Nice Place for a Murder (7 page)

“You know where her place is, right? Come along and show me.”

“Got work.”

“It’s October, Prager. The season is over. Whatever’s left to do, your people are doing. Not only don’t you, personally, have anything to do, you won’t until March.”

“Just shows what you know about running a business. Now I understand why that Teague guy in New York has you by the balls.”

“I’ll buy your lunch,” I said. “Hell of an offer, I think.”

“A McDonald’s Value Meal in Riverhead, you mean? Not likely. I do this, I want to come back on the North Road and get a lobster roll and a slice of that chocolate mud pie. Cost you twenty-five bucks, with the tip, mi compadre. More, if you eat, too. But what the hell, it’s not your money, right? You’re going to put in for it, anyway.”

“We leave in fifteen minutes,” I said.

“Why not right now?” 

“Because it’ll take you that long to smoke up that hideous cigar. You’re not getting into my car with that thing.”

It hardly mattered that Wally’d finished his smoke and disposed of the butt in the approved GI fashion, pulling it apart and scattering the tobacco. The smell of cigar smoke still clung faintly to him as he sat next to me in the car. “I still smell that cigar,” I told him.

“Tough shit.” His quick reflex answer. “It goes away. Two hours, tops.”

I swung onto Route 27 and headed west toward Shinnecock.  There was barely any fog now, because we were away from the water. I said, “What can you tell me about this Lulu?”

Wally thought for a moment, staring ahead at the road. “Every bayman, dock hand and rummy out here seems to know her. Story is, she just showed up one day and bought herself a saloon. It used to belong to John Argyris, an old Greek who figured it was time to pack it in and go back to Athens to die. Along comes Lulu with a handbag stuffed with hundred dollar bills, and the next thing you know, Lulu’s behind the bar, and Argyris is on an airplane. That was, like, a dozen years ago.”

“Where’d she come from?”

“All kinds of stories. One is she was a madam from Pennsylvania someplace. Another, she was on the lam, embezzled the money from a tire factory in Ohio. And get this. Somebody even said she was the bastard daughter of Lyndon Johnson, and that the bar was paid for with hush money from the Democratic National Committee. All bullshit dreamed up by drunks. The truth is, nobody knows, really. And she’s never said. Hey, you want to find out, I think you should ask her.”

We drove on until the highway crossed the Shinnecock Canal, a man-made waterway that connects two of Long Island’s big bays. Boats can go from the Atlantic Ocean on the south up into Shinnecock Bay, then through the canal, with its lock, into Great Peconic Bay. It’s a practical route for boats of all kinds, and Shinnecock is ringed with docks and marinas.

“Turn off here,” Wally said. “Then take the third left, and another left. Over there. See it?”

I saw it. An exhausted old building covered in asbestos tile that hadn’t been painted in so long it was hard to tell what color it used to be. The sign on the roof still said John Argyris Tavern, no apostrophe, in faded green and blue letters. I had to look hard to decipher it. The car rocked as I drove it across deep ruts in the graveled lot. I parked. 

“How do you like it so far?” Wally said.

Though the morning sun was out full, once the tavern door closed behind us, it was late afternoon inside, dismal and totally drained of color. Two grizzled old-timers sat murmuring to each other near the door, as they filled the air with cigarette smoke. There were empty coffee mugs and shot glasses on the pitted wooden table in front of them. The only other customer was an obese woman in a ghastly green housedress who sat at the bar drinking Coors from a long-neck bottle. Her hair looked as though she hadn’t combed it since Elvis Presley died.

“That’s not her,” Wally said, quietly.

“I hope not,” I said.

The centerpiece above the bar was an ornate advertising clock, framed in red and purple neon, that said Hale’s Pale Ale. I remembered the Hale brand, an extinct regional brew that quenched its last thirst sometime in the late 1970s, I think it was.

