“So?”
“What was his problem?”
“His problem? I was his problem. Me, Dante Ryan, only son of Sid and the former Mrs. Ryan. My mother was still young and good-looking when she married Dominic. Everyone figured there’d be more kids, but nothing happened. Usually they blame the woman, call her barren, but my mother already had a baby so everyone knew the problem was him, not her. I was living proof he didn’t have the goods. So every chance he got he made me pay. Christ, if I was breathing too loud I got smacked.”
The highway narrowed from three lanes down to two. Ryan moved to the right and slowed slightly, letting a few more cars fall in between us and the truck but always keeping it in sight.
“I tried to kill him once,” Ryan said. “I was maybe seventeen and he had given me a royal beating because he thought I was stealing cigarettes from him. Which I was but fuck him anyway. The next night I go out on a B and E with my friends and I find a gun in the house, in the guy’s bedside table in one of those purple Crown Royal bags. A .38 snubbie. The next time Dom tried to lay a beating on me, I put the gun on him. Told him what a useless lazy ugly fucker he was and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The ammo was so old it wouldn’t fire. Just my luck, I break into a house where the guy keeps a limp-dick gun in a bag. He really gave it to me that time, Dom, I mean with all the trimmings. I couldn’t walk right for a month. That’s when I started teaching myself about guns. Never bought or stole another cheapie. To this day I arm myself only with the best.”
“Is he still with your mother?”
“Dom? Nope.”
“Still alive?”
“Definite nope.”
“What happened?”
“I left home soon as I could. Once I was established and could support my mother, she had no more use for him. I’m pretty sure he was beating her too. So she kicked the bum out.”
“And?”
“He must have been overcome with grief. Maybe burdened with remorse over the way he treated her. Fuck, the way he treated me. Either way, a few weeks later, sadly, he took his own life.”
“How?”
“Shot himself in the head.”
“How many times?” I asked.
CHAPTER 42
Buffalo: Friday, June 30
Rich Leckie watched through a gap in the curtains as his wife and daughter left the house. He flinched when the front door slammed, even though he knew it meant someone going out, not coming in. He watched as they got into the car, watched Leora back out of the driveway onto the street, not paying attention as usual, forcing an eastbound driver to swerve around her back end, flashing a finger and blasting his horn.
And finally they were gone. He was alone, thank God. He was on his way back to bed when a dark thought crept into his mind: Leora hadn’t locked up behind her. The new deadbolt hadn’t turned. It made a distinctive click and he hadn’t heard it. Panic rose up in him. He felt like rats were crawling over his bare feet. He could hardly swallow his own spit. He had to go down and lock up but what if it was too late?
What if Ricky was already in?
No. It couldn’t be. Rich would have heard something. Footsteps. Old floorboards creaking. A high girlish laugh. The sound of a gun barrel slashing through the air. Of cartilage breaking.
He had to go downstairs now, before it was too late, and lock up. Stupid fat fucking Leora, putting him in a spot like this. Okay, she didn’t know about Ricky—he told her he had gotten mugged that night—but she knew better than to leave the door unlocked. This was still Buffalo, and hardly the best part. He tried to breathe through the panic but the best he could manage were shallow gasps. He looked around for something he could use as a weapon, settling for an African fertility statue Leora had bought four years before Leigh-Anne was conceived. Eighteen inches high and made of acacia, as good a club as he would find. Clutching the statue in his right hand, holding onto the banister with his left, he moved silently down the stairs. Halfway down, his bathrobe fell open and he cursed but couldn’t close it, afraid to let go of the banister or his club. As he neared the bottom of the stairs he paused—exposed, vulnerable, ridiculous with his shrivelled little turtle-head dick hanging there in a nest of grey hair—and listened with every ounce of concentration he could muster. He could hear the air conditioning unit humming away in the front room. The fridge rumbling in the kitchen. Water dripping—why couldn’t Leigh-Anne ever close the faucet all the way? But no footsteps, no laughter. No sound of a round being chambered. And then he could see the front door, saw that the deadbolt handle was horizontal, not vertical—locked, thank God—and he took the last step down, missed it and landed jarringly hard on his left heel. His knee hyperextended and slid forward, sending him hard onto his back, fertility statue still in hand.
