The Art of Disposal

by John Prindle

  Bullfrog was halfway into the passenger side of the big rig cab when the shot rang out and split the night in two.

  I saw the white dot of the flashlight, bobbing up and down like a drunken firefly, and Max Finn came rushing out from the woods and back onto the road.

  “You shot him?” Carlino said. “You killed him?”

  “He seen our faces,” Max Finn said.

  “Guy had a wife and kid.”

  “They all got a wife and kid when you're pointing a gun at 'em. And who cares if he's got a wife and kid? Now he don't gotta worry about 'em.”

  Max Finn aimed his gun at Bullfrog. Carlino pulled his piece and aimed it at Max Finn. It felt like someone had touched the wrong lever inside of a trusty old clock, and the mainspring was furiously unwinding.

  “Don't you see?” Max Finn said. “This nigger takes the blame. And we take more of the money.”

  “His cut is small,” Carlino said.

  “So we make it smaller,” Max said.

  Bullfrog stood there, as calm as the Buddha. He looked at Carlino. He looked at me. He looked at Max Finn.

  “It's me or this nigger, D-T.”

  “We stick to the plan,” Carlino said, looking down the barrel of his gun.

  “Plans change,” Max Finn said.

  “They do,” Carlino said. He fired the gun. The brief explosion lit up his face and made me think, for some reason, of Rumplestiltskin. Max Finn fell back and landed right on his ass, then tumbled over. He looked at us with half-closed eyes and a raised upper lip, and he gripped at his chest and reached into his pants-pockets like he was looking for his missing car keys. Then he fell all the way onto his back, said ahhhhhh, and died.

  “Holy Moly,” Bullfrog said.

  “Fucking weasel,” Carlino said, and spit on Max Finn's body.

  “He did sort of look like a weasel,” Bullfrog said.

  “Thought you liked Max Finn,” I said.

  “No one likes Max Finn,” Carlino said.

  “Let's get this truck to Jody's,” I said.

  “What about him?” Bullfrog said.

  “Back of the truck,” Carlino said.

  Bullfrog and Carlino dragged the corpse around the big rig, while I stood twenty feet away down the hill, watching for headlights. I heard the rolling door go up and go back down, and when I turned around and walked back over, Bullfrog was sitting on the bumper, out of breath.

  “You need to drop a few pounds,” Carlino said.

  “No shit,” Bullfrog said.

  “Too many Big Macs and Camels. Or wait: Kools, right? Brothers love a menthol.”

  “Go eat some buhskettee and garlic bread,” Bullfrog said.

  “Funny—that's what your Mom always serves me.”

  “My Ma's dead,” Bullfrog said. His smile vanished.

  “And I'm s'posed to care?” Carlino said.

  I could hear the locust wings strumming in the trees all around us. Bullfrog grinned and tilted his head mechanically.

  “Hell, my Ma ain't really dead,” he said.

  “Bet you a hundred bucks she dies tonight. You just jinxed her real good, Sam.”

  Carlino threw the trailer door's metal lever over and locked the clasp, and it rang out like a giant nail had just been hammered in a canyon.

  “One man short,” Carlino said, chin in his hand. “We leave the cars.”

  “On the edge of the road?” Bullfrog said.

  “Off to the side a little. Ronnie—you cool driving the rig?”

  “Used to drive a tractor on the farm,” I said.

  “This ain't no tractor,” Bullfrog said.

  “You wanna drive it?” I said.

  “Nah. Uh-uh,” Bullfrog said.

  “You ever seen a black guy driving an eighteen wheeler?” Carlino said. “Me neither.”

  I pulled myself up into the driver's side of the cab, and it felt like I was a hundred feet off of the ground. I sat in the cab and watched Carlino and Bullfrog back the two hot cars off into the small ditches that ran along the road. Then they walked around the big rig, and I heard the horn of my car beep twice, as if Carlino was saying, “go ahead, Sam… let's get this show on the road.”

  I threw the beast into first gear and it slammed forward and died. My foot started shaking. My forehead got hot and wet. I pictured myself old, with shattered nerves, seated in a wheelchair, looking blankly out the window of an ivy-covered rest home, with a checkered blanket thrown over my knees and a chessboard in front of me.

