Ask the Dice (15 page)

"Nope, I still never met the dude."

"Odd. Most odd." Bang's eyes gleamed as hard as the mirror-polished steel marbles batted around inside a pinball machine. "Our eyewitness ID's you going into Ogg's shitbox of a bungalow. You got some heavy man-on-man action going on with him?"

"What if we do? Does that break any law?"

"What you do behind closed doors is your business, but my business is homicide, and my job is to arrest Gwen Ogg's killer."

"Who is your eyewitness?"

"That's not germane to this discussion."

Bang had lied. "Then I'll go ahead and contact my lawyer," I said.

"How's that, eh? My hearing comes and goes. I should wear an aid, but who likes to screw with them? I guess it's my vanity. Again, what's your deal with Ogg?"

"Why do we keep going around in circles?"

"Careful. Don't bullshit your way to prison. Watson Ogg is an old-line gangster. Just because he moved his HQ to a shittier 'hood, he didn't fall off my periscope. Anything but, in fact. He's never been more of a person of interest, and I'm getting close. Can you spell RICO?"

I wasn't sure if Bang was all bluff and bluster. My creeping hunch said he was. But he knew of Mr. Ogg, and that set off loud alarm bells. I still played it dumb. "RICO? Gangsters? Look at me. Do you see any tattoos? Me dressed in gang colors? Me flashing gang hand signs? Was I packing a piece?"

Bang cracked his apish knuckles, one by one, as if the nitty-gritty lay in store for me. "Let's put our cards down on the table. I know you're a contract killer, mechanic, or button man. Take your pick of job title. Yeah, my eyes would light up, too, since that's a heavy rap. The point is, you take care of Ogg's dirty work, and his hands stay pristine clean.

"Hold on, before you jump up in my shit and sing out with your denials, let me add this is my pet theory. I've told nobody before now, but I've got my eye on you. See, I'm making it my career's quest to put you behind bars. I'm a driven cop. All I can think of 24/7 is making the Tommy Mack Zane bust stick and gloat at him in my prison cell."

My heartbeats used piledriver slams. How did he know my secrets? Had Mr. Ogg given me up? I'd tiptoed around every job I did, and I used extra care not to leave behind the faintest trace. I grappled for the comeback an innocent man would hurl out in his defense, but I got nothing.

I weighed if Bang was baiting me. He'd thrown out the accusation and now looked for any reaction. He had to be on a fishing expedition. My gut instinct was to stick to my original story. I knew zip. I mustered enough gumption to chuckle at his outlandish idea.

"Me, a hit man? You're dicking with me, right? I hope so. The only hit man I know is from the Godfather movies."

"I'll tell you why I got it right." Bang smacked his lips at me. "You overplay the anti-gangster shtick for your a smoke screen. But you don’t fool this cop. Item: you own a modest split-level in the 'burbs. Item: you drive a nondescript coupé, nothing too flashy or pimpy. Item: you don't consort with the usual homeboys in the ‘hood. Those items add up, and they underpin my smoke screen theory."

So maybe Mr. Ogg hadn't thrown me under the police bus, and I shrugged as relief washed through me. "Has it ever occurred to you I'm just a regular guy, Bang?"

"Then why do you crow so loud for your shyster?"

I shrugged again. "How else do I get out of here? We've gone at this for an eternity it seems, and I see no light at the end of the tunnel."

"We're getting there. How do you pull down a paycheck, Mr. Zane?"

"Odd handyman jobs. I'm paid in cash, and things are slow. My father left me a small slug of money, and I can make do between jobs."

"Your father Phil Zane is still living. I checked."

"I was adopted. My birth father
Bradford
died, and I inherited his assets."

"I'll also check on that fact."

Not that it's any of your business
, I wanted to blurt out, but I bridled my tongue and gave him a third shrug.

Sucking between his teeth, Bang reached around a hand and tugged a packet of folded stationary from his hip pocket. The top sheet was yellow and lined, and I recognized it. My breath stalled. He tossed the packet on the tabletop between us and tapped his square, scaly fingernail on it. "Are these chicken scratches your, uh, poesies?"

“Poems.” Anger lay a hot poker at my brainstem. He took joy in watching me squirm in the chair. "Who gave you the permission to search the coupé?" I asked.

This time he shrugged. "A gust of wind blew out the pages from your open window. Fortunate for you I snatched them."

Back to riverboat gambler cool, I faked my grateful smile. "Thanks. I'll take them back now, if you don't mind."

But he just sat there, his shrewd marbly eyes appraising me. He cleared his throat. "This just fits what I view as more of your intricate masquerade. Who would ever figure a hit man for a poet? That just doesn't jive at all. But I know better. I'm not suckered or swayed by your bullshit cover story."

"Are the poems about killing folks?"

He flicked the packet over to me. "To be honest, I can't make heads or tails of them."

I stuffed the rolled up packet into my hip pocket. "Is the soda machine fixed yet?"

"Soon. Back on task. The stiff is Ogg's niece, Gwen. That can't make the big kahuna feel warm and fuzzy."

"I guess not, but then I don't know the Oggs."

"If I was him, I'd order my dark suits to comb the streets, find Gwen's triggerman and whack the guy."

"All this drama about the Oggs is fascinating. Could be I'll write a poem about it."

Smirking like the Joker at me, Bang nodded. "I've got just the private spot to inspire you."

I wanted to kick myself. "Sitting in here, I suppose."

"You got it." He arose from the table and lumbered to the door.

"Any hope for that soda?"

"Pink pigs will fly out of my ass first. Snap to it, Shakespeare. Write down everything about the Oggs."

