Bobby Gold Stories

by Anthony Bourdain

  "Eddie had nothing to do with it," said Bobby, irritated. That episode of his life was a sore point, as Connely clearly was aware.

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah, Einstein," said the cop. "That's what you said then. It got you five years. You think your friend Eddie could have done eight to ten? I don't care how early you got out. He woulda snitched off everybody he ever knew. He snitched you off, didn't he?"

  "Bullshit!"

  "Oh yeah? Think? Listen up, moron. Wake up and smell the coffee. How do you think they picked you up with that carload a dope, genius? You think they're that smart up there? You just looked suspicious - so they pulled you over, happened to have a warrant? Eddie got grabbed two days earlier. He traded the load — and your ass — for a nice cushy community service, licking envelopes at some friend of his daddy's office. His father put it together for him. You didn't know that?"

  "He had nothing to do with it."

  "I got the fucking arrest record. Eddie Fish, detained while enjoying the services of a prostitute and found to be in possession of a controlled substance. You want to see the CI report? The one where he put it all on you? Told the nice troopers what kind of car you'd be driving and where and when? You surround yourself with bad people, Bobby. You're not a good judge of character."

  "Fuck off. This conversation is over," said Bobby. "You want to talk more, call my lawyer."

  "Awww . . . Is that any way to be? With an uncertain future in front of you - and a new girlfriend - I thought at least you'd want to listen."

  At the mention of Nikki, Bobby slowly moved his hand across the table and pushed the cup of coffee onto the cop's lap.

  "Ooops. Terribly sorry," said Bobby, without any attempt at conviction in his voice.

  Connely stood up and separated the wet fabric of his pants from his crotch, shaking his head.

  "That wasn't nice," he said. "These are Haggar slacks. Not polyester. All cotton. I'll never get that stain out."

  "I know the feeling," said Bobby.

  It was the people doing the little things around Eddie who saw him at his worst: the drivers, the waiters, bartenders, the doormen who saw him stumble home late, the deli owner at the corner who sold him ice cream when he was too high to talk, the clerk at the video store who rented him pornos. Eddie didn't notice them - so he figured they didn't notice him. They did. The elevator man had seen plenty. Bobby saw that as soon as he stepped inside the gold-and-mirror-paneled chamber and told him what floor he wanted. The man rolled his eyes, repeated the floor and pressed the button. Bobby took the ride in silence, still not sure what he was going to do.

  The cop had been telling the truth, of course. Bobby could see that now. It's no accident that the rich seemed untouchable. They never hesitate to sacrifice their friends.

  The thing to do was to kill him. That's what Eddie would have done, same situation. It's what Tommy V would do — probably what he's going to do, thought Bobby. Right upstairs, charge inside the apartment, pick that treacherous little fuck up by the armpits and throw him off the balcony - thirty-four floors down. Emotionally, it was the right thing, in that it was the traditional thing to do when betrayed. And intellectually . . . it might be the right thing too. Eddie was a terrible liability right now. Had been for a while. There were plenty of people who would be happy — even grateful — to see him go. The fat men out in Brooklyn would not be unhappy — that's for sure. As a career move it was almost a necessity, the way things were going. Still want that nice job at the club? Want those fat stacks of unaccounted-for bills to keep coming? No problems with the Italian contingent? A life free — or at least freer — of aggravation? Kill the midget. Hit him once, right on the Adam's apple, pick him up and throw him out the fucking window. Say something Arnold or Clint as he goes down, something like, "Have a nice flight," or, "See you on the street."

  The bell tone rang once when the elevator arrived at Eddie's floor. Bobby looked at the elevator man and mused on whether he would choose to remember him. He glanced at the corner of the ceiling where he knew the camera would be. The window wouldn't do. He heard music from inside the apartment, Curtis Mayfield, "Little Child Running Wild" . . . knew that Eddie was in a sentimental mood, playing records from the good old/bad old days. Bobby leaned on the bell, heard the music turn off and the shuffle of feet.

  Eddie was dressed in a silk bathrobe, no shirt, dress pants — the bottom half of a charcoal-gray pinstriped suit. He wore no shoes or socks and he hadn't shaved or bathed in days. Bobby was shocked at how bad he looked - usually, no matter what he was doing, Eddie remembered to get a haircut, have himself shaved if his hands shook. This was not like him. There was a white crust at the corners of his mouth, and the eyes were wild, jangly little pin-pricks surrounded by dark, raccoon-like circles.

