God's Pocket - Pete Dexter

by Pete Dexter

  Mickey said, "You borrowed six and bet the wrong horse? What were you going to tell them if you lost?”

  Bird said, "Five. You gotta give six for five, the fucks, but I been tryin' to tell you. It couldn't happen. Now take your grand and gimme my money back." Mickey took seven hundred-dollar bills and put the rest back in Bird's pocket.

  "I'll give you the meat," he said.

  "Fuck meat," Bird said. "You always gotta be movin' it in or out or sideways, so fuck it. They can't touch you when you don't give a fuck." They drove with the traffic then, neither one of them saying anything until Bird turned off the Interstate into South Philadelphia.

  "I think I'm done now," Bird said. "I think I'm used up in Philly. These new people takin' everything, they don't own Miami. The people that own Miami know what their business is about."

  * * *

  Vinnie Ribbocini was sitting behind his desk with a glass of milk and a package of Oreo cookies when they came in; without knocking, and stood one on each side of the door staring at him. Vinnie knew one of them. The new people had him overlooking his business. His name was Sally. "So what do you want, comin' in here like this?" he said. "You want to put smack in the jelly donuts, what is it?"

  The one he knew came across the room to the desk. The other one stayed where he was. He had that look like he had them fuckin' little earphones on, that you couldn't hear what everybody else could hear. He was standing with his feet wide apart and his coat open. The shooter. Vinnie laughed out loud. The one he knew reached across the desk and slapped him across the face.

  The slap spun him around in his chair. "I oughta fuckin' kill you right here," the man said. Vinnie straightened himself and stared at him. He promised to kill him for that. "Before Angelo got wasted," he said, "if I spit in your face, you'd a asked if it was all right to wipe it off." Sally slapped him again.

  This time the old man saw it coming and moved with the hand. His cookies sprayed into the wall, the milk stayed where it was. He picked it up and took a drink. His hands were shaking, ' and he was ashamed. The left side of his nose was bleeding down into his mustache, and he dabbed at it with a Kleenex he took out of a box on the side of the desk that hadn't been disturbed.

  "You set me up," Sally said.

  The old man laughed at him. "If I set you up," he said, "you'd be where you belong."

  Sally said, "I sent my brother-in-law on that job yesterday. Him and another guy just as good. I sent him over there with two eyeballs, Vinnie, and when they find him he's walkin' around Broad Street holdin' one of them in his hands." He grabbed the old man's shirt and pulled him across the desk. "You told me it wasn't no problem,"

  The blood filled his mustache and began to drip on the desk. He stared right into Sally's eyes.

  "The other guy, they got his ass in the hospital, tied to the ceiling in six places on account of his back's broke and his leg's broke, and they can't give him no painkiller because they don't know if his fuckin' head's broke too."

  He let go of the old man and straightened his clothes. Vinnie used another Kleenex to clean the spots off the desk. "So?"

  "So you said it wasn't no problem, Vinnie. And I sent my brother-in-law over there with another guy, just as good, and they run into a fuckin' gorilla. I mean a real fuckin' gorilla. What's that make me look like?"

  The old man saw that they hadn't noticed him shaking, and Sally's voice began to change, like he wanted to talk now. If they'd seen he was afraid, they'd of beat him half to death before they wanted to talk. . .

  "So shoot the gorilla," the old man said. His nose began to swell, he could feel it. It had been broken before and he knew better than to blow his nose, but he did it anyway.

  "It ain't him we want," Sally said. "We ain't got no business with him, never did. Not until you asked us to go to the hospital."

  "So shoot me," he said.

  Sally shook his head and sat down on the comer of the desk. Blowing his nose had pushed some of the blood up into the cavities under the old man's eyes, and they were swelling now, cutting off his vision. "To tell you the truth, that crossed our mind," Sally said. "Comin' over here, me and Mike talked that over, right, Mike?" Mike smiled, distracted, almost polite. He'd be the one to do it, if that's what it came to.

