by Jeffrey Lent
“A little business. Might be late. You want something, want me to drop you somewhere?”
“No. I’m fine to stay home. You want me to ride along with you?”
“No. It’s no big thing.”
“I’ll ride if you want.”
Jamie shook his head. “There’s no need. Like I said, it could be late.”
“All night maybe?”
Jamie smiled. “It’s not what you think. Tell the truth, I wish it were.”
“It wouldn’t bother me you had a lady friend.”
“Is that so?”
“It wouldn’t.”
“Well, then.” Jamie stood, ran his hands up under his braces to smooth his shirt. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
It was well past dark when he left the house but he felt no urgency, driving away with the same easy calm over him the supper had brought forth. Focused and steady. Came up into Bethlehem and thought of Foster earlier in the day, no doubt cruising the small streets as lord of the way, and with this bemusement fresh over him he recalled the little snub-nosed automatic tucked up under the seat. He reached down and felt for it, his fingers against the crosshatched grip, thinking still of Foster. It wasn’t fear of Foster finding the gun; the boy had known, without ever being told, not to poke anywhere, to leave things be. It was the fear of needing the gun. A complicated, essential fear: that he might not be able to protect any single thing, come down to it.
A dank mood and a rank mind. Hotel guests were out walking the lamplighted streets of Bethlehem. He drove slowly. Not looking side to side but straight ahead.
He took the long way over the hills to Franconia, the back way, the rough track. It was still early. He stopped three quarters of the way where the small meadow opened amongst the trees. He left the car running and took the automatic out from under the seat and got out. The gun heavy in his hand. A good thing, that weight. In the headlamp beam he studied the safety lever and moved it up and down, on and off. Then pointed the gun out ahead of him down into the ground and clamped his right index finger hard back against the trigger. The noise an abrupt rupture in the night. The gun leaped in his hand. As an echo to the concussion of the firing heard the deep whomps as the soft-nosed bullets drove into the ground. Saw a faint spatter of dirt and torn grass rise. Satisfaction. He was a little bit restored. He knelt in the pale tangerine light and reloaded the clip and shoved it home. Another click of satisfaction hearing the snap of the mechanism grasp the clip. He left the safety off and got back in the car, now setting the gun in the glove box.
Down into Franconia, over the bridge, down the Easton valley. At the Carrick farm a light burned in the parlor window. He went on past the farm for several miles and turned and came back north and drove into the trailhead pull-off and shut down the car. Sat in the batwing dark a long time before the silence of the night settled and came alive around him. The light was still burning at the farmhouse window. And he decided it wasn’t that early after all. He sat waiting.
Then, just like that, like he’d already seen it happen, a little after midnight an automobile came down the road and turned into the farmyard. He watched as it backed around in the yard, dousing its lights as it slid behind the barn. He’d done the same thing himself many times. Still he sat. Only moments passed and the parlor light went out and then there was the bob of a lantern being carried from the house toward the barn. He waited until the lantern blacked out going into the barn. He fired a smoke and smoked it down and then started the Chrysler and pulled onto the road with his headlamps off and drove slow until he came to the farm drive and as he made the turn in hit the gas pedal and reached to the dashboard for the lamp switch and so came in fast and hot to pile up beside the strange car, Jamie already out of his door with the heavy little gun in his hand as he raced around the Chrysler past the other vehicle, a big Dodge touring car with the top down, its engine running also. He kicked open the barn door and came into the pale circle of lantern light.
Carrick and three other men. Heads up. Cases of whiskey in a stack on the barn floor, right out in the open. Waiting.
Jamie had the gun up, jerked the trigger once and remembered to let go. One case in the stack splintered and jetted. Jamie cried, “That’s it, boys. You all hold on now.”
The three strange men turned very slowly toward him. He was outside the circle of light. They moved as if practiced, their hands swept away from their bodies, young birds contemplating arrested flight.
One of them said, “What’s this?”
Carrick said, “It’s him.”
“Jeeter, you fuck.”
Another of the men said, “It’s Pelham?”
