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I realized I’d have to throw a block for a pal or Moo Shoes was going to lose ground with the object of his infection. “Lois,” I said, leaving Eddie standing and moving up to Lois, using my best condolences voice, “if you could just give us a minute. I got a personal situation and Eddie is giving me advice like he does so well. Okay?”

  She stepped back into the lounge. “Okay, I guess. But Eddie, I gotta get ready for work, soon.”

  Moo Shoes nodded, smiled, put a finger in the air, be there in a minute.

  “Our snake?” he said.

  “Yeah, we have a snake. Deadly poisonous black mamba.”

  “A snake?”

  “Yeah, remember that South African merchant marine who was at Sal’s the other night, the one with all the animals? Well—”

  “So you bought a snake?”

  “It was your idea,” I said.

  “How in the hell could it be my idea if I’m just now hearing about it?”

  “Because you took me to the noodle place with all the snake whiz at twenty bucks a scoop. So I figure it was an investment.”

  “Wait, this was the angle you were talking about when you wanted to pay Uncle Mao in snake whiz? So you bought a snake?”

  “That is what I’m saying.”

  “And it killed Sal?”

  “In my defense,” I said, “the snake was addressed to me. There was even a note saying to be careful. Sal completely ignored the note and opened the crate.”

  “You had it delivered to Sal’s?”

  “Yeah, I figured it was safer than my place. My place they would just leave it outside on the stoop. You can’t just leave a valuable snake lying around. Someone will—”

  “So the snake bit Sal, and now he’s dead?”

  “That is true. Back room of the saloon.”

  “And where is the snake?”

  “Dunno. Maybe still in Sal’s.”

  “With Sal’s dead body?”

  “So you see the problem?”

  “Yes,” Eddie said. “I see the problem. The cops are going to be looking all over for you.”

  “Not necessarily,” I say. “I mean, there’s no way to prove it was our snake.”

  “Except it was addressed to you.”

  “That’s it. I’ll make like someone was trying to kill me, but Sal opened the box and saved me.”

  “No one will believe that,” said Moo Shoes.

  “Ed-deeee!” Lois whined from the doorway.

  I went over and took her hand gently, like I was leading her onto the dance floor. “C’mere, doll, just a little bit more. You know what a sharp operator Eddie is, right? Well I really need just another minute with him and he’ll help me out and then he’s all yours.”

  “Well, all right.” Lois pouted and took little pouty steps back to the bar.

  I turned back to Moo Shoes. “So, I need you to help me get rid of the body.”

  “What? No! I don’t know how to get rid of a body.”

  “Yeah, but you know a guy, right?”

  “Why would I know about that? I grew up in the laundry business.”

  “But you’re an operator, Eddie.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “Well, you would have been if this snake deal had worked out. What about your uncle?”

  “Yes. Maybe.” Moo Shoes was cogitating. “No. He specializes.”

  “What? He specializes in drugging a kidnapped cop and keeping him gacked on smack until we can figure out what to do with him, but he can’t handle one lousy dead guy?”

  “Not a dead white guy.”

  “What, he’s good enough to take my money for drugs but he can’t soil his delicate hands on a corpse? The nerve.”

  “No, you Anglo mugs are too big.”

  “Nonsense, Sal doesn’t go a buck-fifty soaking wet. And he’s already down a couple of quarts. I’d say one-forty, maximum.”

  “Ho says it takes too long for the pigs to eat a white devil.”

  “Maybe since we’re regular customers, he bends policy?”

  “He won’t do it. In fact, he wants more money if he’s going to keep Pookie a few more days. Says he has to bring him around enough to pour some water into him or else he’ll dry up and die.”

  “Well we’re fucked then,” I said. “Because then we’ve got two bodies, and Pookie is huge.”

  “Ed-deeee,” Lois whined.

  “You are going to need to fuck right off, Lois!” I barked. “Right now. Just give us one fucking minute!”

  I may have been somewhat less delicate than I had intended in answering Lois’s concerns.

