“After that,” Frankie said, “after that I can’t see her no more on Wednesdays. Only weekends, and Jesus, every time I go there I expect they’re gonna put the old man in the car with us, we go out. So, I start hanging around with the wrong type of guys. And I meet a couple guys, and one of them knows Johnny, and I meet Johnny, and I start doing a few things for John. And you know something? I was still in love with that crazy kid. I probably would’ve married her. I dunno if her old man would’ve let me fuck her, I was married to her. Maybe Fridays and Saturdays. Long’s I got her home by midnight. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Then I got hooked and they try me, I was in the can the whole time, and they all come to the trial, him too, now and then, and I got the time, there. Sandy and my mother and Janice and everything. Ten years. What’s ten years? I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. I was, I wasn’t even twenty-one years old. Somebody says ten years to me. What’s that mean? That judge, you know what he said? If you continue in this path, young man, you’ll be in serious trouble before you’re through.’ Then he gives me ten years. Serious trouble. That’s probably when they cut your nuts off and make you eat them.
“So they’re taking me away, fuckin’ old deputy, his uniform’s got soup all over it, and they’re all crying, my mother’s crying, Sandy’s crying, Janice’s crying, she’s havin’ fuckin’ hysterics. I should’ve told her, go out and throw the bumper around, always helped me when you wouldn’t come across and I sure can’t help you now. And the deputy, he wouldn’t let them talk to me and I was still punchy, I was on his side. I just got ten and I never even got a hand-job off this broad and now I got to go through this? Pissed me off. I said to him: ‘Get me out of here.’ And she’s gonna do this, she’s gonna do that, it was awful. So, I was in about three months, Sandy comes to see me. Janice’s married. It don’t mean anything.”
“Broads’re different now,” Russell said. “You been in too long. This broad, this broad means it. You can tell. She’s gonna do it, and then the guy that’s with her when she does it, he’s gonna have to explain a lot of things, and that I can’t do. You can’t do it either. She needs a good leaving-alone.”
“I can make up my own mind,” Frankie said.
“She wouldn’t give me a chance, for God’s sake,” Russell said. “ ‘We gonna do it again?’ Absolutely. Just gimme a minute or so, get it up again. ‘I can do that,’ she says, and she blows me. Well, you know, I haven’t been out that long. I’m still pretty eager. And, I knew what was gonna happen. But I didn’t tell her, and she got herself a pretty good mouthful. Which she kind of gags on, naturally, and she sits up and wipes her mouth off and she looks at me and she says: ‘Thanks a lot, you bastard.’ I say, I said, ‘Look, I didn’t know. I mean, you act like you know what you’re doing.’ ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Yeah, you probably think I like the taste of come.’
“So I told her,” Russell said, “Goat-ass always did. Fuckin’ guy couldn’t get enough of the stuff. Said it kept him young. ‘I never liked it myself,’ I tell her, ‘but he did, and I don’t know.’ So she says: ‘You turd. You’re all turds aren’t you, you turd. There isn’t one of you that’s not a turd.’ And there’s this big song and dance. We’re lying there and, it’s a really nice apartment, got all these African masks on the wall and everything, and she’s bitching and moaning, the first time wasn’t any good either, it’s never any good, she keeps on hoping, and it turns out, it’s not even her place we’re in. I thought it was her place. It belongs to this guy she’s going with, the stereo, all the rest of it, it’s all his. He’s in school. He’s gonna get himself some kind of thing and then he’s gonna do something and it’s all gonna take him about a million years or something and she don’t get nothing from him, so she calls up guys, put ads in the Phoenix, ‘Ex-con, long dong, love and affection.’ I mean, she don’t say that. But that’s what it is. So I say to her: ‘Cut the shit, all right? You wanna get laid? I come here, get laid. Never mind all this other shit.’ And she’s rubbing me up. And she says: ‘Well, he thinks he knows everything. And he doesn’t think I know anything. So he can treat me any way he wants. But he can’t.’ And then she says, she says she’s gonna kill herself. So I look at her, and this girl really means it. Remember the way Greenan looked there, it was all over the place, they’re gonna kill him and he was walking around with a board under his shirt, remember the way he looked?”
