by John Prindle
It was quiet outside. No trees rustled. No cars passed. I walked to the main road, turned right, and pretended that I was the last guy on earth. Streetlights aimed their dreary yellow eyes at the road beneath them.
I heard something breathing. Under a streetlight, I saw a peach-colored gang of possums, gathered in a circle, in a spot where the tall grass was dead and the ground was level and bare. As I drew near, one of them turned and hissed like a dragon. I was close enough to see its ragged gums and wavy grin. No possum is winning a beauty prize any time soon, that's for sure. They waddled off, grudgingly, like some gypsy family, into the dark.
They'd been eating a dead raccoon. I squatted down and studied him, and wondered what kind of life he'd led, and if he had a family that was out looking for him right now. I don't know how smart a raccoon is, but I do know that animals are a whole lot smarter than we'd like to admit. Maybe a raccoon has hopes and dreams and doesn't want to die. A raccoon has delicate hands, like the hands of a small child. One of those hands was reaching out and clutching at the night air.
A skinny white kid was working the counter at the 7-11, reading a book. I walked to the back of the store and grabbed an iced tea from one of those ponderous coolers with multiple doors, where there's so much of everything that there's never anything you really want; and when I got back to the counter I said:
“What are you reading?”
The kid hopped off of the tall stool where he sat, closed the book, and pushed his long hair off of his face. He held up the book so I could see the title.
“Gulliver's Travels,” I said. I shook my head and grinned. “You reading it for school or something?”
“I'm reading it to read,” the kid said, with youthful surliness.
“Synchronicity,” I said.
“What's that?”
“I was just looking at my own copy of Gulliver, right before I walked over here. And here you are, reading the very same book. That's synchronicity.”
“Amazing,” the kid said, in a flat voice, with a flat face.
I set my twenty on the counter and walked out with my iced tea.
“Hey,” the kid said with his real voice, “what about your change?”
“Keep it,” I said, looking back at him.
“It's only a buck eighty-nine,” he said.
“Buy yourself some Mark Twain,” I said.
The smile on the kid's face was worth a whole lot more than eighteen bucks, and when I was outside I looked back through the glass, and the kid was there counting out the bills he could keep after putting the buck eighty-nine in the drawer. He looked up and waved and made a fist and pumped it in the air a couple of times, like he was saying, hey man, you're all right…
* * * *
Killing Ricky took something out of me. I saw things as they were, and there was a whole lot more ugliness than I remembered. Marcia kept up with her weekly delivery, but her eyes made me sick, for they were the same eyes that she used on her husband and kids. I walked every night and checked on the progress of that dead raccoon. Skin-first it withered away, still grasping at the emptiness, as rotten as a heap of old fruit. It made me think of Ricky Cervetti, dripping into the earth around Eugene's eerie cabin.
One night, on my walk past the dead raccoon, my phone rang.
“Get to Eddie's house,” Dan the Man said.
“What for?”
“Barney,” he said.
“What about him?”
“Poison,” he said.
When I knocked on the front door, Irene answered. She looked like a lady who'd just gotten the ransom call on her newborn baby. She was wearing a white nightie, and she had curlers in her hair, just like they wear in the old t.v. shows. She showed me out to the back patio, where Dan the Man, Eddie Sesto, and Mac McDyer were crouched on the ground, under the soft porch-light, commiserating like guys in a hospital E.R.
Barney the pug was lying on his blue blanket between the three of them, his tongue hanging out to one side.
“Look here,” Eddie said to me. He stood up and handed me a postcard.
“Greetings From The Black Hills,” I read aloud.
Mac McDyer switched out an I.V. in Barney's back leg. Dan the Man smoked a cigarette, coughed a lot, and watched the procedure.
“What's wrong with him?” I asked Mac.
“Strychnine,” he said.
“Poisoned treats,” Eddie said.
“Griffin Shaw?” I said.
Eddie nodded.
I got down on one knee and studied the pug's choppy breathing.
