Murder Mystery... Chapter Four... "A Final Assault"!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:    A Possible Murder Mystery...  Just Trying it Out, Sort of...

Chapter Four — Mavis and Leonard - A Final Assault!

       Leonard, day bar manager of the famous and highly successful Beech Tree and Basswood Inn, arrived early to perform his usual duties.  It was a Friday, and Leonard habitually preferred a bit of a head start on this typically very busy day at the end of the workweek.  He set up the back bar in his usual manner, confident, or perhaps merely cautiously hopeful, the day would be uneventful.

About 45 minutes following Leonard’s arrival, Jack Roskov, barback and now “assistant chief daytime bartender” as well, reported to work.  Jack had been on the job for a period, at the time, of about three months.  He’d proved himself competent, and the staff grew to accept him as a valued member of the service crew.  “Hey Leonard, how you doing?  I’ll just start filling the coolers, unless you have something else for me to do.” 

“Go to it,” Leonard said.  “I’m OK here.  Got things well in hand.”

Jack said, “Hey, wait a second.  Is that a clip-on black tie you’re wearing?  Did you take some good advice, you know, in case of a Mavis incident?”

“No chance of that,” said Leonard.  “It’s just easier.  I mean, this type of tie.  And besides, I understand she’s on some sort of holiday travel, at least that’s what I hear from a friend of hers who lives in my neighborhood.  I think, I hope she’s had enough of her crazy tirades.  I think she’s accepted things.  I mean, the divorce.  She won’t show up.  I sort of promised Mr. Cruickshank we’ve seen the last of Mavis and her explosive antics!”

If indeed she had been away on holiday, it must have ended, or maybe it never actually occurred.  Just before noon, Mavis stumbled in, already well on her way to an extravagant state of inebriation.  

“Christ, she’s drunk as a boiled owl,” said Jack in a whisper.  “Hello, Mrs. Hoaglund.  How are we today?”

“Shut yer goddamned button and get the hell out of my way,” she shouted and snarled at the approaching Jack.  She didn’t ask for a drink.  No sane bartender would have served her one in any case.  

“Mavis,” Leonard began preemptively, “please just be calm.  Let’s talk. Please don’t behave in an unseemly manner.  There are customers at the bar, and…” 

“You can stick your ‘unseemly’ right up your ass,” spat Mavis, her eyes blazing.  She immediately climbed up on the bar rail as a stupefied Leonard stared in disbelief.  Too quick for him to react or move away, Mavis grabbed hold of Leonard’s tie.  Yanking and releasing the clip-on from Leonard’s collar, the unexpected action sent her backward.  She nearly fell as she slipped off the bar rail, but managed to maintain her balance, a remarkable feat in her condition.

“You rotten goddamned bassoon,” she screamed at the hapless Leonard.  Reacting more quickly than Jack thought possible for someone in her boozy condition, she practically leapt back onto the bar rail. 

“I think she meant to say, ‘baboon’,” said Jack in a quiet voice, directing the comment to a man seated at the bar, one of several shocked patrons.  The man’s eyes became enormous white poker chips, his mouth agape, as he stared transfixed at the crazy unfolding mayhem.

“I heard that, you wormy little shit!”  Mavis aimed the comment at Jack, like a poison dart.  The bar patron stared back and forth, at Mavis, then at Jack, then back to Leonard as if viewing a tennis match that had deteriorated into a violent melee, like an athletic contest turned into a one-sided battle, an assault laced with deadly venom.   
    

Above illustrations shown to depict
the difference between a bassoon
and a baboon!  

Unfortunately for Leonard, the cored and peeled lemons and sliced limes remained on the cutting board easily within her reach.  Within moments, Leonard seemed to morph into a rigid statue on which a flock of angry pigeons had unleashed its collective discharge, one of pulpy splatter, juice and seeds.  The assault, as had occurred a few times previously, was over in moments, and Mavis stormed from the barroom.  As she exited in a drunken, serpentine path, she passed by Jack delivering an elbow to his chest, sending him reeling into the aforementioned bar patron.  The man seemed not to notice, still goggle-eyed in a kind of shocked fascination.

Watching her departure with just his eyes pointed leftward, Leonard came back to himself, no longer the immoveable petrified statue.  “I thought she was out of town,” he said somewhat obliquely, still a bit stiff with astonishment.  He picked up a few bar towels, and headed for the employee wash and locker room.  