Then came tears. They leaked out of his eyes at first, then fell in hot wet streams, his body shaking like he was having a seizure. He let go of the statue and pressed his fists to his eyes and curled up on the floor and held himself tight, rocking back and forth until there were no tears left. When he felt strong enough to stand he made his way into the kitchen where he blew his nose, then ran cold water into his cupped hands and gently washed his face. He sat down heavily at the kitchen table, flexing his knee gently and rubbing his tailbone.
I’ve lived a good enough life, he thought. Kept more or less to the straight and narrow. Did most of the things expected of me, other than make the big bucks. So what in God’s name did I ever do to deserve Ricky Messina?
He shuddered as the name entered his mind. The face, round and benevolent. He tried to banish Ricky from his mind but Ricky wouldn’t go.
Ricky dressed like a delivery man, with a gun at Amy’s head.
Ricky kicking him and breaking his nose.
Ricky shoving him into his car, driving him to Forest Lawn Cemetery.
Pulling off the road and yanking Rich out of the car, sending him stumbling into the darkness away from the lights along the road.
Ripping Rich’s pants down and bending him over a freezing cold gravestone.
Hurting him so badly. Making him do such vile things before leaving him bleeding, shaking, gagging on the ground.
“We understand each other now, don’t we?” Ricky had said. “You so much as call my name in your sleep, I’ll bring you back here and bury you alive.”
Rich knew he would never get the images out of his mind; he would never get the taste out of his mouth. What was the use in trying?
He thought about breakfast but had no appetite. He thought of getting dressed and going for a walk but it was too hot out. He wondered if he could make it to Barry and Amy’s tonight, or if it was better just to let Marty handle it.
He thought of the Buffalo River and the time he and Marty had plunged in on acid.
He thought again about going back to bed and wondered how many pills he had left.
CHAPTER 43
Buffalo: Friday, June 30
When the white truck passed the first highway sign for the Peace Bridge to Buffalo, it pulled over onto the shoulder and stopped, hazard lights flashing.
Ryan had to keep going—no way to stop without drawing attention—but he took his foot off the gas and coasted.
“What’s he up to?” I asked.
Ryan looked at the dashboard clock. It read 3:50 p.m. He said, “Shift change, I bet.”
“What?”
“He’s waiting for a shift change at the border. Four o’clock, half the guys change over.”
“He’s got someone on the inside?”
“Let’s find out.”
Ryan had told me his crew often crossed the border by getting the name of a bent Customs officer from Vinnie’s brother Luciano. Ryan got this Uncle Looch on the phone as we neared the crossing.
“Uncle?” he said. “It’s me. Yeah, that me. How you doing? Good, good … Yeah, I know. We all feel terrible, but what can you do? He had good health all his life. As long as he’s not in pain … Listen, Uncle? We got anyone o
n today at the bridge? Yeah, that one. Yeah? Comes on at four? Perfect. Okay. Give her my best too, Uncle. Thank you.”
“Lane 9,” he said to me. “Any bets that’s where our truck goes too.”
Security going into the U.S. was tighter than ever these days, whether you were flying, driving or taking the train. The lines stopped a good hundred yards from the crossing and inched forward from there.
“Open the glove,” Ryan said. “Give me the folder there.”
I handed him a green vinyl folder that had his registration and insurance papers.
It was four-fifteen when we pulled up to the booth in lane 9. As Ryan had predicted, the white truck was in the same lane, seven vehicles back.
The U.S. Customs officer leaned out of his booth, a heavy man of fifty or so, with exploded blood vessels in his nose and cheeks, watery eyes and a tremor in his hands. He looked like he’d sell his mother into slavery for a drink. “Citizenship?”
“Canadian,” we said in unison.
“Where you heading today?”
“Buffalo,” Ryan said.
“Purpose of your visit?”
