BREAKUP By Terence Butler

One morning I came out on the balcony and looked down at my parking slot and saw that my car was gone. Really pissed me off.  It wasn’t that I loved the car so much, it was more like why the hell do thieves have to steal from poor people and not from the big time criminals who live in the gated communities?

I set out storming around the neighborhood. A few years before I’d had a VW stolen by some neighbor kids who just rode around to show off and then left it a couple blocks away, so I thought maybe I’d run across it.

Actually I was still depressed that my girlfriend dumped me and the car was just an excuse to get angry/busy. She'd email-dumped me an hour after I told her I got laid off. I mean, how phony is it that as soon as I lose my job she needs “more space” and “time to grow?" I thought she might help me pay my rent until I went back to work. What a naïve asshole I am!

 I could have walked right by the car and not even noticed because all I was thinking about was Angie. I walked, and I thought about Angie, how pretty she is and how sweet she could be and I gradually lost my head of steam.

It was a beautiful sunny day and the birds were yelling in the trees and people were saying hello and smiling, and it dawned on me that the car had probably been repossessed.

I also realized I didn’t need to even care about the car or Angie. I just needed to take care of number one and everything would be fine. I could make it through this rough patch on my own.

I started feeling better and I stopped at the store and got a newspaper and splurged on some hot dogs and buns. I went back to the apartment and out on my balcony to grill the dogs and have a look at the want ads. There weren’t any jobs though; just the same ones I’d been looking at for weeks. Dead end jobs I either wouldn’t do or wasn’t qualified for.

By late afternoon I had indigestion and a headache and I was back to thinking that repo companies are no better than car thieves and that Angie was a lying bitch who had broken my heart. I sat on the balcony and watched the traffic on the freeway until it was almost dark and then I went back to the store and got some jug wine. After I’d drunk about half of it I started calling Angie. She never did pick up. She had written me off.

*

Things started getting weird a couple of weeks later. I got a notice for a parking ticket in the city that was dated before the car disappeared. I hadn’t driven it for a month prior to the date on the ticket and now they were saying I had 30 days to pay this ticket or it would go to my DMV file.

I called the number and got involved in the menu and got hung up on. I called back and got a sleepy lady who put me on hold while she looked up the citation number. I guess she died or something because I heard “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” at least three times. I couldn’t stop thinking about my cell phone bill, so I hung up. Maybe I'd call back later because I sure as hell couldn’t pay any ticket now.

The next day I got a notice of a fix-it ticket for not having my license in my possession, dated a week after the car went missing.  Someone had stolen my car and was driving it. It looked now like whoever stole the car was driving it occasionally even before he took it, because how else would I get a parking ticket with the date from before it disappeared?  And if that was true, it meant that he had a key, and so that meant he must have gotten it from Angie since I gave her a spare in case of emergency.

I felt the heat building in my face. I let my mind race. Some guy got next to her and they used my car without me knowing it, and then when she finally dumped me they just kept it. Now he'd gotten pulled over and he’d tricked the cops by saying he’d forgotten his license and all he had was the registration I kept in the glove compartment.  

I guess I was pretty frustrated because I started yelling and throwing stuff around in my apartment. My neighbor banged on the wall though, so I cooled off pretty quick. But I was left with the kind of slow burning anger that made me want to get even. I decided to try her land line.

It sounded as if the guy had just woken up, and also there was a trace of an accent. “Holl-oh?” he said. I acted nonchalant.

“Hey, can I talk to Angie?” I said. The call went dead.

I got this picture in my mind, and I know there wasn’t any real information for it, but the picture was this guy and Angie lying up in bed sharing a cigarette after a heavy workout. She’s all satisfied, and he’s hairy and dark, like the guys she always flirts with, and I’m sufficiently gone from her life that she doesn’t even think that it might be me calling, so when the phone rings she tells him to answer it. And he says in his sexy accent, “Holl-oh?” and I feel like somebody just hit me in the back of the head with his fist.

*

I calmed right down when I heard the knocking on my door. It was more of a doomy thumping, really, but I opened it without hesitating. This action was akin to throwing the excrement at the fan and waiting for the result.

There was an NFL linebacker with a shaved head standing there. He was dressed in a suit that was at least one size too small and he had a tiny notebook in one hand and a shiny badge in the other.  He looked me up and down and then looked at the notebook. 

“Art New-vex?” he said, mispronouncing my name because of the weird spelling. His voice was Clint Eastwood’s; all whispery and mad as hell.

“It’s Nouveaux actually, like New-VOH. It’s French.” My folks always told me to tell people that so they’d be impressed instead of thinking it was Jewish or, god forbid, Polish. My folks are Polish Jews.

“You missing a car?”

“Yes! Did you find it?”

“We found it all right. Where’d you leave it?”

