THERE COULD HAVE BEEN ten thousand dealers in the Jackson Arms and it wouldn’t have helped Talker Purdy. There could have been a dealer in every doorway, even the door where the old fuck lived, the one who got Rudy-Bicho busted, and it still wouldn’t have helped. In fact, the Jackson Arms could have been the dope center of the fucking universe and Talker Purdy would still be shaking, still sweating, still shivering as if in the grip of a violent, unrelenting fever, because Talker Purdy was dead broke.
“Maricón!” Talker Purdy screamed at the bare walls. He knew that time was running out and he had to decide what to do before he couldn’t do anything. The muscles in his back were tightening down, pulling his shoulderblades toward his spine—by evening, they’d be twisted into knots the size of golf balls. Already, his skin crawled like an army of ants was marching just below the surface. He kept touching himself to make sure his skin was still smooth. In the end, if he had to do it, had to kick, his crawling skin would be the worst symptom. And the last to go.
But the deal that really bothered him, and what made it so hard for him to concentrate long enough to make a decision about what to do, was that it just wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair right from the first go-round. For instance, why did Rudy-Bicho get arrested? The old fuck came right up to Rudy; Rudy didn’t go to the old fuck. And Rudy didn’t even hurt the old fuck, either, just taught him a little bit about soft and hard. Weren’t he and Rudy in the lobby of their own building? Weren’t they minding their own business? Not hurting nobody? The pig shouldn’t have arrested Rudy-Bicho or found out that he was on parole, so that Rudy’s bullshit bust meant two weeks at Rikers waiting for a parole hearing. No way. It just wasn’t fair.
Talker thought his biggest problem was that everything belonged to Rudy. (In a way, even Talker belonged to Rudy.) Rudy-Bicho was the one connected to the wiseguy in Bensonhurst. He was the one who set them up in their apartment and went downstairs to get the dope (before they needed it; Talker hadn’t been sick in months). And Rudy had introduced him to a new kind of bitch—crack whores who spread their legs and left them spread as long as the pipe continued to crackle and spit. Thinking about them, Talker nearly managed a smile. They were fine young bitches just out of their mamas’ kitchens. Do anything for that big rock candy mountain.
Unfortunately, Rudy-Bicho kept the money, too. Not that he was trying to cheat Talker Purdy. It was mostly because Rudy was reliable and wouldn’t do anything stupid with it (like leaving it taped to the bottom of a table for another junkie to rip off), but also because Talker Purdy trusted his partner completely. Talker knew Rudy-Bicho was standup cold, because they’d watched each other’s backs the time Talker did a hard bit upstate. Talker and Rudy had been there for each other in the most totally fucked-up situations; situations where they could definitely get themselves killed. After that, if your name is Talker Purdy, you trust your partner enough to let him hold the money. And you never think about what you’ll do if he gets busted and you’ve been calling Rikers every day and the pigs claim they never heard of Rudolfo Ruiz. And likewise the fucking Men’s House of Detention in Brooklyn and in the Bronx. And you know there’s no way you can get to the main stash, either. It doesn’t matter that you’re so fucking sick, your whole body is crawling with ants underneath the skin.
Thinking about it (and especially about the old fuck who dissed Rudy-Bicho until he had to do something) finally drove Talker Purdy into a fury. Talker was very slow to anger. He was just bright enough to know that anger made him even stupider, made him liable to do stupid things which resulted in immediate punishment. (Like the time he really hurt the kid in junior high school. Like hurting the kid with broken glass and a metal table and whatever was handy and doing it right in the cafeteria where the whole school could enjoy the show.) It wasn’t until he ended up in a courtroom (after which, despite a probationary sentence, his mom and her boyfriend had kicked the living shit out of him), that he finally calmed down, allowing himself to fall under the direction of quicker, smarter criminals like Rudy-Bicho Ruiz.
But getting so angry the tips of his pale ears flamed with frustration didn’t help Talker Purdy decide what to do about being sick. It didn’t absorb the snot running in a thin stream from both nostrils. There was only one cure for the condition of being sick and that was dope. For the five hundredth time, he wished for Rudy-Bicho to be there. For Rudy to explain a plan, so he didn’t have to think one up by himself.