“He knew it wasn’t gonna do any good,” Frankie said.
“And he was right,” Russell said. “Can’t wear no board in the shower. Well this broad, she looked the same way. I mean it. She did. So, Jesus, that’s all I need. I gotta tell some fuckin’ cop how come I’m inna guy’s place, I don’t even know, and this girl kills herself and I don’t know nothing about it? For something like that they bring back the chair. So I say, well, it can wait, we make it again, right? And we do. And then, after, I’m gonzo. That broad’s hoopy. I’d, if I was you I’d stay away from that broad, Frankie.”
“I’ll think about it,” Frankie said.
“Okay,” Russell said, “I’ll tell her. She’s supposed to call me. See, you can’t call her there, because the guy’s apparently there some times. So she has to call you. She’s supposed to call me tomorrow. She was supposed to call me today, actually, only, I was out. Jesus, you should see the thing I got this morning. I got this big black fucker, German shepherd.
“Guy I know,” Russell said, “calls me. Last night. He’s looking over this place in Needham. Guy that owns it’s supposed to have a pretty good coin collection. Those medals they’re selling now? Made of silver and stuff. I can get in there like I was getting into bed,’ he tells me. The both of them work and they haven’t got no kids. But they got this goddamned dog in there, looks like a fuckin’ wolf or something.’ So he tells me, I get the dog outa his way, I can have the dog. Plus he’ll gimme a fifth, what he gets.
“So I go over there,” Russell said. “The house’s back from the street and all, lots of trees and stuff. Beautiful. And we go around the back, there’s the dog in there, jumping around like he’s gonna go out of his mind or something. Barking and everything. ‘Okay,’ I say, let the bastard out.’ I’m not going inside and tangle assholes with that monster. ‘Let him out?’ the guy says. ‘You must be crazy or something. He’ll kill both of us.’ Well anyway, he racks up the window and that fuckin’ dog comes out of there like his ass’s on fire. I hadda couple wool shirts on my arm and he makes this whipass flying jump at me and knocks me on my ass, but I got the arm up and all he’s doing, he’s chewing the hell out of them shirts. And I’m, he keeps trying to spit them out and I won’t let him. And he’s growling like a mad bastard. So, I get this stick in his mouth. Now he’s not chewing, ack, ack, ack. Then I put six phenobarbs down his throat and I take the stick out and he’s got to swallow and I put the stick back in. He almost bit the fuckin’ stick in half, for Christ sake, and I had it way the hell back in there, too. Then, I got this rope, and I tie, I hadda slip knot in it. Tie his mouth shut onna stick. Tie his feet, the guy’s helping me. I get him inna car. I had Kenny’s car. He’s a great dog, boy. If I can ever sell him to somebody, find somebody that wants a dog to kill people with.”
“What’d he get in coins and stuff?” Frankie said.
“Nothing,” Russell said. “Guy put them inna bank.”
“Bullshit,” Frankie said.
“No bullshit,” Russell said, “I know the guy. He came right around. Showed me what he got. Couple cameras, portable color, some silver stuff. He had the paper the guy got, the guy put the stuff in the bank. Guys borrow money some times. It happens.”
“That’s what I oughta do,” Frankie said. “I oughta go down the bank and borrow myself some money. They probably wouldn’t mind, last time I did it I was inna can for doing it, I had a gun.”
Frankie turned the 300F up the Bedford-Carlisle exit ramp on Route 128. At the island he turned left on Route 12 and crossed 128 on the overpass. Beyond 128, Route 12 was dark.
>
“Once they see what a nice fellow you are now, and all,” Russell said.
“Sure,” Frankie said. “I can show them my papers, there. Rehabilitated son of a bitch, is what I am. Well, let’s see how this turns out, first.”
