Posted on September 26, 2008

Karaoke Quintessence: Chapter 5: Caesar

They’d given him a lead.

“It’s yucky. And it smells,” Charlotte said as she handed him the matchbook.

“They serve beer,” Madison added.

The matchbook was for a bar on the north side of downtown, an area that had attempted a cultural renaissance fifteen years ago and failed. Now the neighborhood was home to tweakers and welfare moms—and bars like the one Dale was now headed to.

“We don’t know that they’re there,” Charlotte had said.

“We’re not sure,” Madison said.

“But we get feelings about things sometimes.”

Dale had accepted this. He still had their first payment in his pocket. This was the only tip he had to go on, and, who knew?, maybe their feelings were justified.

He sent them home, telling them to be careful and if they saw anything at all out of the ordinary, anything that made them suspicious, they were to call the cops first and him second. Even if that meant getting their parents involved.

“Anything at all,” he said, as he stood up to see them out of his office.

“We got it, Mr. Dale,” Charlotte said.

“Yeah, we got it,” Madison said.

And then then were gone and Dale was left standing there wondering just what the hell he was doing. They’d given him a wad of cash and a set of vague instructions and not a whole lot else. Dale had pulled out the money and looked at it. If you’d asked him why he was doing this, he’d confess ignorance. He just didn’t know. There was something about those two girls that made him want to figure it out, for them. He couldn’t think his way around that simple fact. He wanted to solve their problem because he just knew it had to be solved.

Now he pulled into an empty meter spot half a block from the bar and killed the engine. This area of town was shit. Poor folk sat on their front porches, drinking cheap beer and cheaper wine, and watching the cars drive by with the jolly fascination of those who knew, no matter where the rest of the world was headed, the people in this neighborhood were going nowhere. The houses pushed close together, the lawns dead or dying. Alex opened his car door and got out.

He walked the rest of the way to the address on the matchbook. The bar was tucked into the bottom floor of a larger apartment building, taking up one corner and sharing the ground level with a cigarette, milk, and prepaid phone card store—according to the white, hand lettered sign—and a joint selling mobile phones and pagers. The bar’s sign, which said only “Bar” in red neon, hung only a few inches above the recessed entry and the last letter flickered as Dale walked underneath.

He pushed the door open.

Charlotte was right. The place smelled like hell. Dale couldn’t place exactly what it was: musty, yes, but also sour. The bar was small, with only a few tables and a line of booths along one wall. Behind the counter, a fat black man in a grey t-shirt handed a beer to a beer to a diminutive Mexican in a straw cowboy hat. Dale walked to one of the booths near the middle of the row and sat down. besides the Mexican, he was the only customer.

He waited. After a few minutes, the bartender waved at him and asked if he intended to order anything. Dale called back that he’d take a Coors Light and got up to take it when the bartender put the open bottle on the bar. Back in the booth, Dale leaned into the corner, sipped his beer, and returned to waiting. This was his only lead, after all, and the girls had paid him. He figured his constitution could handle a few hours in a place like this at the very least. Dale wasn’t counting on lucking out, but you never knew.

He’d brought a book, a biography of Charles Dickens, and he pulled it out of his jacket, flipped to his dog eared place, and began to read. He made it through three quarters of a chapter before anyone new came in and two more before anyone interesting showed up. This interesting group consisted of three guys—two white, one black—matching the description Charlotte had given him. “They’re like punk rockers,” she’d said.

“With tattoos,” Madison had added.

They ordered drinks, sat down, and started to talk.

“I think you’re right,” the black guy said.

“What about?” one of the white guys, skinny with a blue, Caesar like crown tattooed around his head said.

“What you were saying before. About the trouble with people getting choices.”

“Oh, that.”

The second white guy—fat with tattoos limited his is forearms—said, “Jesus, I can’t listen to this shit.”

The black guy said, “I mean, I get it. Let folks make choices, they’ll make bad choices, and then what’ve we got?”

“Bad choices,” Caesar said.

“Right. But the thing I don’t get is, what do we do about it?”

“We don’t let them,” Caesar said. The fat one stood up and walked over to the bar. He sat down and said something to the bartender which Dale couldn’t hear.

“Don’t let them what?” the black guy said.

“Make choices.”

“Somebody’s got to, though.”

“Us.”

“We can’t make them all,” the black guy said.

Caesar shrugged. “Soon,” he said. “We’ll be making them all soon.”

The black guy leaned forward. “Is that what it’s for? Does it do that?”

Caesar shrugged again.

Alex put down his book and inched closer to them along the booth he was sitting in. Was it really this easy? Were these the guys Charlotte and Madison had sent him to find and now here he was, not ten feet from them?

Caesar said, “Could be.”

“Sweet Jesus,” the black guy said.

The bigger of the white men, the one who’d left when the conversation started, had his drink now and came back to the table. “You fucking stupid?” he said, sitting down.

The black guy turned. “What’s that—”

“Talking about this shit? In here?” He looked at Caesar. “I thought better of you, you stupid prick.”

Caesar shook his head. “Sorry, man,” he said.

The black guy said, “It’s not safe? You don’t think it’s safe? You think somebody could be watching us?”

“Maybe.”

“Who? In here, who’s gonna be watching us?”

The big one looked around. “I don’t know. Anyone. Him, over there.” He was looked at Dale.

Dale sat still. He didn’t move except to take another sip of his drink, trying to look like he wasn’t paying any attention.