Trigger Man

by Richard Futch

  I wish it had stayed that way.

  Something told me to go back (just piss in a corner back there somewhere; who the hell would know?) but I didn’t. I kinda hunched my shoulders forward and walked into the humidity. The one I didn’t know was pointing at the freezer, saying, “--be a bad idea if—” and stopped abruptly when he saw me. I acted like I didn’t see him, fiddling with my belt or something, but I saw him smile. I saw when he put a hand on Mike’s chest, a facsimile of mock disbelief spreading across his features. “Goddamn Mike! Wha’cha ya doing to the help around here!” he said as both men laughed.

  I stopped walking.

  Their humor cut back a pace and the stranger held out his hands. Just like I supposed I had right before the lunatic killed John. Little did I know the situation wasn’t much different.

  “No, no, kid!” the stranger said, his voice softer now. When he put his hand on Mike’s shoulder the ‘boss’ shut the fuck up. The stranger looked back at him. “Goddamn man, I said! You trying to kill this guy?”

  Mike shrugged his shoulders. “’S a fucking dirty place, Aldo. That’s how it is. He said he wanted it, so I gave it to ‘im.” He tried to look squarely into the other man’s face but had trouble doing so. The stranger, Aldo, made this guy afraid. I couldn’t exactly put my finger on what or why but it was true.

  Sautin took his hand off Mike’s shoulder and walked over to where I was standing. His smile was real then, too, like always. He was the smoothest motherfucker I’d ever seen. And he was holding out his hand to me. I looked down at mine, saw how grimy they were, and set my eyes on his, keeping my hands at my side. They didn’t fit the mouth, too cold, calculating, but later I realized that was the reason he’d perfected the smile: to focus attention elsewhere. His hand was still out.

  “Go ahead, kid. I wanta shake the hand of the man who needs a job as goddamn bad as this! Name’s Aldo Sautin!” and he laughed again, but this time I detected no mockery. Mike was silent over where Aldo had left him.

  I shook his hand, mumbled my name, as he pumped it up and down twice. I let go before he did. It felt like his eyes were peeling off the top of my head. I knew he must’ve really made women nervous even then, like being in a zoo with all the cages sprung.

  He turned back to Mike with his hands on his hips. “I think I can use a guy like this.” He walked closer to the guy. “You gonna be needing him much longer? I mean it doesn’t sound like you intend on keeping this hustler around long.”

  Mike made a sound close to whining. “Meant for him to clean the ceilings in the warehouse. You know how it--”

  Aldo whisted short and loud, silencing the man outright. “Jesus, Mike. I’m not even sure that job’s fit for a nigger,” and he turned his head back my way. The smile was a fixture within his hard features. “Tell you what, let me take him off your hands and I’ll pay him what you owe him? So what about it?” he said (to me, before Mike could answer), “Sound good to you, Jesse?” and he winked at me as if we both shared the joke at Mike’s brooding expense. It was the first time someone had called me by my name since John. But Sautin’s always been good with that kinda shit, getting to the switches of manipulation.

  I said, unfortunately, “Yeah, sounds fine to me.”

  And that’s how it’s been ever since. Before we left (after I’d cleaned up about an hour later) he pulled out one of the fattest wallets I’d ever seen and handed me a one hundred dollar bill. “Here,” he said. “That motherfucker should get niggers to do nigger work.”

  Chapter 14:Back to the Trade

  It didn’t take him long to unroll my tangled yarn; he has the humility to bring whatever he wants out in anybody. Or at least anybody I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen him crack harder cookies than me. When he asked where I’d been staying and I told him, his eyes rolled back and he slapped his knee, laughing. He made like he didn’t know, but I’ve seen Chubbs poking around his doorway a few times over the years since. It was a set-up; I just actually proved to be worth something.

  A good thief is pure gold and he knew it.

  What he told me about himself was mostly made-up I’m sure. But he’s always taken special pains to remind me how many similarities we share. He said he saw himself behind the spider-shit and dust and didn’t want me run by some pansy-assed idiot who was handed everything he had by his old man. He assured me people like Mike were easy pickings for the likes of people like us, and I didn’t ask him to explain. When he’s talking it’s like hypnotism. You hang on every word, you want to do whatever it is he’s asking. God knows it’s worked enough on me.