  The truth was that I rarely drove the tractor on Carl and Stella's farm. Once or twice, maybe. Uncle Carl was more likely to shoo me away than to teach me a valuable skill. I'd walk to the top of the hill and sit down under the apple tree, and I'd watch the distant tractor, small as a child's toy, carving dark lines through the soybean fields. Sometimes Uncle Carl would stop and leave the tractor running, and he'd hop down and kick the tires, or poke a stick into a gopher hole. There were always chickadees in the branches of that apple tree, and they squeaked like a hundred shoe soles on a waxed basketball court. I guess I've always spent a lot of time alone with my eyes fixed on faraway things.

  Behind me, Carlino hit the horn again as if to say, “move it Sam—didn't your old man learn you nothin' on that farm?”

  I turned the key, revved the engine, and with a shaky leg I threw the beast into first gear and got it crawling up the hill. It was a relief to make it over the crest and feel the weight of the truck as I started coasting down the long grade. There's room to learn when you're coasting. I shifted the gears. I turned the headlights off and on, and hit the windshield with a dose of blue washing fluid. It took a few minutes for my leg to stop shaking.

  Out on the freeway, Carlino and Bullfrog pulled alongside of me. Bullfrog did that thing that kids do when they pass a big rig: he made a fist and a rigid L-shaped arm, and then he pumped it up and down a few times, asking me to hit the horn. I obliged. We both laughed, and then they pulled ahead of me—Carlino must have hit the gas hard—and I watched the brake lights get dimmer and dimmer, until I could no longer pick them out from the other red eyes of distant vehicles.

  I kept it at fifty-five miles an hour, and blew past a weigh-station. No way could we risk some do-gooder wanting to see a manifest or take a peek in the back of the rig. I reached the warehouse, feeling like a kid with a shoplifted pack of smokes in his pocket.

  Eddie was there in my rectangular side mirror, and he guided me as I backed the truck into the loading dock. He wore a tweed cap, and his reading glasses far down on his nose like Santa, and he pointed left and right, or pulled his cupped hands forward, waving me on.

  Most women get no respect in the world of organized crime. Guys dote on their daughters, and an hour later they're backhanding some whore's blotchy face because she's a day late with the money. It's a hard world for a woman. But every so often you get some crazy broad who really soaks up the life. She's not content to strut around in high heels and take hand-outs from wiseguys. Maybe she dates a made guy for a while, meets all the right players, and then she ditches him. But she doesn't ditch the lifestyle.

  That's Creeping Jody. Her dad was part of Joey Bones's crew. When she was twenty-one she married a real greaseball named Paulie Pagani. After he smacked her around one too many times, she hit him upside the head with a frying pan. Then she hit him again and again with it, a real heavy cast-iron number. Eddie said it looked like someone had dropped a lasagna on the kitchen floor. Creeping Jody only did two years.

  “Why do they call her Creeping Jody?” I asked Eddie, way back: the first time I met her.

  “Some guys thought she set the whole thing up. Like Paulie was some angel, come home from a hard day's work, and there she was, hiding behind a door with that frying pan, creeping… waiting for him to walk into the kitchen.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “Hell, I asked her. Point blank. Up at the state prison. Right over one of them phones like you see in the t.v. shows.”


  “With the glass between you?” I said.

  “Yeah, the glass,” Eddie said. “Listen—Paulie Pagani was a prick. He got what he deserved. And let me tell you: she was some widow. After her two years was up, she gets right back in with us. Man, oh man. A real knockout. But tough. Like she might just kick your ass.”

  “Like Joan Jett?” I said.

  “Yeah,” Eddie said. “Joan Jett.” He closed his eyes and smiled, going backward in his mind to a place where his hair was dark, and his arms were strong.

  “Paulie Pagani had a stash—a hundred thousand—in a fireproof safe underneath of the floorboards, back of the Totsy.”

  “The Totsy was around back then?”

  Eddie nodded.

  “And you and Jody?” I said.

  “Nah,” Eddie said. “We fooled around once or twice. I was trying to be a good family man. When Jody picked up Paulie's cash, she says to me, 'Eddie, you keep half.' And I says to her, 'fifty grand? no way, sister.' And she says to me, 'you could've lied about it… kept the whole thing… that's what Paulie would've done.' And I says to her, 'do I look like Paulie?' And she says to me, 'no, you sure don't.' And she gives me a kiss on the cheek, and then a long one right on the lips.”

