Bust

by Ken Bruen

  I love storms.

  GANDHI

  Monday morning, Max wasn’t expecting a party in his office, but he thought there would at least be a few smiling faces. Instead, no one even said hello to him. Max didn’t understand it. Didn’t anyone read the papers or watch the news on TV? Didn’t they know that Angela had cleared his name? He’d fire all these bastards, see what they thought then. Christ, couldn’t an innocent guy get a break?

  Max went to Diane Faustino’s desk and asked her to please come into his office. He had steel in his voice, thinking, You wanna play hardball, baby? All right, then come to Daddy, sweetie. Come to Daddy.

  “What for?”

  “I’m your boss – I don’t need a reason.” He let his eyes turn to stone. He’d seen Eastwood do that.

  Diane breathed deeply, then followed Max.

  In his office, Max asked her to shut the door then he said, “All right, now what the hell’s going on here?”

  “Going on with what?” Diane said coldly. She was still standing near the door, looking like she was staring down a man who’d raped and killed her family.

  “The silent treatment,” Max said. “You’d think I was Charles Manson or something.”

  “The police came back here Friday afternoon, after they took you away.”

  “So?” Max said.

  “They were talking to everyone, asking a lot of questions.”

  “That’s what police do,” Max said, trying to seem patient. “When somebody gets shot they go to their office and ask a lot of questions.”

  “You don’t care, do you?”

  The question confused Max. He wasn’t sure whether Diane was trying to change the subject or not. “Care about what?”

  “You really don’t know, do you?” Diane said. “You’re pathetic.”

  “That’s out of line,” Max said. “If you don’t-”

  “Everybody thinks you did it.”

  Max stared at Diane. He couldn’t believe she had the balls to talk to her boss this way. What the hell was happening to the world?

  “Did what?” he said.

  “Hired that guy to kill your wife,” Diane said, “hired somebody else to shoot Angela.”

  “I didn’t hire anybody to shoot Angela.”

  “But you hired somebody to kill your wife?”

  “I didn’t hire anybody to do anything.”

  “I don’t believe you. Nobody believes you. We knew you were an asshole, I just can’t believe I’ve been working all this time for a murderer. And no, don’t bother firing me – I quit.”

  “Will you just calm down?” Max said. “Jesus, I hate it when you get hysterical.” He wondered if she had any valium. Women always had that stuff and God knew he could use some too. He’d been having chest pains again lately and needed something to ward off a heart attack. How much could one decent man take?

  Diane stormed out of the office, letting the door slam behind her. To hell with her, Max thought. If an employee wasn’t loyal to her boss, what use was she? Besides, accounting people were a dime a dozen and it was a known fact that the Chinese were better than Italians anyway. He’d make a call to a headhunter and tomorrow morning there’d be ten Chinese guys lined up for Diane’s job. His heart pounding, he looked at his Rolex, went to the drawer, poured a large glass of vodka, and gulped it down, spilling some on his tie, thinking, Aw, c’mon, gimme a break.

  There was a knock on Max’s door. Diane begging for her job back? That was fast. But instead it was Thomas Henderson, NetWorld’s CFO. He told Max that he was resigning, that he just couldn’t work here anymore. Max said this was fine with him. A CFO would be harder to replace than an ordinary accountant, but fuck it, Max didn’t want anyone working for him who didn’t have loyalty to the company.

  Eleven more people resigned during the next half hour, including four of his Senior Network Technicians, a few cable installers, and two of his best PC technicians. Goddamn it, his whole company was hemorrhaging. Now Max was starting to get frightened and more than a little drunk. As they filed in and out of his office, he said to one guy, “When the going gets tough, the tough get fucked.” He knew that wasn’t right, was it? What-the-fuck ever. He said to some woman, “Easy go, easy come for me, baby.” Like he didn’t give a goddamn, but he did, oh yeah. After another glass of Stoli he screamed at another woman, “Get out of my fucking face!” Max realized he was losing it. It was one thing to lose a couple of people, but all of a sudden his entire company was falling apart in front of him.

