Marty drove his old Impala. Len was in the passenger seat. The nets were in the back, the coolers in the trunk. They headed north, away from the marina, past Marty’s house, and turned at the cemetery onto a road that went over a wooden bridge. It led to a narrow lane lined with oak and pine. The deer looked up, their eyes glowing in the headlights.
“You know that giant tree up at the end of the road here, where you make the turn? The one with the neon-orange pentagram on it? Star with a circle around it. What’s that all about?” asked Marty.
“That’s Wiccan, I think. Nature witches. They’ve been here for a long, long time. They mark the important crossroads.”
“Witches?”
“I’ve run into a few. You hear stories about spells and shit, but I never witnessed any of that. They just seem like sketchy hippies.”
“Me and Claire call it the Devil Tree. Which way am I going here?”
“You want to make a left. Then, in a quarter of a mile, make a right. I hope the buyer’s there again.”
“How much do you think we’ve got?”
“I’d say about eight grand. Maybe more.”
“Jeez.”
“These eels have never been successfully bred in captivity,” said Len. “When it comes to eels you can only take.”
“You trying to make me feel guilty?”
“Yeah, but fuck it, we need the cash. The parking lot of the old diner is up here on the right just past these cattails.”
Behind the burned-out shell of Jaqui’s All-Night Diner, in a parking lot long gone to weeds, Len and Marty stood before the open back doors of a large van. Inside was a lantern that gave a dim light. Behind the lantern, a teenage girl sitting on a crate aimed a shotgun at them.
“We’ll see what you have,” said a heavyset man to their right. He wore a tweed suit jacket and had a pistol tucked into the waist of his jeans. Before him on a makeshift wooden platform was a large antique balance scale, one end a fine net, the other a flat plate holding four-kilogram cylinders of lead.
“Snorri,” called the buyer, and a huge guy with a crew cut, wearing a shoulder holster, appeared from around the side of the van. “Pour these gentlemen’s eels, I have to weigh them.”
Snorri lifted the first cooler and carefully poured out the eels into the net of the scale. The weighing took awhile. Every time the scale moved it creaked. The wind blew strong and whipped the reeds that surrounded the parking lot. The girl with the shotgun yawned and checked for messages on her phone.
“That’s the last of them,” said the buyer, clapping his hands. “One more calculation, though. I subtract for the water the eels have on them. I only pay for eels, not water.” He laid three small white gull feathers on the flat plate of the scale and leaned over to read the difference. “You have a little more than nine kilograms here. I can give you eight thousand.”
“I heard it was a thousand a kilogram,” said Len.
“One hears what one wants,” said the buyer.
“I know from a reliable source that last night you were paying a grand.”
“Supply and demand,” said the buyer.
“Explain it,” said Len.
“Eight grand or I can have Snorri explain it to you in no uncertain terms.”
The girl in the van laughed.
“We’ll take the eight grand,” said Marty. “Chill out,” he said to Len. “We’re talking eight grand for an hour and a half of fishing.”
“Okay,” said Len.
Snorri stepped back, taking the gun from its holster. The buyer leaned into the van and stuffed eight stacks of banded hundreds into a yellow plastic grocery bag. He handed the bag to Marty. “Check it.”
Marty held the bag open and counted the stacks in a whisper. He reached in and felt the money. He lifted the bag and smelled it. “Thanks,” he said.
“An hour and a half,” said the buyer. “That’s very fast for what you brought in.”
“We don’t mess around,” said Len.
“Where were you?”
“Over west,” said Len, “in the woods by the bay south of Greenwich.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Have Snorri explain it to you,” said Len, and laughed on his way back to the Impala.
They got in the car. Marty backed out past the remains of the diner and onto the road. “Why’d you have to be such an asshole with the guy? I thought they were gonna shoot us in the back with every step I took.”
“They’re not gonna shoot us. Think about it, they need us. If we’re getting a bit less than a grand for a kilogram, imagine what the buyer is making per kilogram from aquafarms in Asia.”
