"I thought you were kidding. I thought . . . Jesus, Nikki," says Lenny. "I thought you liked me. I thought. You know . . ."
Nikki just shakes her head and then leans forward and gives Lenny a sisterly hug. He tries clumsily to kiss her but she turns her head away, avoiding his mouth.
"I see. I see what it is now," says Lenny. "I'm outta here tonight. I'm outta here tonight before you fucking tell the fucking ape-man and blow everything. You . . . you . . . fucking whore!"
Nikki is up in a flash. She reaches back and pops Lenny a good one in the right eye that knocks him back into his seat. Two customers look up quizzically but immediately look away as Nikki glares right back at them and Lenny bursts into tears.
Nikki cradles Lenny in her arms on the hardwood floor of her tiny apartment. They're both still in their coats. Lenny is still crying, his nose running profusely, chest heaving with suppressed sobs. Nikki is petting the back of his head like he's a child, saying, "That's okay . . . that's okay." Though, of course, nothing is okay now.
The money has been divided, Nikki keeping only a relatively small share — getaway money should things really turn sour. It's morning already — and Nikki can't remember a time the cheeping birds and early morning garbage trucks have sounded so sinister. Lenny's money is in an airline bag, ready to go.
"You should get out of here," says Nikki. "Take your money, get on a train. Go someplace nice and live a little. Get yourself a fucking girlfriend. You're a rich guy, now, Lenny. You'll have to beat them off with a stick."
"I want you to be my girlfriend," snivels Lenny, his face collapsing all over again.
"That ain't gonna happen, Lenny," says Nikki, wiping tears off his receding chin with her sleeve.
Lenny gone, morning commuter traffic in full swing outside her window, Nikki lays on her bed, staring at the ceiling. This was something she never should have become involved in. "Story of my life, right?" she says out loud.
Her cut, still in the nearly empty duffel bag, sits on the floor — more an affront than a windfall. It isn't the prospect of cops she is worried about. Or the chaos and paranoia and whatever else awaits her when she goes in for work today — if she goes in for work today. It wasn't Eddie Fish — who always struck her as a pathetic little shrimp anyway — or what he might do. She could stand up to an interrogation. She'd hide the money somewhere and she'd ride it out. She doesn't feel guilty about taking money from a dishonest shithole like NiteKlub - probably go out of business in a few months anyway (a la carte dinners were getting slower and slower and the party business was drying up for the season). The owners had already skimmed their money out, that was for sure. Only a matter of time till they were all out of work. They deserved it. They'd probably barely notice the money had gone missing. One night's fucking receipts — okay, there had been a disconcertingly large amount in there this time —but what would really happen now? It isn't getting caught that bothers her. She wasn't going to get caught. It isn't guilt. Or fear — not much anyway. Who'd suspect a chick? Especially now, with Lenny gone? She closes her eyes and tries to forget about the whole thing — pushing the office, the safe, the bag of money on her floor out of her mind. But something keeps intruding. Keeps waking her up, eyes wide open, her breathing getting faster, a painful, swelling ache in her chest.
It's Bobby.
That bothers her. It really does.
BOBBY TAKES IT ON THE LAM
Bobby Gold, in a hastily thrown on black leather jacket, white T-shirt, black denims and sandals, a Heckler and Koch pistol between his legs, stomped on the gas and blew right by a tractor-trailer. "Road-runner," the old Modern Lovers tune about cruising Route 128, was on the radio, volume cranked up —appropriate to the circumstances as Bobby and Nikki were on exactly that road, middle of the night, Massachusetts highway, headed for the Cape.
"I forgot to pack a bathing suit," said Nikki, from the passenger seat. "Does the music have to be up so loud?"
"Just this song," shouted Bobby. "Greatest album ever made. What do you need a bathing suit for? It's winter."
"The hotel. Maybe the hotel will have a pool."
"We ain't stayin' in no hotel, baby. Not this trip. People are angry with me. They want to kill me. We stay in a hotel we gotta use a credit card. We use a credit card and it shows up on my statement. Wrong person sees my statement? Bang Bang Dig Dig time."
"Shit! I thought at least there'd be a pool."
