Hell Chose Me

by Angel Luis Colón

  25

  Ayah says she wants another coffee, so I stop at a bodega and wait for her to get a cup. I watch the Bronx fauna wander about their day. Try to forget the conversation with Uncle Sean. Can’t help feeling like I did when I was eighteen. It’s a shame I can’t roll up to a recruiting station without a care in the world like I did the last time there was too much emotion to deal with in my life. I push my thoughts aside and stare out the windshield of the car.

  The world’s alive around me. Babies in strollers sleep and laugh. Single mothers frown and keep their gaze held firm on the concrete. The mid-day wanderers linger in front of storefronts. A couple of Nebraska-looking fellas wander door to door down the block—name tags on their lapels and broad white smiles on their faces. I manage to read the letters on the books they’re clinging to for dear life—Jesus and You. They must be Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses. Any other time and I’d probably laugh at them, but they’ve got it right. Those guys have hitched their wagon to something better than I have.

  Ayah returns with a massive cup of coffee and a newspaper—nothing for me. She tosses the newspaper on my lap and lazily waves at it while she blows into her cup. “Page three.” She settles in and holds out her coffee to me. “Hold this for a moment, please?”

  The coffee burns my hand, but I deal. Wait for her to be sorted and hand it back to her. I turn to the page she mentioned. There’s a story about a duffel bag with a small armory’s worth of weapons found in a Jacobi Hospital bathroom trash can. Police are investigating a long list of potential suspects and the hospital is now on lockdown.

  “Fucking wonderful.” I throw the newspaper back. “Didn’t you have coffee at my mom’s?” Wipe my hands on my pants when I notice ink stains on my fingertips. Crap, do they have my fingerprints? Can’t remember for the life of me if I was wearing my gloves during that insanity. Had to be—no way my fingerprints wouldn’t set off a thousand alarms statewide. My ass would be in the back of a squad car before I even knocked on my mom’s door. Then again, it’s not like they’d want to let me know they were on the way.

  “The coffee was terrible.” She sips from her cup—the kind with the Greek temple on it.

  I’m hot. Crank up the air conditioning in the car—a late nineties model Jeep Cherokee. The interior stinks of cheap cigars. Didn’t ask Ayah where she found it. “Sorry, I’m boiling alive.” I undo the top two buttons of my shirt. Wipe the sweat off my brow. Can’t tell if it’s the weather or my blood pressure or both.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “Your conversation with your uncle seemed to end…passionately.”

  “My uncle put out a hit on me. Hard not to be upset about that.” I shake my head. “Does it really matter in the long scheme of things? You’re just babysitting me.”

  “Understood.”

  We drive in silence for most of the trip. Ayah reads through the newspaper. She hovers over the box scores for baseball.

  “You have an interest in baseball?” I ask, more to kill the uncomfortable tension.

  “Not really.” She lays the paper on her lap and picks up her coffee cup from its precarious perch on the passenger side door’s ashtray. “Better than asking what I’d like to ask you.”

  “Well, if that’s not pushing the door open. I guess if we’re working together, I should try. Go for it.”

  She clears her throat. “Blacky…I mean, Danny. He told me you might be…a little unhinged.”

  I laugh. “Do you believe him?”

  “Yes.”

  There’s no amount of explaining I can do to set her at ease, so let her believe it. Let her think I’m the loose cannon. Not as if we’ve known each other long enough for me to trust her completely, and after seeing what she can do, it’s not like I’m willing to believe she’s all teddy bears and hugs. If I were a betting man, I’m pretty sure it isn’t bothering her at all. Ayah feels bred to be in this life. That bothers me. Someone so young shouldn’t feel like any of this is normal. Someone so young shouldn’t size everyone up. I know the look. The way a person like that assesses how best to damage a stranger because they always need to be on.

  “So, what’s the real question?” I ask. “Because that one was bullshit.”

  She stares out the window. “Fine. Are you really invested in this for the right reasons? You’re dragging your feet quite a bit for a man who’s apparently so bloodthirsty.”

