A Friend from Hell's Kitchen
a crime story by Ennis James Sheehan
We’ll take a break from endless summer days and heat to stop off in NYC, into the seedy underbelly that lies at the heart of many of our larger cities.
A Friend From Hell’s Kitchen
by Ennis James Sheehan
Another rainy night in New York. A Tuesday. The shoulders have been put to the grindstone. Monday was a shock to the system, but Tuesday was a day of understanding that you were in all the way, strapped to the harness. Until the end.
Mason McKinney looked out on the rain slicked night—red tail lights moving in a serpentine slow motion dance, countered by a white bright endless conga line of headlights returning to the city. Faint jazz played on the radio behind him in accompaniment to the scene.
He sighed, offed the music and found his jacket, wondering not for the last time why this apartment sometimes felt so cold, even with the heat turned up. Ghosts? Cold spots? He didn’t really subscribe to it. Ghosts as he had come to theorize might be poor spirits who needed prayers from inadequate people like himself. Why not? Everyone needs a helping hand if only to get out of some dismal corner of purgatory. He said a quick one for whatever misguided soul might be pacing the living room and headed out to the bar.
The rain-slicked sidewalks swam in reflected distorted colors from neon-cluttered storefronts lining the avenue. Mason walked in a light-falling mist with collar up, no umbrella, although everyone hurrying past him seemed to be armed with one. Something about such people on the top of their game annoyed him. But he let it go. Get to the bar and things will be fine.
Shandy’s Tavern was quiet tonight. More low key jazz on the jukebox. It followed him around, Coltrane, Mulligan, Getz, Gordon… like faithful old hounds. Life was better lived in a minor noir key, late nights flecked with the lonely lit windows of meditating insomniacs.
He took his favorite corner seat with a good side view of the street. Billy poured a drink from behind the bar. A slow night, Tuesday after all. Mason toasted the ancient stamped tin ceiling and sipped in a genteel fashion. Bourbon always made him feel somewhat southern.
Billy laid a hand on the bar, hiking a foot up on a shelf on his side of the aged mahogany—a spot Mason once occupied three nights a week while bar tending here for over ten years. Now he was officially retired from his daytime security guard gig in Brooklyn and from Shandy’s as well. He sipped again. Life is sweet. Let Billy have the ornery drunks with the eternal fumes of stale beer soaking the floor through the sawdust.
“Maaayson.” Billy raised a quizzical eyebrow in jest. “Are you a Mason?”
“Hell no. I’ve done some carpentry.”
“They say the Masons want to take over the world.” Billy looked out the window as he spoke. “What in the world do they want with it?”
“Well, if I were a Mason,” said Mason, “I’d be careful what I wish for.”
Billy nodded at another patron down the bar, a single distressed-looking woman who seemed like she needed to speak to him—in addition to needing another drink. She was past forty and looking too good to be a regular. Billy was always out there meeting new acquaintances and plying them with free booze. It was a bartender’s prerogative in most places. He headed in her direction, already armed with a bottle, pouring into her glass with a whispered conversation and a kiss on the forehead.
Over Mason’s shoulder, the nightly news droned in a low volume monologue, occasionally drowned out by a mournful tone from Ben Webster’s tenor sax on the jukebox.
Billy was back, looking at him curiously. Something was up.
“So whataya been doin’?”
“Not much.” Mason shrugged. “Readin’, walkin’, retired.”
“Must be nice.”
“Most of the time”
“You know that Carl left the late shift?”
“So I heard.”
“He’s moving to L.A.” Billy rolled his eyes. “He’ll be back. Idiot.”
“So now you’re doin’ double shifts?”
“I freakin’ live here now. Drivin’ me nuts.”
“So… you’re wondering if I’ll take the late shift back.”
“Nobody does it like you, buddy.”
Mason looked down at his drink, keeping him in suspense—looked up at the ceiling again as if consulting the Man Upstairs, then looked a tense Billy in the eye.
“Sure.”
