Comeback
by Mark Best
Copyright © 2001



It was raining the day I left the resort. I didn't mind. Six years of living in a nine-by-nine cube of concrete leaves you with a stale feeling and a blended stench of urine, sweat, and cigarette smoke. As I walked down the street, I could feel the confinement of prison flowing from my body into the sewer the the rest of the city's filth. I was free. 

The closest bar to the penitentiary was Iron Mike's. According to legend, Mike spent time on cellblock B for throwing a collector out of a third story window. The man laughed out loud when the judge passed sentence. Three days after Mike was released, the collection agent was involved in a freak accident when his wheelchair rolled into the path of a speeding fire truck. Mike sent a wreath to the funeral home and a dozen red roses to the man's widow, who was now Mrs. Iron Mike. No one knows how much of the story is true. No one knows how an ex-con got a liquor license, either. No one cares. On your first day out, your first drink is free and the rest are on credit. That made him jake in my book. 

When I walked in, I was greeted by several former neighbors. Mike poured me a beer without asking. We had never met, but you get good information owning a bar. He set the beer down and stuck out his hand. "Welcome back to the world, Jacko. This one's on the house." 

We shook hands and I smiled up at him. He wasn't as tall as the foul pole at Yankee Stadium, or as wide as the Jet's offensive line, but he towered over my six feet like a mammoth. His grey hair was cropped close to his scalp, and his light blue eyes and soft mouth both smiled. He didn't look as if he's hurt a rodent, let alone a collector, but I had no doubt the story was true. 

I thanked him for the beer and drank it, at first sipping slowly, then gulping like it was ice water in July. I had never cared much for beer, but at that moment nothing would have tasted sweeter. Mike poured me another, and I pulled out my release pay. The big man shook his head. "Pay me when you get settled. If you have to lam out, send it." After six years of strip searches to see if I was boosting silverware, it was refreshing to be trusted again. 

I hung out at Mike's for the better part of two hours. All the years I spent in my cell, I'd thought only of getting out and playing on the square. Every thief plans on getting off the grift sometimes. Getting pinched and doing a stretch in stir just makes going legit seem more attractive. But Mike's was a decent place. You could trust the crooks in that room. Sitting there with them, talking about old jobs, plays that went down while I was away, and plans for future runs brought back the desire. My uncle had written me at the resort, offering a job at his shop. He fixed appliances and sold second-hand, reconditioned electronics. Exciting as community access television, but it was mostly honest. I had been headed there on my way to Mike's, but the afternoon had pushed it into a far niche of my mind. Not gone, just not current. 

My back was to the door when all conversation stopped. "Weed in the garden," someone hissed. I could see him in the mirror over the bar. He carried three hundred pounds of flab on his frame like a politician carries relatives. He was dressed all in black: shoes, pants, open-necked shirt with the tails hanging out of his trousers, and a leather jacket. His fat, hanging jowls were framed by mutton-chop sideburns and thin, oily hair the same color as his outfit. He had a large, jagged scar over his right eye, and was ugly a human being as I had ever seen. He was a dick. 

He waddled through the maze of tables, sneering at everyone he passed. One drinker slunk out the door. Others hid in their glasses. The fat man sneered happily, enjoying his effect on the crowd. There was an empty space at the bar next to me, which he squeezed into. I smelled body odor and Vitalis. 

"Hi ya Mike. How about a whiskey?" The dick's voice was higher than it should have been. At the resort, it would have earned him a place on the butch boy's dance cards, but no one in the bar even cracked a smile. Mike made no move to honor his request. He just kept drying shot glasses with his apron. "Hey Mikey. I asked for a drink." 

Iron Mike didn't look away from his task. He spoke in a conversational tone. "What do you want here, Slattery? I pay your masters to keep your kind out of my place. What's wrong, no one to read the precinct memos to you?" 

There was a low chuckle from the far side of the room, and another at the end of the bar. The dick ignored the laughter. He reached across the bar and grabbed a bottle and a glass. He poured himself a generous swig, which he slowly emptied into his chubby mouth. After replacing the cap, and with surprising speed for a man of his girth, he spun around and hurled the bottle across the room and nailed the first guy who'd snickered on the forehead. The man fell to the floor. When he came up, he had a huge gash over his eye and quickly ran out the door. Slattery, meanwhile, had lifted the second laugher and hurled him with the same effort he had used on the bottle. He landed by the juke box and didn't get up as fast as the first guy. It would probably be a while before he did. 

By this time Mike had come out from the bar and approached Slattery. The two big men faced each other warily. 