  “What would be the right reasons? I ain’t a good man, Ayah, and I can’t change what I’ve done. Paulie did me and my brother wrong, and I want to get back at him. I don’t know if the old ways are the right ways.” I look over to her. “Besides, you’re keen on going after Paulie too. At least we have that in common.”

  “If it wasn’t for all of this, Hannah would be alive. I owe Blacky enough to stay around and see the rest of this through, though.”

  “I can say the same for my brother.” I reach to scratch at my bandaged ear. Get a jolt of pain in return. “Shit, by your reasoning, I deserve retribution as much as Paulie.”

  She mulls that over. “Maybe you do deserve retribution, but not from me.” She sighs. “Being a villain, that doesn’t bother you?”

  “It’s not as simple as your comics. I ain’t out to hurt people for the hell of it like, uh, Doctor Doom, or someone.”

  “You’re not that smart.” She says it so plainly it hurts even more than it should.

  I nod in agreement, whether I want to or not. “Your smart-ass crap aside, it’s all the same, isn’t it? I know you’re not a stranger to it.” I watch Ayah sip her coffee and regret not asking for one too. “Not to pick at a scab, but you ever have this kind of talk with your sister?” I don’t say her name, but it doesn’t prevent me from invoking her. Hannah peels from the shadows’ strobe in the back seat as we drive by rows of pylons. I watch her in the rearview. She watches Ayah, a sad smile on her face. The scattered black behind her ebbs like water. She’s pale against the backdrop. The shadows hum low. Something’s being said under the noise, but I can’t make it out. Hannah’s fraying at the edges, though, ready to leave me. I’d bet she won’t be around as long as Liam.

  I can’t figure out why she hitched a ride with me. Do I really blame myself? Of course, I blame myself, but I had plenty of people die on me and not do this. I look at her and my cheeks go hot. Shouldn’t get angry but I do because if Hannah can appear to me, if she weighs so much on my soul, then where the hell is Liam? Why can’t I see my brother one more time—insanity or not? The link is there, though. In another life, maybe Hannah and Ayah would have been like me and Liam or maybe it would have been the other way around. I lost Liam and she lost Hannah. Maybe Hannah’s fresh enough in my head to come out this way. That would mean Liam isn’t and I’ve lost him in more ways than I realized. I guess I deserve that.

  That kind of thinking needs to stop before I jump from the car.

  “My sister and I did what we had to do to survive. Everything was to survive—to help our family.” Ayah’s interruption is a help. It kills the hum before it digs its way into my skull.

  “But you’ve killed the same as me. No matter how we justify it, we’ve done wrong.”

  “I’ve probably killed more than you.”

  “So we’re both villains. We need to live with that. Shit, you’ve got a fancy metal blade thing.” I laugh. “Where the hell did you come up with that?”

  “My sister didn’t want anyone to question my abilities. She found someone to make a suitable replacement for my hand.” She leans her head against the window. “If you finish business with your ex-handler, what comes after? Do you fly out to Ireland? Help us finish the job with Mr. Shea?”

  Mr. Shea? How formal. “I’m no fortune-teller, Ayah. One job at a time. Not for nothing, you can walk away too.” Realize I’m starved. Haven’t eaten in a while. “You hungry?”

  Ayah takes a sip of her coffee and shakes her head.

  I t
urn on the radio. The Replacements’ “Alex Chilton” comes on. I go to change the station and Ayah pushes my hand away.

  “Leave it. I like this song.”

  “How old are you again?”

  “Younger than this song.” She smiles. “Hannah owned six albums growing up. Pleased to Meet Me was one of them.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “She was an impressive woman.” She runs a finger along the scars on her left arm.

  “I’m sorry you lost her.”

  Ayah nods. “I’m sorry about your brother, too.”

  “That was my fault. I should have let him go a long time ago.”

  “I should have told Hannah not to take the job.” She goes to sip her coffee. Frowns when she realizes there’s no more. “We both have reasons to be guilty.” She lifts her stump. “I’ll always have more regrets than fingers.” A sour laugh climbs from her chest.

  I give her a gentle nudge. “Hey, at least you’re not an old man like me.”