"You're the one wanted to break the law. You're the one wanted to be an outlaw. Welcome to the wild world of interstate flight."
Bobby's cell phone rang from inside his jacket. He slowed down slightly, reached, flipped it open and listened. It was Eddie.
"You've killed me," said Eddie, his voice thick with pills.
"How did I kill you?" said Bobby, annoyed.
"Threw me to the wolves. You left me out on a limb. I've got nobody. I've got nobody anybody's scared of."
"Buy yourself a pit bull. Hire a security guard. Do the Witness Protection thing. I don't give a fuck. I'm gone.
"You're with that bitch?"
Bobby flushed with anger, surprised at the question. "What the fuck you talking about?"
"That rotten bitch from the kitchen. She busted into the safe last night and took the fucking receipts, Bobby. That's the bitch I'm talking about. She with you?"
"I got to get back to you, Eddie," said Bobby. "Call you right back."
"Uh . . . sweetheart?"
"Yes," said Nikki.
"Have you been a bad girl? Is there something you're not telling me?"
"Well . . . depends by what you mean by 'something' . . ."
"How about this. Did you by any chance break into the club's safe last night?"
Nikki said nothing for a while as she considered her answer. A 16-wheeler blew by them on the highway followed by silence.
"I might have done something like that. I'm very mechanically inclined. My brother works in a machine shop."
"That's nice. That's very nice. And last night, when you and whoever helped you in this boneheaded fucking venture were taking stacks of money out of the safe. Did it occur to you, perhaps, whose money exactly it was you were absconding with?"
"Well . . . I guess we figured it was Eddie's."
"And who does Eddie owe money to do you think? Who do you think Eddie's partners are?"
"Some German asshole. I've seen him. He's always trying to fuck the waitresses."
"That's what we call in the business the 'straw owner,' cupcakes . . . That's what they call on television cop shows 'the front man.'"
"Uh-oh," said Nikki. "You're about to tell me whose money it really was, aren't you?"
"Yes. Yes I am," said Bobby.
A little while later they were crossing the Buzzard's Bay Bridge onto the Cape and Route 6. Bobby's phone went off again and he rolled down the window on the driver's side, hurled it out over the rail into blackness.
"Your phone's ringing," said Nikki.
"I know," said Bobby.
"This guy you mentioned is not a very nice man, I take it?" said Nikki.
"You could say that," said Bobby.
"I got nineteen thousand dollars," said Nikki. "Would he like, hunt us down and kill me for that?"
Bobby did a little quick math in his head, abandoning his equations after a few seconds.
"Well . . . let's just say he's not exactly going to be looking for his money back. It'll cost him half the nineteen by the time he finds us. Thing is, with Tommy, guys like Tommy? It's the principle of the thing, you see. That's the problem."
"So, I kind of got us in trouble, didn't I? And we were already in trouble."
"I was in trouble. Before? Before you could have dodged out anytime you got tired of chowder and grinders and cold nights. Now you got a problem too."
"Bummer."
"Will they know where to look?"
"Eddie'll know - eventually. Me and him used to come out here summers for a while."
"Will he tell
Tommy?"
"That's the question, isn't it?"
"Suddenly, Provincetown doesn't seem far enough away."
"No, it doesn't, does it?"
"I was in it with a friend. You think —" Bobby didn't let her finish her sentence.
"I think they got your friend strapped to a table battery by now. I bet he's coughing up whatever his cut was and whatever he knows or suspects or can dream up. I think when they're done asking him questions they're going to drive him out to Jersey and dig a hole and put him in it. Maybe they'll shoot him first."
"Oh," said Nikki. "Oh."
She sat quietly in the dark for a while. Bobby thought he could hear an occasional sniffle between cigarettes. He kept his eyes on the road, speed just under the limit, thinking about what to do next. A place in town was now out of the question. He knew somebody who could hook them up with a dune shack which would have to do until they figured out what to do next. Terrible things were going to happen in New York. People were going to die. Eddie being "boy most likely to." He figured he'd wait. See who fell and who survived before he made any rash moves. With luck, something bad could happen to Tommy in the shake-out to come. Letting some girl saute cook take his crew off for a night's receipts didn't look good. Such things were bad for you, the business Tommy was in. With any luck, a few whispers, some young Turk would maybe make the problem go away. Maybe Eddie would turn state's evidence, go off to Arizona and rehab, keep Tommy and his people hunkered down filing motions and answering summonses. On the other hand, maybe Tommy would come after them with everything. Maybe Tommy would go have a nice talk with Paul and tell him what a terrible thing that Eddie's man Bobby did — how he cast aspersions on Paulie's sainted, no-doubt-virginal daughter to get out of a previous jam, how he was a thieving, cowardly, and potentially dangerous problem who had to be taken care of immediately — along with his puttana. This, of course, was the more likely scenario.
