Debasements of Brooklyn

by Ira Gold

“Yes. It’s just . . .” The great books haunt me worse than Vinnie’s ghost. I check my pocket for the keys. “I’m ready.” I go to the stairs that lead to the basement and Mrs. Five-Five stops me. “We can go around the front.”

  Outside, the cool air envelops our faces. It’s nice not to be crawling around like a hedgehog.

  35

  A Day at the Lake

  I pull out of the garage and drift slowly into the street. I can’t afford to attract the least attention so I repress my desire to floor the accelerator. I glide onto the BQE. Ninety minutes later, the last scuds of night still envelop the world. Luckily the people around this lake know enough to keep silent if they see strange men rowing around with a package wrapped in a carpet.

  I’ve made this run twice. Once, after Vinnie clipped a made guy with the permission of the Commission. Another time Vinnie asked me to dump a metal box that contained I know not what—a hot gun, a large scrotum. In any case, he told me to treat it like a dead body, to leave nothing to chance. So I took a rowboat, a few always dot the shore, to the middle of the lake where I watched the box sink below the surface.

  This current job would be identical. My only problem would be lifting the load into a rowboat.

  The shore is deserted. Adrenaline pumps power into my muscles so I lift Vinnie’s body from the trunk with no more difficulty than I would a shopping bag. I work quickly, slinging the carpet over my shoulder. I half waddle, half run over the wet ground where my feet sink into the mud. Even this doesn’t matter. I get to a boat and push it into the water.

  The lake is at 3,000 feet and it’s much cooler here than in Brooklyn. The sun begins to rise and its rays streak the sky cobalt and yellow. In a few minutes, I stop rowing. The boat bobs and the dawn reveals a terrible beauty. Fir trees line the far shore. Purple mountains rise above them in the distance. Ducks quack overhead and slide onto the water near the boat.

  I glance at the carpet in which Vinnie is rolled and think that it wouldn’t be the worst thing to change places. I’ve had a death wish on and off for most of my life, though I only allowed it to overwhelm me that one time, in the Seventy-Ninth Street subway station. But I have a gun. If I use it on myself, I will never have to worry about someone else killing me.

  Then I imagine a life with Ariel. We’d get a place above ground, copulate in weird ways, maybe have a strange kid. Both of us could, eventually, be good earners. Buy a house. Travel. Read. Find an inner life a little less tormenting. Everything would come together perfectly. That’s the moment I will get it in the back of the head. Why live in this unbearable state of heightened anxiety when I could evaporate in this lovely spot?

  With the last of my strength, I push Vinnie over the side. The carpet floats until it absorbs enough water to turn it into an iron chain. It sinks. Only if the last drop of water is drained from the lake will Vinnie’s bones ever come to light.

  If I’m not going to kill myself, there’s no point in hanging about. Why ask for trouble? I bring the skiff back to shore and, unseen as far as I can tell, take off.

  Without the body weighing me down, I speed down the highway helium high. I have accomplished something. What, I’m not sure. Have I finally matured into a conscience? Have I finally learned that it is not enough merely to think? One must act. Have I eliminated a vicious predator who should have suffered this rough justice years ago? Or am I just another self-justifying killer? I have gone through life believing myself incapable of killing. Ridiculous.

  At this hour, this far away from the city, the roads are quiet even of cops. A few cars disappear in my rearview mirror. I pass a few trucks. The car’s rocking motion lulls me. Usually, it is not a good idea to close one’s eyes when driving sixty-five miles an hour unless you want to . . . I pass on yet another opportunity.

  The car slows as I pull into the parking lot of a Giant supermarket. It’s only dawn but the lot is half full. My only risk is that I meet other wise guys on their way to the lake. But because of the war, most regular business has been put on hold. These days, bodies lie where they fall.

  While I sit with a coffee I call Mrs. Five-Five, who picks up on the first ring. She sounds extremely clearheaded when she demands, “Where the hell are you?”

  “Having coffee.”

  “Really? Howie, I never expected this of you.”

  “Coffee?”

  “You always struck me as—”

  “Incompetent?”