“Pleasure,” Ryan said.
It didn’t feel that way to me.
The guard held out his hand. “Licence and registration, please.” As Ryan passed the guard his folder, he said, “Regards for you from Mr. Lewis,” he said. The guard’s eyes brightened and his face moved ever so slightly in the direction of a smile. He kept Ryan’s folder tightly closed as he withdrew into his booth. He knew the drill, knew there’d be five U.S. hundreds in there, tucked in by Ryan while we waited. Much stabbing of computer keys ensued in the booth. Then the guard leaned back out, beaming at least sixty watts brighter than he had been before, and welcomed us to the U.S. “Have yourself a nice day,” he said.
I’d settle for surviving it.
We pulled away from the booth and into a parking area. Ryan raised the hood of the car and checked the oil while we waited for the white truck to clear Customs. Checked it a few times, then slowly topped it up.
“Would Looch say anything to Frank?” I asked.
“Like what?”
“Like ‘Gee, you’re the second call I’ve had today. First was from Dante Ryan.’”
“First of all, Uncle Looch didn’t get to be his age by flapping his lips. Second, the other guy called first. He knew he had to wait till four o’clock so he’d already spoken to Looch when he pulled over.”
“Just checking how paranoid I need to be.”
“Right where you are is fine,” Ryan said.
CHAPTER 44
As we followed the truck north on the New York State Thruway, I could see a jetty built out into the Buffalo River below us. There was a paved path along its spine where people were walking, jogging and cycling. They looked like they were walking on water. On the south side of the channel, overlooking the river, were grand mansions built in a Spanish colonial style.
“Look at these places,” I said.
“Trust me,” Ryan said. “You’re seeing the best part first.”
The truck turned onto the Scajaquada Expressway, as did we, and exited soon after the first toll booth onto Elmwood Avenue, past the rolling green spaces of the Olmsted parklands. A few turns later, we found ourselves on Lincoln Parkway, a wide boulevard with houses that wouldn’t have been out of place in Forest Hill: Tudors, colonials, Georgians, all on spacious lots with well-maintained gardens.
The truck was slowing down.
Ryan had been keeping half a block back. At the first flash of the truck’s brake lights, he pulled over immediately. Frank got out and walked down a driveway beside one of the larger colonial houses. Claudio pulled away from the curb and began backing down the drive, Frank guiding him. I noticed the truck didn’t beep when in reverse. They’d probably disconnected the fuse that controlled it, a smart move given that the truck was generally put to nefarious use.
“Closer,” I said.
We cruised slowly toward the house. The truck was backed up to a brick garage at the end of the driveway. A tall grey-haired man in his fifties was offloading cartons by hand. Claudio and Frank stayed on the sidelines as usual. There was no forklift or hand truck in sight.
“It’s going to take that guy forever to unload if he has to do it himself,” I said. “Let’s park down the street.”
Ryan drove to the end of the block, made a U-turn, and parked on the other side of the boulevard so we could watch the house. He turned off the engine and lowered the windows. He lit a cigarette and hung his arm out the window so the smoke wouldn’t blow my way. The car felt quiet after the constant hum of the engine and the road.
“I wonder if there’s a coffee shop in walking distance,” I said. “I need a bathroom and a coffee, in that order.”
His answer was, “What the fuck!”
The truck was coming back out the driveway.
“He couldn’t have unloaded it all,” I said.
“There’s more than one drop-off,” Ryan said. “Stay or follow?”
“Follow,” I said. “The house isn’t going anywhere.”
Traffic was heavy as we tailed the truck south and west. Five o’clock on a hot afternoon, people were busting out of work, desperate to make it home to the yard, the porch, the air-conditioned den, anywhere they could peel off their work clothes and crack open something cold. American flags hung everywhere, limp in the heat. Some were probably out specifically for the Fourth of July, but many homes had permanent flagpoles fixed to their fronts, a lot more than you’d see in Canada. Some houses sported yellow ribbons and signs saying they were proud to be American. Lawn signs and bumper stickers, some in the form of furled ribbons, proclaimed support for soldiers in Iraq; some for the war itself. One car ahead of us, a big old Impala, had four bumper stickers: Proud to be a Vietnam Vet. Support Veterans of the Vietnam War. Support our Troops in Iraq. Insured by Smith & Wesson.
