A man was a man no matter what the fuck you did to him.
He said, “Lula.”
“Yes.”
“What’s your real name?”
“That is.”
“Really? Do me a favor.”
A vicious smirk nicked her lips. She could sense his need and came at him like she was going to undo his pants. “Okay.”
Clay handed her all the money, four packs of heroin, the spoon, the lighter, and the syringe. “Make up a nice fix for him.”
“I thought you might be a cop.”
She took everything from him, cooked the H and filled the needle. Rocco had fallen asleep again and a syrupy green drool trickled down his neck. Lula was about to hand the fixings back when Clay said, “More than that.”
“More will probably kill him.”
“And you think I want to take him home with me and introduce him to my grandmother?”
“No.”
“You love him?”
“Fuck no.”
“Then do it.”
She grimaced and started to sulk. “I was sort of hoping I could go for a ride too. He’s going to use it all.”
“You don’t want to take a ride to where he’s going.”
The reality of the moment hit her as if she’d been backhanded, but even that didn’t quite rattle her.
“I believe you,” Lula said. “But-”
Rocco began to softly snore. In a way, Clay envied somebody who could take a nap with a gun pointed at him. The dynamics of murder vibrated in every atom of the room.
“My faith in mankind has been shaken a tad, girl. How about if you just do what I say.”
“Sure.” She drew another five cc’s into the needle.
Clay said, “Make it ten.”
“You really don’t like him, do you?”
“Not a whole lot.”
“He doesn’t have many veins left.”
“All he needs is one more.”
She found the same bloody pinprick track that Rocco had last used and eased the needle in. Rocco showed the whites of his eyes and offered up a hideous smirk big as an ass crack on his face. He sat straight up in bed and went, “Ooooggaaa-”
Stroking the center of her chest, gently petting the top of the raven’s head, Lula sashayed over to Clay, throwing all 95 pounds into her hips. “Are you gonna screw me now?”
“Don’t get insulted,” Clay said, “but no.”
“I didn’t think you could handle it. Suck your dick?”
“No.”
“Can I leave then?”
“Sure, but don’t tell anybody about this.”
“Who would believe me?”
“Good point.”
Glass rattled in the window frames, breeze beginning to kick up. Clay yanked at Rocco’s arm and he came along like a kite string being pulled on. He had no weight or solidity to him.
They wandered back down the corridors towards the main office.
“Wait there like a good boy. I gotta get something first.”
Clay moved behind the counter and searched the area for a minute. Mel’s eyebrows were still on the wall but had slid about six inches-cocked as if wondering where the hell the rest of the body had gone. Clay found a door that opened into a closet with cleaning supplies, rummaged around on the shelves checking labels. There it was. Apple cinnamon natural fragrance freshener. He took five canisters.
Rocco stood in the same spot with his eyes rolled up into his head and a smile so wide that the hinges of his jaw had separated.
“Let’s go.”
Rocco blissfully followed him into the parking lot, trailing like smoke.
Clay opened the back door and said, “Okay, squeeze in.”
Rocco started to vomit and Clay took him by the shoulder and aimed him towards the curb. He patted and rubbed Rocco’s back with his free hand, kept the gun pressed into his ear with the other. Finally, Rocco climbed in next to Edward’s baby seat, sat on the Chihuahua and made a small noise of discomfort. Clay said, “Get up for a second.” Rocco eased himself off the seat and Clay reached in and pulled Cuddles out from under Rocco’s ass, tossed the dead dog onto his lap. “There, that better?”
Rocco sighed contentedly.
Clay sprayed the car down with the air freshener and got in, took Kathy’s hand again. “You still with me on this, baby?” he asked. “I know it’s ugly, but it’s the way it has to be for a little while longer.”
Rocco made a noise in the back of his throat and went, “Ooooggaaa-”
CHAPTER FOUR
Getting back onto the highway he hit the other side of that same goddamn ramp’s curbing, and this time he couldn’t hold back a shriek as the car jostled savagely. Cuddles and the road kill bounced around into each other sending tufts of fur into the air. The sluggish flies buzzed angrily and crawled into Rocco’s ears.