"What the hell you think you're doing, coming in and busting up my joint? I pay too much to have someone like you come in and roust my customers." 

"The people you pay, pay me, so I wouldn't push that. Besides, I ain't after your joint. I just need to talk to someone." 

A huge hand clamped onto my shoulder and lifted me up like a beach ball. It let me go mid-air, and the momentum landed me halfway to the door. He grabbed me again, and dragged me to the door, and tossed me into back into the rain. 

I was shoved to the front of an alley and thrown again, coming down in a plie of stinking garbage. Small animals scattered from beneath me. I started to rise, but was kicked in the stomach and fell face-first in the swill. The stench made me vomit. 

It took me about a day to finish retching and another week to stand up. No kick this time. Now he was just leaning against a dumpster watching me, smoking a cigar that smelled better than the garbage I had been breathing, but just barely. I braced myself against the wall of the alley, trying to get my wind, watching the dick through the corners of my eyes in case he tried another Pearl Harbor. 

He didn't. He just stood there until I had recovered sufficiently and then asked "You know me?" 

I nodded. "Slattery. Lieutenant, vice, Precinct Five. You control or protect all the action on the south side." 

"Also most of the Heights and Uptown. But you've been away for five years. I'll forgive you for not keeping up." 

"Six. Missed my first shot at probation when I knocked out a guard in a boxing match. I was told to dive. The guard lost three teeth and got put in the tower. Do you box, Lieutenant?" 

"You talk big for a cheap crook about to get your ass kicked. I know about you, too, punk. Jacko Rollins, best peterman in the business. That is what they call you safecrackers? Petermen?" 

"I went up for assult with attempt to kill. I don't know from safes. Did you get too caught up reading Dick Tracy to check my file?" 

The punch came. I was expecting it this time and braced myself, but it still knocked me down onto the wet ground. I felt a hand grab me by the belt and scoop me into the wall. My left arm went numb. His fist found my kidney. I didn't fall this time, but I was in pain. 

"You're on your way to the hospital, boy. Then I'll bust you for assulting a cop, violating your parole by going to a bar and consorting with known felons, and anything else I can think up. You understand?" 

I thought about complimenting him on the use of "consort", but I still had ribs he hadn't broken, so I just nodded. 

"Good," he continued. "Now maybe we'll get somewhere. 

"I've been reading up on you. Suspected in over twenty big money jobs from '88 to '94. I know it was more like fifty. All professional jobs, big scores, no evidence. Whoever done them was an expert in explosives. Your take had to be upwards of one hundred gees. You ain't one for drinking or gambling or spending it on broads, so I figure you got a cool nest egg set aside somewhere. Smart boy like you, probably thinking about going straight and spending some of that dough. I know a dozen ways to frame a two-time loser like you, chuck you in a cell till that money don't buy you nothing but a coffin. Or I could just kill you, put a gun in your hand, and nobody asks no questions. I done that one before." 

Slattery stopped talking and I didn't start. The rain continued to fall and drowned out the city noises. The occasional car sloshing through a puddle, or the whine of a bus's diesel engine, was the only evidence that Slattery and myself were not alone on Earth. 

I knew he'd tell me eventually, so I decided to get it over with. "Okay, you let me go straight. What's the cost?" 

Slattery started to laugh. "I knew you weren't dumb. Now, you ever heard of someone in the DA's office named Ettleman?" 

"Sure, everyone's heard of him. He's as dirty as you are." 

Slattery ignored my last remark. "Ever since he got hisself promoted, Ettleman's been building his own little operation. About a year ago, he cut in on some of my business. I went to see him, to discuss my stuff, and do you know what happened?" The dick's voice got even higher and quivery. "Do you know what that college-puke sonuvabitch did? He threw me out. Called two state cops to throw me out of his office. Called me small time. Punk." 

"Punk," I said. "But what does this have to do with me?" 

"I'm getting to that peterman. Like I said, I know about your jobs. Ain't a safe been made that Jacko can't break. If you can't crack it, you blow it. Fact is, you're the best explosives man in the business." 

"Not me. I was just a yegg. Someone else did the explosives. I never touched the stuff." I didn't like where this was heading. 

Slattery threw his bulk at me with the grace of an avalanche, crushing me against the wall and bringing one knee up into my still-sore kidney. "The Parker House job. Fierstein's Jewelry. Old lady Stevenson's safe. You think I don't know what I'm talking about? You did all those jobs solo. I also know you blew the warehouse of the fence that was stiffing your gang. Blew up his entire stash. He tried to get even by icing one of your people, so you shot him in the kneecaps. He almost died." 