  "My sister calls me up and says they found Ronnie walkin' around carryin' one of his eyeballs, it crosses my mind to come over here and cut your head off. She's real upset, screamin' all over the neighborhood that nobody can get away with that. You know how they are. So I promise her I'll take care of it, but, like I said, on the way over, me and Mike talked it over, and we figure it don't have to be you. I mean, somebody told you it was no

  problem and you told us. So it's him .... "

  Vinnie saw his nephews was working both sides—they'd talked to these two—and he shook his head. The reason these two wouldn't cut off his head, they was afraid. The old man was the one Angelo had listened to. Angelo loved him. They might kill him, but they wouldn't cut his head off. Scarin' was one thing, but you didn't want nobody scared and pissed at the same time. That would be bad for everybody.

  "I done business with this guy since before the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor," he said.

  "He fucked up," Sally said. "Somebody's got to make this good."

  "So shoot the goril1a," he said again.

  Sally said, "We ain't goin' near that motherfucker." The old man laughed at them again, and Sally slapped him. His eyes had swollen almost shut now, so he didn't see it coming and it knocked him out of his seat. Then there were hands on his collar, lifting him back up. "It's him, or it's you and him," Sally said. The old man could smell his breath, and his legs were shaking like the palsy.

  And he saw what they would do, and gave them the address. Sally wrote it down and then, without another word, they walked out the door. The old man heard them get into their car outside.

  He turned toward the window, but his eyes were almost shut and he couldn't see. The door to his office opened, and he heard the girl who worked behind the bakery counter. She came in and made a noise like she'd found a kitten. "0h . . ."

  He sat up straight and faced the voice. "Lock up the store and go home, child," he said.

  She said, "Oh, Mr. Ribbocini . . ."

  "Go home," he said. And for a few minutes he listened to the sounds of the cash register and the window blinds and then the front door being closed and locked. He was still shaking, but he wasn't scared.

  "I shouldn'ta gave you up, Arthuro," he said out loud. "But we're all dead now, so it don't matter, and I need to see these monkey cunts dead too. Humor an old man on this .... "

  * * *

  Shellburn stopped at a bar near the Wilmington airport and bought a six-pack of Schmidt's. There was a phone booth outside, a few yards from the highway, and he opened one of the beers before he dialed the number in God's Pocket. He deposited seven quarters, a dime and a nickel and got a busy signal. So he went over uninvited, which would have seemed like bad manners to him if he hadn't been who he was.

  He found a place to park the Continental on the sidewalk just outside a dark, wet-looking hole in the block called the Hollywood Bar. There was a faded rainbow painted across the window. The six-pack of beer was working, smoothing him out, and he went inside to use the bathroom so he wouldn't have to ask Leon Hubbard's mother if he could use hers.

  There were a couple of old women drinking rock nips at one end of the bar, a couple of old men drinking the same thing at the other end. Shellburn got the idea they were married. They watched him come in. There was a wasted rummy. in a neck brace, standing by himself in the middle, talking to the bartender. The bartender was tired of listening and looked played out when he brought Shellburn his can of Schmidt's from the cooler.

  When he said "Schmidt's," one or two of the men had looked at him again. They drank Rolling Rock or Ortlieb's at the Hollywood. Shellburn drank half the beer and went into the bathroom. The toilet was cracked and leaking and rotting out the floor, and when he s
tepped inside, the wood gave underneath his feet.

  There was a mirror in the towel machine and a bare orange light bulb over the sink. Standing on his toes, Shellburn could see the top half of his head. He patted down his hair and saw that his eyes were a sunset over Key West. Reds, pinks, lovely. He tucked his shirt into his pants and brushed some of the dust from Maryland off his shoes, and then went back out and finished the beer.

  "Is that Leon Hubbard's house across the street?" he said.

  The bartender cocked his head, to see who was asking. Then he said, "You aren't Richard Shellburn, are you?" Shellburn nodded, the bartender reached across to shake hands. "I knew it," he said. "I read you every day. You look different from your picture, but I knew it was you."

  "Is that the Hubbard place?" he asked.

  "Scarpato," the bartender said. "The mother's remarried. Jeanie Scarpato."

