Grayson's Knife

by Russell H Aborn

  “That’s true,” Charlie says. “Listen, I’m starting to get bummed. Let’s engage in some small talk.”

  “You bet. How about them Red Sox?”

  “Who cares?” Charlie says.

  “That’s not how you do it,” Grayson says, shaking his head. “Try this. What did you do last night?”

  Charlie brightens and says, “Me and Yow got high and watched an old movie. It was hilarious. That James Dean rebel flick, where he’s supposed to be a teenager. He cries all the time and gets hysterical at the drop of a hat. The one part when he puts his hands over his ears and screeches, ‘You’re tearing me apart,’ we fell on the floor we laughed so hard. Some funny shit.”

  “You don’t need to be high to laugh at that movie.”

  Billy the Bouncer comes over with two more of the beers they’d selected and hands them one each.

  “Do you guys think you’re tough?” Billy asks, looking at Grayson. “You and your pal Maurice?”

  “I don’t,” Grayson says. He jerks a thumb toward Donny. “He doesn’t boast, but he’s tough. Highly tough.”

  “By the way, Mr. Billy,” Charlie says. “My friend’s name is Mah-reees. Not More-iss. The mispronunciation of his name can sometimes upset him.”

  “And not only is Maurice tough,” Grayson says. “He’s wicked mean.”

  Charlie says, “But, this guy right here, he’s actually a good guy.” He lifts a hand and lays it up on Grayson shoulder. “He just hides it well. Like, he may almost kill you, but when he cools off, he’ll feel bad. Drive you to the emergency room. Put you in a wheel chair, wish you luck, tousle your hair. Well, not you, you have a baldie, but you get my drift.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Billy says. “And I’m right here, too, if he’d like to take a swing at me.”

  “No, not me,” Grayson says. “That big guy, Maurice? He might. If he looks at you, I’d recommend that you just drop to the ground and play dead. Trick him. That’s your best bet. If he comes over and swats at you with a paw don’t fight back, you’ll just be prolonging your agony.”

  “You guys are real funny,” Billy says.

  “See here, Billy,” Charlie says. “I offer this in the spirit of brotherhood.” He points to Donny. “That organism over there is even meaner than he is big, and he was meaner at six years old than you and all your friends will be at thirty.”

  “You don’t even know me,” Billy says.

  “No, I don’t,” Charlie says. “But what I do know is this, that those who have eyes to see know that yonder stands certain death.”

  Billy turns to look at Donny, who, it appears, is imitating a chicken crossing the road while Judith laughs and claps her hands. When Billy turns back all cockiness has disappeared from his face.

  “He looks like he has something mentally wrong with his head,” Billy says.

  “Oohhh, yeah,” Charlie says.

  “Well, I won’t fight retarded people, or mental nuts, whatever he is,” Billy says. He walks away shaking his head.

  “Wow,” Grayson says. “What’s with you baiting that big doofus.”

  “I don’t know,” Charlie says. “Raw nerves and a solid supply of speed and I’m a real chatterbox. I’m shaking like a wino jailed over a three-day weekend. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  “You serious?” Grayson says, thinking about it.

  “Yeah, fuck them, and their stupid ass plan,” Charlie says.

  “We can’t do that. Leave my brother hanging. Not now.”

  Charlie takes a couple of deep breaths.

  “Maybe I just need more bang,” Charlie says.

  He pulls a wad of paper from his pants pocket, and unfolds it. He holds out his quivery hand, palm up, offering the pills to Grayson, who shakes his head.

  “What are those?”

  “Purple hearts,” Charlie says. “They really buck me up when I’m feeling bad, sad, or mad.”

  Charlie slaps the pills up to his mouth and washes them down with beer.

  They lean against the wall drinking beer and watching Donny work on Judith. Then she takes him by the mitt and leads him out of the room and further into the apartment.

  “Unbelievable,” Charlie says. “Fifteen minutes, and they’re in the bedroom. And he looks like a fuckin’ T-Rex to me.”

  They drink beer and talk until Donny comes into the room and summons them with a toss of his head.

  “Judy says up on five, apartment 52.”

  “Where is our buxom hostess?” Charlie asks. “Did she call them?”

