Mickey Slips (Tyler Cunningham Shorts) Page 2

  “She mentioned what a good time that she had had last night in my hotel room until I got too drunk afterward and wanted to head out to a bar.” Mickey said this with a combination of anger and confusion in his voice.

  “Seeing her this morning, I have no doubt about what happened last night between Lily and me … but I can’t understand it. I don’t drink much, would never cheat on Anne, and don’t go bar-hopping. Tyler … just what the FUCK happened last night?”

  In the ordinary course of events, Mickey would never talk like this, but he felt as though his life had come undone. I had to help him keep from falling apart, and also I had to see what I could do to fix whatever had actually happened. He had slipped, as people do, and I would help catch him.

  “But wait, it gets worse! She said that I had encouraged her to make a video of … what happened in my room, and that her ‘friend’ Shane had come by to pick her up later in the evening, and seen the video at one of the bars we visited. He got mad and we started fighting, which was when the police were called to the scene.” By the end of this, Mickey could scarcely talk … he was red in the face and crying this point and wouldn’t look at me.

  “Let me guess the rest Mickey. She managed to talk her friend out of pressing charges, but he (not Lily, of course, but unreasonable Shane) wants money or else he’ll send a copy of the video to Anne and the girls, whose pictures they saw in your wallet.” I paused for breath, “Is that about the size of it?” Mickey just nodded, ashen.

  “You got set up Mickey … quite nicely. I’m pretty sure that she’s not registered for your conference, but was trolling for a rich doctor. You enjoyed the attention of a beautiful woman, as men often do (myself excepted), and she gave you some drug to render you docile and impressionable. When she was done with you (no need for too much in the way of details here, I don’t like thinking about anyone having sex, much less a father-figure of mine being drugged and forced into the act), she dragged you to a public place, and set you up for an embarrassment and injuries that would distract you long enough for her to get away and finish building the trap for you.” He looked up at me with whipped puppy-dog eyes, and I jumped in before he had a chance to apologize … again.

  “That’s all the bad news, and it’s plenty bad. They built a nice trap and you were, unfortunately, the poor sap that wandered into it. The good news is that you’ve got me. I can never repay you for a million kindnesses and lessons and pieces of advice that you’ve given me, but I may be able to fix this; and that’s what I am going to try, if you’ll let me.” Mickey started to talk and I cut him off.

  “You’ve been telling me and anyone who will listen about how smart and unique my brain and personality make me, and you helped (more than anyone else alive) to make me happy and proud about who, or what, I am (not entirely true, as I don’t really ‘do’ happy or proud, but Mickey would appreciate the sentiment anyway), so it’s fitting that you can benefit from who, or what, I am.” I paused for a breath before rushing into the closer, realizing that I could feel my flush and elevated heart rate, indicative of emotional involvement in what I was saying, beyond the show that I was putting on for Mickey. I do favors for clients, and sometimes acquaintances, but never get involved in their problems emotionally … until now (I wondered briefly how it would affect my process or the final product).

  “You’ve always known that I see the world differently than ordinary humans do. I use that difference sometimes to help people, and now I’m going to help you. I’ve already got eighty-seven percent of a plan, and the rest is coming together in the back bits of my brain as we speak.”

  “Do the police need you for anything?” I asked, and Mickey gave a tiny shake.

  “Does your health, after the bar fight, preclude your leaving with me now?” Another tiny shake.

  “Did Lily give you a deadline?”

  Mickey spoke quietly, and to his lap, “No Tyler, she said that she’d be in touch in the next day or two, on my cell-phone.”

  “OK, so we’re going to get you checked out right now, and I’ll drive you to your hotel and then to the airport, so you can head back towards Manhattan. You should check into an airport hotel until the regularly scheduled end-date of your conference here, and then go home and tell Anne that you were mugged, which is essentially true.”

  “Tyler, I can’t lie to …” I interrupted Mickey, and started rounding up his things and herding him towards the bathroom to get dressed while I threw his stuff into a bag to carry out.

