Big Al is why Richie’s walking back from the bat cave with a shiner and I’m trying to come up with a story explaining it that will hold water when the grown-ups start looking for the son of a bitch and don’t find him, and someone remembers seeing the three of us going up there and two of us coming back and the local yokel cops dredge the sunken mine shaft where, according to what passes for tough country boys up here claim, they’ve fished up the rotting corpses of those what had it coming to them many times before.
The grown-up me inside the thirteen-year-old kid knew that you’re supposed to tie weights to a corpse when you ditch it in a drink, and preferably with chains instead of ropes that might rot away too fast, or it’s liable to fill up with dead man’s fart gas and float to the surface, as well as the moves that allowed me to do what was necessary when Big Al demanded we both take turns sucking his dick and socked Richie in the eye.
But I didn’t have either ropes or chains with me, so we had to just drop his fat ass down the well and hope for the best.
Oh shit!
I know they’re gonna nail me!
“And?” the shrink demands eagerly, like what I’ve been telling him’s left him with a boner and it’s up to me to come to a punch line that gets him off.
“And nothing, Doc, that’s the end of the dream. They all always end like that.”
“Nothing like that in the literature . . .” he mutters. “Suppressed memories inside dream timelines, time sequences running backwards . . . very strange . . .”
“No shit, Sherlock. Why do you think I’m here in the first place?”
“Uh . . . well, they could be wish-fulfillment dreams.”
“Are you nuts, Doc? Who would wish he was gonna take a fall for a homicide?”
“You’d be surprised . . .” the shrink sort of mutters under his breath with a weird dreamy look on his face. “Guilt can do funny things to the mind.”
“Guilt for what?” I shout at him. “I told you I never offed anybody, what’s the matter, don’t you believe me?” I say it in a movie-gangster voice, half rising from my chair to leer at him cockeyed like Tough Tony wiseguy.
He turns pale. “What kind of work you say you do . . . ?” he stammers.
“I didn’t. You sure you want to know?”
He cringes a little.
Why I want to do this, I’m not sure. Probably just because I’m getting pissed off. Who wouldn’t be?
“Maybe I don’t,” he mutters, then tries to get more professional. “Uh, was there a bully called Big Al in the country place where you spent your summers? It’d be natural if you had fantasies of, uh, getting him off your—”
“Are you kidding, Doc? There wasn’t even a country place, my pop couldn’t afford stuff like that! And the only Big Al I’ve ever known is still alive and he’s—”
I stop myself, because I was about to say he’s just muscle, not a real enforcer, he don’t even have the smarts for that, you gotta be able to talk the talk a little, and Big Al’s just a particularly big and particularly ugly plug-ugly your real enforcer might have use for when dealing with particularly hard-core ass-pains. Or to take a murder rap himself if necessary.
“He’s what?”
“Just a business associate,” I tell him.
“Interesting . . .” the shrink mutters like Mr. Spock. “Very interesting.” He picks a pencil off the desk and starts nibbling on the eraser, an ex-smoker, and probably recently. He sort of waves it back and forth in front of his face like a guy conducting a phantom opera got only one note, like what do they call it, a metropole, a . . . metronome.
“Why . . . don’t . . . you . . . tell . . . me . . . another . . .”
“Like . . . what . . . do . . . you . . . mean. . . . ?” I mimic back at him.
“Like . . . one . . . where . . . you’re . . . an . . . adult . . .”
I find myself unable to stop watching his damn nervous tic with the pencil, like my old Uncle Marty always bobbing his head like one of those trick plastic birds do it forever in a glass of water without a motor.
“Like . . . a . . . wet . . . dream . . . ?”
Like Maggie wagging her finger under my nose when she’s really pissed off at me and reading me out.
“No . . . like . . . just . . . business . . .”
