Prince of Thieves

by Chuck Hogan

  "Nobody's here looking for friends," said Frank G. "This here, you and I, this isn't friends. This is a partnership. What we have is a pact. That said, I don't know what all this is exactly about your being out there on your own."

  "Okay. You're right."

  "I'm your wife in this. Me, I'm your kids. I'm your parents and I'm your priest. You let yourself down, you let us all down, the whole system crumbles. And as to the others listening to you-- hey, so they're not asking you for a ride back to the T. They respect the work. You're doing it. Coming up on two years? That's getting it done. I'd take respect over back pats, any day."

  An old man came shuffling up the center aisle, shrugging on his raincoat, saluting them before hitting the door. "Billy T.," said Frank G., waving good-bye, watching the church door close. "Wonder what he goes home to, huh? If he's got anybody but himself to answer to." He shook his head at the character of the guy, then shook him all the way off. "But one thing I don't get about you, and it's a big one. Why you're still doing your two the hard way. After all you learned here-- why you don't know you can't be around people who drink."

  Doug made an impatient noise, knowing Frank G. was right and also knowing Doug wasn't about to change. "You choose your friends, right? But not your family? Well, my friends-- they are my family. I'm stuck with them, they're stuck with me."

  "People grow up and leave their families, guy. They move on."

  "Yeah, but the thing with that is-- they actually keep me sober. That's how this works. By their example. Seeing them fuck up over and over-- that works for me."

  "Okay. So hanging around with knuckleheads makes you feel smarter."

  "It's like lifting weights. Resistance training. The temptation is to give in, to skip that last rep, short the weight, arms burning. I ignore all that, finish out my set. Being with them reminds me that I'm strong. Reminds me I'm doing this. Without that, I could get lazy."

  "Okay, Doug. And I hear you, right? And I still think you're packed full of crap. This uncle of mine, right? His wife died, he's getting ready to go to a nursing home, and I'm helping get him set up there. Decent attitude, all things considered. Month or so ago, we're sitting in Friendly's over grilled cheeses. All-around good guy, telling me how now he looks back over his life and thinks, Hey, if only I knew then what I know now. Not regrets necessarily, just his perspective now, you know? That whole, Youth is wasted on the young thing. And I was polite and all, sucking my Fribble through a straw. But I'm looking at him, this uncle of mine, struggling to get that flat yellow sandwich into his mouth, and I'm thinking-- no way. He'd do things exactly the same way he did them before, even knowing what he knows now. Drop him back into his life at twenty-one, twenty-five? He'd slip right back into the moment, make all those same mistakes. Because that's who he is." Frank G. leaned closer to the back of Doug's pew, resting his forearms on the top and lacing his fingers. "So who are you?"

  "Me?"

  "What makes Doug M. think he's different from everyone else."

  "I guess-- only because I am different from everyone else."

  "Fine, good. We got a problem here, let's address it." Frank G.'s hands grappled with the air. "You don't seem to realize that you are your friends. That's who you are-- the people you attract, who you keep around you. Now, I'm a part of you, right? Just a little taste, maybe-- lucky dog, you. A bigger part is this goddamn cancer tumor part, I'm talking about your knucklehead friends. Seeing them tonight?"

  "Yeah."

  "Okay. Do this for me. Take a good long look around. Because those faces you see staring back-- that's you."

  Doug wanted to answer that, wanted to lodge his protest. He wanted Frank G. to know he was more than the sum of his friends.

  The priest was out in his black suit and Roman collar, cupping his hand around the candles on the altar, blowing flames into smoke. "Looks like last call," said Frank G.

  Doug said, "I think I might've met someone."

  Frank G. was quiet awhile, a silence more meaningful than a simple pause. Doug suffered through it, alternately sickened by his desire to please Frank G. and hoping he had succeeded.

  "She in the program?"

  "No," said Doug, surprised.

