Not good enough. What the hell is wrong with me? But it doesn’t matter; she’s already in the throes, already moving beyond me, her whole body slick with sweat.
Does Britta hear the same thing I do, the thundering between our chests completely off tempo? Or is it just me, my awareness sharpened by the smirk of the moon glowing in its predawn brightness, spotlight on poor choices, unprotected sex with vampires and the self-loathing that accompanies the unspoken admission that if given the chance I’d probably do it all over again.
Britta produces cigarettes, flicks the trigger of the gun, igniting a blue lick of flame from the barrel, and lies across the foot of my bed propped on her elbows. Beside her sits an open gym bag crammed with tightly bundled wads of cash, the cat curled against her narrow milky waist, the round slope of her rear mooning the moon. Her nakedness is without modesty, and I figure it can go either way, her exposed body the absence of anything to hide or the ultimate distraction, a full-body bluff.
Does she know Gus is dead? Would I have slept with her if I didn’t? It’s the worst type of question: one that can only be answered with lies you’re willing to believe yourself, like holding great cards but ignoring that sick feeling you’re heading toward a bad beat and Brokesville. Sometimes you just know.
“Ashtray?” I can only see her face in the momentary glow of the cigarette.
“I don’t smoke,” I say.
“You’re angry?”
“I tend to get moody after I’ve been taken advantage of.”
“I forced you?” Britta finds this possibility amusing.
“Angry at myself.”
“Don’t be. You’re not nearly the fastest messenger in Boston.”
“I wasn’t talking about that. Whose idea was it, yours or Gus’s?” I say.
“What part of it?” Her voice is raspy, tired, and I realize that I’m not going to be the one to tell her that Gus is gone, that I’m too selfish, too emotionally spent to comfort her if she truly cares. At the moment, my sperm count’s probably hovering in the dozens.
“I don’t know. You can start with the dealing, work your way up to the hard stuff.”
Britta lights a fresh cigarette from the old one, two flares, like fiery eyes alighting her face, the vices she’d claimed to be kicking returning in spades.
“Gus was already dealing when we started dating.… Did I just say dating? That’s so quaint. When we hooked up. Not a whole lot of courtship, but there you have it. He’d started with a few of his accounts, stockbroker types. I guess fleecing the market isn’t enough of a high. I don’t think your dispatcher knew.”
“She didn’t.” Martha unwittingly running point, living within the same rules that govern her couriers—don’t ask, don’t tell.
“Gus was fed up with Black Hole.” Britta hides behind the smoke and darkness. “Even though it was Ray who signed him to a record deal in the first place, which on the surface sounds great if you’re trying to pick up girls at a bar, but whatever money Gus had coming was tied to the record release. And Ray kept pushing the date back.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. They had a pretty stormy relationship, and after a while Ray used the recordings to bait him. And since Gus had the company account, he had to see him practically every day. Sometimes Ray just had Gus pick up shit to torment him, remind him that all he’d ever be without him was a messenger.” Britta blows smoke in my direction. “No offense.”
“Offense taken,” I say.
“Yeah well, when Gus bankrolled some decent money with the coke, he got it into his head he could buy back Gizzard’s master recording, offer Ray something above what the advance amounted to, and Ray could pocket the difference for basically doing nothing.”
“You told Gus that Darryl Jenkins was boss?”
“Only after he got curious enough about the runs that he finally opened one of the packages.”
“Gus told you he did that?”
“Not right away. But when he did, I told him he should talk to DJ, go over Ray’s head about the record, but he was too intimidated. DJ always had these two scary guys with him, and he was legit street. He wasn’t very approachable. And Gus also figured if Darryl found out he was dealing coke to people he met through the Black Hole account, there’d be trouble.”
“Because you knew Darryl was washing money?”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“He was running drug money into the business.”
“Or something. Why have Ray acting boss if everything’s on the up-and-up, right? That’s why Gus figured he could buy back the recording. DJ didn’t have day-to-day dealings with the business; me and Darcy took care of things like that, contracts, concerts, advertising. If Gus could convince Ray to sell back the recordings, then anything above the advance money paid out for studio time and producer’s fee was Ray’s to keep, free and clear. And DJ didn’t need to know anything about it.”
“But Valentine refused,” I figure out loud. “Why?”
“Because he was too scared of what would happen if Darryl found out.”
And rightly so.
“How often did large amounts of money come in? Had to be a lot, considering the move to Newbury.”
“It was pretty steady from all the club shows we’ve been promoting. And we reissued a couple of Lobster Rock compilations that started selling, so there was that. There was always a lot of money moving around from the ticket sales and merchandising. Gus had made multiple runs to Roxbury where you were heading before he…”
“Ran me over with your car?”
“That wasn’t the plan. Not exactly. It’s true Gus wanted the money he’d been delivering, but mostly he wanted to put Ray in a bind over the missing cash. He figured that if DJ was really the OG type he looked like, then he’d make Ray repay whatever was lost. Or else. Ray doesn’t have that kind of money, so Gus figured he’d create a seller’s market, force Ray to sell him back the master recordings.”
