No Quarter

Pretend Uncle Tony Johansen woke on this second of May morning and remembered. He raked his seventy-five-year-old hands over his face, plucked sleep crust from his eyes, squeegeed salt water away. Tears? He didn’t know what would be worse, mourning with the family or, as it was, by himself. The family he’d grown up in would have kept it locked up, far from public or even private expression. No matter. This particular second of May was a milestone in the Johansen family history. Ten years. Though, to Pretend Uncle Tony, the decade felt less than a day old.

“Pretend Uncle” was the honorific jokingly bestowed on him by the others because Tony wasn’t blood. But then the jest was no more. They’d all passed on, except for Kevin, all those Johansens. The late nineties and early two thousands, they were the Grim Reaper years. Cancer’s catalog: lung, breast, brain, colon, esophageal. Ten years ago, Tony and Kevin made up what remained, with Tony as the eighteen-year-old’s life coach. Tony had laughed when Kevin referred to him that way. Life coach, for crying out loud.

Ten years ago, Tony and Kevin were going to meet for breakfast as they normally did at a little café on Fifth Street, place that had been around for years. Tony was about to get a refill on his coffee, but the boy hadn’t put in an appearance yet. He apologized to the waitress, left some money on the table and left.

Kevin’s efficiency apartment was a few blocks away, just off Fifth. His bicycle—he’d lost his driver’s license that past winter—was chained and locked to the porch railing. Apparently, he hadn’t even left the place, a chopped-up sieve of a house on Weeks Avenue. The efficiency was in the attic space and Tony had a key, but it was unnecessary. The door was ajar, open an inch or two. He called out, but when there was no response, he pushed the door wide.

Kevin was there, on his bed, earbuds planted in his ears. A Yankees ballcap, black, down to the iconic N and Y, hung from a corner of the footboard. Music came muffled from the earbuds. But Kevin wasn’t listening. Kevin was dead.

Tony thought about it a lot over the years, that ballcap. Strange as hell, but he did. He didn’t recognize it as Kevin’s. The kid didn’t even like baseball. Tony thought about it a lot. The cap hung forever after on a coat hook by the backdoor in the utility room, as if waiting for its rightful owner to return. The older man considered wearing the cap during the baseball season in progress when Kevin died, but he stuck with his preferred Minnesota Twins lid. Besides, he was positive that the black ballcap wasn’t Kevin’s. He also believed the cap was connected in some way to his death.

Kevin’s death. To Tony, sure, it was suspicious, but to the local cops it was just another case of a kid OD’ing. Hell, Tony knew Kevin smoked weed occasionally, but an overdose? The police happened by that day. Tony hadn’t phoned 911, not that he recalled. He was in shock. Even Anita Sobczak put in an appearance. She was the PD’s district commander, whatever power that title gave her. At the time, he appreciated it. Now, a 1000-piece puzzle was nearly complete with Sobczak locked up for her drug-dealing operation. She had transformed her confidential informants into her very own drugstore delivery service. That trial certainly made a splash in the Twin Ports of Superior-Duluth. Her conviction landed her in Taycheedah, the women’s prison over in Fond du Lac. Given his druthers, Tony would have been happy to see Anita Sobczak dead.

Enough of the replay.

Tony, on this warm May morning in the northland, brewed a pot of what was on sale at the grocery store, went with a cup out to his backyard patio—a twelve-by-six of faded pavers he’d laid out thirty-five, forty years ago for Ginni, his late wife—wiped the dew from the seat of the white plastic lawn chair with his bandana, and then planted his scraggy ass. He expected no company. The twin of the plastic lawn chair sat in the open doorway of his garage. Arrayed across its seat was an extension cord, a rifle, and a hammer. If asked about the arrangement of these items, he would shrug and say, “You pick up one tool to take care of a job, do that job, set the tool in a convenient spot when you’re done, and so on and so forth.” Lately, the job was evicting pigeons from the gutters on either side of house. Dirty birds.

For now, Tony sipped his sugary coffee and watched the goings-on next door.

New neighbors moving in.

They seemed a younger couple, moving boxes from a U-Haul to the house, taking time to goof off with their little boy. Tony guessed the kiddo was four or five years old. The Pretend Uncle didn’t want to bother the family on the day they were moving in. Besides, he was preoccupied. He reasoned he could catch up with them later. When Tony finally did meet them, he was surprised.

It was early evening, in the alley behind their houses. Tony and the new neighbor were putting out trash and filling their recycling bins for the next day’s pickup. What staggered Tony was that the other man was an older dude.

“Well, then. Good evening,” Tony said, wiping his hands on a bandana. “Welcome to the ’hood. Name’s Tony Johansen.”