I tried to conceal my surprise. Slattery had pretty good information himself. Nobody but the fixer could connect me to the heists he'd mentioned. I had gone to the resort for the kneecap shooting, but no one outside of my mob, I thought, knew about the warehouse bomb. 

"He was nowhere close to dying. If I'd wanted him dead, I'd have aimed higher. I didn't want to kill him. I'm no chiller." 

"You, punk, are whatever I say you are. I want Ettleman dead. I want it loud and I want pieces of him as far away as Jersey." 

"Why me?" I asked. 

Slattery smiled. "Because you can. You can blow anything, and no one will trace it to you, cause you're just a peterman who's too much of a wimp to put a bullet in the brain of someone who chilled one of your mob." 

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out an envelope. 

"Here's a grand. Get what you need. Don't think I'm gonna shaft you. Ettleman dies, you get ten grand. But you cross me, or try to run, I'll have your ass." 

I was dismissed as Slattery turned his back and walked away. 

I waited a few minutes to be sure that he had left, then staggered out of the alley. The beating Slattery had given me was as good a beating as I had ever had. Nothing was broken, there would be few marks, but anytime I moved in the next week, I would remember it. Whatever else he was, Slattery was a man who knew his job. 

I went back into Mike's and received a much different welcome than I had only a few hours before. Eyes avoided mine, and no words were spoken. I was on Slattery's list and was to be left alone. His anger might rub off. 

Mike's eyes didn't avoid mine. They called me to the bar while his calloused hands poured me a stiff drink. I drank it quickly, the burning liquid numbing some of the pain. He poured me a second drink and motioned me to the back room. 

"What happened?" Mike asked once we were alone. We sat on empty kegs and I told him the tale, leaving nothing out. He didn't speak during my story. He didn't move. Only his soft blue eyes hardened. 

When I finished, Mike spat on the floor. "I hate that fat bastard," he said. "You can't trust him. When he walked a beat down here, he'd shake us down five, six times a month, and that was after the precinct cut. He's brutal. Gets kicks out of hurting people. You do this for him, he may chill you anyway." 

"That's what I thought when he offered me the ten grand. Easier to give me a bullet than to pay me. Who's gonna know?" 

Neither of us spoke for a few seconds. The air was heavy with hatred. I said, "What about Ettleman? You think I could square with him?" 

Mike shook his head. "You could try, but I wouldn't trust him, either. He's as cold as Slattery, but he's smart. Both ways, you're screwed." 

I stood up and walked to the other side of the room. There was a poster on the wall with the name of a popular beer, bottles dressed like players, and the entire NFL schedule for next year, including the playoff games and the Super Bowl. I liked football. I hadn't been able to see much of it in jail. It was one of those things I'd missed, along with sunshine and showering alone. I didn't want to go back. 

"I don't have much of a choice." 

"You gotta do what you gotta do," Mike told me. 

I nodded. "I have no right to ask, but I need help." I picked up a cocktail napkin and wrote out a list. I handed it to Mike, along with Slattery's thousand dollars. "There's a few things I'd like you to do for me." 

Three days later, at precisely 8:31 pm, a 1998 Saab 9000 belonging to Assistant District Attorney John A. Ettleman exploded in the basement garage of his midtown apartment building. Two automobiles parked nearby also caught fire and exploded. It took fire fighters half an hour to get the blaze under control. Ettleman's body was pulled from the Saab, but the corpse was so charred the coroner requested the deceased's dental records for the purpose of positive identification. Arson and homicide investigators were called in to examine the accident site to determine the cause of the blast. 

I read this in the newspaper the next morning. Much of the story I already knew, having been just outside the garage when the explosion occurred. As soon as the blast came, I drove away, parked the stolen car by a loading dock, and tossed the leftovers from the bomb into the river. Then I went to the pay phone and made a call. 

I paced nervously as I waited for Slattery to arrive. I kept remembering Iron Mike' s warning. If he decided to chill me, there wasn't much I could do. If he let me live, he'd have something on me, and Slattery was a man who liked having things on people. But then, I'd have something on him, and Slattery was not a man who liked someone having something on him. As my whole purpose in his plan revealed, he was not above swatting an annoying pest. 

I tried to stop thinking about it and checked my watch. It was after midnight. We were meeting in the warehouse district. From ten PM to three AM, the area was completely devoid of people, except for the occasional watchman who wasn't staying warm inside. It was a nice, private place to meet. If Slattery was going to chill me, this would be his ground. 

I heard his car before I saw it. It made a rumbling sound on the cobblestoned street. Slattery drove a big, ugly, lime green Cadillac. Even in the dim light of the night sky, the color was blinding. 