  “Gwai lo,” Lois muttered as she hurried away.

  “I heard that! I know what that means! I am not a white devil!”

  “Oh shit, now you’ve done it,” Eddie said.

  “Sorry, pal.”

  “The money,” Eddie said.

  “I don’t have any,” I said.

  “I lent you a hundred bucks the other night.”

  “I know. Why did you make me buy noodles?”

  “I told you. I needed to look broke. That’s not the point.”

  “I spent it on the snake. Along with a C-note of my own.”

  “You spent two hundred bucks on a snake?”

  “It is a first-rate snake, as I think we can see now.”

  “Ed-deeee!”

  Moo Shoes wheeled on the dancer. “Scram, Lois! This is business. I’ll be there in a second.”

  She sniffled and started to cry as she ran away. Moo Shoes turned on me then and I had to take a step back, because I was not entirely sure he was not going to sock me in the choppers for wrecking his woo. But he tightened down all of a sudden and got very scary and whispery with me, which I had not seen before, and which unsettled me more than somewhat.

  “You have got to get back to work. If Sal’s isn’t open people will get wise. You already got them looking for a guy with a cane. Hey, where’s your cane?”

  “Don’t need it.”

  “Good. Hide Sal’s body, open the saloon, work your shift, and we’ll figure out what to do tonight after work.”

  “What if the snake is still in there?”

  “Then catch it.”

  “I don’t know how to catch a snake. It’s probably a big snake. Bokker said he’d get a big one. And it’s probably angry because it’s still got Sal’s taste in its mouth.”

  “Use a broom or something.”

  “A broom?”

  “Yeah. I’ll call you later.”

  “What about the scrotum guys?”

  “Who are the scrotum guys?”

  “The old guys at the noodle joint. The ones who look like they are made out of scrotum skin.”

  “That’s disrespectful, Sammy. Those are my venerated elders.”

  “They drink snake piss, Eddie, how venerated is that? This is mostly their fault.”

  “How is this their fault?”

  “Supply and demand. Don’t they teach basic economics in Chinatown?”

  “Go to work. Don’t get killed. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll call you.”

  “Tell Lois I’m sorry. I have been a little edgy lately.”

  “I’ll tell her I’m going to have your arms broken.”

  “Sure, that’s a good angle.”

  “I just need to find the money to pay a guy.”

  So just like that, Moo Shoes went after Lois and left me to find my way back to Sal’s with no help at all.

  * * *

  When you hear guys say that a guy got put in a sack, it sounds much more simple than it actually is, or so it occurred to me as the evening passed.

  I was completely calmed down by the time I got back to Sal’s, and there was no sign of the two guys in the sunglasses, just a few sad dogs sitting vigil, or maybe waiting for dog pizza. Anyway, I let myself in the back, looking around a little bit to make sure that the black mamba was not waiting behind the door to scrag me like it did Sal, but the coast was clear. I stepped over the aforementioned Sal, who, to my s
urprise, seemed less than concerned with my bad manners, then I grabbed the mop by the big laundry sink by his head. There was a little hair and blood there on the corner of the sink, so with the keen Sherlockish detective powers that I have honed over several years of forklift driving, ship welding, and bartending, I deduced that Sal had banged his melon on the way down, thus making for the small, serviette-size puddle of gore on the floor by his face.

  I figured I had an hour to get the saloon ready and open before the after-work regulars started to think something was up, and—with all due respect for the dead—I did not mop up around Sal right away, because I did not care to be surprised during cleanup by the black mamba, so I brandished the mop as my weapon of choice in battling the deadliest snake known to man, as evidenced by the deceased douche bag under the sink. I thought maybe if I found it, maybe it would bite the mop head instead of me, and meanwhile I would run outside and come up with a different plan. The South African said they can outrun a man, but how are they with doorknobs, huh?

