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All The Way Home

John Stickney

Staring at the blood, it comes to my mind that these days the night sky of Cleveland could be confused with the one above Rhinelander, Wisconsin.  After all of Cleveland’s industry was outsourced the sky cleared, lost the rotten egg smell of burnt-off gas and the stars got bright. Ex-Boy Scouts can stand at the intersection of St Clair and East 14th, elbow each other, point upward and say, “Isn’t that Cassiopeia?” What’s good for the Scouts hasn’t worked for the rest of us. Clean skies came with a big price - no jobs. Fine, shut down steel mills and auto foundries and all the other things that went with industry but damn that’s a lot of jobs gone. Good paying, raise a family and move to the suburbs jobs. Maybe before we sold everything to the Japanese, the Germans and to China, someone could have thought about all those jobs leaving.  If someone had done a little planning, I’d be working some where smelting or pouring or sweeping the damn floor next to the blaster, sweating like a pig on a spit, wouldn’t care, I could have been working there and would not be in room 432 of the New Renaissance Hotel looking at a dead body and a hooker with two freshly severed pinky toes. 

Did I say hooker? 

My bad, I mean escort. But just so you understand, no amount of word play is going to put those toes back on.

Jobs, you can’t be too choosey about your job. I was just back from the army, thrilled that the civil war err, the “War Against Terror” that is Iraq was no longer my full time concern. My early ticket out? A piece of metal embedded in the back of the leg. I was foolishly trying to get the US Government to deliver on its promised trade school funding but they said, no, rest up, we still need you. See, the army maintains my wound is bad enough to get me states-side but not bad enough to keep me from re-upping. Their carrot? My school money and me, I’m left holding the stick. Waiting on my money, I try on jobs like jackets in a used clothing store. Waiter, couldn’t take the people. Express delivery man, not express enough.  Even tried painting houses for a while but standing on the ladder killed my legs. 

A friend of my uncle’s gave me a call, had a small insurance office downtown. He asked if I had a valid Ohio driver’s license. Yep. Asked if I had my own car, I did, a four door sedan, a little old but despite my time away, the body and engine held up fine. 

He said, “I need a driver.”

“Great, what’s it pay?”

“Meet me at Hutton’s, you know Hutton’s? Euclid and Thirty-sixth? You know it?”

“Yeah,” I said, picturing a billboard sized sign atop a green diner proudly announcing - “Home of the Buttered Steak.”

“That’s the one, meet me at Hutton’s at nine. I’ll buy you dinner, we’ll talk.”

I had never had the “buttered steak”, didn’t know how one buttered a steak or why anyone would eat their steak buttered. No combination of butter and steak sounded appetizing to me. I decided to order a burger.

Late spring, kids still in school, dark at eight and unless there was a game in town, downtown Cleveland is almost deserted. Sure, there were a few cars, a few stragglers on the streets, mainly people looking to make their way home, the leftovers looking for other things only available on the streets. Hutton’s inside was like Hutton’s outside, run down but clean. A few tables and a few booths, specials on a chalk board, a bar with six stools. When I entered, a florid, middle aged man raised his hand and said my name, waving me over his back booth. He had on an off-white dress shirt with a fraying collar under a Member’s Only tan jacket. Both fought a losing battle to keep his belly covered. I felt stupid. I was over-dressed, wore a tie and blue shirt, tan pants, blue sports coat, like I was going to a high school dance. He pumped my hand as if genuinely happy to finally meet me.

“George Winiski,” he said. “Call me Wink.” 

I took off my jacket and laid it on the booth next to me when I sat down. Unbuttoning the top button, I loosened my tie, order a burger, subbed a salad with Ranch for the fries, and a Stroh’s.  This place still had Stroh’s.  I was disappointed when Wink told the waitress he’d have the same, I wanted to see one of those famous buttered steaks. He told the waitress, “Hold the bun, blue cheese with the salad, and ice tea, no beer.” Patting his stomach he extolled the virtues of the Atkins Diet.  “Down twenty-one pounds since March,” which made me wonder what he had looked like in March. 

“That’s great,” I said. 

So we ate and talked, mainly I talked, answering his questions about the army (gym class for grown-ups though the dodge ball game was a little more serious), what it is really like over there (the war was hell and the peace was like opening a door to a room full of more hell), future plans (computer jockey if my trade school funding ever appears) and so on.  Occasionally he’d stop, stick a one moment finger up in the air, pick up his phone, turn his head, say a few words, put down his phone, return his attention. At one point he answered the phone, showed me the whole palm, stood up, walked toward the john, went in, all the while talking. When Wink came back to the table, he said, “Promise if I hire you, you won’t be an idiot.”

