“I’ll miss these guys.” Zero looks around nostalgically.
“Fuck you,” the bouncer says, reaching across the bar to twist fresh ice into the rag.
“Shut up and count your money,” Zero tells him.
“You do all this yourself?” I look around more closely. The guys on the floor aren’t much but they still have numbers and the bouncer looks capable of folding an iceberg.
“Hey, give me a little credit,” the bouncer says. “Nah, it ain’t even that. I had it under control. It was the Rabbi did most of the damage.”
“The Rabbi?” I say.
“Rabbi. Hell’s Angel, fuckin’ big bearded fuck, what’s the difference?”
I don’t tackle that question, though I’m tempted to say, Knowledge of the Talmud.
“I’m telling you.” The bouncer scoops the money from the bar, tips his head in gratitude. “The guy was a savage.”
“And you don’t got manners anymore?” Zero swivels to me. “That’s Andrew Wolf on the floor there. Ain’tcha gonna say hi?”
“Hi Andrew. Long time,” I say over my shoulder before doing a double-take. “Hold on, what the hell’s Wolfy doing in Dorchester? Isn’t this a little far from his turf?”
“Turf?” Zero barks a laugh. “What turf? Since the Dig it’s like free-range townies out there, guys wandering around like they cut a hole through the wire. You haven’t noticed these losers walking around gazin’ at the sky as if the stars look different from one neighborhood over?”
I’d noticed. By dismantling the rusted green behemoth of the elevated expressway and replacing it with the giant four-lane Ted Williams Tunnel—at twenty billion dollars, by far the most expensive highway mile anywhere in the world—the city had reconfigured entire city neighborhoods; a two mile patch of greenway was now the only border between the formerly all-Italian North End and Faneuil Hall, Southie linked to downtown via a burgeoning waterfront, new money flowing freely, the borders washed out by a sea of green.
Only a few years ago wandering into these neighborhoods was an open invitation to rumble, people tending to stick to their own neighborhoods, temporary passes issued for weekday working stiffs and for special events like a championship celebration or St. Patrick’s Day parade. But once it was dark, you best consult your street map; just setting foot in an unfamiliar street was enough to get you punched in the neck.
Still, new Boston or old, it doesn’t explain why Andrew Wolf thought it was a good idea to mix it up with Zero in a bar that hadn’t stamped his neighborhood passport.
“Hell, it’s gotten so’s you can’t hardly even get mugged in this city anymore,” Zero laments. “Ain’t that right, Andrew?”
Andrew grunts quietly and sits upright with his back to us, adjusting something at his waist, his head lolling from side to side trying to shake out the cobwebs.
“So what’s the problem, Zero, all this?” I place my messenger bag on my lap, adjust the strap that had been digging into my shoulder, pulled down by the combined weight of the gun and the poker chips.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“All right.” Zero takes his time, glances at my bag. “In the park by Dad’s house, I saw a blind man crying his fuckin’ eyes out. They were still good for that.”
In the filthy bar mirror Andrew does a Rocky Balboa, rising unsteadily on the nine-count, his nose bleeding onto the front of his Dropkick Murphys T-shirt. He has a purple braised-onion bruise swelling on the side of his face. His sneakers are unlaced green Converse high-tops with shamrocks on the tongues. The knife in his hand is one of those survivalist throat slitters with a knuckle grip and curved handle.
“You’re right, I don’t understand.” I swivel on my stool with the Beretta pointed languidly toward Andy’s crotch.
“Go home, Andrew,” I say, but I don’t think he hears me over the bark of Zero’s laugh and the bartender yelling “Hey!” And the bouncer dropping for cover off his stool with a loud thud.
“What?” Andrew looks stupidly from my gun to his hand, like he can’t figure out how the knife got there. “I’m sorry. This ain’t the proper response.”
“Like wrong hat, wrong rabbit?” Pure amusement alights Zero’s face. “And say thank you to Zesty.”
“Huh? For what?” Andy drops the knife and backs away with both hands raised, angling for the door.
