Friends and Other Lowlifes

By Libby Cudmore

Eddie called us when he hit his roommate in the face with a 2-quart saucepan. I don't know what he wanted us to do about it, drive over there and finish making dinner so he'd have something to nosh on when he got back from central booking? His voice was frantic on the other end of the line; they were holding him on a thousand dollars bail, could we please come get him out? He'd pay us back, honest.

Victor agreed to hire a bail bondsman he knew—he didn't trust Eddie enough to put up our own savings and I wouldn't have let him anyways. Eddie's loyalty was the first thing to go if it stood in the way of what was best for Eddie, and it wouldn't take much to hop the border to Canada or head south with his dealer and lay low in Mexico. Ha. Eddie couldn't lay low anywhere. He was a gelatinous reefer fiend with a helium laugh and a bad temper. Keeping under the radar was not an option.

Victor knew Eddie from his ex-wife Michelle's social circle; he'd been a friend of theirs until he burned through his trust fund and then none of them had any use for him anymore. Victor couldn't explain why he liked the guy, when I asked, he just shrugged and said he and Eddie got on all right while he was still married to Michelle, and there was no reason to stop that now that they weren't married. With Eddie on the outs with the high rolling crowd, Victor felt like he was safe from getting sucked back in.

Victor got home around 1am and I watched him undress in the shadows cast by the hall light through the half-opened door. He got a tumbler of rum from the kitchen and sat on the end of the bed, smoking the day's last cigarette.

“How's Eddie?” I asked.

“Hysterical,” he replied, exhaling slowly. “He was baked, of course, but on top of that, he's heard all those stories about prison. He's freaking out, and the more he freaks out, the longer they want to hold him.” He stuffed out his cigarette in the pocketed bar ashtray on his dresser and stretched out under the covers. “Maybe he's going for an insanity defense, but I'd rather be in prison than institutionalized. If you can hold your own for a few minutes in prison, someone will come to your aid. Those rubber rooms hold noise, Sheila, and the orderlies are trained to ignore screams.”

I put my head on this shoulder. “What's the official charge?”

“They booked him on 2 nd degree assault—the EMTs on the scene said his roommate's jaw and nose were busted. He's looking at a year at most, unless they tack on a drug charge, then maybe a year and a half, two years. It's his first time, so they'll toss him in minimum security with other non-violent offenders and he'll get out early if he stays clean. It's really nothing, I don't see why he's so panicked.”

***

Two nights later we got a 4am phone call. I was on the side of the bed closest to the door, so I got up and answered. Whoever it was, he was on a cell phone; I could hear static and moving traffic, but not much else. “Eddie . . . not home . . . passport expired . . . ” and then nothing.

I filled a glass with rum and woke Victor. “Call Russ,” I said. “I think Eddie skipped town.”

He killed the drink, got out of bed and went to the kitchen. I heard another slosh of liquor into a glass and the buttons on the phone. I dressed while he talked. “Don't send Terry, Terry's trigger happy and Eddie's skittish. He's my friend, I'll do this job right. Yeah, I'll be in touch.”

He turned on the bedroom light and tossed me the keys. “Get your coat, Sheila,” he said. “We're heading north.”

***

Our first stop was Eddie's lawyer's office. He must have been on retainer until the end of the century because there was no way Eddie could afford him on what he had left. This was where my job started—Victor was the brawn, I was the books. Twenty minutes later I had two hundred in gas money and a contract for expenses. Victor filled the tank and bought coffee and cigarettes. He chain-smoked until he sobered up and then took over driving duties. I slept. He drank my coffee.

Eddie didn't take his passport, which meant he wasn't crossing the boarder. There were lots of ways to get into Canada, but Eddie wasn't the type to head into the mountains. He needed a resort town. He needed a place with a transient population, a place where a lot of people spent a lot of money so that he wouldn't stand out.

Stay the night at a Holiday Inn and they'll want to know everything—date of birth, mother's maiden name, SAT scores. There are two kinds of crash pads that won't ask for names—class acts and no-tells. No-tells are self-explanatory, but the chandelier joints know that the more they do to protect their deep pockets, the more comes out of those pockets to keep it that way. It's security on everybody's part.

Eddie was spoiled. Even though his own apartment was squalor, he was too soft to hide in some fleabag. We got breakfast and asked the waitress where all the chumps with loose change lay their heads. She gave us four names and got a hundred percent tip in return. Victor always did have a soft spot for waitresses.

The first two hotels didn't recognize his picture. The third manager flinched when he saw the photo and gave us the expected runaround that there was no one registered to that name. We perched on two barstools with a good view of the door and watched the staff hurry by to cater to idiots with too much money to be bothered with fluffing their own pillows.

Bellhops, like everyone else, can be bought—it's all a matter of figuring out who can be bought the cheapest, and the younger they run, the less they know to ask for. We picked out a young man with a blonde fauxhawk and a pale puppet face. He took fifty out of our expense account and gave us Eddie's room number and the housekeeping key. He was registered under Frank. Should have guessed he'd use his father's name.

Eddie was holed up in a thirteenth story suite. The den smelled of room service and mary jane. I nibbled a French fry off his plate. Still warm.

“Eddie?” Victor called. “Eddie, it's Victor, are you in here?” He drew his pistol and passed it back to me. “Eddie?”

“I'm not going back.” The echo of his voice bounced off the closet mirror. The bathroom. Eddie was curled up in the tub, eyes red, forehead damp. There was an ashtray full of half-smoked roaches and holes burnt through his cuffs. He was shivering. Victor nodded to me and I got a blanket off the floor. Victor stepped into the tub and tried to cover him, but Eddie pushed him away. “You're not taking me back.”

“That's not why I'm here,” Victor said, putting down the toilet lid and sitting. “If I wanted to take you back, I would have sent Terry—no, Eddie, me and Sheila are on holiday. Can you believe she's never seen Niagara Falls? We heard you were here and thought we'd drop in to say hi.”

Victor was a terrible liar. Eddie's black eyes darted to me and I etched out a smile. I never thought much of Eddie before, but this was just too pathetic to do anything but thinly mask my disgust.

“There's a bounty, isn't there?” His voice was climbing higher. “You two lowlifes, you're selling me out!”

“Eddie, there's no bounty . . . .”

“Say what you want about us, but you, you're the ones without ethics. You'd sell your wife for a pack of cigarettes! You'd sell your own mother! You took Michelle for all she was worth and dumped her when the bucket came up empty. Money buys loyalty, sure, but only from other money—not from scum like you.”

“Maybe that's true,” Victor said. He was remaining remarkably calm. I thought I was going to bite my tongue in two.

“Of course it's true! You just don't see , man!” Eddie gripped the faucet and tried to pull himself to standing. Victor offered his hand, but leave it to a jamaican junk fiend to carry a knife. He twisted Victor's wrist and slashed down across his ribs. My fingers twitched twice on the trigger and Eddie went down, smashing his head against the wall and slumping into the tub.

Victor stared down at his wound and back up at me. He sat back on the toilet and reached for a hand towel. “It's just a scratch,” he murmured. He breathed out and added, “Thanks Sheila.” He glanced at Eddie for a second and used his free hand to reach over and turn on the shower. The blood ran in pink rivulets down the wall.

I got a scotch from the mini bar and used Eddie's knife to tear strips from the sheets. I wrapped Victor's chest while he drank and when he was all patched up, he rifled through Eddie's wallet. I pocketed the shampoos and emptied the mini bar into my purse.

“Too bad,” Victor said, closing the bathroom door behind him. “He might have even gotten off with probation.”