“Mac fixed up Ricky's leg, and he's gonna fix up Barney too,” Eddie said, like he was putting in an order at a restaurant.
“I don't know,” Mac said. “Don't get your hopes up.”
“Kids and animals shouldn't never be a part of it,” Eddie said.
I scratched the short hair behind Barney's ears. His whole muzzle was wet, and his buggy eyes looked like marbles coated with Vaseline.
Mac looked at Eddie and shook his head.
“Goddamn it,” Eddie said. He bit his clenched fist, and blinked his eyes a few times.
“He's in a lot of pain,” Mac said.
Eddie got down on the ground and kissed Barney's wrinkly forehead. He ran a hand over his belly and patted it a few times. “What a dog,” he said, choking up.
Mac McDyer took out a vial of something as pink as grapefruit juice, and he hooked it up to the I.V. Then he pressed the plunger, and the pink death exited the vial and went up the tube and into Barney's leg.
The pug pulled in a loud breath, snorted, and died.
Mac held a stethoscope up to the chest of the dog. “The heart has stopped beating now,” he said in a somber tone, like he was telling the nation that President Kennedy had just been shot.
Eddie stood up, walked around in a circle a few times, and then he froze: arms folded, eyes shut, head to the ground, as calm as a stone Buddha.
“Kids and animals,” he said again.
“What do you want done, boss?” Dan the Man said.
“Get lost, McDyer,” Eddie said.
Mac put his things away and started back into the house. Eddie grabbed his shirtsleeve. “Take Barney with you.”
“I don't do that sort of thing,” Mac said.
“You do now,” said Eddie.
Mac set his bag down, walked back, wrapped Barney's limp body up in the blue blanket, picked him up, and carried him under one arm back into the house. I heard Irene, thanking Mac McDyer and letting him out the front door. Then I heard her crying, faintly, like some distant angel.
Eddie looked at Dan. “Get a plane ticket and a rental car. You're off to South Dakota.”
“What about me?” I said.
“Frank needs you in New York.”
“What for?”
“Jobs.”
“I'd rather help Dan,” I said.
“Dan don't need help, Champ. And when Frank Conese asks you to do something, you do it. No questions.” Eddie licked his upper lip. “I can still picture that Harley hick—sat right there in my office, wearing that goddamn bolo tie! Does some chicken-shit thing like poisoning a dog? He's got a hot date with Eugene the Ukrainian.” Eddie held up a hand like he was stopping traffic. He swallowed. His eyes were glassy.
“Want me to choke him with that bolo tie?” Dan said.
“No,” Eddie said. “Make sure Eugene gets him alive.”
* * * *
Death claims more than the obvious victim. Barney the pug was the last connection we had to Thin Y No, and when the pink death rushed into Barney's hind leg, it felt like Thin died again and went even further underground. With Barney alive, Thin's ghost kept hanging out with us, and it was easy to see him smiling that toothy yellow grin; when Barney died, Thin turned into smoke. I couldn't get his face quite right anymore. The nose eluded me. I couldn't remember the graceful symbol that he'd stamped into those dabs of red wax, and I wished like hell that I'd saved an envelope.
I we
nt to the Totsy to meet Dan the Man. I was driving him to the airport for his red-eye to Sturgis. When I got there, Carlino DiTommaso was sitting across from Dan in the booth behind the pool tables, under the old Jean Harlow picture (a charcoal sketch done by Eddie Sesto's late mother, and one of the better pieces of art in the Totsy).
“Big trip,” I said to Dan, and slid into the booth next to him.
“Who's leaving?” Carlino said.
“I'm goin' up to visit Dotty's folks,” Dan said. He looked sideways at me.
“Where they live?” Carlino said, lighting a smoke.
“Minnesota.”
“Frickin' cold,” Carlino said.
“Me and Ron got business,” Dan the Man said. Then he sat and waited, without a frown, without a smile. Carlino tapped his fingernails on the tabletop. He smiled. Then he nodded like a guy who'd just come up with the answer on a test.
“You two lovebirds have fun,” Carlino said, sliding out of the booth.
