by Marcus Sakey
“What’s with the Heineken in the fridge?” Evan leaned back in his chair, rocking it up on two legs, the picture of comfort. There were three empty green bottles on the table already, a fourth well on its way.
“Karen’s.”
“Tastes like piss.”
Danny glanced around casually. If there were any other surprises planned, he wanted to know about them. The table sat in an alcove beneath the window, bright with afternoon sun. The rest of the kitchen didn’t offer much cover, just a small counter and a pantry on the far side. The pantry was maybe large enough for a person, but the bifold doors would make for an awkward exit. How long had Evan been here? And how had he known Danny would be the first one home, and not Karen? “Didn’t seem to slow you down any.”
Evan shrugged. “Been a while since I’ve been able to enjoy cold beer. I’m still catching up. Of course,” his eyes now hard, “you’ve had plenty of time, haven’t you?”
Something tightened in Danny’s gut, that humid stirring through his entrails, like the wind preceding the subway. It was an old feeling, familiar, but not missed.
He turned away, went to the fridge. Grabbed a bottle for himself, thought of the cooler move, took another. Popped the caps and handed one to Evan as he sat down.
Evan finished the beer he’d been working on in one open-throated swallow. The black T-shirt he wore traced the lines of his muscles. The upper curves of a blue-black tattoo extended just past the collar. The design was ragged and messy. Ink from inside always was. Tricky to be precise with a straight pin and a ballpoint.
Danny played at being casual as he undid the top button of his oxford and rolled the cuffs, but his mind crackled and hummed. There was no good angle from which to see Evan breaking into his house. It ramped the tension between them, elevated it to action. The disrespect would have been intentional. Only one conclusion to draw.
Evan was stepping things up.
Which made cool all the more important. Cool was currency. Cool suggested a lack of fear, an equal footing. He raised the beer. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” They clinked bottles, looking into each other’s eyes, neither acknowledging the tension. “Just like old times, huh? Two friends bullshitting over a beer.” Evan’s tone was jovial. “You know what it reminds me of?”
Danny smelled a setup, chose to play along. “What’s that?”
“This con I knew in Stateville. Chico. Chico was a prison queer, shaved his chest and wore his jumpsuit half open. You remember the type? Suck your cock for two packs of smokes, or one pack of menthols. He belonged to Lupé, this big Norteño Mexican, but they had an understanding. Chico could work to keep himself in luxuries, long as he split the take.”
Evan paused, holding his beer by the neck, eyes still drilling into Danny. Didn’t seem like he’d blinked yet. Danny met the gaze, knew better than to look away. The tension in his gut grew worse.
“I’d been in a couple months when Chico got a new cellie, some eighteen-year-old transfer. Word round the yard said it was love, that Chico’d been hitting his knees for this new boy with no smokes required. Truth be told, Lupé might have tolerated that – he wasn’t a fag so much as a player – but Chico took it too far. Told Lupé they were through. He’s a changed woman, and not working anymore.”
Evan paused to take a sip of beer. “You know what? I’m coming around on this Heineken.”
Danny said nothing, glanced at the clock. Karen would be home soon. If he heard her key in the door, he wasn’t going to have a choice but to raise the stakes himself. He’d been too concerned with her reaction to tell her about Evan’s return. It wasn’t the idea of getting caught that scared him. He just had no intention of letting the two of them be in the same room. Ever.
“Anyway, a couple days later, Chico and Boyfriend are in their cell splitting pruno when Lupé and his crew come for them. The pruno, that’s what reminded me. You know the stuff? Prison liquor. You steal fruit from the mess, mash it up with ketchup, some water. Put it in a bag to ferment for a couple weeks. The color of the mold on top depends on the fruit you use; sometimes it’s green, sometimes this sick orange. But if you skim that off, the liquid that’s left will get you fucked up. Shit’s worse than Mad Dog, though. It’ll give you a headache make you wish you were dead.” He smiled. “Nothing like the imported beer you’ve been drinking.”
