J. MICHAEL BLUE has published more than 150 short stories, essays and articles in publications as diverse as Byline, The Flying Island, The Concho River Review,  Blue Murder Magazine, Papyrus, Hand-Held Crime, The Timber Creek Review, Literally, The Writer's Journal, Vintage Northwest, Arts Indiana, and Plots With Guns. His short fiction has won awards in a dozen contests. 

Blue Murder Press published a trade paperback edition of J. Michael’s first novel in August of 2000. New editions of Justified Crimes and A Favor For Zodiac have been reissued under the Mystery Writers of America Presents imprint, along with a collection of short fiction entitled 3 Lady Blues + 12.  All three books are available as e-books through Coffee-Cup Press.

EXTRACT FROM SECOND SINNING

Commit a sin twice and it will not seem a crime.
Jewish saying

He hath showed you, oh man, what is good, and what doth the lord require of thee, but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
The Book Of Micah: Chapter 1 Verse 8

Chapter One

Three tightly packed lanes of cars, everybody eating someone else's exhaust; this was no way to start your morning. Wes Hayes liked to get to work early. He preferred to take the scenic route along the river or to pick up a paper and a coffee at the Koffee Kafe on McCasky, and head downtown along an empty six-lane boulevard. The trick was to get started before every other driver in town hit the streets.

Congestion in St. Joseph, Indiana paled by Chicago or Detroit standards, but Wes hated to start the day being tailgated by somebody who should have gotten out of bed a half hour earlier. He had enough unsolicited aggravation in his life.

Today, for instance, was an ex-wife day. LeAnne had called him at home and said she wanted to see him privately and as soon as possible.

"Is Sarah in trouble again?" Somehow his near perfect daughter had become "The Public Enemy" over the past few months.

"She is, but that's not why I called."

"If this is more about her wanting to come and live with me, I told you and her both that I think we ought to just cool it for a while. See how she feels in another three months."

"As far as I'm concerned, that discussion is over," LeAnne said. "She's lived with me since she came into this world, and she's staying with me until she's ready to be on her own."

He sighed. "So what's this about?" He dictated a note to his brain – try to find out what's up with Sarah.

"I want to talk to you about one of your employees."

He didn't think his ex-wife had ever stepped inside one of his salons, but maybe he had missed something. "You're a customer now?"

"No, but I need your help with something."

He'd been fixing his dinner when she called. Pasta with a bottled sauce, a dark leaf salad dumped from a plastic bag, and a loaf of quick-bake garlic bread. Twenty minutes start to finish, his kind of cooking.

He pictured LeAnne sitting at his kitchen table the next morning, her waved blond hair skullcap close, her makeup exaggerated but perfectly drawn. She'd be sipping herbal tea from her travel mug, staring at the river through his floor-to-ceiling windows and calculating the cost of everything he owned. "Why couldn't you have been rich when I was married to you?" she would want to know. He could do without that conversation.

"Be glad to meet with you, LeAnne, but probably not here, and I know Pete doesn't like me spending time at your place."

"Let's go to Howell Park," she said. "I want to stay away from restaurants, and it's so damned cold in the mornings, we'll be the only ones crazy enough to be outside."

"Like old times," he said. "By the statue? Around seven?"

"Make it eight-thirty. I want to get everyone out the door before I leave."

"Okay," he said reluctantly. "It'll make me late to the office, but I can do that for you."

She hung up.

"You're welcome," he said. "Think nothing of it."

And that was why, on this cold and windy Tuesday morning, he was fighting the rush hour traffic. No good deed goes unpunished.

He had decided against a quick stop at the office. He'd just get into something important and then have to pull the plug, and that would make Dori, his downtown shop manager, and Edna, his right hand lady, begin to wonder what he had going on. Wes liked to keep his private life private. Coming in late would work for him if he left messages in advance, and he had taken care of that before breakfast.

He turned off Michigan onto Parkview Drive about eight twenty-five and pulled into the paved area under the last stand of elms left in the city. Twenty-eighth of September and the leaves had already begun to turn. What the hell happened to summer? He remembered Midwestern summers that lasted until the middle of football season, but now they disappeared soon after he got his boat in the water.

Only two other cars in the lot but one of them was LeAnne's Jeep. He locked the Eldo and took off across the wet grass. The park trash barrels were well beyond the overflow stage, and someone needed to do a better job of policing the grounds and cleaning up after visiting dogs. If the city couldn't keep this place cleaned up in the off season, what would they do when summer rolled around again?

He could feel the dampness from the river and hear its unrelenting white noise as it raced over rocks and fallen limbs in its rush to get out of town. Even with the dog crap, this was a great park.

He had hit his first honest to God, over the fence home run on Diamond No. 2 here, smoked his first joint lying in the dark on the riverbank, and enjoyed his first carnal experience behind the park pavilion with a sweet, eager to please girl named Sammi Levanthal. Sammi still smiled at him when they passed on the street, so it must have been as good as he remembered it. Ah youth.