Swallowing blood, Clay cleared frost from the windshield and kept waiting for Kath to start talking to him. He knew he was feverish enough to be hallucinating, and he actually wanted it to happen. Anything to help him along. He figured he’d look over at her sitting there next to him, and she’d grin and start giving him hints on what he should be doing.
Edward would be murmuring, “Daaa? Daaaa?” the way he did after Clay read the storybooks to him and drew the blankets up to his chin. He might place one of his tiny hands on the back of Clay’s neck and give him a touch more strength, just enough to finish this.
Wasn’t that how it went? Kath would chuckle and swirl her fingers over his knee, and he’d be blunt enough around the borders to get through with it.
That’s what this sort of burning insanity was supposed to be all about. What good was it letting your fucking mind go if it didn’t go far enough?
“Kathy,” he said. “For Christ’s sake-” He couldn’t manage to put his hand against her skin. “Kath, you listening?”
“Ooooggaaa-”
Not even a ghost of the Chihuahua prancing around, yapping. Nothing. No relief, he wasn’t getting anything from his own dying.
He touched Kathy’s hair and gave it a couple of feeble strokes, trying to feel what she might have now become under the crushing weight of complete release.
She grew that much more ashen beside him, hushed and yet, perhaps, sitting in judgment, her determination unshaken. Did she still hate him for all his mistakes?
“Jesus, baby, were things really that bad?”
“Ooooggaaa-”
He could never tell. She’d always been an inch or two away from him. He’d be over here with the things he could never talk about, and she’d be there with her own secrets. It made life dicey at times but kept it interesting. He never completely knew what to expect from her, and she liked having that little extra edge.
A couple of times he’d come home and found her wearing the cheerleader outfit. Once she was laughing and horny and they’d gone at it on the floor, rough and angry and having a hell of a good bout. Another time she was sitting in the center of the bed with the pom poms at her feet, both of their high school yearbooks torn to shreds and flung all over the mattress. She was crying so hard that he had to get a paper bag from the kitchen and shove it over her face before she hyperventilated.
“Rocco, you prick, you still hanging in?”
“…”
“You still alive?”
“…aah…”
Leaning down, Clay had to spit another mouthful of blood onto the floor mat. He went into a coughing fit for a minute while his vision filled with streamers of gold and orange. He tightened his fists on the wheel until his knuckles cracked and the massive knot in his chest eased up. “Good, I got a question to ask-”
“Yaaah?”
“Did you screw my wife before or after she was dead?”
“Aww…”
Suddenly, it became important to know. “Come on, level with me, I’m trying to work through this as best I can.”
“…it…”
“Say again?”
> “…”
“Hey, you can tell me.”
“I liked it…”
“What?”
Even with the H boiling his few remaining brain cells, Rocco nodded back into the world for a few seconds. “I really dug…”
“What’d you dig?”
“…her ass.”
“Yeah?”
“…and I had fun…fucking her and…”
“And?”
“…shooting you…killing you, man.”
“Fair enough.”
Clay had to wait five minutes before there was enough room on the shoulder for him to pull over. He took another two packets of heroin and tore them open, reached into Rocco’s mouth, got hold of his bloated tongue, pulled, and poured the skag down his throat. “Here, enjoy.”
Rocco immediately began convulsing and choking and pissing himself, kicking the passenger seat so hard that Kathy flopped wildly and her chin wagged back and forth the way she sometimes did during sex.
The wailing traffic tore by. He counted two police cruisers but neither cop so much as turned his head to look at the side of the road. Sometimes apathy was its own reward.
Clay got back into his car. He sprayed the apple cinnamon freshener all over the inside of the Caprice, and the flies buzzed and spun in the fragrant mist.