In a baritone too smooth for this alley encounter, the new neighbor said, “Frank Slick.” Their brief handshake was made shorter by the youngest member of Slick’s household, a little kid who spun around the corner of the garage, kicking up gravel with the rubber soles of his sneakers. “And this is Jamie.”

Pretend Uncle’s eyebrows crept up and he smiled.

Frank laughed. “No, no. Jamie’s our grandson.”

That voice. That name too. Something familiar. “You a singer by any chance, Frank?”

Slick’s wrinkled face blushed as he nodded.

“My wife loved you and the bands you were in.”

“Back in the day, yeah. Those days are long gone. Tell her thanks, though.”

Tony shook his head. “Only in my dreams. She passed away twelve years ago.”

“Damn.” The conversation stalled out at that point, both men having run empty on their pasts.

Bev Slick, Frank’s wife, always had a full tank of gab. So Tony judged. She also wouldn’t take no for an answer. To anything, as it turned out. The evening after Tony met Frank out back, she invited the Pretend Uncle over for coffee and kringle, the Official State Pastry of Wisconsin. He could have his choice: almond or cherry. He was torn, but almond it was.

Before the coffee klatch was over, Tony’s spigot turned on full, he’d let his entire history loose on Bev and Frank at their kitchen table. He didn’t require a glug or two of Frank’s whisky in his coffee, only occasional prods from Bev. His entire history, or nearly so.

Ginni dying, taken by ovarian cancer.

Shortly after his sweetheart’s death came Tony’s retirement from the shipyard, where he’d been employed as a welder his entire work life.

“Other family?” Bev asked.

Finally holding back, he’d replied no, not adding that this was because he was a Pretend Uncle among the Johansens, that they’d all passed on. And nothing about Kevin’s murder, which he would have called it. Murder. No one else did. Anyway, ten years after, yes, it was murder.

He deflected, asked the Slicks about their history, and about the grandson who’d nodded off on the sofa in the living room after snarfing down a generous slice of the pastry, almond and cherry, and a glass of milk.

Frank watched Bev at Tony’s asking and she more than complied.

“Yes, Jamie”—she gestured toward the living room and the sleeping boy with her chin, a no-nonsense grandma—“our grandson. Cyn’s boy. He’s our responsibility now, of course. His mom— Cyn liked to drink. Too much.” Bev scratched with her thumbnail at something nonexistent on the tabletop. “I would say—Frank, correct me if I’m wrong—but I would say the driest Cyn ever was was when she was a child, and then when she was pregnant with Jamie. That was remarkable, a shocker. But, Frank, how old did she admit she was when she started?”

“Eleven,” Frank said. It looked to Tony as if Frank wished he could disappear the whisky bottle back into the cabinet.

Bev shook her head. “Jamie’s father was bad news from the word go. On the run, to hear him tell it, from this, that, and the other. Like it was something to be proud of. One felonious SOB.” She adjusted her bifocals though the move appeared unnecessary.

Frank coughed, then said, “He’s the main reason our moves have been so frequent.” He glanced over at Bev. “We’re both from Superior. But we’ve moved to Milwaukee. To Wausau. Hayward?”

His wife nodded, maybe smiled, recalling the home of the National Fresh Water Fishing Museum. Hayward. That was correct.

“And now we’re here again. We’ve had it with moving on, avoiding him. He should be the one running.”

“We’ve moved just to keep Jamie safe. At least one step ahead of Worst Dad of the Century. Bobby Cheever,” Bev said.

That name. Bobby Cheever. Tony Johansen had never met him, but he knew the name. It was another piece of his history that he would hold close for now.

After the caffeinated evening at the neighbors’ kitchen table, Tony couldn’t sleep. He put a Led Zepplin album on the turntable. He’d bought the record at Finyl Vinyl. This particular LP, a replacement for one Tony lost years back at a party in South Superior, Kevin let him know there was a copy of it at Finyl Vinyl. He even hid the album for Tony in the Easy Listening section so no one else could snag it. Sure, the cardboard sleeve had seen better days, a previous owner’s name block printed with a ballpoint pen in the upper right-hand corner. But the LP? Excellent shape, no scratches.

Coffee. Bobby Cheever. That name. That kept him awake too.

He sat back in his La-Z-Boy recliner. Ginni gave it to him for Christmas one year. So he reclined. There was something about listening to Led Zepplin late at night, cruising on a coffee bean high. And not loud. No. Low volume. The rumble of John Paul Jones’s bass and Bonzo’s drums, the piercing sheen of Jimmy Page’s guitar work, and Robert Plant’s wail.