He left. More relief flooded through me. I’d rather have the nosy bastard find my poems than the sawed-off shotgun I'd ditched before the cops bleeped me over. My rearview mirror had flagged them lagging back a ways as I cleared the turn, but they'd caught my scent, and I had to act fast. The public mailbox sat at the next intersection, and I punched the accelerator. Then I braked beside the mailbox, and scooped up the sawed-off shotgun and the roll of black electrician's tape I carried.

My sprint to behind the mailbox let me see the vandals had also jimmied this one open. No letters or packages sat inside it. Slashing services, the
PO
bleeding red had orphaned the mailbox. The tossed sawed-off shotgun clanged inside it. The back to the mailbox got taped shut. Sure, it was klugey, but I lacked the time for anything too fancy. I vaulted back into the coupé and got rolling again. A block later, the squad car spurted up, and its red-blue roof bar flared at me.

My mouth went dry. I might accelerate off and elude the cops, but my rational logic advised me to cooperate. I yielded to the curb when the cops blurted their siren. Being hauled over was a new experience. The uniformed cops—both white as pickled eggs and probably reprimanded more than once not to profile—branched off, each taking a different side of the coupé. Both came armed with 9-mms. My window already down, I let them talk first.

"Sir, you ran a red traffic light back there."

"Uh-huh."

"Were you distracted by texting or talking on your cell phone?"

"Not me. Cell phones are despicable, and I'll never own one."

"License, registration, and proof of insurance, please."

"Sorry, but I left my wallet in my other pants."

"Sir, I need for you to step out of your vehicle. Keep your hands up."

So, we took a little jaunt downtown, tit led to tat, and here I perched on my thumbs. Who killed Gwen Ogg? Not me, said Tommy Mack Zane. The pisser was I got nailed by the one murder I wasn't a party to, and that injustice boiled my blood. Other concerns gnawed at me. Whenever law enforcement poked under your hood, they diagnosed the crimes you didn't even know existed there.

Short of a steady drumbeat of denying my alleged misdeeds, I'd no better defense. I'd gut out my slammer time. Worst case scenario, it'd end fast and be over for good. How many times could the Commonwealth breathe new life into my corpse and repeat injecting its lethal IV? How many stays before the governor grew jaded enough to delete my defense attorney's latest email request as spam?

My pack of Blue Castles came out. As I struck the lighter to flame, the door batted air at me, and Bang, clutching a soda can, lumbered inside. He ignored my cigarette. After angling out the chair, he flumped down and upended the soda can and quaffed its final gulp. He crushed the can flat between his furry paws, pitched it in the wastebasket, and belched.

"Where did we leave off?" he asked me.

As a simple idea inspired me on how I'd end this charade, I shrugged.

"You took five to clear your head. Well, did you?"

"Matter of fact, I did." I stretched up from the chair. "Now I'm just walking out that door. Don't stand in my way."

"Wrong move, Mr. Zane. Sit down. Now."

Instead I fired up my
Blue
Castle
, inhaled, and exhaled a plume of smoke. "You ain't charged me, and I ain't sitting around while you get your ducks in a row to slap a bogus rap on me."

"Stay away from that door. We're not finished."

I stepped forward.
Be bold
, I thought. He also ranged up, but he wasn't set to block me. I knew it. They hadn't even cuffed me to the table's eyebolt. There'd been no whiff of a Miranda. I felt as if I'd been free to exit from Bang's Star Chamber all along. Sometimes the obvious stuff like that fell between the cracks in my brain. I left the interrogation room all to him still yelling out at me cutting down the corridor.

I whistled Bird's snappy take of "A Night in
Tunisia
." That's how footloose it felt to amble out of Old Yvor City PD's station house and greet the Milky Way as a liberated brother.

F
rankly, I didn't give a rat bastard's ass what the modern jazz academics, pundits, and detractors said or blogged on her. For me, one accolade summed up Lady Day's music:
class
. When I was a kid, I listened to her LPs, the 12-inch diameter vinyl discs we old hipsters spun on a turntable if the diamond stylus hadn't grounded off. Raw as kerosene yet rich as sable, she piped out a vivid tonal range no singer—guy or gal—since could begin to match. Lady Day and I would come to share another link: she married a mobster while I worked for one.

When I grew up in the Zane household, I tuned out their music, often a rhythm and blues or soul standard served on white bread. I seldom strayed from the vintage post-war jazz. Why was that? Who can say? Youths are rabid fans of their generation's troubadours, and mine was no exception. But what the other kids—in the main, Caucasians—liked to hear just didn't cut it for me.
Soul Train
on TV was boring. I ignored them, what besides my dark pigment ostracized me out as the neighborhood loner.

How or when I got hooked on jazz is hazy to me. My early
Texas
years may've ingrained it. I remembered all the transistor radios playing everywhere—the grease pits, bus depot, barbershop, cash-and-carry, pool hall, washerette, drive-in, and hardware store—in Champagne’s Folly the riffs tooted by Coltrane, Gillespie, Monk, Parker, Powell, and, of course, my square root of cool, Miles.

Jazz thrived in the
Texas
dirt, oil, and air. Jazz tasseled atop the endless rows of corn ripening in field after field. The night katydids blew their discordant variants of jazz. The road gangs whistled it while slinging their yoyo blades to chop the thistle patches.
Champagne
's Folly was a blissful bower of jazz lovers, my kind of folks. Or at least I liked to paint that idyllic past about my
Texas
roots.

The Zanes were atheists, a belief I found useful to carry into my adulthood. If I took the existence of Hell off the table, then I'd never face any reprisal worse than what I'd already encountered as a mortal. Besides, I was just doing my job. Mr. Ogg assigned me the tasks, and I went off and got them done. I know my work ethic is what saved me. When the lean times struck, the freelancers trawled to hitch on with him and bump me out of a job. But he stuck by me, and I rewarded him with unswerving loyalty.