by Tom Kakonis
“No prol’um. Even got a selection for ya. C’mon,”
Sal led him to a doorway opening onto a tiny room dominated by a single bed. A nightlight plugged into a wall socket revealed three boys, fair of skin and hair, slight of bone, naked but for their undershorts and laid out crossways on a filthy mattress, sleeping peaceful as cherubs. The oldest looked to be—what?—no more than six or seven, near as Dingo could tell, the youngest maybe half that, the other somewhere in between.
“There y’are,” Sal said proudly. “Not a pickaninny in the lot.”
“Where do you find them?” Dingo asked, genuinely curious. He took a professional interest in such matters. A businessman always had to be alert to new avenues of opportunity.
“These ones here?”
“Generally.”
“Why you ask? Thinkin’ a branchin’ out?”
“Curiosity, Sal. That’s all.”
“Oh, your zoos are good, ball parks, schools, beach in the summer, some a them museums downtown. Places like that.”
“How do you go about securing them?”
“Snatch ’em, y’mean?”
“Yes.”
“Depends. Sweet talk do it sometimes, sometimes takes little happy gas in a hankie, which is trickier. These you lookin’ at here, that’s what it took, all three. Lemme tell ya, it ain’t easy. Ain’t like regular boostin’. With your ankle biters y’gotta be quick.”
“I’m sure. They’re awfully, uh, young, aren’t they?”
“You can talk normal,” Sal assured him, for Dingo had been speaking in hushed tones. “We got ’em on some, y’know, Nytol. Own special brand.”
“That’s a comfort.”
“You think young?” Sal pointed at the oldest boy. “See that one there, he’s almost over the hill. We got a sayin’, this game: fucked before eight, or it’s too late.”
“What about that one?” Dingo asked, indicating the youngest.
“Yeah, well, he’s maybe little on the tender side. Figured he’d be just about right, what you got in mind. Fresh too. Just picked him up today.”
“How much?”
“Twenty long takes him home.”
“I’ll give you ten.”
Sal snorted contemptuously. “I was born at night, Dingo, but not last night.”
“Ten. He’s too young for your other…trade.”
“Be surprised. Some them chicken hawks out there like ’em real pink. Fresh outta the cradle. Get an easy twenty off them people put out Hot Tots. ’Nother couple years he’ll be ready for the squirm flicks.”
“All right, fifteen, then.”
“Eighteen. Nothin’ less.”
“Seventeen five.”
Sal’s lips, pink as worms, shaped a sneer. “You tryin’ job me here?”
“Seventeen five. That’s my best offer.”
“Gotta be some Hebe in you, Dingo. Okay, deal. Let’s go out the other room, finalize.”
Dingo followed him, positioned himself carefully along a wall facing the couch where Vincent still lay, still absorbed, it appeared, in his comic book. Sal stood between them, scribbling something on a scrap of paper. He handed it to Dingo, said, “What you got there’s an address, drop house out to Elgin. How it works is we got a cunt out there, plays the sad mother. We dummy up the papers on the kid, birth certificate, that kinda shit, make it look like what y’call a brokered adoption. Us the brokers. You have your clients there Sunday morning, they got ’emselves a kid.”
“They’ll be there,” Dingo assured him. He pocketed the address, took a step toward the door. “Pleasure doing business with you boys.”
Sal moved into his path. “ ’Cept it ain’t quite done,” he said. “We gotta see some earnest money.”
“Earnest money,” Dingo repeated after him, thinking, So now it comes, crunch time. Treachery the only constant in this shifting, shifty business. He smiled, melancholy speck of a smile. His eyes were absent of any emotion other than an infinite sorrow at a world that never quite measured up to his expectations, his expression grieved. Indeed, with his long hollow chiseled features, his rigid posture, refined bearing, precision speech, tasteful clothes, he might have been mistaken for a Calvinist minister on his way to preside over a vesper service.
“That’s right,” Sal said. “Half down. Now.”
“Surely you don’t think I’d be carrying that kind of money. In here?”
“Then you better trot on home an’ find it. ’Cuz that’s the rules, this game. Half now, half on delivery.”
