by Eric Beetner
“So, you’re lowering my rates.” It’s as simple as that. I’ve been undercut. “Without warning.”
He raises his hands. “Not like that, it’s been a tight month. Look, I got another gig here.” A folder lands on the desk in front of me. “A couple of strippers been loose-lipped about a party they were hired to work a few weeks ago. It’s giving a few very important friends agita. You’ve done something like this before. Shouldn’t be too hard.”
It’s a tempting offer, wouldn’t hurt to feel it out. “Is what the strippers saw a need-to-know deal?”
Paulie shrugs. “Eh, drugs, a few girls at the paygrade above them—of the non-English-speaking variety, of course.”
No way. Those are the darker alleyways, and while, yeah, my career isn’t exactly sunshine and sparkles, I’m not about to go playing in that sandbox so soon after a simple gig. I push the folder back to him. “You know I don’t go back to back. All these years, and I look green to you?” I should know better to even entertain this. I bend once for Paulie, and he’ll press in harder the next time.
“No, but you’re as prickly as a fucking rookie today.” He rolls his eyes. “I’m offering you a means of cash flow to handle your family commitments. I know keeping Liam half robot costs an arm and a leg. I’m doing you a solid here.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.” I stand up. “Give me what I’m owed, and I’ll be on my way.”
Paulie opens a drawer to his left and fishes out two stacks of bills. “Throwing in an extra two fifty since I’ve offended your sensibilities.” The money lands on my lap. Wrapped tight with dirty rubber bands.
I stare down at the cash. “You got an envelope or something for me to put this in? Or do you expect me to slip this down my ass crack?”
“On top of the extra two fifty? Jesus.” He’s busting my balls—trying his hand at easing the mood. The envelope appears next to the job folder. “You interested in this extra gig or not?” His eyebrows rise in the kind of way that always makes me nervous. He’s working an angle—I know it.
I shake my head and squirrel the cash into the envelope. “I said no back-to-back gigs. Call me in a month or two once you got something good—something expensive.” I stand up. Charlie’s right next to me and staring daggers again.
“I can always set you up with something meatier. Ain’t any shortage of high-priority assholes that need taking care of.” He jabs a stubby, sausage finger at me. “Payout’s twenty-five grand minimum.”
“Nope. That’s for the younger fellas ain’t got a problem with lighting fires in paper houses.” It’s a personal policy. I’ll hit losers and nobodies—folks that won’t be missed. I can wash away that guilt quickly, for the most part. It also keeps me and Liam safe. High-priority targets like stoolie button men or disgraced criminal middle managers? No way. That kind of heat follows you home no matter how fast you run.
“I’ll talk to you soon then. Try to look on the fucking bright side at some point.” He gets back to scribbling on papers with a pen that has a comically oversized moose head bobbing on top of it on a spring.
“Yeah, well, shooting drunks in the head makes that tough.”
Yeah, Charlie mutters from behind me. Something feels off, but I ignore it. I’m tired.
I open the door and nearly step on one of the little munchkins crawling all over Paulie’s school. She looks up to me and snorts back a gallon of snot. Her eyes are wet with tears. “You’re not Mr. Paulie.” She says it coldly—I’m clearly an interloper and breaking whatever protocol she’s set out in her kid brain. Look at her shirt. Don’t recognize the gawping cartoon animal. Kid’s got lame parents.
“He’s right in there, sweetheart.” I step aside to let her into the office. She watches me the entire time she makes her way past the threshold. That stare crawls straight up my ass and climbs my spine—too familiar—so I double-time the hell out of there.
“Little girl…” Charlie is two steps behind. If he had breath, it would be make my neck moist.
“That one’s too young to be yours, Charlie, try again.” I whisper.
No answer.
I wave to the ladies at the front desk and dodge a few dozen rug rats playing tag and tugging helium balloons around. I wait to get buzzed out and step back into daylight. Get to the car and what a surprise—a ticket. The parking meter was busted. I tear the ticket up and toss the shreds into the wind. My own personal ticker tape parade to my failings.
Back in the car, Charlie grins.
I get the car started. “Really? You think a ticket’s giving you one over on me? I ain’t the one with lead rattling in that empty skull.”
That gets him sulking good. I get the car on the road. “You did that to yourself, not me—not Paulie or his employers. Just you.”
“I can make good,” he whispers.
“None of you ever understand. When a guy like me shows up, it means you burned out all the chances you had.”
He stares out the passenger window. Plunges a finger into his bullet wound and picks at it like a scab or hangnail. This is a first, a sullen ghost. Maybe this idiot was a closet philosopher or something.
“You think I want you here with me?” I slide a cigarette from the pack I have holstered on my visor. Light it with a Zippo I keep in the center console. “The sad truth of it, Charlie, is that you’re not the first. Won’t be the last, either. At least you get to fade away.”
Charlie’s lips move. “Please…”
“Please yourself.” I blow a stream of smoke toward him. “Guess you’re riding with me to the hospital to visit Liam. That’ll be nice. Maybe you can meet a nice, sort of pretty coma victim—settle down. Then you can leave me the hell alone sooner than everyone else.”
We pull up to a red light and I light a fresh cigarette with the old one. Scratch the spot between my eyes. I’ll make the hospital trip quick. Maybe pick up a bottle of something strong. Then catch a day of sleep and bad TV. That sounds about right.
Paulie called Liam a robot and for some reason that sticks with me. I laugh. Liam was always a tough son of a bitch—he would have gotten a kick out of being called a robot or Terminator. Always loved those bullshit movies.
“You know, what I did to you, Charlie. That was for family. That was the extreme I went to in order to stand by my blood and protect them.” I pull my foot off the brake and let the car roll forward. This light is taking forever. “Guys like you are fucking worthless. You don’t leave your family—especially a little kid. Now you’ll never amount to nothing for your daughter and she’ll remember you as some kind of shadow in her life.” I’m getting too personal. This isn’t real. I need to calm down.
I toss my smoke out of the window. The driver next to me is staring. Oh, yeah, I’m talking to myself. I give the guy a smile and a wave. He pretends like he can see right through me. Does that little tough guy thing where you lean to the side and stroke your chin. Then he drives off. Of course, I’m distracted and the asshole behind me leans on his horn three milliseconds after the light turns green.
In the mood for some music. I turn on the CD player and The Wolfe Tones’ “Celtic Symphony” starts. Old school rebel Irish music. Flutes and banjos and brogues. The song’s a bunch of pandering gibberish, but it gives me the warm and fuzzies nonetheless. There’s not much about my time in Ireland that ever makes me smile, so I take these moments as a small treat.
Charlie makes a face like someone farted.
“Deal with it.” Turn the volume all the way up. I sing along at the top of my lungs—dance along the way I used to in the pubs of Killarney and Newry. I think of half-drank pints and smoking two packs of cigarettes in a single night. Of nights with girls that never told me their names but showed me everything else about them. For all the bad, there was some good in Ireland—or at least plenty to distract me. Here, though, I have none of that. I came back to New York and life was waiting to deck me with concrete gloves.
Out the corner of my e
ye, I see Charlie hold his head in his hands.
At least that makes me smile.
Click here to learn more about Hell Chose Me by Angel Luis Colón.
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