Bust

by Ken Bruen

  Popeye stayed still for a few more seconds then settled back down in the seat and stared straight ahead. Finally he said, “So where does the crippled fuck live?”

  “First let’s talk about the important shite,” Max said, trying to put on a brogue, wanting to give Popeye a taste of his own. “My money. I want to revise the offer I made to you over the phone this morning.”

  “You said twenty large.”

  Max loved the way Popeye’s tone was weakening. Jesus Christ, Max felt the power going straight to his head.

  “Yeah, well, a lot has changed since then,” Max said. “For instance, you’ve made it on to the NYPD’s Most Wanted list, so I’ve decided you owe me a freebie for this one.”

  “Like fuck I do.”

  Max ignored this, said, “You have as much stake now in this as I do. You can’t disappear until this Rosa guy is out of the way and you know it.”

  Popeye’s eyes narrowed into slits.

  “How will you find his address?”

  “I already called Information,” Max said. “They told me they didn’t have any Bobby Rosas. I said, what about Robert Rosas? They had one in the West Village – the fudgepacking district. The Rosa I met didn’t look like a guy who talks into the mike, if you know what I mean. They also had one at one hundred West Eighty-ninth so I said gimme that one.”

  “But how you know it’s the same fellah?”

  “I did something you’re not used to doing – I used my fucking head. I called the building and said to the doorman, ‘Does a Robert Rosa in a wheelchair live at your address?’ The guy said ‘Yeah,’ and I hung up. You have any more stupid questions?”

  Popeye started to say something, but Max interrupted and, with his best Oirish accent said, “Good, then you can get the bejaysus out of here.”

  Popeye looked stunned for a couple of seconds, mumbling something about “tinkers.” Then he stood up and said, “You shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain, tis bad luck.”

  About twenty minutes later, when Max got out of the cab in front of his townhouse, a man said, “You Max Fisher?”

  Looking at the guy, Max thought, Jesus Christ, what now?

  The guy took out his shiny gold badge and said, “Ortiz – Homicide. I think you better come with me.”

  Eighteen

  I wanted to say they busted apart as do dried-up dreams, or public trust, but, truly, they flew apart exactly like yesterday’s shit.

  DANIEL WOODRELL, Give Us a Kiss

  The doorbell rang and Bobby said, “Come in,” sitting in his wheelchair about ten feet from the door, his Glock 27 compact pistol resting on his lap. In walked Max Fisher’s executive assistant. She was wearing a short red leather skirt, matching pumps and a tight top. Like the other night at the hotel, her hair was big and blown dry, but tonight she had on thick red lipstick, plenty of eye makeup, and silver hoop earrings.

  After looking her up and down again and then waiting a couple of seconds, Bobby wanted to say, Holy fuckin’ shit, but went with “Can I help you with something?”

  “Sorry to bother you like this,” she said. “I mean I would’ve called, or tried to call and tell you I was coming over, but I didn’t think I’d have time. It’s just I heard my boss talking on the phone today and I had to come over to warn you.”

  Man, that Irish accent was sexy as hell. He was trying to remember whether he’d ever banged an Irish chick. He had – a few of them – but they were Irish-American. They didn’t sound like this girl, that’s for sure.

  “Warn me about what?” he asked, hiding the gun between his leg and the side of his chair.

  “I think you’re in big trouble,” she said. “My boss said he’s sending somebody over here to hurt you, or maybe worse. I don’t know what’s going on, but I heard him mention your name and address.”

  Bobby stared at her for a few seconds. She was biting her lower lip, in a naughty schoolgirl way, and he wished he could give her something else to bite on. He wondered if she’d dressed up just for him. The other night, at the hotel, she’d been wearing jeans and a tube top.

  “So who’s this guy that’s gonna come after me?” he asked.

  “He calls himself Popeye.”

  “Popeye? I gotta look out for Olive Oyl too?”

  Angela smiled, said, “I just heard Max talking about Popeye.”