CHAPTER FIVE
It took six hours to get to the Tri-borough Bridge and back into Manhattan. Lights of the city seared into his eyes. Clay had blacked out twice at the wheel for a couple of seconds each time. Now it was 7 PM, right around the time Chuckie liked to start his antipasto. Clay had about twenty hours of video of Chuckie chomping calamari, stuffed artichoke leaves, prosciutto, and thinly sliced Capacola sausage. He made soft humming noises of delight while he ate.
Clay drove over to 73rdStreet and circled the neighborhood a few times until he found the Experience-L'Esperienza Bella-right off Central Park West. He double-parked out front and left the engine running.
The agony had become so total now that he had somehow gone beyond it, detached but still hurting, making peace with his own slaughter. Clay could feel himself winding down, the heavy fist tightening around him even as his heart slammed in his chest, lungs struggling to keep his nearly dead, poisoned body going.
Not much time left, and none to waste on subtlety. He had his .38, the throwaway .32, and the service revolver he took off Tommy Yahmi. Plus the two sets of handcuffs. Clay didn’t much like the feel of Tommy Yahmi’s piece so he stuffed it into the glove compartment, carefully maneuvered the guns in his jacket pockets and kept his finger on the triggers, hands out of sight.
Clay walked into the restaurant and immediately spotted Chuckie Fariente in the back at the VIP table with Big Frankie Merullo, Roma Bartone, Fabrizio Allegante-the main players in the Merullo crew. Sure enough, they were all forking the shit out of a plate of calamari and red peppers.
Did he know his boys or what?
Smug Chuckie Fariente, with his ferret-face drawn into a perpetual sneer, was browbeating Bartone over the east side construction unions. Clay was still a little surprised that nobody had put a hit on Chuckie yet just for the way he looked. Always grinning and self-satisfied, ready to toss his wine on someone’s shirt.
All those stony, round, small dark faces looked up at the same time, four black pompadours frozen thickly in place with oil and mousse, even big Frank who was pushing seventy.
Snorting blood, Clay drew both guns and casually pointed them at the crew, covering everybody. He said, “All I want is Chuckie. He comes along and the rest of you fat fucks get to finish your dinner. We clear?”
Big Frankie turned to Chuckie and said, “I thought you told me this cop was dead.”
“Look at him, he is.”
“Not enough.”
“Give him a few minutes to keel over.”
“I don’t think he’s gonna wait.”
Clay braced himself against the table with his hip. Fabrizio had been inching his left hand under his jacket, where he kept his knife upside down in a holster. You had to give it to some of these Sicilians, they sure had style. Clay put the barrel of the .32 in the wiseguy’s ear and said, “How about if we just remain respected adversaries, eh, Fabi?”
Now it was Roma’s turn to start acting up. “Don’t we pay your goddamn precinct enough? What, you didn’t get your cut from the bag man this week?”
Fabi’s hand strayed another half-inch under his arm. Clay sighed, wishing there’d been another way to handle this, but still not too bothered by it. He pulled the trigger and a small piece of Fabi’s head flew laterally down the room. It landed with a wet slap on the lady sitting over there, her gray Prada strapless suddenly mired in blood and bone chips. The screeching started and people ran around the restaurant yelling in Italian, the kitchen help going at it in Spanish.
Boss Merullo went, “Ah, motherless-”
Clay pursed his lips, met Big Frankie’s gaze, drew down and shot him and Roma Bartone twice in their chests.
“Come along, Chuckie. We’re going for a drive. You like dogs?”
Man, the cool on the guy. Chuckie continued to sip his wine, unwilling to move a second faster than he wanted. You had to admire somebody with that much poise and calm who wasn’t pumped full of heroin.
“You’re in charge, at least for the moment.”
“Ain’t it the truth?”
“What do you want?” Chuckie asked. “It’s easy enough to pull the trigger.”
“I’d have nothing to do with the rest of my life then.”
“How long’s that gonna be? Five minutes?”
A spasm whipped through Clay’s abdomen and he almost went over. Another burst of blood worked up his throat and leaked out of the corners of his mouth. “Give or take.”