  “Did you take the half?” I said.

  “Hell no,” Eddie said. “Jody needed that money.”

  You could still see an edgy young woman somewhere under the wrinkles and crow's feet and saggy neck. Every time we did business with Creeping Jody, Eddie lit up like a fire burned in the blacks of his eyes. They were mirrors for one another: each of them reflecting back a better, younger version of themselves. Maybe that's why we need old friends.

  I watched my side mirror, and Eddie's hands, and the big rig beeped like the countdown sequence of a bomb.

  NIGHT OWLS

  Carlino was smoking a cigarette and Bullfrog was talking to Creeping Jody when I hopped down from the cab. Jody walked over and gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek, and she lingered there, feeling the small of my back and moving up to my shoulders like she was working some dough on a cutting board.

  “Easy, tiger,” I said.

  “Meowww,” she said, and pinched my cheek.

  “Got something to drink?”

  “Scotch,” she said.

  “The good stuff?”

  “It gets the job done.”

  The five of us went inside of the warehouse, and Creeping Jody opened the roll-up door that let in the cool night air and a clear view of the back of the big rig. In the back corner of the room, near a punch-clock and rows of worker cards on the wall, there were two card tables and a few crummy chairs. Creeping Jody went into a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of scotch and some red plastic picnic cups.

  “Classy,” Carlino said as she poured.

  “Perfect for you,” Jody said.

  “You got some iced tea?” Eddie said.

  “Sure, hun,” Jody said.

  “Iced tea?” Carlino said with a frown. He knew damn well that Eddie didn't drink, but every time the subject came up he had to make a big thing of it. Guys like Carlino always do.

  “He don't drink,” Jody said, setting a canned iced tea in front of Eddie.

  “What kind of a man don't drink?” Carlino said.

  “The kind who'll put a foot right in your ass,” Eddie said.

  “Try it, old man.”

  Eddie stood up, leaned over, and gripped the sides of the table like a baggy-eyed detective interrogating a suspect. The veins in his forehead stood out.

  “We got one dead guy in the back of that truck because of you. If you wasn't a made guy, I might just make it two.”

  Carlino licked his lips, rubbed his chin, blinked his eyes a few times. Creeping Jody reached into her oversized coat pocket. She froze in that position.

  “It couldn't be helped,” Carlino said.

  “It's true,” Bullfrog said.

  Eddie looked at me. I nodded.

  Eddie swallowed. Sat back down. Creeping Jody took her hand from her pocket.

  “Are you boys almost done playing whose is bigger?” she said.

  “Mine's bigger,” Eddie said.

  “Oh yeah? Around here, mine's the biggest of 'em all,” Jody said.

  “Amen sister,” Bullfrog said, and raised his cup to his lips.

  “Eh-eh-eh,” Jody said, placing a hand on it to stop him from drinking. “Bad luck. Where's your manners?”

  Eddie opened the can of iced tea and poured it into a cup. He grabbed his collar, bent his head, and cracked his neck. It was loud, like someone twisting some bubble wrap.

  “Goddamn,” Carlino said.

  “Getting old: it ain't no joke,” Eddie said.

  “Let's drink already,” Bullfrog said. “Hmmph—white folks.”

  “Success,” Jody said, raising her cup.

  “Success,” we all said in unison.

  The cups got drained, and Bullfrog asked why all the formality?

  “Tradition,” Eddie said.

  “The illusion of permanence,” I said.

  “Huh?” Eddie said.

  “Woody Allen. Tradition is the illusion of permanence.”

  “I'm a big fan of permanence,” Eddie said. “But I never much cared for Woody Allen.”

  “Annie Hall was dope,” Bullfrog said. He burped. Then he poured out another dollop of scotch and gulped it down.

  “That little guy's pretty funny,” Carlino said. “For a Jew.”

  “Man, if there weren't no Jewish comics, there wouldn't be no comedy,” Bullfrog said.

  “I'm s'posed to trust a black guy's opinion?” Carlino said.

