by Norman Green
“Don’t know him.” The old man got the last bracket loose and the radiator hung from its hoses. “Lot of people hang out down here. Freaks and stew-bums, whores, drug pushers, head cases, kids playing hooky, sailors off the boats, longshoremen, you name it. Mostly they don’t stay long, they get hungry or cold and they move on.” He whipped a butterfly knife open and sliced neatly through the two hoses. Just as quickly the knife disappeared and he deposited his prize in the shopping cart. “Friend of yours?”
“Something like that.”
“Can’t help you.” He gathered up his tools and put them in the shopping cart.
A flatbed truck with a load of lumber and drywall sheets rumbled down the hill and pulled up to the gate. The kid with the goatee left off harassing the two black guys and went over to open the gate. He held up the driver while he checked his delivery ticket. “You wait here,” Silvano heard him say. The driver looked heavenward in exasperation while the kid marched over to the construction site, shouting as he went. “Lee, Lee, you guys got a delivery!”
A large guy in jeans and a flannel shirt came lumbering out of the half-finished building. The kid handed him the delivery sheet and he took it in a meaty hand, but he handed it back to the kid and said something Silvano couldn’t hear, turned, and went back inside.
“C’mon, Lee, I don’t have time for this. Lee . . .” But Lee was gone. “Shit.” He turned and made his way back over to where the two black guys were still working on the truck, and a discussion followed. The kid’s voice was softer, now, pleading, but the black guys were not having any.
“Ain’t no rasshole rose tree trimmer,” the older of them said. “You got to take care a your own business.”
Nobody wants to unload the truck, Silvano thought. The carpenters think it’s beneath them, the driver just wants to dump it off, and those other two guys don’t want to have to do all the shit work. Kid’s going to have to do it himself. Serve him right.
A tall, thin white guy, looked to be about fifty, came out of the office and stood, blinking in the sun. He wore green work pants and a matching green workshirt with a patch on the pocket that identified him as “Joseph.” He stared at the delivery truck. “Hey,” he said, a trace of anger in his voice. “Sean! You plan on coming back inside to work anytime soon?”
“We got a delivery,” the kid said. “We gotta get this truck unloaded.”
“Well, get on with it, then. Or else, don’t come crying to me when you have to work late.”
“All right, all right.” He walked up to the fence, right next to where Silvano and the old man were watching. “Hey, you,” he said, looking at the old man. “Hey. You wanna make some money?”
The old man walked over and stood on the sidewalk, two feet away from the kid. He stood there squinting for a long count, and then wordlessly turned on his heel and walked over to his shopping cart and began to push it down the sidewalk.
“Suit yourself,” the kid said. He looked at Silvano. “Hey, how ’bout you? Wanna make a few bucks?”
“What do I hafta do?”
“Nothin’. We need some help unloading this truck, is all.”
Silvano shrugged. “Why not,” he said, and he headed for the gate.
THE WOOD WENT FIRST.
The kid climbed up inside the building and stood in an opening about eight feet off the ground and waited there expectantly. The driver shrugged, climbed up on the back of his truck, and began to hand two-by-sixes to Silvano, who walked them over and handed them up to the kid, who took them inside. The wood was new, blond, and a little wet. Silvano hefted each piece in his hands, relishing the feel and the clean pine smell as he worked. He had worked for a carpenter once out in Oregon. The guy had liked him and had tried hard to teach him, but Silvano had been in no shape for a steady job. He’d enjoyed the work, though, especially the way you started out in the morning with what was there, and at the end of the day you saw the changes, you saw what you had done, and when the job was all finished you could look back and see something, a house or a garage or whatever it was, standing where there had been just empty space before you came.
The drywall was a little tougher to handle than the wood. The driver slid the four-by-eight sheets off the pile one at a time, and Silvano balanced them in two hands, handing them up to the kid, pressing them up over his head. The kid was sweating profusely now, breathing hard, and halfway down through the pile he had to wave Silvano off and take a break.
