We both stopped and looked at each other. I couldn’t begin to guess how he’d found out I was there. There certainly hadn’t been enough time for Georgie to have spilled his guts. Looking at Lou then, I thought about the night with Shades. I knew Lou had only been doing what he thought he had to, but what was he thinking about tonight? Was I still an employee, or had I become another problem to be handled?
“Got Edward in the car?”
“Huh?”
“Nothing. What are you doing here, Lou?”
“I could ask you the same thing. You’re a little late, Mikey.”
“Yeah, well, shit happens. You left a few details out of the fucking job description.”
“I heard. Get in the car.”
“Not sure I should.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I don’t know who to trust anymore. Who are my friends? I’m a little edgy right now. Two days ago I couldn’t believe you were handing me cash for a bullshit job like this. Now it kind of makes sense. Either the run is dangerous enough to warrant the pay, or I got set up for a fall. So tell me, Lou; who are my friends?”
“Don’t be fuckin’ stupid,” Lou said. “How do you think I found you? Your father called Tony an’ tole him where you were. Think about that. You’re becoming goddamn paranoid.”
I pulled the front door closed while I thought about it. It made sense, actually. Nobody knew I was there except Georgie, my father, and the super.
“Why’d my old man call Tony?” I asked, as Lou took my arm and helped me down the steps.
“Well, that’s one a’ the things we gotta talk about,” he said, holding the car door open for me. I seemed to have gotten used to new cars; I didn’t know if that was good or bad.
“What’s up with my father? I know something’s doing.”
“He’s in jail,” Lou said. He started the Caddy.
“Jail?”
“Jail. You know. Cops, arrest, jail. Jail.”
“Lou, tell me. Say words. What happened?”
“You had a car. The one I gave you the keys to this morning. The way that works is, there’s some guys around. Guys that—you know— get behind a little. Not much; a nickel here, a dime there. But it all adds up. And when the shys can’t collect, they come to us to, like, negotiate. So we work out deals, if the money ain’t too much. Every now an’ then we borrow a car, for some kinda run. If the run goes okay the car gets put back, an’ it’s no harm done. But if something gets fucked, then the guy calls the car in stolen an’ everybody’s off the hook.”
“Except the driver,” I said.
“What?”
“Except the driver. You’re going to tell me somebody reported the gray Cutlass stolen, right?”
“We hadda go that way Mike, by four o’clock.”
“Jesus Christ.” I was practically screaming. “My old man climbs behind the wheel of a car for the first time in about four years and he gets locked up. What are you going to do? Can I see him? Is that where we’re going?”
“No. Calm down. You can’t see him till tomorrow. Arrest to arraignment is at least twenty-four hours. If we pull any strings, everybody ties him into some operation an’ then they watch him afterwards for a million fuckin’ years. If they think he’s just some jerk off, no offense, we got a better chance a’ gettin’ him out right away an’ everything dropped.”
No offense. I’d been shot and my father was probably eating baloney-and-cheese sandwiches with a Jamaican crack posse. Plus, I still didn’t know where Lou was taking me. “No offense,” I said. “None at all. Where are we going?”
“We’re gonna see Tony. He says he needs to talk to you.”
“I’ll talk to Tony when my father is out and standing next to me.” I leaned back and closed my eyes.
“Hey, I like you Mike, an’ I know you’re ragged out cause a’ what happened—but this is for real. You’ll talk to Tony now. You’re walking a line here. One side is you’re calm, in control. You think on your feet. Tony seen that in you. He likes it. The other side is you’re an arrogant little fuck. I see that in you an’ I don’t like it. You better grow out of it before Tony ever sees it in you. You’ll do a lot better in the long run.”
I didn’t say anything, mostly because I didn’t know what to say. I considered the possibility that maybe I was an arrogant little fuck. What if I was? It didn’t change the fact that I’d been shot or that my father was in jail. Lou was right about one thing, though: I was walking a line here. I could be—had to be—pissed off with Tony, but—from the way Lou acted, anyway—refusing to talk to him at all until he got my father out would be an unacceptable way to behave. I glanced over at Lou. How did he know where that line fell? Was there a manual or something that everyone in the neighborhood except me had been issued? It often seemed that way. I wished to hell I could talk to my old man. He would know how to play this. He’d always told me to shut up and think before I opened my mouth, so I practiced for the rest of the ride to Tony’s house in Mill Basin.
