by Brian Selfon
Shecky coughs into the crook of his arm. Has half a mind to throw himself into the East River, only there’s a money problem to be worked out. For the kids.
Twenty-five thousand dollars—Shecky doesn’t have it just lying around the house. While the fixer manages many bags of cash, he doesn’t keep much of it. Most of the money returns to the client, and then there are operational expenses. Burner phones, burner computers, the runners, the transaction surcharges, Kerasha’s legal fees—everything adds up, and forty-eight thousand dollars would have to come out of the house. A reverse mortgage, if only it were in his name. And so Shecky will have to tap the family’s emergency reserves. Secured by private-client banks—the fixers’ fixers, you can’t imagine better—these accounts have no documented connection to Shecky Keenan, Henry Vek, or Kerasha Brown. Instead they belong to a paper family, the identifications of whom are handwritten on the index card taped beneath the cabinet.
Which Shecky, at this moment, is not strong enough to lift.
He curses himself. You do everything online. You use your computer for every client. You have your protocols, your IP spoofers, and your anonymized cloud accounts. You regularly swap out old laptops and phones—so why, for emergency money, are you depending on an index card? There’s exactly one reason you can’t access your accounts right now: you.
His hands are shaking. He can’t lift the cabinet, even though it’s empty, even though he tries and tries, the metal biting into his skin, and even though he’s clenching his core—the cabinet is unimpressed. It hasn’t gotten heavier, he knows, but age has unmanned him. The miseries of this past week. And so he calls Henry and then waits at his old desk, lost in a thoughtless fog. Drumming his fingers not far from the briefcase stuffed with dirties.
* * *
The door opens with a bang, as if kicked. “The fuck are we doing here?” Henry storms in and looks around.
We, for Shecky, is the operative word. Trailing Henry is that girl.
“We,” Shecky whispers, “is you and me. She can’t be here.”
“She,” Lipz says, before Henry can get out a syllable, “is getting her name back. Where’s my money?”
Henry looks from her to Shecky and back again. “Am I missing something?”
“Your uncle and I had a little chat,” Lipz says. “He didn’t tell you?”
“She came into the house.” Shecky tries to keep the anger out of his voice. Fails. “She told me she’s our connect to the client.” With a hardening look at Henry: “Something I should have heard from you.”
“You talked without me?” Henry looks fit to break something. “The two of you—alone?” Hopefully the something will be Lipz. “Behind my back? The fuck is that?”
Lipz shrugs. “Business.”
“You don’t know a goddamn thing about business,” Shecky says. “Neither of you.” To Henry: “Our storage unit isn’t for friends. It’s not for clients, and it’s certainly not for her.”
Lipz lights a cigarette. “Rude.”
“You’ve put the whole family at risk,” Shecky says to Henry. “We’ll have to find a new unit now. She’s a problem, she shouldn’t be here.”
“Okay, but she’s my problem,” Henry says. “And my partner. You called me here, she was with me—we’re here. So let’s get through this, okay? I can handle her.”
Lipz ashes on the floor. “Since when?”
“Partner?” Shecky looks from Henry to Lipz and back again. “You’re together now?”
“Define together,” Lipz says, taking a long pull on her cigarette. Then flicking it, and pulling out a gun.
Her eyes are on Shecky, who is frozen—can’t breathe—but her gun is on Henry.
No, no, no! Not him—
“You’ve always been a bitch to me,” she tells Shecky. “But this isn’t personal. This is about you being bad at your job.”
Shecky straightens. His panic scatters, and out from the mist comes a violent determination. “You touch my boy, and I will fucking end you.”
She rolls her eyes. Mouths a word Shecky is pretty sure is what-evuh. “You lost the money. You. This is your operation. Take responsibility, get me the money, or I’ll hit you where you’re soft.”
“You selfish, sloppy addict.” Henry takes a step closer to Lipz—closer to the gun—and now he stands between Shecky and death. “This is too crazy, even for you. You’re using again.” Panic comes back and hits Shecky like a cold bolt to the chest. This must be what it feels like to have a heart attack. He tries to maneuver himself in front of Henry but is immediately overpowered—is lifted and set down a few feet back.