“Somebody stole it! From right here in front, and I think I know who did it. Not his name, but I know who he is or who he might be, anyway.”

“Stole it. From right here.”

“Yeah. Did they wreck it? Is it driveable?”

“They?”

“Uh, yeah. My girlfriend -ex-girlfriend- I think she helped him steal it.”

“Tell me about your ex-girlfriend, Art.”

“Well she’s a brunette, about 5 foot 5, 110 pounds, nice shape, 25 years old. Her name is Angie Graham.”  

“You want to get your wallet and jacket and come downtown with me, Art?”

“Downtown?”

“Yeah. That description of your girlfriend matches the dead person we found in the trunk of your car.”

*

His name was Lieutenant Laszlo Nuschler, and when he got done with me I felt like a puppy that has been spanked, shaken and yelled at, only for something far worse than pooping on the rug. The guy actually believed I had killed Angie. I almost believed it myself when I finally staggered out of there at midnight. He never laid a finger on me but somehow I hurt all over.

The situation was this; I was a murdering scumbag as far as Lt. Nuschler was concerned, and he was going to prove it. He told me that guys like me always do something stupid and he was just going to wait until I performed like the trick monkey he knew I was. No matter how many times I answered his repeated questions with the same answers or how many times I swore I hadn’t killed Angie, he just called me a lying sack of dog shit and yelled even louder.

I’d had sense enough to grab the paperwork for the tickets and bring that along, and it gave me enough of an out that for the time being he had to let me go. He said he would look into that stuff and interview people around the apartment and get back to me. If I left town it would prove my guilt and he would hunt me down wherever I went.

I did not doubt him.

Now I just shuffled along in the nighttime like a wandering ghost, searching for some lost key that would unlock this suit of chains and let me die peacefully. Pretty dramatic I know, but Nuschler had made me feel like the State Poison Bed was waiting just around the corner.  I was feeling like Angie was the great love of my life and she had been taken from me by unknown evil forces and my Mission of Destiny was to avenge her death. Or alternatively, just not go to prison.

The buses quit running to the suburbs at 11:00 so it was about 2 in the morning when I drug myself up the stairs to my apartment and fell into bed. Sleep came down like a thick blanket thrown over me and I dreamed all night of Lieutenant Nuschler dangling me over a pit of rabid Rottweilers. And of poor, dead Angie, hidden in the trunk of my car.

*

Leaning on the balcony rail, letting the white noise of the morning freeway traffic smother thoughts of my predicament, I saw Mr. Foulkes, the apartment house manager hustling my way. He was glancing up directly at me about every fourth step so it was too late to pretend I hadn’t seen him coming and duck back inside. He was shouting even before he got to me, such was his haste.

“Morning, Mr. Novoah! Sorry to hear about your girlfriend. She was a awful pretty girl, wasn’t she? Awful pretty. They had her high school graduation picture on the Tee V. You must feel awful. Just awful, I bet".

 “Thanks, Mr. Foulkes. Yes.”

“Well, I need to tell you something. I wanted to tell the police, but I didn’t for some reason, and then I forgot to call them, and since I seen you on your porch I thought why don’t I just tell you and you can tell them?”

“Sure, Mr. Foulkes. What is it?”

“I seen her getting into your car what must have been the night she got killed. She wasn’t too happy about it neither. None too happy.”

A witness! I wanted to hug the old man. But I had to be calm. I didn’t want him shouting his news to the whole apartment complex.

“Can you come up here, Mr. Foulkes?”  

I went in and threw on some jeans. I was pulling a tee-shirt over my head when he knocked on the door. I let him in and tried to be patient while he started rambling towards what I desperately needed to hear.

“Just want you to know that the Foulkeses ain’t no kind of snoops. I happened to be up that night due to eating too much blood sausage and sauerkraut for dinner.”

“Oh, I know your no snitch Mr. Foulkes, but could you tell me what it was you saw that night?”

“Call me Papa, Mr. Nauvoo. Me and Mama Foulkes like to say we're just  Foulkes.”   

“Sure, Papa. Now if you could--”

“Well, I was watching the late night QVC channel and I heard noise outside, so I got up and turned the lights off and opened my curtain a little bit. I seen your girlfriend, Miss Graham, arguing with this fella and starting to walk away from him when he grabbed her and shoved her into your car. And he punched her pretty hard before he slammed the door. She kind of slumped down in the seat and then he got in and took off like a bat out of hell. It didn’t look right to me. Didn’t look right at all.”

“Did you see the guy? You know what he looks like?”

“No sir, I didn’t get a real good look at him, but I knew it wasn’t you and that’s why I wanted to tell the police, because when you watch the crime shows the police always go after the husband or the boyfriend right away since they done it nine times out of ten. But unless you was wearing a wig of long dark hippy looking hair and a black beard it just wasn’t you. It just didn’t look at all like you. You got more size on you than this here fella too.”

