Black Cat Weekly #1

REMISSION, by Michael Bracken-1

REMISSION, by Michael Bracken

The Barb Goffman Presents series showcases modern

masterpieces of mystery, crime, and suspense selected by

acclaimed mystery author and editor Barb Goffman.

The blonde sitting on my stool at the far end of the bar when I walked into McGinty’s one Tuesday evening was smoking a cigarette and nursing a martini. I had never seen McGinty make a martini. When I looked a question at the grizzled bar owner, he shrugged and returned to wiping the counter.

I walked the length of the bar and settled onto the stool next to the blonde, trapping her against the wall. Though every other seat was empty, she gave no indication that she noticed or cared. McGinty put a shot of Jack Daniel’s in front of me but said nothing.

The blonde was overdressed for the place, in a black sheath dress that hugged her curves. She wore a pearl necklace and pearl drop earrings to match, but no other jewelry. A black clutch lay on the counter to her right, between her martini and the wall. As I examined her, she lit a cigarette from the butt of the one she’d been smoking and mashed the stub into an ashtray containing three others. Without glancing in my direction, she said, “I’m tired of drinking alone.”

I downed the Jack Daniel’s and tapped the empty glass with my index finger. McGinty poured a second shot. I asked, “How long’s your husband been gone?”

When the blonde didn’t respond, I touched her ring finger.

She glanced at the telltale indication that she’d removed a wedding band and said, “Not long enough, but he has something of mine and I want it back.”

I knew then that she’d come to McGinty’s looking for me. I’m not a cat burglar, sneak thief, or con man, but I earn a passable living retrieving things for people who have few other options. “Who sent you?”

She named her divorce attorney, a man who had once hired me to retrieve his French bulldog from a spiteful former lover.

I asked, “What does your husband have?”

“My father’s burial flag and his medals,” she said. “They aren’t worth anything to anyone but me.”

“Why did he keep them?”

“Spite.”

Never-ending martinis were her lubricant, and her story came out in no particular order, punctuated by deep drags from a string of cigarettes, each lit from the butt of the previous one. What I pieced together involved a marriage based on mutual obsession and a father who may or may not have been a war hero.

By the time she spilled everything, the blonde reeked of tobacco and alcohol and was in no condition to drive. I live two blocks from McGinty’s, in a second-floor walk-up I share with a gray tomcat that comes and goes on its own schedule. After we staggered to my apartment, I stripped off her shoes, her dress, and her jewelry, and tucked her into my bed.

Then I opened her clutch and found her driver’s license, a tube of lipstick, a wad of currency, a fresh pack of cigarettes, and a five-shot .38 caliber snub-nose revolver. I examined her Massachusetts license, learning her name, height, eye color, birth date, home address, and driving restrictions. After I put everything back, I grabbed a blanket from the closet and closed the door behind me as I left her snoring in my bedroom.

I fell asleep on the couch wearing nothing but my boxers, and I woke the next morning to the smell of freshly brewed coffee and someone banging pans around in my kitchen. I found Stella Carter wearing only the black push-up bra and panties in which she’d slept, and she was cracking eggs into a cast-iron frying pan my wife had once brandished as a weapon during a bout of pain-killer-fueled hallucinations. Stella had made no obvious attempt to freshen up and had left much of her makeup on my pillows, the first woman to do so since my wife.

“I’m not good at this,” she said. “I broke the yolks.”

I filled a mug with coffee and sat at the kitchen table beneath the wall-mounted telephone sipping it as I watched her toast and butter stale white bread, fry the eggs, and divide everything onto a pair of mismatched stoneware plates that she carried to the table. I reached behind me, retrieved two forks from the silverware drawer, and slid one across the table as she sat. “You told quite a story last night.”

“I want my father’s things back,” she said. “I was told you’re the man who can get them.”

I forked two fried eggs onto one piece of toast and placed the other piece of toast on top. I lifted the egg sandwich from my plate and took a bite. After I chewed and swallowed, I said, “Tell me more about your husband.”

“He’s John Carter.”

My gonads shriveled. Carter is a common surname, and until that moment I had not made the connection.

“I was waitressing at one of John’s clubs when we met, but I didn’t know who he was until Marcie tipped me off.”

Carter was hard to miss. Standing half a head taller than most men, he’d played defensive tackle throughout school and had remained deceptively thick-bodied well into middle age. I knew an up-and-coming heavyweight boxer deceived by Carter’s tailored suit, styled hair, and excessive floral cologne who had landed a right hook on the man’s chin during a disagreement over a gambling debt and had never again boxed professionally after Carter left him in a dumpster behind one of his clubs.

“At the time I was living in a furnished, fourth-floor walk-up that makes this place look palatial.” With a slight wave of her hand, Stella indicated my apartment. “My father had been gone for a year, and I’d run through the money left after paying for his funeral. What I earned as a cocktail waitress barely paid my rent.”

She glanced down at her breakfast as if ashamed of what she was about to tell me. After a moment, she looked up and continued. I had the feeling I knew where she was headed with her story, but I was wrong.

