Mickey Slips (Tyler Cunningham Shorts) Read online

  Mickey

  Slips

  Jamie Sheffield

  2013

  “Mickey Slips”

  © Jamie Sheffield, 2013

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author /publisher.

  Cover photo “Cold Whiskey” by Yekophotostudio, used with permission through Dreamstime.com.

  Published by SmartPig through CreateSpace and Amazon.com KDP.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SmartPig Office, Saranac Lake, 1/21/2013, 3:07 a.m.

  When the phone vibrated in my pocket, I had just broken into (with some difficulty) the locked den of a locked house as a favor for my latest client (who needed some pictures back quite desperately). I pulled the phone out of my pocket (not many people have my current number, so I assumed that it was important), saw that it was a “911” text from Mickey, turned around, and let myself out in much the same way that I’d let myself in. Sheila wouldn’t be happy, but I was doing her a favor for money, and Mickey was my answer to family (since everyone genetically related to me on the planet had died eleven and three-quarters years ago). I got back to SmartPig as fast as I could, and called Mickey.

  “Tyler, why are you awake at this hour?” asked a voice that I eventually identified as belonging to Mickey Schwarz. It took me a few seconds to be certain that it was Mickey because his speech was both labored and clumsy (and neither was the norm for Mickey, regardless of the hour).

  “Mickey, if you thought I’d be asleep, why did you text me?” I stood up quickly, displacing my rescue beagle Hope, who had jumped onto my chest when I lay down on the couch in the world headquarters of SmartPig, my office, and lair, and home, and bat-cave. As I asked, it occurred to me that Mickey had never called me (or anyone, as far as I knew) at three in the morning. I broke back in to cut him off as he started to apologize for the lateness of the ….

  “Mickey, what’s the matter? Are you and Anne and the girls OK? Where are you? What can I do?” These were the four questions that I needed to have answered immediately. His ability to process the questions and answer them succinctly would give me more information about the state of affairs (within one of the few people on Earth who can elicit something like an emotional response from me) than the answers themselves would.

  Mickey was in the circle of my parents’ friends who chose to educate their children outside of traditional schooling, by taking advantage of all that they, and the city of New York, had to offer young and hungry minds. Twenty-some years into the experiment, I would argue that it has worked out well for me, as the communal approach was more responsive to my social/educational needs (peculiarities?) than either public or private schools would have been. When all the other doors in my old life slammed shut on 9/11/2001, Mickey was the one left partway open. It was important to me that he be all right.

  “Tyler, I woke up in a hospital-bed fifteen minutes ago with a policeman outside the door. Anne and the girls are home, and fine. I’m in Syracuse, New York. I’m not sure that there’s anything that you can do, but I was scared and lonely, and can’t call Anne … not yet.” Mickey had answered all of my questions, in order and efficiently, so he was still essentially Mickey; but, none of his answers made sense given the kind of person that he was … is.

  “Ok Mickey, everything will be fine. Start by telling me about your injuries … were you in an accident?” I wanted to ask about the policeman, but needed to know about his physical condition first.

  “I was apparently in a fight of some kind. I haven’t spoken to the attending yet, but my nose is badly broken, I’ve got a split lip, my right eye is swollen nearly shut, it feels as though a number of ribs are cracked, and I’m sore all over. The policeman said that they responded to a call about a bar fight, found me alone outside of some bar, and took me to the ER to get checked out.” Mickey mumbled this last part, not entirely because of bar fight soreness; he was both ashamed and lost at sea.

  Mickey consults at hospitals all over the country (and the world) as an oncologist. I would bet (if I was the kind of person who placed bets) that he had never been in a bar fight in his life; to the best of my knowledge he has never gotten a speeding ticket or a been cited for jay-walking before, either. He was deep into the weeds in this instance, and far outside of his comfort-zone.

  “The officer outside my room when I woke up said that they weren’t going to arrest me for punching one of the cops that brought me in, because I was in an impaired mental state. They could tell that I didn’t know what was going on; but I may have to appear in court for a bunch of other charges related to what happened.”

  “What did happen? Why are you in Syracuse? I’ll be there in a few hours, but why haven’t you called Anne?” I popped open the coke-fridge, grabbed two cans, opened one, and chucked Hope a handful of homemade dog-cookies while I started making mental lists and checking them twice (not too concerned, as is my way, with naughty or nice). Syracuse is about three hours away from my base of operations in Saranac Lake, depending on logging trucks and winter-driving conditions.

  “I’m … was … here for a cancer-conference, and I’m reasonably sure that I slept with another woman last night.” He stopped talking to let his last words sink in … to shock me as much as they shocked him.

  They didn’t, not that it wasn’t shocking, (Mickey worships Anne and their marriage, both the concept and the reality), but I just don’t shock much in the regular course of events. It was certainly noteworthy, as Mickey had often spoken with disdain about people with ‘disposable’ marriages and lifelong promises that meant nothing; but I was more surprised than shocked.

