by Diane Munier
Jules finished the dog and wiped his hands and mouth with the napkin. “Yeah? I guess I saw that coming.”
Gorilla smoothed the collar of his flesh-colored shirt against his neck. It was chilly off the lake, but Audie ran hotter than he did even. Unlike Jules, he didn’t wear a jacket.
They ended up leaning on a railing, side by side and not close. Jules lit a smoke, then Audie bummed one, and Jules stretched his arm out and passed the pack. After a few seconds, Audie said, “Francis is pregnant.”
Jules coughed. “Shit,” he squeezed out.
“Yeah.”
Well, what did he say here? “You happy about it?”
Audie laughed a little, grinned around his smoke, but he didn’t look at Jules.
“She gonna marry you now?”
“Not yet.”
“You serious?”
“As Hitler.”
“Screw dat,” Jules said, taking the last drag on his smoke. He actually felt sorry for Audie, because women were so complicated sometimes. “It’s your own fault,” Jules said, though, because he’d taken blame for where he was wrong with Isbe, and Audie should try it sometimes too.
Gorilla blew a breath. “You the preacher now? I mean…it’s in your blood…right?”
“Fuck you,” Jules said, cause that was Audie being the shit side of himself.
“Yeah, well, you should hear yourself sometimes.”
He pitched his smoke, and they both stood there, Jules glaring at Audie, and that one looking out at the water. “You want Francis…and your own kid?”
“I ain’t answering that kind of shit,” Audie said.
“Do you?”
Audie looked at him, finally. Jules wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of Audie’s temper.
“No, I don’t want her or my kid. What the hell do you think?”
“You can’t meet her on this, then you’re a coward.”
“Oh, you got all the answers? All you and Isbe do is fight and f—”
Jules gripped the bar to keep from punching Audie. “You been up to shit, and where is it getting you? You got a woman won’t even marry your ass. She’s willing to take the disgrace of making your kid a bastard rather than tie herself to you.”
Audie got a little closer. “Shut your fookin’ horrible mouth.”
Jules plowed right into Gorilla, knocking him off balance like Isbe had done with him.
Audie put a hand on the rail as he steadied himself. “I’m warning you.”
“You need the warning. Not me. I got my woman, my wife. You’re the one can’t make good on giving your own child his daddy’s name.”
“Jules, I swear to God…”
“You gonna make something legit out of your life? Then marry the mother of your kid and be a damn man!”
Audie looked away first, jaw bunched, chewing his tongue, breathing like a consumptive gorilla.
“Francis can’t trust you.”
“What are you talking about? I haven’t done anything—”
“That’s right. You don’t do shit for anybody but yourself.”
“You’re mixing me with you. You don’t do shit. I just buried your father-in-law while you what—did the deed with the little woman? Fooker, I kept Cabhan off your back. I do all the dirty work.”
“Nah,” Jules said, so mad he was seeing things that blurry way. “You don’t talk about my wife—damn ape. You don’t do shit.”
Jules lit another smoke to keep his hands busy.
They were walking again, toward their cars.
A couple of dames passed, one of them saying, “Hi handsome.” They ignored it, fixed on each other.
Audie stopped walking. “You don’t know shit, Jules. You really don’t.”
Jules pulled the fag from his mouth. “Enlighten me.” What Jules didn’t know about Arthur Finn could fill that lake right now, far as he was concerned.
“I worked a couple jobs—robberies. It’s easy money all the way up. Old Clark—he was greedy, out of luck and out of friends. So he put Isbe right in the bulls-eye. You got him twice, once at Lou’s, then Isbe’s dough. He let Cabhan have the house, and then it was in your lap. Clark’s debt became yours to force you to cough up Isbe’s money.
“Isbe would have tried to get her house back cause that girl’s a fighter, and see, Clark knew that. He knew about her dough and never could find a way to get his hands on it. But you came along, and he knew you’d pay one way or the other.”
“You were in on that.”
“What?”
“You were in on it. The timing—me home alone. You in the house. You knew about it. You knew Cabhan was coming.”
