by Norman Green
“You save my ass,” he said, looking at the tube. “I owe you.”
“Damn straight you do.”
He craned his neck to look past me, make sure nobody was standing in the corridor, listening. “And you owe me, muthafucka. You owe me.” I could see him putting on that wounded face again, going back into character. He looked like a woman who’d just caught her husband in bed with her sister. “Why you hadda take my money, Mo? I thought you and me was friends.”
I put my hand on my chest. “Rosey. I can’t tell you how much it hurts me to hear you talk like that.”
“Oh, fuck you, man. . . .” He started to rise from the bed, but his eyes went wide and he grunted in pain and laid back down on the pillows. It took him a minute to recover. “You are a cold son of a bitch, you know that?”
“Hey, Rosey, no bullshit. Did you really expect me to fall for that switch you pulled with the claim tickets? You really thought I was that stupid? Besides, I know what you did to those three guys you picked up. Tell the truth, Rosey. I was gonna get the same. Ain’t that right.”
“Oh, man, c’mon. I couldn’t talk to them, when I met them the next day they got all unreasonable and shit. They wanted a half a mill apiece. I couldn’t give them that. . . . So I gave them something else instead.” He had not lost any of that hurt and resentful expression on his face. “How much was there, Mo? Can you leas’ tell me that?”
“One point eight million.” I had to sting him, at least a little bit.
“You see? You see? I was tryina take care a you, Mo. I give those three guy a half apiece, how much would that leave for you an’ me?”
“Rosey, I’m touched, man, really. I never had another friend like you.”
“Oh, fuck you, man, you fucking piece of fucking shit.” I really thought he was going to cry. “Why you come here, Mo, you come down here to fucking laugh at me, you come to piss in my fucking face, you know I gotta lay up here in this fucking bed like a fucking baby. . . .”
I waited a minute after he stopped. “Rosey, you’re a smart guy.”
He took a couple of breaths, let go of the jilted-lover act. “Yeah, so what.” No false modesty there.
“You see me sitting here. What does that tell you?” He wouldn’t answer, he just lay there staring at the television. “Think about it, Rosey. If I wanted to keep your money, I could just walk out of this place and leave your sorry ass stuck in this bed. Why didn’t I do that, Rosey?”
He continued to stare at the television, his distrust plain on his face. It was because he’d been ready to do it. I’d had the suspicion before, but now I knew it for sure. There was no way he could have brought himself to split it with me. He’d have had to kill me. “You tell me, Mo. Esplain to me why.”
“All right, Rosey. You believe in karma?”
He glared at me. “I’m Catholic, Mo, you know that. I believe God gonna send you and me to hell.”
“Maybe he will. But the way I look at it, I got three ways to go here. One, I wait until you’re sleeping, okay, and I come down here and put some rat poison in your IV, you die screaming, and God puts you in hell tonight. Okay?” Rosey was staring at me, wide-eyed, looking, once again, like an outraged housewife. “I coulda done that already, and you know it. Or two, I could just take off, keep it all. But then I gotta go around worrying about you coming up behind me for the rest of my life. That ain’t no way to live. Or three, I can give you your cut, and we can both walk away from this. The first two choices got too much bad karma on ’em. So I’m gonna pick number three. All you gotta do is lay up here in this bed and keep your fucking mouth shut.”
His face was drawn, haggard with doubt and suspicion in the flickering light of the television. “You wan’ go get it for me? Look at us, Mo. I don’ gonna trus’ you, you don’ gonna trus’ me. You still don’ gonna tell me where my money is at.”
“If I did, you couldn’t leave it alone. You knew what was going on, it wouldn’t make any difference how good it was, you would have to get on the phone and fuck it up. Besides, how long could you hold out if the Russians picked you up again? Or some different ones, maybe? Look at you, man, you ain’t going anywhere for a couple of days, anyhow. By the time you’re ready to walk out of here I can have everything taken care of. After that, you’ll be able to go anywhere you want. As long as you stay the hell out of New York City, you can die a rich man.”