LeAnne couldn't have been waiting long, but she always had the shivering fits when the thermometer dropped below sixty. She'd taken a seat at the bench in front of the weathered statue of a Union Army soldier, her back to the wind and the river, her hair and ears covered with a dark blue watch cap. The cap matched the Paul and Shark sweater jacket he had given her nine Christmases ago after his release from prison. He'd sold his favorite watch to buy her that sweater. Five months after he slipped his package under her tree, she'd married Pete Parker and put an end to Wes's hopes for a reconciliation.

"I can't take much of this," she said as though their outdoor meeting location had been his idea. "It must be thirty degrees out here."

"Forty-two," he said, "I heard on the radio as I drove in. The wind makes it brutal. You want to sit in the car?"

She frowned and looked around as though for spies. "Better not," she said. "You never know."

He shrugged and shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. "What can I do for you, Sweetie?"

"Cassie Meyers." The name came out of her mouth with dirt around the edges. "You know her?"

"Sure. I know all our master stylists. A woman needs a new silhouette or has a hair color problem, I might send her to Cassie."

"Yeah, well you must not be the only one passing out referrals. She's fucking my husband."

Wes waited. He spent time looking at his shoes and then turned and stared as far as he could see down the river. "Well, she isn't doing it on the job, I can promise you that."

LeAnne stood and moved around in front of him. "Is that your idea of funny?"

"No, but it is my way of telling you that I don't control the sex lives of my employees, and I'd just as soon remain ignorant about your marital problems."

"Yeah? Well I'm sure you'll remain ignorant about most things, but I want help with this."

"Have you talked to Pete?"

"No."

"Why not? He's the one who's out of line."

"The way I hear it, she's twenty-four, looks like an angel with the body of a swim suit model. Her tits don't sag, and she probably has time to keep her legs and her pussy shaved the way both you and he seem to like them."

"Hey, LeAnne!"

"I bet she doesn't wear socks to bed or hound him about unpaid bills either. So given all those fine attractions, he could be hard to discourage."

"But she's not married to you."

"And neither are you any more, so why don't you stop with the lecture?"

"I'm not lecturing, but how can you be sure what's...."

"I'm sure."

Wes shook his head as she glared at him like he was the one doing the cheating. God, she looked tired and worn. Still a good-looking woman, but stretched past her limit. "I don't know what you expect me to do, LeAnne. Even if you're right, this is none of my business."

"I expect you to pull her off of him. I expect you to get her to keep her hands and her other body parts off of his dick!"

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "You still like to talk sewer mouthed around me because you know how much it pisses me off."

"Get her away from my husband."

"How am I supposed to do that?"

Tears flowed from her red-rimmed eyes. She seemed at the far edge of her self-control. "I don't care how you do it, just do it. You owe me, you bastard."

He reached out to her, but she pulled away and glanced around as though someone might have been watching them. Had she always been this tense and uncertain? This sharp and angular? He remembered a girl with a big laugh and soft white shoulders and high round breasts, a girl who couldn't wait to try something new. "Come on," he said. "Let's get out of this wind."

He led her back across the grass to the parking area. She cried all the way, but she stopped resisting, and when he opened the passenger door of his car, she slid onto the seat and covered her face with her gloved hands.

At sixteen, he had talked her into his bed. He was her first and she was his tenth. He got her pregnant within a year and she had an abortion. He got her pregnant again after their engagement but before their wedding, and Sarah was born half a year into their marriage. Shortly after his daughter's second birthday, he had gone away to prison, leaving LeAnne trapped in a dead-end marriage with no money, no job and a child to raise. As a final fuck you, he had served his time, and come back home to get semi-rich after she divorced him. "The only reason you've made all of that money is to spite me," she liked to tell him.

Did he owe her? Yeah, he owed big time, and no amount of making up for past sins would ever get him even. Her trouble would be his trouble forever.

He climbed in on the driver's side and started the car so he could run the heater. She had her head on her knees and her body shook from belly deep sobbing. "You sure you want to stay married to Pete? He's not such a great husband that you couldn't be better off on your own?"

She straightened and squared her shoulders. "I love him! I love him as much as I loved you, and I would have killed for you!"

"Maybe you could love somebody else. Somebody who deserved it for a change."

"I don't want somebody else, and I don't want to have to find somebody else. I hate being on my own!" she said.

"Pete knocks you around."

"You don't know that."

"Yeah I do, and so does our daughter. He doesn't leave marks where she can see them, but she knows."

"Cops beat their wives. It's part of the job. They can't help themselves."

"That's bullshit, LeAnne."

"And it only happens when I push him too much."

"Like if you went to him now about Cassie."

She had washed away her makeup with tears, and her defenses seemed to have gone the way of her mascara. "The shitty truth is that I need a man in my life. I can't go it alone again. I'm thirty-six years old and I feel seventy. Besides, he'd never let me be the one to end it. Nobody quits on Pete. He does the quitting if there's any to be done."