  I grabbed a leather jacket out of the lost-and-found and put that on for protection, then I commenced to look around every corner, under every table, behind every stool, in every cabinet—opening the doors and leaping back, mop in hand, ready to run. Half an hour later and there was no snake, although I did surprise a small gray mouse in a cabinet under the back bar and introduced him to my aforementioned giant-dick-in-the-door man-scream, which sent us both scurrying off. So, the coast being relatively clear, it was time to deal with Sal.

  Sal was never the best-smelling mug under normal circumstances, but now he had gone quite overripe indeed. There was a drain in the floor under the sink, so I commenced to dash buckets of warm soapy water over him until he was quite refreshed, although somewhat damp.

  He would not remain so fresh, I guessed, until closing time, and besides, a customer at the end of the bar would be able to spot Sal lying in repose under the sink and curiosity would ensue, so I needed to move him. As I may have mentioned, I have limited experience in the hiding of stiffs, so a good hiding spot did not immediately come to mind. Then, there it was, like the Holy Grail, or the magic words, or free nookie (which, I suppose, could also be the magic words).

  Shortly after the war ended, when Sal first hired me, there came on the market many surplus machines no longer required to defeat the Axis powers. Among these were battleships, bombers, tanks, flamethrowers, atom bombs, and ice machines. And it was the last that Sal decided he needed for his saloon, as the price was so low as to make it almost free, especially considering the savings of not having to have ice delivered every day. And there it stood. Too big to fit under the bar. Too big, even, to get through the door into the front room. Originally designed to make life somewhat less hellish for mugs in the Pacific campaign, it stood in the corner of the stockroom, opposite the sink, chugging and hissing and making various crashing noises all day, all night, every day. Roughly three times the size of a normal fridge, it had a bin that was supposed to hold five hundred pounds of ice, and now, I hoped, would also accommodate its owner.

  There was no way I was going to get dead, wet Sal in there by myself and still be presentable for work in a half an hour, so I stripped to my skivvies, folding my bartender togs and leaving them out on the bar, then I returned to the back room, hoisted Sal from under the armpits, and dragged him over to the machine. It turns out that the term stiff is not entirely a metaphor, which is to say, in the intervening time since he last drew breath, Sal had become quite rigid. The ice machine’s hatchway was about three feet off the floor and covered by a heavy door that clunked shut when dropped into place. While quite serviceable for passing a small bucket or steam tray through, it was not the ideal portal through which to pass a rigorously morted douche bag, and I let loose with a couple of Technicolor roars into the sink during the process. Thus I was enlightened as to how difficult indeed it would be to put a guy in a sack, when I couldn’t even get a well-lubricated welterweight into an ice machine. And it was occurring to me that perhaps I did not have the stomach for cutting parts off of Sal to get him in the ice machine, even if the paring knife we used for cutting lemons was sharpened up considerably, when the phone rang. I left Sal hanging mostly out of the machine while I went to answer it.

  “Sal’s,” I said.

  “May I speak to Mr. Gabelli, please?” said a woman, very official and serious.

  “Mr. Gabelli just stepped out,” I told her. “May I take a message?”

  “Please have him call this number as soon as possible,” she said, then she gave me the number, which I wrote down on a notepad we keep by the phone for just such things.

  “Who should he ask for?”

  “Just have him say who is calling and I will direct his call.”

  “Sure thing,” I told her. She hung up, and I held down the phone cradle for a five-count before I dialed the number she gave me.

  “Stoddard, Whittaker and Crock,” answered the same dame who just hung up on me. So, without a word, I returned the favor.

  What is Sal doing mixed up with a law firm? A law firm who doesn’t want to give me their name? I figured I’d ponder it later and went back to the task at hand.

  When I returned to Sal, I saw the solution. Right there in front of me was a perfectly serviceable snake crate, and no snake, and I would only have to bend Sal in one place to get him in there, which was easily achieved by laying him flat across the top of the crate and then jumping on him.

  Before you can say Jack Robinson, Sal was sitting peacefully in the crate, which I moved over by the drain for meltage, and I was pouring buckets of ice over him. By the time it was time to flip the open sign, Sal’s bald spot was the only thing showing above the ice, so I put the lid on the snake crate and tapped it down with a crowbar to give him his privacy.