Tony closed his eyes, recalled a retirement party, Pap Mizinski’s, at the Ore Dock Tavern. Someone plugged their coin in the jukebox for “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”—and it could have been Pap’s choice. Pap. It was a nickname Tony associated with an old character actor. Walter Brennan. Pap didn’t look like Brennan at all, though he was old, walked with a hitch in his step, claimed he began working at the shipyard in the whaleback days. An obvious lie on the old man’s part. Both were in their cups late that night, Pretend Uncle and Pap.

Anita Sobczak had been sentenced earlier that day. The local news was on the TV that hung mute in a ceiling corner of the tavern. Everyone knew about Kevin. Even Pap. Pap told Tony what he’d heard.

“Of course, you know Anita had a fixer.” Pap eyed Pretend Uncle. “Took care of loose ends, so to speak.”

Pretend Uncle looked at him, covered an eye to stop going cross-eyed from the evening’s multiple shots of brandy. “Go on.”

“Christ.” Pap sighed. “Maybe Kev was a loose end that needed tying up.”

Pretend Uncle had always thought, up to that drunken moment, that the word on Pap knowing the underside of the city was a crock. Now though, he repeated, “Go on.”

“Two words.” Pap urped something up into his mouth that he swallowed back down before saying, “Bobby. Cheever.”

Within a week of Anita Sobczak’s sentencing, Bobby Cheever was in the wind.

A decade plus days after Kevin’s murder, Pretend Uncle had Led Zepplin playing at low volume. The sound was like a summer storm rolling in.

#

The wind brought him to town in late May. Powerful enough to call a gale, the late spring northeaster came in off the lake, spun up the hills of Duluth and rolled back down on Superior, dropping Bobby Cheever like shipwreck debris on the Slicks’ deck.

Pretend Uncle, glancing up from his kitchen sink, spied him over there, a puff-faced man-child unsuccessful at encouraging Jamie, the son he hadn’t seen in perhaps years, to “Come meet your Pop, little man.” Jamie was having none of it.

Lake Superior-souvenir cup filled with coffee and a couple three spoonfuls of C&H, Pretend Uncle meandered over to Bev and Frank’s deck as if he had never intended to do just that. He was totally at ease butting into this midafternoon get-together—he felt Bev would’ve done the same—understanding who their visitor was.

The younger man with the pink, bloated face of someone addicted to something legal or illegal, was talking about how happy he was to be back in Superior, staying with a buddy right there in North End, and scouting now for work appropriate to his abilities. Pretend Uncle wondered what the hell those abilities could be when Bev announced, “Tony! This is our next-door neighbor, Bobby. Tony Johansen. Tony, this is Bobby Cheever, Jamie’s dad.” Unspoken was that the little boy wanted nothing to do with his dad.

“Johansen,” Bobby Cheever said, shaking Pretend Uncle’s hand. He knew the name, Pretend Uncle could tell. “Anyway”—as if waking himself from a bad dream, Cheever returned to talk of job prospects—“Rusty, the guy whose place I’m couch-surfing at right now, he knows some guys at the refinery, the railroad too.”

Frank laughed a whatever and shook his head.

Cheever looked back at Pretend Uncle. “Johansen, huh? Name sounds familiar.”

“Used to be a lot of us in the area. Not so much now.” He proffered a that’s-life shrug, said good afternoon to the Slicks and walked back to his house.

It took three nights, but then he was there.

Pretend Uncle heard the backdoor open, the screen door tap shut, then footsteps. He saw a slow swinging drift of faint light. He expected the visitor sooner or later, so left the front and backdoors unlocked. He sat in his recliner in the dark—checked his wristwatch, it was just after three in the morning—and sipped lukewarm decaf.

He watched how the light grew stronger as it moved closer, his visitor weaving through the utility room, the kitchen, the dining room, a phone’s flashlight guiding the way. Cheever jerked back when the bright light picked out Pretend Uncle in the living room, in the La-Z-Boy, a coffee cup in one hand, the other resting on the rifle that lay across his lap.

“That song. Is that ‘Whole Lotta Love’?” Cheever asked.

Pretend Uncle nodded, the stereo speakers rumbling low. It was a compact disc. He didn’t want the bother of flipping an LP to side two. Not tonight.

“Why don’t you turn it the fuck up?”

A floor lamp popped on. “I will when I need to.” Cheever eyed the rifle. Pretend Uncle thought, He doesn’t know what a Benjamin Bulldog is.

“I don’t always walk in uninvited, Mr. Johansen. Johansen, right?”

Pretend Uncle shrugged. Cheever may have been uninvited, but was expected nonetheless. Gesturing with his coffee cup, he said, “Have a seat there, on the sofa.”

