Warpath

Outside, I sit down on the bench. Joe looks over.

“I know you?”

“My name’s Richard. As long as I’ve worked in the city I must have driven by your shop a thousand times. Always saw your name next to Barry’s on that big yellow sign.”

“Yeah, but do I know you?”

“I guess not, but I thought I’d come by—”

“Whatever bullshit you’re sellin’, I’m not here to listen.” Joe turns away, crosses his arms.

“You ran a blue-collar criminal enterprise fencing stolen goods through your pawn shop.”

He gets hard. Looks back at me, the lines in his face set. “Don’t know you. Fuck off.”

“Mickey Cantu’s last gig was going down after he got out of prison. I say last gig because he involved someone from your pawnshop and that someone betrayed and murdered him, then raped a woman. She’s dead also.” I stare at him.

“I know no such thing.” He rocks forward and tries to stand but his back and knees aren’t in the mood. He rocks back, settles on the bench. Gears up for another try and I put a hand out. He stays seated.

“All I want is a name.”

“You think you can show up to a halfway decent raisin ranch like this one and point at some old man and then accuse him of bein’ around rapists and murderers? What, did you pawn me your wife’s weddin’ ring and I sold it before you could buy it back? Is that it?”

“All I want is a name.”

“I got news for you, jack. If you don’t want me sellin’ your shit, don’t give me the chance.”

I lean in, one hand on his shoulder. “Listen, if I wanted to shake you down, I’d wait until you were in your room and struggling to take a piss and then do it. But I respect your dignity. I will not respect your bullshit. I used to be on the force, and I know dozens of guys like you. Stan Carlson from over on 82nd and Perry. Tom just off of interstate by the stadium. Enrique Mendez always had that asshole rooster running around inside his shop. When Bill Mahoney was robbed and murdered, I worked the case and got the bad guy. I did that.

“I’m sure when you opened you were legit,

but as the neighborhood went downhill you had to fence to make the rent. Mickey Cantu was a good guy who liked being a cat burglar. The problem is, he walked into a set up and got axed for it. And he was set up by your employee. Now give me the name.”

Joe stares off. No doubt he knew Stan and Tom and Enrique and Bill. No doubt he, like everyone who ever met Bill, hated Bill. It was only a matter of time that guy got shotgunned to death standing at his cash register, but it doesn’t make it right. I let it all sink in. Lean away. Sit down next to him.

“I never knew no Mickey Cantu,” he says. “But if you got reason to believe it was my shop...”

I pull out my Rum Coasts, offer him one. Joe looks over my shoulder at the desk, shrugs. Takes one. I light us both. Then I say, “Mickey made a deal with some guy he met in prison. Rob the house while the guy is out with his wife, Mickey keeps the score; the guy gets to claim his insurance. Only Mickey got a second dude in on it and that dude killed him and waited at the house. Raped—”

“Ursa Hanchett,” Joe says without even looking at me. “Couldn’t have been anyone else in my crew. If it was one of my employees, it was Ursa Hanchett.”

Sounds like a pervert.

I nod, sit back. Joe takes a drag, scratches his chest. Says, “Hanchett’s old man, Bob, he waddn’t half-bad. He had a temper, but that man could eyeball somethin’ and nail the worth. Never was off, neither. Like those goofs on that travelin’ antiquities show where you bring your junk and they tell you the history and all that? That was Bob. And he loved that boy. But that boy was like...a snake or somethin’. Even when he was a kid I says—I says to my wife, ‘Francine, that Hanchett boy is either a fruit or a serial killer. He’s too soft and too connivin’.’ That’s what I says.”

“And you think he was the rapist?”

“He had some mental thing. Back in the day if they wasn’t right we’d just whisper, say they was retarded or whatever, but the kid could do math just fine and he, you know, he wasn’t like he was gonna need to live with his dad his whole life. But he was...off. There’d be months and months where the kid was nice and sweet and very likeable, he’d come around with girls and all that. Pretty girls, too. Some were from the right side of the tracks, others weren’t, but he was one of those guys that if he set his sights, he had ’em. But then he had this cruel streak.

“Probably ’cuz his mom...Bob picked all the lookers but not a one of ’em had any substance to her. Not a damn one. Ursa’s mom was gorgeous when she wasn’t drunk and trying to cut Bob with his shaving razor. Crazy bitch. Messed that boy up for life when she killed herself on the boy’s birthday. Yeah. Crazy bitch did it on purpose, I just know it. Bob always ran Ursa around like he was his pet or somethin’, for sure. He loved that boy, but he was weird about him, too. The whole thing was weird. But I blame the mom.”

Joe smokes for a minute. “Ursa’d steal from me, I know that. Just sneaky enough to be a pain in the ass. He waddn’t so good he’d be a world-class criminal; he was just such an annoyance that the only reason why I never beat his ass once real good was Bob. I could never take Bob. And I needed Bob. So I put up with his perv boy.”

“Sounds like a deviant in the making,” I say, putting together the profile in my head.

“Yeah. Like I says, he was two-faced. Either he was the best guy ever, or he was a damned animal. And a cruel one. I had this niece from my older brother’s side. Her name was Cassy and she wound up posin’ nude in some skin magazine. Ursa knew I wasn’t proud of it so he went and got that magazine, tore out her pictures. Then the bastard would leave them a few at a time around the shop for all my customers to see. Little stuff like that. Little stuff. That’s all.”

But that’s how it starts. When God makes a new baby, they’re a clean slate. Ready to be directed. Molded. And then unstable women get pregnant by morally ambiguous men, and you get a little boy who loves his mother for what he wants her to be, hates her for what she is, gets a power-complex from his controlling father and eventually sees his mother in every woman he meets. Ta-da.