by Tim Green
“I thought we didn’t do that no more,” he says. “I thought we’re a little too fancy for that.”
“I don’t think anyone’s going to see us back here,” I say, and hold out my hand. I pin him quickly and he immediately wants to go best out of three. He beats me once and then I get him again and it becomes best out of five. He gets me the next two and then we’re done because by then it was best out of seven.
“You ever notice how you have to keep going until you win?” I ask him.
“That’s ’cause thumb wrestling is my thing,” he says. “Like fucking these people over is your thing.”
“Exact revenge,” I say, more to myself than to him.
“What?”
“When someone does something to wrong you,” I say, “you exact revenge. You take it. But it’s exact too in its precision. It’s about respect.”
Bert only grunts.
“You’re the one who told me one time that you’d kill Villay if you ever had the chance, you remember that?” I say.
“Yeah, that’s different,” he says. “In the old days, the Akwesasne warriors would tomahawk their enemies who fell on the battlefield. That wasn’t the way it was with all the tribes. The Hurons? They’d skin ’em while they were still alive and boil them. That’s pretty exact, huh? The white man’s like that, but in a sneaky way. I think you get this from your dad’s side.”
“In a way,” I say, thinking of Lester.
The car dips down into a tunnel and we lose sight of the city around us. Bert drinks the next beer on his own, and neither of us says anything until we get out in front of the mansion and we say good night.
When I get to my bedroom, I feel something. A dark figure is tucked into the curtains by the balcony. My heart races and I ease my way over toward the night table. There is a gun in the drawer.
I think of Andre, Russo, Villay, Rangle, and Frank all at once.
“Seth?”
“Helena?” I say, exhaling. I step into the broad strip of light that falls into the bedroom from between the curtains.
She moves into the same light and throws her arms around my shoulders.
“Don’t do that.”
“I saw you and Bert come in,” she says. “Standing in the curtains is lucky for me.”
“I thought you were in Toronto.”
“I was.”
“I thought tomorrow was Boston.”
“It is,” she says, putting her nose in my chest. “Did you miss me?”
“I always miss you.”
“So, you’re glad I’m here?” she asks.
“Always.”
“Is there someone else?” She pulls away and looks up at me.
“Is that why you were watching?” I ask quietly.
“You’re different since we came here,” she says. “There’s something.”
“Work,” I say. “Just work.”
I kiss her and we move toward the bed.
In the middle of the night, my eyes shoot open. I am breathing hard. Helena is wrapped around me and I twist free and sit up, dabbing at the dampness on my upper lip. I saw Villay, twisting in his sheets. I heard him moan. And scream.
It is 3:37. I look at the computer on the desk across the room and I get up and get dressed. I resist the urge to turn on the computer. Instead, I sit out on the balcony, watching the sky above the park change from black to purple to blue while I wait for the day to come.
At 6 a.m., I am in the second-floor dining room, having breakfast with Bert, when my cell phone rings.
“He did it,” says Chuck Lawrence. “It’ll be on the news if you want to see. I waited until now to call. Didn’t want to wake you.”
“What did he do?” I ask. Bert is looking at me.
“Killed the wife,” Lawrence says. “Strangled her. Then went running through the neighborhood in his boxers crying like a baby. I went in as soon as he left and got our stuff out of there. I’ve seen some bad stuff, but… Jesus.”
“Where is he now?”
“They took him straight to Winthrop Hospital,” he says, “that’s where I am. They got him locked up in a rubber room.”
By the time the psychiatrists are finished with their initial assessments and I am able to buy my way into Dean Villay’s rubber room it’s nearly noon. He is lying in the corner wrapped in a straitjacket, sedated. His breathing is shallow and he stares vacantly at the empty wall. His face is sunken and gray and his forehead gleams with a thin sheen of sweat.
His blood-red eyes widen when I kneel and put my face in front of his. The torn pupils are fully dilated, like black stars. I speak in a whisper.
“Do you know who I am?” I say.
