Citizen Vince

by Jess Walter

  Behind Tina, a broad-shouldered man in Jockey shorts and short curly hair comes down a hall and into the small living room. “Tina? Who’s at the door?”

  She says over her shoulder, “It’s nothing, Jerry. I’ll take care of it.”

  Dupree remembers the date on the letter—a little more than a year ago—and sees his opening….” Why don’t I talk to your husband about this letter. Maybe he knows something—”

  Her head snaps forward. “No. Please.”

  Jerry McGrath is at the front door. “Who is it, baby?”

  Dupree looks at Tina, who opens her mouth but clearly doesn’t know what to say. So Alan offers his badge and guesses right that Jerry won’t realize it’s not an NYPD shield. “Hi, Mr. McGrath. We’re looking for a robbery suspect we thought might be in your neighborhood. Have you seen anything out of the ordinary tonight?”

  “I haven’t,” he says.

  Tina smiles and pats her husband’s chest. “I’ll take care of this, Jerry. You go on back to bed. It’s late.”

  He smiles, a sweet-looking guy. “Thanks, baby.” He looks down and maybe realizes for the first time that he’s in his underwear. He shrugs. “I work at four.”

  “It’s fine,” Dupree says. “I’m sorry to disturb you this late.”

  Jerry trudges back to the bedroom and Tina steps out on the porch, closes the door behind her. She takes the letter and reads the envelope. “Look, I don’t know any Vince Camden. I wrote this to my old boyfriend. Marty Hagen. But I haven’t seen him in three years.” She turns the letter over in her hands. “He didn’t answer it.”

  Dupree writes the name Marty Hagen on his notebook. “About six feet tall? Brown hair? Has kind of has a…” Dupree tries to replicate Vince Camden’s smirk.

  “Yeah, that’s Marty.”

  “And you never heard him use the name Vince Camden?”

  She shakes her head.

  Dupree writes this in his notebook. “Does he have any friends or relatives here?”

  “His parents are dead. He doesn’t have brothers or sisters. I don’t know about extended family. He never mentioned any.” She looks back in the house to make sure her husband isn’t listening. “You could try my brother. Benny. They were friends. Benny was his lawyer.” She gives him Benny DeVries’s phone number and address.

  Dupree pulls out a business card and writes the name of his hotel on it—then looks over his shoulder at Detective Charles, staring at him from behind the wheel of his car. Almost midnight. “Look,” Dupree says, “if you see Vince—I mean, Marty—if you hear from him, please call and leave a message for me at this hotel.”

  She nods, takes the card. “So what makes you think he’s coming to see me?”

  “He wrote your married name on a piece of paper the day he left. And this letter was on his nightstand.”

  She looks surprised, maybe flattered, and then pulls her features tight again. “What did he do?”

  “He was stealing credit cards.”

  She rolls her eyes as if that information was obvious. “You came to New York for stolen credit cards?”

  “We also think he may have information about a homicide.”

  “You don’t think he—”

  “Maybe. We don’t know. Look, Mrs. McGrath, if you see him—”

  She nods and looks down at the card.

  “One more thing. Do you have any idea how he ended up in Spokane?”

  She cocks her head. “What do you mean?”

  “Why he moved from New York to Spokane?”

  “Well…I assume you put him there.”

  “We put him there?” Dupree feels the last tinge of his jet lag.

  “After he testified. I assume that’s where you guys moved him.”

  And then everything makes sense—the lack of a record or a driver’s license, the phony name, the letter with the name torn off. “Jesus. He’s in witness protection?”

  “Yeah. You didn’t know that?”

  Dupree laughs and rubs the bridge of his nose. A shadow. A ghost. “No,” he says, “No, I didn’t know that.”

  JOHNNY BOY THRUSTS a big index finger in Vince’s face. It looks like a sausage with a manicure. From Vince’s vantage it is centered between the big man’s bleary eyes.

  “One mistake,” Johnny says. “One fuckin’ mistake.”

  Vince doesn’t breathe. This is my fault, he thinks. Some things you just don’t bring up with drunk people.