“Shut the fuck up! Jeeter, I’m done with you, you fuck.”
The first man said, “Calm down, friend. Mr. Carrick here might be surprised but we been expecting you. Just calm down.”
Jamie advanced halfway to the circle. Swinging the gun in an oval over the men. “You don’t expect shit. Shut up.”
Carrick said, “It’s nothing off you. I been straight with you.”
Jamie made another step and leveled the gun off at the first man. “I’m not hard to find, you wanted to. How long you been expecting me?”
The man smiled at him. Took his hands down from their winged-up stance and rubbed his face. “As long as it took you to wake up.”
“I’m awake right now.”
“That right?”
“You Pompelli?”
The man laughed. Then looked up into the darkness of the overhead haymows and studied them. Back at Jamie. “You only think you’re awake.”
What happened then he thought as it was happening that later he would look back and see he’d missed something. The softlight footsteps onto the mowfloor chaff. A pivot turning in one of the men’s eyes. Some sense of something coming behind. All this ballooned in his brain the instant the hard round double end of a shotgun struck into the nape of his neck, the base of his skull. And from behind she said, “Toss it off. Toss it off, shithead.”
And in that moment between when she spoke and he understood, she did not wait but pulled the shotgun back away from his head and drove it forward again so the barrel ends struck him hard this time, knocking him forward and off balance even as her message came through and he let go of his gun, throwing it into the thick layer of last year’s chaff before the mounds of new hay. His head a bright brute flare of orange and clear-white pain. Then he was down on the floorboards, the rough uneven planks of the mow. Jeeter said, “There’s Mother now.”
The three men gathered Jamie up off the floor, all with little guns out like Jamie’s that one collected from the chaff and put in a pocket. His head a continual echo of pain. Amy Carrick in a housedress and open sweater holding across her front a shotgun more as one would hold a broom. One of the men went to her and lifted the shotgun away from her and she let him take it. Jamie could not see Carrick, he was behind where they made their group on the barnfloor but Jamie held no hope for Jeeter’s help anyway. That much he’d known before he tossed out that last cigarette and drove on in here.
They lashed his wrists behind him with a piece of lead-rope. He stood for this without moving or speaking. The one who’d first spoken was the leader of the three, not in some way overt but by inclination, the sweep of personality. Perhaps he was the most calm of the three. When they were done tying him the first man said to Jamie, “Like I said, you been expected. You want to see Mister Pompelli, do you? Well now, nothing so bad as he’s wanting to see you.”
Jamie said nothing to this.
The man stood regarding him a moment and then did a very odd thing: reached out and with one open hand lightly stroked Jamie’s cheek.
Then he turned and spoke to the Carricks. “You two follow us. Bring his car too. I don’t want it sitting here. Drop it off in Franconia, one of the hotel lots, and then follow on.”
Amy Carrick said, “I’m not leaving the children—”
He cut her off. “I’m not asking a favor here.”
Jeeter said, “Mother.”
The man said, “That’s right, Mother. Listen to your husband.”
Jamie spoke then. “I don’t see the need to leave my car at Franconia. Just carry it on to where we’re going, I can take it home from there.”
The man smiled at him. “Well, there. That makes sense. But Mister Pompelli don’t like too many cars cluttered around his place. He don’t like the attention.”
They drove in caravan up the Easton valley, one of the men driving the Dodge, the other two with Jamie between them in the backseat. Some distance behind followed one of the Carricks with the Chrysler and behind that the other Carrick driving their old Ford. His brain working now, trying to settle, seeking the angle, the hook to spread for Pompelli. He didn’t have much: Pompelli already had Carrick; this left Jamie with some distribution. Not much, given that Pompelli could easily, might already, be duplicating it. His local contacts, those glad-handed receivers of monthly cash, Pompelli would have those also. Pat Jackson. There was nothing he could give Pompelli of Pat Jackson. Jackson would get him killed he guessed. So what he had. Not much. Just to wait and see. See Pompelli.