  Shellburn looked at the narrow brick row house across the street. The windows were all covered, like nobody lived there anymore. "How's she taking it?" he said.

  The bartender shrugged. "He was the only child," he said.

  Shellburn had another beer, then put a five-dollar bill on the bar and walked outside. They watched him cross the street and knock on the door. Then the door opened, and a few seconds later he went inside. One of the old women said, "Richard Shellburn is the only one ever come down here, to the Pocket," Ray shook his head. "Adlai Stevenson was right on this spot," he said.

  "Well, I never voted for him," the woman said. "I like Ike."

  "Dwight David Eisenhower had the third-lowest I.Q. of any U.S. President since Grover Cleveland," he said. Then they ordered more Rolling Rock beer and watched the street so they would know how long he was in there with Jeanie Scarpato before he came out.

  Shellburn knocked on the door and waited to see the grief` stricken mother, so he could put her red eyes and shaky hands and her tear-stained cheeks in the newspaper, along with the harsh, naked light in the bathroom of the Hollywood Bar, where Leon Hubbard drank. And then she opened the door and Shellburn was struck stone dumb. "Mrs. Scarpato?" He heard his voice but he didn't seem to be the one talking.

  "Yes?" It wasn't that she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. She was pretty, but it took him a few seconds to see that.

  "I'm Richard Shellburn, Daily Times." She opened the door for him and smiled. He curled around that smile like he was paper on fire.

  "Thank you very much for coming," she said. He followed her into the living room, where two darker, older women were sitting on the couch, drinking hot chocolate. "You don't know how good it is to talk to somebody that understands .... "

  "I understand," he said.

  The women sized him up, heavy and suspicious. Jeanie Scarpato offered him a chair and then sat down near him on a footstool, hugging her knees, looking up. It wasn't that she was beautiful, it was like he'd looked into her face and found a perfect lit. She looked like the other half of whatever piece he'd been broken off of.

  She had eyes that were harmless and couldn't make up their mind. And her hair was soft and touched the hollows of her cheeks and neck, and he could see the edges of her ears poking through farther back. And he wanted to touch the hollows too. He cleared his throat. "I was very sorry to hear about your son," he said. The bottom rim of her eyes went dewy and teared over. She wiped at the tears and he noticed her hands. Great hands, they just fit her.

  "Thank you," she said.

  The women stood up and cleared the cups off the coffee table. The bigger one said, "We've got to go now, hon, run some errands .... " Showing themselves a little sweeter for the newspapers, and a minute later they both went out the front door. She was talking, something about Leon. “It didn't happen like they said, Mr. Shellburn. I know Leon, he was my boy."

  "I know," he said, "I know .... "

  She was looking down at her hands now, as still and white and fancy as Sunday gloves you might find in a trunk in the attic, and before Shellburn had realized he was doing it, he had reached down and picked them up, and was holding them against his cheek.

  * * *

  Richard Shellburn had knocked on the door in the middle of what was about to be a scene. Joyce had just said everybody had their crosses to bear, like Leon was already old news, and then there he was to save her. He looked older than she expected, but friendlier than his picture. "You don't know how much good it does to talk to somebody that understands," she'd said, for her sisters.

  "We're going to go home and do some errands," Joyce said. She and Joanie waited, and when Jeanie didn't answer, they left her there in the living room with Richard Shellburn. She noticed he was sweating. He smelled like he'd been drinking. "Something is wrong about what happened to Leon," she started. "I don't know how I know, but it didn't happen like they said."

  He was looking down, she was looking up. Vulnerable. He liked her.

  "It isn't money," she said. "Ever since it happened, everybody says, sue the hospital, sue the construction company, but I need this cleared up for myself. " She stopped to see if he was following her. It was hard to say, but then he said, "I know, I know. . ." and then he got her hands. He'd held them against his cheek and closed his eyes. She waited him out, and in a minute he sighed and let go.

  He took a note pad out of the inside pocket of his coat and found a soft-tip pen in another pocket, and asked about Leon. "What kind of a boy was he?" he said.

