Tuesday was my first solo run, and before I left the apartment I was already thinking of when and how to tell Tony I was quitting. I had to make at least a few trips so it would seem like I’d really given it a shot, but I’d decided my father’s suggestion of several months was excessive. If I split the difference—his wanting me to do it for two months or so and my wanting to quit the day I started—it left me with a month, which was probably about right. That would be eight or nine runs. I could pick up a fair amount of cash and leave without losing face. It was a good plan, but it didn’t do as much as I’d hoped to make me feel better.
My father was up and dressed before I even hit the shower. He was always an early riser, no matter how late he’d stayed out the previous evening. When I was ready to go we left together, stopped at the candy store around the corner, and had egg sandwiches and coffee at the counter. While we were getting grease stains on the Post and making jokes about the most recent mayoral blunder, Little Joey walked in with a list of coffee orders from the car service. He came over and sat with us while his order was being filled. We hadn’t spoken since the night Nicky died, but if anything was bothering him I couldn’t see it. A chill passed over me and I thought for a moment that if it had been me instead of Shades who was killed that night, Joey would still be here getting coffee, somehow turning it into a win. Who would he care about? Lou? Tony? His brother or his father? Where would Joey draw the line? He’d spent more time with Shades than I had, but he seemed to blow it all off like it was nothing. I realized sickeningly that that had to be how a lot of people saw me. Suddenly that cold-blooded image lost all its appeal. I didn’t want to be grouped with Joey.
“You don’t come around no more,” he said, as I finished my coffee. “You got a big-shot job an’ now you’re too good for the regular drivers, hah?” He winked at my father, who was doing a thorough job of pretending Joey wasn’t there.
“I’ve been pretty busy,” I said, “but I’m still around. I don’t think I’m too good for anybody. In fact, I’ll walk around to the store with you now. I have to see Lou. If you’re nice to me maybe I’ll let you kiss my pinkie ring.”
“Kiss my prick.”
“Buy me a drink first.”
Joey paid for his coffees and our breakfast as well, and I left my father there and walked around with him. Lou had told me to see him for a set of car keys. I hoped the car he had in mind was halfway decent.
“Jesus Christ,” Little Joey said, “will you look at that.”
Diagonally across the street, emerging from the corner building that the red Buick had crashed into a few weeks back, was Nicky’s girlfriend, Louise. The house was a six-family brick with four apartments upstairs over a doctor’s office, which took the whole first floor. He was a doctor of obstetrics, and that was good because Louise looked as big as a barn. She had to be seven months gone if not more. I realized that Joey probably hadn’t even known she was pregnant. I raised my arm to wave and started to call out to her, but he grabbed my hand and stopped me.
“Don’t.” He said. “Are you nuts? Don’t. What if...you don’t know.”
Little Joey pulled me closer to the building line, out of her sight. He looked terrified, but not the way he had the night Shades was killed. For all his tough guy stance and his rapidly receding hairline, he looked like a very young child who had been caught doing something he knew was horribly wrong. I knew what he was concerned about and I guessed that if I’d given it any thought I wouldn’t have tried to call out to Louise, but actually, the odds that she knew what had really happened were astronomically small. Nicky had been a doomed soul since he went back on junk and a dead man since he’d robbed the club, but I doubted if a dozen people on the street knew who’d aced him. Joey’s sudden terror fascinated me and I stared into his face as we stood nearly hidden in a doorway. Louise lumbered awkwardly around the corner and out of sight.
“Are you okay now?” I asked when she was gone.
“What? Yeah, I’m fine. I just didn’t want you to call the bitch over an’ then we gotta listen to some sob story.” His hands were still shaking a little and one of the coffees was leaking and had soaked the bottom of the bag.
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, that’s what I figured.”
We walked around to the store and when we hit the corner Joey looked warily down the street. Louise was almost a full block away by then and was completely indistinct. Her form and movement from that distance reminded me of the permanently mourning black-clad old ladies who prowled the churches, streets, and grocery stores of the neighborhood like some secret sect. Little Joey watched her for a moment, then relaxed, and we walked the other way.
