THE ICEMAN COMETH

By J.E. Marshall

“The days grow hot, O Babylon!

‘Tis cool beneath thy willow trees!”

~ REVOLUTION by Ferdinand Freiligrath.

 

 

Three streetwalkers walked into the Low Tide Inn Saloon.

“Hey Lucky, this place looks like a morgue! Where’s Spoon?” Connie entered the room with her trademark, over-the-top, imperturbability. She surveyed the room where all nine drunkards, except for Professor of Literature, Lawrence Swink, had passed out while predicting how fantastic this visit from Teddy Ray Quinn was going to be. April and Maggie lagged behind, distancing themselves from Connie’s increasingly annoying entrances.

“He’s probably asleep,” Lucky Malloy, the night bartender answered. “You girls better get Quinn’s room ready.”

Quinn started hosting these parties the year his beloved wife Kathy died. The men figured it helped Quinn deal with the loneliness. Quinn had a special bond with Harold Hayes. Harold had also recently lost his wife, Harper. Harper inherited the inn from her father. Quinn reckoned when Harper died and Harold inherited it; he would want to sell it since he always complained about the upkeep.

Connie bit her tongue and didn’t tell Lucky that she’d just seen Quinn at the posh new boutique hotel across the alley. Quinn paid her handsomely to get something from Harold Hayes.

April and Maggie did chores while dissing Connie for not carrying her weight in their new day jobs as replacements for Fanny, Marina and Gladys, the housekeepers who had been removed by ICE agents a week ago.

“She thinks she’s Cleopatra ever since Spoon proposed. She better not ask me to follow her around with one of them ostrich feather fans. I’m not a fan”, April dropped the fresh sheets on the floor where she stood and paraded around the room with her nose in the air, mocking Connie.

“Well, what do you expect, she never does her share,” Maggie snapped. “Speaking of feathers, can you imagine her plucking chickens at that farm they keep talking about buying?”

***

Lawrence Swink downed the free drink Lucky gave him and resumed staring into oblivion, not ready to talk about the topics of the day yet. Like all the patrons of the Low Tide Inn, he was looking forward to the impending plethora of free drinks that the biannual visits from Teddy Ray Quinn would bring, but he was not ready for the wild tales and merriment which mostly consisted of Quinn boasting about how he cleverly conned someone out of a fortune. Swink could do without that, especially now. He excused himself to go to the john to avoid further conversation. No one was in the restroom with him. On impulse he took a gun out of his jacket and held it to his head.

***

Little Mateo De Leon purposefully marched into the bar, grabbed the Catholic priest by the head, lifted it up from the table so he could see the priest’s face and ask a question. Father Howard Halstrap bolted up from his slumber and shouted, “The days grow hot, O Babylon! ‘Tis cool beneath thy willow trees!” Then he remembered who and where he was and sat down to answer the little boy.

“I told you! Your mother isn’t here. You must stay with Miss Vicky. You don’t want to end up in a children’s camp. They will teach you to hurt people and do many bad things.” Father Halstrap gently reminded the child. Though the priest had never seen the inside of a children’s camp, he had seen what came out of them up close and personal. He’d spent five years in the Death Valley Facility for Disloyal Adults and noticed how the guards were getting younger. Innocent children were molded into cold-blooded monsters capable of unspeakable actions.

Halstrap managed to escape from the Death Valley Camp on the day of the first televised executions but couldn’t bear to return to his church Saint Francis on Saint Vincent Street. He stopped at The Low Tide Inn for a drink and never left. Every day since then he would find comfort planning the hows and whens of his return to Saint Francis with his drinking buddies.

A frantic Miss Vicky from the underground child rescue mission ran into the bar and collected Mateo, scolding him, “Never do that again! You could get lost and I would never be able to find you!”

“Mamita! Mamita!” Mateo used his dead weight to drop to the floor, roll and escape Miss Vicky’s hold. He ran towards the rooms his mother used to tend. His mother, Marina, was one of the maids that ICE kidnapped in the alley on her way to work at the Inn. Nimble and quick, Miss Vicky intercepted and scooped the child up again at the foot of the stairs and carried him kicking and screaming out of the inn.

“For pity’s sake, Lucky, turn off the damn TV. Where the hell is Quinn? He’s late! Give me a drink!”  Father Halstrap was visibly shaken by the incident with little Mateo. He also personally knew the woman they were going to execute on the White House lawn. He had been incarcerated with her. After too many escapes on Execution Day at the Death Valley facility, the festivities were moved to Washington DC where only the inmates to be executed were allowed to attend. The rest remained secure in Death Valley, away from the distractions and opportunities that had allowed the previous escapes.