  Frank G. nodded like that was a good thing. "What does it mean when you think you meet someone?"

  "I don't even know. I don't know what that means."

  Frank G. rapped a knuckle on the back of Doug's pew, like a blackjack dealer knocking a push. "Take things slow, that's all. Take care picking who you hook up with. Attraction does not equal destiny, the thirst teaches you that too. Not to break your tender heart here, kid, but nine times out of ten, romance is a problem, not a solution." Frank G.'s brows remained high over long-sober eyes. "Aside from not walking into a bar alone, my friend, this is the most important choice you're ever gonna make."

  7

  Saturday Night Fever

  DOUG CONTINUED ON TO the Tap that night because he had told them all he would. Upstairs was filled with warm bodies arranged around a glass bar underneath some nouveau lighting, lots of laughter and clinking and the general hubbub of people working on their weekend buzz. Whiny guitar chords warned drinkers away from the doorway leading to the smaller rear room and its one-light, one-stool stage. All the young professionals who couldn't get into the Warren Tavern on a Saturday night, this place was their Plan B.

  Doug turned down into the narrow stairway just inside the front door, descending into the haze of smoke. Downstairs was old-Town style, brick-walled and low-ceilinged, a dungeon of piss and beer. A glass bar here wouldn't last one night without shattering. Cases of empties formed benches along the walls, and a CD jukebox pumped in the corner like a beating heart. The bathrooms were grim but never crowded, drawing buzz-emboldened ladies from Upstairs, picking their way through the hometown crowd like debutantes at a sewerage convention with minced Excuse me faces, French-tipped nails pointed toward the His and Hers.

  "MacRaaay!" hailed Gloansy from the bar, jumping up on the iron-pipe foot rail. He had that crazed, this-night-will-last-forever burn in his army-green eyes.

  Doug made his way there, letting maniacal Gloansy hug him and slap his back. "'S'up?"

  "I'm getting there, man. You good?"

  Splash, the wet-handed barman, saw Doug and shouted something along the lines of Long time, no see, then slapped down an automatic soda-water lime. Splash spilled every drink he served. Doug answered Gloansy by taking a slurp of soda water, then looked around the room.

  Gloansy had already signaled Jem, who detached himself from two sour-looking kids Doug didn't know and made his way toward the bar, a lane opening up for him. Jem, in turn, thinking Doug couldn't see him, gestured to the corner to hail Krista, and like half-drunk chessmen on a crowded, sticky board, the pieces made their moves. Krista stopped stirring her bourbon and Coke and placed a hand on Joanie Lawler's forearm, starting away from their conversation, and Joanie-- a sturdy, frog-faced girl from the projects, the mother of Gloansy's boy, Nicky, and Gloansy's longtime bride-to-be-- shooed her on, mouthing something encouraging.

  Dez fed the corner juke a dollar bill and The Cranberries' "Linger" came on, a recent favorite on the all-Irish Downstairs playing list. Another hour or so and Dez would be firmly installed there for the night, the self-declared DJ, enforcing the mood, clearing out any malingering yuppies with a barrage of Clancy Brothers and accordion jigs before getting serious with a late-night set of U2.

  Jem came up and telegraphed a roundhouse right, following through at half-speed, Doug playing along, snapping his head back in mock contact. Doug returned a sharp, Star Trek jab to the face that back-stepped Jem, who in his zeal for Hollywood splashed a pair of idle, hoop-earringed girls with foam out of his High Life longneck.

  "The mastermind," greeted Jem.

  "The masturbator," said Doug, smacking Jem's fists.

  "Not anymore," Jem reminded him, killing his beer with a muscular flourish and pointing hard at Splash. "Four Highs."

&nbs
p; Gloansy smiled, never tiring of the horseplay. "Jem kid, I think you shot a little beer cum on those ladies there."

