from the park, Sam the barbecue man was already manning his grills on the lot of the burned-out SuperMart.

Once inside Gateway Cab, Guts passed through the main room and into the inner office, which he shared with two desks, a quartet of file cabinets, and Trina Ames, Gateway's receptionist and dispatcher. Trina was as beautiful and hardworking as she was sweet, and the drivers often pretended to misunderstand just to hear her sugary voice repeat an address over the radio. As far as Guts was concerned, the most appealing thing about her was her knack for staying out of other people's business.

Guts was not much for long phone conversations. Face to face, he could chew the fat with the best of them, even if he spent every exchange casually taking in everything going on all around him, ever alert to dangers. But the phone? Disembodied voices disturbed him in a way he couldn't quite nail down. So even though he was happy to hear from Pearl—how her day was going, her lunch plans, how she couldn't wait to spoon more fresh-baked banana pudding into his waiting mouth—he was nonetheless relieved later in the day to put down the receiver and step into the main room, where the men of the cabstand had congregated for lunch.

Of the three men present, only one had an actual connection to the stand. Cherry, sporting an Afro less out of style considerations than just natural hirsute exuberance, was the in-house mechanic. Good-natured, sleepy-eyed, and skillful, he was adept at hanging around and shooting the breeze, ears attuned to the bell that rang when a cab pulled onto the lot.

Shadrach, long retired, had made the cabstand his second home. Wearing his customary straw fedora with the gold band, he sat with Cherry at one of the three card tables that served as workplace furniture for the Gateway fleet. The two men attacked a platter of ribs while Oliver paced nearby and read from the paper. Oliver worked at the bowling alley across the street. Nervous, bespectacled, of indeterminate age, he took so many “coffee breaks” that it remained a mystery how he managed to keep himself employed.