“The days grow hot, O Babylon! ‘Tis cool beneath thy willow trees!” The priest trembled and cried out in a shaky voice. A long thread of spital hung from his chin. He found it unbearable that he was unable to think of anything to do about anything anymore and it was eating him alive.

The priest’s howls had broken Swink’s trance and stopped him from blowing his head off. He wasn’t happy about it. Like all the men living in the Low Tide Inn, he had grown dependent upon Quinn’s parties. It made him feel worse each time he wrapped his life around a visit from Quinn. He especially hated the fake mirth that tainted the taste of his free drinks. He might as well drink kerosene. He never asked for assisted suicide. A man couldn’t even drink himself to death in peace.

 

“Give him a drink, Lucky, for God’s sake and turn the damn TV off! Give me one too, while you are at it. Quinn will take care of it. He always pays our tabs during these soirees,” Lawrence Swink returned from the men’s room pacing like an enraged caged cat. His demand was bitter and laced with hatred of Quinn rather than gratitude.

***

The ruckus woke up the elderly veterans, General Van Nam Long, and Captain Bernard Duran who fell asleep leaning on each other in one of the red leather booths that lined the windowless walls. They were the oldest of the end of the line drunkards and had vehemently endeavored to kill each other in their youth during the first Indochina war but were best of friends now. Every day they whiled away the hours describing what it was going to be like when they returned to their homelands of Cambodia and France.

Before they could catch up on events, Johnny Love, a disturbed young man entered the bar asking if Lawrence Swink was there. He cried that they must stop an unjust execution.

“Benny Shields is a genius attorney; he can help you. He’s going to help me get my job back,” Edison Finch, Harper Hayes’s brother and brother-in-law of the Harold Hayes reassured the distressed boy. Edison was a con artist who constantly talked about the day he would get his job back at the theme park that had fired him for selling fast passes for the handicapped to people who were not disabled.

“Benny don’t practice law! He don’t practice anything except drinking.” Former police lieutenant Jack Faegan bellowed.

“What do you know about it anyhow?” Finch soured.

“I know you probably bought him a drink every time he told you that you have a solid case. I know he dropped out of Harvard when his dad got busted big time for stock market manipulation.”

“Says the cop who was kicked off the force.” Finch refused to give up faith that Benny Shields was going to help him get his life back.

***

“I hope Quinn will arrive soon before they kill each other.” Matthew Fletcher, the entertainment, looked up from the list of songs he was planning to perform at the party. He observed that all the men were getting testy. Something was off.

“Why don’t you just practice what you are going to sing? None of that shit you sang in the casinos. It makes the men take the name of the Lord in vain and that upsets Halstrap and he stays upset howling for hours!” barkeep Lucky Malloy was also getting short tempered.

The owner Hayes entered carrying in a case of champagne from the loading dock. He was followed by the daytime bartender Charlie Spoon, who was carrying a crate of expensive whiskey sent with compliments from Teddy Ray Quinn. Soon a catering service delivered four roast ducks, three huge bowls of shrimp and crab legs and a buffet of assorted side dishes and desserts.

“Wow!” Charlie Spoon, declared when the buffet table was set up. “Don’t let Connie see this spread! She’ll expect me to go one better at our wedding reception! Speaking of Connie, where is she?”

“I don’t know where she was headed but she gave Hayes the third degree before she left.”  Eddie “Two Weeks” Turner reported.

Eddie used to be a war correspondent and dreamed of returning to the front line but now that the front line came to him, he froze. The front line was everywhere, literally banging on his door, and he couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge it. He earned the name “Two Weeks” by pushing all his promises out two weeks, repeatedly, until everyone, even he, forgot them.

“She’s probably shopping for something for the party.” Fletcher suggested.

Fletcher, the live-in entertainment, sang for his room and sucrose. He started out with gigs in the casinos doing Michael Jackson tributes and even went so far as plastic surgery and skin bleaching. He hit the skids because he had the nasty habit of gambling away his paycheck before each show. He would consistently leave the casinos owing more than he made.

Like Eddie “Two Weeks”, Fletcher had a dream of making a comeback when the time was right.

***

Quinn was very disappointed by Connie’s report. He watched her squirm as she gave it.

“Howard said the only way he could survive without Harper was to sell the house and pretend she was still there. That’s why he has never stepped outside the inn since she died. I, ah, I gotta get back to the Low Tide, Charlie’s gonna miss me. Here, I’ll give you the money back.” Connie was terrified by the look on his face.