"But he's got somebody else," Wes insisted.

"Right now he seems to want both of us, and that gives me time to work this out."

He sighed. As he had already tried to point out, this was none of his business. "I got no idea what I'd say to her, and I don't know a single reason why she should listen to me."

LeAnne turned and trapped him with a look that demanded a promise. "You tell her to go get her own man, because Pete Parker is taken! Make her understand she can't do this."

After a solid minute of silence, he said. "It'll probably cost me one of the best people I have, and I doubt it'll do any good, but I'll talk to her."

Chapter Two

After he left LeAnne, Wes let his Eldorado take him for a drive around the city. He needed the time and solitude to decide how to handle the problem his ex-wife had dropped in his lap.

Should he approach Cassie Meyers directly? He had met with her no more than half a dozen times during the two years she'd worked at Wesley's, and all of their discussions had been about business. Also, anything Wes said to his stylist would almost certainly get back to Detective Pete Parker, and that would set off explosions Wes would just as soon avoid.

He raced with the traffic along Michigan Avenue, whipping past the spiffy new Methodist Health Care Complex and then circling a square through the busy downtown section of the city. No need to think about where to turn or what streets to avoid. He'd been wandering St. Joseph alone since his years in grade school.

Without planning to do so, he did a drive-by of each of his beauty salons, a quintet of establishments that carried his name above their well-tended entrances. He had designed the interior of each location -- large potted plants and huge framed mirrors and walls of mauve, and pink, and mint green. Muted jazz drifted from a dozen hidden speakers in every salon. Hip, relaxed, and comfortable; not bad for a guy who learned how to cut hair in the joint.

Finally, he realized how hungry his morning activities had made him and he pulled into the parking lot of a restaurant named Eddie's Other Place four blocks from his West Side shop. As he eased into a slot near the entrance of the diner, quart-sized rain drops began to bounce off his windshield. "Luck and timing," he muttered, "I really got it going today." He ran inside before the weather could get worse.

Wes had not eaten at Eddie's since its most recent change of ownership, so he ordered food no one could abuse. "Coffee, juice, cold cereal, one egg scrambled, and whole wheat toast," he said to the unshaven guy in the stained apron. The previous owner, a fiftyish woman who had sported homemade tattoos on both biceps, had also favored messy uniforms and practiced razor avoidance.

"What kind cereal? What kind juice?"

"Whatever you sell the most of. The phone still in the back?"

The man pointed to a sign that said "Restrooms/Telephone."

Edna Waters answered Wes's call on the second ring. "I got your message. Are you out visiting the shops?"

"I had a couple errands to run. Anything happening?"

"I'm not certain I'm up on everything. I've been busy counting your money."

"Good girl. How am I doing?"

"You're still spending it faster than we're bringing it in."

"Investing, not spending."

"Either way, the cash is dwindling. It makes me nervous."

"Am I trying to go too fast again, Edna?"

"Probably. Last week's receipts were down at Southtown. Too many cancellations. There's something going on over there."

He nodded. "I'll take a look."

"This keeps happening to them. Maybe it's time to change managers."

"You looking for a job?"

"Don't tempt me," Edna said. "It would feel like a vacation."

"Anybody looking for me?"

"Mr. Pass called. He said he'd like to see you if you can work it out." Edna was accustomed to taking calls from Harry Pass, but Wes knew she didn't like talking to or about him. Bad guys weren't her thing, and she didn't understand why Wes associated with a man who ran gambling, extortion, and loan sharking businesses.

"All right. I've got his number. Anything else."

"I have a stack of checks for you to sign, and I suppose I should remind you about your meeting with the pension people this afternoon."

As usual, she had him pegged. Wes had forgotten about that meeting, probably because he never looked forward to hours locked up in the company of numbers crunchers. "Okay, I'll be there."

"Those of us who have our life savings locked up in the pension fund say, 'Thank you.'"

"And well you should. Is Cassie Meyers in this morning?"

"I think so," Edna said. "You want me to ring the shop?"

"No. Just call her and say I have a new customer for her, but I want to talk to her first. Have her meet me at Cappellini’s after she gets off at five. I haven't been in there in a couple of weeks anyway, so I need to stop by and make sure those guys aren't wasting my money. I can buy her a drink before I leave for home."

"You don't want her to come to your office?" Edna didn't like it when Wes got too casual in his contacts with his employees. "Some people will start to think you play favorites" she reminded him whenever he spent time socially with the men and women who worked in his salons.

"No, but if you're available, you can chaperone."

"Very funny. Are we going to start seeing accurate, on-time, month end numbers from that restaurant any time soon? You'll never keep track of anything the way your new partners handle their bookkeeping."

"Patience, Edna, patience. I'll tell them you need to see rough numbers by the fifth of each month, how's that?"

"It's a cash business, so five days should be plenty of time, but I'll believe it when it happens. When are you coming in?"

Wes glanced over his shoulder. His breakfast awaited on the counter behind him. "I'll probably drop by and see Harry Pass, but I'll try to be in the office around noon."