  “And how does Max know a guy like this ‘Popeye’?”

  Angela shrugged.

  “Is he the guy with the gray hair and the screwed-up mouth I saw a sketch of on the news?”

  “I really don’t know anything else,” Angela said. “I mean I guess it could be the same guy.”

  Bobby looked her up and down again, said, “Wanna sit down?” and Angela said, “Sure.”

  As Angela passed by Bobby caught a whiff of her perfume and said, “You’re wearing Joy.”

  “Yeah,” Angela said, smiling. “How’d you know?”

  “I bought some of it for an old girlfriend one time. I love that smell.”

  Bobby watched her sit down on the couch. He liked the noise her leather skirt made when she crossed her right leg over her left. She was exactly the type of girl Bobby would have gone crazy for before he got shot. He would have taken her to one of those classy Italian restaurants downtown in the West Village, then to some club on Seventh Avenue, and then back to his place for an all-night screw fest.

  “This is a really big place you got here,” Angela said looking around. “You live here all by your own self?”

  “Yeah,” Bobby said. Then he lifted himself up in his wheelchair to do a pressure-relief and said, “But I’ll probably sell it one of these days and move into something smaller.” Noticing an empty pizza box on the coffee table and glasses half-filled with soda on the end pieces he said, “Sorry it’s such a dump.”

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Angela said. “If you want to know a secret, my apartment’s a real mess too.”

  Bobby was staring at Angela’s mouth, loving how when she stopped talking her lips stayed slightly apart. He said, “So you know why Max wants this Popeye guy to kill me, don’t you?”

  “No,” Angela said.

  “You don’t know anything about the pictures?”

  Angela shook her head.

  “Well,” Bobby said, “I sort of took these pictures the other night of you and your boss… in that hotel room.”

  Bobby was watching Angela’s reaction closely. She seemed genuinely surprised, but he couldn’t tell for sure.

  “You’re saying you were the guy who-”

  Bobby nodded.

  “And you took pictures of me and Max…”

  The funny thing was, it almost seemed the idea was getting her hot. He nodded again.

  “I can’t believe this,” Angela said, but not in an angry way. “What are you, a detective or something? Did somebody pay you to follow us?”

  Bobby laughed.

  “No, it was just chance. It could have been any two people. It didn’t have to be you and your boss.”

  “I don’t get it,” Angela said. “Why would Max want somebody to kill you?”

  “Well, the meeting we had yesterday… I’m not really sure how to put this. I went to Max with a business proposition. I’m a businessman, like he is – except my business is a little different than your boss’s.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t think you would. Let me put it this way – I was trying to squeeze some money out of him. It was just a racket I got involved with because I had nothing else going on and it got a lot bigger than I ever thought it would.”

  “A racket? What kind of racket?”

  “Taking pictures of people fucking in hotel rooms and trying to blackmail them.”

  “That’s amazing,” Angela said.

  “What is?”

  “That you could be so honest about something like that. I mean a lot of guys would’ve made up some bullshit story. You just sat there and told me the truth. I can really respe
ct that about a person.”

  Bobby liked that. “Thanks.”

  “I mean, I have to admit I’m a little embarrassed that you have those pictures and that you saw me… you know… but on the other hand I can understand why you did it.”

  “But you don’t have to worry,” Bobby said, “once your boss pays me the money I’ll throw out all of those pictures and the negatives. They won’t wind up on the fuckin’ Internet if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Oh, I’m not worried about stuff like that. I really don’t care about Max. As far as I’m concerned he can go rot in hell.”

  “Really?” Bobby said, loving how she said hell. You could almost feel the flames. “I thought… I mean, going by the way you two looked that night…”

  “I made a huge mistake,” Angela said, looking at her lap. “It’s the story of my life – things just seem to get really fucked up. I was on the rebound, you know? Max kept asking me out and asking me out and finally I just said yes. I guess I just thought he was a different person than he turned out to be.”