Zero’s hard to understand because he’s laughing so hard but I think he says, “For saving you from a second ass whipping, you fuckin’ numbskull. If I ever catch you with so much as a butter knife in your hand again, I’m gonna make you swallow it.”
“I’m sorry,” Andrew yells, stumbling out the door.
Zero’s still chuckling as I put the gun back in my bag, but he’s also shaking his head, telling me I’d made a careless mistake, revealed a card too soon.
“You gotta go,” the bartender says. “I got my limits. Bobby, toss them the fuck out.” He jerks a thumb at the bouncer, perching himself back on his stool.
“You’re kidding, right?” he says.
“No worries. Just give us a minute.” Zero warns him off with a look and invites an explanation from me with an entirely less patient face. I explain the gun quickly along the lines of: It’s not mine. The serial numbers have been scraped off. I need you to stash it for me.
“Let me get this straight.” Zero’s always big on paraphrasing when he hears something that annoys him because it gives him adequate time to work up a lather. “You want me to hold a hot gun in my safe, like I don’t got enough to worry about, half my guys with their POs coming around checking up on them, and after what we went through with Dad? You’re a bigger knucklehead than Wolfy.”
It’s hard to disagree. I hadn’t thought out the implications of an unregistered gun in his safe, I just knew it would be beyond Charlie’s reach.
“And you being here means you’ve already been to the office, asked Jhochelle to stash it, and she tells you she’s got no access and sends you here to pull me out. The safe, by the way, is none of your fucking business. Got that?”
“I got that. But this,” I wave my hand at the mayhem, “I don’t get at all. Playing house with Jhochelle, it’s too much pressure for you now?”
“I told you already, you wouldn’t understand.”
“Try again,” I say, but I know how difficult it is for Zero to express himself with words, too much time spent choking down the traffic of his inner demons; a one-way street when it comes to introspection, self-reflection, whatever the fuck you want to call it. The hard shell is what Zero gives most everybody, the hard knuckles if you rub him the wrong way.
“Pressure.” Zero snorts. “You really don’t fucking get it, Zesty. What pressure? I’m happy is what it is, I gotta spell it out for you?”
“You’re happy?” I hadn’t seen that coming. “So then what’s with all this shit?”
“Collateral damage?” Zero winces.
“Of happiness.”
“I dunno. Call it what the fuck you want. I’m having a hard time getting used to it, is all. You understand what I’m saying?”
“Maybe.”
“Nah, no maybe. You do, that’s why you ride your tricycle like you got a fucking death wish, why your head’s always in a weed cloud. Because you don’t want to think about tomorrow, about what’s gonna happen next. You think you can avoid shit forever, but you can’t.”
“You’re one to talk.”
Zero concedes the point. “Having Eli’s changed all that. Only not the way you think. You have a kid, you’re supposed to gain some perspective, right? Be less selfish?”
“How should I know?”
“Yeah, well, here’s a little secret for you. I’m still a muthafucka. It runs too deep. Nothing’s changed and words don’t matter. Mom’s still been gone forever, Pops has his ticket punched, riding the third rail into never-never land. Life ain’t fair.” Zero throws up his hands and out of the corner of my eye I see the bouncer flinch. “I
guess I’m just not equipped to handle it, happiness. But it’s what I got.”
Meaning now Zero has more to lose. His philosophical musings are deeply rooted in our father’s poker training perspective, that when things are going well, you can’t lose sight of the probability your luck will turn; that no matter how well you play, how efficiently you manage your chips, Lady Luck will cast her eye elsewhere, spurn your advances, and bring your house tumbling down.
Some people might consider this outlook blatant pessimism, but it’s more nuanced than that. Zero and I were raised on the hustle, uncertainty the only true constant. Happiness? What the fuck’s that look like? Was my father ever happy? My mother? Were they happy together or was it just an illusory time; did they know the clock was running down on them and just held on to each other for as long as they could?
“Happy.” Zero eyes me with rare empathy. “How fucked up is that. Pops hasn’t said a word in months and the doctors don’t think he ever will again, he’s that far gone. Shits himself, can’t even feed…” Zero turns himself away from me. “That why you’ve been avoiding the house last couple of months?”