A snort from Lipz. “You guys are too cute.”
“This is selfish bullshit,” Henry spits at Lipz. “I’m not twelve-stepping with you a second time. We’re done. You get that? You and me are fucking—”
“The money,” Lipz says to Shecky, leaning to speak around Henry.
Shecky is shaking. He puts a hand on the desk, and it wobbles. There’s a gun taped to the back of this desk, but how to grab it, pull off the tape, and turn and use it—it’s impossible. She could empty her weapon twice.
“You’ll get the money,” Shecky says. A low growl. “I’m working on it.”
“That doesn’t sound like a plan.”
“The plan is we’re getting a loan. From another client.”
The announcement visibly jolts Henry, who turns to look at him. “Since when?”
Shecky speaks past him. “The loan will square things for us. Please, for fuck’s sake.” His eyes on the gun, his voice cracking. “Put it down.”
Lipz looks at Shecky a long time. Then she smiles, points the gun at her own head, and pulls the trigger.
Click.
A long, dark quiet, then a roar from Henry: “Fuuuuck!”
Shecky opens his eyes. Hadn’t realized he’d closed them. He breathes but can’t catch any air.
“A loan!” Lipz is smiling as she pockets the gun. Heads for the door. “We can be friends again, I love it. So glad I stopped by.”
“And now you’re getting the fuck out,” Shecky says. He slams the door behind her, then turns his full anger on Henry.
“I should’ve guessed the gun was empty,” Henry says to Shecky, reaching around Shecky to bolt the door. “That wasn’t real.”
“Then why are you locking the door.” Shecky is still catching his breath, still trying to get some warmth back into his body. The kicks to his ladder, the gun pointed at Henry. “That girl is dangerous. Get rid of her, we’ll all live longer.” He’s about to say something else but sees Henry’s shaking now, too, coming off the adrenaline. And Shecky once again feels he’s with the little boy Henry was, the small person who slept on the floor beside him. Shecky touches Henry’s shoulder. Indicates the file cabinet: “Come on, help me lift this.”
“Wait, what you said about the loan.” Henry nods them away from the door, and the two move to the far side of the storage unit. Low voice: “Total bullshit?”
“We’ve already got the money.” Lower voice: “It’s in that briefcase.”
“Holy fuck.” He looks back to the door. Soft-shoes to the briefcase, touches it. Then seems to catch himself. “Wait. Can’t we just give this to Lipz?”
“She’s not our client,” Shecky says. “And we get no commission for losing cash and then giving it back. We’re going to treat this like a normal job. We’ll get the money into the machine, and it’ll hit Red Dog’s offshores by tomorrow.”
Henry nods, backs away from the briefcase. “Who’re we borrowing from?”
“Our friend at the Paradise Club. He got us most of the way there.”
“Most of the way?” Once again he looks back at the door. “Red Dog’s not going to be okay with that.”
“That’s why I called you here.” Shecky, growing impatient, again points Henry to the file cabinet. “I need your help lifting this up. There’s a card taped to the bottom.”
“A card?”
“An index
card. With the details for our emergency accounts. The PINs, the names I used. Give me a hand, will you? My fucking knees.”
Henry blinks. “We have emergency accounts?”
“Of course we do.” Impatience heating up now. “I set them up when you moved in. Got a couple in Luxembourg, a new one in Singapore. Quiet countries. No wars, no problems. And there’s a new account for Kerasha. So come on, help me.”
Henry looks at the cabinet, then back at Shecky. “You never told me.”
“And you’re fucking welcome for that.” He takes a step closer, a glow in his eyes reflected from the hurricane lamp. “Some things are better not knowing. When the cops come at you with questions, and you say I don’t know—it’s better if you really don’t know. But we don’t live in the better, right? Your friend went out and got himself killed. And my knees are fucked, and I can’t lift this thing up anymore. Last month I could, but tonight—just fucking help me.”
But Henry is backing away from him. His face is in shadows, his voice a low, steady growl. “Emil didn’t get himself anything’d. He was murdered.”
