by Norman Green
“I’m sure the guy’s been in jail before, Benny. Pretty safe bet he’ll wind up back there, sooner or later. Guys like Dylan ain’t afraid of jail, it’s part of the life. But this way, every time the motherfucker takes a shit, he’s gonna remember me. You know what I mean?”
Benny was shaking his head. “I don’t understand how your mind works,” he said. “You would rather have this guy out walking around than in prison, where he belongs?”
“Benny, if the cops wanted the fucking guy in jail, he’d be there already. But he ain’t.”
“Well,” he said, “that’s the way it’s supposed to work.”
“In what alternate universe? Get real, Benny. This asshole runs an ad in the local paper, for chrissake. Got a picture of some girl, she looks like a high-school cheerleader, except she’s wearing less clothes. You think she’s gonna come over your house and give you a Swedish massage? The only things she’s gonna squeeze is your dick and your wallet, and not in that order. And the funny thing is, his ad ain’t the only one in there, okay? There’s a whole shitload of ’em, they got a special section in the want ads for whorehouses, they just don’t call it that. Cops read the papers, too, don’t they? Some of them must.”
Benny was silent, staring at him.
“Don’t be a politician,” Stoney said. “Don’t talk out of both sides of your mouth. Prostitution and cocaine are both illegal, right? So how come every twelve-year-old kid in this city knows where he can get an eight ball and a hooker, right in his own neighborhood?”
“Yeah, I know, I know.” Benny sat and thought about it for a minute. “All right, then,” he said finally, “are you finished with Dylan?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So what are you gonna do about this guy Prior? The one that keeps calling your daughter.”
“He’s next. Tommy and I are gonna run a game on him.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Isn’t this man going to be expecting something like this? Isn’t he just sitting there behind his moat waiting for someone like you to come along?”
“Reasonable assumption,” Stoney told him. “But, Benny, a man’s greatest strength is also his greatest weakness.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“My partner, Tommy, says the key to breaking anybody is, you gotta find a crack, first. Once you do that, you stick your screwdriver in the crack and you pry. From there on, it’s just a question of torque. What we’re doing now, we’re looking for the right crack.”
“What if he doesn’t have one?”
“If he’s human, he’s got plenty.”
“All right, fine. So what happens at the end of this game you’re planning? Are you going to kill this man? Do you think you have enough justification for murder?”
“He’s after my daughter, Benny. There’s no jury in the world that would convict.”
“That wasn’t my question. Do you think you have the right to kill this guy?”
“If I thought that, I’d kill him tonight.” He was silent for a minute. “I’m gonna give him the chance to run. He does that, okay, it’s over, I won’t chase him, he can be someone else’s problem. But if he comes after Marisa, I’m gonna put him in the ground.”
Benny started to say something, then swallowed it, kept silent for the space of three breaths. “I guess I’d feel the same way,” he finally said. “What about Marisa? How’s she holding up?”
Stoney shook his head. “That’s the thing, Benny. The whole time I was talking to her, I had the feeling that it was over already. I wasn’t even a footnote. I shouldn’t have even opened my mouth. I don’t think anything I said meant a thing.”
“You never know,” Benny told him. “Besides, ain’t it kind of a relief, not being the General Manager of the Fucking Universe? Ain’t it a lot easier, just being you?”
Stoney thought about it. “I’ll let you know,” he said.
FIFTEEN
Georgie Cho led Tommy Bagadonuts down a long corridor. He opened a door at the end and the two of them stepped into a large room. The walls, floor, and ceiling were painted flat black. There was a mock living room set up on a raised platform at one end of the room. It had a thickly upholstered yellow couch, end tables, television, and a fake window with venetian blinds and frilly lace curtains. The wall behind the couch was covered with flowery wallpaper. Two large television cameras were aimed at the couch, and thick cables ran across the floor. Banks of lights hung from the ceiling. A guy with a shoulder-held camera was bent over, aiming the thing at a diminutive blonde who sat on the couch smoking a cigarette. Georgie Cho, ignoring it all, ushered Tommy to a door on the far side of the room, down another corridor to his office. It looked more like a control room than an office, filled with monitors and electronic equipment. There was a desk in the middle of it all. It was a very orderly room, no loose paper or clutter on the desk. The trash basket was empty.
