Black Cat on a White Fence

Gus's voice buzzed through the receiver like a distant bee. "No can do that, Benny," he said.

I gripped the hand piece tight. My palm was greasy with sweat. "No can do what, Gus? Give me his number, or call him yourself?"

"Neither." Gus whined through his adenoids. "I mean, I can call him, but it no can make a difference, he don't—"

"So call him! I want the job cancelled, see?"

"He don't give refunds, Benny."

It was stifling in Dixon's Drugstore after the rain, and doubly stifling in the telephone box. I had the collar of my greatcoat up around my face as I pressed against the pay phone's mouthpiece, and I felt the humidity on my own breath. But I didn't want anyone seeing me. Least of all Mike the Cop, who was tucking into a donut at the end of Dixon's counter.

"So I don't get no refund!" I growled. "So the Dane picks up a score of gees for listening to a big dope talk mean about his ex-wife, but he don't do nothing about it!"

"But the Dane, you see, when he takes a job, he takes a job."

"So he takes a job, but it don't get done! Who but me'd have a problem, and I'm tellin' ya, I won't squawk!"

There was a frozen silence at the other end of the line.

"That kind of thing's bad for business, Benny," Gus said. "The Dane, he gets a reputation for takin' money for a job, then not doing no job—"

"Anyone else know he took a job?"

There was another cold silence, one that did nothing to relieve the hot sweat on the back of my head. "I'll call him and tell him what you said, Benny," Gus replied. "But you won't like what comes next."

"I'm a big boy," I said. "So long as I don't see the obituary I paid him to see."

"I make this call, Benny," Gus said, and he sounded regretful, "an' I guarantee you won't see no such obituary." A hard click sounded at the other end of the wire.

Mike grabbed me by the arm as I tried running past.

"Benny!" he exclaimed with a grin. "How's every little thing? How's the little lady?"

"We're divorced," I snapped.

He chortled. "A black cat surely crossed your path the day you met her! She still yukkin' it up with that ballroom dancer?"

I wrenched myself free of his grasp.

"Nice of you to let her keep the necklace," he went on. "Even if— What's the expression? Pearls before swine?"

I tore a bill from my pocket and slapped it on the counter. "Buy 'im another donut," I growled at Lou Dixon. "So he can cram it!" Mike guffawed as I stalked out the door.

Damn Carole!

And damn Mike the Cop too, for giving me the needle!

It was almost enough to make me call Gus back, tell him to forget what I said about telling the Dane to forget the job. I could've broken Mike's jaw for calling my ex-wife a swine, but I'd called her worse after she dumped me, and after I'd found her pearl necklace—my present to her on our first wedding anniversary—in Gus's pawnshop.

Just my luck. Gus knew the Dane, and told me how he could arrange to relieve my heartache with a well-placed slug.

And in a moment of weakness, I had listened.

It was a bad afternoon all around. Another squall blew in after I left Dixon's, but there weren't no cabs at the stand, and they were playing a Robert Taylor picture (who I hate) at the Rivoli, so I got drenched when an awning upended itself over me as I huddled beneath. I wound up back at Dixon's.

"Call came in for you," Lou said when he saw me. He nodded at the pay phone. "Mike got it for you."

"Mike?" I felt cold blood drain from my face.

"Yeah. Said it was a guy lookin' for you. Said he'd walk around to your place, see about passing the message on to you. Had something else for you anyway."

I called Gus. "Dane's waitin' at your place, Benny," he whispered. "To talk over the situation."

My hands were numb as I hung up. Mike and the Dane, talking about me on my front stoop. That was not a conversation I was eager to imagine happening. For almost ten solid minutes I thought real hard about running to the bus terminal and skipping town with only the clothes on my back.

I did catch a bus, though not an out-of-town one. I figured if Mike didn't walk too fast, I could still beat him back to my place.

But it was the wrong bus, and there was a patrol car and a meat wagon out front of my building when I arrived forty minutes later.

Mike was cheerful, even with two bullets in his arm. He'd had a near thing, being answered from within my house with a short fusillade when he tried rattling my knob. But he didn't lose his cool, and he got the Dane when the other ran out the back.

I told him of my mishap at the bus stop. "Sounds like your black cat ran under a freshly painted white fence," he replied.

"Whaddayu mean?"

"Old expression my granny used to use. Means one piece of bad luck drives out another. I mean, if you'd beat me here, you might've got three slugs in the belly. You cross that fella somehow?"

"Somehow." It came back to me: Gus's warning that if I cancelled the deal, I wouldn't be seeing no unpleasant obituaries. The Dane must've wondered if I was setting him up.

"Well— Oh!" Mike added. "And here's your donut money back." He presented me with a hundred. "Didn't think this was the bill you thought it was."

-30-
Winner of The Writer's Cramp: 3-3-21
Prompt: Title it "Black Cat on a White Fence"