by Thomas Pluck
“Where you been?”
Jay thought on it. He was a free man, at least for the moment. “Rahway.”
“No shit?” Herschel tucked the twenty deep in his sock. “What the hell you do, a white boy going to jail that long?”
“Rather keep that behind me, if it’s the same to you.”
“You don’t wanna say, that’s fine with me. Man’s got a right. You done your time.”
Cee-Lo Green crooned on the fuzzy stereo as they headed up Route 21. A billboard with a tricolor harem of dancers advertised Cheetah’s: A Club for Gentlemen. Jay made a note of the phone number before looking away, watching traffic. A woman with her hair tied back passed in a Mustang convertible. The perk of her nose and gleam of her hair made Jay ache deep inside.
“Mind if we make a side trip?”
“Depends,” Hersch said. “You need to score, I don’t truck with that. I’ll drop you off wherever you want, but you get another ride out of there.”
“Nothing like that. Wasn’t in for drugs.”
“Lemme guess, strip club? There’s one just up the road. I’ll wait, but you can’t bust your nut in my car.”
“Nope,” Jay said. “Been so long, I figure I can go a while longer.”
Punks inside dolled up and offered suck jobs for barter. Jay had politely demurred. A Latin queen named Rene had grown fine little breasts on smuggled estrogen treatments, and fixed up real nice. Rene liked to say it was all the same under the sheets in the dark, but Jay never found out.
“I’ve done some pickups from the county jail. Most of them want to find a girl or stop for a drink right away. A drink I can handle, but you get sick in my car, I’m driving straight to the police. Tired of cleaning filth out the back. So you feel queasy, you tell me so I can pull over.”
Jay’s last drink had been Irish whiskey, with the girl who’d saved him from doing time a virgin. Memories of her had been enough to fend off temptation from both the punks and the throat-clenching stink of jailhouse hooch, which was usually orange juice fermented in a toilet tank.
“I’m good,” Jay said. “I’m thinking Rutt’s Hut. You know it?”
Herschel laughed in three short chops. “Twenty-five years in jail, man wants a hot dog. Only in Jersey.”
“They better be as good as I remember,” Jay said. “The food at Rahway tastes like wet toilet paper.”
Herschel nosed the cab down a side street and hugged the Passaic River until he got past the traffic snarl, then popped back on the highway.
“Take the Nutley exit,” Jay said.
“Next one’s closer.”
“I wanna see something.”
“Okay.”
Nutley had a new bridge and a lot more clutter, but the heart remained. Graffiti marked the overpass off the highway. Rust stains on the concrete like honey brown hair flowing down a woman’s back. Houses with neat little yards huddled in a phalanx on the border.
As they cruised River Road, Jay frowned at the hole in the sky where the steel rocket of the International Avionics tower had once stood. The defense contractor’s sprawling campus was gone, with townhouse condos posed in their place. Most people worked there, or across town at Roach Pharmaceuticals, makers of the tranquilizer made famous as “Mother’s Little Helper” by the Stones. One side built tools for the Cold War, and the other cranked out the pills required to live in the shadow of the mushroom cloud.
They swerved past Kingsland Park’s waterfall, where police had emptied their guns into a Newark carjacker when Jay was in sixth grade. The shootout stood as a warning to interlopers, an invisible moat that made the denizens feel safe in their homes. Nutley had been a good place to grow up, rich or poor. Parks to roam, ponds and streams to fish in, a pizzeria in every neighborhood. The town had been a little too proud, a little unfriendly to outsiders, but Jay felt a twinge inside at no longer being welcome there.
“Thought I recognized the name,” Herschel said. “You’re the guy who…you’re him.”
“That I am,” Jay said. “You’re pretty sharp, Hersch. I don’t remember you from school.”
“I’m from Belleville,” Herschel said. “But we all heard about it.”
Everybody had. Jay’s rep preceded him to Annandale reformatory and followed him into Rahway.
Their eyes met in the rearview mirror.
“C’mon, Hersch. I ain’t gonna kill you with a hot dog.”
“Sorry, man.” Herschel laughed and held up an open palm. “Looks like you’d do just fine with your bare hands.”