Billy smiled. “That’s what I like about you. No drama.” He paused, planted both palms on the bar, and looked down as if composing his next words.
Mason felt a red flag rising slowly in his cerebrum. “Don’t worry,” he cut Billy off at the pass. “I know how to close the place. Four a.m. is my hour of power.”
Billy shook his head. “There’s something else about Carl.”
“What, he emptied the register and ran away to L.A.?”
“You’re getting warm.”
“Okay, so?”
“Somebody else emptied the register on his shift. A guy off the street in a ski mask with a gun.”
“I see…” Mason stroked his chin. Sad. The first time it ever happened at Shandy’s. But it was bound to happen sooner or later. He glanced at the woman at the end of the bar, now lost in perusal of her cell phone screen with a pleading look in her eyes like she was texting a judge for a stay on ten to twenty at Rikers.
Billy pulled out his phone, gave a quick look at an incoming message, then turned and rolled his eyes at her. She dropped her head, put the phone down and picked up her drink, lost in its comforts.
But Mason wanted to hear more. “He was here alone?”
“Just him and old Tommy Crain, passed out at a table, at three a.m.”
“Hmmm…”
Billy shrugged. “I wasn’t gonna hold out on ya. Wouldn’t be fair. Carl’s been talkin’ about L.A. for five years. Suddenly it looked good.”
“Yeah, shit never happens in L.A., right?”
Billy chuckled, then got serious again. “You were an armed security guard, right?”
“Sure. But I never had to deal with anything. Took a shot at a rat once. Had to spend a day filling out forms to explain the bullet hole. The rat is still there enjoying life.”
Billy kept his look steady. “—but you’re licensed to carry?”
Mason began to feel the weight of the request. Billy had already gotten him to say yes. Now he was trapped by his own sense of honor. He could fudge his way through the rest of this conversation but that wasn’t the way things worked in Shandy’s. You kept it on the level behind the bar. You had each other’s back. Otherwise the inmates took over.
“Yeah, I’m licensed to carry.”
Billy held the questioning stare.
Mason offered him a small toast with his glass. “I’m in, Billy. No worries.”
Billy nodded imperceptibly, rapping the bar with his knuckles. It was a gesture of respect. He wasn’t going to gush with gratitude about someone stepping in to take a great weight off his shoulders. They both knew that would be disrespectful.
Still, it was one of those times when you have to fully think through a decision—even after it’s already made. Mason looked through the varied-colored bottles under the light strip lining the back of the bar. He peered at the cash register centered on the back counter like a gold veneered tabernacle.
He made up his mind right then and there. If the guy with the ski mask came back with that gun, he wouldn’t be leaving the same way he came in. Period.
Billy smiled as if reading his thoughts. “I think you got me wrong. You’re licensed to carry but I don’t want you bringing a gun to work.”
“Oh, I thought—”
Billy shook his head. “Can’t do it here. Insurance, liability, all that good stuff. If you get sued for standing your ground—this place closes. Doesn’t matter how right you are anymore.”
“Okay.” Actually, he felt a bit relieved.
Billy pulled up a baseball bat, an old school Louisville Slugger, Harmon Killebrew model from the sixties. “This, however, is fair use if you’re quick on the draw.”
“Hammerin’ Harmon,” Mason said, taking the bat and inspecting the burned-in signature. “You know what his other nickname was?”
“Mr. Minnesota?”
“No. ‘The Killer.’ ”
“Works for me,” Billy took the bat and stuffed it back under the counter. “Well,” he said, reaching for Mason’s glass. “So much for the pleasantries. Starting tonight you drink for free.”
“Cool. And tomorrow, I hit the gym.”
Roosevelt Avenue on a sunny day dispelled all dystopian nightmares. It reminded Mason of those old postcards of Greenwich Village—on the other side of the river—with vegetable and fruit stalls lining the sidewalks under the el, before the advent of drugged-out bridge and tunnel kids flanked by incoherent homeless schizophrenics.
