Panic At Shakes

Crime Fiction by Christian De Matteo

Marty Beesman moved the body three more inches to the right. He cocked his undersized head at it, considering while biting his lower lip, then reached down and gently flung the corpse’s right arm out. Marty breathed out his nose exasperated, even stomped one foot ever so slightly. What the hell did make it look natural even mean? Casual? Like she was sneaking a nap on the living room rug? Should he put a fucking magazine in her hand?

He thought about this, looking around the small, well-kept apartment for one. Did anyone still read magazines? An idea hit him. Her cell phone. She’d been drinking her coffee and doomscrolling. That’s what people did. And doom was certainly appropriate. Keeled over right there. Only 36 and dead by heart attack. Doomscrolling.

He found her cell under the metal and glass coffee table where it had landed when she’d kicked out her leg and grabbed her chest. He’d hated to see it. He’d always liked Eveline. One of the few who didn’t poke fun at him constantly for his gnarled little body and child-size head. She even brought him apple turnovers from time to time, Marty’s favorite.

But when you broke up with Mr. Telemetti, you got broken. His steadfast secret rule. And Marty was the guy who did it. He was just glad he didn’t have to use the knife or beloved pair of brass knuckles he kept in his pockets. Not on her. That would have stayed with him.

Marty thought the body looked good enough, though the way she’d actually tumbled over had seemed okay to him already. Well, orders were orders. He found dishwashing gloves in the cabinet under the kitchen sink – the whole cabinet more organized than any he’d ever seen under a sink – and retrieved his and Eveline’s coffee mugs. He washed both, dried them thoroughly, and returned his to the cabinet where she kept them, another immaculately arranged space. Still wearing the plastic gloves, also thoroughly dried, he took her cup back into the living room and pressed the edge against her lips, getting enough of a lipstick smudge to make it convincing she’d drank from it. He put her fingers on it, the way she’d held it. He poured a bit more coffee in, sloshed it around, tipped in the direction she drank from and dropped it on the carpet a foot or so from her. He flinched at the small stain on the muted pink carpet.

He’d never seen a pink carpet before and surprised himself by liking it. The femininity was warming. Marty looked around the room, all the furniture small, dollhouse-like. She’d been a minimalist. That’s what Mr. Telemetti called it. He said he liked that about her. He hated clutter and messes. They made him violent. Mr. Telemetti’s office in the back of Shakes Bar was pristine, almost nothing on his desk but his laptop, a few statues and decorations from trips to the motherland, and maybe the all-important secret accounts book recording where the real money came from, if he was working on it.

Marty’s eye caught another stain on the carpet, near where he’d been sitting, dark brown and smudged deep into the pile. Well, at least he hadn’t made the first mess.

He erased all traces of his presence, returned the plastic gloves to their place and closed the door behind him, locking it with Mr. Telemetti’s copy of the key. Next, this would go in the Hudson River. Eveline Giacomo was dead, a tragic heart attack the authorities would not be able to connect to the quickly dissolving poison she’d ingested at the hands of her friend, Marty Beesman.

###

The deed hung heavy on Marty as he drove away from the Ossining waterfront on the Hudson River, apartment key deposited in the waves. He’d stopped at a local deli to get a replacement coffee for the betrayer’s cup he’d had at Eveline’s. He sipped it now, one hand casually working the wheel, and wove through the downtown streets not far from the famed Sing Sing Prison. He had acquaintances in there and hoped never to join them. Marty was a careful guy, though, never leaving a trace of himself behind. Folks could mock his small head and weirdly hunched body all they liked, but he’d never be cornered in a shower by caged, feral men.

Behind the bar at Shakes, Marty tossed his coffee cup in the garbage and shook himself out of his beige trenchcoat. Not the fashion anymore, Marty clung to the classics. From his zip-up quarter boots to his paisley necktie and blue collared shirt, he looked all the part of the professional. Johnny “Greaseman” Nardeli and Louie “Up-Chuck” Dello could wear their sweatsuits and tight jeans all they wanted, modern thug essentials, but Marty would always be classy. Never flashy. He liked that about himself.

Rolling up his sleeves, he began readying the bar for afternoon business. The day was sunny but biting cold and the bar would be packed with locals looking for liquid lunch to warm their bellies and brains soon. He cut the lemons and limes, restocked the coolers and wiped down all the bottles on the shelves below the wall length mirror with the Shakes Bar scroll across it. Few people realized how essential the big mirror was for bartending. Beyond being able to see who needed a drink while you were mixing another, it also provided a view for brewing trouble when your back was turned. Marty had busted quite a few heads in Shakes, enough so trouble was rare these days.