His eyes grow wider yet. He nods that he does.
“Cole,” he says in a mutter.
“No,” I say, keeping my voice very low. I put my lips next to his ear. “Look close. Look at my eyes. It’s me… Raymond White. I’m back.”
I look at him again, staring until his face crumples in agony, his eyes locked on mine.
“You can’t be,” he says. “You’re dead.”
His arms begin to squirm inside the canvas straitjacket, making the buckles clink like small spoons. A choking noise bubbles up from his throat. His head starts to shake and jerk from side to side before he explodes into an unending wail.
I put my fingers in my ears and stand up, looking down on him while he twists and shrieks until his throat is torn and an attendant comes in, nervously taking me by the arm and leading me away.
56
THE WINDSHIELD WIPERS slapped erratically across the cracked glass, making the dark road ahead barely discernible through the rainbow smudge. Andre rubbed the back of his neck, tired from holding it at an angle so he could see out of the one strip that the blade wiped clear. The play in the wheel of the ’72 International Harvester made steering the wet, windy back roads a constant battle.
“Piece of shit,” he said, stubbing out his Marlboro in the ashtray and slapping the dashboard. In the back was most of the heroin, along with three hundred and sixty thousand dollars in cash. They had dumped some of their smack in Syracuse and gotten rid of a little more outside Utica.
Andre wasn’t going to do anything stupid, though. He knew the best places for him to unload it were up at the border where it would go to Montreal. He wasn’t going to get caught up with another Haitian deal. He was selling only to people he knew. Then, when he had his money, he could go back to New York and check out Seth Cole again to see what else he might have.
“Should have taken that fancy car of yours,” Russo said from the backseat, offering up a nearly empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
“Shut the fuck up,” Andre said, swiping the bottle from him and taking a pull. Dani was asleep, curled up on the seat next to him. Like him, she wore jeans and a white tank top T-shirt. He nudged her.
“Whaaat,” she said in a long groan.
“Want some?” he said, nudging her still.
“Fuck off,” she said and pulled her jean jacket up off the floor and over her head.
“Bitch,” Andre said, nudging her with his elbow hard enough in the head to make her sit up and blink. “Have some.”
She took the bottle and tipped it up. Amber liquid dribbled down her chin and she swallowed until it was gone.
“I love a girl that swallows,” Andre said, and she cuffed him playfully on the back of the head.
“Where’d you find this piece of shit, anyway?” Andre asked Russo, looking at his ugly mug in the rearview mirror. “The junkyard?”
“Got it for four hundred dollars,” Russo said, frowning. “So I don’t know what you expect. You better believe I’ll be buying myself a Mercedes as soon as we get back to civilization. Hey, what are we gonna drink now? There’s no liquor stores open.”
Instead of answering, Andre focused on an all-night gas station up ahead. He pulled in and handed Russo a hundred-dollar bill.
“Go get a case of something good. Michelob or something. And a
sk them if there’s a decent place to get some rest around here.”
“There ain’t no Ritz-Carltons,” Russo said, hopping out. “I can tell you that.”
“He’s an asshole,” Dani said in a slurred voice when he was gone. She was staring straight ahead.
Andre looked up through the smeared windshield at the bright green and yellow of the BP sign and in a detached voice said, “I know.”
“Why’d we even bring that ugly bastard?” she asked. “He gives me the creeps. Why are we riding in this piece of shit?”
“This is America, honey,” he said. “I want to see how the real people live.”
“You’re talking funny.”
“I been talking funny for a month,” he said. “Now, why don’t you give me a kiss.”
“He’s coming.”
“So what,” Andre said, grabbing the soft part of her thigh and squeezing. “Maybe we’ll let him watch tonight.”
“You’re sick,” she said, and licked his neck.
“I think you’d like that,” he said, and swirled his own tongue in her ear.
The rear door opened. Russo slipped in, brushing the rain off his shoulders, and said, “Hey, hey, cut it out. There’s a motel about two miles up Route 12 with HBO, can you save it?”