  Her accent had become full-blown Irish, and had a trace of little-girl-lost in there too, a sucker punch for most men, and for Bobby, who hadn’t felt anything for a woman since Tanya, it was a K.O.

  “Did he pay this guy Popeye to kill his wife?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but after hearing him on the phone today… I’m almost positive he did. He was going crazy for me, getting really obsessed, you know? I kept telling him it was nothing serious and that we should end it. But he wouldn’t get the message and then he must’ve gone ahead and got this guy to kill his wife. Believe me, if I had any idea anybody was gonna get hurt there was no way I would’ve stayed with him.”

  Angela uncrossed her legs then crossed them again, her leather skirt making that rubbing sound. Her bottom lip was moist and, he didn’t know if it was just him or something about the way she was sitting, but her bust looked bigger than it had when she walked in.

  “But you were with him the other night,” Bobby said, “after his wife got killed.”

  Angela looked away for a moment, toward the front door. When she turned back, tears were streaming down her cheeks and her face was all scrunched up and ugly.

  “I was afraid,” Angela said, her voice cracking. “I wanted to break it off, but I’ve only had my job for a few months and he told me if I didn’t keep going out with him he’d fire me and give me a shitty reference. And I was lonely, I guess. Maybe you can’t understand, but women get desperate when they get lonely. They do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. Plus my mother was putting a lot of pressure on me.”

  “Your mother?”

  “My mother died a while ago and she was, you know, real salt-of-the-earth.”

  Bobby loved how she pronounced it sall-t. She could even make a condiment sound sexy.

  “She had a hard death,” Angela went on, “and before she passed, she held my hand and begged me to find a good man someday, not to end up alone.” She took a tissue from her bag, dabbed at her eyes, then said, “Maybe you can’t understand it, but my mother always had a lot of control over me.”

  “Actually, I know exactly what that’s like,” Bobby said.

  “You do?”

  “My mother and I were very close.”

  “I’m sorry,” Angela said.

  “Oh, she’s not dead. She’s in a nursing home. I still go visit her all the time, but she’s really out of it.”

  “I think that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard in my whole life,” Angela said, starting to cry again. “A son who visits his mother in a nursing home.”

  Bobby was feeling something he’d never thought possible – he was feeling noble, like a fucking good guy. He had no idea how that had happened, but he kind of liked it. He saw himself like Tom Cruise in that flick, Born On The Fourth of July, having fucking dignity in his disability.

  “I only go a few times a week,” Bobby said.

  “A few times a week! I hope when I’m old I have a son like you who’ll always love me.”

  Now the tears were starting to flow freely down Angela’s cheeks. Bobby noticed that the tissue she had was drenched so he wheeled into the kitchen and returned with some paper towels. He gave one to Angela and she dabbed her eyes a few times and said, “I have a confession to make. There’s something I lied to you about before and I feel really bad about it.”

  “Shoot,” Bobby said.

  “See, the truth is, I could’ve called to tell you all of this instead of coming here. But after I saw you leave the office, I just couldn’t stop thinking about you. I thought maybe if I came over here… I don’t know… I just thought maybe something could happen between us. Believe me, I usually don’t do stuff like this – I mean get so forward with guys – but after all the hell I’ve been through lately I figured things couldn’t get much worse than they already are. I just think you’re a very attractive man and… I feel like such an idiot. I should probably just go home now.”

  Bobby’s face was hot. He hoped he wasn’t blushing.

  “Well, that’s definitely very flattering,” he said.

  “It is?”

  “Of course,” Bobby said. “I mean you’re a good-looking girl and-”

  “You mean that?”

  “Mean what?”

  “That I’m good-looking.”

  “Of course. Believe me, if I wasn’t in this wheelchair…”

  “Oh, I don’t care about that.”

  “You don’t?”

  “If you want to know the truth I think a wheelchair’s kind of sexy. I mean it’s not like I’m some bleedin’ pervert or anything like that. I don’t go out trying to meet guys in wheelchairs, but it’s not like I have anything against it and you’re so, like, courageous about it. You don’t whine or moan – you just go on with your life. Max can use both of his legs and he never, and I mean never, stops whining.”