  “You can tell her the whole truth if it makes you feel better, but you were the victim here, not Anne, and you should make sure that she sees it in that light.” I advised him through the closed door.

  I have never understood Mickey’s preference for difficult truths over convenient lies, but I imagine that it’s one of the things that makes him a good man, and makes me something just a bit less.

  We made sure that he was checked out with the hospital and his conference and hotel, and I got him out to the airport in time for a 1 p.m. flight back down to JFK. He promised to stay in an airport hotel for a couple of days. I gave him one of my burner-phones (generically activated this morning, along with the others that I had bought) in exchange for his phone, and watched him enter my current phone number into the contacts list. If Mickey thought anything odd about the back of my Element being filled with microwaves and camping gear and duffels that clanked like firearms when jostled, he was tactful enough to keep his own counsel.

  At the airport drop-off, I walked around to his side to take his picture with my phone, and endure a hug from him. Once he got past security, I breathed a sigh of relief, and then gave Kevin, at Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, a call in order to put the next bits of my plan together. I was comforted that the human element (at least the one that I cared about) was out of the equation now, and I could focus, once again, on the ends, and not the means.

  Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, Syracuse, 1/21/2013, 2:27 p.m.

  “Try all of this!” Kevin crowed triumphantly, as he threw down the last of a seemingly endless parade of plates and bowls of BBQ and sides. I was working my way steadily through all of it, but he always tried to beat me with food whenever I came through town. The previous March, Kevin’s ex-wife (and her new boyfriend) had grown sick of shared custody, and taken Kevin’s six year old daughter, Tracy, with them (absent permission or legal authority) when they moved to Ohio. People we both knew through three degrees of separation had put Kevin and me together, and it had worked out well for everyone involved (except the ex-wife and boyfriend, who might get out of jail in time to attend Tracy’s graduation … from grad-school).

  Kevin had a great relationship with his daughter, a wonderful job at the best barbeque joint in New York State, and no money at all to pay me (to his ongoing chagrin). It didn’t bother me a bit, as the retrieval of Tracy was easy and quick (and interesting), and now I eat for free whenever I’m in Syracuse.

  I finger-squeegeed the last morsel of brisket from the top plate on the stack twenty minutes later, and told Kevin once again that he put out a nice plate of food. “I won’t be hungry again for hours!” I said, giving him a smile designed to show him that I was kidding and grateful and full.

  “I wish that I could do something else to thank you Tyler.” Kevin said, and dug out a picture of Tracy. “Here she is at the Christmas Choir Concert … isn’t she an angel?” he asked.

  “She is, and that’s all the thanks I’ll ever need, but there actually is a favor that you could do me Kevin … but certainly feel free to say no if it’s a hassle.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s done … just say the word Tyler.” He gushed, and for a microsecond, I thought about letting Kevin take a more direct (and violent) route towards settling Lily and Shane for me and Mickey (just a microsecond, I promise).

  “You mentioned one time that one of the owners of Dinosaur owns a garage around here that he lets people borrow to work on their bikes and trucks from time to time.” I remembered Kevin talking about it
the last time I came through town.

  “Yah, Mike’s place … not really a garage so much as an empty warehouse with a roll-up door and piles of crap in the corners. Why … is your car busted?” Kevin asked guilelessly.

  “No, the Element is fine, but I need a private spot to do some work for a couple of hours. Do you think you could set it up for me?”

  “Sure, I can ask. When would you like it for?”

  “Kevin, I need it for this evening if possible, or if not, as soon as he can manage. Also, since Mike doesn’t know me, could you leave me out of it? Don’t mention my name to him or anyone else, OK?”

  “Sure Tyler I can do that, but why? What’s the deal?” Kevin asked, clearly unable to imagine why I would need or want garage space on the sly.

  “Kevin, I’m in town helping out a friend, like I helped you and Tracy out last year. I need to do some work in a quiet and private place for a couple of hours, and if you could set me up with it, I’d consider us more than even.” I even tried to waggle my eyebrows meaningfully during this part, and I could see a low-watt idea flicker on in his head, and then he winked at me.