  “It happens Mickey … it happens all the time. You should call Anne. Call her and tell her everything, or you could call her and not tell her; you could make it work either way.” I prepared myself for his explanation about why he couldn’t lie to Anne, and further, why he couldn’t tell her everything just yet. In a way, I was looking forward to (and had even set Mickey up to go into) one of his complex logical discourses on why the right thing to do is the right thing to do, even (especially!) when you could get away with a falsehood. I had enjoyed and appreciated exploring these constructs of his over the years, even if I didn’t always abide by them, and I hoped that his launching into one would give him some comfort on what sounded like a pretty rocky morning.

  “Tyler, it gets worse … there was a … he might have been her pimp … and there was video … I think … my brain still isn’t functioning too well, but I keep getting disturbing memory-snippets and flashbacks to this woman and me in bed, and then this guy yelling at me and slapping me and showing me a little video camera and a movie of me and the woman.” When Mickey choked out this last bit he sounded like he wanted to cry.

  “Mickey, I know you are sore and tired and foggy, but this is important … when she showed you the video and camera, what did it look like?”

  “Jesus Christ, Tyler, my life is literally in the toilet and you’re interested in …”

  Mickey, shut up and think … I’m not shopping for a new camera, I need to know this … what did it look like? Was the camera tiny, like a cellphone, or big like one that my
mother and father used to have? Did it look heavy? Can you remember anything?”

  “Ok … sorry Ty, I just ache all over and feel so stupid and can’t imagine what I’ll say to Anne or my colleagues or the police. Let me think … it was bigger than a cellphone and smaller than your parents’ camcorder … more like the size of a brick of Bustello (Mickey drinks lots and lots of cheap/strong coffee that he buys in rectangular vacuum-sealed bags a bit smaller than a box of tissues). Wait! I remember that she took out one of those little cassettes, and shook it in my face, and said something … I can’t recall what she said … sorry Tyler.”

  “Mickey, you did great … that helps. Now don’t talk to anyone about anything until I get there … except your doctor. Tell me what hospital and room you’re in, and I’ll see you soon.”

  He told me, I hung up, made three quick calls to facilitate my next moves, grabbed gear for a week’s car-camping in the cold, and was out the door ten minutes later.

  Route 3, heading west, 1/21/2013, 5:28 a.m.

  Dorothy had been my first call, and was my first stop; to drop off Hope and pick up some supplies. Dorothy runs the Tri-Lakes Animal Shelter (TLAS), and introduced Hope and me the previous summer (a perfect and lucky moment for both of us in what turned out to be the most exciting/dangerous/law-breaking two weeks of my life). Dot wasn’t happy to get my early morning call, but she had her lights on and a hug for both Hope and me as she handed over the waterproof container that had been waiting above the acoustic tiles in her bathroom for five years.

  “What the hell are you into Tyler, and can I come along?” She asked as she handed over the OtterBox. She’d probably looked inside it within five minutes of my giving it to her (Dorothy is able to resist anything except temptation), and ten thousand dollars ‘in case’ money in a mix of bills will always raise both eyebrows and questions. I’d given it to her to hold for me ‘in case’ something happened and I needed a lot of money instantly … like tonight.

  “Nope, your mission, should you choose to accept it, and even if you don’t, is to stay in town with Hope, since she hates every human on Earth besides the two of us, and I have to leave for a bit.” She looked disappointed, but understood, at least the bit about Hope.

  “Tyler, what problem do you have that ten grand is gonna fix?” she persisted.

  “It’s better if you don’t ask, and I don’t tell, and it’s entirely possible that I won’t need the money (or at least not all of it), but nobody ever got to the far side of a jam and wished that they’d had less money to grease their way through the tricky parts.” I answered her in a way designed (hopefully) to head off any further questions … it did. I already had almost two thousand from the cache I kept at SmartPig, but I could always put any extra/leftover back in its hidey hole if I didn’t spend it all.

  Dorothy and Hope wished me well, walked me back down to my packed and gassed Honda Element. They faded into the dark quickly in my rearview mirror as I headed further west.

  My next stop on the way to Syracuse was just outside the Adirondack Park, near Fine, NY. Dan was waiting for me outside of the cleverly named Dan’s Pawn (Loans and Payday Advances - Checks Cashed), which did a booming business with the soldiers at Fort Drum, although his laissez-faire business practices occasionally landed him in trouble (which was, in fact, how we had met nearly four years earlier). While his problem had been interesting to me, I found Dan himself to be a repellent and immoral man, who improved his lot in life by preying on those in need … that being said, sometimes a repellent and immoral person is useful to know and/or have around (especially one who feels that he owes you a favor).

  Dan motioned me around the side of his building, and had me back the Element into the attached garage. Before I had gotten out of the Element, he’d already opened the rear hatch and shoved in two obviously heavy and clanking duffels, and then met me with a handshake and an all-purpose grin/wink/head-bob that took in everything and meant nothing.

  “Glad you called Tyler, I hate owing a man, and with this I figure we’re about even … I guess I thought you’d forgotten my number.” Dan said to me as we walked back into his garage to lean against a dusty workbench for a minute.

