Grayson's Knife

by Russell H Aborn

  “He was going for a gun,” Bird says. He appears as calm as if he was watching all this on TV.

  “Is there a gun in the bag?” Hugh asks.

  “Coulda been.”

  “No. No. Fuck no, you asshole,” the mouthy guy says. “We don’t have any guns. My father is going to sue the shit out of the Boston police. He’s—”

  The kid is cut off in mid threat when Bird kicks him on the side of the head. The praying kid is suddenly silent, too.

  “Shut up,” Hugh says. “Don’t make it worse.”

  “Hey, what’s going on in there?” Eric says from the hall floor.

  Bird snaps at Grayson. “Shut that clown up.”

  Donny and Hugh are closer to the couch than Bird is, and he gestures to them.

  “Go through the couch. Get the cash.”

  They turn and start fishing the couch, like Bird is the boss or something.

  Grayson is across the room from Bird; from there he could see the prone men and the guy Bird had shot.

  “Let’s go, let’s go, c’mon,” Bird says. He steps over the man he shot and moves over the mouthy pharm boy. Bird’s looking back at Hugh and Donny, then turns to Grayson.

  Hugh straightens up from searching under the cushions, elbows Bird out of the way, and speaks to the other kid, the one who had been praying.

  “Where’s the rest of the money?” He taps the kid with the toe of his shoe.

  “The couch. In back. Not the cushions. Is Jimmy okay? He doesn’t even live here,” the praying kid says.

  Bird smirks. “Yeah, sure,” he says.

  “Shut up,” Hugh says. “Nobody else has to get hurt. Just lay there and be quiet.”

  Grayson backs into the hall, blood pounding through his head.

  “I don’t get what’s going on,” Eric says. “Are you guys the cops?”

  “Yeah, we’re all undercover, except this little guy, and he’s in the shit just like you,” Grayson says, but his heart wasn’t in it now.

  “Who shot Jimmy?”

  “Shut up,” Grayson says. “Mind your own business, man.”

  Grayson went back to the doorway and watches Donny and Hugh each pick up an end of the couch to move it away from the wall. Then Hugh goes behind the sofa and drops out of sight. He tosses a roll of bills wrapped with rubber bands over the back of the couch onto the cushions.

  “Help me,” he says to Donny. “There are a bunch.”

  Now Donny disappears, too. Bird steps over to the kid he’d shot and points his gun at the back of the kid’s head and pauses. If he shoots him again, Grayson knows Bird will execute the other kids, too.

  Grayson says, “Don’t.”

  Bird looks up and sneers, and then back at the kid on the floor. One of the kids on the floor is crying in a way Grayson has never heard before. The kid was actually making a sound like, ‘wah wah.’

  “Wait,” Grayson says. “Don’t.”

  Bird looks at Grayson with a horrible smile, and again points the gun at the bleeding guy’s head.

  If Bird kills this kid, he will kill all the others, too. Grayson takes two steps, drops his shoulder and drives it into Bird’s mid-section. Grayson visualizes Bird bouncing off the wall and dropping the gun. But, unfortunately, instead of crashing into the wall, Bird crashes right through the fifth-floor window. The window had been cracked open, maybe to vent smoke, and Bird’s back hit the crossbar on the double hung window, took out the glass and the old wood in the window snapped like kindling. Bird is through the glass and out of sight in nothing flat. He’d torn out the entire window, except for a few chunks of splintered wood stuck here and there in the frame.

  Behind the sofa, Hugh pops up. “What the heck?” He looks around the room.

  Beside Hugh, Donny, with his Marine training, only pokes up enough of his head to see what is happening. Satisfied he is not in urgent peril, he stands up, looks at the gaping hole in the shattered window and then at Grayson. “Where’s Bird?”

  Grayson looks at the window, then points.

  “What did you do?” Hugh says, looking at Grayson.

  “He was going to finish off this kid he already shot. I wanted to knock him over and make him drop his gun.”

  Donny moves to the window and looks out. “It worked. He dropped it.”

  Grayson starts over to look, too, but Donny holds him back. “You don’t want to see.”