“I’ll make it a point to get over there soon.”
“That’s not what I fuckin’ asked you.” Zero’s voice is barely above a whisper, a sure sign he’s crossed into anger, misdirection a staple of his personality: quiet when angry, joking when serious, offer you coffee, serve you tea.
“I guess.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t blame you. It takes a toll.” He turns back to me, his eyes dry as desert sand. “I hired on some new help to give Sid and Van Gogh a breather, but you need to get yourself ready.”
“For what?”
“Don’t be an idiot. You weren’t old enough to remember when Mom left, but I’m telling you, you need to have your head together to get through this, Zesty, it’s gonna fuck you up bad. That’s really why Jhochelle called you. She sees something in me she don’t recognize since Eli was born. I don’t know how to explain … it’s…”
“A paradigm shift.” We both swivel to the bouncer, who shrugs sheepishly. “I went back to night school.”
“You’re fired,” the bartender says. He looks serious.
“So fuck it, if I can’t handle it I’ll just make sure you come around more often. Now you gonna tell me what else is in your bag?” Zero says warily.
I take the case out and show him. He eyes the chips for a moment, slips a few out at random and lines them up on the bar, slides off his stool and picks up Andy’s dropped knife. He looks at the bartender, looks at the bouncer, who both turn away, and with a quick violent motion stabs the chips hard, breaking off a chunk of each one. He inspects each piece and holds up each shattered chip to show me.
“Congratulations,” I say. “You just stabbed three thousand dollars to death.”
“Where’d you get these?” Zero pulls a few more chips out, his eyes widening at each valuation, his Rube Goldberg brain already running risk/reward calculations that would have earned Liberty Mutual a billion dollars if Zero had a single straight bone in his body.
“Sam Budoff’s storage unit.” I give Zero a condensed version of Sam’s cross-pollination with Rambir Roshan and everything I’d learned from Brill and Wells. He’s pissed, but having well over half a million dollars in poker chips sitting in front of him keeps him focused.
“You clipped the lock?”
“Jhochelle did the honors.”
“Pretty smart playing the hunch with the unit.” He bestows a rare compliment on me.
“I wouldn’t have thought to look if Wells hadn’t asked me about it.”
He nods. “I’m surprised he didn’t come see me first like last time.”
“Why would he?”
“Because I’ve been to that club across from the Stockyard.” Zero surprises me. Aside from the occasional games at the moving company, where Jhochelle usually does most of the damage, I didn’t realize Zero still took an interest in poker.
“Any Russians or Ukrainians there?”
“Sure. And Greeks and Poles and Indians and Armenians. Fuck the Olympics, poker’s the only thing anybody can agree on.”
“You win or lose?”
“What do you think?”
“What kind of stakes we talking?”
“It varied, but you’re not getting through the door without at least a couple grand in your pocket. But I’ll tell you something, Zesty, I went maybe three, four times before I realized I didn’t need the action anymore, wasn’t catching that high. So barring that, what’s the point?”
“Money,” I say.
Zero shrugs with the nonchalance of someone who has some. “Maybe it’s another example of what Night School here says. Anyhow, I’ll take care of the case until your buddy resurfaces, but that gun I’m not fuckin’ touching, you don’t know where it’s been. Also, I gotta tell you, I’m a little sore Budoff stashed these chips in the warehouse, put us at risk like that. Nobody walks out of a casino with this kind of haul. What’s the point? These chips are real, but they ain’t kosher.”
Only what’s done is done and as we exit the bar into the bright afternoon sunshine, it’s hard not to feel like we’ve stepped out into heaven’s blinding light. Or is it the train rumbling down the tunnel track?
Sometimes it’s hard to tell.
ELEVEN
The Atlantics, one of my all-time favorite local bands, is already blasting their hit “Lonelyhearts” inside my head when Martine Andino steps out of the Loews holding a black guitar case, tips the doorman, and folds himself into a cab.