There in Manhattan—on the opposite shore as he liked to call it—the new family-friendly Times Square had triggered the retreat of the street-partying Armies of the Night to the bars and clubs downtown—but this part of Queens had been spared from the exodus. No one wanted to wait on the train across the river to go there and cause trouble, and there wasn’t enough park space to fill with needles, crack vials, beer cans and defecation. The neighborhood was a bit like Sicily; conquered by successive layers of ethnic invasions—Hispanic, Irish, Jewish, Asian, Middle Eastern. Everyone had left their mark in archaeological layers—delis, restaurants, bars, churches, synagogues— and everyone pretty much got along under the banner of the American Dream.
Through this panoply of culture Mason walked with Bumpus the bulldog—who frowned on everything as if no amount of exercise could budge him from his disdain of all life. In truth he could slobber with affection with the best of them. But in public he held back, like a dignified elder, patiently putting up with the excesses of vibrant city life surrounding him on all sides.
Mason nodded, waved and chatted with a succession of shop owners and bench sitters lining the way. They gave Bumpus a pat on the head while jawboning about everything from the weather to the current knucklehead living in Gracie Mansion, bemoaning the sorry state of the world. Mason understood their deeper worries—the common refrain of all who depended on the changeable street for life, the ever-threatening specter of new landlords with the dreaded commercial rent increases that knew no bounds. Their kids had fled to Houston, L.A., Boston, Chicago… you name it. They weren’t hanging around this place.
Nearing the anti-nostalgic heavy traffic of Queens Boulevard—on the last bench—sat Tommy Crain, looking out at nothing, as was his custom. Tall, lanky Tommy in a threadbare jacket and shapeless pants, a tangle of salt and pepper hair with a matching stubbled face. Mason paused. This could very well ruin his day, but he needed to talk to Tommy. Now. While he was sober—which in his case meant merely awake.
“Bumpus, how’s the boy!” Tommy had a thing for the bulldog. For some reason known only to God, he was Bumpus’ favorite human. The dog hoisted himself up—with much effort—resting his front paws on Tommy’s knees, and slobbered all over his face. It’s possible he knew that Tommy was the only person in the neighborhood who would put up with it.
Mason made a grimace of disgust and groped for some clean tissues in the dog bag on his shoulder that carried adequate supplies for clearing the street of Bumpus’ not inconsiderable calling cards.
“Bumpus the rumpus.” Tommy smiled as he cleaned his face of bulldog spittle. “I’m gonna kidnap you some day!”
“It’ll probably be the other way around, Tommy.” Mason sighed and took a seat on the opposite end of the bench.
Tommy gave him a sidelong look. “I hear you’re back at Shandy’s.”
Wow. News gets around. Mason was speechless for a second. “Who told you that?”
“Ahhhh!” Tommy tapped his forehead. “I have me ways.”
Mason frowned, then cut to the chase. “I hear you were there the other night when the place got robbed.”
Instant paranoia showed on Tommy’s face. “Who told you that?!”
Mason smiled in response, then slowly tapped his own forehead. “They tell me you were passed out at the time.”
“I never talked to the cops. Never would. Who told you?”
“Doesn’t matter where I heard it, Tommy. It’s out. So tell me what you know. Was it just you and Carl in the place?”
Tommy’s hands worked opening and closing into tight fists, mumbling under his breath.
Mason squinted at him. “Tommy?”
“I was passed out drunk the whole time. You heard it right. I gotta go.”
He started off the bench. Mason grabbed his arm reflexively and guided him back to his seat.
“Whoa, whoa! Tommy, Tommy. Calm down. We’re friends right?”
“Sure, Mason. We’re friends. Of course we are.”
“Okay, so you trust me?”
Tommy gave him a look. “Can’t trust a man you’ve known twenty five years, can’t trust no one.”
“Damn straight. And I trust you. Bumpus even trusts you, and he don’t trust nobody.”