A door behind the bar opened and it was the fabled Lulu Lumpkin who appeared, as I could tell by Wally’s smile and nod to me. She carried a full pot of coffee. I had to agree with Wally’s assessment of her looks. With an ample nose and chin that gave her face the coarse appearance of someone right at home pulling draft beers and breaking up fights, she was not a beauty queen contender. Still, she had a remarkable figure for a woman of what? sixty, maybe more, and an unmistakable come-hither presence. She wore a denim workshirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows, and jeans.

Lulu Lumpkin came from behind the bar and filled the mugs of the two old guys with coffee. “And what can I get for you gents?” she said to us.

“Two coffees,” Wally said.

“Got any donuts?” I said.

“You must be lost,” she said. “Dunkin Donuts is the one with the big orange sign over in Hampton Bays. This here, where you are, is a tavern, and everything we serve is a liquid of one sort or another. Coffee we can do, though mostly it’s a chaser for something stronger.”

“Just the coffee, then,” I said. “Two black. Little early for stronger.”

“Something only a sissy would say, you know that?” She went behind the bar, brought up two mugs, thumped them down and filled them with coffee. She looked at Wally and said, “Him I don’t know, but I seen you before, didn’t I?”

“Been in a couple of times. You made me a martini once,” he said.

“Oh, yeah, right. I remember because it was a real event. Only guy ever ordered one. None before or since.” She reached onto the back-bar and pulled out a bottle of dry vermouth. “Same bottle came with the place when I took over. No telling how long it was here before that.”

“Could last forever,” said Wally.

“It’ll last longer than I will, anyway,” said Lulu Lumpkin, replacing it. “So how come you two swells wandered in here this hour? I generally get just the hopeless boozers in the morning.”

“I wanted to meet you,” I told her.

“That’s a thrill for me,” she said. “Any special reason, or is it just my famous charm and beauty?”

“Because your name is Lulu,” Wally said.

Lulu Lumpkin leaned far over the bar and peered into my face. “What is it, you got a thing about my name? A Lulu freak, is that it?”

I’d barely opened my mouth, and already Lulu had me on the ropes. She clearly could be more than the equal of any tough drunk. So feisty you just had to like her. “Lulu’s a fine name, a hell of a name,” I said. “There’s a commercial fishing boat somewhere around here called Lulu, too. I’m trying to find it.”

“What, you’re trying to find a boat?” she said.

“That’s right,” I said.

“Look around,” she said. “You see any boats in here?”

“I thought you might know. Thought maybe somebody named a boat after you. An admirer.”

“I discourage admirers,” she said. “I wouldn’t let some fool name a boat after me even if he wanted to. Just what I need, a smelly fish boat with my name on it.”

“I think you’re saying you don’t know of any boat named the Lulu,” I said.

“I think that’s what I’m saying, sport.”

Wally sipped on his coffee and grinned at me. “Well, like you told me going in, muchacho, it was a long shot. But I want you to know how much I’m looking forward to that lunch.”

Wally may have been ready to give up on Lulu Lumpkin, but I wasn’t. Maybe she knew more than she was giving me. I suspected she was a woman who liked to keep her own counsel, as they say. And anyway, bartenders know things. Secrets. “Are you interested in learning why I’m looking for the boat?” I said to her.

“No. Don’t tell me.”

“Because the guy who owns it has important information I have to find out,” I said, shading the truth in case Lulu felt protective. “Maybe you know him.”

“What’s his name?”

“See, that’s my problem. I didn’t get his name when I met him. I only know what he looks like. Gangly guy. Big, broad shoulders, way out to here.” I saw the expression on Lulu’s face start to change. “Kind of a flat, pushed-in mug.” There was a glint of recognition that was unmistakable, so I kept on.  “Eyes close together. Long yellow hair, kind of ratty. Big snake tattoos on both arms.” That did it.

She leaned in close again. “What do you want with him?”

“I told you. He has some information I need. You know him?”

“Information, bullshit, “ she said. “The only reason anybody’d want that guy is to beat the bastard to death.”

“So you do know him,” I said. “No, I don’t want to kill him.”

“Too bad. Somebody ought to.” Lulu poured a mug of coffee for herself, then came out to sit on a barstool next to us. “You’re no cop. You’re old for a cop.”