Where was this going? Was he just flexing to show how hard he’d become? Hardly necessary – Evan looked like if you drove a truck into him, you’d just end up with a busted rig. There was a larger point, Danny knew. He just didn’t see it yet.
“So Lupé’s guys are serious gangbangers. By the way, you know what the bangers call a youth fall? Gladiator school. Nice, huh? Anyway, they get hold of our lovebirds, and right away they’ve got the gags in. Lupé’s last into the cell. He makes sure that Chico is watching, and then he paroles Boyfriend. Leaves the shank sticking out of the man’s throat.”
Danny couldn’t taste the beer. He tried to keep his face a mask, to stay above it. The ticking clock made him think of time bombs, explosions straining to escape.
Evan leaned forward, corded forearms bunching. He smelled of beer and cigarettes. “Then Lupé touches Chico’s face real soft. Smiles at him, turns, and walks out.
“Chico senses what’s coming, starts struggling. You can tell he wants to kill these guys, but he’s just a prison queer. What he wants isn’t important. After all, these three are gladiators. One gets him in a chokehold, and another lifts his foot up on the bunk, stretches the leg out straight. The bangers are laughing, two of them arguing who gets to do it, like Chico isn’t even there. He’s turning white and shit, but they don’t pay him any attention. Finally the one on the bed holds Chico’s leg taut, the joint locked. The third winds up, then stomps down, just bam, down, like snapping firewood, right on the knee. Chico howls, I mean, you can hear it through the gag. And no fucking wonder, because bone is sticking out the back of his prison blues. The bangers hoot, and slap each other on the back while Chico shrieks. Whole thing took maybe a minute. Guards find the pruno, the blade, Boyfriend’s body, they choose to write it off as a lover’s quarrel between the cellmates. Easier than actually looking into it. That’s the mentality on the inside.”
Danny’s mouth was dry, and the tension in his stomach had curdled into something sour. There wasn’t a hint of emotion on Evan’s face, none. Just the intense stare between them that he didn’t dare break. He swallowed slowly.
“After that,” Evan spoke softly now, “Chico didn’t walk so good. But I’ll tell you what.” He paused, and then the mask of his face cracked into a smile, thin-lipped and cruel. “He never again forgot what he was. Or who he belonged to.”
Danny leaned the chair back, feet on the ground. His palms swamped up with sweat. He struggled for the remnants of his cool, and took a swallow of beer. It flowed warm and flat down his throat. “Bad luck for Chico.”
Evan smiled broadly at that, but with none of the comradely warmth Danny remembered from their childhood. “I thought about your offer.”
Here it comes.
“Fold it sideways and shove it up your ass.”
Danny shrugged, finished his beer.
“You owe me, Danny. But I’ve thought of a way to square us. And you’re going to help, like it or not.”
11
Swept Up in Fire
The cigarette tasted sweet as a stolen kiss.
A funny expression, Evan thought, Ma’s. She used to say it on good days, the ones when she’d sing, the ones when the bruises weren’t too bad. He hadn’t thought of her in a while, but now, strolling through Lincoln Park, watching families indulge in happy domestic bullshit, she came to mind. He couldn’t say for sure, but he’d bet she’d not had too many kisses stolen.
After he’d jimmied the lock on Danny’s window and let himself in, Evan had wandered from room to room. He wasn’t searching for anything in particular. Just looking. He lingered over a photo of Karen smiling in a bi
kini, shielding her eyes from the sun of a lost afternoon. Took a shit in the master bathroom, thought about leaving it floating there, a little gift, but decided against it. Then he’d sat and waited with a smile growing inside. It felt good to be playing again.
And the game had gotten better once Danny arrived.
He took another drag, smoking the cigarette to the filter, feeling the melting resistance as the heat fused it. His favorite part, the cigarette yielding. He knocked off the cherry and flicked the butt into the grass. One of the Lincoln Park mothers, about his age, figure still tight and her hair expensive, glared at him. He winked, then laughed as she gathered her boy off the swing set and hustled him away.