  Right up until tonight.

  Like I said, this morning he’s not gonna know what hit him. Because this was his biggest thing, the most important. He must’ve said that a hundred times in the last month, always with that faraway, dreamy look in his eyes that is so out of place on his inhuman face. But it almost worked. If I hadn’t thought back to that rainy day with Grandma I don’t think I could’ve mustered the guts to deny him the deed. But I did.

  Somehow I did and what’s done can’t be undone.

  I hope.

  ***

  First we went to the mall and he bought me some new clothes. I’d been wearing the same smelly old T-shirt and jeans for the better part of my lifetime, it seemed, and right about then I wasn’t asking any questions. I figured what the hell? I was young and naïve, still wanting to believe there was good in everybody, regardless if up till that point I’d had strong reason to suspect otherwise. But people are easily fooled; we believe what we want to believe. I guess that just shows what a little money and good food will get you.

  I didn’t know enough. I hadn’t read enough, though I don’t believe that would have changed much anyway.

  He actually asked if I wanted him to bring me back to the Army. He said it in all seriousness and the look on my face must have been hilarious because he started braying laughter again. Hitting the steering wheel, slapping his knee, almost going overboard with the act.

  Almost.

  When I said ‘no’ that sealed it. From that day till this I’ve been his boy. Not in any homosexual way, but he’s a child predator in every other sense of the word, and I don’t know that it could have been much worse. Not in the long run.

  He lived Up Town but said he had an apartment Down. His cousin was living there right then, not much older than me, he said. I said it sounded okay, for a long while there I’d slept stuffed in a corner, ignoring the people who came and went, the fucking on the couch, the dirty needles littering the floor. I figured it couldn’t be any worse and would probably be better. Such youthful fantasies.

  It was a third story place in the best part of town I ever lived until then. He brought me upstairs, introduced me to Duane, a tall black-haired guy who bore absolutely no resemblance at all to Sautin. I didn’t know what kind of game he was running then, but I do now. The boy was no more than another me: a homeless runaway liberated from the same Salvation Army. I learned later he’d fetched out several others from there, courtesy of Chubbs, and they’d all met with predictable fates. All except me, that is.

  For the moment.

  By the end of the first couple of days I was convinced Duane was neither Sautin’s cousin, nephew, mother, or messiah. He was just a simple pawn holding its dangerous position, momentarily, on the board. Of course, Duane confirmed everything Sautin had told me, but I didn’t believe a word of it. His eyes couldn’t lie even though his tongue tried; he had the imagination of a rock.

  For several nights thereafter I had dreams of flames and sirens, screaming people and blasting guns. Looking back it wasn’t even very prophetic; I simply knew the guy would be nothing but trouble.

  When I awoke the next morning I showered, shaved to remember what I looked like, and stepped from the foggy bathroom like Lazarus from the tomb. Duane was up watching television (cartoons) and when I walked into the room he spun around quickly. I never actually found out where he was from, but I didn’t care. His eyes
were always jumpy, constantly distracted, as if always expecting the inevitable blow. And when it came of course I was there.

  He asked if I was hungry and I said ‘yeah’. He had a credit card from Sautin; we could eat wherever we wanted. He did it all the time, he said. We’d see ‘the Boss’ later in the afternoon. He always called him that when Sautin wasn’t around; only ‘sir’ to his face, though. I don’t think it mattered to Sautin one way or the other.

  I ate enough for three people at the Shoney’s around the corner.

  It was a pretty relaxing afternoon, later. Duane was over the novelty of whatever I was experiencing. He was a dull bird and I couldn’t see lazing around the apartment all day while he watched TV. The sun was out and we broke company outside the front door. I did a lot of walking, looking at the shop-window stuff, listening to random fragments of conversation from different knots of people. I didn’t feel quite as invisible for the first time in my life; I guess it was because I wasn’t as desperate. Sautin has that effect; he finds tormented people and appears to soothe their problems, smooth out all the wrinkles. It’s as old as B-plots from the fucking movies, but that’s why movies are about that kind of nostalgic shit in the first place. People buy it; everybody, down deep, wants to believe it. All that ‘somewhere over the rainbow’ shit.