“Okay, fine, it was murder.” Shecky is so done with this shit. “But sometimes murder gets invited.”
“Excuse you?” Henry’s voice is raised, and Shecky sharpens his own.
“Tell the truth. Your friend. Was he a good runner? Did he follow the rules? Did he check in when he said he would—always? Did he hand over his receipts—all of them? Every time? Was he discreet?” He’s been approaching this whole time, and now he’s right up in Henry’s face. “Would you have given him a big carry—would you have even kept him on—if he wasn’t your friend?”
Henry says nothing for a long time, but there’s a soft sound from some quiet, pushed-back corner of his chest—it’s either a little cry or a no. Then the kid goes to the cabinet. And finally—fucking finally—he squats, lifts, leans the big metal piece against the wall, and paws the card off the bottom.
Shecky watches his nephew admiringly. Regretfully. “Thanks, Hen,” he says, taking the card. Feeling a little sick inside. “Listen. I’m sorry about what you’re going through. It’s just—”
A thud and then a shuffling sound.
The cabinet, dropped rather than repositioned, has decided to release a drawer. And the drawer hits the desk, and one of the file stacks tumbles down. Loose papers drift, clipped and rubber-banded packets hit the floor. And in Shecky’s rush to save another file from sliding off the desk, he knocks down the briefcase. It manages a little bounce before it breaks open, and despite Shecky’s sorting and rubber-banding, filthy cash spills out across the floor.
The room is silent except for the quickening of Shecky’s heart. And Henry’s looking at the money, looking at him. And Henry may be muddy-headed sometimes, and he’s certainly too soft and trusting with his friends. But the kid is neck-deep in the business, and here’s something Henry has known since he was a boy: money from the Paradise Club has never looked like this.
Across a frozen, never-ending moment, Shecky feels Henry’s eyes on him, waiting for an explanation.
chapter 38
“Think, you junkie cunt. Where is it? Think.”
While Mama paces, Kerry Brown, twelve years old, sits out on the fire escape. She peeks in only when, judging by Mama’s footsteps, she won’t be spotted. Mama walks the kitchen, pausing to turn out cupboards, to scratch herself, to scream at the walls and laugh. “Come out, come out, olly-olly-oxy!” She’s not looking for Kerry, of course. She’s looking for the yellow-white powder in the little glass vial, which Kerry has in the palm of her hand. On TV, people hold crucifixes this way. They close their eyes and pray with their hands to their mouths, and Kerry wants to say something to the vial. But how do you pray to a yellow-white powder? What do you ask for, and what do you promise?
“I’m so sorry,” Mama says, but not to Kerry. Never to Kerry. “I hid you and forgot where. You know how my mind is now. A staggered, tripped boy, a shod-toe. I’ll remember once you’re in my blood. That’s the irony, right? The old lady needs her glasses to find her glasses. And this lady just needs her meds, and she put them … Where? Think, cunt, think. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
Hearing sickening, rhythmic thuds, Kerry risks another peek. Mama is beating the word stupid into her head, punching the sides of her skull, hitting the same two points again and again, as though those were the places where her memories went to hide. Kerry can’t watch this for long. Fire escape to top floor, top floor to hall, hall to airshaft, airshaft to roof. She arrives at her secret spot. Here, and nowhere else, she is safe. Here she turns over the ways she is wicked. Mama wants something. Kerry has it, but she’s not letting go. Mama is in pain. Kerry can make it go away, as she has so many times before, but this time she won’t. And Mama doesn’t suspect her, blames herself, not her Kerry, for the lost medicine.
Well look at your twelve-year-old now, Mama. Heading up to try a little medicine myself.
Kerry has a sterile syringe, swiped this morning from Krupa Pharmacy. A lighter from the bodega, a spoon from Peter Luger—she went all the way into Williamsburg yesterday just to palm something quality. Only the best for a first kiss.
Hello, darkness. It’s been a long time coming.