I see fear and despair
Written all over your face
But it’s no disgrace
A life that’s lived alone
Andino had changed into a suit and from the corner I catch a glimpse of what his turtleneck had concealed, a colorful explosion of inky flames sprouting from the open collar of his shirt and running up his neck. I toss the remains of my lukewarm coffee and follow as the cab swings a right onto Columbus Ave., fake-brakes and guns it through a red light. The mark of a professional. If Grandma were crossing the street, he would’ve swerved to take her out, too, burnish his reputation.
It’s a little past nine, traffic light, which forces me into a sprint until we hit the glass cubes of the new Boston Police headquarters and take a right up Ruggles.
Take a crowbar to your heart
And pry it loose
Just don’t blow a fuse
While everyone’s throwing stones
On Huntington, the cab turns left and then about a half mile later left again, crossing the MBTA tracks where they wind up North Broadway toward Jamaica Plain, the terrain getting hilly, forcing me to stand up on my pedals and dream of a cure for gravity.
Lonely,
lonely, lonely hearts
There’s nobody like lonely
lonely lonely hearts
You know that I can hear your heart beat
I know what’s going on—
The static comes in hard then, a hot-skillet explosion that blinds me for a moment and sends me careening against the line of parked cars, my toe clips shaving paint off a minivan before I clip the mirror and swerve back into the street. I lose sight of the cab cresting the wide curve of Centre but there are multiple traffic lights ahead and I catch up when the driver hits a red light and concedes a full stop.
The cab passes me again in front of the giant plaster cow’s head sticking out of the J.P. Licks building, business brisk even at this time of night, and we cruise the next quarter mile past funky soft-glow restaurants and coffee shops before turning onto Lafayette, which winds through the Hispanic hold-steady section of JP, a formerly Irish borough that had ceded to a Mexican and Dominican wave in the 1980s and sunk just enough roots not to be easily supplanted as the new money poured in.
When the cab pulls over in front of the Hacienda restaurant on the corner of Lee Street and Mayfair, I zip by and circle the block past two large plate glass windows with he
avy red curtains drawn across, blocking the interior views, maybe meant to dissuade the neighborhood hipsters from checking out the vibe in case the young men smoking and jostling at the curb weren’t enough of a deterrent.
Posters and handbills are taped to the windows to the right of the door. I roll past too quickly to read them, with the exception of a large Spanish Budweiser poster that has olive- and dark-skinned Latinas posed provocatively in red and white bikinis. Beach balls. Sand and surf. Foaming bottles of Bud. It’s not subtle, but it is effective. All of a sudden I crave a Budweiser. And a Latina girlfriend.
Andino steps out of the cab leading with his guitar case, his appearance setting off a near-choreographed flicking of cigarettes to the curb, one man peeling off back into the club. The shortest of the crew unburdens Andino of his guitar case just as another group of young men exit the restaurant, each one giving him a deferential nod before Shorty leads him into the L-shaped alley that runs behind the restaurant and exits out the other side on Lee Street.
I lock my bike about forty yards away, a wave of mariachi accordion music spilling out as another man, older, with a full head of dark hair and matching mustache, steps to the curb, surveys the street, and rounds back to the alley.
I take Solarte’s camera out of my pack, step into a doorway, and unscrew the exposed lightbulb with a quick twist. After a few minutes and a half dozen pictures, the original batch of young men regroups and fresh cigarettes are lit. Andino and the dark-haired man aren’t with them. Which means either I’d lost him as they’d strolled out the other end of the alley or there’s a back door and they’ve entered the club.
I watch the bar for about a half hour, cooling down quickly as my sweat dries in a chill breeze, and slip on the Zen Moving Company T-shirt over what I’m wearing.
All the smokers are young and wearing golfing outfits in colors I’ve only seen in tub-size sherbets produced by Monsanto. Radioactive lime green pants. Pornographic pink shirts with orange stripes tight on their biceps and flat chests. Identical neck tattoos and Mexican national fútbol club haircuts, buzzed above the ears, long, chisel-stiff, and swept to one side across the top.
A Town Called Malice Page 10