Look out for the bad man, kid. Your mommy, she’s still a nice piece of ass, and she’s got instincts strong enough to tell her to move away. Funny how it worked. The more you had – a job, a house, a lover, a kid – the more you had to lose. Soccer Mom may not have spelled it out that way, might have chosen to push a truth like that out of her well-decorated world, but some elemental part of her understood.
Evan pulled the smokes from his shirt pocket and tapped out another one. The sun fell warm on his back and the top of his head, though the wind was cool. A perfect afternoon.
Danny had said no. Or tried to, anyway. In the end, he’d agreed to think about it. With the old Danny, the one he’d known, it would have been different. But now he was just an angle to be played, and he cowed the same as a prison queer or a soccer mom.
But then, he had so much. So very much to lose.
12
Liabilities
“Jesus.” Patrick turned, one hand still on the railing, to look Danny in the face. “Are you serious?”
Karen had whipped up pasta for dinner, with spicy sauce and a bottle of red. She hated the criminal in Patrick, feared his impact on Danny, but Patrick the person, him she loved. So the three of them had sat at dinner, laughing and having a good time, all the while Danny raging behind a calm mask, desperately needing to talk to Patrick alone. “Nevermore.”
“I can’t believe he asked you to do that.”
“It wasn’t so much asking,” Danny said, “as telling.”
“Motherfu-”
“Keep your voice down.”
Patrick turned back to the sprawling night sky. After dinner Danny had led him out to their fire escape, ostensibly so that Patrick could smoke, but really for the privacy of it. The game had just let out, and Wrigley Field still blazed with light. The streets swarmed with fans shouting drunkenly for cabs.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” Danny shook his head. “I really don’t.” Was it only yesterday afternoon he’d sat at the kitchen table, knuckles clenched on the beer bottle, listening to Evan propose a plan to shatter his life? Hard to believe so little time had passed. He’d thought of nothing else since. Hardly slept, his mind spinning and grasping for a way out.
Your boss, Evan had said. He’s got a kid, yeah?
Right then Danny had known what was coming, and fear climbed his spine one vertebra at a time.
To hear Evan talk, it was a simple thing, no big deal. Together they snatch Tommy, put him somewhere safe. Dick-twist Richard into paying as much as he could afford – not too much, Evan said, no point making it impossible – in trade for his son’s life. Split the score and consider themselves finished, all accounts balanced.
“Jesus.” Patrick’s face glowed as he dragged on his cigarette, eyes wide and dodgy. “What did you tell him?”
“What do you think? Hell no. You know what his response was? ‘Think about it.’ He’s sitting in my kitchen, boots on the table, telling me to think about it. He rocks back a little, so his shirt pulls up? And he’s got a gun tucked in his belt.”
“He pulled a piece on you?”
“Just let me see it, like it was an accident. Then he asked when Karen would be home.”
Patrick blew a breath through his lips. “So he’s set on it.”
“The way he sees it, either we’re partners or I’m disrespecting what I owe him.”
“You don’t owe him shit.”
Danny shrugged. “Not the way he sees it.” Which left Danny in a bad spot. The first times they’d met, there had been awkwardness and even a little fear, but also a faint and reserved fondness. They’d grown up together, suffered Sunday school together. Shared swiped menthols to impress fifth-grade girls in leather jackets and too much hair spray. Watched the sunrise from the top of a parking deck, twelve-year-old Evan afraid to go home, his eye blackened from stepping between his parents. They had history.
But when he’d walked in to find Evan at his kitchen table, fear was all he’d felt, a gnawing in his belly that grew as he listened. His friend had come out of Stateville changed. This man followed him. Spied on him. Broke into his house. And if he’d done all that, what was to stop him from doing worse? Danny shivered. “I’ve got to find a way out of this.”
“Why’s he need you at all?”
“I know Richard. I know his routines, I’ve been in the house. I even know his finances. Plus,” Danny said, “figuring out how to do things, that’s what I was good at.”
“Evan always was just muscle.”
Danny shook his head. “He likes you to think so. He’s got a temper, and he doesn’t give a damn for anybody in his way, but he’s…” He trailed off, searching for the right word. “Cunning. Even so, yeah, he knows his odds are better with me planning it.”