My father had been locked-up before, but not for a good many years. I remember my mother dressing me in my Easter suit when I was very young and dragging me down to criminal court so we could stand teary-eyed in the front row, while some judge who looked seven feet tall arraigned him ominously and then met my mother’s gaze and “duly noted that the defendant’s family is present in court.” Then he cut my father loose and that was the end of it. I’m sure there was a fine or something, but I never did find out. My father hadn’t been arrested since long before my mother died, and now it occurred to me again how truly alone he and I were without her.
His previous arrests had always been for gambling or fighting. This was the first time he’d been charged with stealing something, and I wasn’t sure that they’d let him walk. Another thought came to me as the Caddy slid quietly along the Belt Parkway, past the skeleton of the parachute jump. I remembered the contempt my father had displayed for the other defendants, either in the pens or in open court. He spoke as though he had nothing to do with them, as though he were there for some reason other than having been arrested.
“They’re fuckin’ animals,” he told me one night when he arrived home drunk from a matinee court appearance. “Strong young men, not a thing wrong with ‘em, and they won’t work. Every guy in that pen with me had a welfare card. Every fuckin’ one. I was the only one in there with a job. They steal money from your taxes then pop an old lady for her social security. I don’t want you thinking it’s cause they’re black or P.R.s,” he said, pointing at me. “You got plenny a’ guys like Chuckie out there that ain’t afraid a’ work. But these fuckin’ bums, they make the rest of ‘em look bad.
“When my father couldn’t get work after the war—when we first got here—you know what he did? He shined goddamn shoes. He was in his thirties with a family an’ he shined goddamn shoes cause he wouldn’t go on home relief. He went everyday to Wall Street an’ stayed there ten, eleven hours till he made enough he could go home. The only thing, he was embarrassed to walk through the neighborhood with the box. I’d haveta meet him by the Rex—I was maybe ten years old—an’ carry the box the six or seven blocks home. In the morning I’d carry it back there an’ that’s where he’d take it from me. Do you understand that kind of pride? Of not takin’ charity? Of knowing you’re worth something?”
Yes, I’d said at the time. The story impressed me fiercely. I didn’t get some of what he was telling me, but I never forgot how important it all seemed.
From the day that he faked his injury and got out on three-quarters disability, I felt that I needed to know how that was different from the defendants my father despised for ripping off society. I never asked. My old man could always explain everything he did, but in the back of my mind I suspected there was no acceptable explanation for this, and, more importantly, I was afraid that to even ask would put a wall between us where one had never existed.
“What’d you do, fall asleep?” Lou asked as we drove off the King’s Plaza exit ramp.
“No. Just thinking. I hope my old man’s okay.”
“Your father’s a fuckin’ bull. Don’t worry about anything.”
We moved through a series of winding, quiet streets lined on both sides by impressive detached houses that would have seemed more appropriate someplace wealthy like Long Island or Connecticut. They might as well have been in Long Island or Connecticut, I figured, because it took almost as long to get around to Mill Basin, out on the ass-end of Brooklyn. Lou made a right down a deserted-looking block and stopped in front of a fieldstone house with the kind of elaborate wrought iron designs over the windows that are supposed to fool you into thinking they’re decorative instead of protective. The place was set far back on the building lot. It looked more like a fort than a residence. Lou parked in the driveway and we got out. I looked as far as I could down the street in the dark.
“Dead end block?” I asked.
“Jesus, don’t let Tony hear you say that. He almos’ took my fuckin’ head off once I called it that. He says it’s a cul-de-sac.”
“You serious?” I asked. Lou shrugged. “I’ll try to remember.”
We went to the door and Lou pressed a series of numbers on a keypad over the lock. When a beep sounded, he inserted a regular key and opened the door.
The entryway and foyer looked like a catering hall or a funeral home—glass and red drapes, dark wood, and marble. Lots of pieces of furniture that serve no purpose but to stand against a wall. All in all, about what I expected. I’d never met Tony’s family. I knew he was married and had a couple of kids, but the house was as quiet as Saint Rosalie’s used to be when I lit the candles before the seven a.m. mass back in my altarboy days. The silence of the church had terrified me back then, and I felt a similar panic growing now as we walked down the heavily carpeted stairs. Tony was behind the bar in a finished basement that would have made a very upscale after-hours. Besides the bar, which had a wet sink, there was a regulation-size pool table and an art deco–style jukebox in the corner. Tony came around the bar quickly with both hands extended and a serious look on his face. I put my right hand halfway out in front of me, not sure whether I’d be shaking his or defending myself. When he got near me I thought I was going to be hugged, but what he did was grab both my shoulders firmly and look directly into my eyes.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “How’s your side?”