  Max ordered the temp who was answering phones today to call all the headhunters NetWorld dealt with and to transfer them to his line as soon as she got through. Later, when the headhunters returned his calls, Max told them to set up appointments to interview people for the vacant positions. This made Max feel a little more at ease, until clients started calling. He realized he was slurring and the damn vodka was empty, How the hell’d that happen?

  At first, there were just a few smaller clients, calling to cancel their service and consulting agreements. They were five- to ten-thousand-dollar-a-year clients that Max wouldn’t miss, but then a few bigger clients, where Max had placed full-time consultants and did steady business, called to say they were planning to look for a new company for network support. All of the clients had the same story – they didn’t like the bad publicity that Max and NetWorld were getting so they had decided it was best to take their business elsewhere. Max tried desperately to save the clients, but nothing he could say worked. It was like he was shouting and the world was, what, deaf? He hated how he sounded, like he was fucking pleading. Then, craving another drink, he went to the stash of Chivas Regal he kept for special clients. He poured a glass, some going on his tie, thought, Fuck it, and started guzzling. Vaguely, he remembered the hangover from hell the last time he mixed vodka and whiskey, but he didn’t let that slow him down. He hit the intercom button and ordered his temp to go out to get some pistachios, figuring they’d soak up the booze.

  Ten minutes later, clutching the bottle of Chivas, Max wobbled out to the temp’s desk and said, “Where the fuck are my nuts?” Then he said, “Wait I know where they are, they’re right here,” and grabbed his balls.

  The girl mumbled something with the word “disgusting” in it and Max interrupted, “Hey, you talking back to me? Don’t you know, I own your arse!” He smiled, realizing he’d channeled Thomas Dillon, old Popeye himself.

  Now the girl was saying something about quitting and Max said, “You know, you’re getting just a tad on my nerves.” Then he thought, Tad? How fucking British was he gonna get? And where the hell was that Zen book? Hadn’t the police returned it? How was he gonna mellow out if he couldn’t find the goddamn thing?

  The girl got up to leave. No big loss – she was thin, had no shape.

  “And Zen there were none!” Max yelled at her as she ran out of the office.

  He opened the Chivas for another dose and then shouted, “Fuck!” as the cap cut into his index finger, blood leaking out. In the bathroom, full-blown panic set in as he rinsed his finger, watching what he was convinced were pints of blood go down the drain. He was gonna bleed to death from a Chivas bottle cap – how pathetic was that?

  The bleeding finally stopped but, but he was convinced he’d lost vital amounts of blood and back at his desk, he drank from the bottle, trying to replace the fluid, thinking, Yeah, like that was gonna work. Then, thinking out loud, he said, “Did I just think out loud?” Fook on a bike, as that Irish cow always said. Why wouldn’t the bitch do the decent thing and fuckin’ die? Was it so much to ask?

  Max stood straight up, muttered about getting focused, even though he was seeing double. He was determined to save his business. Then, the whiskey pumping him up, he thought, The office? Why stop there? He could save the world, maybe give Angela’s buddy Bono a run for his money.

  Then Jack Haywood from Segal, Russell amp; Ross called to tell Max that his company wanted to sever ties with NetWorld. Max nearly cried, No, not
fucking Jack.

  “Come on, Jackie baby,” Max pleaded, “after all we’ve been through, all the lap dances and hookers? Come on, buddy, you know what kind of guy I am? You know I’d never get involved with any of those sleazeballs you’re hearing about in the news, I thought we were tight, man?”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. Max thought Jack might have hung up, then he was saying, “I want to believe you, Max, but I saw you with that stripper the other night and I’ve seen you with strippers before and I know how you were always putting down your wife, talking about how you sleep around-”

  “Jack,” Max shouted, “that was just bullshit I say when I’m selling. You don’t really think I… whatever you do, Jack, please, don’t tell the police that!”

  “It’s not my decision anyway,” Jack said. “If it was up to me, I’d keep you on, but the partners don’t like it. But hey, listen, I’ll keep your number in my rolodex. If I ever move to another company, I’ll give you a call. Maybe we can do something.” There was a long pause then Jack asked, “Are you drinking?” Then, “I mean, it’s none of my business, pal, but you need to stay sober if you want to regain any credibility.”

