Sweeney on the Rocks Read online

  SWEENEY

  ON

  THE

  ROCKS

  SWEENEY

  ON

  THE

  ROCKS

  A NOVEL

  ALLEN MORRIS JONES

  Copyright © 2019 by Allen Morris Jones.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher. Please direct inquires to:

  Ig Publishing

  Box 2547

  New York, NY 10163

  www.igpub.com

  ISBN: 978-1-632460-84-4 (ebook)

  The best heroes all have a little bit of villain in them.

  In the dripping, vermin-rustling basement of a Bay Ridge trattoria, amid cardboard pillars of boxed Chianti and swelling cans of ten-year-old tomato sauce, past a narrow hallway of folded buffet tables and five-gallon jugs of olive oil, a man sits duct taped to an armchair, squinting under the greasy light of a bare bulb, regretting certain, ill-considered life choices.

  Skinny in a sallow, cigarette-stained sort of way, up until a couple hours ago he’d been the cat’s meow, the bee’s knees, the cream in your coffee. An anachronism all the way down to his graying, well-trimmed little Valentino mustache. Which, by the way, and thanks to a swatch of duct tape being repeatedly torn off and reapplied, has been mostly reduced to a row of bloody freckles, a slow-welling pattern of red dots. His tongue comes out for a taste, then retreats.

  You wonder, in this business, what you would do—what you will do—when somebody sticks a gun in your ear, says, “Get in the car.” Will you play the hero? Throw some wild punches, offer a few kicks to the crotch? Or maybe make a break for it, screaming like a cheerleader? Pull your own gun and go mano a mano right there in the street? Turns out, no. None of these. Here’s what you do instead: You get in the car.

  He sits in his sweat and blood and stale urine, the rich stew of fluids that flee our bodies at the first sign of trouble, then adds a few drops of tears to the mix, sobbing with a little half-hitch hiccup. Each hand has been taped to the arms of the chair so as to the leave the fingers free. Swollen by the tightness of the tape, pink and trembling, there’s something obscene about their wormlike, naked vulnerability.

  A voice from the dim periphery. “You still with us there, Georgie?”

  From the chair, sobs, pants.

  “What do you think, he still with us? I can’t hardly see nothing.” Under layers of dust and cobwebs, the bare bulbs emit only a dim light.

  Three men sit splayed in various postures of boredom. Three cashmere coats folded over the cleanest of the wine boxes. Three sets of white shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. Per union specs, they all wear identical sneers. The smallest man, an aging and obese toad of a guy, a sixty-five-year-old mouth breather named Donnie Moretti, separates himself from the shadows. Limps over to stand under the bulb. The other two, gents not uncommon to the genre, are dull blades indeed, heavy-lidded and slow. Somebody’s cousin married somebody’s cousin. This older guy, though. This guy has a gleam. Cynicism, intelligence. If he was mocked in high school (which he was), then surely a trail of Molotov cocktails and slashed tires followed in his wake (which they did).

  Ominously, horribly, a set of bolt cutters swing heavily at his side: Tick tock, tick tock.

  At this point, you wouldn’t think the man in the chair would be capable of copping to the details. But yeah, swollen eyes and all, he fixates immediately on the tool. Groans low and doomed, a rusty car door wrenched open.

  Twenty feet over their heads, the last few late night diners are polishing off the dregs of their wine, sopping up watery marinara with crusts of sourdough, settling back, inspecting the bills, waving credit cards. Down here, though, a man has come to the reluctant awareness that even if he lives through this night, his days of wiping his own ass are almost certainly behind him.

  The duct tape on his mouth is loose enough now it’s mostly just a gesture. He sobs through gummy adhesive. “I don’t…god, Jesus, I don’t know where she is, Donnie. Swear to god, swear to god, swear to god. We don’t talk no more. She don’t like me. Swear to god.”

  Donnie shifts the bolt cutters, reaches out to toss the tape aside. “How long I known you, Georgie? Grade school, right? Kindygarten? You went to school with my kids. They had you in that gifted program. You rubbed me wrong even then. You was five years old, you thought your shit didn’t stink. I gotta tell you, though…” he lifts his pug nose, sniffs conspicuously, “it’s stinking now, buddy.”

  Appreciative chortles from the apes in the wings.