“I have to go do what I have to do,” Talker said aloud, finally deciding. “I ain’ gonna get sick.” He shook his head. “No way, man. Fuck tha’ shit.” He walked, much more calmly, from the kitchen into the bedroom, opened the second drawer of the bureau, and dug under the pile of T-shirts for the two 9mm automatics. It was the first thing Talker Purdy did that Rudy had always done for him. He felt like a kid in church, handling the priests’ robes, as he sat at the edge of the bed and laid the guns on his lap. They were identical Berettas, big expensive handguns with barrels that could make a vic shit his pants in a minute.
“If you ever get to shoot someone,” Rudy-Bicho had told him again and again, “you gonna see some blood from all the way inside blow right out through his back.” Rudy called the automatics “one-shot tools” because they were so powerful you didn’t need to make sure the victim was helpless.
Talker lifted one of the pistols, the one with an ornate T burned into the walnut grip (Rudy had done that for Talker; he’d done his own with interlocked Rs), jacked a round into the chamber, then rose to look at himself in the mirror. His reflection frightened him—his face was drawn, his cheekbones hollow, his skin gray. It was not a face to make someone afraid, unless you were its owner. Then what you felt was goddamn panic.
He pushed the gun into the waistband of his trousers, sliding it down into the small of his back and covering it with his shirt, then left the apartment. After seeing his face in the mirror, he was convinced there was nothing to do, but get hold of the magic powder that would restore his health. There wasn’t any question about where he had to go. He had to go downstairs where the dope was.
Johnny Calderone, knowing nothing of Talker Purdy’s sudden poverty, welcomed him with a big grin, pulling the door wide. “Talker, baby,” he cried, “come on in. I heard about Rudy. What a fucking bad break. I swear, man, the scumbags who live in this building think who the fuck they are. Somebody oughta teach the cocksuckers a fuckin’ lesson. Check it out. So what could I do ya for?”
“I need some bags, man,” Talker said hoarsely.
“This I already know,” Calderone returned, his smile firmly in place. “Check it out. Ya look like death warmed over. How many?”
“I need a few bundles. Maybe thirty bags.”
Johnny Calderone was not a trusting man. He had a hole cut in his front door and he usually didn’t let junkies into his apartment; he accepted money through the hole before passing out the heroin. But he’d known Rudy for years and Talker had been running with Rudy for more than six months and sometimes you have to be a little bit human, even if you are engaged in a fiendish profession. “No problem, baby. Check out a chair and I’ll be right back.”
He strolled casually into the bathroom, to the medicine chest which held his stash of heroin. Though expecting nothing, he knew, as a professional, that he was in bad trouble as soon as Talker Purdy followed him inside; he knew he was in deep, deep shit even before he turned to confront the Beretta.
“Hey, man,” Calderone said, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. “Check it out. Ya don’t need that piece. I wouldn’t let a friend of mine stay sick. Whatta ya think, I’m some kinda scumbag?” He opened his clenched fist to display the small bags of dope. “Check it out, Talker. My special brand: Smiley D. The absolute mother-fuckin’ best, right? Take it, baby. Go ahead. Take it upstairs and get well. You can tighten me up whenever you’re fresh. I’m in no hurry.”
Talker didn’t make a decision before he pulled the trigger. At least, he didn’t remember making a decision. For sure, the piece jumped in his hand. It jumped in his hand and Johnny Calderone jumped back with a little red rose in his chest like the two of them (the gun and Johnny Calderone) were doing a dance.
“Hey, Rudy, man,” Talker whispered, “you was right about tha’ one-shot shit. The maricón bastard ain’ movin’. But how come it din’ make no blood in the back?”
In fact, the slug had exploded inside Johnny Calderone’s chest, slashing through his heart, lungs, kidney, and spleen. There was a great deal of internal bleeding, but as there was no exit wound, the blood had filled the abdominal cavity, only belatedly oozing through the small hole in Calderone’s chest. Talker dipped his finger in the blood, pushing his finger a little way into the wound. He had never shot anyone before (though, maybe, even here, he didn’t actually decide; it was more like an accident) and he wondered what he was supposed to feel.
But all he felt was sick. Casually, as if the gun had made a whisper instead of crashing so loud in the little bathroom it still hurt his ears, he took the heroin out of Calderone’s hand, then went to the cabinet to scoop up the rest. It wasn’t as much as he’d hoped for—Calderone most likely had a second stash somewhere else in the building—ten bundles often bags each. Enough for about five days, if he stretched it thin.
Talker didn’t really wake up until he found himself in the stairway leading to his apartment with the 9mm still in his hand. He couldn’t remember closing Johnny Calderone’s door and it was annoying the hell out of him. If Rudy was around, he might not even talk to Talker for doing something as stupid as leaving the door open and waving the gun in the hallway. Suppose he ran into one of the tenants. He’d have to kill the fucker. And the next one and the next one.