“Too many guns for me.”
“Quit your cryin’, we’ve got four grand apiece. You can get your roof fixed and I can medicate. Harmony will reign.”
“I’m happy for the four grand,” said Marty. “In your honor, I’m gonna paint a series, maybe eight canvases, each a scene from the career of Uncle Fun.”
“Put him in a tux and make him look like a North Vietnamese Bobby Darin.”
“Hey, there’s somebody behind us.”
Len looked over his shoulder. “We’ll know soon enough if it’s a cop. When you get to the Devil Tree, keep going, don’t make the turn. Head down the road a ways and then turn back by the old glass factory. We can lose him in the dunes.”
“Could just be somebody out driving.”
“I kind of doubt it,” said Len. “We’ve got eight thousand dollars in cash here and it’s three in the morning on one of the loneliest roads in the world. When you get to the tree, hit the gas. We’ll see if he keeps up.”
“I can’t drive fast at night. I can’t see dick.”
“You gotta lose this fucker now.”
The Impala suddenly accelerated. Len whooped and called, “Faster!”
Marty was hunched up over the steering wheel, peering into the dark.
“They’re definitely on our asses,” said Len. “Turn in at the glass factory.”
“I don’t know where the turn is. You’re gonna have to warn me.”
“Okay, okay, okay … Now!”
Marty cut the wheel. The back tires skidded sideways and the car did a 180. He put it in reverse, turned around, and they were headed into the maze of sand dunes.
“Go to the right,” said Len. “That’s where it gets crazy.”
“You know your way through here?”
“Nobody knows their way through here. I used to play here as a kid and I’d get lost and turned around all the time.”
“How’s that gonna help us?”
“Make a left after this next dune. Twenty minutes of driving around in this bullshit in the dark and that guy’s gonna forget all about us and go home. Just keep dodging him for a while and then I’ll get us back to the road.”
“That plan sucks.”
“That’s its strength.”
“Oh shit,” said Marty, “I’m past empty.”
“You’re kidding,”said Len, and leaned over to look at the dashboard. “Oh man.”
“I forgot to gas up.”
“That’s just fuckin’ dandy.”
“It’s running on fumes, should I try to make it back to the road?”
“No, go deeper in. We’ll hide somewhere with the lights out. Make as many crazy turns as you can.”
“I don’t like it.”
“When the car craps out, shut up. We’re gonna run silent, run deep.”
The Impala died in a cul-de-sac bounded by three enormous sand dunes.
“Kill the lights,” said Len. “Crack a window so we can hear better and then turn everything off.”
“That guy’s probably home having a beer right now, cursing us ’cause we gave him the slip.”
Len unzipped his jacket and reached down the front of his shirt. He cocked back his chin and pulled out a large scabbard and knife on a leather strap around his neck. Taking the strap off, he removed the knife, ten inches with a hunting blade and
grip guard, and stowed it up his jacket sleeve, hilt first.
“What’s that for?”
“Whatever,” said Len. Then he whispered, “I remember, once we had Uncle Fun surrounded and he managed to give us the slip …”
“Run silent,” said Marty.
They sat quietly in the dark. Off to the east an owl called.
Len and Marty stood ten yards in front of the Impala. Three guys in black hoodies and ski masks surrounded them. The one in front of them held a .22 pistol with a homemade silencer on it. Marty shivered and clutched the yellow grocery bag. The moon was gone from the sky. Dark clouds raced and it smelled like rain.
“What you two have to learn is that if you harvest glass down here, you need to pay us 15 percent of your take,” said the guy with the gun.
“Are you ladies pro-eel or something?” asked Len. “I mean the outfits. You look like eels. It’s the first thing I thought when I saw you.”
“Nobody’s pro-eel, asshole. We’re pro-cash. We poach the poachers. Like the food chain.”
“That silencer have a wipe?” asked Len.
“What difference does it make? I could shoot you with a cannon out here and nobody’d know.”
“Listen, I was born down here,” said Len. “I have as much right to these eels as you do.”