“I’m investigating for a big company, a client,” I said. I got the feeling she wanted to tell what she knew, so I kept talking. “I think this guy was involved in a death on Shelter Island. Looked like an accident, but I don’t think it was. He also tried to kill me. Twice. Tell me about this guy? Who is he?”

“I don’t tell anything about anybody. A customer comes in here, even if he’s the filthiest wharf rat on Long Island, whatever he does or says, I never repeat it.” She stopped, drank from her mug, shook her head. “But I don’t do that for Hick Sosenko. Not him. And the guy you described has got to be him. There’s nobody else on this earth looks like that.”

“What’s his name?” Wally said. “Hick — ?”

“Sosenko, “ she said. “Absolutely insane son-of-a-bitch. The most unpredictable, most vicious human being I ever met. And we get some rough ones here. He started coming in maybe a year ago. Bad trouble right away. Fierce temper. Start fights for no reason at all. Nearly choked a guy to death once, right on top of this bar, because he didn’t like his shirt. And my luck, he was crazy mad for me. Night after night, wouldn’t leave me alone. He’d sit there at the bar and sing to me, a song he made up. You know how it went? ‘Lulu, I love your titties,’ over and over. I told him get out and don’t come here no more. But he kept showing up. One night last month he walks in here with a knife on his belt, you know, from fishing. He gets drunk and starts coming after people with the knife. I take my gun from behind the bar and I say get out or I’ll shoot you. He just laughs and keeps flashing the knife around. So I shoot him.”

“You actually shot him?” Wally said.

“Are you paying attention? I actually did. Just once, grazed his leg. And he walks out under his own steam. You know what? He’s back again, bandaged up, limping in here the next night, singing to me. I get out the gun and point it right between those ugly eyes of his. I tell him I’ll kill him dead, he doesn’t stop bothering me. So he leaves. But he says he’ll be back, just loves me so much he can’t stay away from me. Right now I’m worried he’ll walk back in here one of these days. So I wouldn’t be unhappy to have him far away, behind bars, maybe. Or dead.”

“Why don’t you call the cops, tell them about him?” Wally said.

“Yeah, sure,” Lulu said. “That’s all my customers got to hear, that I’m talking to cops. Goodbye, Lulu.”

“Maybe we can help you, get him out of circulation for you,” I said. “Where can we find him?”

She sighed, long and deep. “If I knew, I’d tell you.”

“You don’t know?” said Wally

“Jesus, you are slow,” she said to him. “But what can you expect, somebody who orders fancy drinks.”

“So we still don’t have a fix on him,” Wally said to me.

“I do.” It came from the fat lady with the Coors. “I know where Hick Sosenko lives. And I’ll tell you.”

I turned to face her. “How do you know him?”

She slipped off her barstool and made her way down the bar, her huge stomach leading the way. “Well, he fucks me about once a week or so. Rapes is the right word, I guess, because I don’t really want to do it with him. I live up the road from him. He pulls me in when I go past his place. I read in a magazine fucking is fun, but this sure isn’t. I’d kind of like it to stop. You might take him out late at night and drop him in the bay. That would be a good way.”

“Tell us where he lives,” I said.

She did. 

Wally and I were about to get back into the car when the door to Lulu’s Lumpkin’s gin mill opened and she appeared.  “Be goddam careful,” she called to us. “Hick Sosenko is one dangerous piece of shit.”

CHAPTER VII

Grim as Lulu’s saloon was, it couldn’t begin to reach the depths of dilapidation we found at Hick Sosenko’s place.

It was easily the most run-down of the half dozen shacks that lined an unpaved lane, a street that made you feel discontented just to look at it, filled with tall grasses and overgrown shrubs, and dotted with piles of broken furniture, old TV sets and kitchen appliances, and black plastic bags stuffed with things I didn’t dare to imagine. To the side of Sosenko’s place stood the remains of what I suspected was once a 1969 Ford Fairlane sedan, tires gone now, resting on the rims of its wheels, all the windows broken.