  “Yeah, from the phone in the bedroom,” Donny says. “She’s resting.” He waggled his eyebrows like Groucho Marx.

  “Probably exhausted from trying to escape,” Grayson says to Charlie.

  Charlie smiles.

  “What time is it?” Grayson asks.

  “Quarter ‘til,” Donny says.

  “’Quarter ‘til what? Eleven, midnight?” Grayson says.

  “One,” Donny says. “We’re supposed to go in at one.”

  “Shit, it’s actually gonna happen. Here we go,” Charlie says. He has a look on his face like a spy who accidentally bites through his emergency cyanide capsule.

  They leave the apartment and walk quietly down to the back stairway. They push through a door and out to the landing. Charlie and Grayson wait on the third while Donny goes down to the basement to let Hugh and Bird in the emergency exit. Charlie is breathing hard and sweating.

  Grayson starts up the stairs. “Let’s wait on the next landing.”

  They go to the next landing and wait against the wall for the others. Grayson feels a change in the air pressure when the exit door from the basement floor opens and closes quietly below. Soon the shushing of rubber soled shoes on cement steps conjures the other three.

  Donny falls in behind Hugh and Bird and at the landing he crowds the others.

  “Back down, Moose,” Bird says. “How we supposed to get the door open?”

  Donny steams. “Hey, Birdbrain we’re not going in here. It’s on five.”

  Hugh whispers, “Are we ready? Good. But one last time, here’s how I want it to go. Charlie, remember the plan, just go up and knock on the door. You guys stay to the side so they only see Charlie through the peep hole. Bird and I will come up to five, but we’ll stay on the landing until you’re in. When you go in, leave the apartment door open a crack. When they give you the dope, say ‘Bingo.’ Then Bird and I will come in like the cavalry and we’ll scare the shit out of them. Donny pull your gun when we announce we’re cops.”

  “Here it is,” Bird says, and hands Donny the gun. Bird looks at the gun in Donny’s hand and says, “No that one’s mine.” He reaches into a pocket and pulls out an identical gun. “This one is yours.”

  Hugh says, “Twenty minutes from now, we’ll be yukking it up in our cars, heading home.”

  “Don’t forget the drugs. I want the drugs,” Bird says.

  Charlie nods for no discernable reason. He is clearly nervous but he would function. Charlie climbs up the stairs like they lead to the gallows, with Donny and Grayson right behind him.

  They go out the door and into the fifth-floor hallway, and down to apartment 52. Charlie knocks with a single knuckle, and in a moment the door opens and they hear hipster jazz. Above a playful flute they hear what sounds like a black guy bitching someone out. The music bops out to the hall and then they hear talking. A kid sticks his head out, tells them they have to wait a minute and closes the door again. He’s carrying on a tense dialog with someone else in the apartment who is out of earshot.

  The kid yells at someone in the apartment, and can be heard out in the hallway.

  “I said I would, so I will. Don’t sweat it. Sheesh.”

  “Hear that?” Donny asks. “It sounds like there’s an unhappy brother in there.”

  “The kid screaming?”

  “No, they’re playing the TV or the radio, something.”

  “That’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televis
ed,” Grayson says.

  “That a TV show?”

  “A song,” Grayson says.

  “That’s not singing. He’s talking.”

  “I get tired hanging with you, man. It drains the life out of me.” Grayson lights a cigarette and huffs it.

  Charlie waits fretfully while Donny does pushups off the wall, until Grayson tells him to cut the shit. Grayson slides over to the door to the back stairs, looks down the stair well and sees Hugh and Bird crouched and whispering. They look like two guys pitching pennies behind the corner store.

  A minute later, the apartment door opens and another young guy steps out with a zonked smile and pulls a sandwich bag full of pills out of his pocket to wag at the trio.

  “Forty bucks,” the happy customer says. “For fifty pills!”

  “Beautiful,” Grayson says. “What a deal.”

  The kid nods a few times with everything from the waist up, then turns and walks away in a stroll that mimics the guy in the Keep on Truckin cartoon by Robert Crumb.

  Charlie raps on the door, it opens and a tall, skinny kid with long blonde hair, wearing a headband and a dashiki stood there. He held the door open only just enough to insert his gawky frame.

