Lay Saints

by Adam Connell

  “You have mine,” Kinkaid said. “And do me a good turn, choke on it, priest.”

  A cab drove past them and stopped a few feet from the bar. Calder got out.

  “That him?” Kinkaid said. “You were right?”

  “I was right,” Lundin said.

  “He usually is,” Briggs said, courtesy of subvocal puppeteering from Lundin.

  NINETEEN

  Why didn’t he just kill you?

  That’s a harsh question, Fish, and an awful condemnation of Faraday.

  There’s an easy answer that should satisfy, and it’s that Faraday isn’t a murderous person. You haven’t heard too much about him thus far, but surely you’ve seen that the man doesn’t go around cutting down everyone in his way. He did that, this’d be a much shorter tale because there’d be so many less people.

  He could’ve killed Lundin and Briggs for being stupid. Did Faraday kill — or even attempt to kill — any of Sotto’s men? They were in his way. Have been for years. It’s not how he solves his problems, usually. For the most part.

  Like you. You were a big fucking problem. It would’ve been satisfying, considering all you done. A kill — and I know from experience — satisfies for an instant, then it’s gone. Like a stick of Fruit Stripe gum, loses its flavor in minutes.

  You’re a gobstopper. Laming you, Fish, having you sent up here to Otisville Correctional for ten years for a crime you did commit, that’s lasting. Not for the crime you committed against Faraday, but that’s not the point.

  You’ll be here ten years. You’ve lost all your talents. Unfortunately, your memories went with your talents. But all this pleases Faraday. His revenge has the added duration of time, which a kill does not.

  Over the next decade, it’ll cross Faraday’s mind, out of the blue, your being here, and it will make him happy to know it.

  That’s why you’re here.

  That’s why Faraday didn’t just kill you.

  Gobstoppers are fun. They change flavors and they last. You’d think that piece of round sugar’s gonna last forever, and sometimes it feels that way. It’ll feel that way for Faraday, probably, and definitely over the next 3,650 days for you. That is why.

  back to top

  TWENTY

  Saturday, Prime

  After getting out of the taxi — with Lundin, Briggs, and Kinkaid secretly watching — Calder went directly to his room, fell onto his bumpy mattress and slept till noon. He’d been up most of the night before, touching her but not stroking, not fondling. Fingertips only, and some talking, some napping. Nothing much happened; he was glad about that.

  He woke up and all the rooms on all the floors were empty. With their doors open, that was one of Sotto’s rules, when you’re out the door’s to be open. Calder went back to his room, showered, shaved, changed, left his door open and went downstairs.

  There was a lunch crowd, and some stalwart early drinkers in no way intimidated by the time of day. Pal was there, turning the bottles on the gantry to face forwards.

  “Have a drink?” Calder said.

  “Me or you?” When Pal smiled his ears tended to rise, the left more than the right. He had a deep scar along his jawline as if he’d once tried shaving with a battle-axe.

  “With me, then,” Calder said, taking a stool.

  Pal poured two shots from a decanter under the bar. “This I brew myself. It’s a hobby.”

  Calder threw it back in one swallow. “That is crisp. I taste cherry.”

  Pal pointed a finger gun at him, cocked the thumb trigger. “Spot-on. A little sweet but I like it. The smaller fruits, they brew faster. Passed the test, now I’ll drink with you.” He lifted the shot glass to his mouth, drained it slowly, sucking it through his teeth. “So how you finding the city?”

  “I’m finding there’s a lot to find. There’s parts of it I like.”

  “Well said. There’s parts of it everyone likes, and parts of it everybody hates. Depends, I guess.”

  “I’m not used to a place this big this small,” Calder said.

  “She’s compact,” Pal said. “Another shot?”

  Calder didn’t want to, but he needed friends, so he nodded. “I’m a little confused about you,” he said.

  Pal looked at him in midpour.

  “You a bartender or do you really work for Sotto?”

  “I know what you guys can do. Like, you could’ve gotten that answer without having to ask outright. No, I’m like every other son of a bitch in this world. To me everyone else’s thoughts are their own.” He drank his second shot. “Thank God.”