  Jeanie was glad to see the note pad. There was a moment, while he was holding her hands against his cheek, that the thought had crossed her mind that it might only be somebody who looked like Richard Shellburn. And not even that much.

  "He was mechanical," she said. “Even though his father died when he was a month old, so he never had the kind of help in those things that most boys get. Do you have children, Mr. Shellburn?" She saw he was writing, and it made her feel satisfied, in a way, to think she would be down on paper someplace.

  "No," he said, "I'm not married."'

  "Leon's father was killed on duty," she said. "He was a Philadelphia police officer, and we had been married eleven months. I didn't know what I was going to do .... " She stopped herself. This was about Leon now. He was looking up at her, waiting.

  "Anyway," she said, "I did what I could. He was always a sickly child, which was why he never got very big, the doctors said. There were big people on both sides of the family .... "

  "I noticed your aunts,” he said.

  She left them aunts. "Yes. Well, he was like other children, I suppose, except small for his age. And he never liked anybody else around the house, you know. My friends. He never brought any of his little friends by either, even when he got older. He had a girl friend, a lovely girl, but we never met her. She's a flight attendant for U.S. Air."

  Shellburn was writing words on his pad, sometimes looking at the pad, sometimes looking at her. "Is this helping?" she said.

  He smiled at her, and she thought he might hold her hands again. He seemed so sad about it.

  "And he went into the service, but he didn't stay in long. They sent him to Korea, I know that, but he got discharged for his nerves." He looked up. "That's how I know something happened," she said. "Leon wasn't anybody to have things fall on his head. He used to check the street before he went out the door, he was always looking around behind him, over his head, getting up and looking out the window."

  Shellburn said, "He was a bricklayer, first class?"

  "It was a month and a half," she said, "I don't know. But he was mechanical. He would have picked it up fast, if he wanted to. Anything Leon wanted to, he could pick it up fast ....

  "He never finished school, though. With Leon, nothing was ever quite finished. Every time you thought you got close to understanding him, there was still something he held back. Do you know what I mean? You could never say this or that was Leon, not all the way."

  She was quiet for a minute, looking at Shellburn's pad, wondering how it would all look written down. "Since he died," she said,
"I get the feeling I didn't know him that well. It makes it lonelier, in a way, but things were beginning to straighten out. He had a lovely girl friend .... " `

  She saw Shellburn looking around the living room then, and then he spotted Leon's picture on the table beside the sofa. It wasn't the handsomest picture she had of him, but it was the one she liked to look at. He was sitting almost sideways from the camera, wearing a suit and a narrow black tie, smiling like he didn't have a care in the world.

  "That one makes his ears look bigger than they were," she said. She stood up and brought him the picture. "There's others around. He had nice, even features." And saying that, she thought of her own.

  He gave her the picture back. "Did he live here, with you?"

  She said, "With me and my husband? Then, "Would you like to see his room?" He followed her up the stairs. He walked heavier than he was, she thought, like he was tired. She opened the door to Leon's room.

  Shellburn said, "Did he have a cat?" She shook her head, and then she noticed the smell too.

  "Leon didn't care for animals," she said. "Even when he was a little boy, he was always frightened of dogs and cats. I used to wish we could of lived in the country and had a few animals around so he could of gotten used to them. I think the country air would have been better for him. There's so many his age that already died of cancer, from right here in the neighborhood. It must be the air from the refineries, but then, people have to have jobs .... " `

  She was about to repeat the whole argument over the refineries that was argued every time somebody from the Pocket got cancer, but then she noticed that Richard Shellburn had stopped whatever he was doing and was standing beside Leon's unmade bed, staring at her. He'd completely changed channels.

  "Mr. Shellburn?" she said. He didn't move. He had the exact complexion of a moth, and he was tired and sad at the same time. Mostly he looked sad. "Mr. Shellburn?" She reached out and touched his arm, and he sat down on the bed. And then he got her hands again, just like he had downstairs, and she let him have them. He looked so sad. He held her hands against his cheek, and began talking about a place by the water,