Dingo laid the tips of his outstretched fingers together, peered over them at Sal, and beyond him to Vincent, who was just then setting the comic on the floor and curling himself upright on the couch, apparently listening after all. “No,” Dingo said mildly. “Once the transaction’s completed you’ll be paid in full. Meantime, you’ve got the child. Pretty solid collateral, I’d say.”
“That’s what you’d say, is it?”
“Yes.”
Sal itched his scalp, exciting a shower of moist dandruff that went floating onto his fatty shoulders. “See, Dingo, what your prol’um is, you don’t listen good. I’m tellin’ ya how it works. Rules. Y’got rules, y’gotta have a force man, make ’em stick.”
“That would be Vincent.”
“That’s the idea. Now, you wanna talk to him?”
“Not especially.”
“So what’s it gonna be? That half I’m sayin’ here.”
Dingo collapsed the fingers steeple, pressed his palms together in a gesture oddly reminiscent of praying hands. “No,” he said, mild yet, but firm.
Sal signaled his partner. “He’s little slow tonight, Vincent. You explain it to him?”
“Yeah, I can do that,” Vincent said, lumbering to his feet and crossing the room.
Dingo didn’t move. His sorrowed gaze remained locked on Sal, hands still fixed in prayerful attitude. “There’s no need for this, Sal,” he said.
“Tell it to Vincent.”
Now he was looking up into a flattened, fissured face looming over him, full red mouth opened in shark grin, exposing yellowed snaggle teeth and expelling a breath equally as foul as Sal’s, maybe worse. Positive genius for ugliness, your wops. Vincent took the lapel of his coat and rubbed the fabric between thumb and forefinger. “Nice threads,” he said. “Where’d you pick ’em up at? Kmarts? Blue light special on blue suits?”
A peculiar glint came into Dingo’s eyes, a lucency, like two slivers of green bottle glass shimmering under a harsh sun. “No,” he said. “And that’s Kmart, by the way, no s on the end.” His palms suddenly parted and he thrust his arms upward and seized Vincent’s ears and yanked, simultaneously and with a flamenco dancer’s staccato grace spiking the heel of a tassled loafer into an instep, shattering bone by the welcome sound of it, an assessment confirmed a nanosecond later by Vincent’s astonished squawk and comic one-legged hop, hands clutching at ears dangling by stringy cords of gristle. Dingo spun around and drove little Sal into a wall. He whisked out his knife, flipped the blade, and laid it across Sal’s throat. Sadly, very softly, he said, “Why can’t we do business in a civilized manner, Sal?”
“You’re fuckin’ whackadoo, Dinger, know that?”
He applied a small pressure to the blade, drawing a thin line of blood. Dingo he could tolerate, but not Dinger, jailhouse jargon for lunatic. Entirely uncalled for, to his thinking. “That wasn’t the question, Sal.”
“Awright, awright. Do it your way.”
“Sunday morning, then? Full payment on delivery?”
“Yeah yeah yeah. But you better come with that loot or you gonna be lookin’ over your shoulder rest a your days.”
“Have I ever failed you, Sal?”
He took a cautious step back. Glanced at the lumpish figure crumpled on the floor now, groaning. Nothing to fear from Vincent anymore. Or from Sal, swiping the blood from his neck, glowering at him. He started for the door.
“What about Vincent?” Sal called after him.
“What about him?”
“What you done to him.”
“Occupational hazard,” Dingo said over his shoulder. “Check your medical plan. He’s probably covered.”
And with that he was gone.
Back at the apartment, Dingo went directly to the phone and dialed the number given by his confederate.
“Lockport VFW,” boomed the answering voice, swept along on a blast of music and boorish laughter.
“I’d like to speak with James Jacoby, please.”
“Who’zat?”
Dingo sighed. “Jimmie.”
“Jimmie Jack?”
“Yes.”
“Hol’ on.”
It took awhile but eventually another voice, just as coarse but with a touch of expectancy in it, announced, “Jimmie Jack talkin’.”
“Dingo, Jimmie.”
“Hey, Dingo. Figured it’d be you.”
“How’s the party?” he inquired conversationally, stringing it out a little, making him wait.
“Good party. Real hoot.”
