by Norman Green
“Ain’t gonna hurt you,” Silvano told him. “I just want to talk.”
“I don’t know nothin’! Why you wanna bother me?” He screwed his face into an ugly mask of fear and resentment, and for a few seconds it appeared that he was going to burst into tears, but instead he smacked the shopping cart with renewed vigor. “Lemme alone!” he shouted. “Get the fuck away from me!”
“My brother was a friend of yours. I want to talk to you about him.”
Special Ed hefted the bat in his hand, glaring at Silvano through one eye and then the other. “I don’t got no friends.”
“His name was Noonie.”
“Ah, shit.” The tension drained out of Special Ed’s body. “Noonie,” he said, his voice softer. He crammed the bat back into his shopping cart. “Noonie. The poor fuck.” He looked at Silvano, and a grin spread across his unlovely face. “You must be the guy,” he said. “You must be the one them was lookin’ for.”
“I might be. Who’s them?”
Special Ed shook his head violently. “I dunno! I didn’t ask! I tol you, I don’t know nothin’!” He grabbed for his bat and missed, leaned too hard on the shopping cart handle, and the cart lurched forward a few feet. He almost fell, but he grabbed the handle with both hands and hauled himself back into his semi-erect position. Silvano caught the front of the cart and steadied it.
“Easy,” he said. “Easy does it. You all right?”
Special Ed seemed to calm down a bit. “I’m okay,” he said. “But I don’t know nothin’. I don’t. Awright?”
“These guys, looking for me,” Silvano said. “They give you anything? They take care of you?”
“No,” Special Ed said sourly. “They knocked me down and they dumped my cart out. Said they’d pay, though. Said they’d gimme a C if I turned you up.” He glared at Silvano, his face a closed fist, impossible to read.
“Well, that’s fair enough,” Silvano said. “I can match that, and I won’t knock you down for it.” He reached into his pocket. “Matter of fact, I’ll do you better than that. I’ll tell you how you can collect from both ends. How’s that?”
Special Ed squinted at him. He watched Silvano count off twenties. “All right,” he said. “We gotta get off the street, first. I ain’t takin’ nothin’ from you out on the street. I’m gonna start yellin’, okay, and I’m gonna grab my bat. You run away, okay, and I’ll meet you in the alley down behind my building. You know where I live at?”
IT WAS A LOUSY SITUATION, tactically. Silvano walked halfway down Special Ed’s alley, stopped where it made a ninety-degree turn to the right before dead-ending behind a row of four-and five-story brownstones. There was only the one way in and out, except for a couple of locked doors and one fire escape. Silvano surveyed it from the corner of the L. You were here before, he told himself, what are you worried about now? But the layout didn’t feel good, so he headed back out onto the sidewalk. There was a storefront liquor store down the block, it occupied the first floor of an apartment building. He went inside and found himself in a vestibule made of bulletproof glass. The merchant and her wares were on the other side, and business was conducted through a drawer. Silvano stood close enough to speak to the clerk and still keep an eye on the street.
“Kinda blackberry brandy you got?” He couldn’t help it, when he was wearing his wino clothes, he wanted the cheapest high he could get.
“Huh?” Behind her partition, she hadn’t heard him. He repeated his question, louder this time.
“Old Mr. Boston,” she said, and she went and got the pint and half-pint sizes, and they discussed prices.
“That’s a little steep,” he said, still talking louder than normal so she could hear him. “What you got that’s a little more cost-effective?”
Fortified wines were the best value, in the clerk’s opinion, and Silvano continued to divide his attention between their conversation and the street, outside, while they debated the merits of the various brands the clerk had in stock. “I hate sherry,” he told her. “And that Mad Dog gives me a bitch of a headache. Make it Richard’s Wild Irish Rose. I always like a square bottle.” He dug in his pocket and put a five-dollar bill in the tray. Special Ed was making his painfully slow way up the sidewalk. She passed his change through with the bottle. “Mad Dog,” he said, shaking his head. “Stuff tastes like they cut it with formaldehyde.” Through the glass door he watched Special Ed make his way down into the alley. He waited another minute, but there were no other pedestrians, no cars coming down the street.
