by John Prindle
“Black hillbillies?” Ricky said.
“No. White boys. Actual brothers,” Bullfrog said, shaking his head like Ricky was some kind of serious fool.
“Did you talk to 'em?” Eddie said.
“I sent Moe over there,” Bullfrog said. “They told him they don't deal with no niggers.”
“That's not cordial,” Eddie said. He took out an oily black cigar, clipped it with a guillotine cutter, and grabbed a book of matches. Then he flashed his wicked grin and his eyes got bright, as if he was thrilled to hear about a good throw-down. Moe's a big guy. He can do some damage.
“What'd Moe say to 'em?”
“He kept it cool. Now he's just waiting for your word,” Bullfrog said.
“I like Moe,” Eddie said, puffing away at the lit match and rotating the cigar to get an even burn. Ricky was sitting on the couch and Dan the Man was standing with his arms crossed, like he was a bouncer at a titty bar. Barney the pug was curled up on a blue blanket in the corner of the room.
“Moe is good people,” Eddie said. “Hey Rick, you wanna go over and talk some sense into these knuckleheads?”
“My pleasure,” Ricky said, standing up and flicking unseen things off the front of his leather coat.
“Hey Champ… you go too,” Eddie said to me.
It wasn't snowing, but there was dirty slush here and there and the trees looked like skeletons. The sky was so white it looked like God was smoothing out a freshly washed bed sheet. It actually stung your eyes to look at it, and it made the wind feel even colder.
We sat in Ricky's Buick Park Avenue and waited for it to warm up. Ricky rubbed his gloved hands together, and blew air between his palms like he was lost in Antarctica. I sat there wondering how a guy could take himself seriously while wearing black leather gloves.
“Do they help you drive?” I asked him.
“They keep my hands clean,” he said, and he mimed like he was gripping a guy by the throat with one hand and punching his face with the other. He laughed and put the car in reverse.
We drove past the parched lots and empty brick buildings; past dirty houses with lit-up reindeer and strings of white lights.
“I bought my kid a video game machine,” Ricky said.
“You get your wife anything?”
“She's already got me. What more could she want?”
“Me,” I said.
“Pffff. You? You wouldn't know what to do with her. She's big, for one thing.”
We drove through the south-side, until we found Santa in front of a Methodist Church. He was shaking a brass bell and standing next to a Salvation Army kettle. I saw a little white girl in a bright blue coat jumping up and down in a muddy slush puddle. There were black people walking up and down the church steps, the men dressed up in fine suits and trench coats, the women in dark dresses and shawls. Ricky drove a little way up the street and parallel parked into a tight spot that seemed impossible. Maybe those gloves really did help.
We walked up to Moe's filthy door, and Ricky rapped on it twice. Moe let us in and poured us a cup of coffee.
“Them hicks is crazy,” he said to Ricky. “I said they couldn't be dealin' round here. I tried to be cool. Told 'em I'd set something up, that maybe they could get in with us. They wasn't havin' it. Said they do what they want, when they want, where they want.”
“Where they gettin' their stuff?” Ricky said.
“Pop's a Hell's Angel. He sends it.”
“Their Dad?” Ricky said, a little confused.
“According to Mister Z.”
Mister Z is a meth head whose brain is so far gone that he literally thinks he's from another planet. Bullfrog watches out for him. He gives him free stuff and Mister Z brings us new clients. It works out pretty well for everyone.
Moe gave us directions to the hillbilly house, and we split. Ricky put a twenty dollar bill into Santa's Salvation Army kettle before we got into the car.
“God Bless,” Santa said.
Any time I go into a bad situation, I mentally prepare for the worst. I picture what it will feel like to have a bullet rip through my neck or get lodged in my chest. Then I tell myself it's not going to happen—because I'm too good. Like preparing for a test, or running five miles, you have to psych yourself up for it, tell yourself that you're the best: you're a winner. If you really want to live, the odds are good that you will. People die when they're ready to.
We turned off on a pothole-stricken road just outside of the city. Ricky kept the Buick at five miles an hour, and we bumped along. “Our tax dollars at work,” he said. He pulled over into a patch of dirty grass and mud near a squat blue house, and pointed through the windshield at a distant ugly house—the only other building on the street.