The bottom half of the car service’s storefront windows were painted green, and even on a sunny day they filtered the light so that the place always looked smoky and overcast. Days that weren’t so sunny, it was already smoky and overcast in there, so the windows made it seem like the middle of the night. On the other hand, in the middle of the night it looked perfect.
It was a beautifully clear morning when Joey and I walked in, and squares of sunshine coming in through the top half of the windows hung like framed prints on the cheap paneling of the back wall, just too high to illuminate the card game or anything else. The guys sitting around Lou’s desk greeted me, and the players in the game acknowledged no one, reaching blindly behind themselves for their containers of coffee.
“You’re welcome,” Joey snarled when Sal took his cup without looking up.
“Fuck you,” Sal said absently, studying his cards.
I sat on a corner of Lou’s desk and held up my end of a conversation, which swung from politics to sports to carburetors versus fuel injection. We were debating whether they put the dump on Staten
Island because that was where the most open land was, or because it was where white people with jobs lived, when Lou stood up and motioned me to follow him outside.
“Okay,” he said, closing the door behind him as we stepped into the street. “This is probably what you’re lookin’ for.” He tossed me a set of keys fastened to a ring with a ridiculously large letter R on it. I could barely get the damn thing in my pocket.
“I’m afraid to ask,” I said.
“No,” he said, “you didn’t do bad today. Don’t get spoiled though; it won’t always be this good. It’s the silver Cutlass down at the end a’ the block. You can see it from here.”
“What is it, new?”
“Last year’s,” he said, like that wasn’t new to me.
“And when I’m done it goes...”
“Back there, or as close as you can get it. You remember the directions?”
“Yeah.”
“An’ the address?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Just take it easy. No speeding. There shouldn’t be any traffic now. I’ll see you when you get back.” As I started to walk away he said, “Listen. Remember—you don’t take any shit from that gorilla nigger.”
“Take no shit,” I repeated over my shoulder. I still wondered what his problem was with Todd. I walked down the block and let myself into the Cutlass. The alarm was easy enough to find and turn off, but there were two separate kill switches that were a little tricky. Of course I’d die before asking for help, so I spent about twenty minutes screwing around with it before I got underway.
The trip up was clear of traffic and the car rode beautifully. It had a tape deck, but I hadn’t brought any tapes so I listened to the radio, switching back and forth between a classic rock station and one that played a lot of rap. I didn’t know whose car it was, but I figured the owner was pretty young because the stations were programmed into the radio.
A part of me felt like I was on my way to a picnic, or to visit an old aunt in the country, even though I’d never done that before, and in fact as far as I knew, I had no old aunts in the country. Leaving the city—I supposed because I did it so rarely—tended to lull me into that sort of whitebread middle-American fantasy.
Several times early in the trip I was inexplicably overcome with a sense of dread. I couldn’t figure it, but the feeling was real enough that I had to talk myself down from the edge of hysteria more than once. I was embarrassed by it, and got angry with myself, but that didn’t fully put it to rest. The truth was that I was on a run—a job—and the little bit of my brain that wasn’t reacting like I was on a weekend jaunt was saying that I had no business doing this. It was the feeling of being a child competing with adults. I’d had it before, plenty of times, but not this strongly.
The calming aspect was that my father knew what I was up to and would not have sanctioned anything he perceived to be dangerous. Whatever was going on here was small potatoes. Still, I wanted out as soon as reasonably possible.
