“You need a little nap, you got a long evening ahead,” one of Fives’ men says to Fitz, and slides a syringe into his arm. “Say good night, cupcake.”
Later they carry his unconscious body out, after unsnapping the battery of the blinking visor on his head and then removing the visor. Two slim white guys in slick suits, one a talker, the other with soupy bug eyes staying a few steps back.
“Fives didn’t say nothing about two of ‘em,” the talker says.
“Freckles is yours,” Armand says. “Help yourself to a slice.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” and, “Scratch, man, you want one?” but Scratch just shakes his head, and the talker says, “Armand, you know what?”
“Tell me?”
“That’s good pizza.”
“That’s terrific pizza,” Armand says.
“They’re chefs there,” Hawk says. “They deserve a medal.”
“From the pizza Olympics in West Naples,” Mr. Skinhead says.
“You’re in luck. Fifteen g’s worth,” the talker says, wiping his hands carefully with Scott towels and then handing Armand a fat envelope. “Fives appreciates it. He’s been losing at mah-jongg. You made his night.”
“Fives plays mah-jongg?” Armand asks.
“This Chinese partner of his got him hooked. I’m talking about one serious addiction. It ain’t about the money with any of ’em either. They play for change with his partner’s old mother who don’t even speak English. Only once they start playing they don’t stop for days and the old lady’s whooping him and laughing at his ass and they got him all hopped up on some special ginseng tea, too.”
“What am I supposed to do with him?” Hawk asks, pointing to Nelson, when Fives’ guys are gone and Armand rises to leave.
“I guess he’s your problem,” Armand says.
“You handled yourself respectably so far,” Mr. Skinhead says. “Who’d have thunk it.” Then, looking around, he says. “Anyone ever tell you to clean the place?”
Hawk nods, sadly, and shuts the door behind them and locks it. He walks to the kitchen, picks his bologna sandwich off the floor, looks at it, then throws it in the garbage. Then there’s a knock.
“I’m thinking it was a team effort,” Armand says.
Hawk’s speechless as the man hands him back the two wrapped packets of Sammy’s cash and opens the envelope and riffle counts thirty-five hundred dollars in hundreds and hands it to Hawk.
“Seven-five for you,” Armand says. “You earned your half.”
“Armand?”
“I sincerely wish you luck.”
“Armand, I … I can’t believe … you’re a prince.”
“How’s your toe anyway?”
“I hardly miss it.”
“Got any experience moving pianos?” Mr. Skinhead says.
After they’re truly gone, Hawk recounts the money Armand handed him. Now he can pay Phil the Pot too and still put Sammy’s money—all in its original wrappers—back in Sammy’s safe.
He’ll even have a bit of a stake left over. Armand handing him the money like that.
It might qualify as a minor miracle.
Hawk picks up Zoey’s drawing calling him a freakazoid and her his queen. He smoothes it, a surge of affection for the little monkey, his hand palsied, and turns the drawing to the light. A few speckles fall off, and Hawk pins the thing, all twinkling now, back to the fridge with the Ronald Reagan in a space helmet magnet. Next to the laminated picture of his father leaning against the rink with speed skates around his neck and the photo of him and the gang with Sammy in the bleachers of Yankee Stadium.
Nelson’s face is the color of watered-down chardonnay. He looks about empty, slumped, washed out, vacant, like he’s mostly through the phase between living and dying. Blood has soaked most of his shirt and dried and darkened. There’s a viscous red welt on his arm where Carla burned a few stars off his tattoo, like she could have been arrested for flag burning. The towels and tape wrapping his elbow are crusted with blood through which blood still trickles. Dark beads move slowly down the chair into a clotting pool.
Hawk walks to the window and wheels over the helium canister and inflates a few Love Your Mother and God Bless America on the 4th balloons. He looks up at tall apartment buildings in the distance, with their pin-dot windows, that look like toys in which somehow humans live. Hawk opens a box of each kind of balloon and lays two stacks on the windowsill. They slick off each other like crêpes. He inflates about five more, ties them together into a bouquet, watches them nose, silver and apple green along the ceiling, then walks back through the loft to the table.