"Pull over," said Nikki.
"What? Why? You sick?"
"No. I'm horny. I get horny when I get scared."
She was already unsnapping Bobby's blue jeans when he pulled over to the side of the road.
"Slide over," she said, her feet over the dashboard as she yanked off her pants.
"This is not smart," said Bobby. "This is not smart at all."
She straddled him on the front seat and pushed down.
"Oh."
"Yep."
"You're a dangerous woman. You're going to get us both killed," said Bobby, already way way way beyond caring.
"I know," said Nikki. "Feels good though, doesn't it?"
After a month, when nobody came, when no strangers had been noticed in off-season Provincetown, where people tended to notice such things, they began to visit town more often, usually for breakfast at the Tip for Tops'n on Bradford Street, or for dinner at a Portuguese fisherman's joint where Nikki liked the squid stew. Nikki took a job part-time at a pizzeria, spinning pies, and Bobby did a little roofing and carpentry, a little day labor at the boatyard. It was cold and crisp during the day, but with brilliant, sharp-focused light, the sunsets spectacular, and the sound of foghorns and boat whistles, the smells of fish and salt spray, the slowed down, more relaxed life of an off-season resort town making Cape Cod seem much farther away from whatever was happening in New York.
Bobby read the Times, religiously, looking for news of dead organized crime associates, and Nikki read Vogue and Marie Claire and Bazaar and planned her wardrobe for the spending spree they were going to have whenever they made their next move. Whatever that was. At night it was freezing cold in their beach shack — and on really cold nights, they'd leave the oven on with the door open and huddle naked under four or five blankets, noses cold, giggling, and curiously without care. Bobby kept the H&K under the pillow for the first few weeks then moved it to the night table. They fucked almost every day and spent hours just staring wordlessly down at the sea. They shot pool at the Governor Bradford, bought a cheap TV set from a Portuguese fisherman and watched snowy, blurry reruns of old sitcoms under the covers, Bobby getting out in the cold to move a clothes hanger/antennae around the room from time to time — for better reception. Nikki cooked now and again — usually something simple, but occasionally a classic French feast, serving pate de canard and salmon with sorrel sauce on paper plates, washed down with fine wine in plastic cups. Bobby never asked her about the stolen money or why she should have done something so stupid and suicidal. It was assumed that at some point they'd really run away. Bobby favored the Far East. Nikki was partial to the Caribbean or Mexico.
Nineteen grand, Bobby might have pointed out, was not going to be enough for both of them.
In April, Eddie Fish made the papers. A full-cover shot in the New York Post, Eddie interrupted at dinner, a mouthful of veal chop with the sauce from the chicken, laid out on the cold tile floor, shirt pulled up, head leaking black onto white, dead as dead could be. His eyes were half open and there was food on the shirt.
"I think I need more guns," thought Bobby, heading back to the dune shack. "I really do."
But when he got back Nikki was asleep, dozing really, midafternoon, one arm thrown over her eyes, mouth slightly open, blankets just below her breasts. Bobby quietly got undressed and slipped under the covers with her. She curled into a ball and worked her way dreamily under his arms, seeking warmth. He felt her slowly unravel, throwing a leg over his, then a hand around his back, the other one seeking something, finding it. Her head disappearing completely under the covers.
When he woke up it was dark and he couldn't hear the generator. The window by the bed flew off its hinges, blew apart, glass suddenly in his hair. It took a second to realize that people were shooting at them; window, door, through the walls, the reports of three, maybe four weapons muffled by the sand, whipped away in the wind.
It's always the little things you remember when terrible things happen.
