Death Notes

was doing my stretch. What am I going to do? Match says he wants to borrow against his share and so I give it to him. Twenty grand. But I’m not dumb, you see. Before I give it to him, I made him sign a note that says I get his piece of the business if he doesn’t pay me back.’
    There was a clank behind me and I spun around. The monster kid had a slim jim - one of those long metal slats that unlock locked car doors - in his dirty hand and he was brandishing it like a sword, poking holes in the air with his back to me. Two strong overhand thrusts, then one quick underhand jab - probably the same kind of single, swift motion Match’s killer had used.
    ‘Ditch it, boy,’ Malone snarled. The kid dropped it and scuttled out the door like some kind of subterranean prairie varmint. I turned back to Malone.
    ‘But, Mr. Malone an agreement like that—’
    ‘You trying to say I killed Match?’
    The look on his scabby face dared me to say yes.
    ‘Not in a million years.’
    He stuck a grimy finger in my face.
    ‘You investigating this thing, you snoop into her business, lady. Not mine.’
    ‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘I’ll do that.’
    ‘That fat bitch has got more schemes than Houdini. She couldn’t pull crap with me. Poor bastard Match wouldn’t keep her in line. Couldn’t. He was a nice guy but he was a fool. She walked on him, poor son of a bitch.’
    He grunted and picked at the scab on his chin until it bled. Then he held his finger out, looked at the blood on it, and licked it. ‘Match was all right,’ he muttered almost to himself. Then he fixed his nasty eyes on me. ‘Tell her I don’t want her money. I’d rather have the business and I’ve got it fair and legal and square. Tell her that. And tell her I hope she rots in hell.’
     

13
     
    T he night was young and Buddha Teagues was a cinch to locate. Sharon mentioned that he owned a bar in the Avenues and I stumbled across one on Clement called ‘Teagues.’ How hard was that?
    It turned out the place was an Asian gay bar and I stuck out like a sore thumb.
    When I asked the bartender if Buddha was around, he acted like English wasn’t even close to being his second language. I tried City College advanced Japanese, a couple of words my father had taught me in Spanish, then quickly found his mother tongue: cash.
    I slipped him a Jackson on top of paying for my beer and he opened right up.
    ‘Buddha? Ya.’
    He bobbed his head up and down and motioned for me to follow. I crossed my fingers, left my beer behind, and prayed Buddha had at least an ounce more polish than Sig Malone.
    The bartender stopped outside a moldy wooden door between the men’s room and the pay phone, away from the coy noises the fellas were making up front.
    ‘Buddha here,’ he said, pointing, then ran back to the bar as I knocked.
    ‘Come in!’
    At least Buddha Teagues’ voice was more refined than Malone’s. And when I opened the door, I had to smile.
    Buddha was a fastidiously dressed fat man who looked like, well, like a buddha. His small bullet-shaped head was bald, with short tufts of white hair above his ears and eyes that beamed beneficence. He wore an impeccably tailored, tent-sized plaid suit, a couple of diamond pinkie rings on each hand, and he was listening to jazz from an old-fashioned tape deck in the comer. Match’s songs. If he was a gangster, he looked pretty benign.
    The office smelled musty, probably because it didn’t have any windows, and the walls were covered with old black and white photos and yellowed newspaper clippings. Teagues was in all of them: Teagues with a jockey, Teagues with a racehorse, Teagues in Las Vegas, Teagues with a man in a tuxedo. Everybody smiling, patting each other on the back.
    He raised his bulk out of the chair behind the desk, made little hamster-like chuk-chukking noises deep in his throat while he did so, and offered me his hand. My fingers vanished into it like I’d stuck them into a big, soft muffin. The chuk-chuks morphed into words.
    ‘Sit down, sit down, my dear. Welcome.’
    I took the only empty chair in the cramped room, an overstuffed gold lamé job with a high back and claw feet.
    Buddha’s chair - a vast leather office job that looked like a bunch of pillows cobbled together into a chair - squeaked when he settled back into it. He clasped his thick hands over a vintage leather desk blotter and fixed me with a wide, mildly curious smile.
    ‘We don’t get many girls in here anymore. What can I do