“Have a seat,” Georgie said, gesturing at the client chair next to the desk. Georgie was tall for a Chinese guy, tall and thin, with long black hair flowing loose around his shoulders. He didn’t look like he was long out of college.
Tommy watched one of the monitors behind Georgie. The blonde on the couch was making out fiercely with another woman. “Georgie,” Tommy said. “You gotta that stuff going on over here alla time? How you gonna get any work done?”
Georgie looked over his shoulder and shrugged. “Network’s all set up, Tommy,” he said. “We’ve gotten all the bugs worked out of the system, and there’s really not a lot for me to do around here anymore. Besides, after a while, you don’t even notice. I mean, after you’ve seen everything there is to see, over and over again, it all starts to look the same. I’m beginning to think this place is ruining me.” He looked back at Tommy and shook his head. “You want me to turn those off?”
“Spoil my concentration,” Tommy told him. “Maybe you better.”
Georgie rolled his chair over to a console under the bank of monitors and dimmed them all. “So,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
Fat Tommy smiled. “Something good,” he said. “You ever hear of something whatta you call a hedge fund?”
“Sure,” Georgie said. “Investment vehicles for rich people.”
“Yeah,” Tommy said. “Usually isa run by a young guy. Arrogant, abrasive, aggressive, crooked. Master of the Universe. Biggest cock inna the henhouse. We need you to be this guy for maybe coupla day. And here’s why….” Tommy didn’t try to sell it, Georgie was too smart for that. He just laid it out, and then he shut up and let the kid think about it.
“Damn,” Georgie said finally. “Damn.”
“You see everything?” Tommy asked him.
“Oh yeah, but are you sure you guys want me? I don’t know if I…I mean, wouldn’t you be better off with a professional? Or you could hire an actor.”
“No good,” Tommy told him. “Actor don’ gonna have the guts. We can’t have some guy, gonna get escare, go craze right in the middle of this.”
“Well, what about a pro? You must know somebody, hell, you probably know a dozen guys that could do this. I mean, a real, you know…”
“Criminal?” Tommy asked him, grinning. “Also no good. The problem with most of those guy, they wanna go shoot each other at the end, one guy take all the money. Too much trouble, we no need. Me and Stoney, we think you gonna be the right guy, Georgie. You look right, just the right age, and smart enough to pull it off. Lotta money onna table.”
“Yeah. Well…” Georgie leaned back in his chair. “I mean, I don’t know anything about, ahh…” He shook his head. “I can probably tell lies as well as the next guy, Tommy, but I don’t know if that’s going to be good enough.”
“No,” Tommy said. “You gonna do more than that, but we gonna show you everything. Don’t worry, Georgie, everything gonna come good. You gonna like.”
As soon as Tuco stepped into the kitchen, he seemed to suck all of the oxygen out of the room. She had eyes for nothing
else. “Morning,” she said.
“Hey. Where is everybody?”
“My mother went to work. My brother is in school. My father’s on his way over.”
“Wow,” Tuco said. “You musta did good, they trusting you already.”
She shook her head. “It’s you they trust, not me.”
“Wonder what I did to deserve that.”
She didn’t answer. “You want coffee?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
She went to get him a cup. “If you want breakfast, you’re sort of out of luck. Unless you want toaster waffles. I could probably handle that.”
Tuco shook his head. “Too early for me,” he said. “Coffee’s fine.”
She set it in front of him. “Talk to me, Eddie. All I know about you is that you know how to fight.”
He eyed her warily. “You seen where I come from.”
“So? Tell me about it. Tell me who you are.”