“I only use my hands under the hood,” Jay said, and slapped Herschel’s palm. “You pull over, maybe I can hunt down your vacuum leak. This heap whistles like it’s got a chest wound.”
“You’re all right, Jay,” Herschel laughed again in three short chops. “You’re all right.”
The soot-stained brick of Rutt’s Hut squatted on a ledge overlooking the highway. Construction workers rubbed elbows with suit-and-ties in its yellowed tile interior, lining up for the lunch counter. The low scent of fry oil filled the air.
Greeks in stained aprons tortured hot dogs in the deep fryer until the skins burst and split up the middle, calling out orders in clipped jargon.
Six rippers. One Frenchy, traveling. One Coke, one Marvis, cap.
Jay slathered the dogs with spicy mustard and nuclear yellow relish. They ate in the parking lot, staring out at the slick brown ribbon of the Passaic River painted alongside the highway. Seagulls cried, begging for scraps.
Jay took a bite and moaned. The snap and crunch of the fried skin, the soft yeast roll and the sweet relish outshined his faded memories.
“Good as you remember?” Herschel said.
“Better.” Jay looked over the edge at the cars and trucks roaring toward Newark.
“Lot’s changed since you went in,” Herschel said through a mouthful. “It’s a whole different world now.”
“That suits me just fine,” Jay said. “I didn’t like the other one all that much.”
“How old were you?” Herschel asked, and picked at the paper boat of fries.
“Fifteen,” Jay said.
“You even know how to drive?”
“Nope.”
“They don’t teach that in there, do they.”
“Just how to steal.” Jay watched a high school kid with spiked blond hair rumble out the lot in a red Camaro.
“I don’t mean what you did was right,” Herschel said, and chewed his lip a moment. “But I just wanna say, I kinda understood what you did. In middle school there was this boy named Joseph, he had it in for me. Made life hell.”
“Some folks just need killing.”
Herschel’s eyebrows came together, then he laughed. He watched Jay like he would a strange dog.
“Well it’s true.”
“Yeah, but most of us just think about it. Guess twenty-five years didn’t change your mind.”
“Oh I learned my lesson,” Jay said, around a bite of ripper. “Doesn’t change the fact that the world’d be better off with some people underground. Paid my debt, but I’m glad the evil sumbitch is dead.” He started on his next hot dog. The first hit his belly like a lead sinker.
Herschel cocked his head and chopped one nervous laugh. “You’re something else. Making me think twice about completing this fare.”
“That boy got what was coming to him for what he done,” he said, and tossed a piece of hot dog roll to the gulls. One snapped it up and flew away. “You only know what you heard.”
Herschel parted his lips to ask, and Jay cut off the question with a steely glare.
Joey Bello had always grinned like he’d gotten away with something, and he usually had. Flat little squirrel eyes, and fingers lumpy with burned-off warts, quick with a flick to the ear or a pinch and twist of tender belly meat. If playground torment had been the extent of Joey Bello’s transgressions, Jay might have tolerated him to walk the earth. With what Joey had done, the world was considerably better off for his absence.
Jay looked out at the Passaic. The carpenter’s hatchet Papa Andre had given him on his tenth birthday was somewhere in the muck. The police had never recovered it.
Herschel gave a playful smile. “So was it worth it?”
“I was a dumb kid,” Jay said. “Thought I could take it. My friends’ folks, one was a cop, another was rich. They said they’d grease the wheels, but they let me swing in the wind.”
“You gonna do anything about it?” Herschel said.
“A good friend of mine once told me the best revenge is living well,” Jay said. “Reckon I’ll try to do that.” He tossed the burnt dregs of the fries to the gulls and watched them squabble and fight until they tore the last one apart.
“Good luck. Ain’t easy, these days.”
Four rippers gone, Jay popped the hood and fumbled around until he found the loose vacuum hose. Herschel gave him a rubber band from the glove box, and Jay wrapped it around until it stayed put. The whistling stopped.
“It won’t lug down so much now,” Jay said. “But this thing needs more work than I can do in a parking lot.”
“Ain’t mine,” Herschel said. “We rotate, and today I got the shitbox.”
Jay brushed his hands off on his jeans. “Let’s motor,” he said. “If I’m gonna live well, I might as well get started. Friend’s got an auto shop, somewhere in Belleville, in the valley.”
