Jimmy is a hothead who made mistakes from the get-go. He told you to hit Bob at his office. “Send a message, but keep it away from his house on the Upper East Side. I paid off Bob’s gambling debts and I paid the fucking mortgage on his overpriced house. I don’t want any trouble turning around and selling it, what with blood smeared on the walls. That shit stains!”
Jimmy’s second mistake was to send Denny with you. Denny’s not ninja muscle. The third mistake? Jimmy said Bob would be alone. As soon as you walked into the outer office, there were Bob’s guys, Harv and Marv. You had to improvise so you told them Jimmy wanted them to take the night off and you’d take over babysitting Bob.
That could be bad for you. Maybe Jimmy was wrong about those guys. Maybe they were more old school than new school and, when the reorganization happens, they’ll stick with Vincent instead of Jimmy. You just killed the contender to the throne. The old man won’t take kindly to you if he finds out you’re the hit man. Not that Bob was much of a contender. As criminal masterminds go, poor Panama Bob would have made an okay fisherman.
What if, like Bob said, Jimmy’s plan is to blame everything on you? Bob would be out of the way and Jimmy could go crying crocodile tears to Vincent about the Cuban outsider. Vincent is a smart guy, but a father suffering cold grief might order Harv and Marv to do some creative origami with your scrotum before he began to suspect his other, conniving son.
“Denny,” you say, “I’m starting to think this might be a trap.”
Big Denny’s head jerks and he swerves right to pull into a construction lot by a black pit. You follow Denny’s lead and open your door. You can’t see the bottom of the hole and it looks like no one’s around. Is Jimmy late or are Harv and Marv going to show up, shoot you in the back of the head and throw you in the hole?
The rain makes the car roof a snare drum and drowns out Big Denny. You lean closer to make sure you hear him right.
“Whaddayamean, Jesus?”
“I said, a trap. Like Star Wars…Death Star…General Akbar. It’s a trap!”
“Explain.”
You tell him Jimmy might be setting you up. Jimmy might be setting him up. “There’s lots of hit men. Maybe not with my flair for fashion, but still, expendable. And you? No offense, dude, but to get more of you, all Jimmy has to do is snatch up the guys with bad knees who drop outta pro football tryouts who were supposed to play Special Team.”
“Yeah. I gotcha. Where’s the trap?”
“We’re scapegoats, man. Jimmy blames us and gets the empire when the old man steps down. Vincent will retire in Boca to play golf and go to oncologist appointments and Jimmy will be king.”
“I get it,” Denny says. “You hand Jimmy the locker key and tell him who’s screwing his wife and Jimmy will put it all on him. Whoever’s screwing Jimmy’s wife will take the fall for Panama Bob’s hit and you’re in the clear, Jesus.” Big Denny smiles and you can see his gold tooth glint in the light cast up from the dashboard. “You’re a smart guy, dude. You’ll figure out which storage place that key belongs to and then Babs and her lovuh? They are so screwed.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Christ, Jesus, if I thought about it, you must’ve. You got that key. The key is the key to the whole thing.” Then Big Denny De Molina, your brother from another beaver, balls up his fist and pops you hard in the face. Before you can say anything pithy about that, he pops you again.
You fumble for the open car door to get your balance in the soft mud. The pain is explosive when Denny hauls back and nails you square in the face again. You’re propelled to your back. Bright raindrops flash through the glow cast by the streetlight and fall cold on your face. You’re slow and your gears are disengaged. Denny hit you hard enough to push the clutch in your brain. The raindrops fall from far above. If you were a raindrop, you’d stay high up where it’s safe.
You’re still fumbling for your SIG Sauer when he lifts you off the ground and slams you down, knocking the wind out of you. “I’m the guy sleeping with Barbara, dawg! You playin’ me? You think Big dumb Denny dudn’t know what time the motherfucker is? Who would be stupid enough to mess with Babs? I would. Me! I fuckin’ love her, dawg!”