“Wait, man, listen,” said Marty. “It’s just like a tax. Everything has a tax on it. So we pay for eight grand—twelve hundred or something. Let it go and let’s get out of here.”
“I’m not paying anything,” snapped Len. “He can suck my glass eel.”
“That’s it for you,” said the guy in the mask, and raised the gun.
Len ducked as the shot sounded, the gruff sudden cough of an old man. When he sprang up, he had the knife in his hand. In one swift motion he slashed the blade across the wrist of the masked man’s gun hand. The sharp metal bit in deep and severed the tendon. The gun dropped. The guy screamed. Marty, pissing his pants, turned and ran.
Len took a backhanded swipe and the blade tore open the throat beneath the ski mask. Blood poured and the scream turned to a gurgle. Len pivoted to follow Marty and was hit in the left side of the head with a baseball bat. He staggered sideways a few steps before his feet went out from under him. The masked guy with the bat took off after Marty while his remaining partner stood over Len and drew a .22 pistol with a silencer from the pocket of his hoodie. Len’s jaw was busted and jutting to the side. He blinked and grunted. The cough of the gun sounded twice.
Marty worked like crazy to climb the dune but he got nowhere. Finally, he turned and lay back against the slope. He held the bag of money out toward the two masked men that stood only a few yards below him. One kept a flashlight trained on the painter. The other carried the pistol.
“I just wanted to fix my fuckin’ roof. Take the money.”
“We’re gonna throw your bodies in an eel pond,” said the guy with the flashlight. “In August, when the old ones head to the Sargasso to spawn, you’ll go with them.” He laughed high-pitched and insane.
Marty quit weeping. “Uncle Fun?” he asked. “Is it you?”
“This loser’s lost his mind,” said the gunman to his partner. “I’ll give you Uncle Fun,” he said to Marty, and pulled the trigger three times.
MEADOWLANDS SPIKE
BY BARRY N. MALZBERG & BILL PRONZINI
Rutherford
Listen to me. Please listen. Everything I’m about to tell you is the gospel truth.
I can’t live with this terrible secret any longer. It’s been thirty-five years, but I’ve never stopped thinking about what I did. Not for a single day. It’s all there, every detail burned into the walls of my mind. It could’ve happened yesterday, that’s how clear it is.
I see him alive, not just that night before the bullets tore into him, but the way he was when he had the power. Big man, bigger than life, bigger than death everybody thought, shouting words and slogans, promises and lies in his giant’s voice. King of Labor, King of the Long Labor Con. The job action. The sit-down strike. The secondary boycott. The sick-in. All of that and so much more until they threw him in the slammer for jury-tampering.
James Hoffa, that’s right.
And then came the Nixon pardon that set him up for another run at the union presidency. He should’ve known it wasn’t going to happen. No one was stupid enough other than Brother James himself to think he’d get the deal past his successors, as hardnosed a bunch as they were. Should’ve known they’d take him out by any means necessary.
I was the means.
I picked him up that night in my car. Just me and him, nobody else. He thought we were going to a secret hush-hush meeting with some bigwigs in Rutherford—
Sure, I know he was last seen in the Detroit area, but that was the day before.
They set him up by calling him back to Jersey on the QT. Nobody but Big Billy and me and a couple of others knew that the only meeting he was going to was with God or the Devil.
So anyhow, I drove him to the closed-up garage I owned. That’s where I emptied my Colt automatic into him, six shots grouped in his chest like it was a bull’s-eye target.
Then I put on overalls and gloves, dragged his body down into the grease pit, and dismembered it with a hatchet and a hacksaw. Awful job. Awful. But that was the way the big boys uptown wanted it done, don’t ask me why.
I can still see him lying there dead after I put those six rounds into his chest. Still see the pieces of him after the butchering was done, all the bloody pieces, all the King’s parts: legs, arms, torso, head—my last view of the Great Man before I stuffed the pieces into six separate plastic bags and put them into the trunk of my Buick.
