The Smack

by RICHARD LANGE

  Petty squealed into the parking lot of a Denny’s and slammed on the brakes.

  “Anybody there?” he said to Tony.

  “Nobody.”

  “Good,” Petty said. “Now where’s the money?”

  Tony hesitated for a second, then said, “Some of it’s at my mom’s store.”

  “Okay.”

  “And the rest’s at my uncle’s house, Mando’s dad’s, in his garage.”

  Petty nodded, thinking fast.

  “Good,” he said. “Good. But before we go after Avi, it should all be stashed somewhere safe.”

  “It’s safe where it is,” Tony said.

  “I’m sure, but you’re gonna want it all in one place now, not scattered all over. One secure place, locked up, under your control.”

  “So, what? We have to go get it all and move it?”

  “Right,” Petty said. “Let’s start with what’s at the store.”

  “My mom doesn’t even know it’s there,” Tony said. “And I don’t want her mixed up in this.”

  Petty was fine with that. They couldn’t use the woman to carry the money out anyway, because there was still a possibility that the place was being watched. For the same reason, he couldn’t send Tony to get the cash or go himself or even use Tinafey. They’d all be on Avi’s radar. So, somebody else then.

  He was still plotting when they pulled into the Holiday Lodge, where he’d booked Tony a room. The motel was a few blocks from where he and Tinafey were staying but far enough away that they wouldn’t run into the kid on the street. Petty would keep Tony here until he got his hands on the money, keep him locked down, keep him scared.

  “Why are we stopping?” Tony said.

  “This is your hideout,” Petty said.

  “My hideout?”

  “You need someplace to stay while we figure everything out.”

  “It’s kinda ghetto.”

  “It’s low-key,” Petty said. “That’s what you want.”

  The place did look like something that had curled up on the corner because it couldn’t go any farther. The clerk took money and handed out keys from behind a sheet of cloudy bulletproof Plexiglas, and Tony’s second-floor room had a view of the parking lot with its padlocked dumpsters and potholes filled with broken glass. The room itself smelled vaguely of shit. Shit dipped in pine-scented deodorizer. The bedspreads looked like clown vomit, and the TV remote was bolted to the nightstand.

  Tony set his duffel on the dresser, unzipped it, and took out the shotgun.

  “Keep that out of sight,” Petty said.

  Tony stowed the gun in the top dresser drawer and peeked into the bathroom.

  “You sit on the head, and your knees are banging against the door,” he said.

  “It’ll be three or four days at most,” Petty said. “Then you can go home.”

  “Are you staying here, too?”

  “Close by.”

  “Where?”

  “Look, there’s some stuff I’m gonna have to keep you in the dark about, okay? But it’s for your own good.”

  “How’s that?”

  “If this thing goes south, it’ll be the less you know the better.”

  “How’s it gonna go south?”

  Petty was tired of the kid’s questions and tired of coming up with answers.

  “It’s not,” he said. “Everything’s gonna go smoothly. I’m just being extra careful. That’s what you want in a partner, right?”

  “I guess so,” Tony said.

  Petty led him out onto the walkway. The door to one of the first-floor rooms was open, and a Mexican polka oom-pahed from a radio inside. A shirtless vato slouched on the threshold, beer in one hand, cigar in the other, and flexed his tattoos.

  “What do you need?” Petty said to Tony. “Food? Beer? There’s a hamburger joint around the corner. I’ll get you whatever you want.”

  “Why can’t I go myself?” Tony said.

  “Because you’re the mastermind of this thing,” Petty said. “The dude with the keys to the kingdom. Avi’s goons are gonna be looking for you, so you have to lay low, stay outta sight. We’re going to the mattresses.”

  “The what?” Tony said.

  “It’s an old Mafia saying. It means we’re getting ready to go to war.”

  Tony raised his ruined hand.

  “I already been to war,” he said.

  “This won’t be that,” Petty said. “I promise.”