Like . . . funny . . . he . . . should . . . say . . . that . . . dumb . . . line from a dumb movie about the business he don’t even know I’m in, maybe he’s starting to guess, anyway he must know his business better than I been thinking he does, because this time it’s not like I’m telling him the dream like it’s a story, it’s like a movie and I’m back there in it. I know I can’t change anything, but I don’t quite remember how it goes even though I know I’ve seen this one before, even though I know I’ve been this one before. . . .
I’m lucky, maybe not Luciano lucky, but say Tony Soprano lucky. I’ve got bigger turf, I’ve got a bigger crew, I’ve got one of those so-called consiglieres. It’s not just the numbers and the local bookie operation and a couple of whorehouses one step up from street walkers and the neighborhood protection collections, I’m into the coke trade, a string of upscale whorehouses, a couple of clubs I own outright, pieces of a dozen or so bars.
If this ain’t exactly the big time, it’s not the small time no more neither. We got a house out on the Island with enough grounds you might call it an estate and a wall around it makes it a compound, Maggie’s got her own BMW, I’ve got a big black Mercedes limo with a driver and a bulletproof window between me and him no less, and he’s wearing a uniform.
Like this is my sweet future, only it ain’t so sweet now, because that’s where I am now, in the backseat sucking nervously on a ten-dollar cigar the size of a donkey dick as my convoy zips back out of the city and away from the screwup on the docks, a pearl-gray SUV riding point in front, a blue one behind the limo, desperately hoping I’m gonna get back to the compound in one piece, where I’ll have some firepower protection.
If this was one of those old gangster movies, no problem, they gotta find the stiffs, get to a phone, call up a crew, and beat me to my rabbit hole and nothing to worry about except the cops who don’t give high priority to this kind of thing, especially since this was ordered from higher up the food chain where they probably got ’em on the pad.
But this is not a movie, this is not the 1930s, everybody and his kid cousin, everybody and his kid cousin’s dog fer chrissakes, got a cell phone, and the survivors must’ve had cell phones.
So I’m smoking like a chimney, I’m pouring myself a second scotch from the limo bar, whacking it down, I’m stroking the piece in the shoulder holster I never worn before tonight every five minutes to assure myself it’s still there, as if it’s gonna do me any good, and freaking out every time something in the next lane paces my limo for a few car lengths.
I never expected this when I got into the life—does anyone? I don’t know, but I didn’t. I never was muscle, I never even thought about doing a hit, never even carried a gun—well, hardly ever. For sure never thought I’d ever get involved in fulfilling a contract.
Yeah, sure. Never thought a phone call like that would be part of the deal. Never believed that these are the dues you’re gonna have to pay sooner or later.
“Think of it as a Roach Motel, Joe, you and that cockroach Nickie the Dickie go in, and he don’t come out,” says that voice like Arnold Schwarzenegger doing Don Rickles. “A personal favor to your favorite uncle. I am your favorite uncle, now ain’t I, Joe?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Yeah, sure, like there are personal favors in this business, like you can tell your favorite uncle, sorry but I’d rather not, nothing personal you understand, Unc.
Making your bones, what they call it in the movies, like it’s some kind of, what, coming of age ceremony, a bar mitzvah, getting your foreskin chopped by the jungle-bunny chief, yeah, sure, what a load. Like Don Whoever’s gonna waste your cherry on a pointless hit just to let you in on the secret handshake
.
This is supposed to be a meet to make a deal between me and Nickie been ordered from higher up, that’s the story I’ve been told to have my consigliere tell Nickie’s. Nickie’s got a private garbage hauling company called Earth Angels, I’ve got a bunch of my bars, and clubs, and cathouses what need their crap hauled away, and my operation being in Tony the Tuna’s garbage franchise’s territory, I’ve been using Keep on Truckin like I’m supposed to. But now I’ve been told that for reasons that are none of my business I’m supposed to cut a deal to give my business to Nickie.
Now I ain’t chickenshit, or a pussy, or nothing like that, I may not have ever had a hard-on to make my bones and become a made man—more Hollywood bullshit, anyone who’s running a franchise operation of my size is as made as he needs to get, namely passing at least high six figures a year up the food chain—but I’ve never killed anybody, never ordered a hit, never put out a contract.