  "It'sh you," he said, opening the door and then tottering back to a leather couch. "Just thinking about you . . . about school." Bobby looked around the apartment. There were half-empty take-out cartons everywhere: an uneaten turkey sandwich from a deli on top of the wide-screen TV, a half-order of Pad Thai on the cocktail table, bags of Cheetos and chips which had been torn open at the sides, Chinese spread across the floor, a completely melted box of Eskimo Pies forgotten in the sink at the bar. Eddie was drinking single-malt Scotch and washing it down with Coronas. He must have - at one point —thought about limes. There were two of them on the cocktail table next to the remote control. The Wizard of Oz was on the tube, volume down. Eddie turned up the music again: "Freddie's Dead" this time.

  "I hate the flying monkeys," said Eddie, swatting at something that wasn't there on his face. "Always hated those fucking monkeys. Remember that time we dropped acid and went to see this?" Bobby remembered. Eddie and he and two girlfriends had gone to see it at the college auditorium, tripping their tits off. One of the girls, Eddie's he thought, had never seen it before. The acid was really starting to kick in when the flying monkeys started getting busy, tearing up the scarecrow and tossing his limbs about, grabbing Dorothy and the dog. The girl couldn't handle it. Started bugging right there. They'd had to leave. Fortunately Eddie had had some thorazines. They'd cooled her right out. Yes, it was Eddie's date, Bobby remembered. He'd gone back to his dorm with the other girl. They'd listened to Roxy Music and John Cale and then she'd given him a memorably dry-mouthed blow job in his small, overheated room. She'd smelled of sweat and patchouli, he recalled. He hadn't been able to come. Hadn't been able to sleep. Just laid there in the dark, the girl's arm across his chest, watching the explosions of color behind his eyes, heart racing.

  "What the hell's the matter with you, Eddie?" he said, sitting down across from his old friend. "Your life looks like it's turning to shit."

  "It is shit," said Eddie. "Fuckin' guineas ruinin' my fuckin' life. Got the IRS crawlin' up my ass, got Tommy's people tryin' to put me outta business, the cops with their noses up my ass, and my wife . . . my wife's takin' the kids and the house."

  "Maybe you're taking a few too many pills, Eddie? You thought of that?"

  "I know. I know. I need them. I got a preshription. The doctor says I gotta take them."

  "Which doctor?" Eddie always had five or six writing scripts for him at any given moment. His fucking dermatologist wrote him Demerol and Dilaudid and Ritalin and Tranxene. Bobby looked at his friend and boss, sagging into the couch in his bare feet and stained dress pants, and knew he was looking at a dead man. What could Eddie say now that would make him feel any better? "I'm sorry"? Seeing Eddie dead would give Bobby no pleasure at all. He could easily just reach over — the state he was now — pinch off his nose with one hand, clamp the other hand on his mouth and watch him go. Eddie was too fucked up, too out of shape to put up much of a struggle.

  "This place smells like a Chinese whorehouse," said Bobby, getting up and sliding open the glass doors to the balcony. "Jesus! Get some fucking air in here." He stepped out onto the balcony, looked out across the East River and the Coca-Cola sign and Yankee Stadium. It was freezing cold, a few snowflakes floate
d down and then up again with the updraft from the street. Eddie joined him after a few seconds, his robe wrapped tightly around him, his hand gripping fabric under his chin. Eddie collapsed into a chaise lounge, spilling his drink.

  "I'm fucked," said Eddie. "Unless something happens to Tommy, I got no future. You gotta make him go away, Bobby. You gotta do him."

  "I gotta do Tommy Victory, Eddie?" spluttered Bobby. "You want me to do Tommy? A made fucking guy? What good is that gonna do, Eddie? What the fuck good is that gonna do for anybody?"

  "Show them who to respec'," said Eddie, eyes nearly closed. "Show them who they're fuckin' with . . ."

  "That'll work. That'll work great. How long you think they gonna let you live after that? Are you outta your fuckin' mind? You gotta get permission do something like that - and you ain't ever getting permission, Eddie. You even ask, they'll kill you right there. When's the last time those guys ever sided with a Jew over a guinea?"