How did you not see that? He looked you dead in the eye and asked who would be stupid enough to screw Jimmy’s wife. Of course, there are lots of guys dumb enough. You might have caught on, but you thought you were just making it up. You had no clue he was doing Barbara.
He picks you up again. If he gave you time, you’d tell him it was all a ruse so he wouldn’t want in on the skim. He won’t believe you now, anyway. Besides, you can’t move any air. Your nose is broken and spewing blood. Maybe those are raindrops or maybe they’re stars.
He takes your pistol from your belt and tosses it through the open car door onto the driver’s seat. You’re still rolling around and grabbing your face, trying to get your lungs to work as he rips the switchblade from your sock. He checks your pockets. If you had the key on you, you’d be dead.
You’re up in the air again and Denny’s holding you in a bear hug from behind, his fists crushing into your solar plexus. You look down into nothingness. You’re over the edge of the construction pit with nothing between you and the darkness but a flimsy yellow boundary tape flapping in the wind. It’s a hole for a high-rise. It’s a long way down. You try to focus on one good feeling. You tilt your head back to feel the cold wash down your forehead and open your mouth to drink a few drops of water. The rain tastes sweet. It’s the last thing you will taste besides blood.
“Where’s the key, dawg? Down in that pit, tomorrow morning, they’re going to find you impaled on a bunch of rebar, maybe still dying but begging for the fire department to pull you off so you can die proper. You know what I’m sayin’? Stigmata ain’t the half of it, Hay-soose! Where’s the key? I hate to do this to you, brother, but for me and Barb’s sake, I gotta get those photos!”
The blood from your smashed nose is running into your crumpled and soaked thousand-dollar suit. Your feet don’t even touch the ground. You finally move enough air to laugh.
Until Big Denny squeezes tighter.
“It’s back at the pizza place!”
“Bullshit!”
“Would I lie to my big bear?”
He throws you into the dirt like a broken doll. Your wrist scrapes raw and the elbows and knees on your suit are wrecked. Armani! Why couldn’t Denny have had this tantrum when you were wearing the Hugo Boss with the stupid striped lining?
“If you’re shitting me, dawg, it’s you with rebar sliding through your guts. You get me that key and it’s just a double tap behind the ear and sweet dreams.”
You’re up on your knees, scrabbling toward the yawning passenger door. The mud’s turning softer and slides under you like you’re trying to crawl up the down escalator. You hear a grunt as Denny bends to grab you by your belt, no doubt to slam your head into the side of the car. You feel that big paw making a grab for that fine python skin belt you bought at a flea market in Florida, but he fumbles the ball and you slip away.
You get one foot underneath you and you launch yourself at the car. You get some weight on the other foot and you’re doing a Superman. You are flying, parallel to the ground. You crash land into the passenger seat.
Your SIG is close, waiting for you on the driver’s seat. You almost have it when a vice circles around your left ankle and yanks you back. You struggle to dive for it again, but there’s no traction in the mud giving way beneath you. You’re half in and half out of the car on your knees when Denny wraps a big paw around your left elbow and flips you on your back, still half in and half out.
“Jesus, I’m sorry to do this to you, but you ain’t gettin’ in the way of love and nookie. You gotta ride in the trunk till you simmer down so we can go make sure that key gets safe in my pocket.”
Denny grabs your legs and starts hauling you out.
You are not getting your gun. The hot coffee will have to do. You grab it from
the cup holder and scald your hand as you squeeze to pop the top.
Big Denny sees it coming and stumbles back, but not before you splash it in his eyes. He’s grabbing at his face and screaming, stumbling back and reaching for the pistol in the back of his waistband. You scramble up, push off from the side of the car and throw your shoulder into his big belly.
You almost slip in the mud again. You almost fall short of pushing him by a foot. Almost.
Big Denny has his gun out and would shoot you in the face, but the edge of the pit gives way under his heels and for one almost comical moment both the big man’s arms pinwheel in the air, trying to grab traction from raindrops.
