The Art of Disposal

by John Prindle

  “How's come he don't have it?” Dan the Man said to me.

  “Why don't you have it?” I asked Gideon.

  “My kid brother needed help.”

  “His kid brother needed help,” I said to Dan the Man.

  I felt bad for Gideon, but it was kind of funny to see him there against the wall, Dan the Man holding him up like a sack of russet potatoes. It was like Gideon Cash didn't exist. Dan the Man wouldn't even talk directly to him. I was the English to English translator.

  “Guess we do gotta bring Eddie that toe,” Dan said.

  “I think he just wet himself,” I said.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Dan the Man said. He stepped back a little and let Gideon Cash drop to the floor. “Can you believe this guy?”

  “I heard what you done to Gonzales,” Gideon said.

  I still hated to see Gonzales around the neighborhood. He'd gone back to his old job at the warehouse, and every so often I'd see him at Rudy's buying a pack of Marlboro's. I heard that his wife left him, but that just figures. What kind of woman wants to put up with a degenerate, loser gambler? Gonzales never stopped in at the Hotsy Totsy anymore either, not that you could blame him. It would be a hell of a thing to have a pinky finger clipped off and then have to drink a beer with the guys who did the clipping.

  But the truth was that we did Gonzales a big favor. Eddie Sesto wanted him gone. He even offered me the job. I talked Eddie out of it. Dan the Man did the actual clipping. I just duct-taped Gonzales to a chair and covered his eyes.

  “What do you think Ronnie? Should we give this guy a Gonzales?”

  I was looking out the window, watching two white swans cut smoothly across the surface of the golf course pond. I didn't really hear Dan the Man.

  “Hey nature-boy!” he said.

  “Yeah, yeah. A Gonzales. Hell, I don't know. That's a goddamn mess. I got a date with Marcia set up for tonight.”

  Dan the Man pulled Gideon up from the ground, and looked right at the pee-stain on his trousers, crinkling his lips and flaring his nostrils.

  “Mister Aquarium's gotta date tonight,” he said. “Guess we gotta go easy on you.”

  “Thank God,” Gideon Cash said and clasped his hands together. Dan the Man laid a sharp smack across his right cheek so hard it sounded like a gunshot.

  “You play this course?” Dan the Man said.

  Besides his sales job at Love's Auto-Mall, Gideon Cash is also a part-time caddy at The Sycamore Golf Club. A lot of deadbeats, when they know that Eddie is looking for them, get a sudden urge to put in some overtime at their place of employment. Sleeping at your home address makes you easier to find.

  “You like golf?” Dan the Man said. He punched Gideon and sent him back to the ground, with a bloody nose for his trouble. Then he grabbed a nine iron from a golf bag in the corner. I thought it was a little too soon for that kind of thing, and I flinched because I thought he might swing it and splatter blood on me right before my date with Marcia; but Dan the Man just rubbed the head of the golf club with his fat thumb.

  Gideon cowered in the corner like a tortured animal, arms stretched out, hands wide open, getting ready to stop whatever might be coming his way.

  Eddie wanted his money and he was going to get it. Not because eight or nine large even meant anything to him. It was the principal of the thing. If you give one guy a pass, they all expect one. You lose the power of threat if you don't back it up with some real muscle every now and then. Once, when me and Dan the Man were out collecting around the neighborhood, he gave me an ear-full on Eddie's life story…

  “He had a brother.”

  “Had?” I said.

  “That's what I said.”

  I was hooked on the story now. At first I was just expecting more of Dan the Man's half-assed philosophical discussions about the afterlife, and if guys like us would be allowed in.

  “You didn't hear it from me,” he said, hands on the wheel at ten and two.

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “His name was Dino,” Dan the Man said. “Eddie's kid brother by eight years. Dino's sophomore year of high school wasn't so grand. Got plowed over by a drunk driver. Guy wrapped his car around a tree about a mile up the road right after he hit the kid.”

  “Damn,” I said.

  “Long story short, that drunk driver survived the wreck—but he didn't survive Eddie Sesto.”

  “No way,” I said.

  “Way,” Dan the Man said, and raised his eyebrows.

  “How'd he do it?”

