Read Bobby Gold Stories Online
Authors: Anthony Bourdain
Bobby Gold Stories (9 page)
B
obby Gold, in a hastily thrown on black leather jacket, white T-shirt, black denims and sandals, a Heckler and Koch pistol
between his legs, stomped on the gas and blew right by a tractor-trailer. "Road-runner," the old Modern Lovers tune about
cruising Route 128, was on the radio, volume cranked up —appropriate to the circumstances as Bobby and Nikki were on exactly
that road, middle of the night, Massachusetts highway, headed for the Cape.
"I forgot to pack a bathing suit," said Nikki, from the passenger seat. "Does the music have to be up so loud?"
"Just this song," shouted Bobby. "Greatest album ever made. What do you need a bathing suit for? It's winter."
"The hotel. Maybe the hotel will have a pool."
"We ain't stayin' in no hotel, baby. Not this trip. People are angry with me. They want to kill me. We stay in a hotel we
gotta use a credit card. We use a credit card and it shows up on my statement. Wrong person sees my statement? Bang Bang Dig
Dig time."
"Shit! I thought at least there'd be a pool."
"You're the one wanted to break the law. You're the one wanted to be an outlaw. Welcome to the wild world of interstate flight."
Bobby's cell phone rang from inside his jacket. He slowed down slightly, reached, flipped it open and listened. It was Eddie.
"You've killed me," said Eddie, his voice thick with pills.
"How did I kill you?" said Bobby, annoyed.
"Threw me to the wolves. You left me out on a limb. I've got nobody. I've got nobody anybody's scared of."
"Buy yourself a pit bull. Hire a security guard. Do the Witness Protection thing. I don't give a fuck. I'm gone.
"You're with that bitch?"
Bobby flushed with anger, surprised at the question. "What the fuck you talking about?"
"That rotten bitch from the kitchen. She busted into the safe last night and took the fucking receipts, Bobby. That's the
bitch I'm talking about. She with you?"
"I got to get back to you, Eddie," said Bobby. "Call you right back."
"Uh . . . sweetheart?"
"Yes," said Nikki.
"Have you been a bad girl? Is there something you're not telling me?"
"Well . . . depends by what you mean by 'something' . . ."
"How about this. Did you by any chance break into the club's safe last night?"
Nikki said nothing for a while as she considered her answer. A 16-wheeler blew by them on the highway followed by silence.
"I might have done something like that. I'm very mechanically inclined. My brother works in a machine shop."
"That's nice. That's very nice. And last night, when you and whoever helped you in this boneheaded fucking venture were taking
stacks of money out of the safe. Did it occur to you, perhaps, whose money exactly it was you were absconding with?"
"Well . . . I guess we figured it was Eddie's."
"And who does Eddie owe money to do you think? Who do you think Eddie's partners are?"
"Some German asshole. I've seen him. He's always trying to fuck the waitresses."
"That's what we call in the business the 'straw owner,' cupcakes . . . That's what they call on television cop shows 'the
front man.'"
"Uh-oh," said Nikki. "You're about to tell me whose money it really was, aren't you?"
"Yes. Yes I am," said Bobby.
A
little while later they were crossing the Buzzard's Bay Bridge onto the Cape and Route 6. Bobby's phone went off again and
he rolled down the window on the driver's side, hurled it out over the rail into blackness.
"Your phone's ringing," said Nikki.
"I know," said Bobby.
"This guy you mentioned is not a very nice man, I take it?" said Nikki.
"You could say that," said Bobby.
"I got nineteen thousand dollars," said Nikki. "Would he like, hunt us down and kill me for that?"
Bobby did a little quick math in his head, abandoning his equations after a few seconds.
"Well . . . let's just say he's not exactly going to be looking for his money back. It'll cost him half the nineteen by the
time he finds us. Thing is, with Tommy, guys like Tommy? It's the principle of the thing, you see. That's the problem."
"So, I kind of got us in trouble, didn't I? And we were already in trouble."
"I was in trouble. Before? Before you could have dodged out anytime you got tired of chowder and grinders and cold nights.
Now you got a problem too."
"Bummer."
"Will they know where to look?"
"Eddie'll know - eventually. Me and him used to come out here summers for a while."
"Will he tell Tommy?"
"That's the question, isn't it?"
"Suddenly, Provincetown doesn't seem far enough away."
"No, it doesn't, does it?"