  “I don’t think you understand-”

  “You know who you’re like? You’re just like Tom Cruise in that movie about the Vietnam vet in the wheelchair. My mother loved that movie. She’d say, God rest her, ‘See that? That’s a man of character.’ ”

  Bobby couldn’t believe she’d said that. It was like they were fucking communicating mentally. How great was that?

  Angela was gazing at Bobby with her eyes wide open and her lips parted slightly, like she wanted to be kissed. In the old days, Bobby would have sat next to her on the couch, gone in for some tongue action, and the rest would have been history. But now he felt like it was his first time alone with a girl.

  “I have an idea,” Angela said, maybe sensing his awkwardness. “I’m a really good cook. I could go out and get some stuff and cook you a really great dinner. Are you Greek by any chance?”

  “No, but people sometimes think I look Greek. Why?”

  “My father’s Greek and you sort of remind me of his side.”

  Shit, why the fuck didn’t he just say he was Greek? He could do Greek. Hell, anyone could do Greek. Just don’t shave and grunt, what’s so hard about that?

  “Hey, I have an idea,” Angela said, her face brightening. “I know how to make a great pasticcio and I could make a big Greek salad to go with it. How’s that sound?”

  Bobby said that sounded dynamite. While Angela was out shopping for food Bobby got dressed as quickly as he could. He put on one of his good silk shirts and a pair of chinos. He wished he had time to take a bath and trim his beard, but by the time he finished getting dressed Angela was already back from the supermarket. Bobby had Thin Lizzy going, figuring he’d impress her with some Irish rock.

  Angela heard the opening riff of “Whiskey In The Jar,” shrieked, “Oh my God, that’s like, my favorite song.”

  Bobby had a feeling she was full of shit. He liked that, though – showed she was into him.

  Coming back with some bullshit of his own, he said, “Yeah, I love Lizzy, man. My opinion, they’re better than AC/DC. I got everything the
y ever did on cassette.”

  Angela told Bobby to wait in the living room while she was cooking because she wanted the meal to be a surprise. It took a long fucking time, but she finally told him dinner was ready and he wheeled up to the table. By the way Angela was looking at him he knew that after dinner she was gonna be up for some dessert. He hoped he could give it to her. Phil Lynott was into “The Boys Are Back in Town” and Bobby figured, hey, it had to be an omen.

  The pasticcio was only so-so – okay, it tasted like horseshit – but Bobby told Angela that it was the best Greek dinner he’d ever eaten. They sat at the table afterwards, drinking Merlot and talking. He told her all the highlights of his life, including how he had wound up in the wheelchair.

  “I was dating this black girl named Tanya,” Bobby explained. “It was nothing too serious, you know? We were just going out a lot, having a good time. Then one night we were at her place, up in the South Bronx, listening to some tunes. I remember the fucking song that was playing – Guns N’ Roses, ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ – when her boyfriend comes into the room.”

  “She had a boyfriend?” Angela said.

  “It was news to me too,” Bobby said. “He was a big black guy, like six-four, and he was angry as hell.”

  “So what happened?”

  “He starts saying, ‘Why are you fucking my woman?’ – shit like that. I didn’t know what was going on. I just said to him, ‘Look, you two better settle this yourselves,’ and I got up to leave. That’s when I heard the shot. Next thing I know I’m on the floor and I can’t feel my legs.”

  “Did he go to jail?”

  “No, he ran away and I didn’t press charges.”

  “Why not?”

  “What was the point? It wouldn’t get me my legs back.”

  Bobby didn’t want to tell Angela the rest of the story, how when he got out of the hospital he took a bus up to the project in the Bronx where the guy lived and pumped six bullets into his back. But just thinking about how he’d plugged that fucking bastard and then put a couple in Tanya when she came home made his blood bubble.