Dive Bartender: Sibling Rivalry

T.K. O'Neill

Description

Frank Ford is a survivor of 10 long years at the Metropole Bar, where he's babysitter and alcohol dealer to Zenith City's derelict class: the misfits, the losers, the crazies, the old fading lushes, and, of course, the budding young alcoholics unaware or indifferent to what lies ahead.

We first see Frank in the aftermath of his little brother's funeral. Ray was an addict and a constant irritant. Forgotten, is how Frank wanted to remember Ray. The police, who also lost no love for Ray Ford, are leaning towards a verdict of suicide for the swollen, pulpy body that washed ashore near the port terminal. Frank thinks it was murder, but he's willing to let it ride.

His grieving mother has other ideas.

Set in 1977, Dive Bartender: Sibling Rivalry combines elements of David Goodis and Raymond Chandler with the popular culture of the era to form a pulp novel of sex, drugs, violence and smelt fishing.

Sujets

• Crime
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 06 octobre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780967200682
• Langue: English

Extrait

Dive Bartender
Sibling Rivalry
 
 
T.K. O’NEILL

 
 
 
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places
and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
 
Dive Bartender: Sibling Rivalry copyright © 2017 by Bluestone Press.
All rights reserved.
 
ISBN-13: 978-0-9672006-8-2
 
 
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the
case of brief quotations or reviews.
 
 
Published in eBook format by Bluestone Press
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
For information: Bluestone Press
1911 East Superior Street, Duluth, Minnesota, 55812
[e-mail]
www.bluestonesblog.com
 