  It’s late. There are only five players left at the table—Vince, Johnny, Carmine, Beans, and Ange. The money has moved around, mostly between Carmine and Ange. They’re each up about thirty-five thousand. Beans is more or less even, playing with his original ten. Johnny lost his ten thousand an hour ago, but his face went crimson and his upper lip disappeared and the other guys quickly loaned him another stake and he promptly lost eight thousand of that. Johnny is stone drunk, down to his last two grand, and forgetting to look at his cards before he bets. Vince, meanwhile, has lost whatever luck he brought to the first table and only conservative play and a nicely timed flush have kept him from being wiped out. He’s down to his last fifteen hundred.

  He tries to ignore the meaty finger in his face, wishing he hadn’t brought up the subject.

  Johnny looks around the table. “How about you ignorant assholes? Any of you dickheads know what Jimmy Carter’s mistake was?”

  Carmine: “Not bombing the fuckin’ Iranians the minute they took the hostages.”

  Johnny finally puts his finger down and Vince relaxes. “Nope.”

  “Letting those OPEC fuckers raise gas prices.”

  “Nope.”

  “Not having Billy whacked the minute he got elected.”

  They all laugh except Johnny, who shakes his head. “His one mistake was this.” He looks around the table, and then satisfied, sits back in his chair. “He forgot not to be a pussy.”

  The guys howl, laugh, raise their glasses, and yell salut.

  “I’m dead fuckin’ serious. People will follow a drunk. Even a retard. They’ll follow a stone criminal. Psychopaths and lunatics and queer bullies. But if they think you ain’t got balls—even for a second—you’re fuckin’ done.”

  “So you think Reagan’s going to win?”

  “Hell yes, Reagan’s going to win. This is a whole new thing comin’ here. It’s gonna be fuckin’ flags and parades and armies and virgins and 19-fuckin’-50 all over again. A pussy can get elected once, but not twice. We can’t go eight years without kicking a little ass. We like to kick ass. We pretend we don’t. But we do.” He waves around the table. “The people out there…they’re no different than us. It’s no different than when we got stuck with Big Paul as boss instead of Neil. I wish we could have Reagan run our shop.”

  The guys at the table look around nervously.

  “You watch. We’ll have our own Reagan one day…rise up…a real boss, somebody with some fuckin’ charisma, somebody people respect, come in and restore a little pride to the operation…glory. Kick the asses that ain’t been kicked the last three years. Startin’ with that fat fuck pussy Big Paul!”

  Ange reaches over gently and puts a hand on Johnny’s big forearm. “John. Come on. Don’t talk about that here.”

  “I ain’t sayin’ nothin’.” Johnny pulls his arm away, licks his thin lips. “I’m just sayin’…I’m just sayin’ that’s the one thing people won’t forgive. If you can’t be a man…fuck you. Get out of the way and let someone else be boss. That’s all I’m sayin’, Ange. That’s all I’m sayin’.”

  The guys raise their glasses to punctuate and hopefully end this line of talk, but Johnny ignores them and keeps rambling. “It’s like fuckin’ Reagan! That guy could be our boss! I’d follow him. He knows! He knows to be a man and people follow. He knows you gotta earn for your friends and you gotta be a man and gotta protect your family. You gotta stand up, no matter what. You know why? Huh?” He looks around the table, then waves at the wall. “Because the people…out there…they’r
e all different, the spics and fags and Upper East Side dickheads and little old Chinese ladies…but they all got one thing in common. All of ’em.” John finishes his drink.

  “They’re afraid. Scared to death. That’s all they want in a boss. You know? Someone who ain’t scared. That’s all. Like when you were a kid, the way you looked up to your old man.” The guys make eye contact, grow quiet, as if they know what’s coming, as if he’s crossed this drunken threshold before. “That’s all.” Johnny’s face reddens and his eyes bulge wet. “So when some motherfucker drives his fuckin’ car into your fuckin’ kid! And when he drives that fuckin’ car around the neighborhood with no respect for the grief of a mother! And when that woman has to look at the dent where her fuckin’ boy spent the last breath of his life! I don’t care if you have to go to jail the rest of your life, you stand up and you do something!”

  The guys mutter: “That’s right, Johnny.” “That’s right.” “It’s okay, John.”

  Johnny falls back. “You fuckin’ do something.”

  The guys shift in their chairs, desperate to change the subject.

  “So…” Ange wants to say something but can’t come up with anything.