Bobby would remember the splinter he got when he jumped out of bed, his bare feet scrambling for purchase on the floor. He remembered the way his fingers felt useless and rubbery as he tore open the drawer and grabbed for the H&K. He would always remember the sound Nikki made when he shoved her out of bed onto the floor — and that his cock stuck to his leg for a second as he ran for the door firing.
He'd remember that the first man he saw was wearing a shooter's vest and earmuffs and that when Nikki was hit she made an "Ouch!" noise like she'd just cut herself on a grapefruit knife.
BOBBY GONE
Bobby Gold in a raw-silk robe, maroon flecked with gold, in a faraway place, alone. Outside shuttered windows, palm fronds brushed stucco walls and geckos clacked and chattered in the hot, syrup-thick jungle air. A splash signaled a lone swimmer in the hotel pool, the fat German most likely. Neither the two red-faced Aussies, the taciturn Frenchman, nor the quiet Taiwanese — the hotel's only other guests — could make a sound quite so loud.
The room smelled of jasmine and bug repellent and the 555-brand cigarettes that Bobby had taken to smoking over the last few months. He was seeing the world, finally - after a lifetime under Eddie Fish's thumb, pinned down in New York, smothering in Eddie's careless, relentless embrace. "See the world," Bobby said out loud, chuckling bitterly. "Alone," he almost added.
He was free all right. Cut loose from everything. Eddie gone. NiteKlub gone. Family . . . long long gone. And Nikki? Not here. That was for sure. He missed everything about her. Her hair. Her sardonic smile. The not knowing what was going to come out of her mouth next. Her scent. Recalling it made his chest hurt.
He was the driver now. No longer a passenger in a tightly circling cab. And he had seen the world — the eastern part of it anyway: Bora Bora, Singapore, Japan, China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, a blurry film strip of temples, wats and mini-bars, transit lounges, buffet breakfasts, noodle shops, maimed beggars, stone-faced soldiers, brown-skinned children in mud and rags calling "hello!" "bye-bye!" from riverbanks and stilt-supported houses. He'd seen moon-f
aced whores and eager cyclo-drivers, smoked opium in a tin-roofed shack under a driving rain, stayed in cheap neon-lit hotel rooms: bed, fan, TV set showing only Thai kick-boxing and MTV Asia, "karaoke-massage" in the lobby and someone else's hair on the complimentary plastic comb and everywhere the smell of wood smoke, the overripe camembert odor of durian fruit, fish sauce, chicken shit and fear. The soundtrack to the new not-so-improved Bobby Gold Story was the sound of a million throbbing generators, the endless droning of yet another pressurized cabin, the whoosh of turbines, the low-throated gurgle of turbo-props, the admonitions in pidgin English, Thai, Khmer, Vietnamese and Chinese that one's seat cushion could be used "as a flotation device" and to refrain from using cell phones or electronic devices.
He'd bought a gun in Battambang — an old Makarov pistol with extra shells. Partly for self-protection, as what constituted a crime in these parts depended largely on how much money one had in one's wallet and who one's cousins were. But also with the half-formed idea that one of these days he might want to put the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. It seemed a romantic place to die, Siem Reap, in the shadows of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thorn — to be found dead under the big stone heads at Bayon; the reports, if any, of his demise to read something like, "found dead of a gunshot wound in Siem Reap." It just as well might read Battambang, or Pailin, or Vung Tau or Can Tho or Bangkok. It made little difference, as there was, really, no one left back home to read or care or be impressed by such a romantic demise.
"Oh yeah, the dude with the pony tail? The guy who used to work security? He was fucking the saute bitch, right?" was what they'd say in the kitchen
"He was doing Nikki, right? Whatever happened to her, man? She was good on the line," was what they'd say. Then someone would notice a song they didn't like on the radio and go to change the station and then they'd talk about something else.
It was a very nice hotel — though an empty one. Black-and-white tiled floors, ochre colored walls with mahogony and teak moldings. The ceiling of the bar was decorated with finely drawn murals of elephants and Khmer kings and the agreeable waiters wore green and white sarongs and knew to a man how to make a proper Singapore Sling or a dry martini or vermouth cassis.
The Bobby Gold Stories Page 9