He threw a twenty dollar bill on the table and walked away. I got up and took his old seat, opposite Dan the Man. Becca came over with her pen and pad, and I ordered an iced tea.
“No beer?” she said.
“Can't drink beer all the time.”
“Guess my Dad never got that memo,” she said, and walked away.
“This here's my last job,” Dan said. He lowered his eyes.
“Too old to fly?”
“I'm dying,” he said softly, like a newborn baby was in the room.
“Dying?”
“The dirt nap.”
I stared at him. “Good one,” I said.
“Look at me,” Dan said, striking a military pose and raising his chin.
“You're ugly,” I said, “but that doesn't mean you're dying.”
“See here?” he said. He rubbed at the side of his neck. “Limp-nodes.”
“You been to the doctor?”
“A dozen times,” Dan said.
Becca came back with my iced tea, and I said thanks, and everything around me sounded as flat as an AM radio station. I dumped in half a packet of sugar and stirred the ice cubes around.
“Cancer?” I said, and all at once it felt like I was floating just outside of myself and listening to some weird guy who kind of looked and sounded like me. It's a terrible thing to hear your own voice, the way it really sounds, from outside of your own skull.
“Limp-nodes,” Dan said.
“Lymph nodes… limffff,” I said.
“And I'm s'posed to care how you say it?”
“How long?” I said.
“Two, three months maybe.”
I took a big swig of tea, and the ice cubes hit my front teeth and felt like shards of glass. Then I saw and heard that guy who looks and sounds just like me say:
“I'll talk to my doctor. Doc Brillman. He knows what's what. Don't even worry about it.”
“Don't worry about it?” Dan said and laughed.
“They can treat it.”
“Not this. This here's something bad. Ran right through me.”
“Chemo,” I said.
“I start next week. But there ain't much hope. I'm getting my things in order.”
I sat there for a minute and ran through a million quick scenarios. I scraped my thumbnail along the edge of a tooth, and then another, and then another; but none of the scenarios I dreamed up seemed right. There was always a black casket waiting at the end of each one of them. Dan the Man took a long gulp of beer. Then he held the curvy glass above the table and spun it in a lazy circle, like he was trying to read his future in the last maelstrom of liquid gold. The beer looked warm and old and tired. No more bubbles.
“Eddie?” I said.
“I figured you could break it to him, while I'm gone.”
I told him I would.
“Go easy. He don't do so well with death.”
“He picked a great line of work,” I said.
Dan the Man laughed. Rolled his fingertips across the tabletop. Looked up at Jean Harlow, thoughtfully, like he wondered if she'd be there to welcome him into the club.
I heard the crack of pool balls, and people laughing and talking like there was nothing at all wrong with the world. A young girl put some money in the jukebox, and The Bee Gees started singing “Stayin' Alive.” A cruel kick from the cosmos, but Dan the Man didn't seem to notice: he was still lost in the charcoal gaze of a dead movie star.
Lucky was hunched over in his usual seat at the bar, in front of the video poker machine. His few strands of hair, grown out long on one side of his head, were smoothed over his bald spot, and formed an oily net. What kind of madness prompts a bald guy to sport a comb-over? It's a hairdo guaranteed to make you look like a first-rate chump.
Lucky won the lottery back in 1989, but he didn't cash the ticket in time. Didn't even know he won until they traced it to the corner store where he bought it, and they put a grainy photo of him on the nightly news. He couldn't find the ticket for a whole year. Tore up the house and car, and finally found it in the pages of a book. But he was one day late. Twenty million, gone. That's why they call him Lucky: the cruelest nickname I ever heard.
“Life plays some dirty tricks on you,” Dan said. He waved for Becca, ordered two shots of Porfidio, and she brought it.
“What are we toasting?” I said.
He held up the glass of tequila. “May we get what we want, may we get what we need—” he coughed, and his voice got wet and sandy—“but may we never get what we deserve.”
We clinked glasses and I tossed the clear fire down my throat.
“Who would've thought, a dishwasher moving up like you done.”