Jimmy H. alive, Jimmy H. dead, Jimmy H. in pieces. Nothing left but chopped-up clay, the torso weighted with lead pellets, bouncing and thudding in the trunk as I raced along the Turnpike to the new Meadowlands stadium.
That’s what I said, the Meadowlands.
How did I get in? I had a key to the gate, that’s how. Back then I had connections, guys who’d do me a favor without asking questions and then keep their mouths shut. The refineries five miles to the south would have made quicker work of the remains, but butchering him was bad enough, I couldn’t burn him up too. The Meadowlands was better. Home base. Burial instead of cremation.
The state of New Jersey is where America comes to die. You don’t think so? Remember Paul Simon? The cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, each filled with people in search of America. I was one of them that night, in a Buick with a dismembered slab of America in my trunk and the rising yellow clouds from the refineries staining the night around me.
Oh, I remember, all right. Every detail after three and a half decades. Arriving at the deserted stadium site. Opening the Buick’s trunk in the moonlit dark to get the shovel. Digging six holes all across the south end zone—
Don’t laugh. It’s not funny. I’m telling you just what I did: dug six holes, six graves for the six pieces of Jimmy H.
If New Jersey is where America comes to die, then the end zone was the perfect burial spot for Brother James. Hell, it would have been perfect for the Wobblies, Mother Jones, the ’37 Ford strikers, hundreds of others like them. You see what I mean?
Once the bags were planted, the holes covered up and smoothed out, I stood leaning on the shovel, gasping in the cold, like an exhausted actor taking a crooked bow after a command performance. Thinking that the whole business hadn’t been so bad, that I’d gotten it all done pretty quick. A speed run from the killing to the cutting up to the driving to the burying. Thinking that was the end of it.
But it wasn’t. Not for me. I should have known it wouldn’t be because even then I could see the pieces spread out deep under the end zone turf, as if I had X-ray vision. The flesh that would decay in summer heat and winter ice. The scattered bones that would crumble to dust.
I didn’t stay there long. It was almost dawn and the almost-finished stadium was glowing in the restless early light. Soon there�
�d be workers, traffic. I couldn’t afford to be seen in the area.
I drove the Buick straight back to the garage, backed it inside, and took care of the cleanup. Washed the blood down the grease pit drain with a hose. Used some solvent to remove a couple of stains in the trunk. Burned the overalls and gloves and my filthy clothes in the incinerator out back. When I was done, there wasn’t a trace left.
My house was half a mile from the station. Jane was waiting for me when I got there.
Where were you all night? she said.
Never mind, I said. It’s none of your business.
You look terrible, she said. What have you been doing?
Nothing, I said. What else could I have said to her? Oh, nothing much, babe, just out murdering the boss, cutting up the boss, burying the boss.
I walked past her, heading toward the shower. This is a filthy place, I said then. It’s always filthy. Why don’t you ever clean it up?
She didn’t like that. She hadn’t liked anything about me for a long time. Even thirty-five years later I can feel her contempt, her suspicion. I guess I can’t blame her. Living jammed close together in that little house, not just her and me but the kid too, none of us getting along with each other, fearing Big Billy and the uptown boys, torn apart by secrets. She left me not long after that night, you know, just as soon as the kid got out of high school, and for all I know she’s dead now. The kid too—I haven’t seen or heard from him in twenty years.
But I’m getting off track. After I had my shower and put on some of my better threads, I drove into the city to report to Big Billy.
Disposing of Jimmy H. was the nasty part of the assignment, but facing Big Billy wasn’t much better. You remember him? Sure. He’s long gone now, most of the uptown boys are long gone, but back then he was a force. I did a lot of jobs for him before that night, but none like the one with Brother James. None that was even close.
An hour later I was standing in Big Billy’s office, surrounded by concrete, his hard little eyes boring into mine.
I dumped him, I said. It’s finished business.
Don’t tell me dumped, Big Billy said. Don’t tell me finished business. Where did you put the sucker?
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