  He went out and picked up a sandwich from Subway, a case of beer, and some Doritos, Gatorade, and Pop-Tarts. Enough crap to hold Tony until the next day. After dropping off the supplies, he drove to the hospital.

  A ball of ice formed in his chest when he walked into Sam’s room and found her bed stripped. He hurried to the nurses’ station, where he confronted the prissy Latino on duty.

  “Where’s my daughter?”

  “Please calm down, sir,” the nurse said, very calm himself. “What’s your daughter’s name?”

  “Samantha Petty,” Petty said. “Room 314. Her bed’s empty.”

  The guy pecked at his keyboard. “P-e…” he said.

  “P-e-t-t-y,” Petty said. “Come on, man.”

  The nurse raised a warning finger. “Sir…”

  Petty swallowed hard. The ice didn’t budge. Its chill spread to his arms, his legs.

  The nurse squinted at his monitor. “She’s been moved to another room,” he said.

  The dude was stalling now, dragging things out in order to punish Petty for snapping, but Petty didn’t take the bait. “Which room?” he said, keeping his voice calm.

  “Room 352,” the nurse said.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Down the hall.”

  Petty charged off in the direction the nurse pointed.

  Room 352 was private—small but private. Petty silently thanked Diane Rhee. Sam was watching TV in the dark.

  “Here you are,” Petty said.

  “Oh, shit,” Sam said. “I meant to text you.”

  Petty glanced around the room. “This is nice,” he said.

  “It’s definitely quieter,” Sam said.

  She looked younger in the flicker of the television. When the light played across her face, Petty glimpsed the little girl he remembered, and his heart was tossed by a rogue wave of grief. Without worrying about how Sam would react, he reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “How are you doing?” he said.

  “They have to shave my head,” Sam said. “For the surgery.”

  “It’ll grow back.”

  “Yeah, but I’ll have a scar.”

  “Under your hair?” Petty said. “Who’s gonna know?”

  Sam made a face. Petty’s responses seemed to irritate her. This frustrated him. He wanted to say the right things, especially tonight, with the surgery looming. He wanted to put her at ease.

  She pushed a button to lower the head of her bed.

  “I don’t know why I’m so tired when all I do is lay here all day,” she said.

  “Go to sleep,” Petty said. “I’ll sit a while.”

  “I don’t think so,” Sam said.

  “Why?”

  “That’d be so awkward, you watching me sleep.”

  “I watched you sleep all the time when you were a baby.”

  “You did?”

  In the apartment in Jersey where he and Carrie were living when she was born. He’d put her on the bed beside him and marvel at the rise and fall of her breath, the fairy flutter of her eyelids, and those long, quiet, numinous afternoons were some of the sweetest he’d ever known.

  Sam finally agreed to let him stay, too exhausted to put up more of a fight. She lay back on her pillow and closed her eyes. The door to the room had been pulled almost shut, and all the lights were off except a dim one above the bed, so it was just the two of them again, in their own glow. Petty sat there until Sam’s breathing settled into the rhythm of sleep. He kissed his fingers when he got up to go and touched them to her f
orehead. A smile flitted across her lips.

  When he walked out of the hospital he was surprised to see Hug smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk in front of the parking structure. His pulse spiked at the sight of him. One night after Carrie split he was mouthing off in a bar, talking tough about tracking her and Hug down and beating the piss out of Hug with a crowbar. This got a laugh out of the dude he was drinking with, then a no-shit warning: Don’t even think about it.

  “He’s got a swamp in Louisiana,” the dude said. “Sometimes he kills you before throwing you in the quicksand, but sometimes he likes to watch you suffer as you go down. When you get the urge to do something stupid, picture that.”

  Petty had to pass by Hug to get to his car. He walked toward him without hesitation because that’s what you did with mean dogs, didn’t let them see that you were scared. Hug ignored him until they were practically face-to-face, then blew out a cloud of smoke and said, “Howdy, Rowan.”

  “Is Carrie here?” Petty said. He hadn’t seen her on his way out.