Tommy made a weak smile. “Yeah…”
“So why didn’t you talk to the cops? Didn’t they come around later?”
“Well sure, but they didn’t ask me anything. I was asleep like you said. I was still asleep when they got there.”
“Okay, so what’s the problem?”
“What problem?!” Tommy bolted upright, hands balled into a fist again. “Who says there’s a problem?!”
Mason looked at him for a long few seconds. “Is there anything you want to tell me, Tommy?”
Tommy looked at the ground, inspecting his old black shoes. “I wasn’t asleep the whole time.”
Mason raised his eyebrows. This was interesting, but he didn’t want to overplay it. He sighed and sat back as if the comment hadn’t registered at all.
Tommy gave him a slow sideways look. “You hear me?”
Mason looked up as if suddenly reminded they were in the middle of a conversation. “What?”
“I said I wasn’t asleep the whole time.”
Mason aimlessly patted Bumpus on the head. He felt like Don Corleone with that cat in his lap. When you need a prop there’s nothing like a pet.
“You weren’t?”
“I heard a loud noise, woke me up.”
“Yeah?”
Tommy stared out across the avenue, putting himself back at Shandy’s. “I dunno. I guess it was the guys picking up the trash outside the bar. You know how freakin’ loud they are, even at three a.m. They don’t care if people are trying to sleep.”
“Well, maybe they didn’t know that someone was trying to sleep on a table inside Shandy’s at three a.m.”
“I thought it was a gunshot.”
Mason’s hand froze on Bumpus’ head, and he pulled it away.
“Excuse me?”
Tommy glared at him, impatient now. “I said I thought it was a gunshot.” He looked away across the street again. Mason looked with him, letting it sink in.
“Well… sometimes when they really bang the lids on those big dumpsters, it can sound like a gunshot I guess.”
Tommy looked at the ground again. “I guess I know a gunshot when I hear one.”
Mason chuckled. “Why, was you in Nam or something”
Tommy shook his head. “I grew up in Hell’s Kitchen. I knew the Westies.”
“Come on, you were rollin’ with the Westies?”
“I said I knew the Westies, some of ‘em. Drank in the same bars as Mickey Featherstone too.”
Mason nodded. That was believable. And, yeah, anyone who grew up in Hell’s Kitchen in Tommy’s day knew the difference between a gunshot and the slam of a dumpster lid.
“Okay, so what did you do? Was there a gun?”
“I dunno.”
Mason rolled his eyes. “Come on Tommy. You thought it was a gun. What did you do next?”
Tommy shrugged. “Kept my eyes closed and played dead. Said a Hail Mary...”
“What?!”
Mason struggled to remind himself that he was dealing with a man who spent his nights passed out in various dives around the neighborhood after drinking away every cent of his Social Security check that didn’t cover the rent and canned beans. He slowly breathed out through pursed lips, letting all the tension and alarm escape, waiting for the relief to flow into his chest and shoulders.
“Okay. Why would you close your eyes and play dead after hearing what you thought was a gunshot in a bar?’
Tommy shrugged. “It worked for me in Hell’s Kitchen. I’m still here, ain’t I? I know lots that aren’t.”
“What did you see when you finally stopped playing dead?”
“Nothing. I actually did fall asleep again, and got woke up by the cleaning lady coming in at 6 a.m.”
“Where was Carl? Why didn’t he toss you out like usual when he closed for the night?”
Tommy shrugged. “Beats me. Anyway, he left for California the next day.”
Carl. What an idiot. Just like Billy said.
Mason patted Tommy on the back and stood up. “Tell Billy I need to talk to him if you see him.”
Tommy sort of laughed to himself. “Yeah. I’ll do that.”
It was a curious reaction, but Mason let it go. The sky was starting to cloud over. He had to get Bumpus to “do his thing”, returning home before the weather did it’s own thing.
“Say bye to Tommy,” Mason said to Bumpus who was too distracted by a feral cat dodging traffic on the boulevard. Tommy was no longer paying attention. He looked like he might fall asleep on the bench. Unless he was pretending of course.