  “Here’s how this is gonna work.” With effort, a popping of joints, he squats in front of Georgie, bolt cutters across his knees. He caresses the handles like the ears of something cute. “Eddie’s dead, he don’t know the answer. That Russian everybody talks about, Breetvah, whoever the fuck he is, he’s off the map. But you, you’re right here. Complete with all ten fingers. Plus, plus…” he hefts the bolt cutters, lets them drop heavily on the man’s crotch. “Plus a tiiiny little excuse for a dick.” Holds up two fingers half an inch apart. “Each time I have to repeat myself? I’m cuttin something off. You answer sooner rather than later, we send you to your maker with yourself mostly intact. Maybe they’ll give you an open coffin. If not, they’ll be finding you scattered from Utica to Utah, Boise to Joisee. Now…” He rises, groaning slightly, holding a knee, and places the polished jaws of the cutters carefully around a jerking, quivering pinky. “Now. Where…” and he shuts the cutters hard. A crunch of bone, a spurt of bright blood, the small plip of a finger hitting concrete. “…is that sister of yours?”

  Four days later and three thousand miles west, Ted Sweeney bounces his weak-springed, 1961 International up one of Montana’s kidney-bruiser excuses for a road, head bobbing with the beat.

  At a glance, here’s a guy who’s just flat broke. Tailgate held on with baling wire, windshield a cobweb of gravel cracks. He prioritizes power bills, dodges collection agencies, eats half his meals from a bag. And yet he’s thrumming his fingers on the dash, humming along to an old Stones tune. Breaking out now and then into background vocals: “Whoo-hoo, whoohoo.” A rare occasion in the story of his life, for him to be aware of his own contentment.

  He’s got a ring in his pocket, is the thing.

  Sick of his own equivocation, the endless interior dialogue of pluses and minuses, he finally decided, “Y’know? Screw it.” Went to Bozeman, a jewelry store in the mall. Said, “She likes white gold, right?” Turns out there was a little moon-shaped number that Sweeney’s pretty sure she’ll love. A couple tiny stones set in white gold. Twelve hundred bucks on the third of three credit cards. He can afford the vig to Chase but not the meat. Sixteen percent interest. And if he tries unsuccessfully not to compare it to the museum piece he bought for his first wife fourteen years ago (three carats, twenty-eight grand), maybe he can be forgiven given context and circumstance.

  Owner and sole employee of his own handyman business (“Anything for Money” stenciled on both sides of his truck), the last ten years have seen him go decidedly blue collar. Ambition wise, his eyes were bigger than his stomach. He’s aging into a fondness for domestic beer and second-tier college football. And while he still jogs his three miles a day, hits the heavy bag occasionally, likes to paint (canvases, not houses), he is otherwise more or less your average American Joe.

  Case in point: An engagement ring in his pocket, but his thoughts inadvertently go to the Yankees and A’s, the TV ten minutes in his future. They’re probably already three innings into it, Yanks six runs up.

  Used to be, once a week in the summers, he’d find his habitual seat low in right field. The taste of a sausage dog and oni
ons, the beer so cold, the field so green. Seventh inning stretch, the sweepers sang YMCA, dancing out the letters. Nice days, those. But leaving New York behind, he’s been doing his best to betray the Yanks at every opportunity. If he can hate the Yanks, goes his thinking, he can manage anything.

  But whatever game is in his immediate future, it ain’t the Yanks and the A’s.

  ~

  Is there some law, some rule? Newtonian this or that. The older you get, the faster your memory goes. Case in point: He could have sworn he left his dog inside the fence. But now, pulling up to his back door, here comes Zeke out to meet him, panting and grinning, front feet on the truck door. Sweeney steps out, scratches at the collar. “You doing okay, Zeke? You have you a good day? Figured out how latches work there buddy?”

  A mongrel mishmash of Australian shepherd and beagle, maybe some blue heeler, Zeke’s default stare is equal parts wisdom and disapproval. Wouldn’t surprise Sweeney at all if he’d learned about locks.

  And indeed, here’s the picket gate swinging free. Sweeney’s already thinking about another kind of latch. Something with a knob.

  At the back door, however, house key in his fingers, he stops. Swallows.

  His door frame in splinters, the dead bolt assembly dangling loose, the imprint of a crowbar in the molding.