Cheever frowned, glanced at the rifle, and then thought it best to, yes, sit. Nodding at the weapon cradled on Pretend Uncle’s lap, he said, “There’s really no need for that.”

“Hm. Oh, and turn off your phone. There you go. I don’t know. You walked into my home in the middle of the night without knocking or ringing the doorbell. You’ve murdered at least one person that I’m aware of. That’d be another reason for this.” Pretend Uncle patted the rifle.

Cheever’s eyebrows gave an is-that-so twitch.

“Do you deny that you murdered Kevin Johansen?”

“Your name, Mr. Johansen, when I heard it over at Frank and Beverly’s, I admit that gave me a little blast from the past.” He jumped when Pretend Uncle goosed the volume with a remote. “I never killed anyone.” If the timbre of Bobby Cheever’s voice had been fingers, they would have been crossed.

“Again, I’m asking about Kevin Johansen.” And, again, the volume increased.

Cheever’s foot tapped, but not in time to the music. “What I recall, that kid overdosed.”

“With your help.” Pretend Uncle swung the rifle up and aimed it at Cheever’s chest. “Why? If you didn’t even know Kevin.”

Cheever studied the weapon pointed in his direction. He began laughing. “Oh, ho. Fuck me, man. That’s a goddamned air rifle!”

“A .357. It can hurt.”

Cheever’s smile melted.

“Let’s go back to the utility room. I need you to set something up for me,” Pretend Uncle said, throttling up Led Zepplin to party level.

#

Bobby Cheever was cooperative to an astonishing degree. Spread the paint tarp out on linoleum the color of dried blood with gray and black flecks? Check. Duct tape himself, as much as he was able, to an old wooden chair? Check. Pretend Uncle finished the job of securing him. The older man guessed Cheever’s mantra for survival was, Assist, assist, assist, because wasn’t that the way it worked with Anita Sobczak?

“No Quarter” began, liquid and loud. Pretend Uncle plugged a long white extension cord into an outlet on the base of the light fixture that hung above Cheever. The cord dangled down along Cheever’s right side. Inches away, Pretend Uncle set a butterscotch-colored plastic bucket filled with water.

Cheever wet himself, which Pretend Uncle was halfway surprised by, expecting the punk to tough it out for the entire ride. Then again, Pretend Uncle thought, maybe that was the way with these jerkoffs.

Piss soaked, Cheever noticed the Yankees ballcap hanging by the backdoor.

Pretend Uncle followed Cheever’s eyes. “The cap. It was in Kevin’s room. What’s the story on that?”

“McAlister’s. It was McAlister’s.”

Pretend Uncle leaned in to catch Cheever’s mumbling, then said, “More.”

“McAlister. He worked for Anita.” Cheever teared up. Pretend Uncle didn’t believe the waterworks. “He went independent. He was Lucky Penny McAlister.” Cheever sobbed laughter. “His luck ran out.”

“Put your hand in the bucket. Now. There’s enough give to dip it in.” When Cheever had done as directed, Pretend Uncle held the hot extension cord over the bucket. “Now, more.”

Cheever eyed the cord and his right hand in the bucket of water.

“More,” Pretend Uncle repeated.

“McAlister died on Connor’s Point. Anita worked it, I guess, so that kid, Kevin, found his body. Confirmed I’d finished the job.” Cheever chuckled, wept. “She told the kid to keep McAlister’s cap. Made it easy to find him then too.”

Pretend Uncle dropped the cord—Cheever lurched—but the receptacle at its end came nowhere near the plastic bucket. “Okay,” he said.

Cheever looked at him. “O-okay? ‘Okay’ what?”

From the darkened kitchen, Bev Slick stepped down into the utility room. She had Pretend Uncle’s hammer in her hand. “Frank will be over in a little while,” she said.

“All My Love” filled their ears.

Bev Slick walked behind Cheever.

Strange. A funny story ran through Pretend Uncle’s head, what Kevin said about Led Zepplin. He’d wiseassed, “That band was a little more than dazed and confused, Tony. Music just doesn’t slap, you know?” And then Kevin had laughed. Pretend Uncle missed that teasing voice, the wiseass laughter.

Bev Slick swung the hammer.

Pretend Uncle whispered, “How’s it slap now, Kev?”

BIO: Jeff Esterholm’s work has previously appeared in Mystery Tribune, Rock and a Hard Place Magazine, Shotgun Honey, Tough, and Vautrin. In 2023, Cornerstone Press, University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, published his debut short story collection, The Effects of Urban Renewal on Mid-Century America and Other Crime Stories. His second collection is set for publication by Cornerstone Press in October, 2026.