"I wish you would reconsider getting a pager or a cell phone."

"You mean so that you could keep better track of me."

"It might be a good idea."

Wes smiled and shook his head. "Not a chance, little mother. Besides, you run the whole operation, we both know that."

"Then why don't we start calling these places Edna's?"

"Because then everybody would know."

He hung up and dialed the number of the Belgian social club where Harry Pass spent most of his workdays. A sullen bartender answered, identified Wes, and, after a brief wait, Harry came onto the line.

"Wesley. You coming to see me."

They had known each other most of their lives, but Wes had never become accustomed to Harry's monotone. No question sounded like a question, and the smallest request had the sound of an order. Harry Pass spoke in a flat line.

"What's going on? I'm not due on the last payment for another week. You want to help me celebrate early?"

"We need to talk, that's all. I have some ideas."

"Ideas are good. You going to be there for an hour?"

"I'll be here all day."

"Okay, I'll stop by." When he returned to his seat at the restaurant counter, his toast had dried shingle hard, and his coffee and egg were the same temperature as his corn flakes. "I know this day is going to get better," he said. "I just know it."

Chapter Three

The DK Club occupied four lots on a corner in what most locals still called "Belgian Town." From First Avenue to Bragoon Way and from Willow to Sycamore Street, the twenty-four-block neighborhood dated from the early 1900s but hadn't seen any new home construction in thirty years. Two large Catholic churches, one of them empty and up for sale and the other led by a non-resident priest, anchored the east and west borders of the community.

Seventh Avenue sliced through the center of the neighborhood, lined on both sides with taverns, gas stations, cafes, and second hand stores. White shingled, well-maintained bungalows and Cape Cods, each one ten yards off the sidewalk and twenty feet from its neighbors, housed families who had been residents for more than seventy years.

At one time, this part of town was a crowded little Belgian island, but recently, members of the younger generation were marrying Italians or Poles or, God forbid, Protestants, and moving to new developments on the north side of the city. Homes sat empty with "For Sale" signs stuck in their yards, and most of the old time local shops and grocery stores had been permanently shuttered by chain store and shopping mall competition.

The DK was Harry Pass's club and the center of his world. His financial support provided undiminished cash flow despite a declining membership, and it kept the kitchen operating to suit Harry's tastes. Brother DKers seemed grateful for his largesse and willing to defer to his preferences. In the Men's Bar on the lower level, no one sat in the curved booth along the back wall unless Harry invited them to do so.

"Have a seat, Wesley, I'll be with you in a minute." Pass looked the part of the man in charge, slicked back thinning hair, gold rim glasses, and starched, French-cuffed shirt. His suspenders had a black background and a parade of silver and gold coins that ran up his slender chest and over his shoulders. His tie matched the colors of the coins, and the black suit jacket that hung neatly over a nearby chair sported a pocket handkerchief that could have been cut from the tie.

Wes couldn't remember any visit to the DK when he failed to find Harry on the four-line phone installed at his booth. He waved at Pass to take his time and went to the bar to get a cup of coffee. The DK had the best coffee in the city.

"You spend a lot of time on that thing for someone in your line of business," Wes said when he returned and found Pass ready to talk.

"We check it every morning for bugs, at the same time we sweep this place. Besides, the money I pay out for cooperation, I shouldn't have to worry about such shit."

"But you're a careful man."

Pass shrugged. "There's always the Staties and the Feds, and the new guy in the Prosecutor's Office is a pain."

Wes nodded. "Bakkula. The Crime Fighter. I noticed the poker machines are gone around here, and figured that was his doing. I heard he hit all the clubs in town."

"Gets him a headline and he doesn't have to make a case against anybody. Lots of TV of his people breaking up expensive equipment with a dozer. If he'd let it go at that, nobody'd mind."

"So what kind of ideas you been having?"

Harry smiled and placed his long fingered hands flat on the tabletop. "Right. Let's get to it."

Wes smiled back. "Okay."

"Total dollars, I've advanced you how much." It didn't come out sounding like a question, but it called for an answer.

"You loaned me thirty thousand at thirty percent the first time around, and two hundred thousand for twenty percent plus five percent of my gross revenues for a year when I did the big expansion."

"And since then nothing."

"I still owe nineteen thousand plus some vig on the last one."

"But you're doing business with a bank now."

"Once I got cash positive, they couldn't wait to set me up with a line of credit. My payments to you don’t show up on the books, so they think I’m rolling in dough."

"I give you credit whenever you ask."

"Their interest rates are easier to live with than yours, Harry."

"Yeah, but I backed you when then those spineless pricks wouldn't let you in the door."

Wes nodded and lifted his cup in a toast. "You're right, and I'll never forget it." If he had not repaid those loans on time and in full, Harry would have punished him far more severely than any conventional lender, but Wes had needed the money and Pass had come through for him. He was grateful.

"I think we should join up as full partners," Harry said.

"Really? In your business or mine?"