“But I got the cure, man,” he said aloud, his voice echoing in the stairwell. “Smiley D is mines.” Rudy-Bicho would definitely approve of that. Rudy loved dope.
Talker thought about Rudy’s approval while he cooked up his fix. The envelopes were small and his hands were shaking bad; it seemed to take forever to empty the bags into a bottle cap. But he did get one break in that he managed to find a vein the first time he pushed the dull syringe into his upper arm. The relief was immediate, as always. He went from a sniveling, pitiful junkie to cool, straight, and controlled in a matter of seconds.
“That’s bad shit, man,” he said. “Tha’s a bad maricón.” Slipping down into a chair, he began a light nod, entering an almost dreamlike state. At first, there were no thoughts at all, just a gentle floating through warm, empty clouds. He might have stayed there for hours (he would have loved to stay there for hours), but, even as he’d cooked up a fix to cure the sickness, he knew he would have to make a move. How could he stay in his rooms like nothing happened when he just blew the shit out of Johnny Calderone?
His thoughts began to come together (gently at first, like morning dew on the flowers and shrubs when he’d worked in the Deputy Wardens garden upstate) about twenty minutes after he got off. Vague questions, in the beginning. How long would it take someone to find Johnny Calderone? Did he have a girlfriend who’d be coming by? Or a partner? Was Calderone connected to the kind of bad asses who’d come looking for his killer?
So many questions and no answers. He wasn’t even sure that nobody had seen him when he walked through the hall with the tool in his hand. Maybe some asshole was peeking out through the peephole and had already called the cops.
“Rudy-Bicho, man,” Talker asked, “you gotta help me out. This pendejo shit is so fucked up, I don’ know wha’ the fuck I gotta do.”
Talker wasn’t surprised to find Rudolfo Ruiz in his mind. Opium is the mother of dreams and he’d met every kind of life in his deepest nods.
“You got to get the fuck outta tha’ room, Talker,” Rudy-Bicho said angrily. “I always say you got cojones where your brains should be. Big deal, so you shoot tha’ Johnny Calderone. You stay in tha’ chair, you gonna find yourself pullin’ twenty upstate. You got to get the fuck outta tha’ room.”
“But where I’m gonna go?” Talker asked. “How you gonna fin’ me if I’m no’ here when you get out?”
Rudy-Bicho laughed at him, a sneering laugh that Talker Purdy hated worse than a beating. “How come you don’ think?” Rudy asked scornfully. “You so estupido, sometime I can’ even believe you’re alive. Mira, listen careful to what I’m sayin’. Go over to your sister’s house and wait for me there. Don’ you think when I find out what you done to Johnny Calderone, I’m gonna know you can’ stay here no more? Jus’ go to your sister’s house and wait for me. Take the guns and throw the one you used on Johnny Calderone down the sewer. If nobody seen you, we can put the shit back together in a couple of days. If you been made, we go down to Miami. I got bro’s in Miami. And don’ forget to wipe the piece before you dump it.”
Talker Purdy loved to listen to his partner explain the plans. Because Rudy-Bicho Ruiz was always positive and because his plans came out right. Talker had attached himself to a number of planners before Rudy-Bicho, and their plans had sent him into jail about ten times and twice to prison. “Rudy-Bicho, man,” Talker said. “I’m gonna do jus’ like you sayin’. I’m takin’ the two guns and gettin’ outta here. I’m gonna go to my sister’s house and wait for you, man. Then we can go to Miami, if somebody seen me, or put the shit back together if it’s cool.”
“Wha’ you do, pendejo? You blow farts from out your culo or from out your ears? Wha’ do I tell you abou’ the fuckin’ gun?”
“Oh, shit, man.” Talker Purdy slapped his head and laughed at himself. “I got to dump the fucking piece. The one I shot Johnny Calderone with.”
“Wha’ you do before you dump it?”
“Wipe it down, man. Tha’s right. Clean tha’ shit and kick it down the sewer. No problema, bro.”
“Now you tight. You real tight. You gonna get by with this shit if you stay cool and remember what I learned you.”
“I know, Rudy. Wipe the tool and dump it in the sewer.”
“An’ one more thing you got to do for me, Talker. Por favor, señor.” Rudy laughed, fawning like the greaseball waiter his father had been.
“Anythin’, man,” Talker replied. “You say it and I do it for you. Like now, man.”