He falls back, out of the light, straight as a tree, down into darkness.
You collapse in the mud, gasping.
For the second time in an hour, you’ve thrown a man you liked from a great height. You could do this professionally.
RUN
You park Denny’s ride around the corner from your apartment and go up using the service elevator. Maybe those tourists saw a well-dressed Cuban man fitting your description throw Panama Bob from his office tower and maybe they didn’t, but the cops will have your picture from the security camera soon. Denny’s either dead or bleeding out at the bottom of the construction pit. Worse, does Jimmy really want you to report to him, or was that just Denny’s ruse to get you to the construction site? Is there already a contract out on you? Are you the goat in Jimmy’s nasty power play to take over the Lima empire? These are the sort of nebulous complications that get a dude dead.
If you just barrel into your apartment, you’re going to make a mess of the carpet and blood never comes out of shag. You put Panama Bob’s briefcase on the tile floor along with the knife from your sock, your SIG Sauer, belt holster and the spare mags. You take your clothes off just inside the front door and leave the ruined black Armani jacket and pants on the tile. Everything aches and it seems to take a long time to accomplish what should be an easy task. It would help if you could breathe through your nose.
You stuff the suit, muddy and torn, into a green garbage bag. You’ll miss that suit. Two gay salesmen at a clothing store fawned over you while Lily sat back with a cappuccino and giggled. She kept the salesmen busy running back and forth, fetching you more linen shirts and silk ties to try out. The ruined jacket didn’t make you feel good because the fine cloth fit you perfectly. It made you feel charged because it reminded you of Lily in that store’s leather chair. Her little black dress and high heels showed off her long legs. She pointed at each shirt and tie with long manicured nails, a large gold ring for every finger except the ring finger on her left hand. She sat, sipping cappuccino and laughing, directing the festivities like a queen. You so want to be her king, her jester and her slave.
In the six minutes it takes the hot water to kick in, you keep the cold shower spray on your nose, trying to numb it to the terrible throbbing. When the hot water winds its way up to your shower nozzle, you turn around and let the water pulse over your back and have a good cry. You can’t remember the last time you cried, but this seems like the right time.
You learned English from Tia Marta, a German immigrant in Miami. It was Tia Marta who insisted you break the stereotype and assimilate like she did. “Don’t say ‘Chit!’, little boy! Say ‘Shit!’ like a goddamn American.” She started you out with the same books she learned English from: Mickey Spillane novels. None of Spillane’s heroes would be very proud of you tonight. Mike Hammer never cried in the shower. But Hammer never got hammered by Big Denny De Molina.
The hot water runs out and you shake through your core. You climb from the tub carefully and wipe the steam from the mirror to inspect your face. Your nose is swelling badly. Worse? It’s not at the lovely angle you’re used to. Your eyes point straight ahead, but your nose is looking off to the side in dismay.
“Dennis De Molina, the monster who was the closest thing I had to a best friend in all of New York City was such a slob, he never left things the way he found them,” you tell your reflection. The pain is bad, but you’re crying a little for him, too. With your nose broken, your voice sounds squeezed. You sound like a constipated duck.
Not long after 9/11, you found yourself at Fort Drum. At the end of your third week of Basic, you were on night maneuvers. The idea was to find another squad, camouflaged and hidden. The Drill Instructor didn’t trust anybody with night-vision equipment yet, so the task was an exercise in working together, being thorough and not panicking. A little wrestling to get captured men back to your squad’s flag was supposed to be the fun bonus. To amp up the tension of competition, if the other team eluded capture until dawn, it meant shit duty for your squad. You can’t remember why that seemed to matter at the time because further experience proved that everything in the army was shit duty.
The DI didn’t allow flashlights, either, so aside from the aforementioned “work together, be thorough, don’t panic,” finding the opposing team was really luck and moonlight. The guy in front of you was lucky, at least at first. He “found” one of the other squad by stepping on him. Your squadmate either panicked or was hyper-competitive because, when the guy popped up to run, he smashed the dude’s face with the butt of his M4 carbine. Good thing no one was trusted with live rounds yet or the moron might have shot him.