Cover design by Annie Schweiger
Part One
Chapter One
This way and that way—go this way and that.
That bit of an old German children’s song cycling in Frank Ford’s head seemed to be a comment on the flow of his thoughts. In the aftermath of his brother’s funeral, he was bouncing between sad, happy and relieved—and then back again. And to top it off, he had mud on his pants.
“Goddamnit,” he said, brushing impatiently at the dark clumps ringing the cuff of his only pair of dress pants. Most guys would have relegated these sharply creased grays to painter’s pants long ago, but not Frank Ford. To him these trou seemed more than suitable for his brother’s goddamn funeral.
Frank’s temper was not improving as the remaining splotches resisted his vigorous rubbing. Thinking about the funeral service wasn’t helping his head either.
Frank gave up his grooming efforts with a grunt, lifted his legs into the front seat of his rusty blue Pontiac station wagon and slammed the simulated wood-paneled door. He normally had Fridays off at the bar but today was the second time this month Betty called him in because Douglas “Sack” Sackberger pulled one of his infamous disappearing acts. If you could call holing up inside a bottle at his lowlife-welfare-cheater-girlfriend’s dump, disappearing. Frank wondered why Betty didn’t fire the sorry bastard. Maybe they were related, Sack and Betty. He’d heard that.
“Goddamn families,” Frank said as he turned the key, the angry profanity fading into the empty street like a warning. The starter responded with a tired whine.
It’s not like Ray was a brother anyone should mourn .
The whining and buzzing, ground to a halt.
Frank cranked down the window and yelled, “Fuck,” into the damp, gray air. Christ, the way it went down was so typical of Ray, his body lying there with ID in the pocket of his jeans so we could all know who it was. Know what happened to him, what somebody did to him. Make his big brother feel morally obligated to do “the right thing.” Whatever the hell that was.
Why couldn’t the dirt bag have just gone away?
You know how at funerals people always say they’re going to miss the dead person? This ceremony was no different. But Frank knew they were all liars. Except Mom, of course, she always loved Ray no matter what he pulled. “Ray-Ray’s had a hard time of it,” she’d say, explaining why she gave her younger son money or forgiveness. Money Frank always knew would be spent at a bar or a drug house— and forgiveness surely to be taken advantage of by the receiver. Mom babied Ray and took his side most of the time, which never failed to piss Frank off, but now it was left to him to comfort her.
Forgotten, that’s how he wanted to remember Ray. But the lasting image of his grief stricken mother bent over in the church pew and the rising bile in Frank’s craw, foretold a different future. He didn’t know how to answer when she asked why. Why Frankie? Why did little Ray-Ray have to die like this?
Frank gazed out at the cloudy sky and the small, well-kept houses in the blue-collar neighborhood surrounding his mother’s apartment building and felt the sourness growing. Maybe he should tell her about that time last fall. The time he saved her little darling from an ass kicking. Tell her about driving downtown one night and seeing this gray-haired guy in a dark suit pounding his fists on some turd in a worn-out fatigue shirt. Tell her he got a look at the smaller guy and realized it was Ray. Then maybe he should tell her that his first thought was— Good, he’s probably getting what he deserves . But Ray was Frank’s little brother and Frank had to stand up for him for that goddamn reason and that reason alone, so Frank jerked the car to a halt right there on the main drag—double parking on goddamn Superior Street for Christ sake—honked the horn and waved to his wacko brother. And when the gray-haired guy glanced over, Ray took the opportunity to scramble away and jump in the front seat of Frank’s big station wagon. Then Mom’s sweet little boy Ray-Ray gave the natty dresser the finger and hocked a gob of spit at him as Frank drove off. When Frank asked him what it was all about, Ray said he was fucking the guy’s wife, which Frank thought was a crock because any woman married to the dapper dude was not going to play around with snotty, greasy, Ray Ford. More likely Ray was sniffing around the guy’s teenage daughter, trying to get her high or something.
Frank twisted the key in the ignition again and this time the Pontiac V-8 fired up, sending clouds of oily exhaust into the air. He pulled away from the curb and pointed the wagon in the direction of Jimmy Carl’s Gentlemen’s Club. Nikki was out there doing her waitress thing, the master’s degree candidate working in a strip club for her sociology thesis. Girl was the only joy Frank had left in life. Kept him from thinking about his ex-wife and her asshole new husband or the way the country was going lately, everything costing so much these days. Sweet little Nikki made him feel alive, feel something good inside again. Her company and a couple stiff bumps would get him through the afternoon, but tonight at the Metropole was another thing altogether.
It was four-thirty on the clock behind the bar when Frank pushed open the gold-painted door and entered the hazy but strangely sweet smelling environment of Jimmy Carl’s Gentlemen’s Club. Today the stale alcohol, tobacco, hairspray and cheap perfume were an aromatic bouquet, a pleasant antidote for the tightness in the chest Frank always got inside a church. Especially at a funeral.
Frank saw Jimmy Carl at the far end of the room sitting in a booth, the man wearing a white pinstriped shirt and suspenders, smoking a big cigar and pouring over what looked to be his bills, likely deciding who got stiffed this month. Nikki in her uniform of black skirt and white blouse was standing close to Jimmy, her back to Frank and her arm cocked on her hip. Looked like she was waiting for something and seemed like Jimmy wasn’t in any hurry to have her leave his side. Frank knew Jimmy liked to bang his waitresses as a preferred side dish to his main course of strippers and prostitutes, and a cute and innocent girl like Nikki would be an A-1 conquest. Seeing the two of them within spitting distance was giving Frank another reason to be pissed. And worried. He felt a nervous smile coming on as he approached the booth. “Hey there, young waitress,” he said. “Can a person get a drink in this bar?”
Nikki turned around and threw up her nose. “Not for the likes of Irish trash like yourself, Ford.” Then she broke into a smile that warmed his heart and got him thinking good thoughts about the world again. He smiled back as best he could.
“Sorry about your brother, Ford,” Jimmy Carl said, tapping cigar ashes into a gold plastic ashtray. “He was in here a lot.”
“Yeah, sure, Jimmy. Thanks. I know Ray was a tough guy to get along with at times.”
“Get Frank a drink on me, Nikki honey,” Jimmy said, getting back to his bills.
“The usual, Frank?” Nikki said, giving him a quick hug as she went by.
“Make it a double.” Frank watched with admiration as his girlfriend stepped gracefully behind the bar. Five-foot-six of blonde-haired beauty. He loved looking in her eyes. Ass wasn’t bad either. He always told her if she got implants and lost a few IQ points she could be a stripper and make the real money. She always grinned and blushed in response. Working as a waitress in a strip bar had to give girls ideas, didn’t it?
Frank nodded thanks to Jimmy Carl and stepped across the floor to a barstool.
Nikki said, “Funeral pretty bad, Frank? I would have come along if you’d asked me.”
“Nah, better you didn’t come. Then I would have had to introduce you to everybody. Go through all that shit. I mean would you like the first time you met my mother to be at the funeral of her beloved baby boy?”
“I guess not, Frank. I really wouldn’t know about those things, though. I haven’t been to very many funerals. You off tonight?”
“Betty needs me to cover for Sack again. Wants me there at six. I’d like to put a sack over Sack’s head and beat it with a stick, that’s what I’d like to do. I think I’m going to call in and tell her I’m too grief stricken to work—especially for Sack. The Metro will just have to tough it out without me tonight. I need to hang out with my good friend the waitress and do some drinking, watch girls take off their clothes for money.”
Nikki crinkled up her face into a comedic grimace. “I’m sure Betty will go for that one,” she said. “You know how she gets when she has to work the bar.”
“Too damn bad. She can’t fire me for not coming in on the day of my little brother’s funeral. I’ll get the union after her.”
“I didn’t know you were in the union.”
“I’m not. But I’ll sure as hell join in a hurry if she fires me.” He grinned a little. “I see you’re working both sides of the bar today.”
“Only until five when the girls come on, then Jimmy puts in his two hours before Billy gets here. I might actually have some time to talk to you, if it stays slow.”
“No problem. You know me, easily amused.”
“Especial