  Jem turned, the neighborhood girls glaring at their blouses like they'd been bled on. They were sore but receptive, and any politeness at all-- an apology, a napkin, the offer of a free drink-- might have opened the door to opening their legs. But Jem dismissed them with a nasty grin. He'd only be kissing beer bottles tonight.

  "Fuckin' packed Upstairs, huh?" he said, under a belch. "We should open a bar. I should. Front somebody the liquor license. Drinking and money, combine my two loves."

  Doug said, "Not so sure how well a gay bar would do here."

  Gloansy howled, stamping the floor, Jem smiling like he had the secret murder of a thousand men on his mind. Doug turned, seeing himself in the bar mirror, Krista having arrived at his side without a word.

  "Bully's was fucking hoppin'," said Jem. "We started there. Pitchers, he serves. And no cock-ass tourists."

  "Bully's clears maybe twenty cents a beer," said Doug. "And no ladies show up there without they wheel in their own oxygen."

  Splash was yelling at them from the end of the bar, pointing upstairs, disappearing.

  "Old McDonough chased us outta there," said Jem. "Weaving around the place, waving his fucking walking stick, offering up laments for the Town. Weepy, bandy-legged old fraud."

  "Lived all his life three streets down from me," said Gloansy, swiping at his nose with glee. "So how's it his brogue gets thicker every year?"

  "It's the fucking brain damage," said Jem. "This guy needs to be put down humanely. Bumming pitcher hits off everybody, singing his songs. Making his toasts. How the old Town is gone, gone, gone..."

  Doug felt Krista lean into him, making Hi, I'm here hip contact. Of all the associations the Tap Downstairs held for him, hers was the strongest. Once upon a time they had ruled this cellar together, back when Doug's nights never ended. Downstairs was old territory and so was she. Old habits he had kicked but kept close. The only difference being, beer bottles couldn't jump down off the shelf and rub against him.

  Doug started a little trouble to distract himself. "Isn't it, though? Isn't it all gone now?"

  Jem smacked the air with a grandiose backhand. "Fuck that."

  "So it's not gone? It's just hibernating? Taking a little break?"

  "These things're cyclical," said Jem, the last word rising up on him like a curb.

  "Sickle-lickle," said Doug. "You think those bananas upstairs're going to drop all this money on real estate here, and someday just walk away from it?"

  "Run, not walk," said Jem. "I got a plan."

  "You got a plan," said Doug. He looked to Gloansy. "He's got a plan."

  "I do have a plan," said Jem. "You know sometimes I feel like the last fuckin' sentry on the watch here. The only one who fuckin' cares about the auld Town at all."

  Dez came up on them then, rapping knuckles with Doug and singing, "Here he is among us!"

  Doug slowed him down with mock-seriousness. "Jem has a plan."

  "Ah," said Dez, draining his High Life, eyes shining behind his eyeglasses. "About blowing up synagogues again?"

  Jem horselaughed, then punched Dez in the left tit.

  "Taking back the town," said Doug. "Turning back time. Being Marty McFly and all."

  "Ho, yeah, great idea," said Dez, rubbing his chest, but not backing down. "I'm all nostalgic for those busing riots and street-corner stabbings."

  Jem feigned at Dez again, then let it go, confident enough in his drunken scheme to proceed, showing them a scarred-knuckle peace sign. "Two options."

  Doug repeated this for the benefit of the others. "Two options."

  "F'r'instance, lookit these twats right here." They came off the rubber-carpeted stairs together-- safety in numbers-- like candle-holding virgins entering a horror-movie cave. One wore a shapeless black blouse, the other a mint green cashmere sweater hanging over her shoulders, sleeves knotted into a tit-covering bow. "The papers're right-- it's single women overrunning the Town. Neighborhoods're safe, there's street spaces for their fuckin' Hondas and Volkswagens, and so on. Now I ask you, are we seeing any of this action?" He pointed up. "I think not. We gonna go sit Upstairs with the turtlenecks, sipping Chablis, fuckin' sweaters tied around our waists?"