Five years later the police find her unconscious in the supply closet of Krupa Pharmacy, having somehow—in a kind of anti-miracle—locked herself inside with a Konnekt padlock. Scattered around her are the sterile syringes she came for. Also with her is a backpack stuffed with bags of heroin, a half kilo’s worth, yanked from her dealer’s supplier. This is enough to put her in the cage for three years, and qualifies her for a sentence extension when she is caught after escaping the prison.
It’s almost a week after the murder, Kerasha is twenty-three years old. She walks to the corner of Weirfield and Evergreen and spots the same old dealer on the same old stoop—no, it’s not the same kid, they never last. Not that she was ever a regular customer. She was always more of a taker than a buyer. But this new dealer has the same sleepy look as the old dealer. And he gives her the same leer, and the transaction is smooth, like he’s been expecting her all this time. It feels good to pay for it.
As for the powder, she hasn’t tasted it in years, but it’s a once-and-always lover, knows just where to touch her. But first there’s pleasure in anticipation, in the slow walk to the bus stop. The twin vials make a single lump in her pocket, not much bigger than a marble.
Are you listening, ponytail? You got that silver pen ready?
Here’s the truth about the almighty want. It doesn’t come from Mama or her daily bag. It doesn’t come from me supplying her, and it doesn’t even come from after. Not from hunger, not from picking and stealing, not from the filaments that never landed, the web that never held, not from being the girl the world looked past. The want came simply, and came only, from the heroin. It’s my first and faithful; life is the substitute, not the other way around.
On the roof of the Moses Houses’ Tower C, Kerasha, once a famous child thief, now a graduate of the Franklin Institute of Those Who Failed Even at Crime, puts the needle in her arm. She feels the burn move up her neck, then the prickle, then the quiet.
Let on the inhale, go on the exhale.
Hello, darkness. Feels good to be home.
chapter 39
“It wasn’t loaded,” Lipz says.
“I didn’t know that.” Henry is driving them back from the Gowanus storage unit. “That could have gone sideways fast. If I’d had my gun—”
“Yeah, yeah. You would’ve killed me.” She rolls down the window. Spits. “I’ve been through worse.”
A honk, and Henry changes lanes. He’s driving too fast, he knows, but his foot wants to go straight through the floorboard. Their borrowed van belongs to a former runner, now a roofer, and the interior smells like lung disease. Henry has half a mind to eject Lipz from this van, and maybe run her over with it, but he needs answers.
“So you and my uncle got together,” he says
, “and neither of you fucking told me?”
She’s uncharacteristically silent. He looks over. She’s giving him boo-hoo eyes. Speaking in a boo-hoo voice: “And are you … sad?”
“I’m angry.” He gives her what he wants to be an angry look, but which he knows, in fact, is really just … sad. “I don’t know that we’re going to get past this.”
“It’s not like I had a choice. Your uncle controls the money. He makes the decisions.” She spits again and then rolls the window back up. “You made that perfectly clear when we were talking about my cut.”
“But I’m the one who’s fixing everything!” Again, Henry hears the sad little boy in his voice. Doesn’t like it, so he slows himself down. Deepens his voice. “Talk to your boss. He can check his offshores tomorrow. So no more pointing your gun at anyone, okay? Including yourself. You’d better not be using again.”
“I’m not.” She gives him a long, steady look before turning back to the window. “But if I were high right now, I’d say exactly the same thing.”
Henry takes the van around a double-parked taxi. “Your boss got his money, you got your name. Everyone’s happy.” He slows, changes lanes to pass a wide-load truck, speeds up again. Glances over at Lipz, who’s still looking out the window. Henry asks, “Aren’t you happy?”
She turns back to him, but only for a moment. “We’re not built for that.”
* * *
Dawn, they’re parked at a Mobil station. A knock at the window. Henry rolls it down: it’s his regular Thursday guy.
“Everything okay, boss?”
“Getting there.” Henry hands over the briefcase. “The slips are inside. Wait for my text. Then it’s a rush job, okay? Double pay, but fucking do it right.”
“No problem, boss.” Thursday makes to go, but then he takes a second look at Lipz, who’s now sleeping in the front passenger seat. “Cute.”