Mr Marsden Meets Scarface by Hamilton Waymire

Craig Marsden, at a little past midnight the sole customer in Freddy's Lucky Bar, sniffed his cocktail and buried his face in his hands.

  "Jerzy," he said. "That is your name, right?"

  "Jerzy, yes, Mr. Marsden," said the man behind the counter.

  "How long you been a bartender?"

  Jerzy cleared his throat. "Since Monday, Mr. Marsden."

  "Five days, eh? And in those five days, how many times was I here?"

  "Every night, sir."

  Marsden nodded. "That's right, Jerzy. And what do I usually drink?"

  "Why, Margaritas, sir. Never anything else."

  "Have I ever complained about the way you fix my drinks?"

  Jerzy fidgeted with his towel. "You - uh - several times, sir."

  "So Jerzy, tell me, what goes into a Margarita?"

  "Well, lime juice..."

  Marsden nodded.

  "... Cointreau..." The bartender's brow furrowed.

  "Yes?" Marsden said with another encouraging nod.

  "And Vodka!" Jerzy said, his face brightening.

  "No! No! How many times do I have to tell you. There's a reason why we don't call it Margarotchka! Tequila, Jerzy. Tequila, not Vodka."

  "I am so sorry, sir. I will make new one on the house."

  A tall, pale redhead entered the barroom. Neither man turned his head: Jerzy was facing the door anyway, and Marsden observed her in the large mirror behind the bar. She wore a dark-blue, sleeveless Wal-Mart dress and managed to look stunning in it. Her face might have been beautiful but for the massive scar than ran across her left cheek. The large brown leather bag clashed with the color of her dress.

  "A Cosmopolitan, please," she said in a thick Slavic accent as she slid onto the stool next to Marsden's. The left side of her face did not move as she spoke.

  Marsden looked her over carefully, with particular attention to her chest and legs. "My name's Craig," he said at length and held his right hand out to her. "Nice to meet you."

  "I am very pleased," she said. She rolled the 'r' in 'very'. "Mr. Craig-"

  "No, not Mister. Just Craig. That's my first name."

  She laughed and showed a nice set of pearly-white teeth. "A-ha, we are on first name basis already. Why, that is fine with me. I am Marga." She re-crossed her legs, presenting him with a view of the insides of her thighs.

  Jerzy placed Marsden's Margarita and the Martini glass with the woman's Cosmopolitan on the counter. She took the lemon slice off the rim and sucked on it.

  "Where're you from?" Marsden asked.

  "Poland." She rummaged in her leather bag and finally extracted a pack of Marlboros. "Do you mind if I smoke?"

  "I don't, but I don't think Jerzy here will condone it. It's not permitted in enclosed spaces in California, you know."

  She spoke to the bartender in Polish. He nodded and placed an ashtray and matches on the counter.

  "I'm impressed," said Marsden and took his own Camels from his shirt pocket. "You got something on him? Is he an ex-communist spy or something?"

  "I would not know that," she said earnestly and put a cigarette in the right corner of her mouth.

  Marsden struck a match and lit first her cigarette, then his own. "So what're you doin' in L.A.?"

  "I am consultant for Polish enterprise." While she spoke, smoke drifted out of her nostrils and mouth. "It is boring to talk about. What is your occupation, Mr. Marsden?"

  "I'm a private investigator."

  Her face lit up. "Like Magnum, P.I.?" She pronounced it 'Mug-noom'.

  "Kinda like that, without the Ferrari and the Hawaiian shirts. And of course I'm better-looking than Tom Selleck."

  Her mouth laughed, but her eyes didn't move. "Have you always been a private detective?" She leant forward and allowed him a good view of her cleavage.

  "Excuse me a moment," he said and, extracting a cell phone from his jacket pocket, turned on his stool.

  Marga and Jerzy exchanged a glance. The woman shook her head very slightly.

  "Sondra," Marsden spoke into the phone, "Sorry I couldn't meet you tonight. No, you were right. Two appointments, yeah. All right, I'll see you tomorrow, if I can make it. Love you. Bye."

  He turned back to face Marga and said, "I'm sorry. My daughter. She worries when she doesn't hear from me once in a while." He slid the phone back into his pocket. "You were saying?"

  "Have you always been a private detective?"

  "No, just the past few years. I used to be with the FBI."

  "Really," she said and blew smoke out of the corner of her mouth. "That sounds fascinating."

  "It was, for the most part. I worked in twenty-three U.S. states and fifteen foreign countries."

  She leant forward and said conspiratorially, "I was under the impression that the FBI must not spy in foreign states."

  "They don't. They work with local authorities on cases involving American citizens, that kind of thing. Nothing clandestine."

  "Have you been to Poland as well?"

  He stubbed his cigarette out and dropped the butt in the ashtray. "Once. My last assignment. Warsaw and Lodz." His face hardened.

  She squinted at him. "What was your assignment?"

  He shrugged and showed her his palms. "I really can't say. Confidential, you understand."