He’d been worried for nothing, Special Ed was on his own. Silvano helped him hump his cart down the two steps and through the door to where he kept it chained to the wall outside his basement room. “Fuckers!” Ed shouted, red-faced. “They steal my cart, steal my shit, they even take my cement blocks! What kind of asshole would steal a man’s cement blocks, ain’t even good for nothin’, ain’t worth shit! Can you answer me that?”
“It’s a hard world.”
“Nobody knows that better than me. Nobody!”
Silvano didn’t argue with him. He sat down on an inverted milk crate and slid his bottle out of its brown paper bag. “You got any cups, Ed?”
“Hey. Hey, now.” He held up a stubby finger, and then made his way over to the wall and leaned on it for support and went off to rummage in some cardboard boxes in the corner. He came back dragging a wooden chair, carrying two Styrofoam coffee cups. He spun the chair around sideways so that he could perch on the edge of the seat and lean on the back, in as close to a sitting position as his unusual shape would allow. He noticed Silvano looking at a stack of siding in one corner.
“Lumium,” he said. “They ain’t payin’ shit for it right now, and I’m waitin’ for prices to go up.”
“Sounds smart.”
“Well, they’re always tryin’ to fuck ya,” he said in a wounded voice. “Every which way you turn, there’s always somebody there waitin’ and watchin’.” He handed Silvano a cup. “Brand new,” he said, peering into his. “Nice and clean. I just took ’em out of the package.” He turned his cup upside down and tapped it on the bottom, just in case. “The cops threw out a whole box of ’em, I found ’em in the Dumpster behind the precinct house.”
Silvano looked into his cup, and finding nothing there, he poured it a quarter full, trusting that the Richard’s would kill anything he couldn’t see. Special Ed held his cup out in Silvano’s direction.
“You said you’d pay,” he said. “Said you’d pay me a hundred.”
“So I did.” Silvano poured Ed’s cup full and then sat the bottle on the floor and fished out a twenty. “Let’s start with that. Who are these guys looking for me?”
“Two guys in a Caddy.”
“Caddy have a busted taillight?”
Special Ed twisted his face up, concentrating. “Yeah,” he said. “Driver’s side. Two guys, one of ’em was a big son of a bitch. Bigger’n you. Him and the driver, I didn’t see the driver very good.”
“This guy have a name?”
Ed grinned. “Driver called him Ivan, that’s what pissed him off . . .” Suddenly he scowled. “That’s when he kicked over my cart. Bastard. Asshole.” He screwed his face into a knot, grinding his teeth, holding his breath, and then he recovered, inhaled, opened one eye and glared at Silvano. He took a swig from his cup and swallowed convulsively. “Some day,” he said, “I’d love to push the button. The one the President carries around with him everywhere. I’d like to sneak into the White House while he’s asleep and push that button. See who laughs, then.”
Silvano took out another twenty and handed it over, poured Ed a refill. “You’d have to move to D.C., you wanted to do that. Next question. Who or what is the Dutchman? And where can I find him?”
“Who.” Special Ed wrinkled his face into an expression of contempt. “Lenny Deutch, is who. Another asshole. Another mean fuck, thought I was funny. Noonie liked him, though.” He squinted at Silvano. “Noonie was your brother? You don’t look nothin�
� like him.”
“We had different mothers.”
“Oh. I’m sorry he’s gone.” Special Ed tucked his chin into his chest, both eyes closed, and then he started to cry, his body shaking with the effort. Second time today someone’s crying for my brother, Silvano thought. Special Ed fought with it for a minute, shrugging a shoulder up to wipe his nose and his cheeks on his sleeve. He started in talking again, his eyes squeezed shut. “He always treated me nice. It wasn’t pity, neither, he didn’t feel sorry for me or nothin’, he didn’t know nothin’ about that. He would come here early in the morning sometimes, an’ he would knock on the door. ‘You goin’ to Lantic, Ed?’ he would say, ’cause he knew that was where I would sell my scrap metal, and then he’d load up the cart, right, an’ he’d push it, he’d let me ride, all the way down to Lantic. Do the same thing, comin’ back, if he seen me.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve again and peered at Silvano. “You ain’t like him, are you?”