“You got any idea what you look like?”
“Let’s go.”
Chuckie hadn’t gotten a speck of dust on his suit. He slowly finished his wine, wiped his lips with the cloth napkin, buttoned his coat and walked past Clay. Like they might be heading off to take in a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden.
They got outside where the horrified faces clustered in the shadows and the sirens screamed over the city, coming at them. The guy he’d blocked in by double-parking was huddled in his front seat with his hands on top of his head.
Chuckie peered into the Caprice. “The junkie dead?”
“Consider my state of mind, then ask again.”
“He was just supposed to warn you off. The rest of this…it had nothing to do with me.”
Clay grinned at him, feeling the infection on his own teeth. He opened the back door. “Climb in.”
“You’re crazy!”
“I only wish. Now, inside.”
“Forget that nonsense, you psycho son of a bitch!”
“There’s just enough room. Everybody’s been waiting.”
“Fuckin’ lie down already!” Chuckie cried, his voice cracking. “You’re dead!”
“Not just yet.”
“You’re leaking shit like you just had twelve enemas.”
“You sure talk pretty, Chuckie.”
“Fuck off, dead man!”
“You’re going to start hurting my feelings soon.” Clay pointed both guns at Chuckie’s eyes. “Get in.”
Chuckie Fariente, worth about six million or so, wearing fourteen hundred dollars of silk suit and another eight grand in gold jewelry, with the ruby ring, Rolex watch, and diamond stick pin, went gray and threw up all over himself.
“That goddamn smell!”
“You get used to it. Move.”
Finally Chuckie started to clamber in. Clay slashed down with the barrel of the .32 and sent him for a little loop. It would make things easier. Chuckie flopped backwards, moaning but awake, and the flies gusted into a lazy black cloud. Frost sprinkled down from overhead like snow flurries. Clay got the air freshener and sprayed Chuckie’s dripping coat, hitting all the undigested calamari and bits of salami. They didn’t need a new
stench.
He handcuffed Chuckie’s right ankle to Rocco’s left one, and used Tommy Yahmi’s set to cuff Chuckie’s left wrist to Edward’s strapped-in baby seat. The prick wasn’t going anywhere.
“Let me out!” he groaned, the beautiful panic contorting his features. “This is a charnel house!”
Clay started the car and eased out past the stunned folks lining the street. “It’s the fruits of your labor.”
“It’s a meat locker in here! I told you, none of this was my fault. This stupid cocksucker here was only supposed to scare you off.”
“How?”
Lips crawling, Chuckie remained quiet.
“I’ve been living in your garbage for four years now, taping every move you made, Chuckie, and I could never make anything stick. So why the sudden need for such an extreme move?”
“It’s not so sudden. You’ve been getting on my nerves. Between the attorney fees and the payoffs and the all the bribery, you know how much money you’ve been costing me?”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, you rotten bastard.”
It wasn’t much but it made Clay feel a bit better, like maybe it hadn’t all been a complete waste. He’d done the best he could at his job, and even if he didn’t win out in the end, at least he’d pissed these people off. That was something to cling to now, when he needed it most.
He slid into traffic on Central Park West just as the ambulances descended on the restaurant.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Not much farther to go.”
“Why didn’t you just firebomb my house like a normal person?”
“Ask my son.”
They drove uptown and took the transverse road at 86thstreet into the park. Traffic was heavy, as always, but Clay waited until there was a break between taxis and stomped the pedal, yanked the wheel hard to the right, hit the curb and jumped it.
“Stop this car!”
They drove across the park, tearing up the fields where Clay’s father used to take him to play ball on Saturday mornings, when nothing mattered but his hopes of being a cop like his old man. He’d done that much right.
The Caprice was skidding like crazy, Clay starting to laugh some. At last, Chuckie began whining, then begging, then really letting out these agonized sobs from deep in his body. Clay grinned and closed his eyes, took his hands off the wheel and just rolled with it.
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