  It is Beans who steps in, to the relief of the others. “You think we’ll ever elect an Italian president, John?”

  He doesn’t seem to hear. He stares at the poker table.

  Beans continues, “I mean, if the Irish can get a guy in there, why can’t we?”

  Carmine looks at his cards and bets. “What about D’Amato? If he beats Javits and that bitch with the glasses, I could see him makin’ president someday. That guy’s fuckin’ hilarious.”

  Johnny sighs and looks around; it’s as if he’s returned to their table older and disoriented. He sits back in his chair and closes one eye to see his cards. Strokes his hair. “D’Amato could never be president. He’s goin’ bald. That’s the second thing people want. Hair. You can’t be a pussy and you can’t be bald. Who wants a bald pussy president?”

  “What about Ford?” Carmine says. “He was bald and he was a pussy.”

  Johnny slaps him. “First off, he wasn’t elected, you stupid fuckin’ ignorant cockbite! He was fucking handpicked after that fucker Agnew got his dick in the wringer. And he played fucking football at Michigan. You think a pussy plays football at the University of fucking Michigan? He was a lineman, for fuck’s sake! Jesus!” The other guys stare at their cards and hope to ride this out.

  Vince forces himself to look down at his hand. A pair of tens. Okay. The storm seems to have passed. Now or never. He bets five hundred. Ange and Johnny—still sulking—call. The others fold. On the flop Vince gets another ten. Bets his last five hundred. They call him all in. He gets no help with the turn or with the river. Ends with three tens. It’s a good hand. Johnny’s got nothing. But Ange has three queens.

  “Sorry, Donuts.” Ange rakes his money in. Vince stares at the chips being raked into Ange’s pile. He looks over at Johnny, who is also watching those chips. Vince can’t believe it. He lost. The money he was going to use to pay off his debt. Just like that. He’s still got about six grand in his bag, but it won’t be enough. Not even close. It’s over.

  Johnny stands up and lurches against the table. “I gotta piss.” A fibrous strand of spit connects his lips. Vince just sits there, staring at his cards.

  So that’s it. You have to run. What about Canada? Sure. Open a restaurant, maybe the picnic-basket place in Canada. What’s the French name for picnic?

  Vince backs away from the table, thanks the guys, and starts to leave. But he surprises himself and turns, follows Johnny Boy to the bathroom. He tries to look like he’s just waiting for the head. Stands outside in the narrow hallway listening to the stream. What are you doing? Run! If you run now, you’ll never stop running. Maybe this is as good a place as any to make a stand.

  He can feel his heart in his ears. There is a small end table in this hallway with magazines stacked on top, Reader’s Digest and Saturday Evening Post. Seems so odd to have these magazines here. He opens the Reader’s Digest and turns to his favorite part, the Real Life Drama, amazing tales of escape and endurance. This one is about a guy whose car went over the bank into a river and the guy spent two days with the water up to his neck before he was found. Vince reads to the first quote. “I knew I was going to die.” They always say that in Real Life Dramas. People always knew they were going to die.

  Vince closes the magazine. This is the third time this week he’s known he was going to die. But then…he’s always known, hasn’t he? People always know. What else is going to happen? And yet people always seem so surprised. Vince imagines that if he makes it out of this he’ll write and submit a Real Life Drama to Reader’s Digest: I played poker across from the very man who wanted to kill me. And then I followed him to the bathroom. As I stood there looking at magazines…I knew I was going to die.

  Johnny is in there a long time. When the flow is finished he stays in the bathroom, clearing his throat. Then it sounds as if he’s talking to himself. Vince has decided again that he should just forget it, walk away—O, Canada!—when the door opens and Johnny steps out, comes face-to-face with Vince.

  He’s a heel shorter than Vince, who is surprised at the man’s thickness—sitting across from him, you don’t get a real sense for his gravity, the density of those arms and that chest; it’s as if he’s about to burst. His eyes are half lidded and he seems exhausted. Vince has the sense that the guy making jokes at the poker table all night has been a character, a blustery act—and it strikes him that we all have to be alone sometime; we all look in the mirror and see whoever is really there. Even monsters go to bed.

  His own voice is deafening in his head: Say “Excuse me,” and edge into the bathroom. Canada! They got their own football league in Canada. Just trying to get to the bathroom. It’s cold in Canada.