  “How could I forget your number Dan? It’s the thirty-third number in Fibonacci’s sequence … if I could get a phone number like that, I’d stop using the burners, and settle down with one phone for the rest of my life.” I smiled at the thought, Dan looked as though he wanted to hit me with the weed-whacker growing rust next to him, and quickly changed the subject.

  “I got fifteen, like you wanted, mostly 12s, some 20s, a couple .410s, and a 10-gauge … a few rounds for each …” I cut him off.

  “Dan, I told you, these will never be fired, I just need them clean and not easy to trace back.” I reminded him.

  “Yup, I heard you, but nobody ever kept or sold a shotgun without some ammo … adds verisimilitude.” He grinned a gappy smile at me and added, “My wife Doris gave me a ‘word of the day’ calendar for Christmas, and verisimilitude was January 10th … been waiting to use it for almost two weeks now.”

  I smiled goggle-eyed at Dan, and left him to guess whether I was faking surprise at his vocabulary or the fact that there was a person who would spend time with him (and even give him gifts) by choice.

  “So what do I owe you?” I asked, eager to be on my way, thinking about Mickey in the hospital, hurt and scared and alone made me uncomfortable in a way that I was entirely unaccustomed to.

  “Call it a hundred per … none of them are in great shape, but they’ll do for what you said.” Dan responded.

  He looked suspicious when I counted out twenty hundreds, until I explained, “Like we agreed, these don’t go on a bill of sale, aren’t in your books, don’t get mentioned to Doris or anyone … even through a lapsus linguae.”

  He nodded, and put the money in his pocket, moving his lips through ‘lapsus linguae’ a few times to remember it for later, and waved me off as I drove away.

  I stopped off at the Kwik-E-Mart on the way out of Fine to top up on gas and cokes and road-food (donuts and pizza-flavored Combos) in sufficient quantities to get me down to Syracuse; paying, as I would be for everything on this trip, in cash.

  University Hospital, Syracuse, 1/21/2013, 9:14 a.m.

  I’d rolled into Syracuse at a few minutes before 7 a.m., coming south on Route 81, and queried my GPS for nearby Walmarts; there are four within 10 miles of the hospital. I stopped to buy a burner Trakfone, a set of cheap dark sheets, and a big microwave (the same model luckily) at each before heading to University Hospital, hoping that Mickey would have gotten some sleep in the hours since we had talked. I was able to get in to see Mickey without a hassle, being a friend of the family (and arriving at a decent hour), dressed neatly in slacks and a blazer (as dressy as I own these days). He was struggling with the foil lid of a tiny cup of orange juice when I entered his room, and gave up when he saw me.

  I could see that it hurt him to smile; his face was misshapen by swelling and colored with bruises. This gentle man who had spent his life helping people had no business being here … like this. My mind was racing as we exchanged pleasantries and small-talk. I added a nasty refinement to the constellation of ideas that was trending towards a plan.

  “So, what did your doctor say Mickey?” I asked, once he had run out of the silly things that people say when they’re embarrassed and don’t want to talk about what you need to talk about.

  “Pretty much what I told you last night.” He replied (this morning I thought, but didn’t say … it wouldn’t help, and might slow things down). “A guy that I know vaguely came in this morning and set my nose. Everything else is superficial … my ribs are taped, but it doesn’t seem to be helping much.” (It never does, but they do it anyway), “Honestly though, the worst part was Bill, the guy who set my nose, seeing me like this, in a hospital Johnny.”

  “Then you got off pretty easy.” I said, at which point his face, which had been working on a smile,
despite the swelling and tape and bruising, collapsed in defeat. Mickey had been trying (somewhat pointlessly, or even counterproductively, although he couldn’t know it yet) to put up a brave face for me, and now gave up.

  “If only Bill really was the worst thing … he actually comes in third, maybe fourth. The officer that I struck last night came in to talk with me a while ago, and was quite nice about it, but they’re charging me with drunk and disorderly, along with some form of failure to comply with an officer. What if I go to jail Tyler?” Mickey hung his head in disgust.

  “You won’t. This is bad, but you’re a somewhat important guy who’s never been in this sort of trouble before, you can afford a team of flesh-eating lawyers to get you a deal with a fine and some community service at home … and maybe some diet-form of probation or suspended sentence … if they pursue it at all.” I believed that this was true, but legal research has, strangely, never been an interest of mine.

  “Worse … after the policeman left, and just before you came, Lily came … you might have passed her in the hall on your way in.” Mickey’s eyes filled with guilty tears, and although I felt that I knew, I had to ask.

  “Who is Lily? Is she the woman you met at the conference?” Mickey grimaced when I used the word ‘met’, and just nodded. “What did she want?”

  Mickey picked his wallet up off of the table that his tray of breakfast was sitting on, and chucked it at the wall with an angry gesture. This was the first such gesture that I’d seen from him in the 25 years that I’d known him (it’s possible that he had an angry outburst during the first three years of my life, but if he did, I can’t recall the incident) He said, “She wanted to return my wallet which fell in the gutter during the bar fight last night, she said.”

  “And …” I prompted. That couldn’t be all that there was to the story.