  “She lost her phone in there this morning, and she’s trying to find it,” Hug said.

  “Bummer,” Petty said without slowing his pace. “Have a good night.”

  Hug took a step sideways to block his path, a brick wall out of nowhere. It was difficult to tell how massive he was until you got right next to him. He blotted out the light from the rising moon. His hands dangled from his wrists like Easter hams.

  “I want you to know I don’t have anything against you,” he said.

  “Great,” Petty said.

  “But I imagine you’ve got a few things you’d like to say to me.”

  “Is that what you imagine?”

  Hug flicked his cigarette away. It hit the curb and exploded in a shower of sparks.

  “Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t repeat what I say like a smart-ass.”

  Petty backed up, stepped out of the guy’s shadow, and looked him in the eye.

  “Well, if we’re being honest…” he said.

  “We are,” Hug said.

  “If we’re being honest, I hate your fucking guts.”

  Hug chuckled. “See, I knew that,” he said.

  “So how about you don’t do that?” Petty said. “Ask questions you know the answers to.”

  “I get a kick out of it, knowing you don’t have the balls to get back at me.”

  “Now you’re just trying to hurt my feelings.”

  “That’s the difference between me and you: I don’t have any feelings you could hurt.”

  “That must be what Carrie liked about you.”

  Hug pulled a tube of breath freshener from his pocket and squirted it into his mouth.

  “Get it all out,” he said. “This is your big chance.”

  “I’m just saying she’s got a mean streak, too, so you guys were perfect for each other.”

  “She’s sorry how it went down with you and her. She’d never tell you, but she is.”

  “Her and I don’t matter. It’s what she did to Sam that I hope eats at her.”

  “You dumped Sam, too, on your mom. Does that eat at you?”

  “At least I tried to stay in her life,” Petty said. “Carrie never called, never sent a card.”

  Hug’s laugh sounded like a snake hissing.

  “She was busy,” he said.

  “Must have been,” Petty said. “So fuck you both.”

  He stepped around the big man and made for the stairs that led to the second floor of the parking structure.

  “You’re not as smart as you think,” Hug called after him. “You never have been.”

  Petty kept walking, expecting a bullet in the back of his head all the way until the door to the stairwell closed behind him.

  22

  AT TEN THE NEXT MORNING, BERNARD AND PATRICIA PARKED Petty’s rented Mazda in front of Tony’s mom’s store.

  “You should’ve let me come by myself,” Bernard said, his eyes on the front door.

  “We’re a team,” Patricia said.

  They got out of the car. Up the block, a man in a uniform was talking to a man wearing a hard hat and reflective vest, part of a crew gathered around a storm drain. Bernard froze on the sidewalk in front of the store, watching the men but pretending he wasn’t. His nerves were raw. Too much coffee this morning on top of too much bourbon last night. The man in the uniform waved to the man in the hard hat and entered a bank. Wells Fargo. Ahh. He was a security guard, not a cop.

  “I need a cigarette,” Patricia said. She pulled out a pack of American Spirits and pinched one free.

  “Now?” Bernard said.

  Patricia ignored him. She lit the cigarette, took a long drag, and tilted her head back to blow the smoke up into the air. She did this two more times, quickly, then dropped the cigarette to the sidewalk and ground it out with the toe of her black Converse.

  “Okay,” she said in tough-girl English. “Let’s do this.”

  They were sitting on the walkway in front of their room the previous evening, drinking wine and posting photos from their day at Venice Beach, when Petty strolled over with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. It was their last night in town. They planned to get up early the next morning, rent a car, and drive to Death Valley.

  Petty insisted they have some whiskey. An American tradition between friends parting ways, he said. He filled their cups. Bernard grimaced after his first sip and cleared his throat.

  “It is very strong,” he said.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Petty said.

  “Where is Tinafey?” Patricia said.

  Tinafey was sulking in the room. Petty’s plans for Bernard and Patricia hadn’t sat right with her.

  “Why you mixin’ them up in this?” she said.