Another of the patrons, this man a bit less stupefied compared to the fellow with the poker-chip eyeballs, chuckled nervously.  “I take it that wasn’t staged for our amusement,” he said to no one in particular.  “Holy flaming shit, what a crazy damn spectacle!  Insane!  Holy flaming shit,” he repeated  The entire scene, witnessed from the onset, or eventually in process, by a number of bar and hotel staffers, was reported dutifully to Mr. Cruikshank, the general manager, by “Florence of Arabia” the salad chef.  For reasons never really made clear to Jack or his co-staffers, Florence disliked Leonard with a certain intensity.

“Unrequited love?” Jack mused, when he learned that Florence had informed on Leonard. “Poor old Leonard,” Jack murmured to himself.  “What the hell will happen now?”   
     

Later that same day, just before his day shift ended, Leonard was summoned to the office of the general manager.  Cruikshank’s discomfort was obvious to Leonard as he entered the GM’s office.  Cruikshank was, as usual, immaculately attired and groomed, his thin blond hair so neatly in place as to seem almost artificially attached to his head by a make-up professional.  He wore, as he normally did, a lightly colored suit and matching necktie.  The GM was a pleasant-

looking man.  His oval face was pale and relatively unlined, blue eyed and with a straight nose and wide mouth.  His features worked well to fashion a handsome composite.  He was thin and always presented himself with excellent posture, as if disciplined by a Marine Corps drill sergeant.  

Cruikshank stiffened as if coming to attention, and peered at Leonard over half-moon spectacles.  “Lenny,” he began, “please sit down.  I’m sorry to say this won’t be an easy conversation.  We’ve been friends a long time.”  And then came the inevitable “however” part.  “I simply cannot have this fine hotel, it’s reputation, sullied by the kind of… well, irrational and thoroughly uncomfortable…. I mean, of course, for our clientele…. behavior of your ex-wife, by Mavis.  I believe the best thing to do, at this juncture, is for you to move on.  That is, for you to find a different place to tend bar.  I can help you with that.  As I’m sure you know, I know a good many people in the hospitality business.  I can help you find a new position quickly.  Perhaps just until she, Mavis, can put the matter of your divorce at rest.  Until she finds peace.  I just don’t know what else we can do.  Perhaps at some point you can come back here to work.  I know you’re an intelligent person, Lenny.  I hope you can understand and accept my position in this matter.”

“Of course,” said Leonard.  “I get it, I understand perfectly.  I know you’ve been more than merely tolerant, Herbie.  If you can just give me a week or so, I’ll get things in order.  I’ll find a different job.  I hear they’re looking for an experienced man at the Red Goose.  You probably do too, but I know the owner.  I’ll talk to him; I’ll give him a call this evening.”  Leonard and Cruikshank shook hands and parted amicably.  

Needing a friend of a different sort, Leonard asked Jack to join him after work at the

nearby Margarita Port, a bar they both frequented, sometimes before but mainly after they had finished their day shifts.  The place had the look of a reasonably authentic, if posh, Mexican cantina.  

  “I’ve been asked to leave the Inn,” Leonard began.  “I’m sure it’s for the best.  Perhaps she won’t find me, Mavis I mean, and maybe if and when she does, that insane anger of hers will have ended."

“I wish I could have helped,” said Jack.  “Wish I could have prevented this latest episode.”

“Glad you didn’t do anything to interfere.  She’s nuts.  She would have sued you, taken you to court.  No.  Best to let the thing run its course.”

“Her law suit would have netted her a bag of salted peanuts, not much else,” said Jack.  Both men laughed heartedly, and ordered another round of margaritas.  They chatted amiably into the early evening about adventures and misadventures, relationships both sweet and tragic.  The conversation wandered on, each consuming an impressive number of the salt-rimmed conconctions as their moods softened, laughter and cheer supplanting gloom and apprehension.

   

************************************

Some 30 days or so passed uneventfully following Leonard’s departure from the Beech Tree and Basswood Inn.  Leonard was suitably ensconced at the Red Goose tavern.  The regulars had come to accept him, to enjoy his sense of humor and his easygoing manner.  The Red Goose was located in a kind of rural setting in suburban Redmond, Washington, a good distance from his former place of employment.  A kind of architectural oddity, the building that housed the Red Goose sported large, plate glass windows on either side of its main entrance.  Both windows and doorway sat at street level.  The configuration proved to be a significant misfortune for Leonard and the bar’s owner, one Charley Stackpole, a friendly man in his mid-sixties and a career-long saloon keeper. 