  "Sipping Chablis." Gloansy appreciated that one.

  "Gotta scare them all out of Town. How? Okay. First thing would be, a chemical spill. The environment, bad air. Fumes. They start worrying about their ovaries, all that. So fucking health-conscious it makes me sick. Then? Like, a serial rapist."

  Doug nodded at his reasoning. "You planning on handling that work yourself?"

  "Just rumors, that's all you need. Put it out there. This 'safe neighborhood' rap-- that's what's bringing them in by the carload. Make it unsafe. Put a little fear in them, and-- fffft! The sound of housing prices falling all over Town."

  "So basically," said Dez, upon a moment's reflection, "you'd shit in your own backyard just to keep people away."

  Doug said, "I think it's foolproof."

  "Fucking genius is what it is," said Gloansy.

  Splash reappeared with four uncapped High Lifes tangled in his fingers. "You guys're onna tear tonight. Hadda hit Upstairs for more cold ones."

  "And four more again," said Jem, dealing out the brews, setting one down on the bar in front of Doug.

  Miller High Life had always been their weapon of choice. A tawny brew, cold gold in a crystal-clear, long-neck bottle. The Champagne of Beers. Something about the label always reminded Doug of a bill of currency, the easy-twist cap a serrated silver coin.

  Jem had laid a loaded gun down in front of him-- the bottle waiting, misting.

  Krista leaned around Doug. "Jesus, Jimmy."

  Jem guzzled his, coming back angry. "Fuck's your problem?"

  "You."

  "I'm your problem? Think I'm more like your freeloadin' fuckin' solution."

  "Don't be a drunk prick. Pick one, be a drunk or a prick, but don't be both."

  "So long as you're drinking on my dollar, why don't you just shut the fuck."

  She squinted at him like he was so far away. "What's wrong with you? This is like the same thing with you bringing Ma all those fucking pastries."

  Jem's eyes went dead white. If he reached around to smack Krista, Doug would get dragged into it, and the last thing he wanted to do was rescue her from anything. The truth was that Krista preferred Doug drunk and pliable too, but right now her brother was a convenient, common enemy.

  And then, just as suddenly, some blue leaked back into Jem's eyes and he smiled, if only to himself. He leaned in close to Doug's elbow. "You understand me, right?"

  "Well as anyone," said Doug.

  "We always said, did we not-- one of us takes a fall, the others keep the split going four ways, hold his cut. That's what this is. I buy a round? I buy four, always four. You die tomorrow, and I buy a round tomorrow night? I buy four. You're always in for a quarter. Even in this jail of yours, serving your own self-sworn sentence. In my head I been count-culating your share these past two years-- "

  "Count-culating?"

  "I-- fuck you-- been calculating your share, and you're in for a motherfucking bitchload. When the floodgates open, brother, you drink free and long-- on me. This is my brother right here!" he announced to the bar, standing up on the foot pipe as four more beers arrived. "This is my sister here, and this is my fuckin' brother!"

  Heads turned, but there were no cheers, nothing like that, the Downstairs accustomed to his outbursts. Jem killed his beer, then traded his empty for a new one, his sudden affection carrying him away into the room. Dez extracted from Doug the promise of an ass-kicking later at the bubble hockey table, and then Gloansy disappeared, Doug finding himself alone with Krista at the bar.

  She pushed aside her half-empty bourbon and Coke and took up Doug's untouched beer. He tried not to watch as she drank half of it. "Proud of you," she said.

  "Yeah." Flat sm
ile.

  "I mean it. Strongest guy I've ever known. Stronger than any of these-- "

  "Yeah, okay." Doug got Splash's attention, pointed for another soda.

  Krista took another pull, running her knee along the outside of Doug's thigh. "What was it that happened to us? Haven't we come through all that bullshit now? I mean-- here we are, the two of us. Still."

  "Still."