  Johnny stares at him, expectant and then angry, and Vince has the strongest urge to ask: How many dead people do you know?

  And you can’t help wondering which the great man would count first—the boy hit by the car or the man who drove it. Which comes first: grief or revenge? Which face does he see when he goes to bed at night, when he wakes up disoriented and afraid? Which face haunts his sleep? But that’s not what Vince has come to ask, and so he steels himself, does his best to hold this man’s flat, cold eyes. And before he speaks, the last voice he hears is, ironically, Johnny’s: Stand up and do something.

  Vince takes a deep breath: “Mr. Gotti,” he says, “I owe you some money.” When Johnny doesn’t react, Vince continues. “I’m the guy you sent the guy to kill.”

  New York, New York

  1980 / November 1 / Saturday / 1:38 A.M.

  V

  Chapter V

  Still no answer at Benny DeVries’s apartment. Dupree hangs up the pay phone and walks back to Charles’s car. He climbs in. “Nothing,” Dupree says. “Look, you can go home. No sense both of us sitting out here.”

  Charles, chewing on a toothpick and staring into space, shakes his head. “I’m good.” They are parked outside Benny’s apartment, which seems nice to Dupree, but which Charles claims is in a dicey neighborhood. The lawyer hasn’t been home all night. Dupree knows it would be too much to assume he’s with Vince Camden/Marty Hagen, but it’s worth waiting just in case. He’s tried a couple of times to get Charles to go home, but Charles always waves him off and says he doesn’t want to get in trouble when Dupree gets himself killed.

  Still, Dupree is relieved to see the big cop sobering up, glad to see him coming down from whatever he was on when he picked Dupree up at the airport—frantic and edgy, with those wet, flat eyes. Now he’s staring, unblinking, out the window. “I never minded stakeouts,” Charles says. “It’s nice. Quiet.”

  The streets are slick with the steam rising up from the sewer. There is a surprising amount of traffic. Cabs tear past; couples stagger down sidewalks.

  “First thing in the morning I’ll get our file on Hagen
for you,” Charles says. “Weekends are tough, but I’ll get it.”

  “Thanks.” Dupree settles back into the seat of Charles’s Crown Vic. This does feel okay, sitting in front of a suspect’s apartment, waiting—it’s as reorienting as the trick-or-treaters. He even finds himself thinking of Charles with the kind of concern he’d get for any partner. “So you’re in some trouble.”

  Charles looks over, and then at the front window again. “Yeah.” He rolls his thick neck. “Not that it matters, but what Mike and I were talking about…didn’t happen like that. I didn’t force that girl to do anything. We were laughing, joking. She wanted to come back to my car. It was her idea. She was all over me, practically begged me. I swear on my mother’s eyes I was giving that girl a break. Keeping her out of jail. It’s a goddamned blow job. Who gets hurt?”

  Dupree looks out the window, at Benny DeVries’s building.

  “Let me show you something.” Charles opens his wallet and pulls out a piece of paper with a number on it. “Look. I even got her number. I thought she liked me. I was gonna fuckin’ call her. I thought we hit it off.” Charles shrugs dismissively at his own explanation. “Turned out it was a phony number.” Even so, Dupree notices that he puts the number back in his wallet.

  They both stare out the window. Quiet. After a moment, a cab pulls up to DeVries’s building. Two men step out. One of them has curly blond hair; the other is older, thicker, a big guy with gray hair and a stolid, heavy-browed look that even Dupree recognizes: the guy is mobbed up. They stand in front of the building, talking and glancing around. The cab waits.

  “Curly Hair.” Charles sits up in his seat. “Is that your guy?”

  “That’s not Camden, no. Might be Benny.”

  “’Cause I know the other guy. Pete Giardano. He’s a shy, does some book.” Charles seems genuinely intrigued by this development, and Dupree wonders how long it’s been since Charles did real police work. The two men are on the street, only a few feet apart, talking and nodding. Finally, they shake hands and Pete Giardano climbs back into the cab. The curly-haired guy leans down and says something into the back window, then watches the cab drive off. As soon as Dupree sees that the guy is walking toward the building, he opens his car door and calls out: “Benny?”