“He won’t miss you for long!” Quinn was so furious he strangled Connie and stormed across the alley into the Low Tide Inn. His plan to lowball Hayes and make a bundle had imploded as had most of his plans of late.

***

“I’m not your father, kid. You were already born when I met your mother.” Lawrence Swink turned away from the boy. Swink didn’t want to participate in life anymore. He wanted to observe but not get involved. He did love Delilah Love, but he could not stop drinking. He did not dream of getting back together with her. He didn’t want to do that to her. He didn’t rely on pipe dreams like the others. He took it straight up.

“They’re going to kill her,” Johnny Love cried.

“Yes, they are, Johnny boy, because you betrayed her, you turned her in, because you are a coward.” Quinn enjoyed making a cruel entrance, almost as much as he had enjoyed dismembering Harper. He killed a lot of women since he killed his wife, Kathy. He made Kathy’s death appear accidental to protect himself so he could inherit her estate. The other women he overkilled. He planned to make a mess of Connie when he finished his business at the inn. The world was upside down and he felt free to do as he pleased. If he couldn’t have the Low Tide to sell to the Boutique to tear down for a parking structure, he would burn them both down to the ground and take that lucrative job as an Ice Agent.

Quinn went behind the bar and turned the TV back on so the boy could see the execution of his mother, Delilah Love, the bravest journalist in what once was the USA.

“Turn it off!” Johnny cried out with tears streaming down his face!

Johnny hadn’t meant to lead ICE to his mother. His mother told him that his father had died but Johnny overheard someone tell her that his father was living in a bar. After that he would slip out when she was asleep and check the bars around wherever they were staying at the time. They had to keep moving because AI was being used to track them and it wasn’t safe to settle down anywhere. This time someone followed him out of the bar. They offered him a ride home and he said no, it was not far. Within minutes the area was locked down and searched. By the time he arrived, the place was empty. His mother was gone.

“O, I’m going to turn it off, little boy!” Quinn pulled an assault rifle out of his coat and sprayed the room with bullets. Eighty-eight-year-old General Van Nam Long and 92-year-old Captain Bernard Duran held each other tight and died in each other’s arms.

Within seconds Lawrence and Johnny were the only ones standing.

Lawrence Swink reached for the gun in his jacket that he had intended to commit suicide with, but the rifle was already aimed at his son Johnny, and it was too late to take the shot at Quinn, so he pushed his son to the floor and took the bullets. Then he aimed the gun at Quinn with the arm that wasn’t blown off and shot Quinn between the eyes.

“Daddy!” Johnny crawled to his father.

“I’m so sorry, son. My beautiful baby boy. I am so sorry I wasn’t there for you and your mother.”

“Daddy!”

“Go. Hurry!”

“Daddy!”

“Run son!”

 

~ THE END ~

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dramatis Personae

THE ICEMAN COMETH

 

TEDDY RAY QUINN, Traveling salesman, widow of Kathy Quinn

KATHY QUINN, Teddy Ray Quinn’s deceased wife

LAWRENCE SWINK, Professor of Literature, former lover of DELILAH LOVE

JOHNNY LOVE, son of Delilah Love. He believes Lawrence Swink is his dad

DELILAH LOVE, Journalist, First Publicly Executed on White House Lawn

HAROLD HAYES, Owner of The Low Tide Inn, widow of Harper Finch Hayes

HARPER FINCH HAYES, Original owner of Low Tide, brutally murdered

LUCKY MALLOY, Nighttime bar tender at the Low Tide Inn Saloon

FATHER HOWARD HALSTRAP, Catholic Priest of Saint Francis on Saint Vincent Street

EDISON FINCH, Harper Hayes’s sister, brother-in-law to Harold Hayes

JACK FEAGAN, Disgraced former police lieutenant

BENNY SHIELDS, Former Harvard Law Student, son of stock market swindler

MATTHEW FLETCHER, Michael Jackson Impersonator in debt to casinos

EDDIE “TWO WEEKS” TURNER, Depressed, Former War Correspondent

GENERAL VAN NAM LONG, Fought in the Indo China War

CAPTAIN BERNARD DURAN, French officer in the Indo China War

APRIL, MAGGIE, and CONNIE, Prostitutes

CHARLIE SPOON, Day Bartender at Low Tide Inn Saloon

MATEO DE LEON, Orphaned child of kidnapped room attendant Marina

MARINA, FANNY and GLADYS, Housekeepers at LOW TIDE INN

ICE