Chapter 3
The sign for Big Tony’s Auto Shop displayed a gamma-green airbrushed Hulk wearing a mechanic’s cap, toting a massive wrench that read “Incredible Performance.” The lot was filled with customers’ vehicles, from daily beaters to hopped up Mustangs and import racers. Below the sign was parked a Hummer H2 pickup painted custom gamma green with the Hulk logo airbrushed on the doors.
“This the guy?” Hersch laughed at the sign.
“I’m pretty sure. He was the Hulk every Halloween when we were kids.”
Herschel gave him his card. “You need driving lessons, you give me a call. I’ll take you to the DMV and everything.”
Jay palmed him another twenty and watched until he drove away.
The broken glass in the gutter resembled a trail of diamonds in the morning sun. Jay followed them to the front doors. A handful of mechanics worked the bays. The machine-gun patter and whirr of hydraulic tools echoed down the street.
A beefy gearhead with a Roman nose manned the counter, speaking to a Latin woman in pink sweats.
“You got a bad oxygen sensor. That’s a buck fifty, plus labor.” Tony talked with his hands, and his face ran through emotions like a hammy actor at audition. Since Jay had last seen him, Tony had molded a Big Mac and pepperoni pizza physique into muscle that hung on him like slabs of brisket, swelling his shop uniform as he nodded in sympathy with his customer.
The woman frowned at the price. Tony threw up his hands, the universal symbol for “what ya gonna do?”
“You ought to get both done,” Jay said. “They usually go one right after another. Save you on the labor.”
“Thanks, buddy,” Tony said. “Was just gonna say that. Have a seat, miss. It’ll be about an hour.”
Jay set his elbows on the counter and cleared his throat.
“Just a second, tough guy,” Tony said, punching computer keys.
“I hope your pecker’s not as short as your memory.”
“The fuck you say?” Tony reared up like he was hefting two heavy suitcases. His chest nearly burst his shirt.
“Don’t Hulk out on me, pallie.”
Tony knitted his caterpillar eyebrows. “Jay?”
He stomped around the counter and heaved Jay up in a hug. The shelves rattled and the customer put a hand to her chest. “Holy shit!”
“Easy, hoss,” Jay laughed. He slapped Tony’s back until he set him down.
“How the hell are you? How’d you…”
“Long story,” Jay said. “But it’s legit. Free as a bird.”
“Never thought…” Tony looked like a kid on Christmas opening a pair of socks.
“Look at you,” Jay said. “Thought you and Matty were gonna beat Billy Gates.”
“Well it turns out Gates was pretty smart,” Tony said. “But this beats desk work.”
“What they been feeding you?”
Tony grinned big and flexed an arm. “Like these, bro? I call ’em the Guns of Provolone.”
The woman rolled her eyes and went back to playing a noisy game on her phone.
Tony walked Jay through the shop bays past a Mustang getting new rear gears. “When Matty bought me out, I went in with Uncle Sal. Then the economy went south, and I talked him into doing custom work and paint jobs, performance. If people can’t buy new, they fix up what they got.”
Uncle Sal was a bald-headed walrus on Tony’s mother’s side, the closest thing Tony ever had to a father. Jay had met Tony’s real father only once, at their confirmation party. He’d sneered and drank a lot, until Sal and Papa Andre escorted him out. “How’s Sal doing?”
Tony kissed his first knuckle and held it to the ceiling. “Gone six years now.”
“I’m sorry, Tone. He was a good man.”
They walked past the paint box where a flat gray stealth coat baked on a late model Volkswagen.
“Looks like you got your hands full,” Jay said. “You got a job for an old friend?”
“Uh, maybe,” Tony said. He rubbed his chin between thumb and knuckle. “You’ll need to get your A1 certification.”
“You’re looking at a Master Technician. Auto, truck, and collision.”
Tony arched his eyebrows. “You kept busy in there.”
“There wasn’t a hell of a lot else to do.”