  I even spent a little of the money he’d given me on a leather hat. A beanie-looking number with the Saints logo on the side. Typical tourist shit but once again that’s why clichés work; typical actions for typical people. Reading peoples’ wants and tendencies just so happens to be Sautin’s most potent talent.

  By five I was back at the apartment, a little sick to my stomach from one of the hotdogs I’d foolishly bought on the street. Duane was planted right where I’d left him, though no cartoons this time, just a re-run of ‘Taxi’. Sautin came in with an armload of groceries and instructions about twenty minutes later, a little different acting than the day before but subtle enough not to cause any alarm. I put the stuff away while he went into the front room and whispered to Duane. I heard that dupe grunt a few times and thought nothing of it.

  When Sautin walked back into the kitchen ten minutes later he was all smiles, his mask twisted on tight again. Said he had a few things he needed Duane and I to do after dinner, and he’d brought over groceries for sandwiches. As if I didn’t already know that. He seemed distracted, checked his watch a couple of times while carrying on a half-assed conversation it was easy to see he would have rather avoided. I acted like I was listening but I really wasn’t; my mind was sizing things up.

  Because let’s face it, I knew something was wrong with the set-up. He didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d just walk right up and help someone out if he didn’t have a stake in it. I knew this. I‘d lived on the street; I knew it was unwise to trust anybody. Because when you did you set yourself up for a fall. But the thing was I really didn’t care; I didn’t plan on hanging around long. I was convinced in a few days I’d be far away, doing what? I had no idea. But far away, regardless. I didn’t know I was already strapped to his wheel.

  Right before dark we headed for Algiers. One of Sautin’s nicer job descriptions was Slum Lord. Duane told me on the way over the Mississippi bridge; he was a collector. Sautin owned a block of tract-housing close to Westwego, clapboard shacks that made the last place Grandma and me lived look like caviar and ice cream. We passed by some fairly rough areas on the way in, but the block Sautin controlled was quiet, considering what I’d been expecting. I wasn’t real hot on the idea of collecting anything from these neighborhoods that close to dark, but I was in no position to back out. Sautin always sets it up like that.

  Or attempts to.

  These were the people who were hard to catch in the daylight, according to Duane. That’s all he said. Sounded like pure shit to me. The first house we pulled up to had nothing but a gravel driveway and two hulks of rusted metal rotting away beside it. Half the front porch sagged heavily into a ragged drainage ditch that ran just along the wall on that side. The stairs were on the side that was still useable. I noticed the streetlight in the adjacent yard had been smashed out; a tennis shoe hung from the power line. It was all dark inside.

  Duane pulled to a stop behind the closest heap and opened his door. He hadn’t said anything since turning onto the street and I hadn’t either. This shit wasn’t new to me, the rules were the same. Watch your own back because I’ll be doing all I can to watch mine. The only thing different was we weren’t here to steal money, or at least not in the way I was used to doing it.

  I stayed on Duane’s left shoulder as he walked to the porch. From there I could see down around the shadow of the house to what could hardly be described as a back yard. Landfill would be a better description. I don’t think I’ve ever yet seen a conglomeration of shit that quite matched it: broken dishwashers, rear axles, bird baths, and cement bricks, screen doors and soggy mattresses. It loomed from back there as if it had half a mind to see what we were up to in the front. One thing I noticed right off: there were plenty of places you could hide in all that shit.

  I was pretty tense by the time Duane took the first step at the porch. He threw back the broken screen door like he owned the place and creaked dangerously across the slowly disintegrating wooden planks to the door. Someone had written there in permanent marker: Fuck Da Deke. No one had bothered to wipe it off or paint over it.

  Duane banged on the door hard enough to drop a cloud of dust from the equally rotten rafters overhead. I scanned the area through the ripped mess of the screened porch, glad nobody else was on the street. But it was getting darker and the shadows were stretching. Duane looked at me and spit on the porch. “Like this every fuckin’ time,” he said. Then, “RAFUL! ANSWER THE DAMN DOOR!!” He banged on it a few more times. No one came but I did hear another door slam shut a couple houses down. Duane looked at me again, pursed his lips. “Motherfucker ain’t home,” he said matter-of-factly, as if I didn’t quite get it. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out what looked like a business card. It glowed blue just like a kid’s Match Box car. The name Sautin was emblazoned in red. Duane turned and stomped his way back to the car, cursing under his breath. The guy was born to be a fucking amateur.