  “Where can I get a breakfast around here?”

  “More like lunchtime,” Pal said. “Breakfast?” He laid his forearms on the bar. “Walk north about five blocks, a place called Taylor’s.”

  “On Second?”

  “Yep. It’s small. Mostly it’s a bakery but they got a few tables and real food. Get something eggy. They make a cookie called Dr. Midnight. If you go, bring me back one.”

  “How much I owe you for the shots?”

  “Another drink tomorrow around this time. Sundays are dead and I’ll be bored, and you’re better company than the rest of Sotto’s clan.”

  “Consider it paid,” Calder said and walked out, heading north.

  Laundromat, deli, grocery, cafe, cheap pharmacy, bar, obscure ethnic eatery, smoke shop, magazine shop.

  Repeat.

  He also passed an ugly sliver of a park on the way to Taylor’s. His breakfast and a Dr. Midnight in a brown bag, he backtracked to the park to eat when a crushing headache caused him to see grey. He fell onto a bench and wanted to cry. Pressure in his skull was building like steam. He held his head briefly, but touching it sent thunder and lightning through his brain.

  The twins sat on either side of him.

  “Hurts,” said Attila from the left.

  “Something awful,” said Piker from the right.

  Calder tried but couldn’t speak; his tongue was a limp eel.

  “You’re brand-new,” Attila said. “Piker and I, we don’t like new. What we like, we like tried and trusted. That’s because new also means dangerous. To us. You understand.” He stroked Calder’s hair which set off a storm of volts through Calder’s brain.

  Piker sat back, put his arm across the bench behind Calder as if they were on a date. “Don’t like new cause we don’t know what you can do.”

  “I think you’re weak,” Attila said. “You’re weeping, Chrissakes.”

  Calder was hunched over, tears dripping off his nose. He felt like he’d stopped breathing. He could barely hear what they were saying to him.

  “You brought Lundin to us, you idiot,” Attila said. He smiled at the pedestrians passing by. “Was waiting for you in his car all night. Right down the street.”

  “His mind’s a stench, that Lundin,” Piker said. “Even from blocks away. We don’t know anything about you. What do we know about you?”

  “Promised me you’d be nastier than this,” Attila said.

  “Let go a bit,” Piker said. “Let him talk.”

  Calder’s headache started to unwind. He blinked hard.

  “Go on and say something, stunod,” Attila said.

  “I — I know about you two.”

  “Do you?” Attila said. “What on God’s black Earth could you know about us?”

  “You sleep in the same room. In the same bed.”

  Calder’s headache returned, furiously.

  “You don’t know a fucking thing about us,” Attila said.

  “In the same bed, with the same woman.”

  Calder could feel glass coming through his eyes from behind their sockets.

  “A fucking thing,” Attila said.

  “People … talk,” Calder said.

  Piker said, in a passively demanding tone, “What people talk?”

  “If they don’t say anything out loud,” Calder said, “I still hear. Attila, you dye your hair so people can tell … tell you apart. And you’re both
scared of me, or we wouldn’t be here.”

  “This is comic,” Attila said. “We aren’t the ones with tears comin’ off our noses and drool out our lips.”

  “Doesn’t mean,” he sucked in some spittle, “you aren’t afraid.”

  “I think it does mean,” Piker said.

  “The sense you’re both making doesn’t make any fucking sense,” Attila said. His words came out too fast and he was quietly embarrassed, like he wasn’t smart enough for this conversation.

  Calder seized a few empty seconds to construct twin bulldozers to shove the twins from his mind. It didn’t work but the brothers recoiled, slightly, pretended nothing had changed.

  “Where are you from, anyway? Sotto, bringing you in, that’s precedent,” Piker said. “We don’t like confrontation, honestly.”

  That made Calder laugh, which hurt his head a great deal.

  “It’s the flat truth,” Piker said. “It’s the reason we’re here, enjoying our benches. This lovely park. Save us all trouble down the road.”

