Free Shakedown by Gerald Petievich

ass for dinner."
    "The big guys from Cleveland and Chicago sold to the big corporations," Beadle said. "They got yuppies running the places now."
    Sands slapped his old friend on the shoulder. "How are ya makin' it these days?"
    "My sorry ass makes enough to get by. I collect a few debts for the bookies...that plus my police pension."
    A knock-kneed waitress wearing a short white fringed buckskin skirt and purple lipstick came to the table.
    "Can I get you fellas something?" she said in a Southern drawl. Beadle introduced her as Tex. They ordered drinks. As Tex walked away, Sands admired the way she moved her hips.
    "Nice broad, but don't even think about it," Beadle said. "I've been to her apartment. Dirty clothes, empty Kotex boxes, full trash baskets, cats crawling on the kitchen table. To me a dirty apartment means a dirty box. I'd expect gnats and blowflies to come flying out of her pussy. She'd invited me over, but I left without balling her sorry ass."
    "I'm not interested anyway."
    "You gonna marry Monica?"
    Sands nodded. "And you're gonna be the best man.
    But first I have some business to take care of. That's why I stopped by to see you."
    Ray Beadle swallowed twice. "What kind of business?"
    "The touch-play business...like the old days when you and I worked the vice squad. I need a backup man."
    Ray Beadle examined the palms of his hands. "Extortion is a heavy beef."
    "It's also where the heavy gold is."
    "How much are we talking about?"
    "I just took somebody down for fifty. With a backup man I can make a return trip."
    Tex, with buckskin flapping, brought drinks to the table. As she set the drinks down, Sands noticed that she had dirty fingernails. She winked, moved back to the bar.
    Ray Beadle, with furrowed brow, fingered the moisture on the outside of his cocktail glass. Then he picked up the glass, took a big drink, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, "I can't do time," he said. "My sorry ass just ain't made to do time."
    "There's a lot of bucks to be made," Sands said.
    "Easier said than done."
    "I guess you could say that about anything."
    "You haven't changed a bit, Eddie."
    "Yes I have. I've changed into a guy that's headed for the five-dollar tables rather than the slot machines. I'm through being a stooge for the police department or Parisi or anyone else." Eddie Sands drained the vodka from his glass. His lips burned.
    "Ain't this a bitch. You and me sitting here on our sorry asses talking shit...just like old times."
    "Are we still a team?" Sands said.
    "Come to think of it, that sorry-assed pension check of mine doesn't go very far in this goddam town...partner."

ELEVEN
     
     
    It was seven in the morning and every seat on the flight to L.A. was filled. The passengers, Eddie Sands thought, looked tired and hungover, and had that forlorn expression peculiar to gamblers and losers.
    During the short flight, Sands and Ray Beadle, both dressed in suits and ties, talked mostly of their years on the police department: the time they bugged the room of a New Jersey hood and overheard him in a spirited session of anal sex with a young male prostitute; the time they got so drunk at a police retirement party that when they left they couldn't find their police sedan in a crowded casino parking lot. Cop talk.
    Once in L.A., having rented a car with a cash deposit, Sands steered out of the airport road and onto a freeway heading north. He noticed that Beadle kept rubbing his hands nervously on his pant legs.
    "What happens if this sorry-assed motherfucker just flat freaks out and calls the cops?" Beadle said.
    Sands smiled. "Why would he want to do that?" he said calmly.
    "Don't fuck with me like that, partner. Anything can happen. You know that."
    Sands kept on driving.
    "Did you hear what I said?"
    "Relax."
    At Sunset Boulevard, Sands steered off the freeway and headed east a few miles along the northern edge of the sprawling UCLA campus, then down into a Beverly Hills residential area. Even though he'd