  “I got it Tyler, I’ll go up and see him now. While I’m gone, try these fried green tomatoes … they’re killer.” He smiled broadly as a waitress brought a huge and heaping plate of battered and fried tomato slices based on some signal that I’d missed.

  He was gone for seven minutes. The smile on his face when he came back was clear enough that even I could tell that he had good news for me. He dropped a greasy set of keys next to the now empty plate where the fried green tomatoes had been, wrote an address on the only unsullied napkin within twenty feet (eating at Dinosaur usually ends with me finding splatter evidence of BBQ-sauce and bits of meat in my hair and clothes for days), laughed when I asked for a bill (although I did leave a twenty for the waitress who would have to clear and clean the table after I left), and told me that the warehouse/garage was mine for as long as I wanted, as long as I promised to checked in with him for another meal before leaving town. I agreed and headed out … thinking about a nap in the back of the Element to digest the 8000-calorie meal I’d just enjoyed, and let the lizard bits in the back of my brain work a few final details out.

  While I was drifting off to sleep, Mickey’s phone got the first of many calls and messages and texts from home/Anne. I replied just this first time, in text form, on Mickey’s behalf, telling Anne and the girls that ‘I’ was fine, keeping busy, enjoying the snow, and eager to see them in a couple of days. It didn’t stop the calls/messages/texts over the next hours and days, but it would likely delay Anne from reaching out to the Syracuse PD for enough time to let me either fix or completely screw up Mickey’s life.

  I put the phone back in my pocket, cranked the seat back, and dropped into my usual dreamless sleep.

  University Sheraton, Syracuse, 1/21/2013, 7:12 p.m.

  I called Mickey when I woke up, dialing number for the burner-phone I'd given him when we'd said goodbye. He was fine, and had settled into one of the hotels by the airport after a short flight home. He said that he was sore all over, embarrassed, and wanted to call the whole thing off and just pay Lily.

  “If you do that, she and Shane will own you, and they'll come back for more within a month. Give me two days to straighten this out, and if I can't fix it by then, we can talk.” I tried to put some wheedling into my tone, but am pretty sure that all I managed was impatience.

  We talked for another minute before I told him to order a room service dinner and a bottle of wine, and chase it with a handful of Advil and Tylenol before going to bed. He didn't fight me on the Tylenol/booze combination (which had long been a hobgoblin of his), and just before we hung up he admitted with a hang-dog tone that he hadn't yet called Anne and the girls. I couldn’t decide how I felt about that (it made sense to me, but not coming from Mickey), and so left it alone. I headed back into the university area, and towards the hotel where Mickey had had one of the worst nights of his life.

  I'd checked Mickey out of his hotel only a few hours earlier, but it felt like a different world now. Then, I had been sneaking him in and out as quickly and quietly as possible, both of us slinking and hiding to avoid both ‘Team Lily’ and all of Mickey's colleagues. This time, I was by myself, just the way that I like it. With nobody else on my side, I didn't have to worry about them screwing up in word or deed. I could move forward, adjusting on the fly, based on instinct and input, without having to pause (or even slow down) to explain any changes in the game plan. The facts and suppositions that I had about this situation had formed themselves unbidden into a possible solution (or more accurately, a nested set of solutions) since my initial contact with Mickey a bit over 16 hours ago, changing and reforming as new information was added to the mix; but I approached the front desk with a confidence born from the knowledge that I was smarter and more motivated to get Mickey out of trouble than Lily and Shane were to keep him on the hook.

  “Can I help you Sir?” asked the solicitous, but slightly dubious, front man on the other side of the yard of cool marble at chest height. I was slightly rumpled-looking, and probably had some lingering chunks of BBQ on my earlobes and shirtfront, despite a quick visit to the bathroom at Dinosaur on my way out a few hours earlier.

  “I sure hope so. I helped my Dad, Mickey Schwarz, check out a couple of hours ago. He got in an accident last night, and didn’t get a chance to return some papers to a colleague of his before leaving, and I was hoping to take care of it now.” I served up my opening volley.