  "Bugsy Seigel," shouted Eddie. "Meyer Lansky!"

  Two Jews.

  "Uh . . . give me a minute . . . " mumbled Eddie. "I'll think of one."

  "It never happened, Eddie. Never. And you ain't no Meyer Lansky. You're a fuckin' stumblebum. You're an unreliable, stuttering, drooling, out-of-control fuck-up with his hand in the fucking cookie jar — and you ain't earning enough - you haven't been earning enough for a while - to make them overlook it any more."

  "Fuck you! What do you know? You don't know me, man . . ."

  "I know you, Eddie. I know you in my fucking bones. I known you since I was a skinny kid. I know you for eight fucking years in the jug, smellin' dirty socks and dried jiz and loose farts, you asshole. You sold me out. You fucking dropped a dime on me. And I ain't killing nobody for you no more and I ain't hurtin' nobody no more for you. You can pop your fuckin' pills and drink your fuckin' Coronas and fuck your he-shes and do whatever you want to do 'cause you're not even worth me killing anymore. You're dead already. Worse than dead. Look at yourself!"

  Eddie just lay there, staring out into space from under heavy lids. Bobby could hear him breathe, a thick, rasping sound. A few seconds later, he was asleep.

  Bobby took a yellow cab over to 9th Avenue, the Bellevue Bar at 39th, and found a seat at the end. He should probably call Tommy, arrange a sit-down, work out an arrangement in keeping with the new, inevitable restructuring. He should have killed Eddie. Rented a car, taken him out for a drive. Problem over. Anybody still loyal would understand. And Eddie's enemies would appreciate the gesture. But he just didn't have it in him.

  There'd be people trying to kill him soon, Bobby understood. If he said nothing. Met with no one. Did nothing. If he just sat here every day, drank himself into insensibility day after day, let them do what they had to do — let the gears turn, the world outside go on without him - sooner or later, someone would come through that door and kill him too.

  Nobody at the bar talked to him. When Bobby nodded, the bartender came over and gave him another drink. Soon he was drunk, tapping his fingers to the jukebox. "Love Comes in Spurts," Richard Hell and the Voidoids. He was deciding whether he wanted to try and live, about what would have to be involved. He'd need a gun. And a car. And money. He had the airweight and the H&K in the floor safe of his apartment, with a stack of emergency money totalling about 50K. He could get a car no problem. Just a phone call and a taxi to Queens. His Aryan "brothers" would help — for a while — where the Italians would be unsympathetic. He wouldn't kill Eddie. He wouldn't set him up. But he'd leave him to the wolves this time.

  His cell phone rang and he heard objects noisily knocking together on the other end. A second later, "Pusherman" off the Curtis Mayfield album was playing over the receiver. Eddie, in a sentimental mood, playing him tunes over the phone. The soundtrack to better times.

  BOBBY'S NOT HERE

  Bobby Gold nowhere in sight; 5:30 A.M. in the NiteKlub office with Lenny, in ludicrous-looking ski goggles, working the power saw, Nikki wetting the blade down with water from a kitchen squeeze bottle. Halfway through the second metal pin on the revolving money drop in the safe and Lenny is bathed in sweat, his goggles beginning to steam up.

  "Jesus! This thing is taking forever!" says Lenny, turning off the drill for a second and listening for the sound of the floor waxer. "You sure that guy's still got his Walkman on?"

  "He's always got his Walkman on," says Nikki, wiping Lenny's brow with a paper towel, hands like Lenny's - in surgical gloves from the kitchen. "C'mon. You're almost through there. Keep at it."

  Lenny turns on the drill and proceeds, bits of metal bouncing off his goggles, stinging his face, lodging in his teeth.

  "Ouch!" he complains. "That hurt!"

  "Pussy," says Nikki.

  Finally the sound of the saw changes pitch, the shelf falls free of the last pin. Lenny yanks it out and hurls it into a corner. "I've gotta piss like a racehorse."

  "Use the trash," suggests Nikki, pointing at a plastic wastebasket.

  While Lenny empties his bladder, Nikki reaches her arm (longer than his) down into the safe and starts pulling out banded stacks of cash. There are a lot more of them than they'd expected.

  "Uh . . . Lenny," she says. "You see this?"

  Lenny, zipping up his fly, turns and looks. The pile of cash on the floor is large - and getting larger. "Holy . . . shit!"