“Thanks to you and Eddie,” I said.
“And Tall Terry.”
“He was all right,” I said.
“How's a guy smart as you end up washing dishes?”
“It ain't what you know—”
“—it's who you know,” Dan finished.
“And I'm not much for an office job.”
Dan the Man ordered two more shots. I didn't want one, but it's hard to say no to a guy with cancer.
“Did you know Ronnie when he was washing dishes here?” he asked Becca. She rolled a Bic pen between her fingertips and looked over at me, then back again at Dan, worried she might say the wrong thing.
“That was way before I started.”
“But you heard about it?”
“Sure,” Becca said.
Dan put his hand on top of hers. “You're a good kid,” he said.
“Thanks,” Becca said, but the word was pinched and folded, like something forced through a tiny hole.
“Go on then. Beat it,” Dan said.
Becca tugged her hand away, and walked over to Lucky's side of the room.
“Can you believe that broad?”
“You're old enough to be her Dad,” I said. “And then add fifteen years.”
“Here's to the grim reaper,” he said, raising the shot glass.
“Here's to your health,” I said defiantly. We clinked glasses again. The tequila was smooth, but it burned when it hit my stomach. I coughed. Dan laughed.
“Eddie called it a date with Ethel.”
“Ethel?” I said.
“Booze. When he was gonna tie one on, it was a date with Ethel. Like ethyl alcohol. Back when his daughter died, Eddie went crazy on the stuff. You ever see him drunk and you'll remember it.”
“What does he do?”
“What don't he do? Wanders up and down a staircase like a mental patient. Sleeps in a field. Passes out on a bathroom floor. One time I seen him punch a hole in a living room wall.”
“Whose wall?”
“Frank Conese.”
“Was he mad?”
“He wasn't real happy,” Dan said.
“That why they didn't make him?”
Dan the Man rubbed the side of his neck. “It was a lot more than that, but yeah—he was unreliable.”
“You'd never know it. He's solid now.”
/>
“Keep your eyes peeled. I'll be gone soon. No one's moved on Eddie with me around to get in the way. But these new kids… like Carlino over there.”
“And Max Finn,” I said.
“Thick as thieves,” Dan said.
I turned and looked over at the two of them, sitting far away at the bar next to Lucky. They were playing bar dice, and Lucky was handing a bill to Max Finn.
“Carlino's a made man,” Dan said.
“That guy?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“They made him?” I said.
“'Course they made him. Gold chain. Leather coat. Wops like him get made. You ever heard a more Eye-talian name than Carlino DiTommaso?”
“What's he care about Eddie?”
“He don't. But Frank Conese does. You gotta take care of Eddie.”
“I will,” I said.
“Just wait till you meet Frank. Smooth talker. Guy could sell a carton of shaving cream to the Taliban.”
* * * *
Out in the parking lot, Dan the Man opened the trunk of his Camry and unzipped a black duffel bag. He dug under a few shirts and pulled out the Low-E string garotte that had choked the life out of Ricky Cervetti, Wade Shaw, and probably a dozen more.
“I'm givin' this to you,” he said.
I unlocked my car, which was parked right next to his, and tossed the garotte onto the floor of the backseat.
“Thanks,” I said.
Then he produced a gun. Not just a gun, but the gun. Dan the Man's Walther PPK, fitted with a steel suppressor and a custom made brass-catcher. He loved that gun more than he loved his wife and kid.
“I can't,” I said as he was handing it over.
“Sure you can. Take good care of her.”
“I will,” I said.
“See there,” he said, and touched the brass-catcher that hung from the side of the gun. It looked like a miniature lawnmower bag. “Guy named Eyebrows made it for me special in his machine shop, back in the old days. Never gotta look for brass when you do a job.”
“Why'd they call him Eyebrows?” I said. “Thick ones, or none at all?”
“None at all. Guy looked like an alien.”
“What are you gonna use in South Dakota?”
“My imagination,” Dan said.
I pushed the gun under the front seat. “You sure you're up for it?”