  Hugh goes to look, then shakes his head vigorously, as if to clear out cobwebs. “Oh, fuck.” He gets the two green bags that hold the drugs, and throws some of the banded cash rolls into each bag, and heads for the hall.

  Grayson is numb.

  “Please call an ambulance for Jimmy,” Eric says. He’s been pushing himself down the hall with the tips of toes, because now his head is in the doorway into the room and he looks up from the floor. He was still belly down, with his hands wired his back. “Don’t you guys have radios?”

  “No,” Donny says.

  “All right, Eric,” Hugh says, “Listen to me. Call an ambulance as soon as you can. But do not call the police. If you do so, because this is our sector, this Fenway area, dispatch will send us. Think about that. We will be the guys who answer your call and I promise you won’t like what happens then.”

  “Jimmy, he’s bleeding pretty bad,” Eric says.

  Hugh makes an arcing, global sweeping gesture. “And all this trouble you got in, let it be a lesson to you. Keep your nose clean. Get it?”

  They move down the far end of the hall and speak in frantic whispers.

  “What are we going to do?” Donny says.

  “You and I gotta get Bird out of here. A fall like that, he’s most likely dead, but we should check. If, by any chance he’s still alive, we take him to the hospital and leave him there. We have to tell Amy that we tried to help him.”

  Donny looks out the window again. “Okay, but he looks really dead.”

  “Should we take his body then?”

  “I was just trying to stop him from executing that kid. Really, it was an accident,” Grayson says.

  “We’re going to have to do better than that,” Hugh says. “His brother bikers are going to be pissed.”

  “Hey fuck them,” Donny says. “The Lard Dorks. Shit happens.”

  Hugh grabs Charlie and pushes him into a bedroom, and Grayson follows. “Just tell these kids you’re an unwitting patsy. Then book it. The cops will show up here in the next minute or maybe in an hour, who knows, but don’t hang around. Okay, let’s go.”

  He opens the door out to the hallway and looks side to side.

  Charlie has been so quiet and still that Grayson had forgotten he was there. Grayson pulls silent Charlie down toward the front door, and speaks quietly. “Remember, tell Eric again you weren’t with us, we just came upstairs at the same time. Say that, then beat it. I will be waiting at the car. Now go in there and pretend you’re rattled.”

  “Pretend? I’m losing my mind,” Charlie says.

  “I’m with you there. Fucking Bird fucked up everything.”

  “You didn’t help,” Charlie says.

  “Guilty.”

  Hugh is watching them from inside the front door to the apartment, and again he looks out into the hall.

  “We’re good. Go down the back stairs, but go out the front door,” Hugh says.

  They quietly cover the length of the outer hallway to the back stairwell and run down the cement stairs. At the bottom, Hugh says. “Hold up. Donny and can’t take the bags and move Bird, too. You take the bags.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll try Amy and see if she can reach Belzer. If so, I’ll say Bird wigged out and shot one of the pharm boys, and then another one shoved him out the window. I think if he gets these drugs he’ll be fine.”

  “You may have to give him the money, too,” Grayson says.

  “Fuck that,” Hugh and Donny say near simultaneously.

  “All right, let’s go see Bird,” Hugh says. They run down the last flight and t
oward the door to the back alley.

  Alone for now, Grayson exits out the front door and despite the heavy bags, he quick walks toward Kilmarnock St. and the car.

  When he reaches the corner, he slows to a casual walk, under control. Grayson dumps the bags in the trunk, unlocks the car door, hops in and starts it up.

  “Fucking Bird. Why did he shoot that guy?” Grayson says to the empty car. He’s waiting for Charlie but Donny comes flying up from the back alley, opens the door and jumps in the front seat.

  He looks at Donny, who stares straight ahead.

  “Bird?” Grayson asks.

  “Bird, Bird, Bird, the bird is the word, “Donny says. “Here comes Charlie,”

  Charlie is moving fast, considering the way he runs.

  “He runs like fucking Jerry Lewis,” Donny says.

  “What’s his, Bird’s, condition?”

  “Jelly like. We tried to move him but it was disgusting to touch him, he leaked from everywhere, so we split. Hugh had no blankets to wrap him or move him. We are unprepared for this circumstance.”