In Franconia they turned east and he began to think they might be headed south through the Notch, down to Lincoln, North Woodstock. Some part of him had always guessed this might be where Pompelli was. Only because he did not go that way much himself. He’d always worked north of the Notch.
Then they turned again and went up the hill toward the Forest Hills and it was here that they idled roadside while the Carricks left the Chrysler in one of the lots but then they continued on, going toward Bethlehem on the Agassiz road. And Jamie knew he knew nothing. There was a bad moment when he thought they might be going back to his own house where there would be others waiting. With Foster. And then stopped thinking. He tilted his head back a little to watch the sky. His arms hurt and his wrists were sore behind him. He wanted a smoke but wouldn’t ask for one. The August summer sky a sheet of light, cut by the bright sudden flare of the meteors. Leaving a faint trace on the eye, the reverse of a shadow.
Right under his nose. Into Bethlehem and then north onto the White-field road but off again almost right away onto one of the side streets, before pulling into a yard of old hemlocks. He knew the house although he’d never been in it. Only a few years old, a one-story bungalow done up camp-style with cedar shingles and green-painted trim. There were already four or five automobiles nosed in off the drive. The three men unloaded him and flanked him as they went up the short steps and into the house without knocking. The house all lighted up. As they went in Jamie heard the Carricks’ Ford cough and die outside but he didn’t expect them to follow in and they did not. Inside was a big room with a stone fireplace with a fire in it and electric fixture lamps from the ceiling and twig-style furniture with deep cushions. The four of them stopped there and the man whom Jamie thought of as the boss went on alone through a wood-paneled French door. The other two men stood just behind Jamie, one to each side. Jamie watched the paneled door.
The doors opened and a couple of men came out and left the house without looking at him although he recognized both of them, two of the men he’d become aware of over the past year. The door remained open and one of the men behind him shoved him gently. He shrugged the best he could with his hands done up behind him and walked through the doors. His minders came after him, pulling the doors shut.
A nice room. Leather upholstered chairs. A broad desk with a deep shine. The desk maybe a little too big. Deep green heavy drapes pulled over the windows. Polished hardwood floorboards with a Persian carpet over much of it. Electric lights but not too bright. A man behind the desk in a good crisp suit, better than any Jamie owned but not flashy. He’d expected a middle-aged man, someone heavy, jowled, thick-lidded. This man was a good half dozen years younger than he was. Maybe close to ten. Tight shave. His hair oiled, straight back flat against his head. That head cocked just off center, watching Jamie come in. The other man, the one who’d brought him from Carricks’, sat far down in one of the leather chairs off to one side of the desk. Looking at nothing. Enjoying himself.
Jamie went a third of the way to the desk and stopped.
“For chrissake Sammy, you got him tied up? You don’t need to treat him like that. What’s wrong with you.”
From his chair Sammy said, “Take the rope off him Lester.”
One of the men behind him undid the rope, working at the rough knot. Jamie waited until it was all the way off and clear and then slowly brought his hands before him. Wanted to rub them together but did not. Just let his hands rest before him.
The man behind the desk said, “Come on, come on.” Waved his hands at Jamie. “Sit down. Pull a chair up and sit down.”
Jamie said, “You Pompelli?”
“Yeah, I’m Pompelli. Vincent Pompelli.”
“Well, Vincent. I’m all right right where I am.”
Pompelli straightened his head. Looked at Jamie. Then looked at the man slouched in one of the chairs beside the desk. Looking at him, he said, “I’m just asking you to have a seat, we can talk, face-to-face.”
The man in the chair, Sammy, stretched one leg out and caught a leg of an empty chair with his foot and slid it over the carpet so it was right up against the front of the desk. Across from Pompelli. As he did this the two men behind Jamie took him by the shoulders and moved him forward and around the chair and began to press him down into it but he lifted his hands to them and touched them both, still watching Pompelli and they stood back and he sat. As he sat one of them moved behind him and eased his chair up tight to the desk like a waiter. He let that happen. He joined his hands and laid them up on the desk surface. Still looking at Pompelli.