Not that I wouldn’t if I had to, just business like they say. But I never had to—who needs it? It’s dangerous stuff. If your protection goes wrong, or the cops get pissed off, or there’s some other kind of screwup and you get nailed, it’s at best a long, long stretch, and at worst sweating out the legal eagles’ endgame on death row.
We get to the docks first, that’s the game, tell Nickie eleven thirty, he’ll arrive at eleven on the bean, we get there at ten forty-five and set it up. The two SUVs full of my guys, that’s standard, he’ll have two of his own plus his limo. My driver parks the Mercedes halfway out on the dock we agreed on, that’s all arranged too, and Nickie’s limo will meet me out there. My backup cars park on the shore end of the dock on the left, Nickie’s gonna be on the right, that’s by agreement too.
But what Nickie the Dickie hasn’t exactly agreed to is that two of my guys are out of the SUVs and hiding under the dock where Nickie’s backups are gonna park. With a couple bundles of stick dynamite with three-minute timers each so they can get out of range after they roll them under the vehicles.
Nickie himself is gonna be my job, should be no sweat because he’s about a hundred years old never known to be packing, or at least not for the last fifty years or so, and me being the triggerman is a sucker punch, because everyone knows I’ve never used a gun.
First time for everything.
Sure enough, Nickie’s convoy arrives right at eleven, half an hour early, as anticipated, so my guys are already in position, hanging on to the crossbeams under the dock with their bombs as his backup vehicles park and his long black stretch limo drives out onto it, to where I’m waiting.
Nickie gets out, an old guy wearing a black suit and white shirt, a matching homburg, even got a trimmed mustache dyed black, like he’s auditioning to play himself in some gangster movie, but the black cane with the ivory eagle head is a necessity at his age as he limps halfway to my limo and stops.
I get out of the car and walk towards him. This is supposed to be the signal for the guys under the docks to set their timers and roll the bombs under Nickie’s backups. My signal is supposed to be the explosions.
There is something of a cock-up.
The first two explosions go off too quick, when I’m still maybe ten feet away from Nickie, big balls of flame and black smoke like in the movies, not as loud as on a movie sound track, but enough to have Nickie yelling, “What the fuck!” and drawing his attention away from me.
But it’s not gonna be for very long, I gotta whip out my piece, a .44 Magnum revolver I’m told don’t exactly require first-class marksmanship.
I aim the gun in the general direction of Nickie’s gut and pull the trigger.
Seems like two explosions at once, the third bomb going off up the dock, the bang from my gun with a recoil that just about knocks me on my ass, as my shot tears through Nickie’s throat, just about blows his head off.
I stagger forward, put another slug into his chest just to make sure, as if I had to, and I’m hearing shots from up the dock but no fourth explosion as I run back to the limo. I glance back there as I climb back in and see that one of Nickie’s backup vehicles has been blown to hell and gone according to plan along with his muscle, but the other one is laying on its side with two of Nickie’s guys crouched behind it trading fire with my men.
My driver starts the engine, I drop down on the floor as we tear-ass up the dock and through the line of fire. I stop hearing shots a couple minutes later, as my backup teams break off the gunfight, and their SUVs catch up to my Mercedes to form up the convey. At least that much has gone according to plan.
Who knew it would end up like this? I guess you could say I’m a real gangster like in the movies, but this ain’t the movies. I never bargained for this, this is the real world, and in the real world more guys like me than not never get called on to do a hit until they’re high enough up to do the calling themselves instead of the dirty work.
Matter of luck is all, and tonight mine run out.
Or not.