I’m a redhead and I keep my hair short. 

“The other thing is, Mr. Nuovo, and I got to apologize here for being so dang forgetful, Mama says I got that allshiners or whata-ya-call it, but I think it’s just getting old. We all get old if we’re lucky, and a guy just can’t keep every dang thing that happens straight. I was telling her the other day, Monday I guess it was, about how I was down to the-.”

“Mr. Foulkes! You started to tell me about something else you forgot. About my girlfriend, the night you saw her get in my car?”

The old guy started patting his pockets, mumbling, looking for something.  He pulled out what looked exactly like Angie's phone.  

 “Your girlfriend dropped this when he was putting her in the car before they drove away”. I snatched it from him. I flipped it open and started trying to figure it out. Too late I realized I’d hurt his feelings.

“I’m sorry, Papa. I’m just scared because the cops are trying to pin this on me and this phone may hold some information that will help my case. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. And call me Art from now on.”

That was all it took. Just being nice turned his smile back on.  

" It's OK Art, I know you must be scared."

 “Papa, I’m sorry, but right now I need to start looking at this phone and see if I can find out what might have happened that night.”

“You call me if we can help".

 

*

 

The phone  had old emails to a people she’d written to within the time period when all this was happening, myself included.

His name was Mahmoud Shirazi, he was an Iranian brought here as a ten year old, and she’d met him at a party where I’d gotten drunk and passed out in the backseat of my car. He helped her put me in there, and later went with her and helped again when she put me in bed at my apartment. Then she gave him a ride home. I got this from an email Angie had sent to her sister Jill.

There were other emails to Jill talking about how “Mood” was such a calm guy and how it was so neat to experience another culture from someone who traveled so easily within it, and how she felt bad about drifting away from me, but the combination of my bad temper and the fun she was having with Mood made it harder and harder to enjoy my company.

Then there was some stuff about her “borrowing” my car to go with Mood to a belly dance festival in the city. About how he wanted to drive it even though he didn’t have a license, and how he turned out to be a really terrible driver and they had a big fight when she refused to let him drive anymore. He was upset because he felt it wasn’t right for a woman to drive a man, so she decided then that they just wouldn’t use the car at all.

She told Jill that she hadn’t felt good about that part of the whole thing anyway, and she had to make a decision on me soon, but Mood was making it hard because he was becoming kind of demanding and expecting her to do whatever he wanted to do just because he was a man, “and men make the decisions” in his worldview.

A later email talked more about an increase of that conflict, and described an incident when she caught him taking the key to my car from her purse. When she confronted him he told her he’d done it several times already and then he slapped her and stormed out. This is when she made up her mind to get away from both of us.

Then Angie told Jill that I’d lost my job and that I was asking her to move in and help me with my rent and bills until I got another job. She also said that Mood had told her he wanted to use the car to go to California to work in his Uncle’s produce market, that he planned go out there and get established and then he’d send for her.

The part that really got to me was this; “WTF planet are these guys living on!? Do they think that I have nothing better to do with my life than take care of them?”

The last email she’d sent was the one to me, telling me she needed more space in her life and time to grow. She said she’d return some books and my car key that evening and if I wanted to go somewhere and talk she’d like that. She signed it; “With Love and Hope, Angie”.

*

An insistent knock roused me from the couch. I slipped the phone under a pillow and went to the door.

It was Mahmoud. It had to be him. Middle Eastern, long black hair tied back and a full black beard neatly trimmed. There was a muscular little guy with him. Together the two of them couldn’t have weighed much more than my 200, but they looked dangerous in the same way feral tomcats do. Something about the calm way they held themselves, how Mood’s eyes were sheltered behind sleepy lids, how the other guy looked relaxed, but coiled like spring steel.

“I am Mahmoud. I came to get Angie’s things.”

As soon as I heard his name pronounced the way it is supposed to be-- Macch-MOOD-- I knew he was deadly serious. This would not be a formal call, a reaching out by kind Koranic adherents to a grieving member of a sister faith. These guys wanted Angie's phone. They didn’t know I had it, but they were determined to find out, whatever it took.

I felt strangely calm. Maybe it was the danger I knew I was in that made me calm but my instinct for self preservation was keeping rage somewhere below until I’d need it. I spoke as quietly as I could.

“There aren’t any of her things here. She didn’t live here. And you have a lot of balls coming here, dude.”

“Yes? Why is that?” They came in together then, not touching me but forcing me back by their sheer presence. My anger notched up a little closer to the surface as I backed up.

“Why is that? You have to be shitting me, man. You stole my girlfriend, and you stole my car, and I have an idea you might be the one who killed her and framed me for it.”

