by Tod Goldberg
Jacob says, Baby, listen. We’re in big trouble.
Pool Boy takes a stack of bills, feeds the machine.
I’ve been stealing from my dad.
What?
For us. To give us a head start.
Are you crazy?
Pool Boy takes another stack.
I don’t know how short we’re going to be. But when Leon comes over here, I want you to tell him you took it. They’re just trying to scare us. So you say you took it. And then I’ll make it right.
Jacob.
Baby. Listen to me.
Jacob.
Baby, it’s going to be fine. Just do what I say, and in ten minutes, we’ll be on the road.
Pool Boy whistles. Two black birds lift off into the sky.
What do I say? Natalya asks.
Let me think.
Pool Boy feeds the machine. Big Leon tosses his cigarette into a bush. A spark of flame. He kicks sand.
You say you fucked up. You say your mom is behind on her bills. You say you’ll never do it again.
Pool Boy whistles again.
I won’t be able to pull it off. They won’t believe me.
Baby. You’ll make them believe. Okay? You’ll make them.
Big Leon and Pool Boy are on either side of the car, guns out. “Get the fuck out,” Big Leon says.
THE SOUTH SIDE of Swede Hill descends gradually into a plateau. The last remaining ruins of Ragtown are here. A triangular foundation that Jacob thinks must have been a church, but he’s not sure why he believes that. A circle of boulders surrounding what used to be a well. The bones of a house, two stone walls still standing. When he was here last, there was a shed beside the house, largely intact, somehow still upright. Back then, the house still had a chimney, too, but that’s long gone. Jacob focused on the shed. The way it lolled to the right but hadn’t collapsed. Tilted for one hundred years, but never fell.
It was a sign.
Jacob decided that if the shed were still alive, anything could survive out here, so they’d be fine, they’d make it out. Rationalizing his own existence based on the life span of a lean-to. It’s the sort of thinking Jacob doesn’t do anymore. It speaks of fate, and that’s not something he believes in. Every move he’s made in the last eighteen years has been a calculation.
Will this get me farther from Ragtown? If the answer is yes, then that’s the move he makes.
Stop this gangster shit? Yes.
Never marry, never even get close to someone else? Yes.
Snitch out his father? Yes.
BIG LEON AND Pool Boy zip-tie their hands. Drag them up the hill. Have them kneel beside each other.
There are two shovels already up here. A roll of tarp. In the distance, Jacob sees the shed, starts his magical thinking, his bargaining.
“Anything you want to say?” Big Leon says.
Tell them, Jacob says. Jesus, Natalya, tell them.
She says nothing.
“She took the money,” Jacob says.
“When?” Big Leon says.
“This morning,” Jacob says. “I was sleeping. She said her mom needed money for rent. She just told me.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ten thousand? Twenty?”
“Less than that.”
“So either you don’t know or you know it’s less than that,” Big Leon says. “Which is it?”
“We’ll go back to Vegas and get the money. However much it is.”
Why are you saying this? Natalya says. Why, Jacob? They’ll kill my mother.
Be cool, he says, baby, trust me.
Big Leon steps around Jacob, so that he’s standing in front of both of them. “Stop talking Russian,” he says. He points his gun at Natalya. “Is he telling the truth? Did you take the money?”
Natalya turns and looks at Jacob, and he sees every age she has ever been and ever will be. He sees her as a baby, he sees her at ten, at twenty-five, at fifty, seventy-five, a ventilator breathing for her at ninety, and then she is gone, she is sand, she is ocean, she is stardust, and she is nothing.
Jacobs nods, once.
Say it. It will be fine. We’ll get out of this. Say it.
Does he say this out loud? In memory, he does, but in reality, he doesn’t know. God, he hopes he didn’t, can’t stomach the sound of him pleading with her to lie for him.
“Yes,” she says. “I took the money.”
Big Leon steps to one side.
Pool Boy shoots her in the back of the head.
Just like that.
