Hear Ye, Hear Ye

It’s three in the afternoon and Freddie Moon is having trouble covering his bets with Kenny Montelli. I know this be-cause Freddie Moon lives next to this room I slept in last night and Freddie Moon is keeping me up as he gets his ass kicked off all four walls of his room. Freddie Moon did some time upstate and learned how to cut hair there and now he makes his living at Manny’s Old Fashioned Barber Shop down the road. Freddie Moon begs for them to stop. The wall that borders mine rocks like we’re having a quake. I’ve gotten too tired, too self-involved, to give a shit about what’s happening to Freddie Moon. This is my sorrow and my fear and there’s no room in my house for other people’s trouble. I’ve got my troubles and they’re all I can focus on.

Freddie Moon should have paid his debts.

Mr. Frank Carr should not have sold out his slimy friends.

And whoever the fuck took my things last night, and I’m still tossing coins in my head about Sergei and Maggot Arm Joe, should never have set foot in the Lincoln. Every man for himself and the only side I’m on from now on is my side.

So, fuck Freddie Moon and his cries for help. He’s costing me sleep. I pound on the wall and tell Kenny Montelli’s guys to beat him quieter so I can try to get more sleep, but it’s not happening. There’s things I need to do.

I go down to the front desk and put on a pot of coffee and Don’t Mean Maybe’s Real Good Life CD, which is one of the great undiscovered albums of the nineties and it always cheers me up, but it’s not doing its usual trick.

I call up to Maggot Arm Joe and fill him in on what happened. He sounds stunned and weary. If he had anything to do with it, he’s a hell of an actor. He sounds deflated and upset. I ask him if he still has his three computers and he says he does and that it’s probably time to call Sergei.

“You think he had anything to do with this?” I say.

“I doubt it,” he says. He pauses for another second and says, “No. No way.”

I feel like a kid with a bad report card who has to talk to Dad; I’m looking for someone to take care of this, but they’re nowhere to be found.

I say, “There’s some freeze-dried meat down here for you.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not. They delivered it sometime yesterday.”

“Why can’t they just bring it to that dumb-ass bomb shelter?”

“I didn’t talk to the man,” I say.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll think about it later—give me a buzz when you’ve got a plan.”

I tell him sure, I’ll call him when I have a plan, but I don’t tell him that calling him was half of the plan I had. I dial Sergei’s number. I tell him what happened. He doesn’t sound very upset, but I’m not sure if that’s because the toxins have frozen his vocal cords, too. I’m worried that if he didn’t have anything to do with it, I’m not holding much now. They could cut me loose.

“So, I’m not out of the deal?” I say.

“Why out?” Sergei says.

“Because you still have six computers,” I say. “You don’t need my three to make money, but I lost three.”

“Not lost, Nick Ray. Stolen,” Sergei says. “This happen.” He coughs. “Plus, three computers not lost. Misplaced, Nick Ray.”

“You got any idea where they could be?”

“They not take your Maggot friend’s?”

“No.”

“Then it not someone who knows what they have—or they take both.”

I hadn’t thought of that. Sergei’s sharp, sometimes I forget, but he’s made it in several countries and several languages and he’s come out okay.

Sergei says, “So check the pawnshops. Those crap computers—those show up.”

“You think?”

“They show up at pawnshops. At yard sale,” Sergei says—he sounds amused—like this is a bump in his road. I thought this was the end of the world, but he’s making it sound like grape juice and grass stains. Strictly kids’ stuff. I’m starting to calm down.

“We buy them back—we take twenty dollars out of Nick Ray’s cut,” he says. He pauses. “Poor Nick Ray with shit on bed. We hurt the men who do this.”

I tell Sergei I’m with him on that one.

“Bad form,” he says.

I tell him what the cop told me, how common this is.

“Strange country, this country of yours, Nick Ray,” Sergei says. He yawns. “Need to take pain medication now. Check with Mole’s pawnshop—see if we get lucky. Let me sleep now.”

Sergei hangs up and I’m still pleasantly stunned enough to sit there frozen until a woman’s recorded voice breaks in on the dial tone and tells me that if I’d like to make a call I should hang up and try again.