“Who told you that?”
“You made it look like you stood up for me. But you sold me out.”
“Nah. When I ever sell you out? Cabhan had Clark in a vice. He was going to take everything. Francis said Clark hit Isbe up for money every time they did that Sunday deal they had going. Francis said he only wanted to see her to get money.”
“Then why didn’t he tell her she had to buy the house? Why not do that?”
“Maybe he did. Maybe she said no. Or maybe he wanted her to have it, but he couldn’t live up to it. He couldn’t hang on to anything. He was a gambler, Jules. Out of control. You’ve seen those guys. Hell, even Redver. Jerry has to watch him like a hawk. I didn’t make this happen, Jules. Cabhan looked into what Clark had. He leaned on him and Clark gave it up. Fook you for marrying his daughter, you know? Think he was going to put a roof over your head?”
“You let it come around Isbe, and that I’ll never forgive.”
“I didn’t—fook you. I got wind it was coming, and I was waiting for it.”
“My wife!” Jules yelled.
“But I made sure you were there to handle it. And you did!” Audie yelled over him. “You were playing in the same mud puddle I was.”
“No, you came from that mud puddle. Big difference.”
“I was playing along. Playing along.”
“With what? My life? Isbe’s?”
“You have no idea—listen to me. It was only a matter of time before Clark killed Cabhan, or Cabhan killed Clark. My money was always on Cabhan winning out cause he pays his guys and Clark steals from his—meaning he don’t cut it up fair when there’s a take. But coppers got a thing. It’s the uniform; it’s like, kill one of us, you kill all of us, or some crap. Anyway, they see I’m next in line, so a couple of the coppers reach out to me. Under the old guard, they’re the new ones rumbling around, some of them guys come home from the war, and they say, ‘fook this.’ They become the resistance. They see Cabhan and Clark as the dinosaurs. It’s reconstruction time. The Jews and dagoes, they got the underworld. The micks, they’re above the line—coppers, politicians. It’s still the gravy train, just a new order.
“So they push the issue; the Italians help. They push it until King Cabhan goes for Clark. Doesn’t even have the respect to make sure he’s dead. Nearly kills him and throws him away like trash.
“I open that trunk, and I’m surprised. I wasn’t planning for that. I’m thinking I have to finish him. He can’t live. We need him dead and gone.
“And I’m wracking my brain all the way to Redver’s. But we get there, and that crook is still alive. If not for you, I’d have killed him. Now there’s everybody, and I act all elated like I’m praying for a miracle. But he’s alive, and I got witnesses now, and I decide to let it play out. I figure if he lives, nobody wants an investigation. He’d have to go to Alaska and change his name. Either way, Cabhan goes out on an expedited death warrant because his balls got bigger than his brain and he’s touched a copper. Merry Christmas to me.
“So none of that shit matters now. And I realize the whole time…I’m thinking of those girls. That was the thing all along. Jerry calls Bisbe, and this prick is her father. And I’m thinking about Francis. She’s got me thinking in ways…I can’t do the things I was gonna do…just go to hell on a comet, ride that thing into the f
ire. We got those girls there…Isbe saying goodbye, and I’m thinking, what the hell we doing?
“I got a kid coming. Me…a father.
“And you know what they’ll say? They’ll say, look at us, we cleaned house, we got old boss out so the new fookers are in. But you know what, Jules, here’s what they’ll never know—Francis cast my vote. She wouldn’t marry a gangster. So what choice did I have?
“I been working for coppers, Jules. I’m going to be a cop. So all your crap about me and Francis—a little late. You were right, though; she won’t marry a gangster. But a cop—she’ll love that guy. She’s the one revamped the whole organization in Chicago, and only you and me will know it.”
Jules stepped away from Audie, put his back to him, let the swirling in his head slow down a little. Holy shit.
Gorilla went on talking. “This is reorganization, Jules. The ones on the out are guys like Clark, and Cabhan—the old cowboys still wearing their six guns from Prohibition days. They’ve had their time.”