“Pleased to hear it.”
“So whadda you hear?”
“Most agreeable news, Jimmie. Merchandise meets all the specs. Arrangements sealed. Price settled on.”
“What’d it come in at?”
“Eighteen.”
“That the best y’could do?” Disgruntled edge to the voice now, surly even.
“Margin’s slim, this sort of product,” Dingo said. “I was lucky to get that. Required some, well, wrangling.”
“I was hopin’ we’d maybe do little better.”
“I’d call one large for each of us rather a nice profit for an evening’s work. Never pays to get greedy, Jimmie.”
Jimmie had no comment on this sound advice. “So what’s the poop,” he said, “them arrangements you was sayin’?”
He spelled them out for him: time, location, transfer of cash details, concluding with the directive to pass along these instructions to his contact man immediately.
“Fella’s here tonight. I’ll talk to him.”
Dingo detected some of that skittish waffling he’d heard before, their earlier conversation. Not gladdening. “More than just talk,” he said, chilliest of tones. “What I want is…” He trailed off, looking for just the exact word, fixing finally on execution and not at all unhappy with it, its double-edged meaning. “Deal’s been struck,” he went on. “My good name’s at stake here. Yours too. Follow?”
“Yeah, I follow.”
“Splendid.”
“Get back to ya.”
Dingo put up the phone, poured himself a brandy, and took it into the living room. He switched on the stereo, settled into a chair, feet up on an ottoman. The dulcet strains of some classical piece, he didn’t know which, filled the room, mellowed him, inspired a pensive mood.
He reflected on the events of the evening, most notably the pointless little scuffle in that grimy apartment. A bit out of proportion to the disagreement, perhaps, but then it’s always best to establish one’s authority, one’s presence, forcefully and early on and absolutely without fear. Another hard lesson painfully picked up over the course of his entirely unjustified eight-year stay at the Facility. Eight years wrongfully lifted out of his life, swindling him of his youth. Set him seething even yet, thinking about it.
They said he’d killed his parents, cold-bloodedly and without remorse, but he knew that couldn’t be right. He knew better. They’d died in a fire, Mom and Dad, consumed by flames on a night he’d been innocently off at the movies. Or maybe it was a Scout meeting. Or maybe he had been in the house, watching television, and escaped only by a stroke of luck. Hard to remember anymore. So long ago.
Still, they said he did it. Claimed to have the proofs. Stuck him away in the Facility, a terrified thirteen-year-old white boy, nice upbringing, decent, hardworking (till they died) parents, a diligent student (even played French horn in the school band), Star Scout. Buried him alive.
No good thinking that way, puzzling over it, picking it like a raw scab. Road to madness. So instead he sipped his brandy and wished himself a happy birthday and turned his thoughts to the handsome coffee table he’d be getting soon, a gift to himself, affordable now with those extra five bills tacked onto his thousand.
Norma Buckley was an attentive wife, something of a throwback to another time. Alert to her husband’s every need, she kept watch as he methodically vanished a plate of steamy food, picking at her own, and the moment he was finished she inquired if he wanted anything more from the lavish buffet spread out over a table at the back of the hall. The volume of the music was such it was necessary to lift her reedy voice a level or two, though by no stretch could it be called a shout. As always, she addressed him by given name, Dale.
He cupped a hand behind an ear. “What’s that?”
“Have you had enough to eat?”
Buck leaned back, thumped his firm, if swollen, midsection, sighed contentedly, deliberated. “Little more that chicken be good.”
She reached for his styrofoam plate, removed the plastic fork and knife, and rose from her chair.
Across the table the Wazinskis, Mike and Della, took in this familiar little domestic scene amusedly. Waz (who had been known as such for so long and by so many people he oftentimes failed to respond to his own proper name) shook his head in elaborate show of awe. A teasing grin lit his broad, blue-jowled face. “Boy, you sure got this one trained right, Buck.”
“She’s a keeper, all right,” Buck deadpanned. It was a running joke between them.
“I ask Della here do that, she serve me up a five-finger sanwich.”
Della there made a fierce face and a balled fist and delivered a punch, playful but solid, to his thick bicep. “Like this, you mean?”