Between my prozac-moment moodswings, I spent the ride up thinking about women. I found myself stupidly contrasting Gina and Kathy. The more thought I gave it, the more I realized that I’d never marry Gina and that I really needed to break up with her as soon as possible. On the other hand, if the rest of what was out there was like Kathy, maybe I shouldn’t move too quickly. I was actually very fond of Kathy, and it was screwing everything up. Whenever I’d cheated on Gina in the past, I tried to pick girls who were attractive, but vacuous. I never really understood the concept of mistresses, or even a steady girlfriend on the side, though that was what most of the middle-aged guys in the neighborhood seemed to favor. I understood that it was less trouble finding someone when you wanted to go out, but if it came with all the emotional baggage of a relationship, why not just hang out with your wife? I had always looked for girls who could be led easily in conversation and into bed, but that you wouldn’t want to see more than once or twice. They were mostly Brooklyn bimbos from other neighborhoods or Manhattan space cadets. Kathy had fooled me. I’d pegged her as a space cadet, and I didn’t tip to how sharp she really was until the middle of our date, which was pretty goddamn slow for me. Still, I felt like I couldn’t contend with her long term. If Kathy and Gina could be combined, you might get the perfect girl. Of course the perfect girl would tell me to fuck off, so there was no advantage in trying to mind-meld their brains in my basement laboratory.
As I played the Gina/Kathy tennis match in my head, I was interrupted by the image of Louise waddling around that corner, alone. I didn’t think I felt quite as fucked-up about seeing her as Joey did, but I certainly didn’t feel good. I tried not to think about it, and that worked for a while, but the picture kept coming back to me.
She’d obviously decided to have the kid. I suddenly wondered if her pregnancy could have been what tipped him back into dope. I’d probably never know, but I wanted to talk to her. As far as I knew, she had no family in this country, and I wanted to know how she was getting along and where she’d stay when the baby was born. I’d have to find out if she was still in their old apartment. That was the direction she’d walked in, but it didn’t necessarily mean anything.
I felt like I had a sense of purpose then and I couldn’t wait to get back so I could look her up. I got off the Thruway and onto Route 9 North, and a little while later I was weaving through the decidedly upscale neighborhood where I’d make my pickup.
When I pulled up in front of the house I stopped at the curb because Lou had, even though the driveway seemed like a quarter-mile hike, and there were no other cars on the block that were parked in the street. I didn’t think I’d need the alarm or kill switches.
The doorbell didn’t make any noise that I could hear, but about fifteen seconds after I pressed it a very short black guy in jeans and cowboy boots opened the door. He was wearing a corduroy sports jacket over a white shirt. He stared at me, said nothing, and didn’t move a muscle.
“I’m here to see Todd,” I said.
If he heard or understood me he was doing a great job of hiding it. I could have sworn he was looking right through me at something on the other side of the street.
“I’m supposed to pick up a package from Todd. Tony sent me.”
Nothing.
“Todd. That’s not his whole name. Tall. Skinny. Are you getting any of this? Is there anyone else I can talk to?”
The short guy closed the door in my face without ever having made eye contact with me. It was as though he’d heard the bell and answered it to find no one there. I stood for a moment trying to decide whether to ring the bell again or walk around to the back of the house, when the door swung back open and Todd was standing behind it.
“Michael, isn’t it?” he said in impeccable English. “Please come in.”
I stepped into the entryway and Todd closed the door. “I wasn’t sure the little guy told you I was here,” I said. “I didn’t think he understood me.”
“Little guy?”
“The guy who answered the door. I was about to start drawing pictures in the dirt with a stick for him.”
“Dar speaks English fluently,” Todd said, “but he did not tell me you were here. I saw the car from the second-floor window and assumed it was you. People don’t park on the street here.” He smiled at me and I felt like he was being very condescending. Plus he was full of shit. I knew that cowboy midget had told him I was there. I got the impression Todd enjoyed playing games.
“If Dar speaks English fluently, then it must have been someone else who answered the door, because whoever answered it didn’t seem to understand what I was saying.”
“Everyone in this house speaks English, though they are sometimes very literal. Perhaps you weren’t clear enough.”
“Perhaps whoever answered the door is an idiot, or just wanted to fuck with me.” I kept my voice extremely pleasant, and matched his smile. He looked at me like I’d pissed on the rug.
“You are almost as abrupt as your friend.”
“I’m beginning to understand why he feels the way he does,” I said.
“This is a changing world. Your boss sees it if his brother doesn’t. You must adapt to...different cultures.”