  His tongue thickens and his mouth goes dry. Maybe it’s just a robbery. Simple B & E.

  He steps back, glances around. Near dusk, and across the yard one hundred yards away, the ranch house’s windows are already lit yellow. The old folks, Carl and Pauline, will be at their ease in front of the TV. Half deaf, eyes milky with cataracts. No help there.

  For years you live your life tiptoeing around certain imagined scenarios. Gun barrels that turn out to be folded baby carriages, stubborn starter motors that might be car bombs, a rifle-scope glittering on the rooftop of Western Drug. Afterwards, of course, you berate yourself for being jumpy, twitchy.

  Get a hold of yourself, Sweeney. Burglar, just a burglar. Just some kid lifting your laptop.

  He touches the door, eases it open. Peers into the gloom. “Get back,” he whispers to Zeke, pushing at him with his heel, ignoring the dog’s accusing whine. He slips inside, linoleum sighing under his feet. He should have taken off his shoes. Back in the old days, he’d have remembered to take off his shoes. He does it now.

  Originally a bunkhouse, his home is a bare-essentials kind of place. Tiny kitchen, half-assed stove and sink, ancient turquoise refrigerator. It’s all clean enough, but done up in the used furniture and threadbare curtains of bachelor-melancholy. No dried flowers or jars of potpourri. The fridge innocent of old Christmas cards and family photos.

  He almost flips on the overhead light, then takes his hand back. On his way past the stove, he lifts a frying pan off the rack.

  Here’s the living room. His over-inflated couch and kitschy lamp (bucking bronc etched into a leather shade), half-ton, yard-sale TV, an easel set up by the window with a half-finished study of the mountains (too much blue), his brushes in their coffee mug of acetone. And then the back of his soggy recliner. If they’re still here, they’re either out in the parking shed (wooden tennis rackets, a folded-up ping pong table) or in his bedroom. He thinks of his old laptop, the fireproof safe in his closet. His hundred bucks in emergency cash, his passport.

  And so his hand’s already on the door to his bedroom. But then…No. Those open drapes? He’d left them closed. And his recliner. It’s facing the picture window, away from the TV. It never faces away from the TV.

  He cocks the frying pan like a baseball bat, advancing on the back of the chair. “Hey!” The word jumps out, startlingly loud. “Hey. Outta my lazyboy.”

  Nothing. No movement from the chair. Not even a tremble. Glancing at the half-dark glass of his window, Sweeney sees, in reflection, a figure slouched low, a ghost of a ghost, a small man with in a crooked fedora tilted over his eyes.

  Sweeney touches one corner of the chair with his socked toe and twirls it around.

  The motion of the chair rolls the fedora onto the floor.

  And a shotgun, arranged under the crossed hands, drops barrel-first between the man’s ankles.

  Sweeney lowers his pan.

  In Sweeney’s chair (his favorite chair, his old pal of a piece of furniture) someone’s arranged a tidy little corpse, ankles crossed, lapels neat.

  Sweeney feels a faint tinge of nausea. Then nothing but violation. His chair, his house.

  The guy’s head lolls, rocking slightly. Cheeks pale and waxen, dead eyes staring out toward a questionable eternity. Under the man’s chin, hinge to hinge, see the wink of white bone, a cartilaginous mouth in the esophagus, gaping. The clean slice from corner to corner, ragged only where the cut is the shallowest. A dried bib of blood.

  Sweeney, who has some experience in this regard, can’t help but admire the efficiency of the work.

  ~

  Ted Sweeney, thirty-seven years old, getting soft and complacent in his near old age, mumbles to himself. Pacing, running his hands through his hair: “Okay, don’t panic, now. No panicking here.”

  What he needs is a few minutes, a window to think this through. He pulls the drapes (glancing out to the horse barn, the two-story house, the south pasture) and sits on the couch. He swivels the dead man around until they sit facing each other. Dark, hooded eyes and a hundred dollar haircut.

  Sweeney’s been trying to quit the Camels, these slow, three-inch increments of an early end, but he feels now—with a warm and satisfying regret—that he’s about to fall off the smokes wagon in a big way. He takes a pack from the coffee table drawer and finds his matches. Even when you’re quitting, you keep a pack somewhere. In the flare of a kitchen match, Sweeney’s scowling brow. The smell of cordite and tobacco; the smell of wars.