“We might let you watch tonight,” Andre said.
Russo cracked open a can and shifted in his seat.
“You want a beer?” he said. “I got some sandwiches too.”
Andre busted out laughing and Dani did too.
“You’re both fucked up,” Russo said, sniffing the air with that big nose and tugging at the collar of his yellow Polo shirt with its tiny blue horseman.
Andre made Russo go inside the motel office and get two connecting rooms on the end. Inside, they put their bags down and met at the little round veneer table in Russo’s room. Russo set out three silver cans of beer and Andre took out some needles, surgical tube, a Bunsen burner, and a spoon. He lit a Marlboro and let it dangle from his mouth while he got to work. Dani slipped her jean jacket off, lit a cigarette of her own, and watched him, the blue flame of the burner reflecting double in her dark eyes.
“Lie on the bed,” Andre said when the needle was ready. He inhaled deeply and stubbed out his cigarette.
She stubbed out hers too, then lay down in the sagging middle of the dingy bedspread and held out her arm. Andre wrapped her upper arm with the tube, stuck the needle into her vein, and removed the tube while he shot her up. Dani’s eyes rolled up. She began to moan and squirm lazily on the bed.
Andre grinned at Russo and said, “You want to go next?”
“Sure,” Russo said, raising his can and drinking some of the beer.
After he set it down, he lit up a Newport before he looked at Andre, exhaled the smoke, and said, “Now that she’s in la-la land, I want to ask you something.”
“Ask,” Andre said, tapping some powder from the bag into the spoon without taking his eyes off it.
“I heard you say something to her earlier about her cut,” Russo said, taking a drag, the ember burning bright.
Andre looked up and noticed that as Russo brought the beer can to his lips it trembled slightly. So did the Newport.
“You giving her some of yours?” Russo asked, taking a gulp and replacing the cigarette.
Andre’s grin grew wide and he narrowed his eyes at Russo through the smoke and said, “No. I was talking about her cut. She’s with us. She gets a cut.”
“’Cause the way I see it,” Russo said, opening another can of beer, taking another drag, and studying the table in front of him, “it’s you and me are partners. I don’t see me giving part of my share to her. It was you and me all along, and now all of a sudden she’s here. And I know she’s your girl, but that doesn’t make her a partner…”
Russo looked up to see Andre studying him and said, “Well? That’s fair, right?”
“I think the liquor’s talking for you,” Andre said.
“We’re gonna make five million dollars and I want my half!” Russo screamed, banging his fist down on the table.
57
THE BEER CAN WENT OVER. Beer foamed out of it in a bubbling pool that started to run across the small table toward Andre. He didn’t move, even when the river of beer ran over the lip of the table, spattering the leg of his jeans. Andre just stared and smiled. Dani groaned happily from the bed.
With the cigarette hanging from his mouth, Russo jumped up and began to mop the spilled beer away from Andre as if he were hoarding gold. The cigarette fell out of his mouth and hissed out in the mess. Russo used his bare bruised arm to sweep it onto the rug, then dried it on his leg as he sat back down.
“Jesus, I got shot in that Haitian deal. You fucking shot me in the leg, man. I could have talked and gotten off and you’d be in jail,” Russo said. The corners of his mouth were pulled tight and he ran his hand over the stubble of his scalp, knocking off the black cap. “You don’t want that.”
“Are you gonna cry?” Andre said.
Russo’s face was twisting up, wrinkling that nose and making his eyes squint.
“I want my share, Andre,” he said, starting to blubber. “This is all because of me. It isn’t fair!”
Andre took a deep breath and sighed through puckered lips. In one quick movement, he reached down, pulled the gun from his waist, snapped home a round, and had it pointing directly in Russo’s face.
Russo winced and turned his head away, bringing his hands up as if he could block the bullet. Andre sprang to his feet, sending the chair clattering into the wall.