“Promise.”

We both made it through most of our meal when he said, “So, here’s the deal, I need a reliable driver, one who is honest and tough. “

I started to say something like - what the hell kind of driving do I have to do - when he stuck his finger up in the air. 

I was getting used to that finger.

“The driver, you, will have to handle some money and any time there’s money there can be trouble, am I right?” He didn’t wait for me to answer.  “Your uncle tells me you can handle yourself and that you are an ‘I can not tell a lie, I cut the apple tree down’ guy.”

What if I ran down the apple tree, I wondered. Or took one out with a grenade, same rule apply?

“Ten bucks an hour, plus tips.”

“Sounds good.” Tips? Who tips for driving around insurance forms?

Cassie was starting to fade out, eyes rolling back, breath shallow and quick. Her legs looked like she was wearing red fish nets but I knew they should be black. I grabbed some towels from the bath room, soaked them in cold water, filled them with ice bucket ice, draped her feet, stuck a washcloth in each arm pit and a rolled hand towel across her forehead.  “Cassie, listen to my voice. Stay awake,” I said, looking around for the toes.

Cleveland Greater Casualty and Life (CGC&L) was located over on Sloane Avenue, in a funky white stone three story building called The Capital Building. It was probably someone’s personal residence around the turn of the century. Surrounded by low, one and two story cookie cutter warehouses, it stuck out. An alley ran behind and a black top lot with space for twelve cars was beside it. A sign warned off everyone but tenants and customers with the laws terrible penalties.

The Capital Building was full of the financial backbone of America, the small entrepreneurs striking off on their own, no government hand out for these titans of industry – there was an answering service, two other insurance agents, a mortgage broker (the wrinkled sign on the door promised - We Can Make Your Dream Home Come True), a single practice attorney (he lived in his office, I mean hot plate, fold out bed, lived) and some other unidentified tallymen and mongers. 

Wink was on the second floor, in a suite of four rooms. Front room, some chairs, file cabinets and a metal secretary desk with switch board, it looked like a normal office. Walk through a door to a hall and the other rooms – Winks office, a conference room with tote board, fridge and sludge filled coffee pot, a bathroom, and another office filled with file boxes stacked ceiling high. Some of the boxes had fallen, spewing files, partially blocking the door. The records were at least ten years old. Attached to the back there, accessible through a large window, was a metal stairway, probably an 1880 fire code addition. This was Cleveland, no Chicago fires for us. All the cows have been sold to the Brazilians anyway.

When I reported for work the next evening, eight at night, my faulty wired light bulb finally went on. I think it was after I met Tiffany, Heather, Jennifer and Ebony (that first night two of the girls, Gina and Cassie, were late). All the women were dressed in clothing inappropriate for most offices. I say most offices because some nights it has been my firm hope and belief that the female employees at the corporate offices of Victoria Secrets… I also met Kevin, Howard and Roland, my fellow drivers. They were dressed more conservative, at least their midriffs were covered. 

After Wink introduced me, he led me into his office, grabbed copies of the two weekly tabloid papers off his desk and asked, “You ever look in the back of these papers?”

Of course I had, they’re full of ads for special massages, private dancers and sex talk lines. Grabbing a Sharpie, he circled a bunch of ads. Opened the other paper, did the same.  “These are my ads, my companies, my girls. Use to be in the yellow pages too but they want an arm and a leg, for what? Everyone knows if you come into town, grab these free papers and there’s women for sale in the back. Who needs an ad in the telephone book?”

“Wink, no offense, I thought it was going to be insurance stuff.”

“The insurance business went down the tubes, independent agents are a dying breed. But this stuff,” pointing down to the ads,” you would not believe the money there is to be made.” 

“I’m not interested in anything illegal,” I said.

“Illegal? Illegal? There’s nothing illegal here. Far from it.” He turned his chair, grabbed a pre-printed sheet of paper, offered it to me.  “This is the way it works. The girls sign this contract stating they are self employed independent contractors and that they will not have sex with the customers. When we get a call, the driver takes the girl to the customer, goes into the room, makes sure everything is on the up and up, gives the customer one of these.” He handed me a green paper. It specified no touching and no sex.  “The customer pays for one hour in advance, credit card preferred. The driver calls the credit info to the office and I make sure it’s good, charge an hour and calls back to give the okay. Takes maybe five minutes from when you walk into the room, total.  Driver leaves, waits downstairs for the girl to come down. Keep your phone handy. If they decide to take the dance into the second hour or longer, she calls you, you call me, we hit the card again. When she’s done, pick her up, bring her back here. Sometimes the girls give the drivers a tip. So you make ten an hour driving, plus tips.”