“Why'd you park so far away?” I asked.
“Never let 'em see you coming,” Ricky said. “Ready?”
I opened my sportcoat a little, so he could see the Beretta he'd sold me. We got out and shut the car doors, and they sounded loud and crisp, the way they always do when you're heading toward trouble. We walked. A skinny black cat ran across the road in front of us. It hid in some bushes, and as we passed I knelt down and made a clicking sound. It ran right over to me. You could see the shape of its backbone. I made a fist and let it stroke its face against my hand, and it hummed like an engine.
“Jesus,” Ricky said. “I ain't superstitious, but let's not push it.”
Ricky rang the doorbell. It took a few minutes. Then the white curtain of a nearby window lifted up and fell back into place.
“Who is it?” a voice said.
“The meter man,” Ricky said.
The deadbolt clicked and the door creaked open. A scrawny kid with long blond hair stood there looking us up and down. He had a lot of piercings. One through his eyebrow and one through his nose, right in the middle, like a cartoon bull. His ears were stretched out as big as silver dollars from those tribal style earrings that so many white kids are wearing these days.
Moe wears tiny gold hoops, and those look fine. What I don't understand is some guy with earlobes the size of a coffee mug. There's no going back from that. And it's disrespectful to the guys in Papua New Guinea with red face-paint and bows with poison arrows. Those stretched out lobes are an important part of their culture. They have spiritual significance. But over here in America, on some suburban college kid, giant holes in your ears are just a cheap way to say, “hey, look at me!”
So right off the bat I didn't like this kid. His baseball hat was turned sideways, he was wearing a tank-top, and his bony white arms were covered with ridiculous tattoos. His eyes were redder than a baboon's ass, and the sharp smell of weed was practically floating in a visible cloud behind him in the darkness.
“We're friends of Moe,” Ricky said.
“Who's Moe?” the kid said.
“The black gentleman you refused to do business with,” Ricky said.
“Who is it?” a girl said from the darkness.
“Shut up,” the kid said. Then he yelled out “Wade! Get down here!”
“Do we have to stand out here like bums?” Ricky said, flashing his white teeth.
The kid stepped aside and the door creaked open. Next thing I knew we were sitting on a couch in a living room with two empty pizza boxes, a three foot glass bong, some beer bottles here and there, and white sheets thumb-tacked over the windows. Classy.
A girl with pink hair and tight black pants sat in an ugly recliner. She looked even more stoned than the kid. She grabbed the wooden handle on the side of the chair and heaved herself back.
“Who are these guys?” she said.
“I thought I told you to shut up,” the kid said.
You could hear someone walking down the stairs, and I saw Ricky move his hand toward his gun. It was the kid's older brother. You could see they were related, but this one had short hair and a way more professional appearance. I couldn't find a single tattoo.
“I'm Wade,” he said when he reached the bottom of t
he stairs. “That's my brother Clayton”—he looked over at the scrawny kid—“can we help you?”
“You weren't very nice to Moe,” Ricky said.
“I thought he was bluffing.”
“No Sir,” Ricky said. “We have a certain way of doing things around here. If you guys want to operate, you're gonna have to pay a fee.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Wade said.
“But—” Clayton said.
“Don't worry about it. I'll talk to Dad,” Wade said to his brother.
“You talk to your Dad,” Ricky said. He stood up and looked around the room, like he was disgusted that anyone could live that way. “Then come see us… Tuesday at two o'clock. Eddie's Vacuum Sales and Repair. It's in the Yellow-pages.”
“I'll be there,” Wade said.
“I guess I should emphasize that none of your stuff hits the street again until we figure all of this out.”
“Not a problem.”
“But—” Clayton said.
“Shut up,” Wade said. “These guys are for real.”
“Who are these guys?” the stoned girl said.
Giant-holes-in-his-ears showed us out. He stared at us with bloodshot eyes and a half-open mouth. For some reason I pictured him and the pink-haired girl having a baby, and how the baby would come out covered with earrings and tatts: totally baked without ever taking a hit.