Frankie took the fifth right beyond the 128 overpass. The Chrysler moved beneath bare, tall oaks. At a slight rise the road bent to the right and a small white sign, in script, said: INNISHAVEN. Frankie took the Chrysler right, into the driveway.
“Got a nice golf course here and everything, huh?” Russell said.
“Oh, they got all the nuts,” Frankie said. “John was telling me, they got a gym and they got one of them saunas and a massage thing. First you get all hot and then you go and get blown off, I guess.”
Frankie drove the Chrysler around the northerly end of the two-story motel into the parking lot at the rear. It was poorly lighted.
“One thing we could do,” Russell said. “Instead of going in there and everything, we could just wait out here and grab the guys when they come out.”
“Yeah,” Frankie said, “and get ourselves a lot of Papermates and Zippos off the losers. Fuck that.”
Frankie parked the Chrysler at the front of the driveway, pointing the nose toward the exit. He shut the lights off.
Russell reached into the back seat and came up with a Stop and Shop bag. He took out blue wool ski masks and handed one to Frankie. He pulled the other one over his head. Russell pulled out yellow plastic gardening gloves. He handed a pair to Frankie and put on the other pair.
“Fuckin’ things’re too thick,” Frankie said.
“Look,” Russell said, “you take what you can fuckin’ get, all right? They got none of that light stuff around. Fat shits’re all raking leaves and stuff, this’s what they want. Do the best you can. You gonna use the sawed-off or what?”
Russell took a Stevens double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun out of the bag. The barrel had been cut off behind the front end of the stock. The stock was cut off behind the pistol grip. The shotgun was eleven inches long. There were two shells in it. The front of each green shell stuck out a quarter-inch from the sawed-off muzzles.
“Jesus,” Frankie said.
“You said you wanted a sawed-off,” Russell said. “I told the guy: ‘Wants a sawed-off.’ He told me, he hadda sawed-off for me like I never saw. This’s it.”
“Them things,” Frankie said. “What is that, double O?”
“Double O when they got made,” Russell said. “That’s another thing. What they did, they uncrimp the things and pour the buck out and they take them forty-five wad-cutters, you know? Just like the L.A. police. Split them wad-cutters in half, you can get six of them in there. You can clear out a room pretty fast with this thing, I think. You’re me?”
“Me,” Frankie said. He took the shotgun.
Russell took a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight from the bag and put it in his belt. He zipped his jacket shut over it. He got out of the car.
Frankie got out of the car and stuck the pistol grip of the shotgun into his belt on the left side. The barrels, silver on the edges where they had been cut, fitted in against his body. He zipped his jacket shut over it. He closed the door of the car.
Frankie and Russell walked at a regular pace across the parking lot. They went to the outside stairs that led to the second deck of the Innishaven. The stairs were wood. Frankie and Russell made very little noise.
On the second deck there was light from the rooms, filtering through blue curtains in even-numbered rooms and orange curtains in odd-numbered rooms. In front of each room there were two aluminum-and-redwood chairs, pushed back against the sills of the picture windows.
“Fourth one,” Frankie whispered.
The jalousied door of Room 26 was slightly ajar. Frankie removed the shotgun from under his jacket. He held the pistol grip in his right hand and what remained of the forestock in his left. He carried the gun at waist level.
Russell took the thirty-eight out of his belt. He smoothed the ski mask at his neck.
Russell kicked the door open and went quickly into the room. Frankie came in fast behind Russell. Frankie kicked the door shut and stepped back against it. Russell stopped at the bureau.
There were three round tables, two beds, a bed table, five lamps, a color television set on a chromium pedestal, sixteen chairs and fourteen men in the room. The men sat motionless at the tables, holding playing cards in their hands. There were piles of red, white and blue chips on the tables. There were four men at one table; five men sat at each of the other two tables. Some of the men had tumblers on the tables in front of them.