“This is the suburbs of Tarrytown. The only culture is playing tennis badly and wife-swapping. How are you adjusting?”
“I do not play tennis.” A swinging door opened from behind him at the end of the entrance hall, and Dar emerged, carrying the knapsack. He walked over to us silently and handed the package to Todd, who sort of hefted it once or twice, and then extended it to me. “Your package,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said, taking it from him, “but it’s not mine any more than it’s yours. I guess we’re both just hired help.”
“I suppose,” he said, still smiling. He looked like he was going to say something else but changed his mind. He opened the door for me and extended his hand. I shook it and walked out, deliberately ignoring the driveway and cutting across the lawn back to the car. I hoped I had pissed him off at least half as much as he’d gotten to me. Pompous fuck. No wonder Lou didn’t like him. He probably cut Lou to shreds.
The exchange with Todd had left me in a foul mood and before I was back on Route 9, I was thinking of quitting again. I didn’t want to do this, even for a month. I’d never had any illusions about being a mover and shaker. In fact I hated the idea, but I really felt like a piece-of-shit lackey all of a sudden. I wondered if my father ever got these feelings, and how he handled them if he did. I considered giving my notice after two weeks. That would be long enough to satisfy my old man. I was running down all the arguments I’d give him while I headed back. I just missed the light at the only intersection before the Thruway, and I played with the radio while waiting for it to change.
I heard a throbbing sort of rumble come up behind me. It sounded like a motorcycle, but when I glanced in the rearview mirror I saw it was a car—an old Lincoln. It was green and dated to the mid-’70s, when they made them like battleships. This one had seen better days, if that muffler was any indication.
It pulled up directly in back of me and came to a complete stop with its left directional on. I was in the left lane, but I was going straight ahead. It sat there for all of five seconds, then swung quickly out to the right, passed me, and turned in to the left again at a forty-five degree angle in front of my car.
This wasn’t unusual behavior back in the neighborhood from impatient young Guidos in their Iroc-Z’s or maybe even the Dadillac, but I was thinking that it was a fairly gutsy maneuver in a beat-up Town Car, when the rear doors swung open. Two black guys jumped out and ran to either side of my car. I threw it into reverse, but a string of other vehicles had now pulled up behind me. I didn’t know what to do. Stupidly, I leaned on the horn and made a move to raise my window, but I wasn’t all that used to the car and by the time I found the control they were there. The one on my side had a gun. He reached into the car and placed it against my stomach, below the level of the window. With his other hand he lifted mine from the horn. Then he used the control on my side to lower the passenger window. They were moving quickly, but smoothly, as though this was exactly what should occur and they’d rehearsed it a dozen times. The guy on the far side reached in for the knapsack. It was next to me and I put my right hand on top of it as he grabbed a corner. For a second or two we both kept our grip, and I turned my head a little to look at him. He didn’t look angry. Behind me I heard car horns honking, distantly, and realized the light must have turned green.
“Let it go, brother.”
It came from the one with the gun, and was barely more than a whisper. Then he reached across me with his free hand toward the gearshift. That was when I realized they were going to kill me. The Lincoln would be stolen and they wouldn’t much care who got its description or plate number, but if they shot me while I was in drive I’d roll right into their getaway car.
Without looking at either one of them I nailed the accelerator. The car threw itself forward, and the second it moved the gun went off, sounding like a cannon in the confines of the car. I hit the Lincoln and stopped, but I pumped the gas on and off as if trying to rock out of a snowbank, and after ramming it five or six times I moved it enough to open a path. Then I was clear of the intersection and on the highway ramp. I kept the pedal down for as long as I could.
My right side felt numb and I knew I was in trouble, but I was afraid to look for a while. There was a loud rattle coming from the front of the Cutlass and I figured something was pushing against the fan. The right corner of the hood was pushed up a little. It didn’t look like much from where I sat, but I was sure it looked like hell from the outside. It would be a beacon for cops and whoever had jumped me, but I slowed down anyway because the fan noise was getting louder and I wanted at least a chance of making it home. After a mile or so I realized I was still clutching the knapsack.