He shrugged. “Nuyorican,” he said, and he looked around the room. “Dropout.” He stared at her. “I don’t fit, out here. I don’t talk right, don’t dress right, don’t got the right haircut.”
Defensive, she thought. He’s afraid of what I think about him. “Never mind all that. Tell me where you live now. Tell me what you do when you’re not working for my father.”
She could tell he didn’t like those questions, either, but after a minute, he answered her anyway. “I live in Brooklyn Heights,” he said.
“I don’t know where that is.”
“It’s on the East River, right up by the Brooklyn Bridge.”
“Oh. So you’re, like, one stop from Manhattan on the subway. Do you go into the city a lot?”
“Yeah. I guess I do.”
“You’re so lucky,” she said. “It’s so dead out here. Nothing ever happens. Sometimes I go in and walk around like a tourist, looking at stuff.”
“Your parents let you go to Manhattan by yourself?”
“Let?” she asked him. “Listen, up until yesterday, I could have poured gasoline all over myself and set myself on fire in the front yard and they wouldn’t nave noticed a thing until the landscaper came and asked them what they wanted him to do with the big lump of charcoal in the middle of the lawn.”
He snorted. “Guess you woke them up.”
“I guess I did. So how come you don’t live with your mom? You can’t be that much older than me.”
“Well…” He shrugged. “She started going with this guy a while back. Year and a half ago, maybe. Deacon in her church. He don’t like me much, and I don’t like him. So then Fat Tommy…You know Tommy Bagadonuts?”
“Of course,” she said.
“Yeah, so Fat Tommy found me this place in the Heights.” He hesitated, looked off out the window. He didn’t look like he wanted to continue, but after a few seconds, he did. “They needed a super for the building,” he said. “The job came with an apartment.”
He was staring at her again. He’s waiting to see if I cop an attitude about that, she thought. He doesn’t like being a super. “How come you don’t go to school?”
“Maybe someday,” he said. “What about you? You gonna go?”
“To college? I was planning on it, but that was before all this. I guess I bitched things up pretty good.”
He shook his head. “Stoney will still send you,” he said.
He knows my father better than I do, she thought, and that realization made her sad, but she gave no sign. “Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s the right thing,” he said. “He’ll do it, after he calms down awhile. He’ll just probably break your balls about it for like the next year or so.”
She heard a car roll up outside, and moments later, the sound of footsteps on the front porch. “Eddie? I didn’t thank you for…you know. Bailing me out. You were awesome.”
He colored slightly. “You weren’t so bad, yourself. You hadn’t grabbed that guy’s piece when you did, things might not have went so smooth.”
She shook her head. “I owe you, Eddie.”
He looked down at the table. “Glad I was there.”
They were waiting for him when he got there. Tuco came out of the house with Marisa by his side, walked her over to Stoney’s car, closed her in on the passenger side, then walked around to Stoney’s window. “Everything all right?” Stoney asked him.
“Yeah.”
“You look beat,” Stoney said. “Why don’t you go home? I got her today. You can pick her up in the morning.”
Tuco nodded. “Okay.”
“I’ll call you tonight.”
Stoney got into the car, watched Tuco get into the Beemer and drive away. He didn’t look at his daughter.
“Daddy, I’m so sorry.”
It sounded more genuine to him this time, but he realized that he still didn’t know her well enough to tell for sure. He didn’t start the car. “Everybody makes mistakes,” he said, still not looking at her. “Smart people don’t make the same ones over and over. If you’re done with this one, it can be finished. You know what I mean? I don’t need to keep hitting you with it.”
“But Mom said…” Whatever it was, Marisa couldn’t repeat it.
Stoney did not want to bash Donna. “Give her time.”
“Yeah.” There was a touch of anger there, and he wondered if she was letting it show for his benefit. Divide and conquer? “Sometimes I wonder,” she went on, “what kind of world Mom thinks she lives in.”
Stoney shook out a cigarette and lit it. “No way to tell for sure what another person is thinking,” he said, and he blew smoke out the window.