Everybody laughed, Norma a little less than the other three, more of a good-sport titter escaping from behind a widening of the mouth. She was in the habit of smiling and laughing at all the places in a conversation you’re expected to, but there was a certain forlorn distance in her manner, a wistfulness, as though she carried with her a durable, aching sadness. “Be right back,” she said and started away, purposeful of step, an uncommonly tall woman, willowy, with straight darkish hair flecked here and there with silver and flowing over frail shoulders habitually set in the slightest of stoops, perhaps to minimize a height not all that far off her husband’s. She threaded through a crowd gathered to cheer on a flock of boisterous children romping across the dance floor, jiggling to the beat, clowning for the delighted grown-ups. She paused, not long, watched their antics. Her face, angular, narrow-margined, near to gaunt, tightened. A cloud of hurt passed over her troubled gray eyes, and the smile she mustered was closer to a twitch. She moved on to the buffet, heaped chicken on the plate, said some praiseful words to the servers, and returned to the table.
“I tell ya,” Waz was telling them all, “Harp really knows how to put on a feed.”
“Good chow,” Buck agreed, gazing first at the plate of it set in front of him, then at his wife, fondly, adding, “Thanks, honey.”
“Enjoy,” she said.
Waz wondered who “put it all together.” His voice, amplified and roughened by two decades of bellowing over the roar of machines, was more than equal to the bedlam in here.
“Hired a caterer maybe,” Della said.
“No,” Norma corrected her gently, “it was his children. They arranged the whole thing.”
“How do you know?”
“Irene, his wife, she told me. They have four children, two daughters and two sons. Seven grandchildren. A lovely family.”
For an awkward moment nobody said anything. Buck stared at his food, Waz into a plastic cup filled with beer. Della looked away. The moment lengthened, relieved at last when the D.J. throttled the music just enough to announce, “This next one’s for the guest of honor,” and at the opening bars of “Take This Job and Shove It” the audience howled appreciatively, joining in on the jeered refrain.
As soon as the tune ran down, Harp was escorted to the mike and presented a series of gag gifts: a deck of cards (“brush up on your solitaire”); shuffleboard pole (“keep yourself in shape”); seniors discount card for a local eatery, along with a bottle of Gas-X; cane; and a melon, honey dew (“get yourself ready for all the ‘honey, do this, honey, do that’ comin’ up”). Then “As Time Goes By” was played and Harp’s wife dragged him, protesting, onto the dance floor and they swayed, Harp a bit stiffly, to the sweet, sad melody, drawing a big round of audience applause and loving hugs from their assembled grandchildren when it was done.
Over at the table Buck allowed, “Gonna miss old Harp.”
“Say that again,” Waz concurred.
“Best millwright at the plant.”
“Next to yourself, ’course,” Waz joshed him.
“No,” Buck said soberly, “he’s better’n me. Time’s we worked together, I swear he knew what I was thinkin’ before I did myself.”
Della, visibly bored by the drift toward shop talk, turned the conversation another direction. “What are you up to this weekend?” she asked Norma.
“Oh, I’ll be putting in the garden.”
“You don’t make Buck do that?”
“He’s paneling the basement.”
“He’s been doin’ that basement six months now,” Waz snorted. “Think maybe he’s shuckin’ you, Norma.”
Buck chuckled tolerantly. Norma smiled.
“Don’t pay any attention to him,” Della said. “Get him to do anything around the house, that’s worse than yanking teeth.”
Waz stretched his lips back, simulating a toothless grin. “Yeah,” he said, “an’ look what it got me.”
Della made a quick little shooing motion with her hands, the gesture lifted from a bag of coquettish mannerisms and knowing expressions that hinted at a history of worldly feminine mischief. She was a small woman, almost pocket-sized alongside her hulking husband, round and amply bosomed, shapely once but running now to plump. Her hair was sheared fashionably short, very near a brush cut, and bleached a startling platinum, setting off milky blue eyes, heavily shadowed, rosy cheeks heavily rouged, and full, pouty lips vividly lacquered red as ripe strawberries. Archly dismissing Waz’s effort at comedy, she said to Norma, “You going to have flowers this year?”