Slattery pulled up twenty feet from me and hoisted his lard out of the car. He left the motor running, and his gun was drawn. 

"Okay, Jacko. Do like I say. Turn around slow and put your hands in the air. That's right." 

He came up behind me and patted me down. I wasn't even carrying lint. "Good. Put them down." 

I put my hands down and turned around. Slattery had put his gun away and was holding out a thick manila envelope. "Ten grand, all in hundreds." I looked in the packet to make sure. It was filled with c-notes. 

Slattery laughed as I put the money in my inside coat pocket. "You thought I was gonna kill you, or at least stiff you for the money. You don't understand, Jacko. I can afford to be generous. With Ettleman gone, my power doubles. You did me a favor. But I want you out of my city. You come back here, or ever try strong-arming me, you'll be dead like Ettleman. You follow?" His chubby fingers poked me in the chest for emphasis. I nodded. "Good. Then I won't see you around." Slattery laughed at his own joke as he walked back to his car. 

He was still laughing when he pulled away, and he was probably laughing when that ugly green chariot burst into an orange and yellow ball of flame. 

The late Assistant District Attorney John A. Ettleman stepped out from a darkened doorway up the street. He smiled as he walked up to me. "My compliments," he said, holding the detonator up. Your little toy works quite well." 

Ettleman was a slim man, the lines of his body made to look even slimmer by the expertly tailored gray suit and black wool topcoat he wore. With his short, blond hair blowing in the wind, he looked innocent, almost childlike, a sweet little angel who would hack his sleeping parents to pieces with Dad's rusty axe. He didn't look much like a dead DA. 

"Who the hell was in the Saab, Ettleman? That wasn't part of the deal." 

"Mr. Rollins." He addressed me as if I were a witness being cross-examined. "If there had been no body in the car, Lieutenant Slattery would likely have killed you. Besides, Anthony was an inadequate chauffeur, as well as having a problem with silence. I would offer you his position," he paused, pulling a packet from his topcoat, "but I don't think gainful employment will be a pressing matter." He handed me the envelope. "Twenty-five thousand dollars to extend my life and to shorten Slattery's. It seems a fair exchange. I'm still curious as to why you made the offer." 

"I took a chance. I saw you as more reasonable than Slattery." My tone was slighly less hostile than a lynch mob. 

Ettleman looked at me curiously. "Moral outrage? From a thief and a murderer? I am surprised. Conscience is something I don't usually associate with killers. It is a pity that you're so soft-hearted. You see, I have other work of this nature that needs to be done from time to time. You'll have an easier time if you think less about it." 

"No way. This was a one-time job." 

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Jacko. A business arrangement would have been much easier," he said as he pulled a small automatic from his coat. "It's too bad Slattery shot you before he got in his booby-trapped car. We'll never know why." 

The report of the pistol and Ettleman crumpling to the ground occurred almost simultaneiously. Iron Mike stepped from behind the van he'd been hiding in, took the gun he had used to shoot the DA, and tossed it in the burning wreckage of Slattery's Caddy. He took Ettleman's pistol, leaving the detonator in his hand, and we both ran quickly until more than five blocks separated us from the kill site. Thanks to the healthy jog and nearly being killed moments earlier, I was breathing heavily, but Mike was hardly winded. 

Eventually we slowed up. The night smelled of smoke and a faint orange glow lit the sky. 

"The fix will stand," Mike said. "Slattery killed Ettleman, Ettleman killed Slattery. No one knows Jacko Rollins." Mike dropped Ettleman's pistol through a sewer grating. "No evidence. By the way, you never asked me why I helped you." 

"You've got your reasons. They may be none of my business. Whatever they were, thanks." 

Mike laughed. "Just remember to pay your tab." 

I took Slattery's envelope from my pocket, the one with ten grand in it, and gave it to Mike. Without counting it, he said, "It's only twenty bucks." 

I smiled. "The rest is a tip." 

Mike nodded and put the envelope in his breast pocket. 

We began walking. By now, we could hear sirens. I was just starting to catch my breath. 

"You should lam for a while. No one but the papers will care much that Slattery and Ettleman got burned, but you never know. Take a vacation. Got anywhere in mind?" 

I fingered Ettleman's hefty envelope in my pocket. "I've always wanted to see Bermuda," I said. 

"Yeah, nice place. Lots of rich tourists. I hear all the best suites have safes in the rooms." 

I thought of the resort. Then I thought of my uncle's fix-it shop. I had an honest job fixing toasters, if I wanted it. "Bermuda sounds nice," I said. " I might even make it a working holiday."