"I was in it with a friend. You think —" Bobby didn't let her finish her sentence.
"I think they got your friend strapped to a table battery by now. I bet he's coughing up whatever his cut was and whatever
he knows or suspects or can dream up. I think when they're done asking him questions they're going to drive him out to Jersey
and dig a hole and put him in it. Maybe they'll shoot him first."
"Oh," said Nikki. "Oh."
She sat quietly in the dark for a while. Bobby thought he could hear an occasional sniffle between cigarettes. He kept his
eyes on the road, speed just under the limit, thinking about what to do next. A place in town was now out of the question.
He knew somebody who could hook them up with a dune shack which would have to do until they figured out what to do next. Terrible
things were going to happen in New York. People were going to die. Eddie being "boy most likely to." He figured he'd wait.
See who fell and who survived before he made any rash moves. With luck, something bad could happen to Tommy in the shake-out
to come. Letting some girl saute cook take his crew off for a night's receipts didn't look good. Such things were bad for
you, the business Tommy was in. With any luck, a few whispers, some young Turk would maybe make the problem go away. Maybe
Eddie would turn state's evidence, go off to Arizona and rehab, keep Tommy and his people hunkered down filing motions and
answering summonses. On the other hand, maybe Tommy would come after them with everything. Maybe Tommy would go have a nice
talk with Paul and tell him what a terrible thing that Eddie's man Bobby did — how he cast aspersions on Paulie's sainted,
no-doubt-virginal daughter to get out of a previous jam, how he was a thieving, cowardly, and potentially dangerous problem
who had to be taken care of immediately — along with his puttana. This, of course, was the more likely scenario.
"Pull over," said Nikki.
"What? Why? You sick?"
"No. I'm horny. I get horny when I get scared."
She was already unsnapping Bobby's blue jeans when he pulled over to the side of the road.
"Slide over," she said, her feet over the dashboard as she yanked off her pants.
"This is not smart," said Bobby. "This is not smart at all."
She straddled him on the front seat and pushed down.
"Oh."
"Yep."
"You're a dangerous woman. You're going to get us both killed," said Bobby, already way way way beyond caring.
"I know," said Nikki. "Feels good though, doesn't it?"
After a month, when nobody came, when no strangers had been noticed in off-season Provincetown, where people tended to notice
such things, they began to visit town more often, usually for breakfast at the Tip for Tops'n on Bradford Street, or for dinner
at a Portuguese fisherman's joint where Nikki liked the squid stew. Nikki took a job part-time at a pizzeria, spinning pies,
and Bobby did a little roofing and carpentry, a little day labor at the boatyard. It was cold and crisp during the day, but
with brilliant, sharp-focused light, the sunsets spectacular, and the sound of foghorns and boat whistles, the smells of fish
and salt spray, the slowed down, more relaxed life of an off-season resort town making Cape Cod seem much farther away from
whatever was happening in New York.
Bobby read the
Times,
religiously, looking for news of dead organized crime associates, and Nikki read
Vogue
and
Marie Claire
and
Bazaar
and planned her wardrobe for the spending spree they were going to have whenever they made their next move. Whatever that
was. At night it was freezing cold in their beach shack — and on really cold nights, they'd leave the oven on with the door
open and huddle naked under four or five blankets, noses cold, giggling, and curiously without care. Bobby kept the H&K under
the pillow for the first few weeks then moved it to the night table. They fucked almost every day and spent hours just staring
wordlessly down at the sea. They shot pool at the Governor Bradford, bought a cheap TV set from a Portuguese fisherman and
watched snowy, blurry reruns of old sitcoms under the covers, Bobby getting out in the cold to move a clothes hanger/antennae
around the room from time to time — for better reception. Nikki cooked now and again — usually something simple, but occasionally
a classic French feast, serving
pate de canard
and salmon with sorrel sauce on paper plates, washed down with fine wine in plastic cups. Bobby never asked her about the
stolen money or why she should have done something so stupid and suicidal. It was assumed that at some point they'd really
run away. Bobby favored the Far East. Nikki was partial to the Caribbean or Mexico.
Nineteen grand, Bobby might have pointed out, was not going to be enough for both of them.
In April, Eddie Fish made the papers. A full-cover shot in the
New York Post,
Eddie interrupted at dinner, a mouthful of veal chop with the sauce from the chicken, laid out on the cold tile floor, shirt
pulled up, head leaking black onto white, dead as dead could be. His eyes were half open and there was food on the shirt.