The driver smirked. “S’matter? Can’t take it? Don’t like the way a real job feels? It ain’t like this at the gym, is it, Sean?”
The kid was standing in the opening of the building, leaning over, his hands on his thighs. He gave the driver the finger halfheartedly. “Fuck you,” he said. “Ain’t no wonder I never get anything done around here, I gotta spend all day taking shit from assholes like you, niggers that don’t wanna work, and drafting bums off the goddam street just to get a truck unloaded.”
The driver laughed and lit a cigarette. Lee, the carpenter the kid had argued with before, came over a minute later and looked down at the kid, then turned and walked away shaking his head. The kid’s face got red.
“Awright, c’mon, let’s get the rest of that shit up here. Let’s go, let’s go.” They resumed unloading, and by the time they were finished, the kid was done for. He came down out of the building and wordlessly handed Silvano a ten, signed the driver’s delivery ticket, and walked away. Silvano could hear someone approaching from behind as he watched the truck drive off.
It was Lee. “Hey, buddy,” he said. “You looking for a real job?”
“Working for Prince Charming?”
The big carpenter didn’t smile. “Don’t mind the kid, he’s nobody. You wanna work or not? You on the street? What’s your problem? Your wife throw you out or what?”
“I got no problems,” Silvano said. “You pay off the books?”
“Yeah, we can pay cash, no sweat.” They discussed terms. “We start at seven,” the guy said. “If you want to work, don’t be late. No beer on the job unless I bring it. No dope on the job at any time. We quit at three. See you in the morning.”
Silvano walked over to where the two black guys were finishing up what they had been doing. “One of you guys got the key to the gate? How about letting me out?”
“Why not?” said the older of the two. He had white hair cut very close to the scalp, and his belly strained against a dirty gray T-shirt. “Stop what we’re doing, go let the white guy out.” The other guy, younger, tall and thin, fished around in his pocket for the key.
“I should apologize for Frankie,” he said, walking with Silvano over to the gate. “He’s a good guy, but it’s been one of those days. They throw him and me a few bucks extra to do a little bit of this and that, and he really needs the money, but he’d much rather just drive, he ain’t much with a wrench.”
“You guys ever think about teaching that kid to watch his mouth? Sounds to me like he could use it.”
“O’Brian? Nah, Sean ain’t a bad boy, just ignorant. The old man’s a dick, though. Sean’s uncle. I guess that’s why he owns the company, we just driving the trucks.”
“He the guy came out of the office, dressed like a janitor?”
“That’s him. Cheap motherfucker, still got the first dollar he ever made. You a carpenter?”
“No. Not really. I got out of the Army a few years back, and I been kind of bouncing around.”
“I know the feeling. I’m Roland, by the way.”
“Silvano. Nice to meet you, Roland.”
“You go to Uncle Sam’s party, over there in Viet Nam?”
“I did.”
“I lost a brother there.”
It was a fresh wound, every time. Silvano clamped down hard on his emotions. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry to hear it.” He fished one of the pictures of Noonie out of his shirt pocket and handed it to Roland. “Listen, do you know this guy? I was told he used to work down here.”
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Roland looked at the picture. He stared at it for a minute. “Seen him around,” he said, “but not lately. He was just some street kid, used to pick up a few bucks, running out to pick up lunch, shit like that.” He handed the picture back to Silvano, unlocked the gate, and yanked it open. “Be seeing you,” he said.
SILVANO WALKED UP Atlantic Avenue, thinking himself to be irrationally angry. I should be happy, he thought, I got my foot in the door . . . He wasn’t, though, he was irritated. There had been something in Roland’s face after he’d looked at the picture of Noonie. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it, Silvano thought. He hadn’t asked any of the normal questions, either, like, who was he to you, what do you care, he’d just given the picture back and said good-bye. That did not seem like a normal reaction. And then there was that fucking kid, Sean O’Brian. He had the trick of giving you his last shot and then turning his back so he wouldn’t have to face your response. Noonie would have been impressed with you, you little turd. Let it go, he told himself. You don’t know anything yet.