  “That bastard Bird was crazy, and not good crazy. Bad crazy,” Grayson says. He turns again to Donny. “You all right?”

  Donny doesn’t answer, he just jumps out of the car and holds the door for Charlie to get in the back.

  “Are you okay,” Grayson asks. “Did you tell them what we said?”

  “Am I okay? Fuck! What do you think? No,” Charlie says. “I’m gonna lose it. This is bad. Bad, bad, bad.”

  As Grayson noses the GTO down Boylston Street toward downtown, Charlie looks out the window.

  “Man-o-man,” Charlie says, with a sob. “This is not going to have a happy ending. We are screwed.”

  “Not yet,” Grayson says.

  At the first red light they hit, Charlie pushes on Donny’s seatback and tries to grab the door handle.

  “What the fuck, man,” Donny says.

  “Where are you going?” Grayson says.

  “I’m getting gone, gone, gone,” Charlie says.

  “I’ll take you where you want to go. First, don’t you want to go home and pack a bag or something?”

  “I guess so. I have to get some clothes and my bag,” Charlie says. “I need some money, too.”

  Donny says, “Won’t it look bad if the cops come around and you’ve split?”

  “What cops? Why would they come to me?” Charlie is sitting up and screaming in Donny’s ear. “Where will they get my name?”

  “I don’t know, man. So, go, leave.”

  Grayson says, “Charlie, you should bail if you want to, but I think what he means is there is no immediate rush. If they do manage to piece it together it will take a while so you have a day or two, at least, to get your act together.”

  “Are you armed?” Charlie asks behind Donny.

  “What? Why?” Donny says.

  “Give me the gun, too. I need a gun.”

  They argued for a bit and then Grayson says, “Give him the gun.” Donny handed the .38 over. “I bought that last night from Bird. You owe me $100. Hey, you’re scared shitless of guns. The way you’re shaking, you can’t even hold it.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  Grayson is taking as many backstreets as he can while they talked about where Charlie could go.

  “Will you be taking your car?” Donny asks.

  “I can’t take a chance on my shitbox. If it breaks down on the highway, the cops will be in my face, and it can only get worse at that point.”

  “It’s best if you don’t tell us where you’re going,” Grayson says. “I also think you’d be better off not leaving from Boston. They might be watching the bus station, the train stations and Logan. Let me drive you to Providence. You can get a train or even a plane from there.”

  “In Providence? What kind of plane? A crop duster? No, thanks,” Charlie says.

  “It’s not much of an airport, but they do have some flights,” Donny says.

  Charlie nodded. “No, I said. Dump me at the Greyhound station down on St. James Avenue. Last time I rode the dog I said it was the last time I’d ride the dog. Wrong again.”

  “So,” Donny says, “Charlie’s taking a bus to Timbuktu---”

  “Hey!” Charlie says. “Fuck you and Timbuktu, I never said Timbuktu, you did.”

  Donny turns to the backseat. “Calm down, man,” and turns back to Grayson. “What are you going to do?”

  Grayson shrugs.

  “Nothing personal but I have to get away from you fucking people,” Charlie says.

  “I understand,” Grayson says. “I’m sorry about all this.”

  “Not your fault. You’re just a dope like me. We should never have trusted Hugh. No offense, but your brother, I don’t know about him, man. He’s always in the middle of it.”

  They get to Charlie’s place and Donny jumps out of the car and pulls the seatback forward so Charlie can get out.

  Charlie pauses for a second and says to Grayson in a low voice.

  “I put the .38 down the back of your seat. Keep it away from him,” Charlie says.

  “Call me,” Grayson says. “I’ll drive you in town to the bus station. Call me.”

  On the street, Donny tries to hug Charlie good-bye, but Charlie was too fast for him. He feinted left, went right, and took off down the street.

  “See you later,” Donny yells to Charlie’s back. He watches him run off before climbing back in the car. “He really does run like Jerry Lewis.”

  He looks at Grayson, who is driving carefully. “Are you next? Dash off to parts unknown?”

  Grayson says. “I can’t leave. Not with my mother sick. Not without Catherine.”

  “And what am I supposed to do?” Donny asks. He looks out the window.

  “Why can’t you take off for a while?”