“Some of the girls earn a little extra on the side, and John takes a cut,” she said, “but I wasn’t looking for that kind of arrangement. I wanted him.”

She caught Carter’s attention one evening when he took a secluded booth in her section and the woman he’d brought with him visited the powder room before taking a powder. Stella didn’t explain how she’d persuaded the woman to slip out the back, but she told Carter that his date had developed female trouble—an excuse few men would question—and had to leave. Something in the way Stella offered her condolences for his truncated date implied that she was quite willing to provide Carter with the appropriate solace. Soon she was sitting in the booth beside him and the other waitresses were covering her tables and giving her the evil eye.

That was the last shift she ever worked in one of Carter’s clubs.

“John treated me well enough at first, and I had everything I ever thought I wanted,” she said. “I was wrong.”

Over time Stella came to realize she might have made a better deal if she had sold her soul to the devil. “I pretended I didn’t know where our money came from, but people I knew—people I had worked with at the club and had known in the neighborhood before I married John—were struggling with gambling debt he booked, struggling to pay vigorish on loans he sharked, struggling with monkeys on their backs from drugs he pushed. When Marcie overdosed on heroin and I was the only person in her cell phone contact list who cared enough to identify her body, I realized I was as much to blame for her death as my husband. I also realized I had turned my back on all the values my father had taught me.”

I finished my egg sandwich before she finished her story.

“I told John I wanted a divorce,” she said, “and I was surprised when he didn’t protest. What I also didn’t expect is that he would let me leave with everything I wanted except what was most important to me.”

“Your father’s things?”

Stella nodded and pushed away her uneaten breakfast.

After a moment of silence, I stood, picked up my plate, and stepped toward the sink. She stopped me with a hand to my bare waist. I turned toward her and found myself staring down into her pale-blue eyes and the deep cleavage created by her push-up bra. My body reacted, and she noticed.

Stella took a deep breath and let it out slowly as if she were weighing her words. She said, “I should go before anything happens that we’ll both regret.”

I stepped back and let her rise, wondering if the way her hips swayed as she crossed the living room to the bedroom was an invitation or a gift of nature.

A few minutes later, Stella returned from my bedroom fully dressed, her clutch in one hand. “It’s been a long time since I had that much to drink,” she said as I walked her to the door. “I’m sorry if I was a burden.”

I told her breakfast more than made up for any inconvenience.

After I opened the door, she stepped into the hall. “You haven’t said if you’d help me or not.”

“I haven’t decided.”

“I can pay you.” She opened her clutch and retrieved the wad of cash.

I put my hand on her forearm. I already knew how much money she carried, and I wanted none of it. “There’s no need.”

She stared into my eyes for a moment before releasing her grip on the cash, letting it drop back into her purse. Then she turned and walked down the hall toward the stairs.

I watched Stella until the tomcat scratched at the window, wanting inside after a night spent prowling the neighborhood. I closed the apartment door, let the cat in, and stood at the window, watching construction on the new elevated highway less than a mile away.

* * * *

I returned to McGinty’s that night and settled onto my barstool. McGinty placed a shot of Jack before me and asked, “What’s John Carter’s wife want from you?”

“You knew who she was?”

“I’m surprised you didn’t.”

I had been too busy with other things to pay attention to the love life of Boston’s leading scumbag, and I didn’t appreciate McGinty reminding me.

I downed the Jack and pushed the empty glass across the bar. McGinty refilled it.

An attorney specializing in mediation—between divorcing couples, dissolving partnerships, feuding neighbors, and corporate d**k-waggers—I had never failed to get two parties to reach an agreement.

Until.

Seven years into marriage, my wife was diagnosed with stage 3 cervical cancer. I spent months in and out of hospitals with Erica, pleading with doctors, with surgeons, and with God to spare her life, but nothing I offered in exchange, including my soul, was enough to save her. I lost my practice, my house, my car, and all the trappings of success I had once believed were important. I gave and I gave and I gave until I had nothing left to give.

Because you don’t negotiate with cancer.

It wins.

It always wins.

I’ve been drinking my life away ever since, seeking comfort in a Jack Daniel’s-induced haze. During the intervening years, I claimed the end stool at McGinty’s and made it my office. I’ve done favors for other barflies, and those favors led to the occasional job for well-heeled clients who appreciated the discretion of attorney-client privilege—I maintained my law license even though I didn’t actually practice—and who were willing to reimburse me for my time and effort.

I quit reminiscing in my shot glass and returned my attention to McGinty. “She wants what everybody wants,” I said. “Something she can’t get for herself.”

“If John Carter has what she wants, nobody can get it for her.”

I didn’t argue with McGinty’s assessment of the situation. I had recovered many things for many people, but I had never attempted to recover anything from a man like John Carter. He was not known for his ability to negotiate, nor was he known for his willingness to be on the losing end of any deal. I needed to know what I had to gain if I succeeded and what I had to lose.