Mr. Telemetti entered while Marty was using a fresh bar rag to wipe down one of the top shelf tequilas, a painful stretch for him with his extreme scoliosis.

“Marty, you did it?”

“All done, boss.”

“How’d she take it?”

Marty wasn’t sure how to answer this.

“With sugar?”

The fat man laughed.

“Gotta love you, Marty. Always with a joke.” Mr. Telemetti struggled out of his winter coat, one arm pulling through inside-out. When he was done, the rotund man was out of breath and wheezing for a cigarette. “Well, thanks. Make sure to send flowers to the wake.”

Marty nodded and Mr. Telemetti heaved across the barroom to his office, closing the door behind him. The bar rag slipped from Marty’s hand to the rubber matted floor. He bent to pick it up and crinkled his nose in disgust. He smelled dog shit. He hated dog shit. Sure enough, there it was, smeared on the bottom of his right boot. Not a lot, but enough to stink. Dammit, it had probably happened at the waterfront. The asshole dog owners never bothered to pick up after their filthy beasts. His favorite fantasy floated through his mind, walking through the park with his shotgun and blowing the bowels out of the backs of every fucking asshole walking a dog. He’d leave the dogs alone. It wasn’t their fault.

In the lot behind the bar, Marty hosed off his shoe, laying it on the pavement so the backsplash wouldn’t get on his clothes. Then, using dish detergent and a discarded bar rag, he scrubbed the remaining feces out of the grooves. The dish detergent made him think of the clean-up at Eveline’s place and again he felt bad. She didn’t have a dog.

“Shoe cleaning day, Marty?”

Marty looked up at Officer Hardy. He hadn’t heard him come down the alley.

“I stepped in dog shit, Rob.” Marty dealt with the cop enough to be on a first name basis. The pig even drank at the bar sometimes under the angry gaze of all the regulars. “You ought to run in every one of those dog-owning bastards by the park.”

“Right,” Hardy laughed. “That would do wonders for public opinion of us. What brought you to the waterfront today?”

Marty immediately realized his mistake. Shit. Never offer free information to cops.

“Got a cup of coffee and decided to stretch my legs.”

“Next time maybe stretch your back,” Hardy said with a laugh and Marty’s hatred of the man flared. “You know anything about Eveline Giacomo?”

Marty gripped the boot tight so he wouldn’t drop it but kept his face as neutral as before. How the hell could they know about that already?

“She comes in here sometimes. That’s about it.”

“Comes in here? Isn’t she dating your boss?” The cop used the present tense. Was he playing with him?

“Sure, maybe. I don’t keep up with gossip much.”

“Okay,” Hardy said. “Just we’ve been looking for her. Had an appointment with a detective today and didn’t show up. Figured I’d check here.”

Marty looked at him a moment, shrugged and went back to cleaning out the grooves of the boot sole, though no dog shit remained.

“Boss is inside. See if he knows. Maybe they had a hardy tryst, and she had to sleep it off.”

The cop scowled at the use of his name in such an image.

“Lovely. I can’t imagine Telemetti can even find his dick,” he said and turned to walk off. “Good luck with the dog shit.”

Marty kept his head down until the cop was gone. He threw the rag in the dumpster and put his shoe back on, his sock annoyingly damp from the ground. This would bother him all day.

Back behind the bar, Marty strained his ears to hear what was being said in the office. The door was ajar, but Telemetti was talking to the cop in a low voice, calm and without worry. Marty stepped out to take the chairs from their upside-down positions on the tables starting with the ones closest to the office.

“I haven’t seen her in a few days,” Telemetti was saying. “She’s planning a vacation for us and wanted it to be a surprise.”

“So you couldn’t go to her apartment?”

“Nah, she’s old-fashioned. Gets pamphlets, brochures, maps, spreads ‘em around the place and makes a big thing out of it. Every activity planned to the second, every secret local spot marked for visiting. She was gonna do a whole big presentation for me. Probably with a PowerPoint.” Telemetti laughed.

“That’s odd,” Marty heard Hardy say. “Well, I’m going to her place next, so when I see you, I’ll try not to ruin the surprise.”

“I’m guessing Montego. She’s a big Beach Boys fan. Been trying to check every place they name off the list. We been to Aruba, Jamaica….”

“Yeah, yeah. Ooh, I wanna take ya. Another travesty of the 80s.” Hardy came to the door and Marty took down another chair. “I’ll be in touch, Telemetti.”

He closed the door behind him and looked at Marty.

“All shit free?”

“Clean as a whistle,” Marty said.