JACOB STARTS DIGGING. His back is shot from being on his feet sixteen hours a day at Odessa. Many nights, he sleeps on the pullout leather sofa in his office upstairs, had a full bathroom with a shower installed in the break room, ostensibly for the staff, but he’s the only one who uses it. Keeps a closet filled with black suits and white shirts, drawers filled with underwear and socks. His house is twenty minutes away, behind twenty-foot gates, on the ninth fairway at the TPC in Summerlin. Three thousand square feet and not one of them he cares to stand in. The truth, he always wanted to tell Detective Tiffany Peng, was that he’d woken up in a cell plenty of times.
And so he digs.
All those muscles he worked so hard for? They’re gone. He hasn’t seen the inside of a gym in years. Steroids destroyed his tendons, turned them into dental floss, hid a degenerative problem in his neck and lower back. So every time he drives the spade into the dirt, it’s like lightning through his body.
He doesn’t even know if he’s in the right place.
JACOB’S THIGH-DEEP IN the dirt, not sure if the grave is for him or for Natalya or for both of them, when another man shows up.
He’s in a suit, holds a long black duffle bag. Shakes Big Leon’s hand. Bumps fists with Pool Boy. Looks down at Jacob in the grave. Makes eye contact. Jacob recognizes him. His name is Ruben. Works at the funeral home in Summerlin. Jacob’s dropped bodies off there in the past. Ruben nods at him, but that’s it.
Sets his duffle bag down next to Natalya’s body, which is flat on the tarp. Opens it up, starts taking out tools. A hammer. Long knives. A cordless saw. Puts on gloves. Tips Natalya over. Feels the skin on her neck.
“Can’t do nothing with the organs,” he says. “She’s been out here too long. But I’m gonna take the legs and arms. Cool?”
“Whatever you can use,” Big Leon says.
“Anything else you need?”
“You dispose of the head?”
“That’s gonna be extra,” Ruben says.
Pool Boy drops the bag of cash next to Ruben’s feet.
Big Leon says, “We got whatever you need.”
Ruben says, “All right then.” He glances over at Jacob. “This the only one?”
Big Leon says, “For now.”
“All right,” he says. “I’m gonna need you to strip her.” Big Leon and Pool Boy exchange a look. “I’m not putting my DNA on her clothes. Mr. Dmitrov knows this.”
Jacob climbs out of the grave. “Get the fuck away from her,” he says. “I’ll do it.”
THE HOLE IS four feet deep when Jacob decides he’s done all he can do. He sits on the lip, digs into his pocket, pulls out the ring.
Two carats.
Princess cut.
Bought it with his own money. Nothing that he skimmed. Not that any dollar he made back then was legit. All of it came from some shit he was into. But when he went into Damon’s Diamonds on Lake Mead and Rainbow, he put on tan slacks, a pressed white shirt. Blue jacket. Put gel in his hair. Parked in front of Organized Living, checked his reflection in their window, walked across the parking lot of the Best in the West Center, buzzed the jeweler’s door, like a straight guy. Talked to the jeweler like he’d never seen diamonds, when in fact he had a drawer full of them, crusted Rolexes, stud earrings, the whole nine. Told him that his girl was twelve years younger, so he wanted to make sure the cut of the ring was classic, because the odds were, she was going to have it longer than she would
have him, that there would be years when all that remained of him was the promise of the ring.
He had this vision back then that he was going out like Sonny Corleone. Become a legend. People would make movies about him.
Fool.
Sonny Corleone wasn’t even real. He was just words on a page, frames of film, James Caan still fucking playmates in the grotto, never was dead, never would die.
Almost two decades lost. And here he is. Still looking for her. And she is in the dust.
Damon’s Diamonds is gone. Replaced by a Men’s Wearhouse. Jacob walks the racks sometimes, imagining himself. He’ll buy a shirt, just so it’s not weird, but in fact he’s trying to capture a ghost. It’s a thing he does. Visit the places he used to go when he was that guy. Champagne’s on Maryland Parkway, where he’d meet his father for a drink, talk business in a place they knew wasn’t bugged. Commercial Center on Sahara, where his steroid guy operated out of a sleeper van. Grape Street in Summerlin, where Natalya liked to get the chicken marsala. Hope that time will ripple, and he’ll be able to stop himself, that he’ll catch his own memory by the arm, will drag that boy out of his messes, and Natalya will somehow reappear beside him—thirty-six now, My god, thirty-six!—and this whole life will get rearranged.