"In yours. I don't think you have the stomach for what I do. The balls maybe, but not the stomach."

Wes took a sip of his coffee. Time to go easy. "I appreciate your thoughts, but I'm sort of like you, Harry. I do better when I'm the one running things."

"You've never had someone like me to share the load."

"No, but I like making my own mistakes."

"You'd be making a serious one here if you didn't treat my offer as sincere."

Wes tried the coffee again. He drank it black, but he picked up his spoon and did some slow stirring. "What are you proposing?"

"I give you back the two thirty from the loans, and that buys me fifty percent of your deal."

"All the salons?"

"Yeah."

"And my piece of the restaurant?"

"Everything."

Wes shook his head. "Sounds light to me. I'm doing a million, one fifty, in sales, forty percent of which goes to my operators in commissions. The other sixty either covers overhead or it goes in my pocket, and my pockets have been doing okay. The last appraisal I got said the salons are worth probably a million and a half. It’s too early to tell with Cappellini’s, but it’s already looking good."

"I like you, Wesley," Harry said. "You show gratitude, and you keep your word."

"I do my best."

"So maybe I throw in another seventy thousand to make you feel good. Also, I can bring opportunities to the deal which you would never get close to without me."

"No offence, but I doubt I'd get close to the sort of deals you're talking about under any circumstances. I don't seem to have your talent for staying out of jail."

Harry spread his fingers on the table as though to brace himself. "This is not what you'd call a conventional business acquisition. You don't get to set the price or the terms, and you really shouldn't disrespect the offer."

"Do I get a choice about rejecting it?"

"Everybody's got a choice. Nobody should have to kill anybody over any of this stuff, but it would not be good for our relationship if you couldn't help me find a way to do what I need to do."

Wes looked at his former bankroller. They had never been pals, but they had never had trouble either. "Why you doing this? Like you said, I've held up my end."

Harry had his 'business is business' look in place. "Times are changing around here, my friend. You know how long it's been since we had a guy from one of the old neighborhoods become mayor, or sheriff, or police chief?"

"Quite a while."

"Forever, and those days ain't coming back. I'm getting pushed into a smaller and smaller corner, and I need more stakes in more businesses that can produce clean income, and can maybe launder a few dollars here and there. The big boys call it diversification."

And the government calls this kind of arm twisting, extortion, Wes thought. "What about your strip clubs?"

"Only semi legit, and their days are numbered. Bakkula is driving away the trade, and next month the County Board is going to restrict our hours and put pasties and G strings back on the girls. It's a matter of time till they break us or close us down."

"Even so, I deal a lot in checks and credit cards."

"But you see plenty of cash."

"Yeah, I see some."

"And if you showed up heavy or light, it would be hard as hell for anybody to prove anything had happened."

"Within reason, I suppose that's right."

"I don't mind paying some taxes if it helps me to get coin into circulation without having to explain where it came from."

"And you like me because you know me, and I know how the real world works."

"Makes it better for everybody."

Wes nodded. Neither of them had an interest in smiling now. "How long do I have to decide about this?"

"Take your time. Your last payment isn't due until next week. Give me your answer then."

Chapter Four

The trust people who managed the company's 401K plan brought Wes more bad news that afternoon. He contributed fifty cents on the dollar toward his employees 401K holdings, and now that he had three times as many plan eligible workers as he had when he put the program in place, his next ante-up day would take a large bite from his cash reserves.

Despite Edna's warnings, he had not been making adequate accruals.

"It's a generous plan, especially for your type of business," one of the older trust guys told him. They often tried to protect Wes from his more expansive and expensive ideas. "Most of your people could probably be categorized as contract workers."

"Look, my operators are the best in the city, and that's not an accident. Anyone I've kept behind a chair for three years I want to retain for life. We train them and we develop their professional skills and we make certain they work their butts off. Also, my managers and shop personnel and office staff give me a hundred percent. They deserve what they get."

The pension guys seemed only moderately impressed with Wes's arguments. "As a rule, younger employees aren't too interested in retirement benefits. They like to get the cash up front."

"Do you guys want me to cut down on the size of the business I give you? Is that what you're after?" That shut them up.

He had intended to get to Cappellini’s by four so he could meet with his two restaurant partners before Cassie arrived, but everything ran late through the afternoon. When he opened the front door of the restaurant at quarter till five, she had arrived and taken a seat at the bar.

"We're not open yet, Miss," he said with a smile.

"Yes, but I know one of the owners."

"Well, in that case, I'd better buy you a drink."

Her turn to smile. "Hello, Boss Man. I understand you have someone new to send my way." She looked good, as tough to compete with as LeAnne had suggested. Long slim legs, muscled and tan from summer swimming, and a face so pretty and youthful that most people--especially men--wouldn't wait long to do something nice for her.

"You cut your hair."

She touched it as though she'd forgotten. "It still comes to my shoulders, but I wanted to be able to do more than pull it back or stack it up."