“And this is legal.”

“You see the contracts, the customer notification sheet? It was all researched and drawn up by Walter across the hall. Big time criminal law attorney, he really knows his stuff.”

A week later, I saw Walter. There he was, one-hundred and twenty years old if he was a day, cooking a can of Dinty Moore on his hot plate. Wearing dingy, gray striped pajamas, he knocked on our office door wanting to borrow some crackers.

Gina went to the break room, grabbed a box of Ritz, handed a sealed stack to him.

“Any saltines,” a hopeful Walter asked, eyes spying cleavage.

“Sorry, Walter.” Gina straightened up.

Walter smiled, tipped a none existent hat, and crackers in hand, shuffled back to his office.

“God,” Gina said, “he’s old enough to be my grandfather’s grandfather and he’s still checking me out.” She shuddered. “God, I hate the man who invented Viagra.”

Viagra, I came to learn, Cialas, all that makes your erection erect for hours stuff was universally hated by the girls. Once it hit the market, the client base expanded into elder care regions. And the tastes became more peculiar. On the way over Cassie mentioned Viagra specificity, how it added so much time to her job, how it use to be wham, bam, thank you ma’am, and now was wham, wham, wham, and so on before a far more distant bam. 

I guess part of the reason I was late, they were into the third hour, was because of that conversation. Well, that conversation and the cop. 

The way it worked, the girls waited in the backroom of the insurance office, biding their time primarily by belittling each other, the drivers, the customers, Wink, the men and/or women in their lives. There were magazines to look through, one had a crossword puzzle book (What’s a three letter word for lack of virtue?) and another was taking some correspondence course for hair dressing. Sometimes they did makeovers on one another. They were like fire men, waiting for that call, ready to leap into action. They had their own special equipment, I mean besides what God gave and what some doctor may have improved on, they also had a bag full of lotions and condoms and rubber things to stick places and other things that moved like earth shakers. Some of them had different outfits and wigs and some had things to hurt with.

The latter was extra. 

Everything was extra.

Ebony told me about a customer who could only reach nirvana if, at the point of no return, his feet were set on fire.  “No problem,” Ebony said the first time, “Fifty bucks extra.” When the customer didn’t complain, she said she knew she should have hit him up for fifty more.  “Live and learn, baby. Live and learn.”

“On fire,” I said.

“Lighter fluid,” she adopted an authoritative tone, “it burns off quick, no lasting damage. I have to do it so he can watch in a mirror, he’s kind of heavy.”

Imagine what you had to try before finding out setting your feet on fire is what does the trick. 

Just imagine.

First night, Wink kept me close by his side. We drove Heather out to a regular in a private residence. Private residences are rare, usually the action take place in downtown hotels and suburban motels. Like I was a kid on the first day of class, Wink accompanied Heather and I to the door, watched as I got the credit card info and listened to me relay it to the office. I waited for the okay, handed the guy one of the customer notices and we left. 

“Good job,” Wink told me on the way downtown. “The girls are only supposed to dance or do a private show, anything else I don’t want to hear about it. They break the law and it’s all on them.” Then, in a fatherly tone, “If you’re smart, you won’t talk to the other drivers or the women too much. Some of them have problems you wouldn’t believe. They’ll just try to drag you down with them.”

I nodded. 

Having passed the idiot test, Wink left me on my own the rest of the night. I dropped a few other girls off at hotels, called in, gave the notice. Only one hour, I hung around the parking lot, longer, I waited near-by in the car, cell phone at the ready. 

By four in the morning things slowed down, Wink paid me cash for eight hours (though I had only worked six) and sent me home.

On the third night, while out on the fire escape catching a smoke, Roland asked if he could join me.

I held out the pack. 

“Heather tells me you’re not asking for your share of the tip.”

“What tip?” I said.

“Come on man, the tips the girl gets for the happy ending.”

“Wink told me no sex.”

“He’s playing you for a chump. He’s damn sure getting his part of the tips every night.” 

He dragged deep on the cigarette. 