Back at Shandy’s, Mason easily feel back into the old pattern. Some of the old-timers remembered him and the conversation was light, until it wasn’t anymore, as the nights droned on into the usual funerary recantations of ex-wives, treacherous acquaintances, and the general miserable state of the world.
Mason stayed positive, on the ball, never once imbibing of the house stock. He kept the vision of the man in the ski cap in front of him at all times, kept the handle of the Harmon Killebrew wooden peacemaker at exactly the right angle to grab and swing for the fences. Billy would always move it out of the way on the earlier shift, up on a shelf behind the dusty bottle of Grand Mariner. But it was the first thing Mason retrieved upon tying his apron and assuming the position behind the bar.
He saw nothing of the woman again, perhaps just another faded beauty passing through Billy’s life. Or maybe it was something more, the sorrowful look on her face stayed with him. Maybe it was something deeper. Oh well, none of his business. Been there done that. Knowing himself as he did, it might be only a matter of time before he was playing the same game with some baggage-carrying, sherry-drunk cougar from the neighborhood. Kinda the way things went from hanging around a joint like this for too long.
At some point late in the evening the door would swing open slowly to reveal Tommy Crain shuffling inside. Tommy always primed himself elsewhere before arriving at Shandy’s where he would only have to pay more to stay drunk. Mason figured he spent a few hours every night in his rent-controlled shoebox downing whatever was at hand from vanilla extract to cough medicine.
But Tommy stayed away from narcotics and weed. He always said he’d seen it take down too many people in Hell’s Kitchen, those that didn’t go down from ingesting too much lead anyway.
Tommy generally got two or three whiskeys at Shandy’s while chatting with a few old timers, then one on the house which he cuddled with alone before drifting into his normal head on the table nap. It was a tradition that he was the only one allowed to fall asleep at Shandy’s. He was safely grandfathered. He’d been doing it so long that no one who worked here could even remember when it started. Everyone else caught snoozing was shown the door.
As on many nights—it came down to Mason and Tommy, one conscious the other not. All quiet on the avenue except for the approaching rolling thunder of the Department of Sanitation making their bi-weekly post-midnight rounds and waking up everybody in the neighborhood who was unfortunate enough to have a window facing the street.
They say that being over-prepared can sometimes mean not properly prepared at all. It is a sign of over-confidence—or a serious lack of it. And tonight, for some reason, Mason was not reading the signs. He was scrubbing out the last of the mugs at the sink, with his back to the door, and did not even hear it open.
But he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to confront the vision of his dreams—as in nightmares. It was no her. It was a he. In a ski mask. Holding a gun. Looked like a .38 revolver. Mason wasn’t a gun guy but he knew enough. A .38 gave a pretty damn good kick, on both ends.
He cursed himself under his breath. He already knew without looking that he was too far away to reach for any assistance from Harmon Killebrew. His shoulders slumped in mute surrender. What the hell. Get it over with and empty the register. He stood his ground anyway, frozen, as if trying to exploit some small opportunity that might turn the tables. He looked past the gun at Tommy, out cold. No help from that quarter, that was for sure. Outside, the sanitation truck pulled up to the curb, lifting the dumpster with a deep strained whining of its big hydraulic arms.
Mr. Ski Mask brought the gun up and waved it at the register. Another sign that Mason forgot to read until it was too late. Tomorrow was the day all the cash from the week got deposited in the bank by Sheila the day manager. The register was about as full as it could get. Sometimes you’re just screwed. Mason refused to dignify the scene with any verbal response. He kept a stone face as he turned to open the drawer, simply pulling it out entirely and laying it flat on the bar. The bastard could fill his own pockets.
But the bastard had other ideas. Mason stared as the gun rose to the level of his own forehead. He stepped back in spite of himself, hands spread in disbelief and he finally managed to speak.
“What the hell, dude. All the money’s right there. Take it and go!”