They walked in back to the lobby. Tony told him to wait in his office while he wrote an invoice. The cramped room was lined with shelves of parts catalogs, the walls papered with old pin-up tool ads. A woman straddling a wrench, another excited beyond belief by a set of whitewalls. Above the desk, a replica of the sword from Conan the Barbarian was mounted on the wall, ready to fend off a Pictish invasion.
Jay sat in the office chair and winced at the stale scent that squeezed out of the cushion. The desk was a collage of pink and yellow carbon paper, a coffee-ringed desktop calendar, and a dusty computer keyboard. A yellowed photo poked out from the corner of the calendar.
Ramona.
The photo showed her with Jay and Tony, laughing in the International Avionics company pool. Mama Angeline must have taken it.
His best memories all revolved around water. Fishing in the bayous with Andre, tubing the rivers with Mama Angeline. Meeting his best childhood friends at the pool. He tucked the photo back when footsteps reached the door.
Tony carried two cups of coffee and offered one. “Maybe you can pick up a few hours here and there,” he said, and stirred his coffee with a lug bolt. “I mean, I can help you out, but to hire you full time I’d have to let one of my guys go. They got families.” He settled in his office chair with a creak.
“And I don’t,” Jay said.
Tony studied the oil slick spinning in his cup.
“Looks like you’re doing pretty good here,” Jay said.
“I worked real hard for this,” Tony said, and set down his coffee.
“Not as hard as I did.”
Tony shrank into his seat.
“I kept my mouth shut,” Jay said. “And what I need now is work and a set of wheels. My folks kept in touch awhile after they got chased out of town, but it’s been five years since I heard anything. Nobody came to visit. Might as well have been death row.”
Tony licked his lips and looked up, slumping in his seat. A fat kid in gym class, waiting to get beaned in dodgeball.
“I got no one else, Tone.” Jay bared his palm, where a white scar sliced across the meat. “No one but my brother.”
Tony pinched his face as if swallowing a cockroach. He scratched at the pocket of his hand, where a matching cut shined like the nerve in a cheap cut of steak.
“I pay my gu
ys twenty-five bucks an hour,” Tony said. He rested his chin on his fists, let out a long sigh. “You’re certified, but you got no experience. So let’s say…twenty?”
“Thanks, brother.”
They shook on it.
“As for a set of wheels, I got a shop truck we use to pick up parts,” Tony said.
Jay furrowed his brow. “Don’t tell me you sold the Hammerhead.”
The beast hunkered in the weeds behind the shop like a reef shark cooling its fins. Four flat tires, purple metal flake webbed with cracks. The vinyl top had peeled and the chrome was speckled with rust. A dent had snapped the Challenger emblem in two and left the R/T decal a scrape of rust. The air cleaner cover was missing, and a black plastic trash bag showed through the cut in the hood where the sigils 426 Hemi were once emblazoned.
“Looks like you used up your half and mine,” Jay said, shaking his head.
Tony looked away, corners of his eyes crinkling. “I blew a head gasket in a race, and had to limp back to the shop. Been meaning to restore her, but something always comes up. I only got one pair of hands.”
“Mine work just fine,” Jay said. He ran one along the paint, squatting to sight down the side. The door was dinged to hell but the frame was true.
“You got time to fix her up, she’s yours.”
“It was half mine to begin with.” Jay popped the hood pins and lifted the hood. Weeds had grown up through the engine bay, and a small animal had built a nest between the alternator and the shock tower.
“Aw, Tone. It’s got critters.”
“I’m sorry, alright? You even got a license?”
“I will soon enough.”
“See, you’re getting ahead of yourself,” Tony said. “I’m going back inside. I got a business to run.”
“I hope you run it better than you make coffee,” Jay said, and sluiced his cup’s contents into the weeds. “Tastes like you made soup out of assholes.”
“I wipe my ass on the filter. I should piss in it, too.”
“Might taste better if you did.”
Tony slapped Jay hard on the back, and pulled him along as he lumbered back inside. They worked away the afternoon. Jay helped Tony’s foreman, a chunky Puerto Rican named Guillermo, work the frame straightener on a T-boned Subaru. Jay squinted at the road any time a black truck cruised by. He let the work keep his mind off the Brush Cut twins, but kept a wrench in the hammer loop of his jeans in case they showed. It wouldn’t take Columbo to figure out where Jay had gone to ground.