"Best, Mark - Comeback" - читать интересную книгу автора (Best Mark)

Comeback
by Mark Best
Copyright й 2001



It was raining the day I left the resort. I didn't mind. Six years of living in a nine-by-nine cube of concrete leaves you with a stale feeling and a blended stench of urine, sweat, and cigarette smoke. As I walked down the street, I could feel the confinement of prison flowing from my body into the sewer the the rest of the city's filth. I was free.

The closest bar to the penitentiary was Iron Mike's. According to legend, Mike spent time on cellblock B for throwing a collector out of a third story window. The man laughed out loud when the judge passed sentence. Three days after Mike was released, the collection agent was involved in a freak accident when his wheelchair rolled into the path of a speeding fire truck. Mike sent a wreath to the funeral home and a dozen red roses to the man's widow, who was now Mrs. Iron Mike. No one knows how much of the story is true. No one knows how an ex-con got a liquor license, either. No one cares. On your first day out, your first drink is free and the rest are on credit. That made him jake in my book.

When I walked in, I was greeted by several former neighbors. Mike poured me a beer without asking. We had never met, but you get good information owning a bar. He set the beer down and stuck out his hand. "Welcome back to the world, Jacko. This one's on the house."

We shook hands and I smiled up at him. He wasn't as tall as the foul pole at Yankee Stadium, or as wide as the Jet's offensive line, but he towered over my six feet like a mammoth. His grey hair was cropped close to his scalp, and his light blue eyes and soft mouth both smiled. He didn't look as if he's hurt a rodent, let alone a collector, but I had no doubt the story was true.

I thanked him for the beer and drank it, at first sipping slowly, then gulping like it was ice water in July. I had never cared much for beer, but at that moment nothing would have tasted sweeter. Mike poured me another, and I pulled out my release pay. The big man shook his head. "Pay me when you get settled. If you have to lam out, send it." After six years of strip searches to see if I was boosting silverware, it was refreshing to be trusted again.

I hung out at Mike's for the better part of two hours. All the years I spent in my cell, I'd thought only of getting out and playing on the square. Every thief plans on getting off the grift sometimes. Getting pinched and doing a stretch in stir just makes going legit seem more attractive. But Mike's was a decent place. You could trust the crooks in that room. Sitting there with them, talking about old jobs, plays that went down while I was away, and plans for future runs brought back the desire. My uncle had written me at the resort, offering a job at his shop. He fixed appliances and sold second-hand, reconditioned electronics. Exciting as community access television, but it was mostly honest. I had been headed there on my way to Mike's, but the afternoon had pushed it into a far niche of my mind. Not gone, just not current.

My back was to the door when all conversation stopped. "Weed in the garden," someone hissed. I could see him in the mirror over the bar. He carried three hundred pounds of flab on his frame like a politician carries relatives. He was dressed all in black: shoes, pants, open-necked shirt with the tails hanging out of his trousers, and a leather jacket. His fat, hanging jowls were framed by mutton-chop sideburns and thin, oily hair the same color as his outfit. He had a large, jagged scar over his right eye, and was ugly a human being as I had ever seen. He was a dick.

He waddled through the maze of tables, sneering at everyone he passed. One drinker slunk out the door. Others hid in their glasses. The fat man sneered happily, enjoying his effect on the crowd. There was an empty space at the bar next to me, which he squeezed into. I smelled body odor and Vitalis.

"Hi ya Mike. How about a whiskey?" The dick's voice was higher than it should have been. At the resort, it would have earned him a place on the butch boy's dance cards, but no one in the bar even cracked a smile. Mike made no move to honor his request. He just kept drying shot glasses with his apron. "Hey Mikey. I asked for a drink."

Iron Mike didn't look away from his task. He spoke in a conversational tone. "What do you want here, Slattery? I pay your masters to keep your kind out of my place. What's wrong, no one to read the precinct memos to you?"

There was a low chuckle from the far side of the room, and another at the end of the bar. The dick ignored the laughter. He reached across the bar and grabbed a bottle and a glass. He poured himself a generous swig, which he slowly emptied into his chubby mouth. After replacing the cap, and with surprising speed for a man of his girth, he spun around and hurled the bottle across the room and nailed the first guy who'd snickered on the forehead. The man fell to the floor. When he came up, he had a huge gash over his eye and quickly ran out the door. Slattery, meanwhile, had lifted the second laugher and hurled him with the same effort he had used on the bottle. He landed by the juke box and didn't get up as fast as the first guy. It would probably be a while before he did.

By this time Mike had come out from the bar and approached Slattery. The two big men faced each other warily.

"What the hell you think you're doing, coming in and busting up my joint? I pay too much to have someone like you come in and roust my customers."

"The people you pay, pay me, so I wouldn't push that. Besides, I ain't after your joint. I just need to talk to someone."

A huge hand clamped onto my shoulder and lifted me up like a beach ball. It let me go mid-air, and the momentum landed me halfway to the door. He grabbed me again, and dragged me to the door, and tossed me into back into the rain.

I was shoved to the front of an alley and thrown again, coming down in a plie of stinking garbage. Small animals scattered from beneath me. I started to rise, but was kicked in the stomach and fell face-first in the swill. The stench made me vomit.

It took me about a day to finish retching and another week to stand up. No kick this time. Now he was just leaning against a dumpster watching me, smoking a cigar that smelled better than the garbage I had been breathing, but just barely. I braced myself against the wall of the alley, trying to get my wind, watching the dick through the corners of my eyes in case he tried another Pearl Harbor.

He didn't. He just stood there until I had recovered sufficiently and then asked "You know me?"

I nodded. "Slattery. Lieutenant, vice, Precinct Five. You control or protect all the action on the south side."

"Also most of the Heights and Uptown. But you've been away for five years. I'll forgive you for not keeping up."

"Six. Missed my first shot at probation when I knocked out a guard in a boxing match. I was told to dive. The guard lost three teeth and got put in the tower. Do you box, Lieutenant?"

"You talk big for a cheap crook about to get your ass kicked. I know about you, too, punk. Jacko Rollins, best peterman in the business. That is what they call you safecrackers? Petermen?"