He stopped in front of the Long Island Medical Center, the brown building with the parking garage attached. There was a circular driveway in front of swinging glass doors where the ambulances dumped their cargoes. He turned and walked the few steps back down the hill to the corner of the building, where the driveway led into the garage, which was eleven stories high. He ambled down the alley to take a look. Sean O’Brian, he thought, I wish I had a way into your head. Little bastard can’t be much more than nineteen or twenty, and advertising his insecurities at that, what with the goatee and all. See how bad I am? Bet he has a tattoo. But he wasn’t little, he was actually bigger than Silvano, with a weightlifter’s showy build.
There was no one in the guardhouse at the entrance to the garage. Silvano stepped around the arm that swung up to admit cars and walked inside. To his left was the doorway from the garage to the hospital. He watched the glass doors swing open and a nurse in her white uniform came striding into the garage, a slim white woman with dark hair pinned up under a cap, looked to be in her thirties. She looked around quickly, and Silvano retreated back into the shadows behind some cars. She traversed rapidly over to a stairwell and went through the gray door. Silvano waited maybe two minutes and the door banged open again and she came back out with her head held a little higher, her chest thrust out a little more, and she walked swiftly back into the hospital, wiping her nose and sniffing as she went. There must be other stairwells, Silvano thought, but this is the one I want, this corner of the building will have the best vantage point.
Leave it alone, he told himself, go find another way up, but he was still aggravated over Roland and Sean O’Brian. He felt something stirring in his blood as he walked on over to the stairwell door. You can’t do it, can you, he thought, you can’t step out around. He pulled the door open and went through.
The unfinished concrete of the stairwell was lit by sunlight that poured through the large windowless openings cut through the wall. In the far corner of the landing a thick man with long black hair and a black leather trench coat was sitting on an inverted five-gallon plastic bucket. He was counting some paper money when Silvano walked by. “Hey,” he said. “Hey, buddy.”
Silvano ignored him and walked up the stairs. He listened as he climbed, hearing the scrape of plastic on concrete as the guy got to his feet and got himself set, and then the footsteps as the guy came up after him.
“Hey, I’m talking to you!”
Silvano paused at the next landing, listening to the steps get closer, and at the last minute he gritted his teeth and stepped back around and clotheslined his pursuer just as he got to the top step. The guy’s knees buckled and he lost his balance and fell backward down the steps he’d just climbed. Silvano danced down after him, but there was no need, the guy hit his head on the galvanized pipe railing and he lay on the stairwell landing, out cold.
Silvano fished the pistol out of the pocket of the guy’s leather coat. Heckler & Koch, he thought, hefting it in his hand, nine millimeter, guy goes first class, fourteen in the clip and one in the pipe. He ejected the clip and put it in his own pocket, jacked the last round out of the chamber before he stuck the pistol back where he found it. An inside coat pocket held a white envelope filled with folded squares of paper. Silvano opened one up and shook it, watched the powder blow away. He put the envelope back and continued looking. There were some plastic baggies in another pocket, looked like a quarter ounce of weed in each one. Guy’s a walking supermarket, Silvano thought, sticking two of the baggies in his own pocket before he put the rest back. The guy’s bankroll was in one pants pocket, some keys in the other. No wallet.
He put two fingers on the guy’s neck, felt the pulse, seemed strong enough, and the guy’s breath was whistling through his nose. Silvano grabbed him by the arms and dragged him up to the next landing. He left him on the floor there and went over to sit on the sill of the large square hole in the wall.
He couldn’t see down into O’Brian’s yard, he’d have to climb up to a higher floor for that, so he relaxed and watched the traffic streaming by on the BQE, cars, trucks, and the occasional suicidal motorcyclist. He had ridden but never owned his own bike, and he sat remembering that peculiar mind-set you get when you ride at speed in serious traffic knowing that death rides inches away, when your hands and feet work the clutch, the throttle, and the brakes without conscious thought, when you’re in that pure state of total concentration where all extraneous images are banished from your mind, where it’s just you and the bike flowing through the crush of vehicles as you hold each vehicle and each driver in your head, individually but still all of them at once, when you’re judging speeds, guessing intentions, watching for potholes and ripples in the pavement, riding the knife edge of disaster through drivers who do not see you at all.
