Chapter Nine: Tricks and the Like

 

Chapter Nine: Tricks and the Like

1:46 p.m.

            After talking to the police, who I assumed the owner had called when the trouble first started, I went back to enjoying my sandwich and my refilled mug of Guinness while talking to the owner and Samantha. The other patrons had left during the fight, and police cars outside of an establishment aren’t exactly the best thing to drive in business.

            The owner was a short bearded man whose facial hair was a salt and pepper color and had a shaved head. I had learned that everyone just called him Sparky, which was apparently a name from his time during the Navy years and years ago. He didn’t seem to mind his bar sustaining a bit of damage from the fight, as he had wanted to get rid of those guys for a while. After what happened to them between me and the authorities, he doubted they would be back soon, or cause trouble if they ever did come back. The talk of the hoodlums brought back the subject of Frank Derahno.

            “So, Sparky,” I began. “Do you know what that kid was talking about when he said Derahno cheated him out of some money?”

            The barkeep nodded before speaking in his gruff voice.

            “Yeah… It was actually an old bar trick explained by geometry. I used to see it used every now and then back in the day, but anyone who has a good grasp of geometry will see right through it.”

            I was puzzled, to say the least.

            “How the hell does a bar trick have anything to do with geometry? Much less one that could win a thousand bucks…”

            He smirked and got up to go behind the bar. We waited on him to return with equally confused looks on our faces. When he got back, he held a mug, a piece of paper, a sharpie pen, and a book. Now we were even more confused.

            He smirked slightly and looked at me.

            “Now then,” he began. “What do you think is longer? Do you think it is the height of the mug, or the circumference of the rim? You know…The distance all the way around the rim.”

            I looked at him with an incredulous look on my face. Surely this guy was asking a rhetorical question.

            “The height of the mug is longer, of course. There’s really no contest.”

            He smiled even wider before taking the paper and folding it around the rim, and then marking where the ends touched each other with the sharpie pen. He then unfolded the paper and looked back up at me.

            “You’re right in the fact that there really is no contest. Now…”

            Then he put the mug on top of the book he had brought.

            “Do you think that the combined height of the book’s width and the mug’s height is longer than the circumference of the rim?”

            Now I knew something was up, but I played along nonetheless.

            “I’m inclined to say yes, Sparky,” I said to him.

            “Alright then… This is pretty much exactly what that Derahno kid did to those a******s. Now watch carefully. No trickery is involved here, but just watch.”

            And then, he held the piece of paper up parallel to the mug and book. The line on the paper marking the length of the circumference was at least a couple inches above the brim of the mug, even when it was on top of the book.

            “What a lot of people don’t think about is that a circumference is actually quite long. Derahno knew this, and preyed on someone he didn’t think would be sharp enough to know themselves. I don’t know why he needed that kind of scratch, but I’m sorry you had to pay for his actions.”

            I shook my head in answer to him.

            “No, it’s quite alright. That actually helped to relieve quite a lot of stress that’s been building up on me lately. But like I’ve said… I’ve been kind of carrying out Frank Derahno’s will. I found it on his body when he died a couple of days ago in a car accident. So far I’ve been talking to a bunch of people who used to know him. It’s been…Interesting.”

            Sparky nodded to himself slightly before speaking again.

            “Respecting the last wishes of the dead is a sacred thing. I wish you luck in this, sir. Now, I’ve got to go about getting ready for the five o’ clock crowd,” Sparky finished before getting back up, taking the items with him back to the back of the bar. Samantha got up as well, but stopped before walking off.

            “Mr. Garcia, I’m sorry those prats did what they did, but I want to thank ye for standing up to them, and also for doing this for Frank,” she said. When she saw my surprised look, she continued. “Yes, I knew Frank. He would come in here about once a week to just relax, and he would talk to me. Not just order another drink to ogle me, but just to talk. It was like he enjoyed having someone he could talk to that wasn’t exactly part of his personal life. The way he would talk… It was like he just needed a break from everyone else in his life. He never said it out right, but I could tell, just from the little things he would say. But anyway…I hope ye have better luck with the rest of your day, Mr. Garcia.”

            And with that, she walked away in the direction Sparky had gone. I then finished up my food finally and beer, and then got up. I took enough money out of my wallet to pay for my meal and put it on the table. After thinking for a moment more, I took out an extra twenty dollar bill and placed it with the rest of the cash. I then turned and walked out of the Four Leaves.

2:05 p.m.

            ...I guess another person you could talk to would be my roommate Jason. He is a good friend of mine who might have something to add. You can usually find him at the apartment as he works on graphic designs from his desk. Here’s the address…

            I arrived at the address which was actually just a short drive from the Four Leaves pub. The address was located within an apartment complex that was, while not on the best side of town, still in a pretty decent area for a college kid. I was walking down a breezeway, the note and phonebook in hand, when I finally found the apartment. It was number 42.

            I faced the doorway and was able to make out the sounds of music coming from the apartment. I knocked on the door and waited. I heard no signs of my knocking being heard from inside, so I knocked harder. Maybe I knocked a bit too hard, but the door opened up. Apparently the door just wasn’t closed all the way before being locked. Blinking, I walked into the living room to be immersed in the sounds of rock music blaring from speakers hooked up to a stereo. I walked over to the stereo and turned it off, and began looking around.

            It was a modest set up, with the stereo in the corner, a couch, table, and a television with a couple of game systems hooked up to it, and a small bookshelf. Above the couch was a space that was a slightly lighter shade of off white than the rest of the wall. Looking closely at it, I saw a nail in the wall in the top and center spot of the whiter space. I looked around the room again and noticed that all the rest of the walls were bare of decoration, and then realized that the oil painting of a sunrise that Marie Sanchez painted must have been moved.

            “Hello?” I called out into the rest of the apartment. I know I was already in there, but I didn’t feel like intruding any further. It didn’t seem as though anyone else was in the apartment. They probably would have investigated who turned off the music. I decided that there was nothing for me here and walked back out of the apartment, making sure that the door would lock properly behind me.

            I made my way towards where I parked not really paying attention to things as I thought about what to do next since I wasn’t able to talk to that Jason guy. As I was pondering my next move, I turned the corner to where I had parked just a few yards away when I saw my Prius, and the punk kid who was trying to break into it.

            “Hey! Get away from my car! I’ll call the cops!”
            My yelling apparently startled the kid, who jumped in his skin and turned to face me.

            “Hey man, don’t call the pigs! I’m on my last strike man!” he called to me, shaking like a leaf. But I already had my phone out and dialing the number.

            “…Hello? Huntsville police? Yeah, I’m at the Lexington Estates apartments and I’ve got some kid trying to break into my car…”

            The kid began cussing up a storm.

            “S**t man…Hell… I’m going to get busted and…” he trailed off and mumbled a bit, but I wasn’t paying much attention as I was talking to the dispatcher. That is, I wasn’t paying much attention until the kid pulled out a handgun from behind his shirt and pointed it at me.

            “Holy s**t kid! Put the gun down!” I was ignoring the now frantic dispatcher, and was trying to calm the guy down. He was already shaking so badly he could barely keep the gun hand still, and his eyes were frantic as hell.

            “Nuh uh! Now way man! I get caught, I go to jail! I can’t let that happen. Sorry! You should have listened!”

            He closed his eyes and brought the gun to bear on my chest. I closed my eyes and brought my free arm up in a flailing motion in a pitiful instinctual attempt to do something useful.

            Blam! ....Thud!

            I was falling backwards onto the concrete, watching as the kid was running a way and jumping a fence to get out of sight.

            Blackness as my head hit the concrete… Here we went again…