He opened his robe and looked down at his chest. He was wrapped from his collarbone all the way down to his waist. He looked at me, considering, nodded once. “What you gonna do?”
“I told you, I’m gonna take care of it. Couple more days, maybe a week, your money will be nice and legal, sitting in your brokerage account.”
“Oh, great, you gon’ give it to my useless fucking piece of shit broker.”
“It will be in your account. He can’t do anything with it without your say-so.”
He rubbed his face with both hands, grunting with the effort it took him. “Yeah,” he said. “All right.” He said it with an accusatory tone in his voice, like he knew he was getting screwed somehow, and he was putting up with it because he loved me.
“But I want you gone, you understand? Your money in your pocket, on a beach someplace far away.”
“Like Puerto Rico,” he said.
“You got relatives there?”
“Yeah.”
“Puerto Rico’s no good, then. Think about it, Rosey. You got a big dollar sign on your back now. You gotta go where nobody will think to look for you.”
He laid back on his pillows, looked thoughtful. “I see what you mean,” he said, and he considered it for a minute. “Thass why you come up here. You knew all this shit gonna happen.”
“How did those goons know where to look for me?”
“I thin’ maybe somebody from here call down there, tell them to come get you.”
“Somebody from up here? You sure? Somebody up here ratted me out? They tell you that?”
“They tell me shit, man, but they keep on talking about some guy, he say, you know, ‘I hear you looking for this guy, about so big, look like dis an dat, got a kid with him, come up here and get him.’ I thin’ maybe the guy tell them the town, but maybe not like the house where you was at. Maybe the guy tell them Eastpor’, ’cause they spen’ a lot of time looking over there.”
“Eastport? All right. Who are they, anyhow? They work for those Russians we knocked over?”
“I don’ thin’ so, Mohammed. I thin’ these guy, they hear about you an’ me from somebody up here, they put two an’ two together, they wanna come get the money. One a your new fren’ from here call down to find somebody to come make trouble for you. Because those guy we rob, they too busy right now. They got plenty money, anyway. New York Time say fifty, sixty millions, say the SEC don’ know where is it. Those guy don’ thin’ too much for you an’ me.”
“Good. That means we can still pull this off. But when you get outta here, you gotta go someplace where nobody knows you. If you wanna be a rich man, you’re gonna have to be a smart one, first.”
He was nodding. “Never been to Greece,” he said.
“Don’t tell me.”
He looked at me sadly. “An’ you don’ gonna tell me where you go from this place.”
“That’s the way it is. That doctor comes around, you tell him you feel wonderful. Two, maybe three days, you gotta be ready to go.”
He looked down at his chest, swathed in bandages. “Mo, I tell you sonting. From a few day ago to now, I feel fokking great.”
“Listen, Rosey, I think one of those Russians is in this hospital somewhere, so you be careful. Stay out of trouble.”
“Which one?”
“The one that drank.”
Rosey’s face went dark with anger, but at least it was not directed at me. “Where the other one at?”
“I was told the other guy gave up and went home.”
“All right,” he said. “You come back for me, you sommanabitch. I be re
ady.”
“All right. Who’s your stockbroker?”
His eyes filled up with suspicion again. He had to think about it before he told me. “Charles Schwab,” he said. I guessed he had decided to trust me.
“You know your account number?”
He nodded. He gave it to me, but he did not look happy about it.
By the time I got back to my bed, I felt like the needle on my tank was back down into the red zone. I felt like I had used up whatever energy I’d gotten from the hospital food. Maybe I really did need a good long sleep.
Buchanan’s number was not in the phone’s memory, but it was in mine, and therefore just a little bit harder to retrieve. My brain gave it to me after a little prodding. I didn’t think there was any way possible he would still be in his office this late in the day, but I figured I would leave him a message, let him call me back in the morning. I was wrong, though. A woman answered, said, “Just one minute.” Twenty seconds later, he came on the line.