  The next stop wasn’t so bad. The house was a little nicer and a brand new Dodge Dakota sat in the drive. The yard was well kept. Duane was different this time, about as cordial as someone like him could get. He introduced me and asked a thin, black-haired, black lady where ‘Mr. Sam’ had been. Mr. Sam turned out to be the owner of the Dodge, a short, white-haired little black man with one of the deepest voices I’ve ever heard, a la James Earl Jones. The sides of his boots were dirty as were his pants up to the knee; his hands looked like he scratched through stone for a living. The inside of the house was spare but nice. The old guy had about a hundred times more dignity than the creep collecting his rent could have ever managed. I watched that man hand over two hundred dollars in tens to Sautin’s goon, and that is when I made the first true mistake of my life. I hated Duane and not Sautin. It’s hard to hate someone who’s buying your food and groceries, but my Grandma had raised me better than that. I should have hated Sautin and been done with the whole fucking thing right then.

  But then Annie would be dead, wouldn’t she?

  There’s really no doubt of that in my mind. Maybe this is just how good things turn out sometimes, by a seemingly random set of bad circumstances and decisions. Sounds crazy but a lot of what I’ve said must sound the same.

  There was only one more house that has stayed with me from that night, and I don’t have the faintest notion how the people who lived there fit into the ‘hard to find’ category. Sometimes when I watch the couple downstairs I think about that ancient old couple in that dilapidated shack. Sautin knocked it down immediately after the old man died, leaving the woman at the mercy of a state-run nursing home. The place had no central A/C, no window units. I saw a few space heaters positioned like bombs waiting to ignite th
e place in flames. The porch had fallen completely away and one of the neighbors must have been nice enough to put the cinder block beneath the front door. I’m sure the old woman couldn’t have managed that by herself.

  She was so old as to be practically transparent when she opened the sad excuse for a door, and her eyes were wide in the feeble light drifting in from the working streetlight in her front yard. No cars, no driveway, just a little old woman standing in the crumbling doorway of a little old shack. She didn’t look scared, just hollow-eyed and tired. I heard the thin shriek of a radio coming from inside. Duane said something and the old woman nodded, looked my way, and waved us both inside. Duane went like a bear into a cave and I followed.

  Inside was worse than out. The floor was bare, rotting planks; every step threatening to plunge you to the ground a foot and a half below. A true study in poverty, or man’s inhumanity to man: spindly furniture that appeared to have been dug from the worst garage sale, ancient curling photographs pinned to the stripped walls. I picked the closest approximation of a chair and sat down. Duane remained standing, talking in a voice so low I couldn’t make out a thing. The sound from the tinny radio was clearer here and I heard the unmistakable voice of a black preacher ranting about money to a chorus of ‘Amens’ and ‘Hallelujahs’ in the background. A deep, throaty moan wafted over and through the diatribe and I bent to my knees, attempting to stare past the old woman and Duane into the bedroom where the radio wailed. I could see nothing in the squalid darkness, my vision obscured by a hanging sheet bearing its own long tears and stains of long use.

  The old woman hung her head and ducked away from Duane. She disappeared through the cleft in the sheet and we were left alone for a moment. Duane looked my direction but I chose to find interest in something on the floor. At that moment I couldn’t bring myself into conspiracy with the collector. I heard him grunt loudly but I didn’t raise my head.

  Moments later the old woman returned with a ragged bag in her frail hands. When I looked up I noticed, for the first time, how thin and white her hair was raked back into a tight bun at the back of her neck. It seemed to make the flesh there scream. She glanced my way and I looked down again, but not before seeing the imploring eyes she drilled me with. She perched her tiny body on a barstool set close to the bedroom entrance and studied the contents of her purse under Duane’s steely glare. It was also at that moment I felt my grandmother’s presence stronger than ever before or after. The feeling was an eerie mix of déjà vu and shame and revulsion and something hitched up thickly in my throat. The sensation was so deeply sinful that I carried it with me for the better part of the next week. Some nights since, when I’ve been at my lowest, it has returned to chastise me for the life I’ve let happen.