  “Because I don’t have anybody else,” Petty said.

  “It isn’t fair. They won’t even know what they’re gettin’ into.”

  “They’ll be fine, I promise.”

  “Fuck it,” Tinafey said. “I’ll do it.”

  “I already told you,” Petty said. “That won’t work. If anyone’s watching the store, you’ll lead them right to us. They don’t know the Frenchies.”

  Tinafey huffed her disgust and crossed her arms across her chest. Petty reached out to touch her, but she pulled away.

  “Keep your hands off me,” she said. “And God forbid anything happens to those kids.”

  Out on the walkway, Petty refilled Bernard’s cup.

  “Tinafey’s not feeling so good,” he said to Patricia. “Hey, Bernard, do you play poker?”

  “Of course,” Bernard said. “Texas Hold’em.”

  “When you get to Memphis, there’s a great game in the back room of a bar called Sully’s. It’s a bunch of muppets most nights, but if you know how to play that kind of table, you could clean up. A friend of mine walked away with two Rolexes and a diamond ring. That’s how crazy it got. If you’re interested, I can make a call.”

  “Sounds good,” Bernard said.

  “We don’t have money for poker,” Patricia said.

  “There’s always money for poker,” Petty said. “Here’s another Memphis story. A guy got into it with this dude named Wild Bill at a club there, and Wild Bill pulled a straight razor. He took a swipe at the guy’s throat, and the guy laughed and said, ‘You missed.’ ‘Oh, yeah?’ Wild Bill said. ‘Wait till you shake your head.’”

  Bernard sat there with a confused smile. Patricia said something to him in French, and his face brightened.

  “Ahh,” he said. “It is a joke. Okay.”

  They drank more bourbon and watched a scrawny feral cat lead three scrawny kittens across the deck of the empty pool and into an oleander bush.

  “What kind of car are you guys renting?” Petty said.

  “Something small,” Bernard said. “Something cheap.”

  “You should get a convertible,” Petty said. “Do it right.”

  “A convertible is very expensive,” Bernard said. “Plus the petrol.”<
br />
  “How about this?” Petty said. “What if I told you I had a way for you to make enough money in an hour to be able to afford any car you want? Enough and then some. Enough to pay for your whole trip.”

  And then he poured more Jack.

  “Good morning,” Tony’s mom said when Bernard and Patricia entered the store. “Can I help you?” She’d been expecting them, after a call from Tony: “Mom, listen. I’ll explain later.”

  “We would like to buy piñatas,” Patricia said.

  Tony’s mom gestured at the papier-mâché-and-crepe burros and Minions and Spider-Men hanging overhead. “Pick whichever you want,” she said.

  Bernard and Patricia pretended to shop, pointing out this zebra and that Winnie-the-Pooh, working their way to the rear of the store, as they’d been instructed. There hung three dusty, faded clown heads, all tagged with Post-its on which someone had written SOLD.

  “We will take these,” Bernard said.

  Tony’s mom came back with a broomstick that had a metal hook screwed to one end. She used the hook to lift the piñatas one by one off the pipe they’d been dangling from.

  When Bernard and Patricia woke that morning, Patricia tried to get Bernard to back out of the job Petty had talked them into the night before.

  “Tell him we were drunk,” she said. “Tell him we changed our minds. What can he do?”

  “Maybe something bad,” Bernard said. “I think he’s a criminal.”

  “Why did you say yes then?”

  “You were there. You said yes, too. He made it sound like nothing.”

  Patricia flopped back onto the bed and pulled the blanket over her face.

  “You always go too far,” she said.

  Later, when they were getting ready to leave, Bernard came out of the bathroom with his hair slicked back, not his normal style.

  “Do I look like a gangster?” he asked Patricia.

  “You’re not a gangster, you’re a postman,” she replied.

  “No,” he said. “Today I’m a gangster.”

  Tony’s mother took the fifty dollars Petty had given Bernard and Patricia and handed them five in change. She didn’t have a cash register, just a lockbox.