Jules turned around to study Audie. He had that charming smile.
But Jules didn’t smile back. “You trust this?”
“You know what I told you—can’t trust anyone. But monkey, it’s got the money behind it. You can always trust that,” Audie said.
“So what’s the plan?” Jules said.
“Thursdays…Cabhan goes to McClaren’s bakery for the soda bread to go with the corned beef and cabbage they serve at Mel’s. Potato drops him off in front so he can see the cakes in the cases. He buys one for my mother, for dinner on Sunday. Most of the time he don’t show, but he always sends the cake. They box it, and he hands it to Potato to take to the car. That unimaginative fooker takes the cake, then pulls the car around the corner to the mouth of the alley.
“Meanwhile, Uncle Cabhan walks through the shop to the bakery in back and picks up the loaves from the racks. He does this so McLaren won’t put day-olds in the bottom of the sack. He’s a very suspicious mick.
“After he fills the sack with bread, he walks out the back door into the alley. Potato has the engine running because he blocks the alley so he can make sure. Cabhan walks to the car, gets in with the bread, and they drive off. It’s literally about the only time that bastard is alone, that stretch of bricks. Like I said, very paranoid.”
“I need to see the alley,” Jules said.
Chapter 50
Jules stood on McLaren’s roof holding one of Audie’s Colt 45s, cocked and loaded. Nice little gun. Jules always liked a wooden stock.
Potato pulled Cabhan’s shiny car across the mouth of the alley. Any second now Audie would walk close to the window of Cabhan’s car and shoot Potato through the window. When Jules heard the pop-pop, he didn’t look. His eyes were on Cabhan coming out the door with the bag of bread.
Cabhan was looking toward the car. As soon as Cabhan let the screen door slap closed and Jules had a clear shot, he popped Cabhan through the buff-colored Fedora, then emptied the magazine into Cabhan’s sprawled form. He looked long enough to see Cabhan’s arm slowly unfold from holding the bread and one of the loaves roll from the top of the bag into the blood gathering under his head.
Jules walked quickly then, over the roofs—four, five—then down the fire escape, jumping to the sidewalk and walking swiftly down the block. He went straight to the corner and into the Buick where Audie had stopped in the street.
It was just that quick and clean. Jules took Audie’s gun. “Don’t drive like a crazy man,” he said as he removed the magazine from his pistol, then Audie’s. He pulled the slide on each and made sure the action was empty. He applied pressure to the slide-stop and removed the slide and recoil spring, the barrel, and even its bushing. Between the two guns, he ended up with at least fourteen parts. He dropped each dissembled part into his lunchbox. Isbe had bought him this; well, they’d picked it out together when he’d gotten on at the phone company. Today it was filled with a couple of rags to keep the parts from rattling against the metal walls.
Jules latched the lid, set the box at his feet, and took a big breath as Audie drove through the city. “You sure he was dead?” Jules asked, not looking at Audie, but digging for his cigarettes.
“Nah. I just wanted to fook with him a little.”
Sarcasm. Beautiful.
Cabhan wasn’t in this world anymore, thanks to him. Potato was taken out, thanks to Gorilla.
Audie dropped Jules off at work. “Jules…”
Jules looked at him. There was nothing to say. They’d done it.
“Yeah…see ya round.”
Jules kept the lunchbox with him. He clocked in and found his trainer and in no time, he was on the job. They were installing lines in one of the big office buildings downtown. It was like hiding Easter eggs, but nothing like that, as Jules kept emptying his pockets of pieces of those pistols, one in basement rafters, a couple in a sewer, a drainpipe, the furnace. He was a clever killer, Jules was.
By lunchtime, Jules’s box was empty.
Soon as he got off, he took the bus home, cleaned up some cause he was dirty after a day climbing around in that building and he hadn’t taken the time to shower at work.
So he cleaned up, but before he finished getting dressed, she came running up the stairs. “Jules.”
He had just pulled his pants on, but no shoes, no shirt. He met her in the hall, and she crashed into him, and they were in a lip-lock before any words even.