The eyes behind the ski mask drifted for a moment to the window, where the truck across the street and was now lowering the empty dumpster. A guy stood nearby ready to close the big lids. Mason didn’t have to see it to know what was happening. One second from now there would be a Big Bang. This time, the end of a world instead of the birth of one.
His mouth hung open, out of words. The man in the ski mask braced himself. Mason closed his eyes and bowed his head, said the most compact prayer he could think of. Hopefully that was enough. Dear God—
BANG!
It was like a stereo explosion, rattling both sides of his head. In truth the one from the street sounded louder. What was with those trash guys anyway? They get a kick out of slamming lids shut or what?
He kept his eyes closed and felt his head for any sign of pumping blood, but came away with nothing. When he finally looked up, the guy in the ski mask was gone, as in disappeared gone. There was another guy in his place. That would be Tommy Crain, lowering a nine-millimeter to his side.
Shaking, Mason got on his tiptoes and looked over the bar at the man in the mask lying motionless, face up on the tiles. Tommy knelt and slowly lifted the mask off his face. And there was Billy with a hole in his head; dead on the barroom floor as many an Old West cowboy ballad might put it.
“Billy!?”
But Tommy Crain was all business.
“Yeah. I know he killed Carl. I heard him dragging the body out that night while I was pretending to be asleep. When I told him yesterday that you wanted to talk to him—he got that look on his face.”
Mason reeled with glazed eyes. Too much input. “Carl’s in California…” he said it like a drug-induced mantra.
“No,” said Tommy. “Carl is in the Staten Island landfill. They got in a fight over that girl. Billy shot him, and took the cash too.” He grabbed a bar towel, wiped down the nine millimeter and held out it to Mason who stupidly took it in his hands as if to safeguard it.
“I saved your life,” said Tommy. “Deal with it. And pour me a drink while you’re at it.”
Mason looked at the gun in his hands. “Where did you get this? You’re Tommy freakin’ Crain. Your job is to fall asleep anywhere! Where did this gun come from?”
Tommy just looked at him with an impatient sigh.
He still knows people in Hell’s Kitchen, Mason said to himself. He nodded at Tommy, poured him a whiskey and watched as he went back to his table, downed the drink, and passed out.
Then he got on his phone to call 911. Everything would work out. Tomorrow he’d be on the cover of the New York Post as a scrappy bartender hero.
#
Another rainy night in New York. Mason sat in the semi-darkness of his apartment watching the water color streaked light show of traffic on the expressway through the window, Monk accompanied in the background with “’Round Midnight”.
On the floor, Bumpus crouched at his feet, gnawing with everything he had on the Harmon Killebrew bat, which was already an unrecognizable mass of tooth marks.
The heat was turned up, but there came that weird cold spot again. Billy? Carl? Or maybe some ancient invisible tenant still on patrol in Jacob Marley like reeds.
Who knew? Who cared in the end? He was getting way too old for this.
Mason said a quick prayer for the dead and drifted to sleep in his chair. In the morning he would call the security guard outfit and ask for his old job back.
Or he could move to Los Angeles.
Like an idiot.
Meet the author:
Ennis James Sheehan’s has been a factory worker, US Merchant Marine, paralegal, local newspaper reporter (Brooklyn and Manhattan NYC), Los Angeles TV producer/writer over 25 years from News and Entertainment to True Crime and the Paranormal. With a BA in history from Holy Cross College (Worcester MA) - he lives in Makati, Philippines with his wife Susan (an attorney from Quezon City) and a little white dog named Colette. His fiction has been published in Bull Magazine, Hidden Peak Press, Freedom Fiction Journal and a pending crime/humor novelette for Close to the Bone Productions.
The UNDERSIDE: A while back I owned a house rumored to be built on an Indian gravesite. I never really saw much, maybe shadows and things I attributed to being half awake late at night. A handyman later told me he was working alone in the house and saw a dark shaped figure move across the balcony above. He was terrified and vowed never to work for us again.
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