“And if he refused, then you’d keep the money and what, take over for Ray when Darryl demoted him into an unmarked grave? That’s pretty cold, Britta.”
“Yeah? Well it’s the music business, Zesty. If I was in charge, Gus would have gotten his record cut and promoted like it should’ve been.” Britta drags, glows, fades to black.
“How’d that work out for you?”
“It didn’t. But it’s not too late. Gus and I’ll split the money with you. There’s almost a million dollars in that bag.”
I try to read Britta’s eyes through the smoke, see only my reflection in the glow of the cigarette. “No? I guess I’m not surprised. Gus said you were different. He admires you, Zesty. You ought to know that. He respects you because you’re real, you know, content? He said you knew who you were and that you’d never change, no matter what. Didn’t need to change. You get what I’m telling you?”
“I think so.”
“He also said that you could get hit by a truck, brush yourself off, and walk away like nothing happened. That you’ve done it before, you were a pro. He freaked when you went down like you did and the money went everywhere.”
But not enough to stop and check on me.
“How much money was in the safe when you gave me the fifty?”
“Everything that’s in this bag.”
“Why did you take it?”
“I don’t know! I panicked after you got hit and expected the police to show up any minute.”
If I survived the collision. Though she wasn’t too panicked to call Martha and tell her I never showed to make the pickup.
“Did you know the money came from the Wells Fargo robbery?”
“I figured it out.”
“How?”
“Like I said, money had been coming in steadily, but it started picking up last week like crazy.” Darryl’s money rolling in as the flood of drugs was converted to cash. “I knew something big had happened, and the armored car thing was all over the news.”
“
And you figured Darryl was good and fucked as soon as the police got involved, that there’d be nobody left to claim the money.”
Britta’s unaware that the money has more than one owner, that, if Agent Lee is to be believed, the whole thing has been orchestrated by Devlin McKenna, back in town after more than a decade on the run and, for reasons I can’t even begin to fathom, crank-calling my senile father from the abyss.
So who killed Gus going after the million now sitting on my bed? Darryl? Otis? McKenna? They were all after it.
Britta’s cigarette goes dark as she finds something to stub it out on, and I’m suddenly beyond tired, a delayed postcoital fog rolling heavily across my eyes, and though I can hear Britta saying my name, I let my lids close to black, not interested in any role she might have concocted for me to try to make things right. It’s too late for that, as she’ll find out soon enough. But not from me—not my girl, not my problem—too late and Nyquil blood running through my veins. Too little, too late, Dilaudid sleep. Morphine dreams. Never count your money when you’re sitting at the table.
Story of my goddamned life.
FORTY-NINE
“There are five of us,” Diane says, gently taking Will’s hand from her belly. Already? She is preparing herself and Will is reminded: She’s done this before. “There’s a girl inside that’s just come through their teller program. When the bank is at the peak of their holdings, she’ll place a call. That man with the mustache you saw coming in, his name’s Michael Drain. His girlfriend showed after you left. Then there’s Leila and me.”
“That’s too many,” Will says.
“By one at least. The girl on the inside’s a given. Drain and his girlfriend can both handle guns, but so can Leila and I.”
“Not you. McKenna wants you for explosives, Leila and Drain for the guns. The girlfriend will drive. What’re the explosives for?”
“Diversion.”
“Where?”
“Police station on Washington, across from St. Elizabeth’s. There’s construction on the front stairs at the main entrance.”
“They’re closed off completely?”
“Only on one side. It’s all wrong.”
Will understands she’s talking about the danger posed to bystanders, innocents.
“How does Leila fit into this?”
“I don’t know. We split ways after the Harvard thing—you know all about it. She wanted human targets, and I was done at that point. I thought she’d surface, cut a deal like everybody else.… McKenna must have something on her like me.”
“It’s a suicide run.” Will sees it clearly now, open to the game. “He’s gathering expendables and taking a shot in the dark. Maybe with the exception of Drain, nobody’s robbed a bank before. If you pull it off, he’ll let Ritter loose on whoever makes it back with the money. If you fail, he washes his hands of it. That’s why he wants to blast the police station, to make sure every cop in Boston shoots first and asks questions later. Cop killers don’t make it back to the station house.”
“But why? Why now?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s getting ready to run.” Will’s heard rumors before; there’s always talk. And then somebody disappears, and it’s not McKenna.
“We can run,” Diane whispers, but her heart’s not in it. McKenna’s found her once, perhaps found Leila too in the same way. “So that’s it, then? We do as he says and then he kills us, our baby? What about Zero and Zesty? That’s it?” She allows the tears to flow freely now, not for herself, because in actuality, she has lived longer than she ever imagined she would, fuller, happier.
“No,” Will whispers in her ear, taking her into his arms. “That’s not it at all.” The game will go on. Just not the way McKenna planned it. “I’ve made arrangements.”
FIFTY
I wake to the sound of breaking glass, a rock skittering across the floor, Britta gone, the cat perched atop the money still at the foot of my bed. “Zesty!” From the littered field behind the loft. “Goddamn it, I know you’re in there!”