Early one very pleasant mid-autumn evening, a late model Buick purposely drove into and nearly through one of the plate glass windows, causing it to shatter violently with a terrific noise that sent a full house of bar patrons at the Red Goose into near panic.  The car was driven by Mavis.  She exited the vehicle, cautiously in spite of her apparent drunkenness, walked  

Not the exact one, but a good likeness
of the Buick Mavis drove!

unsteadily to the bar, and began to launch her fists, glassware and anything else she could find at and toward the hapless Leonard, breaking a fine piece of mirror on the antique back bar as the “final great assault” ensued.  It was like an unexpected firefight in a brutal mayhem film, one that had the effect of propelling viewers out of their seats and causing every palm to tingle and sweat.

A couple of patrons, both nicely inebriated, tried in vain to grab hold of Mavis toward the end of this latest mad onslaught.  Ever the clever eel, slippery and elusive, Mavis managed to dodge and weave her way from the bar and through the space that was once a proud plate glass window and jump into her car with extraordinary speed and dexterity.  The tires squealed as

she backed away from the wreckage — tires astonishingly undamaged by a million shards of broken glass.  She spun the auto away in a neat half-circle as if she were a well-practiced stunt driver, wrenched the Buick into drive and sped away into the night.  A bar-full of patrons watched her exit with a kind of dazed admiration. 

       Two of the Red Goose’s more colorful habitués were brothers — King Saul and Kid Rufus — the origin of their names a mystery to fellow patrons.  Magnificently bewhiskered, neither had seen a razor in years.  “That was some fancy driving,” said King Saul to his brother.  “I believe I drive better when I’m drunk.”

“Can’t wait to hear you tell that to some trooper if you get stopped drivin’ home from the Goose, wobblin’ all over the road.”  They both chuckled.

“Hold on there,” said King Saul to his brother after a long moment.  “I think you done drove us here today in your pickup?”  They stared at one another, each in turn scratching his chin whiskers.

“I hope she kept up the insurance payments on the Buick,” said Leonard with surprising calm.  “Good lord,” he exclaimed.  “I’d better call Charley.  How in the hell do I explain this disaster.  And how in the hell did Mavis figure out where I’m working.  I did my damnedest to keep it secret!  My god,” he said, addressing no one in particular, “the woman must be psychic...  crazy as a headless yard bird too!” 

Humbly Submitted 11-21-18 -- Joel K.

Chapter Three: Into the West...

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:    A Possible Murder Mystery...  Just Trying it Out, Sort of...

Chapter Three – Into the West…. But First, a Ritual

        The auditorium was packed with gowned men and women, different groups of them in different colors, a glorious array of distinctive regalia and insignia.  Everyone wore the requisite graduation cap.  On the heads of most of the graduates in the assemblage, square caps with their colorful tassels abounded.  As he sat there waiting for the remaining graduates to file into the cavernous hall, Jack Rosnov thought how those massed square caps resembled a vast, undulating sea, as heads bobbed and turned in conversation or observation.  He amused himself by thinking that if one of the caps were removed from one of the heads, would it seem as though a great sea suddenly drained, as if a plug were pulled from its floor deep below the surface, causing a great swarm of bodies to rush helplessly into an unseen drain and disappear forever into a great, bottomless trench.

Hating the wait, not wanting to be a part of the pageantry of graduation day, Jack was cursing vigorously under his breath, fuming, expecting his head to blow up in rage at any moment, like a bomb, a mine in an enemy harbor accidentally struck by an invading ship.  And then, finally, everyone was seated on the main floor of the auditorium.  Various university dignitaries trooped in, taking their seats at the long table facing the audience of graduates and their families, mothers and fathers and other relatives seated further back, beaming with pride, situated behind the graduating seniors, masters and PhD candidates.  The ritual commenced, at last.  The university president rose and gave lengthy introductions, finally presenting the prominent guest speaker upon whom an honorary degree would be conferred sometime during the proceedings.

Jack did not hear the name of the commencement speaker as the latter was introduced, nor did Jack really care.  Though he knew he could look up the speaker’s name in the commencement program, he had no real interest, at least not at that moment.  He did notice, however, that the speech was quite good.  He thought he remembered that the speaker was a professor of anthropology or history or, perhaps, social sciences.  The man talked about humankind’s propensity for violent behavior, and tried to make the case that human beings, at least in part, were not responsible for “inventing” its own base, cruel and too often outrageously violent behavior.  

“After all, it was a great ape who took up a club and struck another member of the ape family long before homo sapiens began fashioning weaponry.”  At least that’s what Jack thought the dignitary said.  In the end, the speaker’s message made the point that human beings have the intellectual power to reverse the backward evolutionary slide.  “We have the means to resolve conflicts by using our brain power, vs. using the destructive power of guns, knives, bombs and other more destructive weapons.”  It was that point, that snippet from the commencement address that stuck in Jack’s head, in his memory.