“You want a share? You want your own big share?” Andre said through gritted teeth. “Fuck you!”
The gun blast was deafening in the small space and it even got Dani’s attention.
“Wow,” she said.
Russo was on his side, rabbit-kicking away at the carpet as if his feet could take him away. But the blood coursing from a dark hole just in front of his ear began to slow to a dribble and his kicking became nothing more than a dying tremble.
“Fuck,” Andre said.
He stuffed the gun back in his pants and cracked open the door, peering slowly outside until he was sure no one was around. He waited there for several minutes. Not even a light went on. He went back inside and began to look around. From the bathroom he grabbed a towel and began rubbing the surfaces of everything he or Dani had touched. Doorknobs. The spoon. The needle. The chair. The faucet in the bathroom.
He loaded their bags back into the old truck, then heaved Dani over his shoulder and slumped her down in the front seat. He made one last check, leaving the bag of heroin, before tossing the towel down in the pouring rain and jumping back into the truck. He turned north onto Route 12 and checked his rearview mirror.
His mind started gnawing over all the things he could have done differently, starting with the shooting and going all the way back to when Russo showed up in the first place. He should have gone to Seth then. He had a good thing going and now he had fucked it up just like everything else. He wondered if it was the curse his old man had put on him when Andre beat the hell out of him with a tire iron. He thought about that bloody mess and his old man’s words: I’ll fuck you over from the grave, I swear.
But in a funny way, beating his old man’s head in was what got him on the road to independence. From that time on, people respected him. He was nobody’s fool, not even Bonaparte’s. He was the one who got the women and the drugs and the kicks, and that’s what money was for anyway. He’d beat this trap same as he had the others. How could he be down when he had the drugs and the girl, and hadn’t it been a kick to see the look on Russo’s face right before he shot him? Not a lot of people got to see that.
He smiled at Dani and flicked his finger against her ass. She groaned, eyes fluttering, and smiled at him.
Andre sighed deeply and smiled back.
His heart rate had started to even out and he was thinking about where he’d dump the gun when he saw the flashing lights
in the rearview mirror.
“Fuck!” he said, punching his foot to the floor.
Dani looked back and slowly said, “Wow. This is so fucked.”
There was more than one car now, and even as he accelerated up that dark wet highway, they seemed to be closing in. His mind raced to think of a place where he could turn off. Turn off the highway and run. He could survive in these woods if he had to. He’d done it before.
After the bridge over the Big Moose River, there was a bend at the top of the hill and an old logging road right after it. He was almost there and he would briefly be out of sight of the police cars. He thought about the duffel bag full of cash. He could carry that and Seth Cole’s suitcase full of drugs and be gone without a trace in this rain. Dani would have to stay behind, and he indulged himself in a small hit of pity.
Andre saw the bridge and he felt a fresh surge of adrenaline firing up the nerves behind his eyeballs. The road ran down and he was just to the bridge when a cop car pulled up off the side road on the other side with its lights flashing.
“Fuck!” he screamed, slamming the wheel, but not letting up on the gas.
The cop car came straight at him, driving right down the middle of the bridge.
“Die, motherfucker!” Andre screamed, heading dead at him, picking up speed.
At the last second, the cop car tried to swerve, but fishtailed instead. Andre smashed into the rear quarter and the big truck spun, rocked, and plunged through the guardrail. The truck seemed to hang in the air, suspended in space. Silent. Peaceful.
Then it dropped. Andre braced himself, outscreaming Dani as the heavy truck plummeted a hundred feet to the rocky riverbed.
58
BERT IS DRESSED in a new gray pinstriped Zegna suit with four buttons on the jacket. His burgundy tie is in a Windsor knot. Miraculously, we found a pair of Ferragamo fifteen double E wingtips. On his wrist is a big silver-and-gold Rolex Submariner.
Chuck Lawrence is fidgeting with the pin in the tie that is really a camera. He lets go and gets on his tiptoes to peer up into Bert’s ear.