Oh God, he wanted her. She was all he wanted…soft lips and lipstick and a tongue like honey.
They kissed their way into the room and flopped on that bed, and he let his hands smooth over her, and he got lost.
Later that evening they were on their way to St. Louis. No rhyme or reason, but he needed to make sure they were safe. But it was more. Unfinished business. He knew…and he didn’t. It was the past…it was the future…what he had to do. They drove for six hours, in the dark, her head on his shoulder. He’d slept some after they’d made love…and he knew he was exhausted, but he couldn’t rest, not yet.
It wasn’t something regular…what went on between them. When they made love, heaven and earth moved…in him. There was the act, the sex, but what it meant each time was as different as they were. Each time it was something else, each time. This last…he felt cleansed, that’s all. Was it fair to her? Had he used her? He had no idea. He just knew…she was his life.
His hand was on her leg, and he held on tight. He had set the mirror so he could see her face, watch her anytime he wanted. She brought a smile to his lips. He loved the monkeys—not Jerry. He wasn’t a real monkey anyway. And he loved Isbe. It was a man’s love she’d awakened in him, something he hadn’t imagined he was capable of giving. He wondered how deeply she’d changed him. He wondered if such a love would follow him…here.
Chapter 51
He remembered the smell of this river. Sadness, yeah, but…hope? Yeah, hope.
He’d pulled the Ford onto the cobblestones that paved the riverfront there, the Eads Bridge up high to the left. A barge passed, silently parting the water like a whale he’d seen once at sea on the way over… there.
It was mud he smelled; that was the thing about the Mississippi—the way the catfish tasted, that’s what this was, that slow slug, pitch-black in the night, a river you wrote songs about cause it caught the moon and spread that light on its murky roll like a smear of magic.
Farther shore, East St. Louis, back some, someone had a fire going, an all-night camp-out cause those boys fished this thing morning, noon, and night and there were fish in there they told stories about around those fires, and it’d scare the shit right out of you when you were ten years old.
It always did him, when he’d run away here and live by that bridge, that hellacious looking thing, work of art by day, and at night a place men died beneath sometimes.
Nothing tasted so good as that fish fry shared with a kid shouldn’t be here this time of night, and the colored men, they were the kindest to him, feeding him up and ca
lling him Sonny, with a drink from their bottles to stay warm. They taught him to laugh. They taught him to swear.
There was always kindness out there to fight against the sick in his stomach.
What scared him now? Nothing. Everything. Losing Isbe, asleep on him still. He knew she hadn’t slept until they were together again; he knew she wouldn’t. He looked at her now, so damn young.
He had the car pointed toward the river on a downward slant, and when she awoke, she was gonna scream like Boris Karloff was on her tail. All those hook man stories, they happened here, and he laughed to himself cause nothing scared him now. But what he said.
He kissed her hair and went back to looking at the river, smelling the mud, where all the life was, all the things that hadn’t happened yet growing out of all the things that already were, and he remembered his life…and he came to terms. Mix it all together, the good and the bad, spill it on the table and look it over, the faces, the places, God…he was grateful.
So grateful he eased his arm from his wife and felt under the seat, and opened his door, closed it with a soft click, and walked to the water. That badge, it was in his hand. There was no debt now. No debt to her father, and soon, no debt to his. He drew back his arm and pitched that thing, and it soared, glinted once in the dark before hitting the water to sink down and bury itself in the earth.
“So long, Fooker,” he whispered.
His father had died. Last year, his aunt said. In his chair, slumped forward. For all he’d railed, he went quiet in the end, nothing more to say once the anger left, and his aunt swore it had left.
She’d gotten rid of Jules’s stuff. Didn’t think he’d come home again. Well, someone said you couldn’t anyway. It’s what he thought he was doing now, but he realized home was back in the Pontiac with Isbe. She’d wanted to come up on the porch, and his aunt wanted to meet her, but he didn’t know if the old man was here, and when he wasn’t…maybe another time, he lied, because there would be no other time. It was just over.