  She stood up, dropped her cigarette on the floor and stepped on it. As if by accident, her left breast brushed against Marsden's arm.

  "Oh, but it has been some years since then, no? How can it be so secret?" she whispered in his ear before sitting down again.

  Marsden lit another cigarette and took a long drag. He exhaled audibly and said, his gaze fixed on Marga's slightly parted thighs:

  "Oh all right. My partner and I were charged to find a guy responsible for the deaths of three American exchange students. We worked with the Polish police and found him."

  "What was his name?"

  He looked at her curiously and said, "What's it to you?"

  "Humor me," she said and smiled thinly.

  "Tadeusz Zamoyski." He dropped his cigarette into the untouched Margarita. "He was a swine. Killed my partner."

  "And you killed Zamoyski." She had the bag on her lap, the right hand buried inside.

  "It was an accident. We were in a car chase, he was going way too fast, lost control in a curve, and dropped off a cliff. I had nothing to do with it." His face had reddened while he spoke. "Anyway, that's none of your business. I'm going to leave now."

  "No, you're not," she said very softly. "Mr. Marsden, there is a .38 special revolver in this bag, aimed at your chest, and I have my finger on the trigger. One move, and you are, how do you say, dead meat."

  He whistled through his teeth. "Well, well, well. Aren't you forgetting something? What about Jerzy here? You going to shoot him too?"

  "That will not be necessary," said Jerzy, getting out from behind the bar with a Walther PPK in his hand. "Ms. Zamoyski and I are in this together." He went and locked the door, then sat down at a table near the bar, aiming his gun at Marsden.

  "I see. So that's how it is. You want to revenge your father's death, is that right?"

  "It is a matter of honor, yes. And you must pay for this!" She pointed at the disfigured side of her face.

  "What the fuck have I got to do with that?"

  "I. Was. In. The. Car."

  "But that's impossible. Zamoyski was alone. I saw him get into his Lada, alone!"

  "I was lying on the back seat, sleeping off a trip. I had sneaked in the night before. My father did not know I was in the car until I spoke to him."

  "How'd you get out of the wreck? It went up in flames, I saw it."

  "Some of the locals who were loyal to my father pulled me out at the last moment. Enough talking already! I will kill you now." She pulled the gun from her bag and aimed it at his forehead.

  "Hold it!" he said. "I'm sure we can negotiate something. Look, I have some money, enough for a good cosmetic surgeon to get your face back to its old glory."

  She laughed out, tipped back her head. "Do you think I do not have the money to take care of my face? I am the heir of my father's business. I have been wearing this stigma to remind me to kill you. I will kill you now, and then I can have the scars removed."

  Marsden sighed. "All right then. There's something you should know. Listen up, Jerzy, this concerns you too."

  "Shut up," Jerzy said. "No talking for you. Just dying."

  "You're making a mistake," Marsden said. "Remember the phone call I made? I wasn't talking to my daughter. I called the FBI. It was a secret code. They'll be here any minute."

  "Bullshit," Marga said.

  "You wanna know why I made the call? Your girlfriend here called me Mr. Marsden, but I'd never told her my last name. That's when I knew something was wrong."

  "You're a fucking liar. Don't listen to him!"

  "You listen to me, Jerzy. She may not care about her future, but if I get killed, you're going on the chair. You understand, Jerzy? Electrocution?"

  "Don't listen to him, honey," she said. "He's bluffing."

  Marsden turned his head to look at Jerzy. "What if I'm not? You wanna get fried just because some crazy bitch doesn't like her fucked-up face?"

  Jerzy's eyes flickered from Marsden to Marga and back. So did the aim of his gun. He said something to her in Polish. She yelled back at him. There was a brief silence, terminated by the sound of the fire alarm. Marsden jumped at Jerzy's right arm. They went down. The sprinklers gushed water into the room. Marga fired a shot at the struggling men. The door burst open.

  "FBI! Drop the guns! FBI!"

  Marga, her wet hair hanging limply over the pale face, turned and aimed her gun at the invaders. She didn't get to shoot. Several salvos from automatic rifles ripped into her body. She slid from her stool and lay still.

  "Turn the fucking water off!" somebody yelled. A woman and two men, clad in dark windbreakers with "FBI" stitched on them in large white letters, advanced into the room, covering the three figures with their weapons. There was a slight movement in the pile consisting of the two men.

  "Freeze!" the woman shouted.

  They were still being inundated from the ceiling. On the parquet floor, two puddles of blood, mixed with water, merged in the center of the room. One of the agents stood over Marga's lifeless body, still aiming his rifle at her. The other two covered Jerzy and Marsden.

  "Hands up," the woman said. Her voice quivered. One pair of arms went up, very slowly. Their owner grinned. "Not a second too early, Sondra sweetheart," he said. "Geez, you were right. They were out to get me."

  She shook her head. What looked like tears was really just sprinkler water running down her face. "Let's get outta here, Daddy. You're getting too old for this kinda crap."

© Hamilton Waymire 2008 All Rights Reserved