Hardy picked up one of the chairs, flipped it over and put it back on the table.

“You missed one,” he said and walked out of the bar laughing at his own hilarity.

Marty muttered at the closing door.

“Cocksucker.”

###

Telemetti erupted exactly one minute after the cop walked out.

“That goddamn twat of a whore! An appointment with a fucking detective? That double-crossing slut!”

Marty knew better than to go in the office. Mr. Telemetti wasn’t talking to him. He was screaming at God Himself.

“What’d I give’r? Fucking diamonds! Fucking pearls! A fucking life of velvet and satin!” What sounded like the large metal paperweight in the shape of Rome’s Coliseum lodging itself into the wall came from inside. “Trips to her heart’s content! We went to the fucking Jersey Shore, for fuck’s sake! I went to fuckin’ New Jersey for that bitch! I fucking hate Jersey!” Now the sound of shattering glass, presumably his “Time Man of the Year” mirror exploding around a projectile stapler. “And for what? Half-assed head and the honor of watching reality television with her? Am I fuckin’ idiot?”

Marty also knew better than to answer this. It was a good time to take beer inventory in the backroom and so Marty did. A booming crash followed him to the stacks of beer cases, most definitely Mr. Telemetti’s large, wheeled desk chair exiting his office airborne and taking out some of the tables and chairs Marty had arranged so carefully.

“A detective? Motherfucker!”

Marty would take a few minutes longer than normal figuring out what needed to be ordered.

###

The bar was full, construction workers, utility guys, ladies and gents from the local shops, all enjoying some afternoon beverages to get through another hateful day of labor. Marty worked the bar faster than one might expect for his warped posture, getting drinks out with a swiftness unappreciated by any of the customers. Never a thank you, always a few jabs about his height, head and back, and tips that were nothing to write mom about. But Mr. Telemetti paid him enough to make up for the tips, and he’d heard enough bullshit about his fakakta frame to pay it any mind.

Midway through pouring a pint glass of Jack & Coke, something unfortunate hit him. Just before entering Eveline’s apartment building, a little speck of a dog had almost tripped him, running in front of his feet with its retractable leash stretched to the max. Marty stumbled over his own feet trying to avoid it, scaring the damn thing right back to its asshole owner. The man shouted at Marty.

“Watch it, you fucking gnome! You almost stepped on my dog!”

Marty stepped up to him, craning his neck to make raging eye-contact with the much taller man. The dog had cowered, shaking between their feet.

“Say it again and I’ll make your dickhole my knife sheath.”

“The fuck is a sheath?” the man had snorted.

Marty licked his lips ready to strike and then remembered his mission. Best not to advertise his whereabouts this morning. He spit on the man’s chest and entered Eveline’s building, enjoying the man’s sputtering outrage behind him.

Normally such a memory would bring a smile to his face, but not now. In his mind’s eye he could see the other stain on Eveline’s carpet. The one he’d been glad was already there. Next to it he saw the little damned dog shaking at his feet. Scared.

Scared things shat themselves.

“Son of a bitch,” he whispered, completely unsure what to do next.

Hardy had seen him cleaning his shoe. He’d told Hardy it was dog shit. He’d given up too much information. The pig said he was heading for her place. And he was already sniffing around Mr. Telemetti.

Marty pictured the showers in Sing Sing, saw the fat, hairy, tattooed men flanking him like pervert wolves.

Like the worst kind of magic, the front door opened and Officer Hardy walked in, a tall man around 50 wearing a gray suit behind him. The man’s loose necktie gave him away instantly as a detective. Marty had overfilled the pint glass, and the customer was shouting at him.

“Fuck off, Warren,” Marty hissed and dropped the bottle to the sink counter below the bar.

Hardy was waving to him, the detective taking in the bar with a judgmental smirk.

Marty ran. Stumbling momentarily on the rubber mats, he went headlong for the backroom where he planned to run out into the alley and never come back to Ossining again. Instead, he crashed full body into Janice O’Hurley, the resident blousy barfly, a good hundred pounds heavier than Marty. Her drink sprayed the front of her too-small blouse, her pacifier nipples hardening as if on command.

“The hell, Marty! Maybe look up sometimes!” The two others at her table laughed.

A hand fell on his shoulder. Mr. Telemetti gripped Marty while wiping sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. He smiled as brightly as he could and, still holding Marty, acknowledged the cops now beside them.

“Officers,” he said, then turned to Marty. “You running to the back for more Jack? These animals suck that swill down like oxygen.”

“Yeah, Mr. Telemetti,” Marty said, desperate to gather himself. He was still pressed up against Janice, his face mashed into one of her fatty breasts.