  “In the end,” Attila said.

  “Giving you a job like Adelard, makes us wonder,” Piker said. “Makes us know.”

  “He’s out and about, isn’t he? Sotto,” Attila said, “looking for more Calders. We don’t want that.”

  “Makes us wonder,” Piker said. “You gonna be on his side or ours? Cause the time’s come there’s sides.”

  “Profit’s in volume,” Attila said, “not picky-choosy.”

  “My brother wants you gone, but I can be persuaded,” Piker said.

  “Our little group,” Attila said, leaning so far forwards Calder gagged on the starch coming off the man’s shirt, “we’re not sitting in hospitals, talking to comas. That’s for those with little talents.”

  Attila laughed, pointed his mouth at Calder’s ear, hurting him more.

  “Rook,” Calder said.

  “Rook’s the weakest of us all,” Piker said. “Even he wouldn’t have gone into this park and fallen for this — ”

  “Ambush,” Calder said.

  “Discussion,” Piker said.

  “You’re in the city, child,” Attila said. “There’s discussions like this on every block. Well not like this, but arguments. When are you going to wake up?” He slapped Calder’s face with an open palm. “Wake up, Calder!”

  “I’ll tell you about Rook,” Piker said. He sat forwards, elbows on his knees. “He’s been around a long time but hasn’t learned much. Knows enough tricks to get him by, but barely. I can’t understand why Sotto holds on to him.”

  “Because Rook gets all the shitty little chores nobody else wants,” Attila said. “Like babysitting.”

  “We’re not worried about Rook,” Piker told Attila. “What’s today? Today’s what?”

  “Friday?” Attila said. “Saturday? Saturday.”

  “Timeline is,” Piker said, “you’ve till next Saturday. Good luck and Godspeed. Throw the contract. Show Sotto new blood is no answer. He’ll realize it, you botch the contract.”

  “We don’t want no more Calders,” Attila said.

  “Sotto said,” Calder whispered, “I don’t complete it, he wants me gone.”

  “We can soothe all that after. There’s two tests here,” Piker said. “Pass ours by failing his. Passing ours, that’s the future. The future’s a whole new way of doing business. Progressive-like.”

  “I wanna finish the contract,” Calder said, “prove to myself I belong here. It’s radical, the Int, important. I’ve never been important.”

  “Aw. But there’s no proving Sotto right, cause he’s mistaken,” Attila said. “New people is wrong. Using older ones in new ways, once Sotto sees this — ”

  “We won’t be replaced by Calders. This Calder,” Piker said, jabbing him in the shoulder, “becomes more like us twins, then we got progress. We got forward motion. We got ducks for a row. Otherwise, we gotta kick you out. Outta the city, all the boroughs.”

  The twins stood and went off in different directions. First they destroyed Calder’s bulldozers, then conjured for him an even larger headache.

  Calder hung his head, crying involuntarily, unable to move. Not a single person walking by asked him what was wrong or if they could help.

  That’s not true. A little girl came towards him but her mother yanked the girl away.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Saturday, Sext

  It was two other children playing that brought Calder back to himself. Their ball rolled his way. A girl, she came to fetch it, asked Calder his name.

  Calder couldn’t remember. The girl asked again. Calder lifted up his head and said, “Calder?” He gave her the ball; it had stopped between his feet.

  He smiled watching her go, dried his hands on his jeans, his cheeks on his shirt. He felt better. Not okay, but better. The twins’ spell had weakened without their presence to maintain it.

  Not okay, but better. Yet he simply had no idea where he was. In a park near the bar, but in relation to the city? Which way was The Bronx, Brooklyn? To accomplish what he needed doing next, he’d need a map and that would be too slow for the deadline on the Int vote. He needed a guide. Rook is what he needed.

  Calder headed back for the bar, unsteady at first but gradually walking upright.

  “How was breakf — Shit, Calder, what happened?” Pal said.

  There were three people at the bar eating hamburgers on the counter.

  “You see the twins before?” Calder spayed all accusation from his voice.