  “No. A good kid.”

  This night has gotten to Mrs. Five-Five too. “I was never a good kid.”

  “You were suggestible. That’s what I mean. I thought you’d just go to your death like the rest of them, guns blazing but without much of a fight. You never looked too deeply into things. Howie, I always liked you.” Is the old lady coming on to me? She continues, “Of all my boys’ friends, you were the one I thought might be able to do something else. You were never the utter thug that Julius and Gus usually played with.”

  Mrs. Five-Five sounds out of her head. The weed might have worn off, but she’s in that truth-babbling, life-threatening stage. “Mrs. Spoleto, just go to sleep. You sound exhausted. Don’t talk on the phone anymore.”

  “It’s been a long night, hasn’t it, Howie?”

  “Yeah.”

  She purrs, “We need to talk, Howie. We’re in this together.”

  “Of course.” Never have I been more alone.

  And she is flirting. This revolting development arrives out of nowhere, like everything else that ever happens. So why does each idiotic surprise shake me anew? Why can’t I see anything coming? I can’t scorn this woman. I can ice her, however. I just hope she has another unused carpet lying around. “I should be at your place in about an hour.”

  I take the coffee to the car. If this be worth doing, it be worth doing now.

  Because I have murder on my mind, I keep the car under the speed limit.

  Mrs. Five-Five meets me in the garage. As soon as I get out of the car, she melts into my chest. She murmurs, “Howie, Howie. We did it. You know, you probably saved a bunch of lives. Certainly yours.”

  I slip the gun out of my pocket. Mrs. Five-Five’s arms encircle my waist. I hear her panting. If I kill Rose Spoleto then I’m just another gangster willing to justify any murder as self-defense. I will gain my life but lose my soul. Rose is not Vinnie.

  Rose tilts her head toward me. I don’t know what she expects. She has fine bone structure. She is also so transported that she does not notice that one of the arms hugging her is holding a gun.

  “Put the gun down, Howie.” She disengages, but still grips my arms. She does notice. “You’re not that kind of killer.”

  “What kind is that?”

  “The kind that kills. Vinnie brought devastation to whatever he touched. He needed to die like a plague rat.”

  As a kid, I always believed that Vinnie and Rose were quite the traditional couple. She kept house and he murdered enemies. Go figure.

  “Come in the house,” she says.

  I have parked the car away from the tunnel entrance. We pull the door up and climb down into the narrow space.

  Mrs. Five-Five says, “I’m going to blow the tunnel up after this.”

  “You might disturb the neighbors.”

  “I’ll do it quietly. I have my own connections in the building trade.”

  Back in the house, Rose goes to her fridge and pulls out some covered Pyrex dishes. “What do you want? I got some lasagna, meat balls, and . . .” she sticks her head deep in the fridge and takes out half a salami and a block of cheese. “Or I can make you a sandwich.”

  If I’m not going to kill her I should just go.

  “Howie, I got emotional. Don’t think about it.”

  Rose’s face relaxes to the point that I can make out individual features. I see she has a small nose. Pert. Never noticed. When she was younger she was a mom, as ancient as any. Once in a while I’d glance at her chest. Even as a kid I appreciated matronly. But her face had been co
mposed of dark lines and a worried expression. Her features remained vague.

  But now the nose. Maybe because someone finally whacked her husband she feels comfortable enough to showcase her extremities. Her ears, too, I can see, are nicely rounded. They peek out from under the curtain of dirty blonde hair. Yes. The hair, too, I just notice. Up until a minute ago I thought it had been grey.

  Next, I dare look at her eyes. They’re blue. Not a clear sky blue, but a cataracty, smoggy blue that veers into purple and brown. Mrs. Five-Five may be Sicilian, but Northern European crusaders raped at least one of her ancestors.

  “What are you looking at?” she asks as she bows her head.

  “Your eyes,” I say. “They’re blue.”

  “You know me thirty years,” she retorts, angrier with me now than when I pointed the gun at her temple, “and you just this minute—”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean anything.” I continue to stare as new facets of Mrs. Five-Five’s countenance come alive. Her cheeks are doughy but her forehead curves into her hairline at the right nanometer. Her lips are nicely colored . . . I turn away before I infuriate her further.