“Mohammed,” he said. “God, am I glad to hear from you.” He had an unusual amount of animation in his voice. “I was beginning to think you had forgotten all about our, ah, arrangement.”
“I didn’t forget. I was laid up for a few days. Sorry.”
“That’s all right, forget it.” I could hear the relief in his voice. “You still want to go through with this? You all ready?”
“Yeah, we’re still on. Am I all ready for what?”
“Well,” he said, “we still have some details to take care of. You’re going to have to put your funds in escrow with me, for one thing, and you’ll need to take a position in the security in question. And, of course, there will be some paperwork.”
“All right.”
“Can you meet me tomorrow?”
“I don’t think so. How about the day after?”
“All right,” he said, “but make sure you get here. We don’t want to cut this too close. It would be a crime to mess this up, Mohammed. This is looking better and better all the time. I’m telling you, a deal like this one does not come along every day.”
“I’ll be there. Day after tomorrow, say, early afternoon? I’ve gotta drive in, I’ll call you around one.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
I remembered Rosario. “Listen,” I said, “would it be possible to cut this transaction in half, and do it under two separate names?”
“Anything you want,” he said. “But you’ve got to decide all that before me meet. After that it will be too late to make any changes.”
“I can give it to you now.” I told him Rosario’s name and account number. If he found this late change of heart strange, he didn’t say.
“Done,” he said a minute later. “See you in two days.”
8
I woke up around five o’clock that morning. It took me a minute to wake up, to remember where I was, and where Nicky was. I missed him, man, I missed him bad. I wanted to make one of those deals with God, you know, “Get me through this, get me and Nicky out of here and to some safe place and I promise I’ll never steal anything again, man, really, I won’t. . . .”
My left arm and shoulder were throbbing. At least they had a pill for that, and they gave it to me when I got breakfast. And breakfast was a real treat, too, all healthy stuff. First thing I was doing when I got out of there was stop for an Egg McMuffin or two.
I was almost insane by the time the doctor came around a little after nine that morning. He looked at my arm, took my temperature, did all that stuff that those guys do. I could barely sit still. “I guess you’re still in a hurry to leave us,” he said, wrapping that blood pressure thing around my arm.
I wanted to tell him how much I missed Nicky, how lousy I felt for exposing the poor kid to all this craziness, how sorry I was for being such a rotten fucking father. I really did want to tell somebody, but I didn’t think I could do it without crying, and anyway, he wasn’t the guy. “Yeah,” I told him. “I really gotta get going.”
“Well,” he said, “that arm is going to hurt for a while. I’m going to give you something for the pain, and something else to fight infection. Take the pain pills when you need them, and take the other ones twice a day until they’re all gone. I suppose I’d be wasting my breath if I told you to get lots of rest.”
“I’ll be good, Doc, I promise. What about Rosey?”
He shook his head. “It’s like I told you,” he said. “You’re going to have to leave him with us a while longer. He’s not ready to travel. Even if his lung was all right he couldn’t take the pain unless you sedated him.”
I thought sedating him might be a good idea, but I didn’t say that. “Can I go see him before I go?”
“Of course. Did you get anybody to bring you some clean clothes?”
I shook my head. “Never thought of it.”
“Not much left of your shirt,” he said. “We’ll find you something. The rest of your stuff is a bit funky, but it ought to get you by.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I want to ask you a question that might put you in a bad position, ethically. Feel free to tell me to go to hell, but can you tell me anything about a guy from Russia with a concussion?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “Not my patient.”
I didn’t talk to Rosario, after all. There wasn’t much point in it, I had already said everything I had to say to him. I walked out of that hospital around eleven that morning wearing crusty hiking boots, filthy blue jeans with blood spatters down the left side, and one of those blue short-sleeved shirts that doctors wear. Nobody said anything, though. Mainers are like New Yorkers that way. They ain’t gonna let you know, either way. If they’re impressed or intimidated, they don’t like to let it show.
