Who woulda thought ass-sitting on a bar stool minding your business could be dangerous. Well, belly up to the bar and Bill Baber will show you.
Because anything can happen in the gutter.
Because anything can happen in the gutter.
Bar Stool Blues by Bill Baber
It had been a while between jobs and that meant Gaff and I had been spending lots of time on bar stools. That was how our business worked. Sometimes we spent long stretches waiting for a phone call. Drinking was a way to pass the time.
At times we
were really busy; a hit in Denver followed by another in Vegas then a job in
Mexico. Some were quick; a day’s drive, locate the target, execute the kill and
head back to Tucson. Other times we might have to hunt someone down. I liked those
jobs the best. They kept you on your toes, kept the adrenaline pumping. We once
spent two weeks and over twenty two hundred miles chasing some loser all over
the southwest before we caught up with him in a cheap motel in Deming, New
Mexico. Gaff slit his throat and left him to bleed out on a dirty mattress.
We used
the Hotel Congress in downtown Tucson as a base. The rooms were cheap and
decent. There was a good restaurant and the best bar in town. On top of all
that Tucson was centrally located to most of the places we operated throughout
the Southwest and northern Mexico.
It was the
beginning of what passed for winter in Arizona. We were growing bored. Some
nights Gaff and his turquoise Fender would sit in with a band that played
locally. But mostly, we drank to in a futile attempt to keep boredom at bay.
That’s
what we were doing when the desk clerk walked up to Gaff and handed him a slip
of paper. He glanced at it.
“Vegas,”
he said. He finished his Beam and water before heading to the pay phone in the
lobby.
He
returned a few minutes later visibly shaken. He signaled the bartender for
another drink which he quickly downed and ordered another.
“Vegas had
me call Sammy Giancana in Dallas. They offered us a hundred grand to kill the
fucking president.”
“Holy
shit, “I said. “Why do they want him dead?”
“For
starters his brother Bobby is cracking down on the mob. And, after Castro shut
down the gambling joints in Havana, the mob was in bed with the CIA. They were gonna
take out Castro, make it look like a mob hit. Kennedy found out and squashed
that plan. So the dagos ain’t happy with the president.”
“So what
did you tell them?” I asked.
“I made an
executive decision,” he said. “Told them to go get fucked.”
He took a
long pull from his drink. “I might
be crazy but I’m not nuts.”
We both
finished our drinks and ordered another round.
“Here’s
the thing,” Gaff said. “They’re going to
come after us because we know. They won’t leave any lose ends with something
like this.”
***
The next
day we were at Rillito Downs betting the ponies, figuring we would do something
with a Sunday besides spending it drinking and smoking one cigarette after
another. The day was blustery, the wind cold and biting. Neither of us were
having much luck so we left after the sixth race.
I saw them
first; a black Cadillac parked three spaces from Gaff’s Chrysler. One of the
doors opened. I pulled my gun before shouting to Gaff to get down. I got the first guy as soon as he stepped out
of the passenger side door.
After an incident
like that, we went back to drinking and didn’t let up for nearly a week.
***
Friday
came around and we still had no prospects. We were getting antsy. We had
finished breakfast and were drinking coffee. A television in the restaurant
showed the president’s motorcade rolling through Dallas when something went
terribly wrong. Kennedy had been shot.
Two days
later, we watched as a nightclub owner and small time hood from Dallas named Jack
Ruby shot Kennedy’s alleged assassin with a Colt .38 revolver in the basement
of police headquarters. We knew of Ruby and we were aware of his underworld
ties.
“They got
him before he could talk.” Gaff said. “And I’ll bet you a bottle of Beam they
get Ruby too.”
The next
morning we got a call. Some pendejo who
ran a string of brothels in Hermosillo was behind on his protection money. The jefe’s who controlled the city wanted to
send a message. It was time to go
back to work.
“Be good
to drink tequila instead of bourbon for a while, “Gaff joked while we packed
the car.
***
As the
years passed, we heard a few things. A stripper we knew who had worked at one of
Ruby’s joints told us he was involved. She said he hated Bobby Kennedy with a
passion. When Castro threw the mob out of Cuba, Ruby started selling him guns. Word was that pissed Giancana off so they
fingered him to keep Oswald from singing. Ruby got life but was granted a
retrial. We heard he was going to talk. We also heard the mob poisoned him to
keep him quiet.
The
government said he died of cancer.
“Bullshit,”
said Gaff. “The mob tied up loose ends. The government is trying to cover their ass
because they know what really happened. And you owe me a bottle of Beam.”
The mob
only tried to take us that one time. But we never worked for them again either
and that was fine with us. Like Gaff said, we might be crazy but we sure as
hell weren’t nuts. We gladly
kept our distance. There was plenty of work without them and between jobs we
were more than happy to spend some time sitting on bar stools. Those bastards
could do their own killing.
Inspired to write by Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss and the poems of Brautigan and Hugo, Bill Baber has worked as a ranch hand, bartender, truck driver and, for a while, as a sports columnist. His crime fiction has appeared at various sites on the net. A book of his poetry, Where the Wind Comes to Play was published by Berberis Press in 2011.He now lives in Nevada with his wife Robin and a spoiled dog. He has been known to cross the border just for a cold Mexican brew. A novel in waiting can be found somewhere on his computer. And you can find his work on Amazon.