It was so bright out there in the street. My pupils must have dilated to the widest possible aperture back in the dark of that drug house. I had to make a visor with my hand. We walked back to the car, crunching over the few patches of snow.
“The older one was all right,” I said.
“A little too polite.”
“At least no one got hurt.”
“Not yet,” Ricky said.
* * * *
There was a knock on the office door at exactly two in the afternoon the following Tuesday. There's something to be said for punctuality. When you show up on time, people take you seriously. It put Eddie in a good mood.
It turned out that Wade's old man was a pretty big name in the methamphetamine world. He came from West Virginia, but he was currently operating out of Sturgis, South Dakota, and running a huge game. His name was Griffin Shaw. One of Eddie's connections had even done business with a friend of Shaw's a few years back.
“Here's what I'm gonna do,” Eddie said. “The few weeks you've been operating are on the house. But we gotta work out some terms with your old man.”
“Why?” Wade said. “Why should we give you money?”
Eddie rolled back in his chair and looked around at the crew, a giant toothy grin covering half of his face.
“I like this kid,” he said. “He's smart. My old teacher, Miss DeWitt, always said there's no such thing as a stupid question.”
Eddie opened the top drawer of his desk. Wade Shaw reached inside of his jacket, down near his belt. Ricky and Dan the Man pulled out their pieces and aimed at the kid. I had my hand on the butt of my Beretta. The room was so quiet you could hear the rattling of the heater, and the pulsing song of a distant car alarm.
“Easy,” Eddie said. He slowly brought out a small wooden box, set it on the desk, and flipped it open. “Care for a cigar?” He held up a short perfecto with a red and gold band.
“Why not,” Wade said.
We all knew that Eddie was just going for his cigar box, but a scene like that is good for business. You have to do something big just to get all of that fear right out in the open. Guns had been drawn. The air was hot with dark possibilities.
By the time the sit-down was over, Eddie and the kid were downright chummy. Wade even placed a phone call to his old man in Sturgis and put Eddie on the line. From the laughter and quips, you'd've thought that Eddie Sesto and Griffin Shaw were old army buddies.
About a week later, Griffin Shaw flew into town, looking the way hillbillies do when they play dress up. They never quite get it right. He wore a bolo tie with a white dress shirt and black slacks. The shirt had a yellow tinge from sweat-stains that would never wash out, and the slacks were about two sizes too big. The guy was a bean pole. His face was rougher than 50 grade sandpaper and his beard was thin and gray. He was almost bald, but that didn't stop him from having a ponytail.
But Griffin Shaw was eloquent in a twangy sort of way. It was a case where the outside of a man doesn't match what's inside, and I've found that that happens quite a bit in life. Every time I thought I knew a person just from looking them up and down, I discovered how wrong I was once I'd sat through a cup of coffee with them.
“Thirty percent,” Eddie said.
Griffin Shaw laughed. A big hearty laugh like Santa might put out. He looked around at the lot of us, like he wanted one of us to laugh along with him. No one did, of course.
“I think you're one sandwich short of a picnic,” he said. “Thirty percent? What for?”
Eddie put his hands together, fingertip to fingertip, then placed the whole shuh-bang right up to his nose and took a deep breath through his hands. Then he slid them down over his chin.
“Thirty percent buys a lot,” he said. “Cops on the payroll. Greased skids. I always pictured West Virginia as a dirt hill of inbred Goobers with guns and motorcycles. Maybe I was right.”
You could see flames in Griffin's eyes, but he stayed calm.
“Twenty,” he said. “And that's only 'cause I'm in a good mood.”
“Twenty-five,” Eddie said. “That's bargain-basement prices.”
Barney the pug, always napping on a blue blanket near Eddie's desk, stood up, pushed out his front legs, and yawned. He shook his head and his tags jingled. He walked over to Griffin Shaw and sat at his feet, and Griffin petted him.
“He likes you,” Eddie said.
“I got a way with dogs,” Griffin said.