But of course, that’s not how it goes.
Jacob drops the ring into the hole.
It’s done, he says.
The Russian thick in his mouth. He only ever dreams in the language now, never speaks it. Looping. Say it. Say it.
It’s done, he says.
It’s done, she says.
Gotovo.
You could die out here. Look at this place.
GANGWAY
Two weeks out of Joliet, Peaches Pocotillo gets a job delivering lost luggage for an outfit working O’Hare called Allied Baggage. This was back in the early nineties, when you could still get a job at an airport with a prison record. He’d done a year for assault after he put a guy’s head through a TV. Wasn’t the worst he’d ever done. Wasn’t the worst he’d ever do.
First month or so on the crew, Peaches just did the work. He had to. His parole officer wanted to see him with a straight job for a few months, at least, no hanging with known accomplices, which meant he had to punch a clock. Peaches didn’t mind. He had a plan for his life. This was good job experience.
Normal shift, he’d load up a company van and start making his rounds out to the neighborhoods—Wicker Park, Roscoe Village, Boystown, all those—and then to the big hotels on the Loop. The company had a contract with United, but O’Hare being the hub for half the airlines in the world, they’d pick up loose ends for a lot of the other domestic carriers, but where they made their cheddar was on the international flights. You get a bunch of pissed-off foreign tourists without any underwear, you’ll pay anything to get them their shit, morning, noon, or night. Which was what Peaches thought was going down when he got the call to come in at 2 a.m., a couple nights after Christmas.
“You’re using your own car tonight,” MaryAnn told him when he pulled up. She stood in front of the company warehouse, three blocks north of the airport. “We’re off the books. Client didn’t want to wait until morning for his stuff, so we’re doing a favor. I can give you twenty-five cents a mile.”
“If it’s a favor,” Peaches said, “how about fifty?”
“This isn’t a negotiation,” MaryAnn said. She shifted from foot to foot. Snow fell lightly to the blacktop. Peaches spied the suitcases on either side of her. Nice ones. Tumi. Expensive bags meant expensive clothes meant expensive jewelry meant expensive medications and all that. So Peaches, he didn’t say shit, until finally MaryAnn said, “Christ. I’ll do thirty-five and no bitching. Pop your trunk.”
Peaches wasn’t down with people seeing inside his trunk, so he said, “Put it in the backseat,” and MaryAnn did. MaryAnn handed him a Post-it with an address all the way out in Batavia, forty-five minutes away. “I roll up into this neighborhood at 3 a.m.,” Peaches said, “they’re going to call the cops.”
“They’re on Rome time,” MaryAnn said.
“Which is what?”
“Morning. Like, champagne-brunch time.”
“Their neighbors synchronize their watches?” Peaches asked. Peaches liked MaryAnn. She was around fifty and though her husband, Silas, owned the business, everyone dealt with her. The company employed maybe ten ex-cons, got some kind of tax dispensation from the state, but MaryAnn seemed to have a soft spot for guys coming out of prison. Even brought Peaches a bag lunch every day, until he got his first paycheck. It was just basic shit. Peanut butter and jelly. A bag of chips. A can of RC Cola. Nice is nice and that was nice. But still. Peaches wasn’t going to have some rent-a-cop for an alarm company pull him over. That could result in a body.
“It’s fine. They’re expecting you. No one in Batavia has been awake for seven hours.”
“You say so,” Peaches said, “but I get hassled, I’m not responsible for my actions.” He started to put his window up, but MaryAnn grabbed it.
“You have a good Christmas, hon? You get up to see your family?”
“No,” Peaches said.
“What’d you do all day?”
“I’d planned to read,” he said, “but then I got busy with a friend, who also needed a favor, it turns out.” His idea was that he’d get back to his real estate textbooks over his day off, immerse himself again, get that habit back. He’d taken thirty hours of certification classes at Joliet. Did pretty well. Thought he might like to get his license. Had another sixty hours to go before he could take the test. You wanted to be a real gangster, you learned about property. He learned that playing Monopoly. Free parking wasn’t shit. Owning Boardwalk and Park Place, that was the game.
So he was all set.
Pot of coffee.
Stack of books.
Rudolph getting bullied on the TV.