  She nods. “Fair point. That makes me feel better.” Her eyes narrow and she examines my face. “I peg you at, what, forty-two?” Impressive. She almost nailed it on the head.

  “Seriously, I’m starved. Let’s pick up some pizza or something on the way.”

  “Okay.”

  I look back into the rearview and I see Hannah’s eyes shift to bore into the back of my head. She mouths something, but I can’t hear it. Every time the light shifts near her, another of my victims’ faces stutters in and out of existence—hanging in the air. Hannah doesn’t acknowledge their presence, she’s insistent on her own message. I turn down the radio, but it doesn’t help. I can’t remember what she sounded like.

  Drum my fingers against the steering wheel. “Ayah?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m pretty sure your sister loved you, no matter how much of a villain you think you are.”

  She turns her face away.

  Hannah’s gone from the rearview. Guess that’s my good deed for the day.

  “You know, we can just keep driving.” I rub the back of my neck. Try hard to remember she ain’t Liam. It’s messed up of me to even consider putting her in a spot like that.

  Ayah turns back. “No. Running is what got me here. That’s what put you here too. All we’ve done is run.”

  I’ll never admit to this girl how much she terrifies and impresses me at the same time.

  The funny thing about running from it all: you always end up right back in the same pile of shit. Only when you find that you can’t run anymore, it’s because of being chin deep. I pull off at the next exit. A few blocks in, I spot a pizza joint. Ease into a parking spot and cut the engine off. “So what if we get through this without a kill? Try to keep it as clean as we can and then skip out on everything.”

  She arches a brow. “Together?”

  “However you want it. You want to go on a road trip, sure. You’d rather fly off to Uzfuckingstan, rock out. Solo or with a friend.” I extend my hand to her. “Deal?”

  She shakes my hand. There’s doubt in her eyes—she’s entertaining me. “Deal.”

  “I’m serious, Ayah.”

  “I believe that. But you can’t expect a person to trust another in our business.”

  She’s right. Years younger and her sense of perspective is miles above my own. “I get it. How about we agree to not shoot each other anytime soon?”

  She laughs. “Baby steps. We can make that work.”

  “Fantastic.” I climb out of the car. Stretch my back and legs. “Let’s get something to eat.”

  26

  “You’re fucking daft.” Danny gnaws on a piece of leftover pizza. There are scraps of broccoli rabe on his plate that he picked off leaf by leaf. It breaks my heart he’d waste perfectly good broccoli rabe. He swallows his bite and leans over to look me in the eye. “You want to go in alone?”

  I nod, smile, and blow a plume of smoke into his eyes. “Yep.”

  Danny turns to Ayah and Ian. Gives them both a wide-eyed stare and mouths, “Help.”

  “The man wants to do it this way,” Ayah replies. “It’s better than a full-blown assault in the middle of Alphabet City. Less of a risk to us.”

  “I get that.” Danny raises a hand. “Swear to God, I do, but you can’t expect to walk out of there a free man, let alone alive. We have a connection, Mutters, and for sure, you’re crazy, but you can’t be this far gone.”

  “Maybe I am.” I put out my cigarette in a plastic cup. Light a fresh one—I’m a little stressed. “There’s no hard rule that this can’t work.”

  Danny watches me. Grins. “Mr. Badass over here. Acting like we’re still baby boys and running around Belfast as if our bollocks were the size of fucking footballs.”

  “Which kind of football?” Ian slides a slice from the grease-lined box sitting on the living room’s coffee table and takes out half of it in a single bite.

  “Fuck off, ‘what kind of football’?” Danny speaks in a high-pitched mockery of Ian’s Brooklyn accent. He flings an empty paper plate his way. “I said foot-fucking-ball, not hand-sodding-egg.”

  Ayah rolls her eyes. Goes to the kitchen and returns with four beers. “You both need to stop clinging to nostalgia. This is serious and pretending we’re all one big happy family will get us nowhere. Well, no, let me correct that, playing games will get us dead, or worse, arrested.” She tosses a beer to each of us and opens her bottle with her teeth.

  We all wince.

  “Christ, girl, you’re looking to end up like some kind of hill person?” Danny pops open his bottle against the edge of the coffee table. “See? How easy is that?”