The meeting ended with a handshake and a cigar, but their business partnership didn't stay cordial for long. That younger kid, the one with the holes in his ears and the piercing through his eyebrow—that kid was trouble. He was the kind of punk kid who thinks they're tough just because they've been around tough people. Every time we stopped by that house to grab our envelope, Clayton Shaw gave us attitude.
And his beef with Moe was for real. Clayton Shaw wouldn't shake Moe's hand or even talk to him, just because he was black. That wasn't good for business. Moe worked a lot of ground for us, and now that Clayton was supplying his goods we had to see that the two of them could at least coordinate. I went over there a dozen times with Moe, just trying to make it work. But Clayton had joined up with a VolksFront chapter back in West Virginia. He even had an “88” tattoo on his neck. He was a racist dummy, so dumb that it never crossed his mind he was wearing tribal style African earrings.
I don't have a beef with any one race. Take any guy—White, Black, Mexican, Arab—I can almost guarantee that he's a dirty, sneaky, greedy rat. Seven billion dirty rats shredding up this one beautiful planet. Sure, you get your occasional Gandhi or Mother Teresa, but what good can they do against the rest of us, driving our gas-guzzlers and eating Chicken McNuggets? You're the problem, buddy. So am I.
Moe hated going over to that house, but Eddie told him to stick with it.
“He'll come around,” Eddie said. “You'll win him over. He's just a dumb kid who got in with the wrong crowd.”
“Nah,” said Moe. “I'll deal with that Wade. He's cool. But I ain't settin' foot in that house if that skinny fool is home. You tell Wade that I deal with him, and only him.”
Eddie set it up so Moe could pick up the stuff on Sunday nights. He told Wade Shaw to make sure his younger brother was always gone on Sunday night between eight and ten. And for a good few months, through the rest of that winter and spring and summer, it all ran as smooth as a well-oiled watch.
Then that awful Sunday night happened.
It was ten thirty, and I was cleaning the fifty-five gallon aquarium with my tiger oscar, Vern. My arms were sopping wet when my phone rang. And rang and rang. I knew
it was something bad. Only Eddie will keep dialing like that, over and over again.
I dried off my arms and ran to the phone.
“Hey Champ,” Eddie said, “I need a favor.”
Fifteen minutes later, Ricky Cervetti rolled up in his Buick and we sped off toward the side of town where the West Virginia Boys lived.
“He probably went home and smoked a bowl,” I said, talking about Moe.
“But he calls Eddie every week, right after he gets the stuff.”
“People forget,” I said.
“Not Moe,” Ricky said. And he was right. Moe was clockwork.
The sky was as red as dark wine, but you could still see from the light of the streetlamps. A warm breeze shook the tops of the trees. And there was that same black cat again, sitting like a statue near their house, gently licking its paws. Ricky put his finger to his lips and drew his gun. We crept up to the front door. You could hear people arguing inside. The girl was shouting, and I could hear Clayton's deep voice saying, “Shut up! It's gonna be all right.”
Then the words got scrambled up. Ricky cocked his head to one side and his eye twitched. His lip raised up and went back down again, a spasm. I reached into my belt and took out my gun.
Ricky hit the buzzer. We waited.
The deadbolt turned and Clayton Shaw was there in a wrinkled t-shirt, his face as sweaty as an Arizona roofer.
“Where's Moe?” Ricky said.
Clayton looked at our guns. “Probably back home eating a watermelon.”
“Listen up Adolf, I ain't one of your Aryan Nation boyfriends. Moe was s'posed to call. He never called.”
“Bummer,” Clayton said.
Ricky Cervetti punched the kid right in the gut. We rushed in and slammed the door behind us. Ricky aimed his gun at Clayton, who was doubled over moaning and gripping his belly with both hands.
“You should learn some manners, kid.”
The psycho pink-haired doll came running down the hallway, screaming and flailing her arms like the devil was in her. Ricky swatted her down like a bug.
“Is Wade home?” he asked Clayton. “Hey Wade!” he yelled when the kid didn't answer.
Me and Ricky walked into the living room. Moe was on the floor, a bullet hole in his forehead and one in his gut, deader than a roadkill robin. There were towels under his head, to keep the blood from messing up the carpet.