But instead he got a call from his cousin up in Kenosha about someone who needed to get got, a quick five Gs, so off he went. Peaches had been in the game since he was thirteen, had a good dozen bodies already. Just how it was. So Christmas night, he was chopping up some motherfucker and sprinkling his remains into Chain O’Lakes. Cash was coming down after the New Year and then maybe he’d enroll in some real estate classes. Kaplan had something starting February 1.
“You’re a good friend,” MaryAnn said. “But listen. You are always responsible for your actions. I’ve met a hundred boys like you. And what you think is important now is not going to seem that way if you’re back in Joliet doing fifty, sixty years. Okay? Someone cares about you. Do you understand that?”
“I get fifty years,” Peaches said, “I’ll be doing them from the grave.”
“Listen,” MaryAnn said. “You come back here after the drop. I have some green bean casserole in the fridge. You take it home, okay?”
“That’s real nice of you,” Peaches said.
A police cruiser, running its sirens, screamed up the frontage road beside the warehouse. MaryAnn pulled away from Peaches’s car, watched until the cruiser disappeared, smiled down at him. “Quick like a bunny,” she said, “get it done, okay?”
“This job,” Peaches said, “it’s not something criminal, right? Not a bunch of cocaine in those bags, is there?”
“I wouldn’t do you like that, hon.”
“But don’t mention it to Silas?”
“Just a side hustle,” MaryAnn said, and then she stared at Peaches for five, ten, fifteen seconds, snow melting in her hair. “Fifty cents a mile, then you come back here tomorrow for your regular shift, and we’re cool, okay?”
PEACHES POCOTILLO CAME from a solid criminal family. His father, Junior Pocotillo, had been running protection rackets on tribal lands and in the rural backwoods since the late 1970s. The mob hadn’t touched that shit since the Green Ones got out of the meat and farming rackets in the 1930s. He’d grown up in Chicago around Family and Outfit wiseguys but set up shop in Wisconsin after getting in some trouble o
n a manslaughter beef. Did five years at Joliet before he flipped on some Outfit fools on another killing altogether. Five years was enough time to make it look like he hadn’t snitched. Not that the Outfit hadn’t done shit for him, so fuck them. If the old bastard were still alive—some La Raza motherfuckers had him clipped, probably hired by the Native Mob, since Junior never did clique up, and that caused understandable problems—Peaches would pull over, find a pay phone, and ask him his advice about the bags in his backseat.
Straight motherfucker would just go and do as he was told.
Straight motherfucker might not even think anything was unusual about this whole situation.
But Peaches, man, he wasn’t some straight motherfucker.
After twenty minutes of circling around, thinking about the best way to handle this, Peaches pulled off the highway when he couldn’t take it anymore. So he parked in front of a twenty-four-hour Jewel’s, where the lighting was good, workers coming off swing shift getting their groceries, Chicago the kind of town where people still worked swing, and no one thought it was weird you’re hanging around a grocery store in a jumpsuit with your name on the chest.
First bag was filled with women’s clothes—a stack of St. John knits, Gucci pencil skirts and slacks, a small Gucci bag, too, a bunch of high-heeled shoes, a pair of black boots, nice, all shit Peaches recognized was pricey from periodically housing shit from the Marshall Field’s on State Street—but then Peaches discovered a little pouch covered in fake pearls, unzipped it, found what he didn’t know he was looking for: diamond earrings, diamond necklace, neither huge carats, but a diamond is a diamond. Tasteful gold hoops, then: a tennis bracelet, platinum, twelve diamonds, a fucking mint. Well, a junior mint. And then four other bracelets and necklaces, three sets of earrings, all of them pricey.
Whole bag could probably get him ten Gs on the streets. Those diamonds were not a fucking joke. But he wasn’t going back to prison for ten Gs and anyway, they were worth fifteen times that amount, but who had $150K sitting around, waiting for some stolen ice?
So he opened the second bag.
In addition to a few men’s suits—one blue, one black, one gray, all folded in a way so intricate Peaches didn’t even recognize them as suits at first—and two pairs of shoes, underwear, socks, a couple polo shirts, a green sweater, undershirts, slacks, jeans, there was a combo-locked hard-side pistol case.