No, Geller, you are not in Toronto anymore, where most bumper stickers proclaim support for ecological and social causes and lawn signs warn government against privatizing health care and cutting school budgets.
“You want to see the real Buffalo? Check that out,” Ryan said, pointing to a billboard that showed a smiling man in a blue uniform steam-cleaning a carpet. “Crime Scene Incorporated,” the tagline read. “Cleaning and Restoring Buffalo Homes Since 1984.”
“Ever seen one of those at home?” he asked.
“Never.”
“I should apply for a franchise,” he said. “I could present a hell of a business case, don’t you think? I got experience, contacts and I’m motivated as hell to launch a new career.”
The truck rumbled around a traffic circle and veered west onto Lafayette. The farther west we drove, the smaller the houses were. There were no public monuments, green spaces or architectural gems in this part of town. No colonials on generous lots. Just frame houses with stained siding and cars looking worse for the wear of Buffalo winters. Yards showed more brown grass than green, and were piled with old appliances, broken bicycles, discarded lumber and mud-spattered toys. Sidewalks were breaking where weeds pushed up from the ground. Windows were boarded up. Men sat against a fence outside a dirty bodega, drinking from big cans of malt liquor. At least half the businesses on the street had newspaper taped over the windows. Graffiti covered the sides of most buildings.
“Osama bin Laden lives,” someone had written in white paint on a red-brick wall.
“Upstairs,” someone had added in black.
A few minutes later, the truck pulled into the parking lot of a three-storey warehouse surrounded by a fence topped with rusting razor wire. Most of the windows at the rear were broken despite being shielded by metal grilles. We parked on a side street where we could see the back of the warehouse through the fence. Behind the building were tall cottonwood trees. Fluffy white clumps drifted down like large snowflakes only to be snagged by barbed wire or trapped by wind currents against the fence. Frank and Claudio perfected their idl
e routine while two hired hands unloaded the cases: first the loose ones, which they wheeled inside on a dolly, then the skids, which they removed using the same kind of forklift we’d seen at Silver’s.
When the truck was empty, Claudio closed the back door and locked it, and all of them went inside. Half an hour later they were still there.
“If all they left at the house was a dozen or so cases, where do you think the rest is going?” Ryan asked.
“Once they’re over the border, they can go anywhere: Rochester, Syracuse, Detroit, Cleveland.”
Hundreds of thousands of vials, millions of pills, bound for hungry markets where aging boomers wanted—needed—to remain virile and healthy; where their parents were trying to cope with the onslaught of symptoms that storm the body in its eighth and ninth decades; where people of all ages with rare illnesses needed medications in amounts too small for the pharmaceutical industry to profit by unless the drugs were sold at exorbitant prices, which, of course, is what the industry did.
“Let’s go back to the house,” I said. “Try our luck on whoever is there.”
“Are we down to banking on luck now?” he asked.
CHAPTER 45
Parking was suddenly at a premium near the house on Lincoln Parkway. Every available spot was taken for a full block in either direction. As we passed the house, an older man, extremely heavy and sweating through his shirt, was pushing an empty wheeled cart up the walk. He was at the bottom of the steps when the door opened and a man and a woman came out. The man was the one we’d seen unloading the van. He wore black jeans and a yellow T-shirt with a swirling portrait of Jerry Garcia in a cloud of smoke. The woman looked like a yachter in a Ralph Lauren ad. She carried a cardboard carton in her arms; the man had two. He had to use his backside to hold the door open for the older man as he backed up the stairs pulling his cart. They exchanged greetings as if well acquainted. I turned and watched through the rear window as the man and woman carried their cartons to a gold Infiniti sedan. He loaded the cases in for her, then kissed her on the cheek before trotting back to the house.
Buffalo Jump Page 26