  “Hey, are you Eric? Good. Eric, Judith downstairs says you were selling snacks.” Charlie says.”

  “Are these guys with you?”

  Charlie says, “Yeah, I guess. They were at the party, too. Judith gave us your contact info at the same time, so we came up at the same time.”

  Eric opens the door and waves them in. “It’s been a busy evening, we’re almost out of some merchandise. We’re very low on gange, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

  “Magic beans will do,” Donny says. Then quickly adds, “I shouldn’t speak for this little guy here, but me and my pal, we know we want pills. About this guy, I don’t know. I don’t even know his name. What’s your name---”

  “Hey, what are you reading,” Grayson says, interrupting jabbering Donny, who is going way overboard in explaining how much he doesn’t even know Charlie, for crying out loud.

  Eric has his finger inserted in the middle of a paperback book to hold his place. Grayson figures he’s dutifully doing his homework when not engaged in the illegal sale of stolen narcotics.

  “The Great Gatsby,” Eric says.

  “What’s that about, a magician?” Donny asks. Grayson wants to laugh but doesn’t, because he’s not sure if his cousin is making a joke.

  Eric appears confused, then says, “No, not really.”

  He leads them down the hallway inside the apartment. Grayson turns the door knob and shuts the door, but slides the button down on the lock so the lock doesn’t click.

  Donny walks in back of Eric, thus cutting off any chance Eric might have to see back down the hall behind him.

  Donny says, “We’re looking for a regular supplier we can have confidence in.”

  Eric says, “We offer quality pharmaceuticals, as well as organic, home-grown marijuana.”

  As they stood there someone in the far room lowered the volume on Gil Scott Heron.

  “No, man,” Grayson says. “Turn it up.”

  Eric says, “I love that song, too.”

  Donny says, “Yeah, but it sucks to dance to. Back to biz. A double saw for forty reds?”

  Seeing the kid draw a blank, Grayson pitches in. “Twenty dollars.”

  “No. We’re getting forty for fifty.”

  “I heard twenty for forty.”

  “No,” Eric says.

  “Well,” Donny says. “If that’s what you’re getting, we have to pay it.”

  “Let me get you what you’re looking for,” Eric says.

  “Cool,” Grayson says. “As long as we don’t get what we deserve.”

  Eric cackles. “Yeah!” Then he says, “What do you mean?”

  “Hey, that was a great song, the not-being-on-TV thing,” Donny says. “Play it again.”

  “We’re down with the revolution,” Eric says.

  “Right on,” Grayson says. He pumps his fist in the air.

  The kid walks down the hall and into a room at the end.

  “What a shithead,” Donny whispers.

  “This is the age we live in,” Grayson says. “Rich, white suburban kids, who probably never had dirty hands are ‘down’ with the revolution.”

  They hear a whiny voice coming from the other room.

  “Shhh,” Grayson says.

  He moves toward the room and listens.

  “I didn’t hear you ask them if they were cops, Eric?” the voice says.

  “That’s so stupid anyway. Like they’d tell me if they were cops.”

  He comes back out into the hall with red pills in a plastic sandwich bag.

  Grayson gives Eric forty bucks and then takes the bag.

  “Bingo!” Donny screams, his voice booming in the narrow hallway. Eric jumps back, hard, slamming into the wall behind him.

  Behind them the apartment door flies open and Bird, gripping a pistol in one hand, races past them, stopping at the end of the hall. Hugh closes the door into the apartment and follows Bird.

  “Police! Nobody move.” Bird speaks in a strong, controlled voice.

  Hugh points a gun at Eric.

  “Hands up, face the wall. Now!” he says.

  Eric is likely unused to being spoken to in such fashion. No please, no thank you, but, whatever the reason, he just stands there with his mouth open.

  Donny steps in front of Eric’s horrified face and grabs a mitt full of Eric’s dashiki and pins him against the wall. Donny’s ready to launch into some cop verbiage, but Eric’s eyes roll back and he slides down the wall to the floor. Donny holds on to the shirt as Eric slides, and he lands him gently.

  Down the hall, Bird is barking orders.