There were lots of minivans in the parking lot. I wandered around carrying my paper bag full of crap until I found mine. I hadn’t been impressed with it before, but it sure seemed luxurious now, spacious, smooth, and comfortable, especially compared to the Subaru and Louis’s Jeep. I stopped at McDonald’s, put a coffee in the cup holder and some food in the nifty little tray, and went to a drugstore to fill my prescriptions. When that was done, I gassed up the van and headed for Louis’s house. I was still getting used to the emptiness of this place. I come from a world where the streets are numbered and lettered, where they bisect in more or less predictable ways, where they’re lined with houses and buildings, where green spaces are fenced off from everything else. You miss something, you can turn at the next intersection, go around the block, and see it again. Maine isn’t like that, though, at least not the part of it where I was. The roads roll with the contours of the land, they swing around the hills and meander along the rivers. I suppose you could get tired of it after a while, but I was still new, and I passed the trip back in silent wonder.
It was a dismal house without Eleanor or Louis in it. I thought I had become fond of the place, especially the kitchen, but as I stood next to the woodstove, it just felt like an empty room in a poor man’s house, the house itself just an old building nearing the end of its life, with doors that leaked cold air, windows that rattled in the wind, and a field mouse scratching in the cupboard. I could see it standing empty in a year or so, all the people gone, the sounds and smells that gave this place life surviving only in the dimming memories of those few like me who had paused here, then moved on. It’s a fight to remain upright, though I don’t always remember that. I tend to act as if it were my divine right to stand where I choose, to conduct my business as I see fit. This house was not young, though, and it was probably far past such rash assumptions.
My phone was out in the car, recharging, so I called Bookman from Louis’s phone. “Be right there,” he said when he heard my voice, and he hung up.
I waited for him outside.
He turned his police car into the bottom of Louis Avery’s driveway and drove casually up the hill. He stopped next to Louis’s Jeep, where I was sitting on the tailgate. He rolled down his window.
“Hey,” I said.
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He pursed his lips, looked at my bandaged shoulder, and shook his head, as though he were slightly disappointed in what he was looking at. “Get in,” he said. “Take a ride.”
I didn’t move. “Okay if I ride up front? I hate back seats.” Particularly, I didn’t need to add, when the doors didn’t have handles on the inside.
Bookman permitted himself one tiny, wry smile. “Come ahead.”
I walked around the front of the car and got in. Bookman dropped the gearshift into reverse, backed around, and headed down the driveway. “You don’t look so hot,” he said.
“They gave me something for infection,” I told him. “Stuff is giving me the screaming shits.”
“Antibiotic,” he said, nodding. He turned out of the bottom of the driveway and pointed the car back toward Route 1. “Eat some yogit, when yaw done with the medicine. Get some good bugs back into yaw system.” He accelerated as he talked, and within a hundred yards, we were way past legal. The stop sign at the intersection with Route 1 arrived in record time. Bookman braked, stopped at the sign, stopped completely, sat there for a minute.
“Yaw boy,” he said, looking straight ahead, “don’t like unifohms much.”
“I know. Don’t take it personally.”
He didn’t move, just sat there looking out the side window.
“After his mother died, the state took him. Since then, most of his encounters with you guys have been unpleasant.”
“That so,” he said. He pulled out onto Route 1, accelerated calmly and undramatically up to about ninety. “Why’d they take him? Yaw in-laws rathah have him in fostah cayah than living with you?”
I had to think about that one, but after a couple of seconds I remembered the bullshit story I’d given him about Nicky’s mother and the Russian Mafia. “I don’t know,” I told him. I had the impulse to trust this guy, but I reminded myself that no matter what I thought about him, he was still a cop, and I was still . . . whatever. “I’ll tell you the truth,” I said, thinking I would tell him a piece of it. “When we had Nicky, no way was I ready to be a parent. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, but I was pretty sure I couldn’t do it. Then, you know, his mother died. I guess I did a lot of things wrong.”