  "No kidding! . . . Holy . . . shit is right!" says Nikki, suddenly damp, a few strands of hair glued to her forehead. "There wasn't supposed to be that much — was there?"

  "Let's get the fuck out of here," says Lenny.

  Lenny leaves first: down the back kitchen stairs, through the service entrance to the hotel. Nikki drops the duffel full of cash out the window and into his arms before following a few moments later. Two hours later, the money divided up and hidden — for the moment under a pile of sweaters in Nikki's closet — the two are sitting in the cellar of Siberia Bar, leaning forward, heads close, talking.

  "What's the matter?" asks Lenny, bothered by Nikki's stunned expression, the way she keeps shaking her head.

  "I'm alright."

  "No. Really. What's the matter?" he repeats.

  Nikki slams back her third vodka shot, her eyes beginning to fill up. "Everything is different now, isn't It?"

  "What do you mean?" says Lenny, playing the tough guy.

  "I mean . . . How do we go to work tomorrow? It's gonna be a shit-storm in there. How do I look anybody in the eyes? They'll fucking know."

  "Who are you worried about? The Chef? Ricky? What? Nobody's gonna think it was us! Who would think it was us?"

  "There was so much. There wasn't supposed to be that much. I'm worried. I admit it. I'm worried."

  "Fuck them. They're idiots. They'll never find out as long as we don't tell them."

  "I'm worried about Bobby. I don't want him to lose his job."

  "Bobby!? Bobby!! That security goon? Fuck him! He's not a cook! He's not one of us! What do you care about that asshole? Are you fucking that guy?"

  "Yes," says Nikki. "Yes. I'm fucking that guy. I've been fucking that guy for months!"

  "I can't believe this!" shrieks Lenny. "You're doing the head of fucking security?!" His hands trembling, Lenny takes a pull on a beer, missing his mouth and slobbering on his chin. "You're not going to tell him anything? You're not that stupid."

  "I won't say anything," says Nikki.

  "You better not!" Lenny thinks about this for a while. "In fact . . . In fact . . . if it looks like he's getting close to figuring anything out — you better tell me. You will tell me, right?"

  Nikki waves him away, dismissing the prospect. "I think you should bug out tonight, Lenny. You can have the money. Okay . . . maybe I'll keep some . . . but you can have most of it. Go to fucking Florida or something. But you should go. That's a lot of money there. You should be fine."

  "What are people gonna say, I disappear the day they find somebody cracked the fucking safe? They'll know!"

  "We didn't think this out too good,
did we?"

  "What do you mean? Stick with the plan. We stick with the plan. That's what we should do!"

  "The plan? There was no plan, Lenny. You know what my fucking plan was? You know how stupid I am? My plan was to take the money and get out of the fucking business for a while and maybe rent a nice place somewhere where there's water and maybe a beach and buy some clothes and a TV and like . . . live like a normal person for a while. That was what my plan was, Lenny. You know . . . a nice boyfriend . . . hole up behind some white picket fucking fence with a garden and like, live like a regular person. You know . . . he goes to like . . . work . . . wherever that is . . . and I putter around the house. I order shit outta catalogs . . . make myself a midday martini . . . watch soap operas . . . cook, like, tuna noodle casserole. Friday nights he comes home, we get dressed up, go out to dinner and maybe a movie — after which we go home and he throws me on a big four-poster bed and fucks me till my nose bleeds."

  "Are you fucking kidding me? Are you nuts? I feel like . . . it's like Invasion of the Body Snatchers!! What is with you? My fucking partner is going Suzy Homemaker on me? What the fuck!?"

  "I always wanted to putter," says Nikki, glumly, not looking at Lenny when she says it.

  "Putter? You want to putter?"

  "You know. Do normal shit. Whatever it is people do. You know. When they're not like us."

  "This is great," says Lenny, returning from the bar with a Jager shot and two beers. "This is great. I don't even know you anymore. You couldn't a said this before? You're going out with the head a fuckin' security . . . you got some weird-ass idea you're gonna turn into some kinda suburban housewife or some shit. We put down the biggest score of our fucking lives — I'm thinking, buy a couple a kilos a coke and turn that over and, like, open our own place or something — "

  "I'm not opening a restaurant with you, Lenny, I said that. I always said that."