Dying Embers Read Free Page B

pocket secretary with a gold fountain pen.
    â€œYeah,” said Tracy, still staring at Ken, “fat, bald, wrinkled-ass Billy Clements—the sales manager.” She turned her face to Butler. “You can take that and stick it because that’s all I’m giving you. I want to see an attorney.”
    â€œThat’s your right,” I said, and Tracy looked at me. “But if this problem leaves this room, right now, here, and today, it gets turned over to the bonding company. They’ll pay the entire claim and come after you like the cavalry. They always insist on prosecution because they want the court to order restitution plus interest. You get to pay an attorney four or five grand for a deal that makes you pay back what you stole and includes jail time.”
    â€œThat’s blackmail!”
    â€œCall it what you like,” I said. “The judge is going to call it three to five on each count.”

2
    â€œB ITCH, BITCH, BITCH ,” said Kim Goldberg. “I tell you what,”—he waved his tape measure at me—”Jews are God’s chosen people. The Irish?” He shrugged and backhanded the air. “Never more than a hobby. We got Egypt and Babylon. We got the Roman Empire and the Third Reich. What’d you get? Lousy potato famine! Still, you come stand around my shop in you unnapants and bitch about lucka-da-Irish.”
    He draped the tape around his neck and inspected the seat of my trousers at arm’s length. “Boy, you got some gas, eh?” he said and laughed. Kim glanced at me and winked. “A little Jewish-Korean tailor joke.”
    He’d parked his wire rimmed-glasses atop his bald head with the legs anchored in the short gray fuzz that his fifty-plus years had spared him. Maybe five feet tall on his tiptoes, he had a chest that was more like a divot between his shoulders. He wore a white shirt and used suspenders to level his tan wool slacks around a belly weaned on too much pot roast.
    â€œWhat’d you do, buy this for Dutch Schultz’s funeral?”
    â€œIt’s the belt loops,” I said. “All the new suits, you know, the loops are too narrow for my gun belt.”
    â€œThat’s because you shopping off da rack,” he said in a low voice, with downcast eyes—as if buying ready-to-wear was something furtive that people did in dark places. “Tell you what, you go get a cheap suit, bring back, and I’ll open up the jacket to hide a shoulder rig. I got good at dat in Chicago. Buy something double breasted; maybe I be homesick.”
    â€œI’ve been carrying on my hip for twenty-five years,” I said. “If I go to a shoulder rig I’m gonna die grabbing my ass.”
    â€œArt, I know exactly how to help you,” he said. He ripped the trousers in half and handed them back to me. “Next time you want something done, have it laundered before you bring here.”
    â€œJesus, Kim,” I said, “I gotta meet a client in twenty minutes and I’m standing here in my boxer shorts.”
    â€œAnd cowboy boots. Most fetching, if you put da gunbelt back on. The little happy faces very chic.”
    â€œMaybe you got something to match the jacket?”
    Kim stuck his hand out and waggled his fingers. I dropped the trousers and shrugged out of the jacket.
    â€œI did dis lining for you,” he said.
    â€œYeah. Pistol tears up the lining.”
    â€œLining very handsome, but brown plaid make ugly suit.”
    â€œIt’s very muted.”
    Kim took the glasses off the top of his head and settled them on the end of his nose. “Dis muted—I’m Air Jordan,” he said. He took a seam ripper out of his shirt pocket, made one quick fleck at the collar, and tore the jacket in half. “There, now matches pants.”
    â€œAre you nuts? My God! My suit!” My brain churned up the image of me standing in front of a judge who says, “Let’s see