  Max squinted hard, said, “Regain?”

  Wasn’t that the shit to save your hair? Hell, maybe it could save his firm.

  By the end of the day, half his client list was gone, kaput, finito. And the other half would’ve been gone too if, at some point, he hadn’t stopped answering the phone.

  Twenty-Seven

  You have a saying “to kill two birds with one stone.” But our way is to kill just one bird with one stone.

  SUZUKI ROSHI

  With a gym bag resting on his lap, Bobby wheeled into the liquor store on the corner of Amsterdam and Ninety-first. The same old Pakistani guy Bobby always saw there, morning or night, was working the counter. What was with that? Did they sleep, like, standing up?

  There were two customers in the store – a Chinese woman and a black man. Bobby wheeled to the back of the store and started browsing in the Merlot section. Meanwhile, in one of the overhead mirrors, he was watching the activity at the checkout counter up front. The Chinese woman paid for her purchase in small bills, even counting out coins to give exact change, for Chrissakes. But eventually she finished, took her bag, and left. Now it was only Bobby and the black guy in the store. Bobby felt like he could get out of his chair and walk.

  The black guy moved to the checkout counter. Bobby thought he saw the Pakistani guy looking in the mirror, watching him, maybe suspiciously, but Bobby wasn’t worried. He was in the groove – nothing could get to him now.

  “Thanks,” the black guy said.

  When the door closed and the little bell above it rang, Bobby moved – not fast, casually, toward the front of the store. The Pakistani guy was looking down, writing something in a pad. Bobby opened his gym bag and took out an Uzi. The rush he felt when he had the weapon in his hand – yeah, this was the old Bobby.

  “This is a stick-up,” he announced. “Don’t try to be a hero. Just fill up this bag up with money and you won’t get shot.”

  He had just the right amount of hard-ass and viciousness in his tone, just like the good ol’ days, just like Isabella had taught him.

  Everything the Pakistani guy did was magnified. Bobby could hear his breath, see the sweat spreading out of his pores. Was he imagining it, or did the guy smell like the back seat of a cab?

  Then he saw the guy’s right arm start to move. Bobby imagined that a lot of guys might have missed this, guys who weren’t as sharp and quick as he was. This was what he had learned from twenty-plus years in the life – to notice the little things. Maybe the guy was going for an alarm or maybe he was going for a gun, but Bobby wasn’t going to wait and find out. He started firing, unloading half a round in an instant. He had a flashback to Desert Storm, the time a sniper was running across the sand and Bobby shot him in the neck so many times his head fell off, but his body kept running a few feet before it dropped. Then he saw flashes of himself on jobs – running out of jewelry stores and banks. This was where he belonged – in the action, on the front line. Bobby was smiling now, watching the little towelhead store owner flying back against the back wall in slow motion. The bullets shredded the little fucker to bits.

  Then Bobby heard footsteps behind him. When he turned around he didn’t see another towelhead, but an old woman, probably the owner’s wife. She had a gun, a little revolver, in her right hand and she was screaming in a language Bobby didn’t understand. Bobby didn’t want to fire, but when he saw her trigger finger starting to move he had no choice. What, he survived Desert Storm to let some old broad get the drop on him? Getoutta here. He sent the screaming old woman into a wine rack, shattering glass and spilling red liquid everywhere. Red with meat, right?

  The store was quiet again. Moving quickly, Bobby hoisted himself up onto the counter so he was sitting next to the register and reached into the open cash tray. Then he wheeled himself to the back room and found some more money in the old woman’s pocketbook. The whole score only came to a thousand bucks and change. It wasn’t as much as if he’d gotten them to open the safe, but what could you do? He’d just have to make it up on the next job and the job after that. He put the money and the Uzi into his gym bag, closed the zipper all the way, and, with the smell of cordite rocking his brain, wheeled out into the twilight.