  Ayah eyes the coffee table’s newly minted scratch. “The deflection isn’t inspiring confidence in any of your professional reputations.”

  I raise my free hand and snap my fingers. “Look, Sean said he doesn’t give a hot damn anymore. Everyone and anyone is fair game—the man’s cleaning house. Turnabout is fair play. If he’s going for broke, we can too.” I take a drag off my cigarette. “So, I figure you folks hit up something the piece of shit owns in the East Village. He has to have something there worth money.”

  Ian chews on the crust Danny threw at him. “Probably a shit pool hall or a rundown bar.”

  “See? Someone’s thinking. Raise a ruckus at one of those joints and law enforcement will come running, especially if Paulie’s clued these assholes in on the rampaging geriatric mick calling for hell from overseas. Bonus: it hurts his wallet a little.”

  Danny sits down and rests an elbow on his knee. “And you just walk on in.”

  “With Ayah as backup.”

  “No bodies?”

  “At least not by my hand. Concussions, a few missing fingers? Sure.” I take a sip of my beer. “I’m tired of leaving corpses behind. I’m tired of being a bad guy.” I want to say I’m tired of the guilt, of seeing the things I see and maybe I should. I can’t find the courage.

  “You know breaking the law is still having low moral…” Danny sighs. Throws his hands in the air. “Fine. All right, Mutters. So you get to Paulie, then what? You ask him to walk away all nice like? Ruin what I’m planning in the process?” Glad he realizes there’s no talking me down.

  “I think given the opportunity, he’d take it. What’s the alternative, witness protection? Sooner or later, he’ll pop up and someone will finish the job whether Sean’s alive or dead.” I point to Danny. “I still think whatever you’ve got in your back pocket can work out. You need to find it in yourself to trust me. Not all the way, just a little.”

  Danny drains his beer in a single go. Pulls the bottle away from his lips and burps. “I feel my trust is already stretched listening to this bullshit plan, but to be honest, I got nothing else. I was an order-taker, not a leader.” He leans a hand on his knee. “So Paulie walks. My people regroup and go on our way. How do we know you don’t flip, or worse, find a way to fuck us all over?”

  “
You don’t. Just like I don’t know you folks won’t leave me high and dry with my dick in my hand.”

  He shrugs. “We can at least agree that not a damn thing is guaranteed.”

  “I’m putting it all on me to give this a try.” I motion to Ian and Ayah. “Hey, you guys mind if Danny and I have a minute to ourselves?”

  Ian makes a face but stands. Follows Ayah out of the apartment. She gently pushes him past her and out the apartment’s side entrance.

  “Thanks.” I give her a nod.

  She nods back and closes the door.

  “Private matter?”

  “Yeah.” I lean forward and stare at the floor. “Danny, you came into it same time I did, right?”

  “Maybe a few months before.” He scratches at the thin beard growing along his jawline. “Had me some troubles with the whiskey at the time—lots of bar fighting, not a lot of recollection.”

  “Yeah, that was ongoing from when we met.”

  “Like I said, not many memories.”

  “What did you know about Sean during that time? You always seemed a little hipper to his bullshit than I was.”

  He shrugs. “Nothing out of the realm of obvious. He was a fucking gangster—still is. Used a cause as a front to do whatever the fuck he wanted.”

  “Did it surprise you when you found out about the hit on me?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he called me himself to do it.”

  I back away a step. Feel nude without a gun. May have resigned myself to not taking a life in pursuit of my goals, but that survival instinct kicks in something fierce and once again I find myself more than ready to kill. Being around Danny almost feels good, but the tension and this little truth bomb? No, I’d sooner gouge his eyes out with my thumbs than pretend everything is copacetic.

  Still, these people have had more than enough time and no real use for me. They know where Paulie is, they’ve got more than enough skill—at least Danny and Ayah—I’m an afterthought. Hell, I’m a liability. If Danny wasn’t doing me a favor out of pity, no way I’d still be breathing and breaking bread with him. That doesn’t provide all the comfort I’d like, but I can feel my pulse slow down a little.