  “Police!” Bird says. “On the floor. Now!”

  His voice is urgent but modulated.

  Bird steps into the back room, and Hugh remains in the doorway with his gun raised.

  In the hall, Donny pulls a length of rubber coated wire from his back pocket, goes over to the unconscious Eric and rolls him face down and cinches Eric’s arms behind his back. Then he goes down the hall, nearer to the other two.

  Down the hall, Bird’s voice is louder. “Face down, on the floor. Now!”

  Hugh says, “Okay.” He speaks with less heat and lower volume than Bird, but loud enough so they can hear him in the hallway. “Stare at the floor. That’s how to do it.”

  “Where are your weapons?” Bird says.

  Donny goes down to the room where the action is and Grayson grabs Eric by the desert boots and drags him down the hall closer to the room. He stops and presses the prone Eric against the wall, like he was caulking a seam, and then he hurries down and stands outside the room, looking into it. In the room, Hugh, Bird and Donny are each standing over one of the three men on the floor.

  On the hall floor Eric begins to come to and when he does turns his face away from the wall. Grayson and Charlie both turn to look at Eric.

  “Oh, shit. Are you a cop, too?” Eric says to Grayson.

  “Yes,” Grayson says. He crouches facing Eric. “Be still and stay quiet.”

  Eric groans. “Oh, wow. Who narc-ed us out?” He looks up at Charlie. “You’re not...oh, no, you’re cop, too?”

  Charlie shakes his head. If he’s pretending to be scared, he’s an amazing actor.

  “No. We used this sap as our Trojan horse,” Grayson says. “He’s just a clapped-out junkie, like the rest of you, aren’t you, son?”

  Charlie nods and drops his chin to his chest.

  “I’m not a junkie,” Eric says. “I’m a college student. Take these off, please. What are they wires? They really hurt.”

  “Down at the station,” Grayson says.

  Donny comes out into the hall and looks at Eric. “What’s with all the gabbing out here? Keep this bozo quiet.”

  Then there is a flash of light and a crack sounds from the other
room; the crack bounces like a super ball between the hall walls. It might have been the sound of two bricks being slapped together like cymbals, but it isn’t. It is a bang, one that sounds like the end of the world. Grayson is flash frozen for a fraction of time that seems like forever, and also like it would last way longer than forever. He is snapped out of it by a sharp cry from Hugh.

  “What!” Grayson says. He and Donny push down to the back room. Donny gets there first, but stops dead in the doorway, and Grayson runs into his back, then pushes him aside and steps into the room. Hugh is standing there, unharmed.

  “What’d you shoot him for?” Hugh says, looking at Bird.

  “He was moving toward that bag,” Bird says. “He could have been going for a gun.”

  “So what?” Donny says. “Clout him on the head.”

  On the back of one of the prone guys, a dark stain spreads, turning his blue tee shirt shiny. Bird with the gun still in his grip stands looking down at the man on the floor. Grayson knows Bird is going to shoot again.

  “What the fuck?” Hugh says. He’s down on one knee beside the guy who’s been shot and puts a hand on his shoulder.

  “Hey, buddy?” Hugh says. “Can you hear me?”

  The guy’s face is slack and his breaths are ragged. He looks to be about the same age as the rest of them, maybe a few years older. The thumb on the guy’s left hand is twitching, tapping a soft, involuntary beat.

  Another guy on the floor in the room wails. “You shot Jimmy? He wasn’t doing anything.”

  Hugh gets up to face Bird, and Grayson sees Bird tilt the gun slightly in his brother’s direction. Donny has his revolver out and moves quickly.

  “That was loud,” Donny says. “Let’s get the stuff and go.”

  Bird bends and picks up a green trash bag. “There’s a bunch of pill jars in here, but no cash.” He looks at the guys on the floor. “Where’s the cash?”

  No answer.

  “Where’s the money?” Bird says.

  “In the couch,” says the other kid on the floor. He begins a rapid muttering, like he is praying quiet, fast, seriously.

  “What’s going on?” Eric shouts from the hall. “Are you guys all right?”

  Aside from the bleeding man, there are two others, face down on the floor in front of the sofa with their arms stretched out like they are pretending to fly like Superman.