Frankie nodded toward the washstand and the door, closed, beside it. Russell walked silently toward the washstand.
A thin man in a red Ban-lon sweater, sitting at the center table, took his White Owl from his mouth and put it in the ashtray. He put his cards down, very carefully, face down. He said: “Oh oh.”
Frankie shook his head.
The bathroom door opened and Mark Trattman emerged, combing his long gray hair. His head was tilted to the right and he was looking at the aquamarine carpet as he combed. He said: “Okay, you-”
Russell stuck the barrel of the thirty-eight in his face. Trattman looked up, slowly. The muscles in his face relaxed. He looked beyond Russell and the thirty-eight, into the room. He saw Frankie. “Uh huh,” Trattman said, “well, I hope you guys know what you’re doing. I’ll get it.”
Russell looked at Frankie. Frankie nodded. Russell lowered the thirty-eight. Trattman walked past Russell to the closet and opened the louvered doors. He took two Samsonite attaché cases from the floor of the closet. He backed out of the closet into the room. He turned and walked toward the bed nearest the washstand. He put the cases on the bed. Russell trained the thirty-eight on him as he moved.
“Can I sit down now?” Trattman said. He looked at Russell. Russell looked at Frankie. Frankie nodded. Russell looked back at Trattman. Russell nodded. Trattman sat down on the second bed. He clasped his hands between his legs.
Russell went to the bed. He shifted the thirty-eight to his left hand. He opened each of the cases with his right hand. Each case was full of currency. Russell closed one case. He left the other case open. He straightened up. He stepped back. He nodded to Frankie.
Frankie stepped forward to the table nearest the door. He stopped at the first man. The man wore a light blue turtleneck. He had gray, close-cropped hair. Frankie held the shotgun close to his face; the re-crimped fronts of the shells were next to his eyes. The man said: “No.”
Trattman said: “You guys, don’t do that. You guys’ve got all the money.”
Frankie said: “What you got in your pockets. Put it onna table.”
Trattman said: “Leave the poor bastard alone.”
Russell moved forward quickly. Frankie stepped back, away from the man in the turtleneck.
“They’ll get you for this,” Trattman said.
Russell came up close to Trattman. He touched Trattman on the point of the chin with the thirty-eight. The other men watched. Frankie watched the other men. Russell forced Trattman’s head back, by applying pressure with the thirty-eight. Trattman’s torso bent in a backward arch as his head went back. He steadied himself by placing his hands flat on the bed. His eyes bulged. He did not speak. When he was rising off the bed, Russell took the thirty-eight back suddenly. Trattman relaxed forward. He said: “I don’t care, they’ll-” Russell hit Trattman with the barrel of the thirty-eight, using a chopping motion that caught Trattman at the base of his neck, at the collar. Trattman groaned but succeeded in keeping himself upright on the bed.
Frankie stepped forward. He held the shotgun close to the face of the man in the blue turtleneck. The man leaned forward in the chair. He took out his wallet. He removed currency and put it on the table.
While the man in the blue turtleneck worked, Frankie swung the shotgun to point at the next man. He wore a pale green polo shirt. The man reached for his wallet.
None of the men said anything.
“Good,” Frankie said. “That’s the way I feel, too. The less guys that get hurt, the better. So, don’t fuck around. Just give it all up and keep quiet and nobody gets hurt. It’s only money.”
The rest of the men got out their wallets and put money on the tables. Two men removed loafers, with brass hardware on the insteps, and took money out and put it on the tables. One man, in a blue plaid shirt, removed his belt, opened a zipper compartment on the inside and took out four fifty-dollar bills, folded once in half lengthwise. He put them on the table in front of him.
Frankie returned to the door. Russell moved from table to table, collecting the money. He put the money in the open attaché case. He shut the case. Russell put the thirty-eight in his belt. He picked up one case in each hand. Frankie stepped forward two paces. Russell passed behind him and stood near the door.
Killing Them Softly Page 5