  The microwave beeps and Mrs. Five-Five removes a plate of lasagna and puts it in front of me. “Eat this,” she orders.

  I slice the thick slab in half. Steam rises and brings the aroma of tomatoes and beef to my nostrils. My mouth waters. I am starving. I chew a piece and it’s the best thing I ever ate. The juice from the meat combines with the tangy sauce. “This is really delicious.”

  I take another bite because I can’t help myself. But after a third mouthful I put my fork down. No matter how tasty the food, I really can’t eat the leftovers of the man I murdered.

  Luckily Mrs. Five-Five has also sliced some salami and cheese. This I can eat.

  “Howie, I’ve thought of a variation on our plans. Now I think it’s better that you go to the funeral home and act like you know nothing about Vinnie’s disappearance.” She plays with her coffee mug. “Gus has gone crazy. He is going to carry out Vinnie and IRA’s plan. Especially now, in honor of them being gone or some such bullshit.”

  “I thought the whole point—”

  “Shut up. You have no choice. If you jump ship now, either Gus or Tony D will find you. Survive the attack on Vlad’s place, and there’s a chance you can get free of all this. Everything.”

  I’m impressed. Mrs. Five-Five is just another gangster, a good one. She does not, I believe, want me to leave Vlad’s place alive.

  “Do you understand what you need to do?”

  I turn back to Mrs. Five-Five who stares with ferocity. For a second I think she’s going to whack me. She does not want her part in Vinnie’s death known. For her revenge to be pure, she needs to get away with it.

  I pull myself together for the final part of this denouement. I must leave Mrs. Five-Five with the impression that I’m not going to fuck this up. “Okay. I will demand retaliation against Vlad with such demented force that Gus will think I’m as nuts as Pauli Bones.”

  A smile lights Mrs. Five-Five’s face. “Exactly. You seem to understand things if they’re explained simply. Go home and get some sleep. You need to be fresh for the performance.” And with these words, the vision of Mrs. Five-Five recedes into the ether. The hair, the forehead, the eyes, the cheeks, the lips, the breasts return to their undifferentiated form. She becomes the black widow mom of the living and the dead.

  36

  Reconciliation

  Maybe a smarter person would know what to do from here. A genius would intuit a redemptive conclusion to this entire unholy mess. He would leave behind friends, family, fear, and aggravation and be reborn into a sensible and bloodfree existence. In this new identity he would drink good wine and become a churchgoer. His sex would be confined to the most savagely basic. He would learn to enjoy driving.

  But I am not that clever. I would always hate driving and forever enjoy simple bondage and discipline. Violence, to be truthful at last, solves some problems even if it creates ten new ones. Must I join the battle at The National? I text Ariel, coming over.

  In a second I get her answer. Hurry.

  Fifteen minutes later, I’m at the side door. I turn the knob. She has left it open.

  In the basement. Ariel is wearing a yellow T-shirt and white panties. Her hair is uncombed and stray strands stick out like needles. Self-consciously, she runs her fingers over her scalp.

  But then she remembers to be shocked at my own appearance. “Where did you get those idiotic clothes? That tracksuit? It doesn’t suit you at all.”

  Even after cleaning up at Mrs. Five-Five’s I can’t camouflage my wrecked condition.

  “Where were you all night?”

  “Nowhere.” And this is, in fact, the entire explanation I can give her.

  “I understand perfectly. I should mind my own business. Fine. No problem. What gives you the right to do this to me? Answer me, you stupid mute. I know you can talk in the same way I know you can read.”

  “I said I had to do this one thing and that I couldn’t talk about it.”

  I say this forcefully, but without anger, and Ariel turns away, abashed. “Sorry.”

  “You’ve been drinking.”

  “It’s the only way I can contain my anxiety while you’re wandering around a battlefield thinking . . . thinking something. I know you think even though you’ve never actually said a single interesting thing. You lie even about being ignorant and uninteresting. And you lie about being nowhere.” Then her anger dissipates. She turns to me and rubs my cheek. “This is new.” She means it is not one of the bruises I got in the beating when I was kidnapped. “It’s raw. Who did this to you?”

