EXCERPT 9, FLY IN THE MILK
Johnny Beam looks for the good life in all the wrong places in Chapter 2 of Fly in the Milk, ebook available wherever ebooks are sold:
The scotches arrived shortly thereafter, followed closely by Lambert and the buxom redhead. Lambert sat down next to Harry, who slid as far away as he could get, wedging himself against the window.
The redhead slid in next to Johnny.
He didn’t budge an inch.
“Hey Johnny,” Lambert said, gesturing toward the woman. “Hope you don’t mind me bringing Gloria, here, she really wanted to meet you. She likes boxers.”
“Pleased to meet you, Gloria,” Johnny said in a mellow baritone.
“The same, I’m sure,” Gloria said, smiling, her lips crooked.
Her large mouth and large teeth, red lipstick and hair were joined together in unison, shouting, Fuck me. At least that’s the way Johnny was reading it.
“That cut on your eye must be nasty, Johnny,” Gloria said, hormone-induced concern oozing from her husky voice as her long red fingernails slid over his shoulder. “And this awful bump…”
“I’ll be all right, darling. I’m a big boy. I recover fast.”
“I just bet you do,” she said, slowly sliding her hand from his shoulder.
“We just came over to say we enjoyed the fight, Johnny,” Lambert said, slightly slurred. “Didn’t we, Gloria?”
“Of course, Jimmy—it was a wonderful fight,” she said, admiration flowing like clover honey from her big browns.
“I thought you were gonna put the guy out there a couple of times,” Lambert said, lighting a Lucky Strike and letting the smoke disperse in a cloud around his head. “You had him on the ropes more than once.”
“Sparks was tough, he knew all the tricks,” Harry Sloan snapped. “He’s had a lot of fights.”
Then the waitress returned and they hadn’t even looked at the menus. Johnny sipped on his scotch and told her to come back in a minute. “Thanks for the drink, Jimmy,” he said, warmly.
“My pleasure, Johnny. You deserve it after a fight like that. That guy Sparks was pretty tough, eh?”
“Plenty tough, Jimmy. He hit like a kick from a horse and he fought dirty. You saw the bastard head-butt me, didn’t you?”
“That stuff is low down, all right,” Lambert said.
“You ever been kicked by a horse, Johnny?” asked Gloria, her eyes twinkling as she elbowed him lightly in the ribs.
“Can’t say as I have ma’am,” Johnny said like John Wayne; his grin so deep it made Gloria nearly swoon. “But I can well imagine. I’ve been hit by many a horse out on the football field.”
Gloria giggled and fell into him, brushing her breasts against his thick-muscled arm.
“Well Johnny, just wanted to say hello,” Lambert said, staring at Gloria, his lips and eyes narrowing. “We better get back to Nash before he thinks we’re plotting something.” Lambert liked Johnny. A man’s color had never meant anything to him, as long as his money was green. That was one of his little jokes.
“Listen Jimmy,” the boxer said. “You got a few minutes? I’ve got some things I want to discuss with you. Some business ideas I’ve been tossing around. Things I think you’ll be interested in.”
Lambert was always ready to listen to a business proposition. He had irons in many fires and a diversity of investments. As well as bars in Bay City, he owned several establishments in remote rural areas, boondocks buildings on dark tree-lined back roads that housed after-hours clubs. Some called them blind pigs, others, roadhouses. “Good citizens” called them the scourge of the county.
Whatever you called them, these establishments housed after-hours drinking, gambling and, sometimes, prostitution. A local legend had it that carloads of women would occasionally show up at the clubs unannounced. Girls who worked the Wisconsin strip-bar circuit and wanted to supplement their income with a little lying-around money—or so the story went. Just this possibility, the vague dream that someday this might happen while you were in the building, was enough to keep the honky-tonks hopping with horny hayseeds on many a dark and frigid night. These were the places that held Johnny’s interest. Something he’d seen in Chicago seemed just right for such establishments.