I stick my head above the ledge and spy Tom Foley crabbing grass, hunting another missile. Tom runs Honeycomb Rehearsal on Harrison Avenue in one of the few buildings not owned by Spagnola. He rents relatively soundproofed rehearsal spaces by the month—think padded eggshell foam cubicles—and maintains a recording studio at the back of the building in case a band generates four minutes of alcohol- or drug-fueled inspiration and wants to burn a disc before the genius eludes them.
“What the fuck, Tom!” I pop up before he reloads. “I have a doorbell!”
“No you don’t. Albert says he disconnected your buzzer from the battery. Said it was sending him weird signals. Hell of a doorman you got!”
“Put that fucking rock down! What do you want?”
“Does that guy Sid still work for your brother?”
“What?”
“Hulk Hogan. Does he—”
“What about him?”
“The fuckin’ jamook’s in my studio right now holding down guys from Cliff Note like hostages at the Munich Olympics. He already put a beating on Gary G, and now he’s playing with my soundboard like he’s Dr. Dre. He don’t seem right. I don’t know if he’s always like this or he’s on something or what.”
“So?”
“So it’s like the inside of a fucking bong down there, but as soon as the place airs out, which is like real soon ’cause I’ve been running the fans, I’m calling the cops.”
“So call them,” I say. “Or call Zero.”
“You still got pavement stuck between your ears, Zesty?”
“Listen, Tom—”
“You gonna come help me out with this or what? The last time someone with a badge walked through the studio, I bought my lawyer an outdoor pool. And I can do without your brother pulling on my ear if Hogan gets busted, but I got expensive equipment in that studio, and I know he ain’t paying for it if it gets broke.”
“Broken,” I correct him. “Broke is when you have no money.”
“You should know.”
“You going to pay for this window?” I say.
“Who’re you kidding? I hear you’re out of there end of the month.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Word gets around. A little birdie told me Spagnola’s already got Realtors walking through your loft, creaming their pants. You coming or not?”
There are two battered vans parked in front of the studio loading up for a road trip somewhere, the drummer getting the worst of it, the most moving pieces, set it up, break it down, watch as the singer or guitarist cherry-picks all the front-row girls.
It’s a little past noon, and bands are already rehearsing, the hall leading to the rear studio vibrating with the collision of percussive beats. The door to the recording room’s closed, and a kid with questionable piercings is leaning with his ear pressed to the wood, his eyes wide with either horror or delight.
“Oh shit, I think he just shot Dave’s drums. You know this guy, Zesty?”
“Zesty knows everybody,” Tom says. “He’s like the mayor of Shitsville. You’ve got ten minutes, and honestly, I don’t give a fuck if this place gets shut down. You hear those guys rehearsing?”
“Which guys?”
“My point exactly. Doesn’t matter. A month of the same shit, and nobody’s gotten a lick better. Who am I to step on another man’s dream, but somebody needs to break a reality check over some people’s heads before I lose my hearing.”
Sid is at the soundboard, perched on a high swivel stool, playing with dials and switches, giving everything a whirl. I don’t see a gun. The space is tight but lush, Persian carpets, filtered stand-up microphones, and Sid’s captive audience looking aggrieved and distracted, too self-possessed even in their state of siege to give Sid their full attention. Only Gary G has any marks on him, a bloody nose and a bruise on the side of his cheek; the other guys just look disheveled, but then again, that’s their look.
Sid flips a switch, says, �
��Take five, guys,” and swivels to me. “Goddamn, Z, I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“I’m just around the corner, Sid.”
“Your buzzer’s not working. You ever check in with your office? I left messages too.”
“Let’s get out of here, Sid.”
“What’s the rush? I was just getting started. You know these dorks?”
“Yeah. What’s the problem?”
“You know Jhochelle’s friend, Mo, works the stick at the Franklin? Well, a couple months back, she had her cousin staying with her for the weekend, brings the kid to this all-ages show at the Paradise? These idiots are on the bill, haven’t even gone on yet; Mo’s cousin goes missing. She’s what, sixteen, lives way out in the boonies, you know, like where they burn their garbage instead of throwing it out. Half an hour, they don’t see her. They gotta practically claw their way backstage to find her in some storeroom. This asshole, the one with blood coming out his nose, is feeding her wine coolers out the box, her shirt’s over her head, and this punk’s pants are unzipped. He’s lucky security got there before Jhochelle got ahold of him. I’m just squaring things, making sure something like that don’t happen again.”
I have to smile, this coming from a guy who yesterday was advocating sex with dead women in bushes, one last twirl before eternal chastity.
“What about the other guys?” I say.
“They thought they were tough guys.”
“You mean they aren’t?”
“Where you been, Zesty? Really, I been to all your spots. Your name’s poison in this town, by the way. What the fuck you been up to?”
“Walk with me, I’ll tell you. How’d you end up here?”
“Took a detour when I spotted these chuckleheads.”
“Time to let them go,” I say.
“You asking or telling me?” Sid looks at me hard but can’t keep a grin from taking shape beneath his blond Fu Manchu. “Shee-it, Zesty. Who’s the tough guy now? Hell, they could’ve left anytime they wanted. I was just fucking around with the board. The door ain’t locked. What am I, a zookeeper?”
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