  “I heard something about some unpleasantness when I came on this afternoon, but wasn’t on last night, so I’m sure that I couldn’t help you or your father. So sorry, Sir.”

  His eyes seemed to shut down a bit as he replied, and it occurred to me that he knew most of the story, and assumed that I was looking to pay off, or get revenge on, some hooker for a friend. I needed to redirect, and get away from this one without setting off any of his people-radar alarms; this is difficult for me in general, as I lack most of the empathic hardware/software that the rest of humanity is born with.

  “I don’t want to hassle you, or anyone … I just want to talk to someone who might be able to point me in the right direction to find this woman. Dad mentioned getting some drinks after the conference sessions yesterday … I assume that there’s a bar in the hotel?”

  The upside of a fundamental lack of emotions and emotional sensitivity is that I am pretty good at delivering a lie without the usual tells that people tend to exhibit. The guy behind the counter looked at me for a few seconds, and then just pointed back into the semi-darkened gloom of the hotel’s extensive lobby.

  The bartender was polishing and slicing and arranging and generally looking like a guy trying to keep busy during a slow shift. I’ve never had a good Coke from a fountain, so I try to avoid them whenever possible (which is always). I ordered a double measure of Lagavulin 12-year old Scotch with a splash of water.

  I’ve never met a bartender that wasn’t a snob about alcohol, and this one looked like a single-malt snob. My ordering a Coke or a Perrier or Clamato, as I might like to in this situation, would not enhance his calm, and could make my work here tonight more difficult. I had no intention of drinking the vile rope/iodine-tasting stuff he put down in front of me a minute later (I’d seen the label and distinctive bottle as I sat down, so knew that I wouldn’t have to reach for another name), but it allowed him to put me in a series of categorical boxes that suited me for the moment.

  “You know your single-malt.” He said, as he set the chunky glass down with some ceremony. “Lotta guys, they’ll order Glenfiddich or Macallan, and choke it down with their buddies, but they don’t like it, you can tell. I haven’t uncorked the Lagavulin in months.”

  “I like the taste of Islay … the salt and peat and smoke … go far enough back, and my family worked the sea off of Islay … maybe warmed themselves at the end of the day with Lagavulin.” I’d done some research a few years back, and
could talk for hours about single malts, although I hoped that I wouldn’t have to. “Pour one for yourself, if you’ve got the time.”

  He looked up and down the bar, then smiled at me, and went back down the bar to grab the bottle. He poured himself a copy of my drink, and leaned in to clink my glass. “Happy Days.” He said, and I groaned inwardly, knowing that I was going to have to drink some.

  We raised our glasses, and each took a minute amount into our mouths to vaporize. It burned my tongue and tasted like poison, but I made appreciative sounds, and rolled my eyes to heaven. His eyes shifted, saw someone over my shoulder, and he moved his glass quickly under his side of the bar. He shuffled down to the far end for a few minutes to talk with a tall, thin, gray man in a tall, thin, gray suit before coming back to my end of the bar with a wistful smile.

  “Well, you’re not in Syracuse for the peat and smoke, what brings you here?” he asked.

  “Ewan’s my name Phil, and I’m here to sort out some family trouble.” Phil looked surprised and a bit nervous when I used his name (which suited my needs at the moment), but then remembered his nametag, and which side of the bar he was on. He looked hopefully up and down the bar for thirsty patrons to give him an excuse to flee, but was out of luck.

  He looked into the bottom of his glass, swirled it once, took a sip, and brought his eyes back to mine with a neutrality that hadn’t been there before; so I primed the pump a bit, “A friend was in here last night, got picked up and rolled by a pro pretending to be part of the conference, and ended up in the hospital minus some of his belongings. I’m trying to find out who and why and how to get back what they haven’t already sold before they dump it.”

  Phil chewed over what I had said while he brought a basket of various bar-snacks up from under his side of the bar. He tilted his head this way and that, a bit like my dog Hope does when she’s trying to figure something out. He pulled a single peanut out of the basket, and threw it in his mouth before he answered.