“No.”
“No. Nobody is.” Special Ed drained off what was left in his cup, held it out for another refill. “I tol him to stay away from that Lenny Deutch. I tol him and tol him.”
“Where is the Dutchman now?”
“Dead. Dead and in hell, I hope, with his balls on fire.”
“Metaphysically speaking,” Silvano said, “maybe he is. But there’s got to be something left of him up here somewhere, right?” He peeled off a couple more twenties. “Do you know where those parts of him might be?”
Special Ed squeezed his eyes closed tightly and shook his head violently. “No,” he said, fear heavy in his voice. “I don’t know nothin’ about that.”
Silvano sighed. He looked at what was left in the bottle. “Drink up, Ed.”
“All right.” Special Ed drained what was left in his cup, not savoring it anymore, just gulping it down and then holding out his empty cup. His hand was shaking. Silvano poured him full again.
“Okay. Let’s try this another way. You’re a survivor, Ed. You must be a pretty smart guy, making it on your own, like you do. There’s nobody giving you a free ride, am I right, Ed?”
“All by myself,” Ed mumbled, peering down into his cup.
“So I figure, sharp guy like you, you gotta know what the Dutchman was doing wrong. You gotta know why he got whacked. Am I right?”
Special Ed peered at him through one eye and said nothing.
“C’mon, Ed. Tell me where he made his mistake.”
Special Ed looked at the floor. “He din’t know who he was,” he said after a minute. He stopped, thinking it over, and Silvano sat silent, waiting him out. “See, I know who I am,” he said, after a minute. “An’ I know what I hafta do. If I don’t go actin’ like somebody I ain’t, I’ll prolly be safe. Safe enough.” He took another swig from his cup. “Lenny Deutch din’t wanna be what he was. I mean, I wanna be something else too, everybody does. I wanna be you. You prolly wanna be some other guy.” He said it without looking up. “But you ain’t. An’ I ain’t, neither. Different, I mean. Lenny Deutch was a nothin’ but a drunk, but he wanted to be a tough guy. He wanted it so bad, he started believin’ it. When he started out, he’d drink his wine, stay out of everybody’s way, din’t get into no trouble. After he decided he was a gangster, he started workin’ for these guys, they was from down in Bay Ridge or somethin’. They used to use him to run errands an’ shit, an’ he started thinkin’ he was better than us.” He looked up, finally. “Better than me, anyhow. But they was just usin’ him, like he was tryin’ to use Noonie. They sent him inta places he din’t belong, got him doing things he shouldn’t have did. That’s why he’s dead. That’s all I know.”
“All right,” Silvano said. “Bottle’s almost gone, let’s finish it.” He poured the last of it into Special Ed’s cup. “How come I heard that Noonie found the Dutchman?”
Special Ed’s hand was shaking again. “They’ll kill me,” he said. “If they think I know somethin’, they’ll kill me.”
“They’re not going to find out anything from me.”
Special Ed sat and stared at the floor for a while. “We was junkin’,” he said, finally. “You know, collectin’ stuff. Me an’ Noonie. We was way down Lantic, by Flatbush. I lost track of him somewhere, he went in, someplace. I couldn’t go look for him, I don’t do stairs very good. I started gettin’ scared, ’cause we was so far from here, you know, an’ I needed him to push me back, on the cart. I woulda had a hard time by myself. An’ he coulda forgot about me, you know how he was, be just like him to forget me and go off someplace, an’ I din’t know what to do. So I jus waited. After a long time, he come back, all excited. Said he found the Dutchman. He wanted to show me. An’ I din’t wanna know nothin’ about the Dutchman, an’ I wouldn’t go. There’s a bar on the corner, Flatbush and Lantic. Basement stairs ain’t locked. That’s where he found him.”
“I was down there, I didn’t see anything.”
Special Ed was still staring at the floor. “Front corner of the building,” he said, his voice almost inaudible. “’Nother set of stairs down to the subbasement. Noonie said he found the tunnel, found the Dutchman down inside the tunnel.”
“A tunnel? Shit. God, I hate tunnels. What kind of tunnel?”