Following the ceremony and the private family party that saw many friends and family members gather in the basement recreation room of the Rosnov family home, Jack took a job, briefly, as a bartender in a tavern at which he had previously worked, “Mario’s on Mason.”  Tending bar was a profession he had used as a funding mechanism for part of his college education, and would use again to bankroll his soon-to-commence, he reassured himself, travels throughout the western United States.  The memory of that commencement gathering occupied a permanent etching in his brain.  It was during that happy celebration at which he once again enjoyed a long conversation and pleasant visit with the young woman who would eventually become his wife.   That event, the future marriage, was, at the time, unforeseen, and several years and a number of adventures removed from the graduation celebration that was happily unfolding, a tapestry of merriment, laughter, story-telling and free-flowing alcohol.

At Mario’s, Jack continued to concoct drinks and draw beers for the faithful patrons who considered the place their club, for many a refuge, for others a place they seemed to regard as home, at least until asked to leave or ejected at 2:00 in the morning, standard weekday closing time.  Mario’s was a kind of legendary east side Milwaukee bar, a “character lounge,” a hangout, a place of careless revelry for local celebrities, an occasional national celebrity and for those who simply wanted “to be somebody.”  Often feeling they succeeded, as into the procession of nights, they absorbed too much alcohol and felt themselves genuinely amusing and interesting, not merely boring drunks given to tiresome jokes and too much loud and forced laughter.  

Mario’s would provide the bankroll that Jack needed to make his escape, extend his empirical reach into the vast, beautifully wild and romanticized west.  Within the space of two months’ time, more or less, Jack and his possessions were packed into the older but serviceable convertible, and then finally on the road.  The odometer would eventually tick off some 180,000 miles before the red Chevy’s engine would burn itself out in a chaotic soup of blackened and co-mingled oil and water, becoming a bulk of fried and unusable scrap.  Jack and a friend would hitchhike home from the old Chevy’s final resting place, a service garage and junkyard in central Wisconsin.

********************************

Navigating the nation's highways with a mixture of giddy anticipation and anxiety, he enjoyed being on his own, driving the Interstate but retreating frequently to back country roads, drinking in the pleasures of summer landscapes and the faces of rural America.  It was a journey of pure joy, of freedom.  Jack knew he’d eventually wind up in Washington State, but savored the unhurried pace with frequent stops, collecting ideas and odd characters and memories of things seen and experienced, jotted into a spiral bound notebook.  Its pages would become smudged and bubbled, a kind of ski slope of moguls in miniature.  He had no camera but never regretted the decision not to carry one with him.

Eventually, two or three weeks into the odyssey, past stone sentries that lined the highway of a western landscape location he wouldn’t later recall, past hills, rivers, mountains, small towns and too many watering holes of a different sort, Jack arrived.  He landed in Tacoma, Washington, the suburb of Ruston to be accurate, near a scenic park bordering Puget Sound, Point Defiance.

Jack would soon reconnect with friends he met while serving in the armed forces, a bit more than four years prior to this “homecoming.”   Some of whom were residents of long standing, and still made Tacoma or its nearby communities their home.  Jerry Smythe was his first contact, closest among the friends with whom he’d soon reunite.  Those who knew him well called him “Jere the Hare,” owing to a bald pate rimmed by what remained of fair-colored fringe, his proud head always termed by his friends, female and male alike, a “perfectly-shaped cranium.”  

One of Jerry’s procession of paramours — Louise — had often announced, “He has a beautifully-shaped dome, and if anyone says otherwise, I’ll bonk his head with a skillet!”  Jerry often regretted ending his relationship with Louise.  “She was the best cook of them all,” he insisted.  The remark a bit cryptic, as he would not discuss nor reveal the nature of his relationships with “all” of the women in his past.  Or, perhaps, if a “serious love affair” had ended badly, crippling forever any need or wish to commit himself to just one of the  women who populated his longings.  Jack would shortly be introduced to the latest in Jere the Hair’s parade of lovers, a Latino named Magdalena whom Jerry called, not surprisingly, "Maggie."

(Special Note:   Next Chapter, if there is to be one!:    "A Grim Discovery!"  Stay Tuned, and thank you for your rapt attention...  Inattention?  Complete Disinterest??!!)

Humbly Submitted, 10-23-18 -- Joel K.