“Okay,” I said. “A little raw. Doesn’t feel like much anymore.”
“Good. Very good. I was concerned.”
“Thank you,” I said, knowing that was an inappropriate response and wishing again for the neighborhood manual.
“Your old man, he’s okay; I want you to know that. We got someone at central booking looking out for him.”
“That’s good to know. I was worried.”
“Of course you were worried. He’s your father. Tomorrow this time he’ll be home. Around noon, he sees the judge and they should cut him loose then. The next day, the owner of the car goes to the D.A. and explains that he forgot he loaned it to your father. Charges dropped— case closed. But enough of that. I’m wondering what kind of scumbag you must think I am that I send you on a run where you get hijacked. Am I right?”
“No,” I said instinctively. “I mean, I want to know what’s going on and all, you know, but I don’t think you pulled anything on me.”
“Why? Why wouldn’t I do it?”
“Why wouldn’t you hijack your own stuff?” I was stalling.
“Why wouldn’t I set you up?”
I did not know what answer he was looking for and I got the impression that this was somehow very important. I looked at Lou, but he was concentrating intensely on the pattern cut into his crystal whiskey glass.
“My father,” I said.
Tony started to speak, then stopped, then began again. “You’re a man. You and your father are two different people. You can’t count on a thing like that.”
“I can’t count on fucking up and you covering it because of my father, but I can count on not being set up. Don’t you believe I don’t think you did it?”
“I know you don’t think I did it. I just wanted to know why. At least you didn’t feed me any bullshit about being too nice a guy to do something like that, which by the way, I am.” Lou stopped studying his drink and rolled his eyes. “Cut it out,” Tony said without turning toward him, and Lou stiffened behind the bar. “Make Mikey a drink.”
“No drink,” I said. “I’m starving, and I still don’t feel a hundred percent.”
“Okay. Lou’ll get you something on the way home. You should be there tomorrow when they arraign your father. It looks better—in case the judge is a prick—that you got family there.”
I was totally lost. It didn’t seem possible to me that Tony wasn’t going to ask me about the package, or at least about what had happened to me, yet it felt like he was concluding our meeting.
“I was going down there anyway, but thanks. Tony, don’t you want to hear about this morning?”
“Did you set it up and steal the bag?”
“No!” I said quickly.
“Do you know what was in there?”
“No.”
“All right. Go home. Your father gave enough on the phone. Whatever else we have to talk about can wait till he’s with you.”
“I want to know what’s going to happen, and why things went down this way.”
“So do I,” he said tonelessly. “Good night, Mikey.”
“Good night, Tony,” I said.
He took a few steps toward the stairs, then turned, walked back over to me, and shook my hand. Then he went upstairs without saying good night, good-bye, or anything else to Lou.
“Let’s hit the road,” Lou said. He was scowling and looking up the empty stairwell. At times like that I felt really bad for Lou. He was like a large child, or a big friendly dog that keeps waiting for the pat on the head that never comes.
On the way home we stopped at Miller’s Diner on New Utrecht, and Lou ran in and brought back two large bags of hot food. When he dropped me off, he said he was sorry about my father. He had the same look of embarrassment that he’d exhibited after Shades’ death. I assumed it was because I’d just seen Tony snub him. I said good night and, balancing both bags on one arm, let myself in my building.
The apartment looked the same. I couldn’t tell if someone had ransacked it or brought a maid in to clean it up. I unpacked the stuff from Miller’s, and though it was standard diner fare, it tasted like the best food I’d ever had. I was ravenous, and by the time I finished I’d eaten almost everything Lou bought, which seemed to be two full meals. I called Gina then, though it was almost two in the morning, and told her I wouldn’t be staying upstairs. She reacted with the calm, ladylike acceptance that I had expected. When I could make myself heard over the screaming I told her about my father being arrested, that we would have to go down there in the morning, and to dress appropriately. Then I hung up and went to bed, setting the alarm for ten o’clock so I wouldn’t sleep for a week.