  Heading across the street, Bobby saw the cops get out of the squad car before the cops saw him. He went for the Uzi again when he saw another cop across the street aiming a gun at him, yelling “Stop, police!” Shit, why’d he put the Uzi away? He had his hand in the gym bag when the first bullet went into his leg. He laughed, didn’t even feel it, but the bullet sent his wheelchair out of control. The laundry truck, shit, it was coming right at him.

  Twenty-Eight

  He was one of those “There but for the Grace of God” guys; one of those guys that thought if you went out of your way to ignore someone else’s bad shit then the same bad shit was liable to boomerang and smack you in the head.

  JOHN RIDLEY, Everybody Smokes in Hell

  Max was on line at the checkout counter at Grace’s Marketplace on Third Avenue, buying some vegetables to steam for dinner, when he heard these two young guys talking.

  The bigger guy said, “Did you hear what happened on the West Side?”

  Max’s hangover had kicked in big time and, although the guy was talking in a normal tone, it sounded like he was screaming directly into Max’s ear with a bullhorn.

  “No,” the other guy said, sounding just as loud. Max had taken two Advils, but they were doing shit.

  “This afternoon,” the big guy said, “couple hours ago. This guy in a wheelchair robs this liquor store on Amsterdam Avenue and loses it. He goes in with an Uzi and starts shooting up the place – kills the owner and his wife.”

  Now Max was straining, listening closely, as the guy went on, explaining how the guy was run over and crushed to death by a laundry truck.

  “That’s it,” the other guy said, shaking his head. “I’m moving to fuckin’ Jersey.”

  As the guy went on, talking about something else, Max said, “Excuse me,” then more softly because of his aching brain, “excuse me, I just overheard what you were saying – about this guy in a wheelchair.”

  “Yeah,” the guy said. “Pretty fucked up, huh?”

  “You didn’t, by any chance, hear what his name was, did you?”

  “Yeah, it was, I don’t know – something Spanish. Ramirez, Rojas…”

  “Could it have been Rosa?”

  “Maybe,” the guy said. “I wasn’t really paying attention too much to that part.”

  He was staring at Max like Max was some wino or something. Max didn’t get it. Before he left the office, didn’t he have all those Altoids? There was a goddamn guarantee on the packet, wasn’t there?

  Max left the vegetables in the shopping cart, and jogged back to his townhouse, nearly out of breath wh
en he got there. His heart, fuck, it felt like it was about to explode.

  He turned on the TV, expecting to find out that it was all a big mistake, that there were two crazy cripples with Spanish names in this city. But, sure enough, the reporter, live at the scene, said, “… police are releasing no other information about the gunman right now, but we have learned that Robert Rosa was an ex-convict who had been arrested several times for gun possession, armed robbery, and related charges. He was not married and it is not known whether he has any relatives.”

  At first, Max was elated, but then he realized that his troubles were far from over. The police were probably searching Bobby’s apartment at this very moment. It was only a matter of time until they found that cassette.

  Max turned off the TV and sat on his living room sofa in silence, the only noise coming from the refrigerator buzzing in the kitchen. At any moment, the police would come to the door, demanding to be let in.

  He had to see Angela. He’d been thinking about her all last night, and most of the day today, wondering what was going on in her head. He knew she still loved him or why would she have lied to the police to protect him? Sure, she was covering her own ass as well, but she could have done that just as easily by letting him burn. Unless she figured he’d turn on her if she turned on him. Which he would have.

  He needed another drink. He chugged a quarter bottle of Stoli then, thinking That was the problem, never should’ve switched to whiskey, left the townhouse and headed toward Third Avenue to hail a cab. Was he staggering a little? Nah, just nerves, that’s all. It was all perspective, how you looked at the picture. He muttered, “ So you had a wee dram.” Then, horrified, he thought, What was that? Scottish? Jesus. “Coulda been a contender.” Fuck, get a grip.

  “Columbia Presbyterian Hospital!” he shouted at the driver.

  The twenty-minute cab ride sobered Max up a little, but at the hospital he was still half-drunk and it took him a while to find Angela’s room.