Mountain Pulp | A Short Story

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Mountain Pulp

By Eamon Gerber

The cubby we cooped up in saw few visitors. It sat under a line of elevated tracks, on the first story of the brick behemoth. Usually we sat together early in the morning, and waited for something to hook us. I was the only one in when a young man burst through the door practically in hysterics. I must have leapt up in surprise, for he stopped suddenly and nearly toppled.

“You the sleuth?”

“Yes, I am a detective. My title is Turkey, and my currently missing partner is Ginger.”

“Mr. Turkey—”

“Turkey’s fine.”

“Please, you gotta help me, my ring! It’s gone, taken!”

“Please, sit, sit. Let us sit. I assure you, er, what was your name?”

“Thomas Wrinkle, sir—I messed with him, that sick man,” the young man positively broke down, weeping and snotting into his sleeve.

“I assure you, Thomas Wrangle, that all will be taken care of. I need you to steady yourself, okay? Yes, steady now, and tell me more.”

“My ring—”

“Slow down please.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Continue.”

“I was with this man, this great brute called Leroy—he was a gambling man and a drunken ass—and he…he bet…it wasn’t his!.”

“What does that mean—please—more, but now from the beginning,” I was starting to worry that Thomas had gone to the police, that he had been turned away because of his ravings. I had heard similar inventions before. “How often do you see this man?”

“We…used to live together, many years ago before I was married, but he’s been over before he’s…”

“Yes, he bet your wedding ring, I assume, for nothing, yes. Where does the ‘brute’ live?”

“I’m—I don’t know—I’m not sure—”

Ginger burst in through the front door, interrupting Thomas and scaring him through.

“Ah, there’s Ginger. Hello, Ginger.” I said.

“Who’s that one?” He pointed at Thomas.

“That young man is Thomas Wrang—Wrinkle, yes, and his ring is missing. Have you heard of a ‘brute’ named Leroy?”

“Could you mean Leroy ‘Pig Iron’ Glaucon? I sure hope not, though he is brutish in nature.” Thomas’ eyes got big. He shrunk in his chair. Ginger glanced twice at him. “Well.”

“Do you know where to find him?” I asked.

“Yes, but I do not want to.”

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***

The next night we found ourselves in front of concrete mid-rise. Light glowed yellow out from the plate glass windows. They were a hope of warmth and shelter from the night’s cold breath. We waited for someone to come out or in, to open the locked side entrance. We had been waiting for an hour.

“You locked and loaded?” Ginger grinned at me.

“Yes, I’m loaded, yes. Sounds like you plan on it going that way.”

“I know it will go ‘that way’, and as you do not know Leroy, I’m not shocked that you are missing the gravity of meeting him spontaneously, like we are about to do. And forcefully.”

“We will have to warm up when we get inside, I do not want to ask for a blanket when we arrive.”

The side door swung open and a bundled woman and child walked out. We slipped in before the door closed. We started up the stairs, six flights, then seven. At the ninth floor we walked into the hall. At room 978, we paused. Then, as if it took all his strength, Ginger knocked on the door. It opened, and a massive, drunk man stood in front of us.

“What ‘chu want, boys, I shoot solicitors,” he mumbled over bloated, red lips. Come to think of it, his whole face was bloated and red and big as a watermelon. He wore basketball shorts, the baggy ones, and a black blazer over a ridiculous pink guayabera.

I must admit that my memory fails me here. Ginger pulled his gun on the big man, and the big man panicked and hit me with, and I can only assume here, as I was out before I hit the ground (or so I’ve been told), an empty, green bottle of wine. When I came to, I was in Leroy’s apartment and he was bleeding in the corner. Ginger was writing down something in his notebook, and pacing.

“Ginger! What the fuck happened!” I was reasonably mixed up.

“The man lost it to someone called ‘The Lotterman’.” He said with anguish. “I know someone who can help us, but we have to leave, and leave now. You alright there?”

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***

We stood, two nights later, in an alley, in front of a staircase that led down to who knows what. Two men came up and asked us some questions, and we gave them money. They pulled us down into the basement where a few old men sat around rolling dice and shouting and drinking flat beer, and many more young men and women stood around them watching and passing money between hands. There was a grandfather clock in the corner and a table there with a white-faced and black-haired woman posted atop it with a box and a bottle. The whole place smelled of tobacco and grass and a kind of cologne that smelled sour. They pulled us to the woman by the clock, and she smelled good like ginseng and smiled at us.