  “Twins did this?”

  Calder then wrenched the information savagely, jolting Pal, but Pal hadn’t seen the twins all day.

  “Don’t ever, again,” Pal said, his arms tense like he was ready to leap across the counter. “I liked you. I still do, but that’s rude. I felt it enough times to recognize what you done. Don’t be rude to me, Calder. Myself, I’m generally nice.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “The twins? Your eyes are swollen red like from a bee sting.”

  “Allergies, being outside,” Calder said.

  “Everyone’s allergic to the twins. You going upstairs?”

  “Where can I find Rook?”

  “During days he’s at Kingsway Boxing, off Fifth. When he’s not working, which is a lot lately.” He gave Calder the address, then started giving directions that had a subway in them.

  “I’m gonna take a taxi,” Calder said.

  “No more rude, not with me,” Pal said.

  “I swear, I promise,” Calder said, and they shook.

  “Tell Rook poker tonight’s in his room. Chips all over the floor with him. The potato kind.”

  Calder hailed a taxi, got inside, spoke the address and closed his eyes. He didn’t care if Lundin was or wasn’t in a car behind him.

  At the gym Calder overtipped the driver and stepped out. Climbed a flight of (what I presumed to be) sagging steps to the second floor. Into a vestibule that was ticketed with hundreds of photos, champion boxers in action. Boxers you were meant to think trained there at Kingsway. Maybe they had.

  He walked into the gym whose two regulation rings — one blue, one black — were practically blocking the entryway, and so close together they could have been married. It was a task walking where you wanted, what with lockers along the walls, gear everywhere, ropes everywhere. Buckets. The word EVERLAST was ubiquitous. There wasn’t any odor I could describe; the place, circa Rocky Graziano, had a surprisingly clean smell to it.

  But the gym was so solid, so compact, no windows, it would take an earthquake for Kingsway to notice the outside world.

  Behind the rings was a speed bag hanging from a small, wooden gallows. Twelve staggered punching bags hanging from chains. A lot of hanging.

  Rook was in the blue ring. Calder watched Rook orbit his sparring partner, wearing the man out with footwork. He threw solid punches now and then, almost choreographed. His partner threw some — almost telegraphed, Rook was able to evade them so easily. There was blood on Rook’s t
ank top but Calder didn’t think the blood was his.

  Calder sat on a spavined bench next to two young toughs who were probably in reform school. Do they call it reform school anymore?

  One was in red trunks, the other green. They commented on the match.

  “That Rook, twenny years ago, he’d have been good,” said Red.

  “That’s what Knapp says. You’re just repeating him.”

  “Well, I agree with Knapp, so?” Red said.

  “If Rook’d had the right trainer.”

  “Seems happy enough. Not resentful, is he?” Red said.

  “But he rotates too much. Never goes for an uppercut.”

  “Neither do you,” Red said.

  “The jaw’s hard on my hands,” Green said.

  “I never seen someone so rarely get hit. Rook, not you.”

  “He does move out the way a lot,” Green said.

  “Knows his opponents,” said Red.

  “He doesn’t know all his opponents,” said Green. “Not this other guy, says he’s from Rosado’s Studio, we none of us seen him before.”

  “That guy, he’s all bob and no weave,” Red said.

  “Weave! Weave, motherfucker,” Green called out. “You gotta thread that shit!”

  In the other ring was a student and a hunchbacked, grizzled trainer straight from Central Casting. He was wearing yellow paddle gloves. The student — lefts and rights into the paddles, some crosses into the paddles. And a miss — a jab square on the trainer’s shoulder.

  “You hit the gloves, not the man, not this man,” the trainer said as he walked his student around the ring.

  The student missed again and got the trainer in the shoulder, again.

  “I won’t repeat myself,” the trainer said. “But hit me again and I will hit back.” He slapped his gloves together. “Here, you see? Here.”

  The third time, and the trainer let go his right paddle and punched his student with a roundhouse to the cheek that landed him on his shoulders and stopped the gym.

  “Whoops,” said Red.