“My next drinks better be free, you little lech,” she said, wiggling her big tit farther around his face.

“Sure thing, Janice,” Mr. Telemetti said, adding to the cops, “You boys up for a little free libation too?”

“I’m 18 years sober,” the detective said. “And this isn’t the kinda place I’d start back up in, anyway.”

Normally, Telemetti would have bristled and shot back a profane retort.

“No, no. Never mess with a man’s recovery, I always say. What can I do for you boys?”

He pulled Marty back into as much of a standing position as the little man’s spine would allow and let go of his shoulder. He shot Marty a quick look, his eyes enough to make it clear he was to stay put.

“Can we go in your office for a quick talk?” Hardy said.

Telemetti licked his upper lip and wiped his forehead again.

“Well, uh, I’m doing a little construction in there right now. Maybe another time?”

“That would be down at the stationhouse, Telemetti,” the detective said. “Fine by me.”

Marty could feel his heart rate spiking and imagined Mr. Telemetti’s was too. The fat man had his hands in enough of Westchester County’s illegal activities to be sent up the river – well, down the road – for a lifetime or two. He had a tacit agreement with most of the cops in town not to hassle him so long as he didn’t bring any troubles to Ossining. This detective, however, he didn’t know from Adam.

“Okay, yeah, come on in. Just been moving some things around and looking for studs in the walls.”

The office was trashed. Almost nothing had been spared in his rage over Eveline’s betrayal. His chair was back behind the desk, but the desk was a disaster of broken decorations, shards of mirror glass and even a dent where the big man had hit it. More holes punctuated the walls than Marty expected, and his boss’s favorite painting had been kicked through. The only thing still in one piece was the photo of Telemetti’s sainted mother looking disapprovingly down on the mess in his room.

“You got blind apes doing your redecorating?” Hardy asked, picking up an overturned chair and sitting down.

“Ha, yeah. Something like that.”

Hardy was staring at the coliseum buried in the sheetrock.

The detective gestured for Telemetti to take his seat behind the desk and Marty to stand beside him. He lifted the other chair, brushed off the seat and sat down, taking a notepad and pen from the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

“I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you but,” he indicated the wreckage with his pen hand, “I’m wondering if you’ve already heard about it.”

Telemetti picked up the ledger, thumped it lightly on the desktop a few times like he was straightening papers, and put in an open drawer beside him. He closed the drawer; this was the secret accounts book.

“No, just, uh, just a bad morning. Cut off in traffic, spilled my coffee, stubbed my toe. You know.”

“Some temper, Mr. Telemetti. I usually just blaspheme a few times and move on with my day.” The detective flipped open the notepad, thumbed to a clean page and put his pen against it, resting the pad on his crossed leg. “Eveline Giacomo was found dead in her apartment this morning,” he said. “We thought you might know something about it.”

Marty’s balls pulled up in his scrotum.

“Eveline?” Mr. Telemetti whispered in something akin to disbelief. “Eveline?”

“Yes, Mr. Telemetti. An apparent heart attack.”

“My God,” Telemetti said. “She was so young. How?”

“Heart disease often goes undetected in women, actually,” Hardy said, getting a look from the detective.

“What am I gonna do? I loved that woman.” Telemetti made a show of wiping his eyes despite their being dry, no Hollywood career in the cards for the round man.

“And you two planning a vacation, too,” Hardy said.

“I’ll never know where,” Telemetti whispered, putting a small hitch in his voice.

“Funny about that. No PowerPoint in sight. No maps or brochures either.”

Telemetti ignored this, busy wringing his hands.

“Well, thank you boys for coming to tell me. I’ll have to contact her mother and see that arrangements are made.”

“We’ve already contacted her next of kin. Her mother’s been dead nine years now. We spoke to a brother in Topeka. Surprised you didn’t know that.”

“We didn’t talk family much.” Despite himself, Telemetti’s voice had gotten a little gruffer.

“What brought me here, however, was the fact Ms. Giacomo had an appointment with me today. She had things to tell me, she said.” The detective pointed with his pad. “Things about you.”

“I can’t imagine what,” Telemetti said, his voice now even, all pretense dropped.

Marty’s hand was in his pocket, turning and turning his knife. Only a four-inch blade, he was still sure he could do enough damage with it to get out the door before being shot. He’d jam it in Hardy’s neck first, twist it if he had the time. Rat fuck. Then he’d go for the detective. Maybe take his gun off him. His bladder was twitching. He had to get out of here. Mr. Telemetti was going down. That was certain. Marty wouldn’t be party to that trip.