"I think I need more guns," thought Bobby, heading back to the dune shack. "I really do."
But when he got back Nikki was asleep, dozing really, midafternoon, one arm thrown over her eyes, mouth slightly open, blankets
just below her breasts. Bobby quietly got undressed and slipped under the covers with her. She curled into a ball and worked
her way dreamily under his arms, seeking warmth. He felt her slowly unravel, throwing a leg over his, then a hand around his
back, the other one seeking something, finding it. Her head disappearing completely under the covers.
W
hen he woke up it was dark and he couldn't hear the generator. The window by the bed flew off its hinges, blew apart, glass
suddenly in his hair. It took a second to realize that people were shooting at them; window, door, through the walls, the
reports of three, maybe four weapons muffled by the sand, whipped away in the wind.
It's always the little things you remember when terrible things happen.
Bobby would remember the splinter he got when he jumped out of bed, his bare feet scrambling for purchase on the floor. He
remembered the way his fingers felt useless and rubbery as he tore open the drawer and grabbed for the H&K. He would always
remember the sound Nikki made when he shoved her out of bed onto the floor — and that his cock stuck to his leg for a second
as he ran for the door firing.
He'd remember that the first man he saw was wearing a shooter's vest and earmuffs and that when Nikki was hit she made an
"Ouch!" noise like she'd just cut herself on a grapefruit knife.
B
obby Gold in a raw-silk robe, maroon flecked with gold, in a faraway place, alone. Outside shuttered windows, palm fronds
brushed stucco walls and geckos clacked and chattered in the hot, syrup-thick jungle air. A splash signaled a lone swimmer
in the hotel pool, the fat German most likely. Neither the two red-faced Aussies, the taciturn Frenchman, nor the quiet Taiwanese
— the hotel's only other guests — could make a sound quite so loud.
The room smelled of jasmine and bug repellent and the 555-brand cigarettes that Bobby had taken to smoking over the last few
months. He was seeing the world, finally - after a lifetime under Eddie Fish's thumb, pinned down in New York, smothering
in Eddie's careless, relentless embrace. "See the world," Bobby said out loud, chuckling bitterly. "Alone," he almost added.
He was free all right. Cut loose from everything. Eddie gone. NiteKlub gone. Family . . . long long gone. And Nikki? Not here.
That was for sure. He missed everything about her. Her hair. Her sardonic smile. The not knowing what was going to come out
of her mouth next. Her scent. Recalling it made his chest hurt.
He was the driver now. No longer a passenger in a tightly circling cab. And he had seen the world — the eastern part of it
anyway: Bora Bora, Singapore, Japan, China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, a blurry film strip of temples,
wats
and mini-bars, transit lounges, buffet breakfasts, noodle shops, maimed beggars, stone-faced soldiers, brown-skinned children
in mud and rags calling "hello!" "bye-bye!" from riverbanks and stilt-supported houses. He'd seen moon-faced whores and eager
cyclo-drivers, smoked opium in a tin-roofed shack under a driving rain, stayed in cheap neon-lit hotel rooms: bed, fan, TV
set showing only Thai kick-boxing and MTV Asia, "karaoke-massage" in the lobby and someone else's hair on the complimentary
plastic comb and everywhere the smell of wood smoke, the overripe camembert odor of durian fruit, fish sauce, chicken shit
and fear. The soundtrack to the new not-so-improved Bobby Gold Story was the sound of a million throbbing generators, the
endless droning of yet another pressurized cabin, the whoosh of turbines, the low-throated gurgle of turbo-props, the admonitions
in pidgin English, Thai, Khmer, Vietnamese and Chinese that one's seat cushion could be used "as a flotation device" and to
refrain from using cell phones or electronic devices.
He'd bought a gun in Battambang — an old Makarov pistol with extra shells. Partly for self-protection, as what constituted
a crime in these parts depended largely on how much money one had in one's wallet and who one's cousins were. But also with
the half-formed idea that one of these days he might want to put the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. It seemed a romantic
place to die, Siem Reap, in the shadows of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thorn — to be found dead under the big stone heads at Bayon;
the reports, if any, of his demise to read something like, "found dead of a gunshot wound in Siem Reap." It just as well might
read Battambang, or Pailin, or Vung Tau or Can Tho or Bangkok. It made little difference, as there was, really, no one left
back home to read or care or be impressed by such a romantic demise.