Patrick nodded, lit a cigarette. “You could always,” he paused, “I mean, you could always do the job.”
Danny spun. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Well, just for discussion. It would be easy, no one gets hurt, and Evan is off your back.”
“You really don’t get it, do you?”
“I know, you’re out, I’m just saying-”
“‘Just this once,’ right? Only bullshit, it doesn’t work that way. Everybody always goes down on the last job. You know why? Because if they don’t go down, they do another. Besides, we walked into a pawnshop at midnight, nobody even in the place, and still, somehow, we end up…” He paused, collected himself. Sighed. “I don’t want to go back to that world.”
Down on the street, a cab held his horn, the blare lasting five seconds, six, eight. Someone yelled back angrily. Overhead, indigo clouds moved against a dark sky. Patrick turned away from the railing, his boots rattling the metal grille of the fire escape. “I’ll talk to him for you.”
The words yanked Danny from his thoughts. “What? No.” All he needed, Patrick getting wrapped up in this. He already had enough asses in need of covering, enough liabilities.
“Look, this still is my world. Let me help.”
“No way,” Danny said. “I’m telling you, this isn’t the Evan we grew up with.”
“Yeah, well, I’m all grown up too.”
“Listen.” Danny used his most rational voice. “I know you’re trying to help, and I appreciate it. But that’s a bad play.”
Patrick stared back, like he was thinking of protesting further. Then he shrugged, turned, and flicked his cigarette off the balcony. “Your call.”
Danny nodded, went to stand beside him.
“What are you going to do, then?”
“I have an idea, but I really don’t like it.” Danny paused. “You remember Sean Nolan?”
“Sure. I felt up his sister on the playground behind St. Mary’s. He chased me for a week. Would’ve kicked my ass, too. He’s a cop now, still in the parish. Why?”
Danny just stared at the sky, let Patrick work it out. Funny, though the answer was perfectly obvious, it ran so counter to the lessons of Danny’s old world that it took a minute.
“Jesus,” Patrick said, pronouncing it “Jay-sus,” surprise revealing the edges of his father’s accent. “Going to the cops?”
“Just one cop. A guy we grew up with, from the neighborhood.”
Patrick whistled.
“Yeah. I�
��m not sure yet. Just thinking about it.”
“But-”
“What are you boys up to out here?” Karen stepped out smiling, carrying three beer bottles in one hand with practiced ease. She turned to close the door, and Danny shot Patrick a quick warning look. He hadn’t told her about Evan’s visit, convincing himself he hadn’t wanted to scare her, knowing that was only part of the truth.
“Just watching the drunks,” he said.
“And the girls, right?” She smiled, handed a bottle to each of them. “Speaking of which, Patrick, I have a friend you’ve got to meet. She’s a nurse.”
Their eyes met, locked. Patrick started first, then Danny, the laughter bubbling up from within, loud, ceaseless peals of it, each fueling the other until it turned to sobbing for breath, their sides hurting as they fell into deck chairs.
Karen looked at them funny. “What’d I say?”
It was enough to get them going all over again.
13
Better to Roar
The edge of the switchblade already glowed with a liquid shimmer, but he’d broken out the whetstone anyway. Patrick held the knife at thirty degrees and stroked it in a practiced motion. Once, twice, three times. And with each stroke, he remembered last night, and got angrier.
“He pulled a piece on you?”
“Just let me see it, like it was an accident. Then he asked when Karen would be home.”
Poor Danny had been trying to play it cool, but it hadn’t been hard to spot the fury beneath his words. But there was something else there, too. A weird kind of helplessness it killed Patrick to see. He knew what it was; Danny was a civilian now.
And civilians were prey.
He’d raised a burr on one side of the knife, so he flipped it over and began work on the other edge.
After Karen had come out they’d had another couple beers, all three of them, the conversation on safe topics. Patrick had told them a story about this girl he’d met a couple years ago, a twenty-year-old chick who told him she lived with her daddy. They’d had a few drinks, one thing led to another, and then they were back at her house, ending up on the kitchen counter, of all places.