"Nice look. Women would like it and I imagine most of the guys do too."

She smiled and doubled the candlepower in the room. "One of them does," she said. "At least he says so."

Wes nodded and took a seat on the stool beside her. When the restaurant opened in a few minutes, the lounge would fill up with the homeward bound crowd. He needed to move this conversation to a new location.

"I think the guy you just mentioned is the person I want to talk to you about."

She looked confused, but no less adorable. "I thought this was about a customer."

"I figured Edna didn't need to know any more than I told her."

"Okay." Cassie straightened on her stool and put her hands in her lap.

"This is none of my business."

"I thought it was beginning to sound that way."

"How about letting me get us both something to drink, and I'll meet you in that booth over in the corner. It'll get noisy in here, but we'll be able to talk privately."

She nodded and slid off the stool onto open-backed red heels. "Okay."

"What do you like?"

"Frozen strawberry daiquiri," she said. "Heavy on the ice and the strawberries."

The early bartender was preparing his sinks and setting up the stick, but Wes got him to stop long enough to grab a beer from the cooler and make the daiquiri. He sat them up top alongside two glasses of water.

"You want me to bring these over, Mr. Hayes?"

"No, I got them." Wes loaded the drinks and a bowl of pretzels and nuts onto a tray and walked carefully among the maze of round, black cocktail tables to the high-backed banquette where Cassie sat waiting. She wore the expression of a child who'd been kept after class unfairly.

"I'm kind of on the edge of things here."

"I'm sorry, Wes, but I don't see any way that you're even close to the edge of my personal life.

"You're not alone in this."

"But my private relationships have nothing to do with my job."

"I agree."

"So why are we talking?"

"What do you know about me?"

"Less than I thought, apparently. You're a local guy who worked hard and made his own success."

"You know I've been in prison?"

"Ah, I've heard that."

"You know what for?"

She hesitated and looked away. "I'm not sure."

Even the words bother her, Wes thought. "I killed a guy."

She took a tiny drink from the tulip glass and then touched her lips with a napkin. "This is good," she said.

"I had just turned twenty-two, and the other guy was twenty-four. We got in an argument in a bar over who had "next" on a crown pool table."

Her mouth parted and her eyes opened like a doll's. "Really? That was it?"

"Yeah. Brilliant, huh? He tried to hit me with a pool cue, and the owner made us take it outside. When he cleared the doorway, I decked him and he smashed his head on a steel doorstop. Never woke up."

"Jesus."

"Bobby Waddell. I hadn't even met the guy before that night. We'd both been over-served and we both had testosterone fever, but there's no explaining that level of stupidity. I pled no contest to manslaughter, and did five and a half years at Somerville."

"I had no idea."

"So you see, I know something about messing up lives. I have a Ph.D. in screw-ups, and there is a family in this town that will hate me until the day I die. No day begins or ends without me thinking about what I did and wishing I could pull that punch."

She wrapped her hands around her drink and used her index fingers to trace lines in the condensation on the outside of the glass. "I'll bet."

"I was married at the time and had a little girl."

Cassie shook her head as if to say, "Don't tell me any more about this."

"LeAnne Parker, you know who that is?"

A silent nod.

"She was LeAnne Hayes back then."

Wes could see tears forming in Cassie's eyes, but she kept looking at her strawberry concoction and rubbing the glass as though a genie might come out and take her away. He gave her time to swallow and breathe.

"You're going out with Pete Parker."

She nodded again.

"LeAnne knows. She's scared and she's angry and she's hurt."

She turned toward him and the tears flowed freely. "Pete says that they haven’t had a real marriage for years. They don’t even sleep together."

He thought about that for a minute before he spoke again. "Ninety percent, I'm talking to you because LeAnne asked me to help her and I owe her big time. The other ten percent is that I've seen Pete Parker do this dance before and the women involved always get the shaft. I like you and I hate to see you walk into what you're headed for."

"I'm a big girl, Wes. I don’t know where Pete Parker and I are headed, but I know we tried hard not to get involved with each other. I don’t like the fact that he’s married."

Wes poured his beer straight down into a glass and waited for the head to settle. The restaurant had opened its doors, and the first celebrants had arrived. Conversations swelled and ebbed at several tables, and laughter had broken out at the bar. Slap Happy hour had begun.

"Some guys fall in love once in a lifetime, and some guys fall in love every time they get an erection. Pete's a lot closer to the second kind of guy than he is to the first. If he gets really tired of having LeAnne do his laundry and his cooking he may come and live with you, but you shouldn't wish for that to happen."

"If I told him what you've said to me...."

"If you tell him, he'll try to break his pick on my head, but I learned a long time ago not to open my mouth if I can't take the heat for what I say."

"I'm sorry about LeAnne," she said, "and I hope none of this affects your daughter."

"It will."

She turned to face him again. "You can't make me responsible for everyone else," she said.