  “I got nowhere to go, and no one to go with.”

  “Come on. You have more girlfriends than Warren Beatty,” Grayson says. “Go to California for a long vacation.”

  Donny chuckles. “I wouldn’t have to bring a girl there. They have lots.”

  “Good point. Do you have a passport?” Grayson asks.

  “Yeah.” He nods. “I could go to Australia. I was in the Marines with a kid who married an Aussie girl and is living there. Mark Golden. He says the chicks there are all knockouts, not an ugly one in the country, and they are always horny and ready to go. Hey, let’s do it, you too. Golden says they sell these big, huge cans of beer down there, too. Something for both of us.”

  “That’s it,” Grayson says. “You go and maybe I’ll go down there later.”

  “I saw a real old movie one night,” Donny says. “Jimmy Durante played a sailor from Boston who went to Australia and ends up boxing a kangaroo. He got the shit kicked out of him.”

  “Jimmy Durante or the kangaroo?”

  “Jimmy Durante. He looked like an asshole, trying to punch a kangaroo.”

  “It’s worse that he got his ass kicked,” Grayson says.

  “Aah, I don’t know how I could live somewhere they enjoy boxing with the kangaroos. Now I’m thinking, ‘Why leave’?”

  “The law says we’re as guilty as Bird, since we were there, committing a felony.”

  “Tell me about it,” Donny says.

  “You’re an adrenaline junkie like Hugh,” Grayson says.

  Donny says nothing, and keeps his face toward the window.

  Then, “Hey, you remember the Civil Defense drills in elementary school, because of the nuclear threats. Hiding under the desk? Margie McCunliff sat in front of me, and when we’d go under, she’d pull her dress up and show me her business. I loved the drills. The Cuban Missile Crisis when we were in junior high? Made me really horny, man. I really hoped they’d make us go under our desks. I love the crazy shit. It’s everyday life that’s a killer.”

  “You were born for the times, then,” Grayson says. “It’s been one horror show after another. JFK, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy. Vietnam, Chic
ago Seven, riots, student takeovers. Bombs. A guy I know says we’re still in the 60’s now because Nixon’s still around. If you look at Kent State, the Munich Olympics, maybe he’s right.”

  “I saw Oswald get shot to death, live,” Donny says. “That was just exactly what I wanted to happen, someone to kill him, I kept wishing it and then it happened right in front of my eyes. Like magic. We were what, twelve?”

  Grayson nods.

  “For about two months after,” Donny says, “I was trying to wish other things into happening like that. I wished my brother Joe would bring his Army gun home so I could shoot my father, so he wouldn’t hit me anymore. Or he’d just disappear. That bastard, when he wasn’t slapping me around, he had this look on his face, like he just found out the hard way there was bird shit on his potato salad. When I got big enough, I drove his head through the kitchen wall. While his head was stuck there, I kicked him in the ass a few times. Remember?”

  “I remember your mother telling mine about it.”

  “I didn’t see him for five years, until his wake,” Donny says. “Your father told me, ‘It was hard on your father to get beat up by his 14-year-old son.’ He says my old man couldn’t come back after that. I said I felt bad I did it, and Uncle Dan says, “No. Screw him. He deserved it.’ So, I guess my wishing did make him disappear. Wishing and kicking.”

  “What I remember most from the 60’s,” Grayson says, “was Bobby Kennedy on the kitchen floor, man, that was…that was…terrible. It made me sick.”

  Donny says, “When the actual shooting was played back over and over again on TV, what I remember most was the yelling. Someone kept yelling, ‘Get the gun, Rafer, get the gun!’ I’ll always remember that, ‘Get the gun, Rafer!’”

  They pull into Hugh’s parking lot, where Donny had left his car.

  “Man,” Grayson says. “Do you realize the trouble we’re in?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Donny says. “Give me those bags. I have to bring them inside to Hugh.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Grayson spends the rest of Saturday night, or actually the pre-dawn hours of Sunday morning, smoking cigarettes in the Newbury Ave apartment. He eats nothing and drinks only ice water. Around 4AM he takes a shower and goes to bed, expecting to lie awake. He’s surprised when he wakes up at 5PM Sunday.