Swifty Taylor and the Missing Child – Episode 7
Sweaty Palms
They came for me when I was least expecting it – if you can ever be expecting to be apprehended by that miserable slaughterman Rogers and two of his goons. In a way, it served me right. I had settled in for a little too long at the Rose Hotel, enjoying one or two Jamesons more than I should have. I’d taken my leave and left Bella Harris alone to deal with her grief, refusing to take advantage of her vulnerability. I was proud of the ounce of chivalry I had found, but still debating whether or not I had made the right decision.
The gutter was still whispering with the remnants of the earlier downpour. As I stepped across it, a sedan pulled up beside me, it’s motor purring like it was hungry. A rear door opened and Mick Rogers slid from it as easily as would a viper. He wore a gabardine coat that probably cost more than six months’ rent for my office. “Swifty, won’t you join us for a ride?” I decided that it was best not to even look at him. I shrugged. “It’s a pleasant evening. I’m happy to walk,” I replied. The two youngsters who emerged from the front doors of the car were built like Kenworth trucks and looked just as dumb. They didn’t say anything. Guys like these didn’t waste words, they just saved their energy for dishing out bruises and fractures.
One of the henchmen hit me hard in the solar plexus, and as the wind left my body I was suddenly reminded that I was no longer twenty-five. Right there on Ferguson St, they took my phone, my wallet, and my dignity. All in less than twenty seconds. Then they bundled me into the back seat like a bag of dirty laundry. As we peeled away from the curb, I looked up at Rogers, who sat beside me as calm as an undertaker. He smiled thinly; the kind of smile you were taught as a kid that a crocodile might offer you. “I pay you to find a woman, and you end up having your way with her? Are you kidding me? Do you take me for some sort of fool, Swifty?”
We cut through dim side streets and industrial lots where guard-dogs barked at anything that moved. At last we pulled into the parking lot of the Palms Motel, an establishment notorious for hiring out rooms by the hour. A collection of worn-down bungalows surrounded a swimming pool that was struggling to remember when it last had water in it. The neon sign out the front buzzed sadly, the neon ‘PAL S MOTEL’ flickering into the night. Who could blame the M for scarpering? We left the car and they marched me up a cracked concrete path to Room 13. “Hey, that’s my lucky number,” I said as we went inside.
The curtains were drawn closed, as tight as a funeral drum. The room smelled of phenol, cigarette smoke, and regret of the type that no disinfectant would ever wash away. “Sit down,” Rogers said. I did as he commanded, and the chair creaked like it was objecting to being involved. Rogers nodded to one of his boys, and the punch arrived as suddenly as a train through fog. I was in serious pain now, and could taste blood in my mouth, but I knew I had to keep thinking clearly. For it was obvious that Mick Rogers had become seriously unhinged since we last spoke. He leaned in toward me, his aftershave smelling expensive enough to cover up any number of crimes. “I’m trying very hard to be civil,” he said. I spat mucous onto what once could have been called carpet. “Civility went out the window when you rented this room,” I said. To think, had I been more of a cad, I’d still be laying beside Bella Harris right now.
I smiled through swollen lips. It wasn’t much of a smile, but it was the best I could do. “Listen to me, Rogers. I’ll only say this just the once. Bella has documented everything, and she gave all the information to me. You should have thought of that before you treated her – and the kid – like garbage.” The man for whom ugliness was a byword slumped onto the bed. “Keep talking,” he yelled. “I have everything,” I continued. “All your dirty deals, all your sour misunderstandings. Bribery. Threats. And I have passed them on to a close friend. If anything happens to me, the shit will hit the fan.” To emphasize my point, I looked around the room for a fan. But of course, there was none. “What do you want?” Rogers asked, knowing that the game was up. “She wants a one-off lump-sum payment. And you are never to come looking for her again.” A piece of wallpaper sagged from the ceiling in agreement. “We will sort out the details tomorrow. Then it’s over. And, by the way, nothing happened between me and the girl. Not that it’s any of your business!” And not that I’d have told him even if something had happened.
Like he was on a roller-coaster, in seconds Rogers had gone from being manic to being depressed. The goons stood silently, waiting for their next command. But Rogers was struck dumb. In the far-off distance, a siren wailed. It wasn’t loud enough to drown out the ice machine outside the motel door, ice rattling around its body like loose bones in a coffin. “The trouble with you, Rogers,” I said, “is that you think fear is a language everybody understands. But you might have to re-adjust your thinking.”
You can read more from Smokie HERE
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