"Oh yeah, the dude with the pony tail? The guy who used to work security? He was fucking the saute bitch, right?" was what
they'd say in the kitchen
"He was doing Nikki, right? Whatever happened to her, man? She was good on the line," was what they'd say. Then someone would
notice a song they didn't like on the radio and go to change the station and then they'd talk about something else.
It was a very nice hotel — though an empty one. Black-and-white tiled floors, ochre colored walls with mahogony and teak moldings.
The ceiling of the bar was decorated with finely drawn murals of elephants and Khmer kings and the agreeable waiters wore
green and white sarongs and knew to a man how to make a proper Singapore Sling or a dry martini or vermouth cassis.
Bobby was well liked at the hotel as he was neither Russian nor German and didn't insist on bringing whores to his room like
the other guests. He spent his days at the temples or at the riverbank and his evenings at the bar slogging through Malraux
and Greene and Maugham and Tim Page, trying to absorb their enthusiasms. Their lives so different than his own. "I love you,"
she'd said and squeezed him tightly, her fingers sinking into his back. He'd kissed her and tasted blood and then she'd slipped
—as Jim Morrison once put it - into unconsciousness.
He'd been drinking too much . . . and smoking bad weed — the rough-tasting Khmer smoke that cost only a stack of worthless
riels per kilo and the anti-malarial pills he'd been taking once a week were putting the screws to his head, giving him nightmares.
He'd wake up, middle of the night with his chest pounding after a particularly violent dream, smelling blood, his arms actually
aching from fighting off full-color phantasms.
Here's one dream Bobby had:
Bobby Gold at eight years old, in blue jeans, high-top sneakers and pale blue T-shirt, standing in the schoolyard, a ring
of faceless children around him in a tightening circle. It was dodge ball they were playing — and Bobby was it —the bigger
kids, pale and dead-eyed, aiming the big rubber ball at his face. Suddenly the action switched and it was Eddie Fish standing
in the perfectly round gauntlet, Bobby holding back the ball, taking aim, throwing it. Eddie cowering, the ball (Bobby could
smell the rubber, read the manufacturer's name: "VOIT") striking Eddie flush on the nose, smashing it flat, the blood coming,
coming, not stopping, as Eddie, in shorts, screaming silently and Bobby's head filling with the smell of rust, of school erasers,
Juicyfruit, disinfectant, latex paint, the taste of chewed pencils. The others come at Eddie with garden hoes now, striking
first the hard schoolyard asphalt, then flesh, Bobby hearing the sound as metal buried itself in bone, felt the vibrations
in his spine with each solid whack.
He woke up in cold, wet sheets, gasping, then smoked a half a pack of 555s, afraid to go back to sleep.
An ancient Antonov to Phnom Penh, seats broken, seat belt useless at his side, the cabin filled with steam a few minutes after
take-off — the other passengers actually laughing when the stewardesses handed out the in-flight meal, a plastic-wrapped sandwich
and a roll in a cardboard box — wings yawing dangerously as the plane touched down. Overnight in Bangkok in a gigantic airport
hotel, a twenty-minute walk to his room from the lobby, a Filipino trio singing "Rock the Boat" in the lounge, Tiger beer
in the mini bar. Transfer at Narita. A packed flight - tourist class — to LAX, taxi to a Japanese-owned hotel in West Hollywood.
The cocktail lounge was filled with well-dressed people talking on cell phones in amber-colored light. The women were well
made-up, hair done, heels, the men in jackets with recently polished shoes. They sat in plush, upholstered chairs and overstuffed
couches, drinking novelty drinks off tiny little tables. British techno-soundtrack music issued from hidden speakers. A waiter
offered Bobby a complimentary spring roll from a tray. He'd never felt so detached from his own country. It smelled of nothing
here, only air-conditioning, the figures around him in the lounge moving dreamlike through space like characters in a film.
A woman at the next grouping of chairs looked at Bobby then whispered something to her date — he turned around for a second,
glanced at Bobby, then snapped his head away as if frightened. Bobby sat there like a stone obelisk, his ice melting in his
drink, horrified. There was something indecent in all this affluence. He'd just come from a place where everything smelled,
where children tugged your sleeve and begged for your leftovers, where amputees slithered legless across the street and the
police felt free to open fire at any time. He felt like he was on another planet, the languid movements of the young, graceful
crowd somehow a cruel and terrible affront to the way he knew the world to really be. Bobby thought, "I could kill anyone
in this room and never feel a moment's guilt."
