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“Mr. Honey Bunny. Blimpie is on the floor, hoping I do not shoot him in the face. First off, Mr. Cherry, I want to assure you and Mr. Danny that the people I represent are not angry with you. They are angry with the woman, but that is another matter which does not concern you. I have it on good authority that you are seeking her out to obtain more of the product you received earlier. Am I correct on that?”
Hesitates. Worried I’m a cop: “I don’t know anything about a ‘product.’”
“Let her go, Mr. Cherry. I hear James Dobbins turned her dyke. And anyways, she ran off. Let her go.” I need to turn him off of the idea of looking for Delilah Boothe. The drug deal will be my angle to refocus him.
“I, uhhh...what?”
“Now, down to business. If you have a market here for our product, we would like to move it. Ideally we would ship twice a month through mules and drop off at a mutually agreeable third party location where you and your associates would distribute. You would be allowed to keep thirty percent. How amenable are you to such a proposition?”
A pause. The silent air of confusion becomes the stinging air of seething anger on Cherry’s end. He doesn’t buy a word of it and neither would I. Read on Cherry: dumb, impetuous and steers his life wherever his rage problem wants to go.
Finally he says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about and tell you what, bub, go fuck yourself.”
Click. Silence.
I look down to Blimpie. I look at the phone and finger through his buttons to the REDIAL command. Press it. Voice mail.
“Mr. Cherry, this is Mr. Honey Bunny. Have it your way then. The offer has been retracted. Within twenty-four hours you, your families and your friends will be red smears. No one tells us to fuck ourselves.”
I hang up. Pocket the phone.
“Alright. We’re done.”
Blimpie recoils into his lard. A jelly turtle, scared and alone.
I crush out the smoke, drain my beer. Stand up. Blimpie crawls like a bug cut in half but still trying to move.
I drop one of Dobbins’ twenties and head out. I hear Blimpie use the bar top to lift himself and the bartender says, “Where’re you goin’?”
Blimpie says, “I thought he was the job today?”
The bartender says, “He was. Now sweep the parlor and do a better job than you did last night.”
32
Hail a cab.
Got to make this quick. I ask the cabbie to take me to a liquor store where the clerk speaks English. Takes him several minutes to think of one, and of course he drives around the whole time. Takes him close to fifteen to get there. I go in, come out with two packages and tell him where to go next.
The breakfast joint is the same way I left it. I walk in, the waitress notices me. We meet at the counter.
I set the bottle down on the counter. Brown paper bag. She eyeballs it, looks to me.
“You wanna fuck me or somethin’?”
“Would the bottle do it?”
“Seriously?”
“I need your phone book again.”
“You wanna know my age?”
“No.”
“Probably the right answer, mister.”
She snatches the bottle off the counter and comes back with the directory. I look up Danny Gibbens-something. Bingo. Daniel Gibson, address on Holland. Tear the page out.