  “Trust this,” Bullfrog said, and cupped his hand over the front of his pants.

  We got to work unloading the stuff, starting with Max Finn's corpse. Creeping Jody got a big roll of industrial plastic wrap, and we rolled the body up like we were saving leftovers. Then we dragged the package into the backroom. Bullfrog talked about how he was renting a small U-Haul truck next week and having one of his boys, DeShawn, drive up with him to get the hundred some cameras that were coming his way.

  “Wait up,” Carlino said. “His name is Dijon… like the mustard?”

  “DeShawn,” Bullfrog said and rolled his eyes.

  “I'm guessing he don't look like Woody Allen,” Carlino said.

  It was a hoot to watch Bullfrog wheel stacks of camera boxes out of the trailer. There was a slight incline on the way back out of the truck, and Bullfrog always wheezed a little, but pushed himself hard to keep up with us. Sometimes he had to stop, sit down, take off his hat and wipe his brow.

  Carlino whistled peacefully, like he was building a birdhouse. We made a lot of trips into and out of the truck. He said he was glad to be rid of Max Finn, but how some of the other guys back in New York might not see it that way.

  “He's a made guy.”

  “So are you,” I said.

  “That don't give me the right. You gotta get approval.”

  “Will Frank be mad?” I said.

  “It ain't Frank I'm worried about. It's Dante.”

  “Who's Dante?”

  “Some beaner,” Carlino said. “Crazy-ass Mexican. He was with the Zetas, along the Texas border, back in the day. They'll chop the head right off an innocent housewife if she calls the cops on a gangbanger bumping his car stereo.”

  We wheeled the stacks of camera boxes.

  Eddie and Jody stayed at the table by the punch-clock. She drank scotch and he drank iced tea, and they laughed sometimes and touched each other's hands.

  Carlino stopped working and leaned on the top of his red dolly. He made a little hole with his thumb and forefinger on one hand, and with the other he pushed a finger into and out of the hole.

  “Rinky, rinky, dinky,” he said, and nodded toward the table.

  We finished unloading at about two in the morning, and we plopped down into those plastic chairs by the punch-clock. Carlino and Bullfrog smoked cigarettes and drank scotch. I drank a tall gl
ass of tap water.

  Creeping Jody was storing the goods for us until her connection came into town to take the cameras far away—to Boston, Salt Lake City, Reno, and San Francisco. Eddie said how some of them were going all the way to China and Japan, to be sold on the black market.

  “Ain't that funny,” Carlino said. “The Japs make the cameras and ship 'em all the way here, and we steal 'em and ship 'em all the way back.”

  “I don't make the rules, D-T,” Eddie said.

  “What about the weasel?” Bullfrog said.

  “You guys killed him,” Eddie said. “Deal with it.”

  “Where's Eugene when you need him?” I said.

  Carlino looked at Eddie. “That shit still creeps me out. Over a dog?”

  “I like dogs,” Eddie said. He stared at Carlino, hard. “Don't bury him too close. Jody don't need any heat.”

  Creeping Jody came out from a backroom somewhere, with a potted red geranium and a card.

  “For Dotty,” she said.

  Eddie took them and nodded, slowly, deliberately. Then he stared at a section of the chipped concrete wall, and his eyes were fixed and cold and dull, like he was watching a distant boat crossing the horizon.

  “How's he doing?” Jody said.

  “The chemo didn't do nothing.”

  “I had an aunt, same thing,” Jody said.

  “Hey Champ, can you take these over to Dotty tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” I said, and took the potted plant and card from Eddie.

  We put our gear into the car. Bullfrog called shotgun, but Carlino vetoed it, saying how he was a made guy, and Italian to boot, so that gave him the right to ride up front. I put the geranium on the floorboards in the back of the car, and asked Bullfrog to keep his feet around it, so it wouldn't tip over.

  Then me and Carlino loaded Max Finn's plastic wrapped body into the trunk.

  While we were carrying the corpse—me the shoulders, Carlino the legs—I saw Bullfrog through the backseat window, sniffing one of the geranium blooms.

  Jody and Eddie talked on the other side of the warehouse, in a little sliver of darkness.

  On the car ride home, I asked Carlino if he thought they were doing it.