“You don’t ask for your tips, it gives them ideas,” he said. Pointed at my chest, “We all expect to get our tips.”

That night I asked for and got my tips.

“Just when I thought I liked you,” Gina said, “you go and turn into everybody else.”

In Iraq, hunkered down in our inadequately armored Humvee (you can jerry-rig with pots and pans all you want Hillbilly Armor won’t stop the real thing), we were riding shotgun for private contractors. They were making their way to repair a blown up section of oil pipeline. Got to keep that oil flowing. In just another small part of the fucktarded lack of planning that went into the war, troops end up “protecting” these private suits who were riding in vehicles better equipped than ours. 

We got taken out by a roadside bomb. 

I knew I was hit, felt around, made sure my privates were still attached (The twins and their big brother reported - Sir, still here Sir!) and tried to help my buddies recover whatever they were missing. 

A piece of metal in my leg, no biggie. Some of those guys lost real things, some lost it all. 

The suits? Why ask - not even a scratch.

You’re wondering about the girls, right?

Hell, everyone always wonders about the girls. Some are cute, others, in the right light, presentable. Looks don’t seem to matter that much to our customer base. Talk to any of the girls long enough and you learn every one of them was done wrong by someone - fathers, step-fathers, boy friends and mothers. 

Gina and Ebony had kids. 

Tiffany was two months along, another two months, she joked, and she’d have to charge double. 

Some of them smoked crack. All of them smoked weed. A couple drank. There were all kinds of pills. 

Some had dropped out, four were high school graduates and one had a year and one-half of college. I had that much myself, put in before I partied my way out of my higher education and joined up. 

Two were married to men outside the business, another two lived together as significant others, and another one lived with Roland. And Howard? Howard went on the call when a man was requested. 

On our first date, Jennifer told me she had responded to a modeling ad. She had head shots made up and the whole portfolio thing. During the interview Wink asked, “Could you be comfortable modeling lingerie?” 

“Sure,” Jennifer recounted, as if that explained everything.

That first date was on a day off, we went to the ball park, ate hot dogs and peanuts, drank beer. I bought her a Wahoo ball cap to keep the sun out of her eyes. When I dropped her at her apartment, she placed a demure kiss on my cheek and bounced up the stairs, gave a little wave before entering the door.

Next day, I worked it out with the other drivers so I never had to drive Jennifer again. 

***

In retrospect, I liked my job. Working at night, driving around when the streets were clear of traffic, sometimes the road wet, wisps of moisture rising up like hope to the stars above. besides the money, which was good, there was something about being out and about when everyone else was asleep, it was quiet and safe; a marked contrast to Iraq at night, tracer bullets and night vision goggles and people trying their best to kill you. I got along with my co-workers, liked talking to them and the night clerks and the waitresses. Some nights, I’d read while waiting, old Penguin paperbacks. When the Tribe was on the West Coast, those were the best nights, baseball games that ran until three or four in the morning. I think the Tribe was playing in Seattle that night. 

Someone with a sense of hope or humor named it the New Renaissance Hotel. There was no attending golden age. Cassie and I entered via the lobby, said hello to Sunil, manning the desk. Desk clerks were, like all of us, open to financial persuasion; they gave us access, even pass keys, turned a blind eye when needed. Wink made sure everyone got their piece. Gupta waved us through, we took the elevator up to the fourth floor. The guy who answered could have been any one of the traveling businessmen we’ve seen nightly, he paid two hours up front on a corporate card. Viagra strikes again. I went down, talked to Gupta for a couple of minutes. He and his family manned the desk 24-7, and he was studying accounting at Cleveland State, trying to make something else out of him self. We decried the death of the central city, noted that business, his and Wink’s, was down, tried to talk baseball, he preferred Cricket, and then I headed out to the car.

On our second date, Jennifer got drunk and told me about how her step-father had raped her from the time she was twelve until she left the house four years later. She cried on my offered shoulder.

Our third date, we wandered around the Cleveland Art Museum. It was her first visit since a junior high field trip and she loved the armor court where they had all this stuff from the Middle Ages – lances, tapestries and suits of armor. We ran in and out of rooms, playing hide and seek like a couple kids.

On our fourth date, Jennifer and I stayed in.

I went out to the car, I wandered over to the nearest 24 hour store, west across the Detroit Avenue bridge, just on the outskirts of downtown, got a pop and a pack of smokes, turned the car back toward the hotel. The Tribe was up in the fourth by a run. The White Sox were going to take the division; our team could make it as a wild card. Phone on the seat next to me, window rolled down, I listened to the game and smoked.