The little guy closed the door softly and stationed himself in front of it. Mood glided across the rug and let himself down on the couch. He was sitting on top of her phone now.

“Why would you have such an idea, Art? Did you know that Angie and I had gotten married? I wouldn’t kill my wife, Art.”

I almost lunged for him then, and I guess he felt it because he put his hand inside his jacket as if there was something there that I should be wary of. The little guy rustled around behind me, making noise so I’d remember he was there.

“You know, that’s just bullshit. She wouldn’t marry you, or me. She was smarter and better than either one of us will ever be, and you need to get the hell out of here right now, because I’m calling the cops.”

I moved toward the kitchen and the phone that hung on the wall there, and both of them came for me then. Mood did have a pistol, but he hesitated after he got it out. Maybe he was thinking I’d stop when I saw it.  But it was too late for hesitation and he should have shot me because I didn’t stop.

I swung my fist and the telephone handset in it with all the force of rage and frustration his head had coming to it. I connected, and the handset broke in his face. The adrenaline pouring through my brain slowed things down enough so that I could see his nose flatten and his teeth break and a startling amount of blood shoot into the space between us. I intuited the little guy rushing from behind, so I just stuck a leg straight back and into his nuts and he went down, dropping a curved dagger as he did. The little Persian Knight should have brought a gun like his buddy had.

My door came crashing in as I bent over to take Mood’s gun. I crouched and spun and held the gun out in front of me as if I knew what I was doing.

I’ll always be grateful that Lt. Nuschler did know what he was doing because he yelled at me right then, and it was what he said and the superior rage in his voice, the rage of somebody who is pissed off for a living, that let me recognize him.

“Police! Drop your weapon! Get down on the floor! Do not Move!”

I was glad to comply.

*

From the dinette table in the Foulkes’ apartment I could see the main stairwell that leads to the upper floors of the building and the identical doors that open onto the central courtyard and the tiny pool. My own door was the second one to the right on the second floor. I glanced at it occasionally while I ate a piece of Mama’s fantastic rhubarb pie with homemade vanilla ice cream.

Papa sat across from me and explained how Lt. Nuschler got there in time to save my butt.

“I been keeping a eye on you and your place every since this whole deal got started. Sure didn’t want nothing to happen to you, Art. Sure didn’t. Bad enough what happened to Miss Graham, let alone anyone else. I’ve told Mama Foulkes many times that you ain’t like some of them who plays their music too loud or stays in the pool past 10, ain’t I Mama?”

Mrs. Foulkes just smiled at him. Probably because, as I was learning, he was going to keep going until he got done talking, whenever that might be.

“Anyways, I seen them fellas park out on the street and sit there argy-in’ and I figured them out real quick. I called Nuschler on his portable phone with the number he give me on his business card. That’s it on the fridge right there. It’s the tan one with the badge on it. Then I went and got my .45 from the closet shelf -I don’t leave that thing lying around where the grandkids might get it even though it ain’t loaded because them little buggers will find a way to get in trouble no matter what, and I sat right here and loaded it and I watched. See, I know how to handle a .45 from when I was a M.P. in Korea and there’s lots of times I had to throw down on some rowdy drunk soldier. Never shot one of ‘em, but I come close a few times. Yes, I did.”

Then he stopped talking and just looked at me for a bit. He looked shy and unsure, as if he had something more to say but didn’t quite know how. I let him know with my eyes that it was OK to tell me whatever he wanted.

“You know, Art, I have to apologize again for my forgetfulness here. Some days are better, but it seems like I’m just not as sharp as I used to be.” He glanced up at Mama and she stepped to him and put her arm around his shoulders and squeezed. He gathered strength from that and cranked himself up again.

“If I had of remembered about that fella and Miss Graham  none of this here might have happened to you, and I want you to know how bad I feel about that.”

He’d saved my bacon and he still felt bad. I knew I had to rectify that.

“Papa, I’m just glad you were here when it counted” I said. “I want to thank you for it, and to tell you, what with running this big apartment building and taking care of all of us tenants the way you do, it’s no wonder you forget things sometimes. My memory must not be that great either, the way I forget to pay the rent on time every now and then.”

We all had a good laugh then, and Mama took my plate and refilled it, and Papa got the .45 and showed me how it works. He also told me some great stories of his MP days. It took him awhile, but it was worth it.

THE END

Terry writes from what he learned in "the old school". Tell stories and keep to the line. See Elmore Leonard's 10 rules for good writing. Google it.

Terry says Donald Westlake is the best writer of crime fic. who ever lived. Google him. Read the Parker novels in order. Pay close attention and it will be better than 4 years in college.

Hollister California is where Terry lives. His wife is a genius but he has her fooled for no