  “No one did anything to me.”

  “Howie, you’re not a fighter. You’re certainly no killer. So why hang around with them?”

  I shrug.

  Ariel begins licking my face, like an animal trying to heal a wound.

  I must have chafed my cheek raw against the rough carpet while lugging Vinnie to the boat. Now that Ariel has pointed it out, it begins to burn. Her tongue is certainly no help and I tilt my head away from her.

  Ariel picks up my hands. “And your fingernails are black. What have you been doing?”

  “Nothing.” Grease covers the whole nail like polish.

  Indefatigable, Ariel lifts my shirt and runs her fingers down my chest until they reach my waist. She gets down on the floor and yanks the legs of my pants. I close my eyes in anticipation of some sort of pleasure.

  37

  The Longish Good-bye

  When I awake, I’m lying on the bed, covered with the blanket. Ariel is not in the room.

  I look up at the window but can’t tell if it is night or day. I control my rising panic. If I miss the rendezvous at the funeral parlor, Gus and the others will think I’m a deserter, or worse, had something to do with Vinnie’s disappearance.

  Just obscenities fly through my head, interspersed with the word “dead.”

  I hear footsteps and I stop moving. I wait. Ariel walks into the room.

  “You’re up,” she says.

  “I missed it?”

  “Missed what? Oh. The blow job. Sorry. I don’t fellaciate sleeping men. Do you feel like getting some Chinese food? Unless you want to finish what we started . . .”

  I glance at my phone. It’s almost six o’clock. With great relief, I go to my gym bag and pull out a pair of my own pants. A look of deep disappointment crosses Ariel’s face.

  “I have an appointment.”

  “Where? With who?”

  Whom. But I don’t correct her. Instead, I get another clip for my gun. I will have to dump this piece after tonight no matter what. Too bad. It really is the first gun I owned that has the gravitas necessary to kill someone.

  Ariel continues her doleful observation of my every move.

  I give her this much. “I just have to do this one last thing. No one will get hurt.”

  “That’s exactly what people say r
ight before they go out and get themselves killed.”

  I put on my jacket. “I’ll be fine.”

  “You look terrible.”

  There’s a scummy mirror in the toilet. I strain to see through the foggy reflection but I can’t tell if I look any worse than I did before the Vinnie thing. I am glad, however, that Vlad beat me up. It’s hard to tell the old bruises from the new.

  Without saying anything, I take the steps two at a time. I hear nothing more from Ariel until I am out the door. There, heavy breathing makes me turn just as Ariel jumps me.

  She hangs onto my back and at first I think she’s playing. I laugh and twist around, but then her crying and cursing break through. “You bastard. You fucking bastard! Where are you going?” Her nails dig into my neck and she pulls my hair. “You’re supposed to be hiding out.”

  The last thing I need is attention. Carrying a loaded piece is a mandatory three years. And the most dangerous place in the world would be Rikers, where Gus could have me clipped for two or three g’s. So I try to peel Ariel off gently, but she holds tight. In the end, I throw her against the wall of her house. She stays on the ground sobbing loudly into her hands. If anyone has seen this bit of business, I’m fucked. The cops have probably already been called.

  So I start running, thinking things couldn’t be worse until I realize that Ariel is chasing me.

  What happened to the ultraconventional girl I met in the pretentious café? The one with the mom, with an education, with artistic sensitivities, with a minor drinking problem, with no plans to destroy herself. Does unemployment really drive regular people insane? Where has this sprinting lunatic come from? I turn the corner and race toward Coney Island Avenue.

  But Ariel must be some world-class sprinter because I turn my head and she’s gaining on me. This, again, does not look good. A frantic woman chasing a six-foot-three thug with a bruised face might make even Brooklyn cops drive over to investigate.

  So I stop.

  Ariel comes up to me. Her makeup is smeared on her face like war paint. Furious, she explodes, “WHERE ARE YOU GOING?”