  “Made it look like a train hit him. Blood alcohol sky-high. They say Eddie drank him stupid, then led him to the tracks…”

  I heard another sharp crack, like the end of a whip, and it snapped me out of my memory. Dan the Man was really going at it now, smacking and punching poor Gideon to punctuate his sentences.

  “Nine grand (smack!). Nine grand and I swear it'll be ten by the end of today (punch!). So pay up (smack!). Pay up (punch!). Pay up (smack!).”

  “I can't give you what I don't got,” Gideon Cash said, his teeth so bloody it looked like he'd been eating fresh roadkill. His face was black and welted, and the skin around his eyes looked like meat that had gone bad.

  “Nine grand, or the VIN's you owe us,” Dan said. “Hey Ronnie, tell this joker how we do business.”

  I sat down in one of those swivel desk chairs, the kind you might see in a high school gym teacher's office. Dan the Man walked away. He took my spot at the window and I could hear him breathing, warm and airy and angry.

  “It's like this,” I said to Gideon. “You got into an arrangement with Eddie Sesto. You know who Eddie Sesto is?”

  “Sure I do, Ronnie.” Gideon was sitting like a slacker against a brick wall, knees propped up, hands dangling over them. He was glad to see me. I wasn't as scary as Dan the Man.

  “Eddie runs a big part of the city. Now, we ain't New York and we never will be. But Eddie's boss runs a big part of New York. You ever hear of Frank Conese? What I'm trying to say is this. Eddie wants his money. He cut you plenty of breaks. You could have stopped taking the envelopes if there weren't enough cars coming through.”

  “I know, I know, but it's like, my daughters and my wife, and—”

  “—eh eh eh,” I said. “This is what me and Dan do. We collect. All day, every day. We've heard all the sob stories. Same goddamn thing every day. Then a guy like you makes me have to do things I don't like to do. Some guys get off on ripping out a guy's fingernails. Putting a bullet into a kneecap. Not me. I like aquariums. You ever had a fish tank?”

  Gideon shook his head back and forth.

  “Well, it's a great hobby. Relaxing. That's why they have 'em in dentist's offices and stuff. It's a fact: watching an aquarium lowers your blood pressure.”

  “I should get two of 'em,” Dan the Man said.

  I looked right into Gideon Cash's bruised-up mug. “Tell you what I'm gonna do. Deal of the century. You give us half. Four point five. I smooth it over with Eddie, get you another few days to come up with the rest.”

  “Thanks Ronnie,” Gideon said, “but I don't even have that much. Wish to hell I did.”

  I rubbed my hands across my knees. “How much can you get us?”

  It took Gideon about ten whole seconds to finally spit out an answer, and since he was looking over at Dan the Man the whole time he was thinking about it, I knew his figure wouldn't be anything close to what Eddie needed.

  “Seven hundred,” he finally said. “I'll go with you guys to the ATM right now. It's the last of my money, but you can have it.”

  “How's a guy like you end up in a spot like this?” I said. “You were making good money.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I got problems.”

  “You sure do,” Dan the Man said, rolling up his shirt sleeves.

  I put my face in my hands and rubbed my eyes. By the time I looked up, Dan the Man had Gideon pinned under his left leg. Gideon looked like a rat on a glue trap, fighting and shuddering, but una
ble to go anywhere. Then Dan reached into the messenger bag and brought out a pair of small pruning scissors. He tossed them to me and I caught them perfectly. I unlocked the safety and squeezed them open and shut a few times. They put off an oily smell.

  Gideon Cash screamed for help. Dan put a hand over his mouth so that all you heard was this muffled wailing, like a guy calling up from the bottom of a well. Gideon's arms flailed about, so Dan switched it up and placed a knee on each arm and let all of his weight do the work.

  “This one's a fighter,” he said, like he was talking about some catfish flopping around at the side of a boat.

  “Finger or toe?” I said to Gideon. I squeezed the pruning scissors a few times so he could hear their oily squeaking.

  Dan the Man took his hand away from Gideon's mouth.

  “Don't do it. Please!” he said.

  “I'd go with a toe,” I said. “Man wears shoes most the time anyways.”

  He hollered out help, hellllpppp before Dan the Man smooshed his hand over his mouth again.