Say Hawk drops Nelson at the emergency room, or brings him to Il Doctore at the IHOB. What happens? Does Ginsu thank Hawk for the new lease on life? It surprises him that Fives’ people or Armand didn’t take care of Ginsu. You could see it as a compliment. What’s he supposed to feel now? Killing someone never spoiled Charles Bronson’s appetite. He shoots a bunch of scum and orders a hamburger and fries. Like, you do what you gotta do. If you find a dog laid open on the road and suffering, aren’t you supposed to whack it in the head with a rock? A bullet in Ginsu’s head. Hold the gun to his head, pull the trigger. Scrub the place down like he’d been meaning to do, the bag of cleaning stuff still there on the counter. Dispose of the body. Just listen to him. He can hear Carla snorting. If the cops gave a rat’s ass about Ginsu’s disappearance, it wasn’t rocket science. But what were the odds of anyone giving a rat’s ass about this particular guy?
Hawk clicks on the TV, angles it so Ginsu can see. There’s a CBS Special analyzing the negative ads of the campaign, which Dan Rather is calling the dirtiest of the century. A clip with horror-film music, black-and-white footage of convicts with zombied-out mugs going through a revolving door. The voice-over declares ominously that “Dukakis gave weekend furloughs to first-degree murderers not eligible for parole.” A red graphic announces: 268 ESCAPED, and MANY ARE STILL AT LARGE, and finally, in tiny letters, that this information had been provided by the Committee to Elect Bush President. Menacing mug shots of Willie Horton.
“What does it have to do with electing Bush?” Hawk asks Ginsu.
Then the screen shows Bush campaign brochures that were sent around Illinois, announcing: Murderers, Rapists, Arsonists, and Child-molesters Are Voting for Dukakis.
“I guess I know who you’re voting for,” Hawk says to Ginsu. “They could make you head of the Drugs-for-Arms Program, or secretary of Cocaine Trafficking and Death Squads.”
Ginsu looks at him, breath wheezing slowly out of his nose.
“I guess you ain’t pushing anyone around now?” Hawk says, and turns Ginsu’s chair so it’s directly facing the TV, and his face catches the glow off the screen like he’s staring into flickering fire. For a moment Hawk pities the guy, switches channels until—hey, it’s Goldfinger. What were the odds of that, him thinking about Oddjob too.
Nothing in this night would surprise him anymore.
They watch in silence, Ginsu occasionally rattling his chair a bit. Hawk could just smack him on the head with a hammer. Buzzard’s luck, he thinks, like they say in the Texas Hold ’Em games. You can’t kill nothing and nothing will die. There’s a flicker of recognition in Ginsu’s pupils at Connery about to outcheat Goldfinger at golf. You can tell he’s seen the film enough to know most of the scenes. The man with the Midas touch about to cough up a bar of gold. Then Oddjob demonstrates that he’s a badass by decapitating a marble statue with his hat.
“Until tonight, I had the reverse Midas touch,” Hawk says, putting the packets of cash in the pockets of his seersucker and the other bills in his jeans. He looks around and picks up a clean Starsky and Hutch T-shirt and puts it on. He picks up the gun on the table and walks around behind Ginsu and holds it to his head, then puts the gun back down on the table.
“Excuse me, okay? I got an errand to run.”
Hawk wraps duct tape around Ginsu every way he can think, the man’s head sagging now, until he’s finished a second roll. He sees a plastic Dolly Parton watch, winds it and gets the time from the news channel and flips back to the Bond. Then the watch reminds him of Nelson’s Rolex buried under the tape and he cuts around Nelson’s wrist and wriggles off the watch and tapes the arm back down, though the man hardly seems alive. Hawk wipes the watch on his T-shirt a few times, turns it over and reads, “For Nelson, love Mom,” shakes his head, slips it over the Dolly Parton watch.
“Now that’s enough to make any pawn-shop owner weep for joy,” Hawk says, and points his hand out like a gun, index finger out, thumb up, “don’t you go anywhere.”
Then, listening to the Bond music, he switches to QVC, one of those shopping channels. When he turns out the lights the loft is dark except for flickers of the TV and dull moving shadows, quiet except for the faint sound of a salesperson on QVC making a pitch about gold necklaces for $17.95. Now this one I love. Eighteen-karat and they’re going fast. What an incredible price for this delicate, classy necklace. Folks, I want this one. To all my family and friends out there, if you’re wondering what to get me for my birthday, get me this.