“There now,” Jamie said.
“Aw, Pelham. Pelham.”
“I don’t see the problem, Vincent.”
“No?”
“No. All I’m doing I been doing a long time. But I’m small time. You know that. You already got my man. My market too, as much as I can see. The way I see it, all that’s just a tittle to you. You can shut me down, sure. But, I’m thinking, that’s what you wanted you would’ve already done it. Not waited for me to figure it out. So, I serve you someway. Just by being here. Some way that works for you and is best I don’t know nothing about, best for you and best for me. You’re a young man. And you’ve got this deal pretty well greased, that’s clear. So we can talk. Just don’t think I’m some old fuck you can jerk around. Things’ll work. Or they won’t. How’s that, Vincent?”
Pompelli nodded. As if agreeing. But he looked down into his lap. As if not sure of something. He took his hands off the desk and put them down into his lap. Seemed to be turning them over, studying them. As if to find an answer there. Then looked up at Jamie, not raising his head but tipping his eyes up. Almost a flirtation. Running his eyes over Jamie. Then he spoke.
“You think we can work together?”
“It could be.”
“No. I got to know. You think we can?”
“I think,” Jamie said, “we stop fucking around, we can likely work something out.”
Pompelli nodded. As if thinking this through. He smiled at Jamie. Straightened again in his chair. His voice still soft said, “Give me your hand.”
Jamie looked at him.
Pompelli lifted his left hand up from below the desk, made a reaching gesture with it. “Come on. Give me your hand.” Reached across the desk, halfway, his hand open, the fingers loose. Still soft he repeated, “Come on.”
And Jamie raised his right hand and extended it over partway and then thinking it was the wrong hand to shake a southpaw started to take it back but Pompelli had snaked his open hand past Jamie’s and grasped tight his wrist and came up out of his chair as he pinned Jamie’s hand down, open palm up, on the desk and as he rose his right came up from under the desk and flew forward and down and back again with the thin silver slice of a razor in the lamplight and then Pompelli let him go and sank back int
o his chair and Jamie looked at his hand lying flat on the desk with the cut a broad deep sideways swipe across his palm from the ball of his thumb to the base of his little finger and as he watched the swipe filled with blood and then his cupped palm like an ill-made vessel. Then his knees jerked up and struck the front of the desk and his bloodslick hand bounced once on the desk surface and flew back and he held it with his other hand against his shirtfront that was already hot and liquid and moving against him, his hand a hot hard thing as the rest of him spread and spewed. The room and the lights suddenly hot and bright. His spine curled. A voice came out of him: “Aww shit.” Looking at the pool of his blood left on the desktop, so much of it so sudden.
The pain a meteor trail that blew open inside and ran all through him. An orange split open with blood juice and pulp. The crotch of his trousers dampened and warmed. His eyes blinking, trying for focus. Far back of them his brain stilled, absolute, silent, refusing to work. Shutting down to try and save itself. The lambent light and air of the room suddenly charged, a faint sound as if some insect was working within.
“Sammy, get a towel.” Pompelli turning the razor over in his hands, his head tipped down to study it. Ignoring Jamie.
The man Sammy threw himself up from the chair and with no particular speed left the room and came back moments later with a soft peach handtowel and handed it to Pompelli who used it to sop the blood from the desk, turning the towel over for a dry portion to lightly buff the wood. Then he balled the towel and threw it across where it struck against Jamie’s wrapped-together hands. Jamie took the towel and opened it and wrapped the cut hand in it. His other hand doing this job as if it was the right thing to do. He could see now and, as if he knew this, the man Sammy did not return to his chair but came and stood by Jamie’s shoulder, one large hand spread out over the back of Jamie’s head like a careful cap.
Pompelli still turned the razor over, looking at Jamie again. “His hand, you know, is like this.” He lifted his right hand and opened it partway as if grasping a small glass, the thumb crooked in toward the fingers, the fingers evenly spaced, not touching one another. “Victor Fortini. The kids call him the Claw. Vic the Claw.”