“Do you want to know why I did it?” she asked him, her voice quiet.
No, he thought, I don’t. Why do women love doing emotional autopsies? Just when you think the shit’s done with, they’re digging up the body for a postmortem, and you gotta go through the whole fucking thing all over again. He glanced over at her, but she was staring at the floor. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
“I have to. I couldn’t talk to Mom about it. I don’t have anybody else, Dad. You’re it.”
“Go ahead, then.”
She sat quiet for a minute, still staring at the floor. “At first, it was just a dare, you know, ‘I will if you will, you don’t have the guts,’ one of those things. Like wearing a bikini at the beach for the first time. I was with my girlfriend. She seemed cool with it, but I was so afraid…. When we got to the Jupiter Club, and when I, um, when I went out there, everyone in the whole place was looking at me, all the guys, the waitresses, the bartender, everybody, they were all clapping. It was the first time in my life that had ever happened. I’m a lousy dancer, so I just…you know. I just did it. They were all screaming. I wouldn’t get close enough for any of them to do that dollar-bill thing, so they started to throw money up on the stage.” She paused, but Stoney didn’t trust himself enough to even look at her, let alone say anything. “It was the biggest rush I ever got in my life,” she said. “I never felt anything like it before, ever. It was like I’d never really felt anything at all before that, I felt like I had just been let out of prison or something. I didn’t want to stop. When it was over, I couldn’t wait to go back.”
Great, he thought. Wonderful. He glanced over at her, finally. She had more color in her face than he’d ever seen there before. “What about now?”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t the same, the second time. It wasn’t as much fun. By the fourth or fifth time, it was no fun at all. It was just…sticky.” She looked over at him. “Is this what it’s like, knowing you can never get high again? That it was the biggest thing that ever happened to you, and now it’s over, and you can never have it again.”
“That ain’t how it works.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not strong enough for never again. I can’t do forever, so I just do right now. When tomorrow gets here, I’ll worry about tomorrow.”
“I don’t know if I can do that.” She looked out
her window. “You know, the idea that I’ll never…that I can’t…”
Don’t blow this, he told himself. You say the wrong thing now, you might never get this close again. “The two situations are not exactly parallel.”
“Why not?” She wasn’t looking at him, she was staring out her window, out into space.
“Because if I wanna have any kind of a life, I gotta stay totally away from shit that fucks with my brain chemistry. You don’t have to go through life without taking your clothes off. You just have to pick your venues a little more carefully.”
She turned and looked at him, scowling. “What do you mean?”
He took a last drag on his cigarette and flicked it away, held the smoke in his lungs for a few seconds before blowing it out. Just like a joint, he thought, except it doesn’t get you off. “Your mother and I used to like going to the movies, back in the day. We had this running joke. We had to take turns picking the movie, because if there was a lot of talking, she was gonna like it and I was gonna hate it, and if there was a lot of violence and nudity, I was gonna like it and she was gonna hate it. So I ain’t gonna be a hypocrite, okay? I always been in favor of naked women. I just never thought you were gonna be one of ’em.”
She looked away from him, stared down at the floor between her feet. She looks worse than ever, he thought. It was too late, though, he couldn’t go back now.
“There’s a lot of that stuff around. You know, they got clubs in the city like the one you were in. And there’s magazines, and videos, and the Playboy Channel on TV. Okay? So I probably seen a thousand naked women in my life. Maybe more. The thing is, if any one of ’em walked past right now, I wouldn’t know her. So all of those times, whether they were stripping for the camera or just for me, you know, it didn’t mean a damn thing. It was just a bodily function, you wanna know the truth. Instinct, nothing more than that. Not much different than taking a piss.”
She didn’t answer, she didn’t even look like she was breathing.
“What I’m trying to say is, it ought to mean something. It ought to mean more than…hormones. I believe the right guy is out there, you just gotta find him. You find the right guy, none of this makes any difference anymore. The problem is, you gotta work for it. And you ain’t gonna find him at the Jupiter Club.”
