A Bullet Apiece by John Joseph Ryan Read Free Book Online Page B

sloppy drunk by then. Lucky for him, though, with Jimmy on the premises, he got less belligerent. Which would give Simon the chance to slip out of The Beef’s grasp and go home. Wherever home was. The other couple of guys would probably wait around for their part-time drinking buddies, fresh from dinner with the wife and kids, or maybe wait for the second-shift workers who arrived as the night wore on. I’d see my uncle another time. And having been summoned by The Beef, the chance for any peaceful drinking, had soured.
    I slapped a couple bills on the bartop. Kira was busy examining glasses to rub spots off them. She didn’t notice, or care that I was leaving.

Chapter 5
The Big Nap

    I drove home with the windows down to the blessings of the heat and humidity, and chided myself for letting The Beef get to me. The Beef was a nobody now, a has-been, at least as far as his professional career was concerned. But in the bar he haunts, he’s the chief spook. And what was that business today? Just to prove he’s still cock of the walk when Jimmy’s not around? I wondered briefly how Kira could tolerate him. Or any one of us, for that matter.
    Home was an apartment above a music store in the West End. That sounds quaint, but quaint it ain’t. The apartment itself is okay, but the police should license the muggers in my neighborhood. Also, just three blocks away, women hook on Washington. Anyone picturing tall gals with legs to die for and a gleam in their eye for some schmuck, well, all I can say is they should save their spunk for the centerfold girls. Some of the prosties, I know, support drug habits. Others are welfare moms from the Pruitt-Igoe Housing Development, just trying to make ends meet. Occasionally, boys, probably runaways, show up. Whatever the market will bear. Single men, married men, older men with a thing for little boys. The police love to bust those pervs especially. It all gets pretty sick at night. By day, though, you’d never know. Washington’s what passes for our garment district.   Shoe sellers, jewelers. Walk down there and you hear the inflected patter of Jewish immigrants, the jingle of silver coins, and the
cha-ching
of cash drawers crunching down on their feed.
    As I opened the door to my apartment, I could hear the jazz trio practicing downstairs. One is the owner of the music store, the other two, I think, are brothers. Nice looking colored guys who blow mellow jazz, which is all right with me, till it verges on bebop noise.
    One night, I went downstairs to listen to them jam. They invited me to a back room afterwards for gin and funny cigarettes. I tried to pass off a shallow inhale of the joint, but the resonance of their music, their easy, joshing speech, and the smoke that filled the back room, all made me pretty high. Of course, the gin helped it along. Later, I went back upstairs, getting a kick out of each step I missed along the way, and fried up a batch of eggs. I added spoonfuls of grape jelly to the mix, which was hilarious. I enjoyed the hell out of them. It was a good night, but one I don’t mean to repeat. I’d just as soon stick with my world-pitching-sideways gin and scotch.
    But tonight, their tunes wouldn’t blend with my budding headache. The greasy hamburger still sat hard in my gut. How long was an intestinal guess. I took a shower and peeled an orange, standing white I ate. After I finished, I glanced over at my wall clock: five after seven. I’d told Mrs. Hanady I’d call around eight. So, that gave me very little time to scope out her place.
    As I rolled onto Route 40 west, I couldn’t help but notice the brilliant sky washed blue by the passing storm. A high upsweep of clouds fading into orange and pink made me think of going west when I was a kid, the
one
time my father took me on a sales trip. I shook my head at the memory and concentrated on the traffic. I rolled down the window and had a smoke. Maybe Miss