Not much different than when I was in the war, smoke and wait, wait and smoke.

I drifted off, thinking about my boyhood summers at a lakeside cottage in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, before my mother’s cancer and my dad’s daily taste for the bottle. My dad and I would drift in the lake, trolling for Muskie, a particular aggressive fish with numerous sharp teeth. You needed heavy line and we carried a small bat to smack it into submission. The nights, in the woods, in the middle of no where, stars bright…  I don’t know if it was the sound of the radio or some movement, my eyes opened to a uniformed Cop standing next to my window, saying something. I felt like I was back in school, caught asleep at my desk by the teacher’s question. I straightened up, reached over, turned off the radio and shut the phone.

Our cell phones worked like regular phones and also like walky-talkies, just press down a button and talk. Sometimes, to be funny, the girls broadcast what’s going on. I didn’t want Cassie’s business reaching the cop.

“I said, what’s the score.” The cop looked a little angry, his flashlight beam swept inside, hit my face.

“Four - three, Cleveland, bottom of the fifth.”

“You staying here?” 

“No, waiting on a friend.”

“Your friend staying here?”

“Ah, no, just a place we both know.”

“You have ID.” 

It wasn’t a question. I reached into my pocket, gave him my driver’s license. He studied it under the flashlight.

“This your car?”

“Yes, officer.” I got the registration from the glove box. He ignored it.

He walked back to his car, called in. Minutes later, came back to the car, handed me the license. ”We’ve had some car jacking in the area. Stay alert.”

He started walking away, turned back, “Make sure you’re gone the next time I swing through.” 

Is it really that unbelievable that some of the girls just dance?

I turned on the phone, checked for messages, nada. I tried to call Cassie, no answer. Hung up, started through the lot, woke Sunil, phoned again while running up the stairs. No answer. We got to the door, I put my ear to it but heard nothing over the bass heavy smooth jazz, knocked, waited, grabbed the passkey from Sunil and pushed. There was something preventing the door from opening. Put my shoulder into it. Finally inside, lights low, I saw her on the bed, tied down, legs and arms akimbo, blood.

I got hit across the back of my shoulders, hard enough that I hit the ground, rolled to my side, tried to get up, was hit again but still made it to my feet. 

The guy was naked except for the wolf mask. He had a knife in one hand, the blade dark and wet.

Driven by reflex, I felt my back, checked my palm, no blood, no cut that I could feel.

He started closing on me, jerky, making jabbing motions with the knife.

I tried to grab the lamp off a table, it was bolted down. 

My back against the wall, he closed in, another foot forward and he could reach me. 

As he stepped in, knife intent on my midsection, I grabbed two handfuls of his hair, jerking his face toward my up raised knee. Instead of busting his nose, my knee hit his outstretched hand, drove the knife up into his chest. His body twisted, arms flung out as if trying to take flight, hands fluttering trying to cool off something hot, the knife stuck in his chest. I kicked him square in the balls and he fell to the foot of the bed. Things gurgled out of his chest and mouth.

The army offered me a re-up bonus of $30,000. It was one of those deals you can’t refuse, take the money or look at a possible “stop loss” recall anyway. Either way you’re in Iraq. May as well prepay the funeral, right? 

Sunil had called the police. I untied Cassie and found one toe before they arrived. It was still on the bed, tangled in the sheets. First on the scene, the cop from the lot, he greeted me with a “Son of a bitch.” And the other toe, I learned later, had been swallowed. 

They don’t really reconnect toes.

Turns out Walter was almost right, the contracts were, at a minimum, a potential legal impediment. I’m not sure the police or the city really wanted to prosecute me for promoting prostitution or manslaughter or anything else. The Wolfman – between the mask and the full moon the name was a natural fit - had mutilated other girls, killed one in San Francisco and one in Houston. According to the local paper, I was half a hero, they played my returning Vet status way up.  National papers and those tabloid shows are still sniffing around, looking for exclusives. The cops and prosecutors just wanted me and the case to go away, offering me one more reason to take the Army’s money. 

Need another reason? Jennifer’s talking about going to Court Reporter School while I’m away. 

So I’m back, stuck in a shallow hole and spending my time smoking and thinking.

Trying to imagine what he tried first.

Just imagine.

Copyright(c) 2005 by John Stickney

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