The guy on the floor began to stir.
“Ow,” he said, rolling over onto his side and holding his head. “Oh, shit.” He was hoarse. Silvano walked over and squatted down next to him, waited for the guy to focus. He watched comprehension dawning in the guy’s face, watched the fear and then the anger, watched him feel the outside of the pocket that held the pistol. Silvano showed him the clip.
“I coulda messed you up,” he told the guy calmly. “Coulda took your piece and your money, coulda took all that other shit you’re carrying, coulda dumped your ass out the window, nobody would give a fuck. Coulda cut off one a your ears, they do that in Thailand sometimes.”
The guy pushed himself into a sitting position and felt around on his head. “All right,” he said.
“I got business in this stairwell, higher up. Ain’t none of your affair. You got business down here, I ain’t interested.” He stood up and looked down at the guy. “We achieve communication?”
“Yeah.” The guy stopped feeling his scalp and looked at the smear of blood on his hand. “You coulda said that, first.”
Silvano shrugged.
“I get my clip back?”
Silvano stepped back. “Don’t push it.”
“All right.” The guy gathered himself and struggled to his feet. Holding on to the railing, he made his way back down the stairs.
FROM THE STAIRWELL landing one floor below the top floor of the garage, Silvano could see down into O’Brian’s yard, but he was too far away to make out very much, just the four trucks parked in the yard, the Cadillac sitting in the middle of the lot with the door still open, the new building off to one side with vans parked outside, and hardhats going in and out. Have to bring glasses, he thought, can’t see much from this distance. A figure came out of the building and headed for the car, he guessed it was the kid, Sean, and he wondered, again, if this kid even knew Noonie at all, let alone if he’d had anything to do with his disappearance.
What is it, he wondered. Why this unfocused hostility, why this aggression? Is it because you think they hurt him, your brother who you didn’t bother to see even one time since you walked away? Or is it just guilt? Or ma
ybe it’s just that territorial thing, he was my brother, goddammit, you messed with something that had my name on it, and now I’m gonna make you pay. No way to tell. It doesn’t matter what you do about this, he thought. No way it can make you feel any better about Noonie. Regardless of what happened to your brother, and no matter what you do about it, you are still what you are. No one can go back and change the past.
He exhaled heavily and leaned on the sill, looking down into the alley. Why is it always so hard, he wondered, so hard to live with what you’ve become, so hard to figure what to do now, so hard not to make a bad deal worse? Just then a Harley with straight pipes ripped up the big sweeping curve onto the elevated section of the highway, breaking his reverie. Wonder what a Sportster goes for these days? he thought. Wonder what it would feel like to open one up and just ride away?
He looked back down into the yard. It had to be Sean. He squinted, trying to focus. Just then, another guy came out of the building, this one was pushing a bicycle. He couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought the guy was Sean’s uncle, Joseph. The guy left the bike next to the gate and went to talk to Sean. The two of them seemed to be arguing, there was a certain amount of arm waving on both sides that suggested it. After a while they stopped talking and the two of them headed for the gate. Sean opened it up and the other guy pushed his bicycle through and climbed aboard.
I can’t see much from up here without glasses, Silvano thought. I might as well go see where this guy goes. If the guy really was Sean O’Brian’s uncle, the bike fit the rest of the package because it was not an American Schwinn, nor was it an English racing bike, it was not even the sort of bike any self-respecting teenager would be caught dead riding. It was a heavy, ungainly, industrial sort of a bicycle, looked like the guy had stolen it from someone delivering Chinese food. When he got to the sidewalk, Silvano could see him from two blocks back, head and shoulders above the pedestrians. He settled into an easy jog, not pushing to catch up but slowly gaining ground.