"If you're smart you'll walk away. You aren't Pete’s first red-hot love affair, you won't be his last. Hell, you may not even be his only side dish at the moment. The guy has a king sized ego and he feeds it by adding women to his "been there-done that" list. Has he talked to you yet about getting the tattoo?"

She blushed and pushed her glass away. The tears had dried and she looked more angry than distraught. "Thanks for the drink," she said. "I won't be coming in tomorrow morning."

"Okay. I'll let Dori know."

"And I'm not sure I can work for you any more."

"I understand. I hope you stay, but I figured you might not."

"I wish you hadn't done this, Wes."

"Yeah, Cassie, I may end up wishing the same thing."

Chapter Five

He probably should have held back on the tattoo remark. But she had written off his warnings as some kind of jealous bullshit, and he'd hoped to give her something to think about on the way home.

Pete Parker liked to brand his women, lay claim to them in a way that made them his no matter where or to whom they went after he'd dropped them. Nothing ostentatious or crude, just a little rose and a ribbon that said "Pete's girl," positioned about an inch south of the bikini line. Sweet. Wes knew three women who'd been marked in that way, including his ex-wife. From Cassie's reaction, she might be number four.

Bill Johnson and Sam Roth, Wes's partners in Cappellini’s, kept him around for more than two hours, feeding him tiny samples of pasta, and explaining why most of what they'd bought for the restaurant had cost twice what they had said it would. In the two months since they'd opened, food sales had lagged behind expectations, but the bar business couldn't have been much stronger.

"Better than the other way around," Sam said. "Margins are good on the booze."

"And dining room sales are coming on," Bill said. "We've decided to open for lunch, so we have some unexpected costs right now, but it'll pay off in no time."

"It better. This place is getting heavy and I'm too old and tired to be a weightlifter."

"Patience, partner, patience."

"I'm telling you guys the way it is. Cappellini’s needs to pull its own weight, beginning now. The well at the Hayes house is dry."

That grimmed everyone up. He left Bill and Sam schmoozing customers and busing dishes, their restaurateur smiles pasted in place. "Don't forget to get Edna her numbers. She's ready to close you guys down."

One more errand before he could go home. He left the parking lot on Logan Street, turned right to cross the river, and followed Washington Ave. into the downtown area. Retail shops had long ago deserted the center city, but banks, accounting firms, insurance offices, and lawyers now occupied the center of town during the daylight hours while nightlife entrepreneurs kept things active after sunset. Sports bars, a dance club or two, a performing arts center, and a dozen eateries, made up the "entertainment" area of St. Joseph. Signs on the lamp posts proclaimed "It's all happening here!"

The homeless folks who'd once napped in doorways and pawed through trash barrels had been "disappeared," along with the seedy bars and the smoky sandwich shops Wes remembered from his youth. News stands, pool halls, and pawn shops had gone in search of cheaper rent and a less visible police presence.

He didn't come downtown often. He'd grown too busy and too socially lazy for late night prowling.

At Memorial Drive he caught a green, but three slender, young women in short, tight dresses and stilt-tall heels stepped in front of him, going against the light. Wes had to hit the brakes or take them out. Two older couples, who had put their car dodging days behind them, watched disapprovingly as the girls ventured into the traffic lanes. One of the three held him off, traffic cop style, while her companions geisha stepped their way to safety. He waited and the traffic cop girl blew him a kiss. He hoped he'd be having that much fun some time soon.

Two blocks further on he took Winston, a one way street headed south, and within a minute he had left restaurants, night clubs and office towers behind. At Poyer Avenue, the streets lights dimmed and the sidewalks emptied as the road dipped under a viaduct and came up alongside a five story, black brick eyesore that had once been an automobile manufacturing plant.

Four thousand twenty-buck-an-hour lunch-bucket jobs had come out of this place at a time when the van conversion and mobile home companies paid eight. During the forties, fifties, and early sixties, the lucky workers punched their timecards at the auto plant.

Then the Japanese came ashore with their boxy, little, sewing machine dependable, sedans, and the blue-collar residents of St. Joe had to learn how to make a living all over again. Those who lived near the assembly plant inherited the dirty bathtub ring from the days of automotive glory.

Beyond the auto plant, a two-mile band of sex shops, strip joints, and liquor stores dominated the neighborhood, though most of them faced the northbound street Wes would take on his return trip through town. Going south, he rolled past fenced and gated warehouses and truck yards, with an occasional empty lot that was a convenient location for illegal trash dumping.

Two hookers on the stroll waved halfheartedly as he passed near their corner. This was business central for Harry Pass and for many who depended on his lending services.

A right on Vermont and a left on Chadwick, and Wes had reached his final stop of the day. He turned into a short unpaved drive and parked alongside a dark brown, two story house with a weed-dominated yard and a sagging front porch. Light shone through draped first floor windows on the driveway side of the house. At the back of the lot, an ancient one car garage, all of its windows broken, leaned in on itself as though from fatigue.

He cut the engine and waited until his lights shut off, and then he locked the car and climbed a set of rot softened steps to a leaf strewn front porch. Maybe he should send someone to clean up and fix up before the house fell down and killed a meter reader or a paper boy.