  “Guess he agrees with you,” he said. “Take off his shoe.”

  Once I had his right shoe and sock off—and it took a bit of work—Dan the Man said how we should clip the second toe, because it was longer than the first and looked pretty weird.

  “They say that's a sign of intelligence: when your second toe is longer than your big toe.”

  “Don't apply here I guess,” Dan the Man said. “If he had any smarts, he'd pay up. And I mean quick.”

  The muffled cry called out through Dan's fat hand, and he uncupped it real quick and said, “don't you dare scream out for help again. Now… you got something you'd rather give us?”

  “Tell Eddie I'll pay him an extra grand if he just gives me another week,” Gideon Cash said between gulps of fresh air.

  Dan the Man shook his head. He pulled out a roll of duct tape and wrapped a piece around Gideon's face so that his mouth was fully sealed.

  What most guys don't understand is that we don't want to hurt anybody. It's better to have a guy like Gideon Cash alive, placing bets, digging his own financial grave. That's our bread and butter. But there has to be some kind of retribution. There has to be fear. Otherwise, they'll walk right over you. It's not easy busting knuckles. I get no pleasure breaking knees. But Eddie says I've got to learn if I want to earn.

  “This little piggy went to market, this little pig went home… this little piggy had roast beef, this little piggy had none…” Dan the Man said. He motioned for me to come over.

  “He's gonna snip it fast. You won't feel a thing,” he said to Gideon in his warmest tone. Then he looked at me again. “I like Gideon,” he said. “Don't take the second toe. Take the littlest piggy.”

  I knelt down and studied the pinky toe. Slid the cool blades of the shears around it. I made the mistake of looking up at Gideon's face. He didn't even look like a man anymore.

  Once, when I was a kid, my foster dad cornered a raccoon that had been stealing our trash. He towered over it with a shovel. At first the raccoon was all hisses and claws, but then he got the shovel blade right under its chin and pinned it to the garage floor. The raccoon stopped struggling and its eyes turned glassy and desperate. Pure fear. Then my foster dad pushed the shovel.

  Gideon was wearing that raccoon face.

  “Come on,” Dan the Man said to me, “this little piggy's gonna go wheee, wheee, wheee, all the way home, back to Eddie's desk. Snip it!”

  And I did. Bone crunched, and the little toe dropped to the floor. It must have just bounced a few times, but I swear it looked like the tail of a lizard, squirming and pulsing with a brain of its own. I almost expected that bloody stub to run away across the carpet. For some reason I fixated on the nail, the tiny nail, ugly and yellowed and calloused. Then I could hear Gideon Cash flopping around like a Mexican jumping bean.

  Dan the Man was wheezing he was laughing so hard. He was literally smacking his hand on his knee and doubling over like they do in the movies. He ripped the tape off of Gideon's mouth and told him not to make a peep if he liked the idea of keeping his other toes. Then he held the clipped pinky toe up in the bright light of the window, and dropped it into a Ziploc baggie.

  “I'll ask Eddie what he thinks about this. Maybe you're square. Maybe you ain't. But I think you should do what Eddie says, okay?”

  Gideon nodded, huffed and puffed, and bit his bottom lip. A tear ran down his face and came to rest on the crest of his upper lip, and his tongue lapped it up like it was a sweet drop of wine. He held his foot and rocked back and forth.

  I had to pick up Marcia in an hour. My shirt had a blood stain on it, and there's nothing worse than a bloodstain. They don't come out. I decided right then that the shirt had to go, so I took it off and threw it hard. It wrapped around Gideon's head with a crisp snap. He looked like a kid at Halloween dressed up as a ghost.

  Dan the Man busted up again. You would've thought he was at a stand-up comedy club.

  “Wrap it around your foot,” I said to Gideon. Then I asked him if there were any extra shirts around in the locker room. He stood up—I tried to stop him, said I would go and look myself. But he said, “no, no, I got it, I got it.”

  He must have raided someone's locker, because we could hear a lot of metal doors banging around. I heard the thump-da-thump of one of those industrial paper-towel dispensers. Then he limped back with a light blue polo shirt and handed it off to me, never once looking into my eyes. He'd used a huge sheet of clean brown paper towel to carry the shirt, just to make sure that no blood got on it. That was mighty nice of him.