“Mr. Telemetti,” the detective said. “When we found her in her apartment, it seemed a clear case of medical misfortune.”

“Certainly,” Telemetti said.

“But the coroner was surprised she’d managed to keep her phone in her hand during the event. She fell from a chair in the living room where she’d been drinking her morning coffee. He said most people instinctively grab for their chests when a heart attack hits, resulting in anything they were holding being flung or dropped.”

“Naturally,” Telemetti said, his famous impatience peeking out a bit more.

“This was at first merely interesting. Unusual.” The detective began a pregnant pause for obvious effect, but Hardy jumped in before it could give birth.

“Then we found the dog shit!”

Marty pounced, burying his knife just under Hardy’s collarbone, where it stuck. The detective took a second to understand what was happening as Marty pulled on the damn knife, trying to get it out.

“Marty, what the fuck are you doing?” Telemetti shouted, struggling to get out of his seat.

“Fucking psycho!” Hardy was yelling, his gun now out. The detective had his out too, having flung his pad and pen across the room like – apparently – someone having a heart attack.

Giving up on the knife, Marty pushed Hardy’s chair over, sending the man’s bullet into the ceiling, almost grazing Marty’s cheek.

He ran for the door, heard the detective squeeze off three shots and made the backroom dodging screaming customers, surprised to find himself still hole-free.

In the alley, he charged his awkward body as fast as he could toward the street, planning to pull some poor fuck from his car and tear off in it. If they investigated him, he’d be lucky to even get yard time in that godforsaken prison. He’d knocked off at least five of Mr. Telemetti’s former lovers, not to mention the low-level drug dealers, unaffiliated pimps, and other scum he’d disappeared over his years of loyal service.

Mr. Telemetti would talk. Would do anything to save his own ass. Marty could see that now. And he was terrible liar. Marty exited the alley, turning away from the bar. He could see a car just slowing for a light at the intersection. That was his car.

Still doing his version of a run, he fumbled for his brass knuckles. They were stuck in the pocket, the cloth folded around them. Foolishly but in oh-so-human a way, he looked down at the pocket as if viewing the situation would change it.

A yelp and he was sliding forward on the sidewalk, chin and forehead first. Just from the feeling he knew most of the skin had been stripped away. The burn was intense, little fragments of gravel and dirt ground into the wound. He’d bitten the tip of his tongue too, coppery juices sloshing inside his mouth. With his hand lodged in his pocket, he’d been unable to stop the fall, but what the hell had he fallen over?

He rolled to his side and saw the dog. A wrinkled, fugly thing the size of a large pig. For some reason he remembered this breed was called a Sharpei. On the other end of the leash was a red-faced man hollering his head off.

“You fucking kicked my dog, you fucking piece of shit! You know what these dogs are worth? He’s a fucking award-winner, you disgusting freak!”

The man raged on, hurling insults while checking his bored dog all over for evidence of injury. Behind him a bloodied and angry Hardy was running with the detective on his heels, guns pointed, fingers right beside the triggers.

“Get the bent bastard! He killed my girl!” Telemetti was shouting from the bar door behind them.

Marty imagined having his shotgun in his hand. He imagined leveling it at the dog owner, pulling the trigger and feeling the kick, watching chunks of spine and shredded intestines and kidneys blowing out the man’s back, spattering the prize-winning dog in the gore of his master. He imagined getting up and walking down the street, taking out dog owner after dog owner, disemboweled canine lovers littering the sidewalks, splattered on shop windows, their dogs running free, yipping and barking and heading for the freedom they’d never even considered.

His nose caved in under the butt of Hardy’s gun, then he was hoisted to his feet, still imagining shot after shot halving the doggie daddies at their waists, volcanic innards filling the cold air with red mist and raining hunks of meat.

His burning face slammed into the opposite window in the back of the police car, leaving a smear of blood on the cold glass, like the smear of dog shit sending him straight to the showers of Sing Sing.

---

Bio: Christian De Matteo is a writer, professional writing coach/editor, and college professor teaching writing and literature. His work has appeared in The Bleeding Margin Magazine as well as the Containment Breach and Folklore for the Uninsured anthology series. His story “The Replacement Ghost” is forthcoming in Horrorsmith Magazine, and his story “The Hopper Job” was shortlisted for the Uncharted Magazine Noir Challenge Prize. Christian has also written the comic series River and graphic novel Blood Valkyrie in Vegas. He is the co-founder of FugitivePoems.com and founder of Tellworthy Creative Writing Services.

Comics, books, and more: FugitivePoems.com
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Writing & editing: Tellworthy.com

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