Callahan's Place 09 - Callahan's Con (v5.0) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Bahama Village accent—a strange lilting creole that borrows quirks from Jamaica, Bermuda, Cuba, and other places I don’t know.   “I beg your humble pahdon, Jake—but who was dat gray-yut styoupid harse?   She look like a jumbee, bahd ting to see wakin’ from a nap.”
    “Sorry about that, Lex.   I wish she was a jumbee; a simple charm’d get me off the hook then.   She’s a bureaucrat.”
    Sploot .   He was gone.
    You wouldn’t think someone like Lex would know enough about bureaucrats to be properly afraid of them.   But he knows the movie Splash real well—I believe that’s why he chose the name Lexington, actually—and there are several bureaucrats in that.
    “Well,” I said to Erin, “I guess the first thing to do is try and get hold of your mother.”
    “The first thing to do,” Erin said, double-knotting a shoelace, “is make a few phone calls and find out what the hell’s actually going on, how much trouble we’re actually in.   Mom’s better with clearly defined problems.”
    I refrained from comment.
    She straightened up from tying her shoes.   “Okay, the first—damn.”   She had just noted the position of the sun in the sky.   “It’s after three PM: every state employee in Florida has gone home by now.   Ah well, that’s why they invented the Net.   Excuse me, Papa.”   She left, and went in the house.   On foot: Zoey and I have impressed on her that teleporting is not something to be done casually, especially not in public.   (Sure, only family were present in The Place at the moment–but at any time a really tall tourist standing up on the seat of a bicycle could glance over our hedge.)   Our house is less than fifty yards from my bar, and the windows are pretty much always open in the daytime, so I could hear the chiming chord of the Mac booting up in the study.
    “Hey, Jake,” Jim Omar called from the other direction, “I can fix this.”
    He referred to the gate.   He was holding it up against its ruined hinges experimentally, the way a girl holds a dress up in front of herself to judge how it will look if she puts it on.   He was using a thumb and two fingers to do so.   Omar looks like a normal, if large-size, person, but I’ve seen him lift up the front of a schoolbus and set it down on his jack.   The gate itself was badly cracked, but Omar was right, it was repairable.   Seeing it made me think of a man decades dead, with the unlikely name of Big Beef McCaffrey.   “Okay,” I called back to him.   “But do a mediocre job, will you?”
    He pantomimed puzzlement.
    “Tradition,” I told him.
    He continued to look uncomprehending for a moment—and then he smiled.   “Big Beef.”
    I nodded.  
    There were smiles all around.   Nearly everyone either remembered Big Beef McCaffrey, or had heard the story.   Our original home, Callahan’s Place, had featured a big poorly-repaired crack right down the center of its front door, too.   It had been put there in the late 1940s by the head of the McCaffrey, the night he tried to stiff Mike with a bogus ten-spot.   Now I had a crack to match it in my own tavern door.   For some reason I found that absurdly pleasing, and a quick glance around told me I wasn’t the only one.
    “You got it,” Omar called.   He inspected the door again.   “Still rather use my own tools, though.   I’ll have it back tomorrow.”   He left with it, carrying it in one hand as if it were an empty pizza box.
    I put my elbows on the bar, my face in my hands, closed my eyes, and briefly left the world.   (That’s the kind of clientele I got: I can do that when I need to, and my bar will still be intact when I get back.)  
    Okay, Jake: let’s compact our feces, here.   The hammer of doom hangs over you, the forces of darkness are mad enough to shit thumbtacks, and it’s time to establish priorities.   You won’t be able to get hold of Zoey for hours yet.   It’ s too late to phone your lawyer, or anyone in