Because, hey, here comes the off-ramp finally, and my lead SUV is turning right onto it, and the limo is following, and—
—wham, bang, smash, as the trailing SUV slows down and starts making the turn, a garbage truck comes up alongside it on the left and smashes it into the guardrail, and I recognize the snot-green and piss-yellow colors of Earth Angels, Nickie the Dickie’s carting company. It’s his guys, or what’s left of them—
—and a red Cadillac Esplanade van is now on my limo’s back bumper—
—and there’s another Earth Angels garbage truck at the bottom of the off-ramp—
—and an RPG launcher sticking out of its death seat window—
—and its grenade is launched—
—and my lead SUV explodes, showering my Mercedes with metal and flaming gas and blood and guts, and guys are piling out of the Esplanade with Glocks and M-16s and—
“And?”
“Where the hell am I?”
I wake up someplace else, sitting in a chair sweating in front of some plainclothes cop’s desk, and he’s giving me this fish-eyed stare and—
No, wait a minute, he’s a shrink, not a cop, and there’s no murder rap to pin me on, I never killed anyone, just like I keep telling him, just like I keep telling Maggie, I’ve . . . I’ve just been sitting here dreaming that damn dream again while I was awake and spilling my guts to this guy . . .
“Wha . . . wha . . . what happen?”
Me and the shrink both say the same dumb thing at the same time.
He’s still waving his pencil back and forth, only in his own face double or triple time like some old lady trying to brush off mosquitoes with a fan, and staring at me like he’s trying to avoid crapping in his pants and afraid he’s not gonna make it.
I’m staring at him staring at me and waving the thing like he was and getting pissed off.
Real pissed off.
“You hypnotized me!” I yell at him.
He cringes back like I just gave him a big breath of wino halitosis. “It’s a standard recall technique . . .” he stammers.
“You’re at least supposed to ask my permission, ain’t you!”
“It worked, now didn’t it?”
“Worked how, you son of a bitch?”
“What we call catharsis. I hypnotize you so you’re telling me everything while you’re reliving the memory in a dream state, and telling it unblocks the guilty memory that’s been giving you these nightmares into your waking consciousness, and that should—”
“What are you talking about? I don’t have no Mercedes limo! I don’t have a string of upscale whorehouses! I don’t have a fancy compound out on the Island! I never even heard of no Nickie the Dickie! And how many times I gotta tell all of you I haven’t killed anyone yet!”
Yet?
“Yet?”
He says it anyway, but he don’t have to, I heard myself say it. But what the hell did I mean?
The shrink gives me the strangest look, like I’m some fascinating bug under a microscope, but a germ that can give
him the Turd Flu or AIDS or some other fatal disease. “But . . . but you really are . . . you’re really a gangster, aren’t you?”
Well, what can I say to that? The son of a bitch hypnotized me into more or less admitting it. And just maybe he can help me figure all this out, so . . .
“What if I am?” I grunt belligerently. Makes me want to stroke the piece in my shoulder holster like in the dream, but of course in the real world I’m never packing.
“The wicked flee where no man pursueth . . .”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Let’s say for the sake of argument that you are a gangster . . .”
“Let’s say for the same sake of argument that the business that I’m in ain’t like in the movies, let’s say it’s like I got a McDonald’s franchise. I don’t kill the cows or chop up the meat, I just sell . . . stuff and services . . . to my customers and pay their cut to the franchisers upstairs . . . and mind my own business . . .”
“Okay, so you run whatever . . . whatever . . .”
“Rackets is okay. For the sake of argument.”
“So you run your . . . rackets, just doing your business, and you don’t—”
“Even order anything much worse than a little roughing up when necessary. Not even a knee-capping. Well, hardly ever. Let alone kill anyone!”
“So you’re afraid to kill anyone?”
“You sayin’ I ain’t got the balls to do it if I have to?” I yell at him.
He cringes back from me.
“I mean you don’t want to kill anyone—”
“Of course I don’t! Who wants to get involved in a hit? The homicide squad’s usually not on the take, a murder-one conviction’s not a hot career move, and it’s a capital offense now, ain’t it, not three-to-five with time off for greasing the parole board.”
More Stories from the Twilight Zone Page 35