“All these problems we got are comin’ from the old fuck who disrespect us in the lobby. You know where he live at?”
“I know.”
“Go and kill him, bro. Tha’s what I wan’ you to do.”
Talker felt himself drifting up out of his nod. He was refreshed and strong. Rudy would fade away, but that was nothing new. The lives always faded when you came out of the nod. “Rudy, man,” Talker said, before he lost his friend completely, “wha’ happen if the old fuck got the door locked?”
“Tha’s easy, man. Take the chisel and the hammer we usin’ for the locks on the truck doors and pop the lock off. No problema, right? Bang tha’ cheap shit right off there and blow the ol’ fuck away. He’s the one who put me in this fucked-up place and he gotta pay.”
Talker Purdy did it by the numbers. He scooped up the remaining bags of heroin and put them in the inside pocket of his jacket. Then came the two guns, Rudy’s in the small of his back and his own (he remembered that he should use his gun on the old fuck so he wouldn’t have to dump Rudy’s piece) in front where his jacket covered it nicely. He hesitated for a moment over the ammunition stored in the dresser, but decided the several hundred rounds would be too heavy in his pockets. They’d make too much of a bulge. Rudy’s clip held the full fourteen rounds and his still had thirteen. That would be enough unless he got into some totally fucked-up shootout with the pigs. Which he didn’t think was even possible, because he had Rudy-Bicho’s plan and Rudy-Bicho hadn’t fucked up once.
Talker left his apartment, half-expecting about a thousand cops to be standing out in the hallway. A thousand cops wearing black vests in a shooters stance with .38s pushed way out in front. But there was nobody. It was eleven o’clock at night and the citizens were settling down to the news and the bed. Even the lowlifes were laying low—the hallways and the stairwells were deserted.
He went directly to the third floor, to 3F, Mike Birnbaum’s apartment, putting his ear to the metal surface, listening for sounds of life inside. Everything was quiet. Next (he wasn’t altogether stupid) he tried the door, turning the handle, but it was locked tight, the bolt thrown. Then he took his chisel, inserting the blade between the lock and the doorframe, hoping to splinter just enough of the frame so the door, with the bolt still extended, could open outward. To his surprise, the metal-covered wood began to splinter with the first twist of the chisel; he wouldn’t even have to use the hammer.
“Rudy-Bicho, man,” he muttered as he worked the chisel back and forth. “You the bes’, bro. You the baddes’ bes’ mother-fucker in the whole joint. You teach me everything, baby, and now I’m gonna get your revenge for you. I’m killin’ this old fuck as soon as I get inside, then I’m gonna dump the pistola and go over to my sister’s house and wait for you. And I’m gonna wipe the piece, Rudy. I ain’ forgettin’ to wipe the piece. I’m gonna wipe the piece and then dump it and then go over to my sister’s house and wait.”
Talker Purdy was sweating when the doorframe finally gave way. He was uncomfortable, but still very stoned. The door had come apart easily, much more easily than he’d anticipated. As he’d come down the stairs, he’d been afraid he was going to make so much noise he’d wake up the whole damn building. In fact, the noise was all he thought about; he never once considered the possibility that the old fuck inside might be able to make some kind of a defense, but the first thing Talker Purdy saw, as the door swung outward, was an old man standing at the far end of the hall holding a pistol, an automatic like his own.
“Aha,” the apparition said. “I see you came back to finish the job.”
“Where you get tha’ gun?” It was the only thing Talker Purdy could think of to say.
Mike Birnbaum laughed out loud. “I took this from a Nazi in the mountains south of Milan. He was a bigshot gonif, just like you. Naturally, I had to kill him, tacha. Just like I’m gonna kill you.”
Talker Purdy, suddenly realizing that it didn’t even matter where Mike Birnbaum had gotten the gun, began to move his hand toward the 9mm in his waistband, but he wasn’t fast enough. Not even close. The first slug caught him under the chin, choking and spinning him until he was facing away from his intended victim and the blood poured down his throat. “Oh, shit, Rudy-Bicho,” he said, “you fucked it up.”
The second bullet caught him in the back of the skull. Deflecting slightly downward, it plowed a thick furrow through his brain, killing him instantly, before exiting a half-inch below his right cheekbone.
“I got one more for you, Mr. Hoodlum,” Mike Birnbaum said calmly, walking the length of the hallway to stand over Talker Purdy’s corpse. “This little present is from Sylvia Kaufman.”