We left the antechamber behind and went into a different, cavernous, unfinished room. It was all pipes and insulation and mouse droppings. Several tables sat in a loose array, and a bar hugged the far wall. The woman led us through the tables, past greasy people and drunken, sloppy people; men wearing patchwork blazers and tuxedo trousers, women wearing plaid skirts and peacoats. The hodge-podge populace turned as we passed. We tried to emulate causalness, but we stood out. We were not ‘in’. We reached the bar, and sweated through our button shirts.

The barman was old. His head—bald as a plate—shined with sweat droplets, and he looked wired with wide, bloodshot eyes. The woman spoke with him, and he poured us gin tonics, squeezing lime juice out of his calloused fingers.

“The pilot’s over there, in the helmet,” he pointed.

A graying man sat by himself in a silver open face helmet. He had a bottle of sake and two small ceramic shot glasses to keep him company. We finished our drinks and walked to him. He looked up, his face carved like a gargoyle, his eyes squinty and small like a hawk’s.

“Who are ya?” The old man said.

“I am Ginger, and this is Turkey.” Ginger said to him. The old man laughed.

“What kind of names are those, boys? Lay it clear and honest.”

“Those are our names, Ginger and Turkey, honest. We changed them to be so, legally. We have no other names.”

“What do you want?” The man wasn’t laughing anymore. He squinted harder, predatory.

“We cannot tell you here, the drift listens, and this is secret. Let’s be very quiet about this. If you don’t mind, we would like to discuss the Lotterman,” Ginger whispered.

“I do not know them…or of them. I would like to drink now, uf Wiedersehen!”

“Oh, aber wir müssen es wissen. You know him surely, he’s been around.” Ginger said, smiling.

“What do you know of ‘around’? Off with you!”

“Please, we must know, must!” I said.

The old man grabbed his bottle and one of the glasses and retreated to a table in a dim corner.

“He—he lives just north of here, wears a red scarf,” he said as he was leaving.

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***

The Lotteryman woke with the sun. He turned on a light and pulled on his shadow and walked out into the hall. It was cold there, and his body moved slowly. He put a kettle on the stove and tried not to fall asleep in his chair. He looked around the room: the soot on the stove, the dust, the worm-eaten wood legs of the chair. These were his familiar companions.

Now he stood at the door of his brother’s house. They talked, prayed, and the Lotteryman left, walking down muddy streets, past people he didn’t recognize. He wrapped his red scarf around his face. A man in absurd furs stood outside his home. Why were they waiting there?

He circled around through the alley. As he approached his back door, unseen, another man stepped out of the shadows, grabbed him around the neck, and pressed a gun to his head.

“Yes, relax now, yes. Quiet, you don’t want to scare the birds,” I said.

Ginger rounded the corner with Thomas Wrinkle.

“This is the man who has your ring,” Ginger said.

“I don’t know anything about no rings. I’m simple. Let me leave this issue to you, and crawl back into my home,” the Lotteryman said.

“You won’t be ‘crawling’ anywhere, yes, anywhere. Not until we get this ring back, that you have but do not rightfully own. You are the accessory of a thievery.”

“And you have a gun at my head, you ass.”

“If you have it then bring it, otherwise we will search and find it ourselves, starting by checking your hands,” I said, jerking up his sleeve. No rings.

The Lotteryman grew frantic, then suddenly smashed his elbow backward into my side. I fell; he sprinted for the door. Ginger fired and hit him in the back, but he crawled inside and bolted the door.

“We better get the fuck out of here,” Ginger said.

Thomas was gone.

“Think he’s dead?”

“Likely.”

“Shame about the ring, looks like we aren’t getting paid.”

---

Thomas ran. Behind him, another gunshot echoed. He tripped, fell hard, his glasses shattering. Feeling in the gutter for the frame, his fingers touched something cold and round: a ring, sitting in the muddy footprint of a heavy boot.

He slid it onto his finger, hailed a cab, and watched the street fade into the wet, yellow fog.