Special Ed sighed. “There’s a abandoned railroad tunnel under Lantic. I been hearin’ ’bout it for years, but nobody knew where it was. Noonie said he got in, down through the subbasement.”
“So the Dutchman was dead, I take it. What else did he find?”
“I din’t wanna know, I tol ya. I got him to push me back home, I got him talkin’ about somethin’ else.” Special Ed was looking down again, and his voice got quiet. “I don’t wanna know things I ain’t sposed to know. I don’t wanna go places I don’t belong.” He glanced over at Silvano, looked back down at the floor. “Maybe you ain’t exactly what you look like. Maybe you ain’t afraid of those guys.” He looked around, reassuring himself that the two of them were still alone. “I can’t be a tough guy,” he said. “I can’t. I got all I can manage, jus collectin’. Pushin’ my cart.”
Silvano counted off another hundred. “Ed,” he said, “I want you to do me a favor. I want you to stay off the street for a few days. Take it easy for a while. Okay? If that guy comes around again, you tell him I came around to talk to you. Tell him I was asking about Noonie, tell him you said you didn’t know anything. Okay? And tell him I told you I was at the Montague, that you could find me there if you remembered anything. Okay? Think you can remember all that?”
“Yeah, sure.” Special Ed sounded despondent. “You’re lookin’ for Noonie, an’ you’re at the Montague. Maybe if I jus stay home they won’t bother me.”
“Maybe not. But if they do, you just tell them what I said. Okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, sure.” He squinted at Silvano. “They killed the Dutchman,” he said. “They prolly killed Noonie, ‘cause he found where the Dutchman was at. You go messin’ around, they’re gonna kill you, too.”
Silvano stood to go. “Maybe,” he said, “maybe not.”
“Be careful,” Ed mumbled. “Don’t forget your shoppin’ bag.” He didn’t look up when Silvano let himself out.
SILVANO WENT FOR the mad dog after all.
He figured he needed it to complete the look, and he went on down past the car service office where he’d seen Bonifacio and his crew, found a liquor store up closer to Henry’s building, bought the bottle, and headed back. The bastards must have found out I used this car service, he thought, someone must have seen me getting out of the car. Sons of bitches, you think you’ve found a safe place, and they show up on your doorstep. He’d been immediately angry when he saw them. Try to do this the easy way, he thought, so nobody else gets hurt, and they don’t cooperate. He cracked the bottle of Mad Dog and tossed the cap into the gutter. For a drunk, open is empty, you ain’t gonna need the cap again. He took a swig, just a small one, wrinkling his face up in distaste. Jesus, he thought. You really have to be willing to suffer, you wanna get
a buzz from this shit. He poured some more of it out before he got there, and then he limped right past them, pausing not fifty feet from where they were to rummage through a trash can. Stupid bastards, he thought. When are they gonna get that taillight fixed? He’d made them from two blocks away.
His heart rate was up and there was a tingling sensation in the pit of his stomach, but mostly what he felt was anxiety. God, don’t let them get Henry . . . He straightened up, finding nothing edible or salable in the trash can. Neighborhood like this, a gentleman of the streets would starve to fucking death.
There was no one sitting behind the wheel of the car, but the back windows were darkened and he couldn’t tell if there was anyone inside or not. He limped his way over to a recessed doorway in the brick wall of the factory building on his side of the street. He leaned on the brick wall next to the doorway, doubled over, pretending to be sick to his stomach, careful not to spill his wine. There was a security gate on one side of the doorway, the expandable kind that you could open and padlock to a hasp on the other side. This one was rusted in place, though, and he guessed that whoever occupied this building didn’t use this doorway, probably sealed it from the inside. Someone used the outside, though, there were some sheets of cardboard stacked up in the recessed space behind the gate, and a hairy green blanket hung from a nail driven into the mortar between the bricks, shoulder-high. Silvano straightened up a little, looked into the space, and then he limped on past.
Where were they?
When he got to Henry’s building he paused next to the fence, looking into the jungle. The dogs were used to him now, and the one with half a tail came out of the undergrowth and looked at him expectantly. He felt a wave of relief wash over him. Maybe Henry’s all right, he told himself. These two mutts would both be dead, they would have never gotten past the dogs. He turned and headed back.