He’d learned a lot in Chi-town. It had taken getting drunk with his Uncle Charlie (Mama’s brother) to find out about his daddy. Mom had never said much about his father, summing up his existence with: “He was a good man who died when your were three.” Old Charlie hadn’t wanted to spill the beans but he was too honest a person to hold back. At least after he and Johnny had knocked off a gallon of Red Mountain wine. Then the floodgates had opened and the story came rushing out like rainwater down the side of a mountain.
The truth was a shock to Johnny at first, but also a relief of sorts. Here was something to explain the parts of him that had railed against his mother’s teachings in spite of his good intentions. These traits clearly came from his daddy’s side of the family, the people his mama never wanted him to know about. The part of him that, among other things, wanted to make moonshine—in the tradition of the old Chicago gangsters—and sell it in Lambert’s joints.
“What kind of things you talking, Johnny?” Lambert asked.
“I bet you sell a lot of liquor, what with all your taverns—right, Jimmy?” Johnny smiled, eyes twinkling.
“That’s right, Johnny—quite a bit, I s’pose….”
“What if I could save you lots of dough on the booze? Would that interest you?”
“Of course it would, Johnny. But I don’t see how you could do that. I mean, you know, you should see the rotgut I sell already.” His snaky body folded forward into a raspy, cackling laugh.
“I can beat any price you get—guaranteed,” Johnny said. “Good quality stuff, too. Is there maybe some time we can discuss this in more detail, Jimmy?”
“Say, listen ah, Johnny,” Lambert said. “We gotta get back over there with Bob. But how about if you come over to the Bayside tonight, say about midnight? I’ll buy you a drink and we’ll talk business. Just tell the bartender you’re there to see me, and he’ll show you back to my office. I’ll tell him to expect you, so he ah… doesn’t get… isn’t… Ah fuck, I’ll just tell him Johnny Beam is coming.”
“I can do that, Jimmy. In the meantime, give some thought to the things I said, I think this could be a good deal for both of us.”
Lambert stood up, holding his cocktail glass and coughing. His lips curled down at the edges as Gloria continued to flirt. Impatience creased his shaggy eyebrows.
“Sure nice to meet you, Mr. Beam,” Gloria said, putting her hand on Johnny’s large forearm as it rested on the table.
“My pleasure, Gloria honey,” Beam said, oozing warmth.
Lambert coughed into his fist and walked awkwardly away.
Gloria got up and followed slowly behind, her heart and just about everything else she possessed full of lust for Johnny Beam.
“Jesus, I’m glad he’s gone,” Harry Sloan said, sliding away from the window and flexing his shoulders. “And what’s this shit you’re feeding him about cheap booze?”
“I know some people in the wholesale liquor business,” Beam lied, stretching his arms along the back of the booth and watching Gloria wiggle away and glance back at him. “Down in Minneapolis, that’s all. People I met while I was in college. I get around, you know.” This was partially true. He knew some guys that ripped off delivery trucks.
“You were only down there for a year.”
“I make friends in a hurry, Harry, you know that.”
“I sure do. Like that broad with Lambert. She was looking for a hunk of dark meat tonight.”
“And I sure aims to please, Mr. Manager bozz.”
“Shut up, Johnny, and look at your menu. Here comes the goddamn waitress.”
“I know what I want.”
The restaurant filled up and stayed that way. The grill smoked. Cocktail glasses jingled and the room hummed. The kitchen pumped out steaks and chops and lobster and the famous shish kebabs that were set aflame in full view, the white-coated kitchen staff carrying the skewers to the tables like burning swords, orange flames shimmering in the darkened windows.
Over the course of the evening, admirers sent drinks to Johnny’s booth.
Others in the restaurant wondered who the nigger was.
(To be continued)
T.K. O’Neill’s crime novel Fly in the Milk is available on ebook at online bookstores, including Barnes and Noble, ebookit, Google, iBookstore (Apple), Amazon, Sony Reader Store, Kobo (Borders) and Ingram Digital.
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