  I slipped it over my head. It was a little tight, but it was clean.

  “All right Baby Blue, let's roll,” Dan the Man said.

  I felt antsy the whole drive back into town. Dan the Man told me to quit checking my watch. “She'll wait. What else is she gonna do?” he said.

  Back in the office parking lot, I hopped out of Dan's Toyota Camry and jogged over to my car. I drive a black Honda Accord. Nice, but not too flashy. Dan the Man swayed me into buying a car that doesn't stand out too much. Something practical.

  “Ricky's Park Avenue looks like a car that a thug would drive. My car looks like something a high school teacher would drive to a picnic. You tell me who's smarter,” he said, back when I was flipping through the pages of an Auto-Trader Weekly.

  I didn't have time to go home and take a shower, and that put me in a sour mood. I like a hot shower. Sometimes I take three a day.

  I bee-lined it straight over to the look-out point where Marcia meets up with me. We can't be seen together: she's happily married with two kids. She was there all right, hands in her pockets and tapping her foot, as I turned into the mostly vacant lot. She was wearing a long coat and sunglasses.

  “Where have you been?” she said, as she crawled into the passenger seat.

  “I could go on and on.”

  “You always have a story.” She was trying to be mad about it, but she couldn't keep it up. I moved closer to her and squeezed her thigh.

  “You and me make the best story,” I said, not meaning a word of it.

  She shook her head, but she was cracking one hell of a smile that she couldn't stop from taking over her face. She looked damn good like that. Sweet and sly and just a little bit evil. I wondered if her husband had any idea about us. All I knew about him was that his name was Kevin, and he sold home and life insurance.

  I kind of hoped that he was worthless. But Marcia never had a bad word to say about him. In fact it was the opposite. Kevin was Mister Wonderful, a good provider who loved and cherished his children. So why did she sleep with a guy like me? I'll tell you why. Boredom. The Kevins of this world have a lot going for them, but they're lacking in one department. Excitement. And a girl like Marcia has a real dirty side, an itch that a guy like Kevin just can't scratch. I'm not saying it's right, but it's just the way it is.

  “He'll be expecting me home soon.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Same
time next week? I won't be late.”

  She gave me a kiss and hopped out of the car. “You don't have another girl, do you?” she said with the door half open, pulling her purse off the seat.

  “Are you kidding me? I can hardly manage you,” I said.

  There's some bright, shiny hypocrisy for you—a broad, cheating on her husband, thinking that she should be the only woman in your life.

  I watched her walk across the parking lot. She had a great can that shifted up and down just right, and the way her legs crissed and crossed in front of one another would have the Dalai Lama thinking unholy thoughts. She reached her beat-up Honda Civic and drove off, back to her other life somewhere, where some insurance salesman named Kevin would probably kiss and squeeze her and think that he was some lucky guy.

  I wondered what Gideon Cash was doing. Probably at the hospital. How would he explain his missing toe? Would he make up some story for his wife and kids… a gardening accident? A car part that fell on his foot in the shop? He sure as hell wouldn't tell them the truth. Sometimes the truth is so ugly it's better to leave a blanket on top of it.

  Some people talk about an eternal truth, outside of us—an ethereal, esoteric, universal truth. They say that truth is beauty, and beauty is truth. That sounds good in books, but it doesn't float in the real world. I'll tell you who's full of truth and beauty: a sparrow, a crocodile, a squirrel, a toad. It's only the animals who are basking in the glory of truth and beauty, never being anything than what they really are. With humanity, where there's beauty there might not be truth; and where there's truth, there's probably no beauty. We always have a story. We want our voices to be heard. We want a friend who will cosign our bullshit.

  I guess I've cosigned my share, and people have signed off on mine. The whole human world would come to a halt if everyone was too full of truth and beauty.

  PUGS FOR SALE

  One of the craziest guys we did business with was a Chinese guy named Thin Y No. That wasn't his real name. Tall Terry (who died from a heart attack) made it up and it stuck. The kid was thin and he was a wino, so Terry chinked those traits right into a pseudo-Chinese name after meeting the kid one night at the Totsy.