He was coming apart here. He had to get out.
He rented a Ford Focus through the desk, set out for Arizona in the morning.
He'd never seen America but he saw it now. Out the window, one strip mall led to another, then desert, then more strip mall,
filling stations, fast-food joints, car dealerships, desert again. The kids were fatter than in Asia; baggy pants, caps on
backwards, fierce acne, sullen looks as they watched him pump self-serve gas, grab a bite. He was old, he realized, nothing
to say to anyone anymore — if he'd ever had anything to say - America suddenly a vast ocean of blond hair, crenulated thighs,
fanny packs and Big Gulps. He aimed the car at the horizon and drove, a six-pack of Budweiser in a Styrofoam cooler on the
seat next to him, a gas station map his only guide. He bought new clothes at a mall in Tucson — khaki pants, a denim shirt,
aviator glasses, a pair of shoes which the clerk assured him would "last a lifetime" — changed at a Motel 6 after a swim in
a pool that stank of chlorine. He arrived in the small development community at dusk: cookie-cutter houses, ranch-style with
little signs announcing family names over identical mailboxes, driveways filled with SUVs, muscle cars, children's toys. Just
outside of town was a mega-mall with food court, deca-plex cinema, a chain hotel with heated pool and "convention facilities."
The "old" part of town dated back only to the forties; similarly identical homes - built like the newer ones all at once —
these to accommodate the wartime aviation and munitions industry who'd once had factories in the nearby desert. And a single
strip of shabby businesses: superette, hardware store, a movie theater turned furniture outlet, city hall, police department,
bowling alley, a few shops selling nostrums and notions.
She worked at Duke's Pizza, spinning pies in the front window. She had her hair tied back with a red kerchief - to keep it
from burning in the oven, and she wore a tight white T-shirt that revealed a slight impression of nipple, a long, sauce-stained
apron. From across the street, he couldn't see where the bullet had entered. She was spinning pie now, two fists working the
dough ever larger, a twirl with the fingertips of the right hand, and then the pie disappeared up and out of frame, reappearing
a second later. Nikki looked grimly satisfied as she slung the floppy, white object back and forth between her wrists. A single
strand of hair worked loose from the headband hung over her face, giving her an appearance of heartbreaking earnestness. Below
the window frame, she ladled sauce, sprinkled cheese, then moved the finished pizza on a long wooden paddle into the back
of a deck oven, yanked it free with a hard, unhesitating jerk of the arm, muscles flexing.
He rolled up his window, ducking back as she pushed away the strand of hair from her face, blew out, stared out the window
at the empty street, squinting in the midafternoon glare.
Nikki in hiding. New name. New address. She'd snitched him off— as arranged bedside at the hospital — in return for protection.
He looked up and down the street and saw no one who looked like a cop or a fed or a U.S. marshal. As arranged, she'd sent
him a single postcard, care of a rooming house in Goa, telling him where she was and that she was okay.
She'd had nothing to say - no "direct knowledge" as lawyers like to phrase it - about Tommy Victory. Bobby had been all she'd
had to offer and he'd insisted. She'd needed something to pay the toll —and an organized crime "associate" with multiple bodies
on his resume had seemed like an easy out. She'd been in the hospital for three months — and physical therapy for a year after
that. He'd had to do something.
"Why?" she'd asked him. "Why does it have to be you?"
"Because it's all we've got," he'd said. "Because they might come back. Because what Tommy's people want from you is too high
a price for anyone to pay." The person they'd send, if they could find her, would have been someone just like he had once
been. A professional. Someone who knew how to hurt people, how to ask hard questions. Someone who didn't flinch when people
screamed. Someone for whom another life extinguished was just another day at work.
Because Tommy knew that Bobby was out there somewhere. Because he knew what he was likely to do.
Bobby left town quietly, saying nothing. He didn't call her at the shop. He didn't even wave.
He dropped the car in Tucson, rented another —under yet another name — and made the long, long drive cross-country, New York
finally appearing beyond the George Washington Bridge. He bought a banged up .38 Airweight from a Serbian safecracker he'd
known upstate and checked into a no-tell motel just across the river in Fort Lee.