  I mopped the sweat off me with a bar towel. Then, as I was pulling on my trousers, the phone rang again.

  “Sammy,” said Moo Shoes, “I got good news.” Moo sounded like he had a hot tip on a fast horse.

  “Swell,” I said.

  “Well, they found a guy dead in an alley off Kearny Street. Chinese guy.”

  So not a tip on a horse. “That’s terrific, Moo. But I’m a little busy—”

  “That’s it, you still looking for your snake?”

  “Kind of. I looked everywhere, but I don’t know how good they hide. I’m about to open up. I want to get some people in here so if he decides to bite someone, there’s less chance it will be me.”

  “Well, don’t worry about it. He’s not there. The dead guy they found died of snakebite. He wasn’t dead when they found him, but soon after, so they know it’s a really deadly snake. All the old guys in Chinatown are buzzing about it.”

  “I feel bad.” I did feel bad. A little relieved, but bad.

  “No, that’s the good news. They all want in.”

  “Who all want in?”

  “The old guys at the jook place.”

  “The nut-sack skin guys?”

  “Don’t call them that. But yeah, those guys.”

  “What about the cops? The papers?”

  “This is Chinatown. Nothing gets out those guys don’t want it to. They aren’t going to risk losing a snake like that.”

  “But we don’t have the snake.”

  “I know. We have to catch it. So I talked to Uncle Mao, he wants to help us.”

  “I thought he specialized.”

  “Yeah. This is one of his specialties.”

  “Oh good,” I said, although I was not feeling as if this was good news. “Will he throw in getting rid of a body?”

  “Don’t know. What about Sal?”

  “Still dead. I iced him down.”

  “I had an idea,” Moo said. “What if we take him out and drop him in the woods somewhere? In Marin or the East Bay, up by Piedmont or something. By the time someone finds him, they’ll just think that he was bitten by a snake in the wild.”

  “Won’t work. Sal has never been out of t
he city in his life. Everyone will know it’s a setup.”

  Suddenly there was a clicking on the line, loud, like Moo hung up.

  “Sammy?” Moo said.

  “Yeah, I’m here. You hear that?”

  “Yeah, it’s probably one of the Chinatown operators, they listen in sometimes.”

  “Maybe we better not talk about this on the phone anymore, huh?”

  “Right, I’ll see you after work.”

  “Right, see you then. Can you come here? Bring a car?”

  “Nah, you come here. Besides, I don’t drive.”

  “You drove the other night when we snatched Pookie.”

  “Well, yeah, but that was just to keep you from killing us. I really don’t know how.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Right.”

  “Did you call Sal’s wife?” Moo asked. “She’ll be wondering where he is.”

  “Oh balls, I didn’t think about that,” I said. “I’d better do that. See you tonight.”

  I saw silhouettes through the stained glass of the door, customers waiting for me to open, and despite it all, all the panic and scurrying, my heart jumped at the thought that one of them might belong to the Cheese.

  12

  Paying Mao

  Poor Sammy. His boss was dead, his snake was missing, he had no money to pay Ho the Cat-Fucking Uncle for the upkeep of his kidnapped cop, and there was no Cheese outside his door. When he opened the bar he was greeted by normal thirsty citizens, many of whom were annoyed that Sal’s did not open up earlier, so Sammy appeased them with free spirits and a serviceable story about how Sal had had a loss in the family, which story had the added value of being partially true, that loss being Sal.

  Also, Sammy’s bad foot hurt and he had thrown his only cane in the sewer, so he was limping to the point of looking like he was skipping up and down behind the bar. Still, he was getting into the rhythm of the job, pouring drinks, washing glasses, talking small, when two uniformed cops darkened the door like a thunderstorm fat with doom. All the patrons piped down to a whisper—even guys not discussing something illegal put on the hush so more industrious criminals didn’t take them for rats.

  “What can I get you, Officers?” said Sammy, beaming smiles of innocence and goodwill.