“You fucking idiot!” The guy with the busted nose stepped close and kicked panicky guy right in the balls.
You could only make out the silhouettes’ interplay, but it was your team member’s sickened moan that turned your stomach. The guy with the broken nose sounded like a constipated duck. He continued to yell at the fallen man and kick him in the ribs to punctuate his cursing.
A DI appeared with a flashlight and asked you why you weren’t helping your fallen teammate.
“Sir! Because my teammate is a fucking idiot, sir, and the guy with the broken nose is not kicking the shit out of my squadmate, sir!”
“He’s not? Then what the hell is that man doing?”
“Sir! He is training my squadmate, sir!”
That got a laugh and the DI turned to the guy with the broken nose. “What is your damage, boy?”
The guy’s nose was smushed to the side, just like yours is now. In the yellow circle thrown by the DI’s flashlight, the recruit put one hand on either side of his nose and with one savage move, made it straight again. You heard his nose click into place, even over the sound of your teammate at your feet, vomiting.
The DI didn’t blink because DIs don’t blink. “Can you continue with this night exercise, son, or do you need a medic like this pussy rolling around on the ground is going to need?”
“Sir! This recruit can continue with the exercise, sir!” He still sounded like a constipated duck, but less so.
“Well, then carry on, boy!” the DI bawled.
Before running off into the night, he turned to you, gave a cruel smile and kicked you in the balls, too. You doubled over in agony. The DI doubled over laughing. The guy with the broken nose had been a paramedic before the army. Later, he became an officer. You did not.
Back at the mirror: You try to set your own nose with one savage twist. It takes quite a few savage twists and more crying. You have to commit to the move, but every time you put your hands on either side of your nose to straighten it, the throbbing pain rises to a silent scream from prescient nerves. The anticipation of pain is so bad, you might start to believe in auras because even raising your hands in the vicinity of your face is enough to make your eyes water more. Was a watery eye okay with Mike Hammer? You can’t remember, but surely even Mickey Spillane would allow his hero to get a bit teary with a badly broken nose. That’s wrong. This nose is actually very well-broken.
You’re stalling.
“In three…two…one…nnnnnope!” You pound your chest with one fist but when that makes your whole head throb, you think better of trying any macho bullshit to pump yourself up.
“In three…come on! In two…don’t wimp out now! One, so
I can be pretty again!”
Clunk!
Agony.
And you got a clunk. Why a clunk? Captain America-Kick-You-in-the-Balls got a click. Why did you get a clunk?
You breathe hard (through your mouth, of course, since a wad of bloody toilet paper is stuffed up each nostril.) When you dare to look in the mirror again you see that, yes, your nose is straight. The nose will be okay, though both eyes are going black fast. No problem, you tell yourself. Jack Nicholson got his nose sliced open in Chinatown and he solved the mystery or got the bad guys or whatever the hell he did in that movie. He probably didn’t cry about it as much as you do now, but you’ve got a whole broken nose and his wound was just one cut.
You ruin a bathroom towel, the bathmat, a t-shirt and a tea towel in the kitchen waiting for the bleeding to stop.
You hear your apartment door slam and you figure Jimmy has sent Harv and Marv to kill you. That would be fine with you just now. When you look up, the lovely Lily Vasquez is upside down. You must have passed out a little because you’re lying on kitchen tile, caught in the soft light from behind the open refrigerator door, ice cubes clutched to your face. You’re on your back and Lily only looks upside down. You glance up her dress as far as you can see, and then begin the laborious task of righting yourself and making it to your knees.
She stands at the edge of your tiny galley kitchen, hands on hips and pissed. She surveys the geography of your face, one eyebrow quirked high. “Are you in trouble?” she asks.
“I don’t know why you’d think that.” Your voice sounds too high and nasal, but thankfully less duck-like.
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