  The face before him is unfamiliar. Narrow cheekbones, close set eyes, dark black hair brushed back with a gel thick enough to reflect light. Sweeney knows the stereotype. Purple silk shirt. A fedora the color of dull chrome. Loafers built up half an inch on the soles. Whoever this guy was, he had some scratch. Wearing the cash equivalent of a good used car.

  The more he stares into his face, however, studying the half-closed eyes, the slight sprouting of black hair in the nostrils, there’s something …

  The shotgun has a rough, brutal utility about it. A little pump-action .410, the stock scarred with a dozen different dings and scrapes, the mouth of the barrel still frayed silver where the hacksaw had worked. These big city wops. They talk a good game, but none of them know firearms from formaggio. A .410. Jesus.

  Dizzy, now, and it’s not just the cigarette.

  There’s not much blood. Just a dinner-napkin-sized swatch on the front of his shirt, a ring of dry rust around the collar. A guy gets his throat cut, there should be blood sprayed on the walls, sopping into the carpet. Ipso facto, the body got moved. Sweeney almost congratulates himself for this simplest little bit of deduction.

  A rain patter on the roof, and from the back yard, his dog barks once, a single, bossy exclamation. Sweeney opens the screen door. “Okay, all right.” He fills the food bowl with a scoop from the pantry. “Little glutton, then, here we are then. Go to it.”

  Then Sweeney’s back on the couch, smoking his second Camel.

  Who are you, buddy? He leans forward, runs his hands around under the man’s hips, feeling for a wallet. But no, that’d be too much to ask. Then he reaches for the right hand. The skin cold, the joints reluctant. Under the sleeve, a Bulgari watch. Sweeney flips the face over, hoping for an etching on the back. To dear so-and-so from your loving wife. Again, nada. Waterproof to 500 Meters. Finally he turns back the collars of the man’s suit jacket and shirt. No tags, no labels of any sort. Custom tailored. Even more expensive than they’d looked. He pats the front pockets, feels an interruption in the smooth fabric, pulls out a few quarters, a pack of spearmint gum, and a car key remote with a plastic Avis tag.

  So. Okay. Any minute now, if this is a se
tup, the drapes are going to light up with rolling red and blue cop lights. “Open the door! Police! Freeze! Hands up!” Yadayadayada.

  If not, he’s got time.

  There’s something about the face. Something…Take ten years off the guy, he might have been one of those kids, a bag runner, maybe, one of those greasy, evil little shits loitering around the tire shop, teaching himself to smoke cigarettes. He might have once hurried to open Sweeney’s car door.

  Zeke pads in, burping Iams, hops up on the couch and drops his fox-snout nose on Sweeney’s hip, Sweeney lets his fingers play under the collar, around the ears.

  An hour ago, his biggest worry was paying for an engagement ring.

  He sits and smokes. Okay, if he’s anybody else, if he’s Joe Blow, you call the cops. You’re innocent, Sweeney, you got alibis…

  You got alibis, right? Time of death? Rigor, but no odor. Call it six hours. And Sweeney—thank you, Jesus; I ain’t religious, but thank you, Jesus—was in Bozeman all day. Used a credit card at the jeweler’s.

  If it’s a setup, it’s a sloppy damn job.

  But he’s not nobody else, and never has been. It’s a small town. Word about him gets out, he either has to run or hang tight. And Sweeney? If you hang tight, inside of a week you’re a dead man. Not to mention your family back in New York. Sister.

  Running’s no good either. He likes it here. He’s put down roots.

  Fuhhhuck.

  If not a setup then what is it? A warning? Maybe. But why? If they could get to him with a dead body, why not just get to him?

  And where’s the other one? These guys always travel in pairs.

  Sweeney walks through the crime scene he used to call a living room, resisting the urge to hurry. Outside, the soft, muddy grass of his driveway—soft enough to show tire tracks. It’s chopped and scarred with his own comings and goings. But there might be a slightly smaller tire track beside his shriveled caragana. And in the mud beside his gate, just off the cracked cement walk, that might be the impression of a smooth-soled shoe. Whoever walked that body into his house had to be strong enough to carry him (no drag marks in the mud) and either had to know that the old folks would be away or have confidence enough to risk it.