Mrs. Arronson opened the door before he could knock. "I started to worry," she said, her wide body filling the entryway.

"I was on time when I got up this morning," Wes said. "I don't know what happened."

She smiled, displaying perfectly spaced half-inch gaps between her teeth. "I'm not going anywhere. I just hoped for nothing bad to have happened to you."

"Yeah, we'd all be in trouble then, wouldn't we? How's she doing?"

A shrug and a shake of the head. "It's up and down, you know. A good day for her is when nothing hurts too much and she knows who she is. A good day for me is when she doesn't fall and she only messes the sheets once or twice. Yesterday, she recited her family tree all the way back to her great grandparents, but today she's been worried 'cause her husband's fighting in the war in Korea."

"She awake now?"

"In and out. She naps."

Wes reached into a jacket pocket and extracted an envelope. "Here's your check. I'll put some money in her household account next Monday. That okay?"

"Sure. I eat too much but she hardly swallows anything. It evens out."

He touched Mrs. Arronson on the shoulder. "I appreciate that you're doing this."

"She needs somebody to tend to her and I have to have a place to stay and a job."

"I'm still grateful."

"Like I've told you, my husband fought the diabetes for years, just like her. The neuropathy, all them little strokes in the brain and the eyes. There ain't much left of them in the end."

"It's a tough way to go out."

A sigh, a head shake, and then another gap-toothed smile.

"Why don't you go say 'Hi?' She asked me today if Bobby would be coming tonight. She always calls you Bobby, doesn't she?"

"Yeah. She does."

The late model television, tuned to a network comedy but operating on mute, appeared to have arrived through a time warp into a 1950s living room. All the other furniture had a fragile Danish Modern simplicity, and the carpet was a worn and matted, burnt orange, shag. Family pictures crowded the mantle over a dormant fireplace: Bobby, his brother Roy, Mrs. Waddell, and a man in a military uniform, who Wes believed was husband and father to the group, smiled at all visitors. Jesus ascended to heaven on one wall and a pair of faded Norman Rockwell posters hung side by side on another.

Wes stepped around a scattering of magazines and newspapers and pushed aside the heavy curtain that separated the rest of the house from the old dining room where Mrs. Waddell waited for her life to end. She lay on a hospital bed, the upper half of which had been canted at a forty-five degree angle. As usual she seemed smaller than the last time he had been here. The sturdy compact woman who had stared at him with an all consuming hatred during his trial, her jaw muscles and fists clenching and unclenching, had shrunk to half her former size. She appeared weightless and insubstantial, floating atop the sheets and the stack of pillows on her elevated resting place.

She stirred as he came through the gloom to stand beside her. "Bobby? Is that you? Where you been?"

"It's me, Mrs Waddell," Wes said. He put his hands together behind his back. "How are you feeling?"

"I got a letter from your Daddy today. He's going to come home from Korea before Christmas."

"That will be good, won't it," Wes said.

She turned her head slowly in his direction. "Who are you?"

He cleared his throat. "I'm Wes Hayes, Mrs Waddell."

"No!" She shouted and the effort raised her from the pillows and set off a series of wheezes and coughs, leaving her gasping for air.

He waited, watching her closely until her breathing quieted. "You're Bobby. I know your voice."

"I just stopped by to see how you're doing."

"Roy's going to kill that son-of-a-bitch, Wes Hayes," she whispered. "He promised he'd come home and do it."

"I think Roy is still in jail, Mrs. Waddell. That's why he hasn't been able to look after you."

"Not no more, he ain't."

"Is that so?"

"He told me, 'Don't worry, Momma, cause I'll going to kill that asshole soon as I get back.'" She sighed and closed her eyes. "Goddamn Wes Hayes murdered my baby."

"I'd better get going," Wes said.

"Kill that asshole."

He backed through the curtain into the bright living room where Mrs. Arronson sat wearing a wireless headphone, staring at the silent TV. When she saw him she slid the headphone and its overhead cradle down around her neck. "Sad, ain't it?"

He nodded. "She says she got a call from her son Roy."

"Came in Sunday, about ten in the morning. Second time in three weeks. I talked to him a little."

"What'd he have to say?"

"Wanted to know who I was, how I got here. I told him I was a friend of his mother's come to look after things. 'Are you from the welfare?' he says real snotty. That one made me laugh.

"'The welfare don't look after much of nobody,' I told him. 'Don't hold your breath waitin' for the welfare to show up.' 'We'll see about who you are when I get home,' he told me. Says he'll be here in a week or so."

Wes nodded again. "Did you tell him about me?"

"Didn't see no reason to, and he didn't ask."

"Okay, that's good. If he comes around, don't say anything about me. Let him think you're doing this on your own."

"Okay, but he ought to be grateful for what you've done."

"If you get a chance to call me, I'd like to know as soon as he gets into town."

 Copyright© 2003 J. Michael Blue

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