Matchstick Men: A Novel About Grifters With Issues (3 page)

“I got an Isaacson over on Twenty-third Court,” Frankie says, finger running beneath an obituary title. “Eighty-three, survived by a wife and daughter.”

“Daughter’s no good. She could be there.”

“And if she is, we blow it off. You always said there’s no use in being scared by the henhouse—”

“—if the fox is eating his dinner, yeah, yeah, I know what I said.” Roy sighs. He can’t believe the things he hears about himself. Sometimes these days, he thinks he’d like to find the old Roy in an alleyway, beat the shit out of him. Slit his throat. Sometimes.

“Isaacson?”

“Twenty-third Court.”

“We could drop by Vic’s place and pick up the van,” Roy suggests. Now he’s thinking, now he’s planning, and the other thoughts retreat. Fall back into the shadows, waiting. Better this way. Safer.

“And the outfits,” Frankie adds. He’s turning it on, getting excited. “C’mon, let’s do it. Thirty-minute job, tops.”

Mrs. Isaacson has just gotten off the phone with her daughter when the roofing truck pulls up outside her suburban home. She and Linda have made plans to go to the Salvation Army this afternoon and give away some of Hal’s old things, the clothes he never really liked, the ties he never really wore. Hal was always a great supporter of charity, but now he’s gone, and Mrs. Isaacson wants to fulfill what she believes would have been his last wishes. No time for that. Heart attack. Gone in his sleep. Didn’t feel a thing, the doctors said. Last wishes in his dreams.

She doesn’t know why they’re ringing her bell, but Mrs. Isaacson opens the door for the two gentlemen dressed in light gray outfits, coveralls splattered with paint and tar. One very thin, one heading to fat, they stand in her doorway like the number 10, smiling, holding clipboards.

“Afternoon, ma’am,” says the heavy one. His brow is sweaty, skin tanned. “Jonas Taylor, Associated Air and Roof. Is Mr. Isaacson at home? Your father, perhaps?”

Mrs. Isaacson drops her eyes. Her voice is thin, weak. “My husband …”

“I see,” says the man. “He didn’t tell me he had such a pretty wife. Well, that’s fine, that’s fine, either one of you can sign off for this—”

“We wanted to get started early,” says the other one, the thin one, the man with the long sideburns and longer face. “On account of the rain and all …”

“No, no,” says Mrs. Isaacson. “My husband—Hal—he passed away …”

The heavy one takes a step back. “Oh,” he says, short, clipped. “Oh.”

“A heart attack,” she continues.

“Oh,” he repeats. The man rubs his chest absentmindedly, as if he were feeling Hal’s past pain. “I am … I am so sorry, ma’am.”

She nods. “It was two weeks ago. Are you … friends of his?”

“No, ma’am,” says the skinny one. “We were just hired by him to do some work for the house—there was a roof problem.… Look, we’ll get outta your way. You don’t need this now.”

The men share a quick look, and the big one doffs his hat. “Ma’am,” he says, bowing slightly at the waist. “I am powerfully sorry at your loss.”

Mrs. Isaacson hasn’t seen a man like this in sixty years, a kind, polite man who tips his hat at a woman and calls her ma’am, not since her and Hal’s courting days. Nowadays, all the servicemen are hoodlums or thieves or just plain rude. Nowadays, she prefers to stay indoors and do her shopping over the phone than deal with service people.

As the two men head back down the front walk toward their van, Mrs. Isaacson calls out, “What did my husband hire you to do?”

“Just a roof job, ma’am” is the reply. Their backs are turned; she doesn’t know which one is speaking. “Repair some damage before the rainy season. You should get it looked at sometime.”

“Wait,” she calls out. They stop. “If you were going to do it anyway … Hal always handled the money, the house.… But if you were going to do it anyway—”

They’re back at the doorstep, rifling through the clipboard, talking to each other, working out figures and numbers and talking about tar and shingles and time. “It’s an eighteen-hundred-dollar
job,” says the older one, the chubby one. “About three hours, all told. Not long, but I wouldn’t want to be in your hair …”

“Not at all,” Mrs. Isaacson tells the men. “I was just going out to meet my daughter for a few hours.”

“Tell you what, then,” says the younger man. “We’ll go back to the warehouse, pick up the shingles, come on back, and get started right away. By the time you get home, you’ll have a brand-new roof, we’ll be gone, it’ll be like we were never here. No muss, no fuss.”

“Yes …” says Mrs. Isaacson, glad that Hal took care of this for her before he left. Glad that he contacted these nice men. She hopes that he thought ahead on other matters, too. “Yes, that will be good.”

“We should probably get a deposit,” says the thin one. “Just so our boss—”

“Forget the deposit,” says the partner. “I’m sure Mrs. Isaacson is good for it.” He tips his hat again and smiles warmly, and she wonders if she should bring them tea or cookies or something while they work.

But the little one is agitated. “Remember last time? Mr. Yarrow hit the roof when we forgot the deposit—”

“It’s fine, it’s fine, she’s good for it—”

“I’m sure she is, but it’s Mr. Yarrow I’m worried about—”

Mrs. Isaacson doesn’t like to see these two men argue with each other. “Gentlemen,” she cuts in, coming between them, placing a thin, wizened hand out to attract their attention. “I thank you for your trust, but rules are rules. I’d be happy to give you a deposit.”

“Ma’am, you don’t have to—”

“Posh. You shouldn’t get in trouble over me. Now, would cash be all right with you two?”

“Bless your heart,” says the heavy one, tipping his hat one final time, “cash is just peachy, ma’am.”

“Twelve hundred bucks,” Frankie says. He’s got the money tight inside a rubber band, the hundreds rolled up into a cylinder. “Sweet the way you set up the blow-off.”

Roy turns onto the highway. He doesn’t want to be on the streets anymore. Mrs. Isaacson gave them juice in boxes for the trip they were supposed to take back to the warehouse. They were for her grandson, she said, but he stopped drinking apple juice when he turned seven. She still has cartons of it in the house. Roy sips at the drink. It tastes bitter going down, scratching at his throat.

“Funny thing is,” Frankie is saying, “I think that broad had a real roof problem. My uncle used to be a roofer, and I went with him on a few jobs when I was back in school. Couldn’t see much from down where we was, but the sides of them shingles looked worn through. She gets that up top, gonna have a whole lotta water gardens inside that house come rainy season.”

Roy takes another sip. The cars on either side of him are zipping by, blurs of red and green blasting past his vision. The Chevy rumbles along. The speedometer reads sixty, but he might as well be on a bicycle.

“Must be doin’ ninety,” he mumbles.

“Whazzat?” asks Frankie, already engrossed in the obituaries once again.

“Said they must be doing ninety. These other cars.”

“Ninety,” says Frankie, mocking Roy’s deep tones. “Sure, Roy, they’re doing ninety. Hey, here’s one.” He folds the paper back, accidentally tearing the corner of the paper, the edge ripping off and fluttering to the ground. The noise is impossibly loud in Roy’s ears, like a jet taking off two feet away. But the ripping and the tearing are nothing in comparison to the sound of the paper shred floating to the floor of the car—wings, flapping at Roy’s eardrums, pounding on them—landing with an explosion, like someone dropped a bowling ball through a glass factory. Roy’s hand tight on the wheel, red knuckles turning white, grasping the vinyl, twisting it. Teeth clenched, jaw tight, holding back the vomit, the rush of food and acid boiling up through his throat, ready to explode, to crush his jaw with the noise and the pain—

“… and he was a diamond broker.” Frankie’s voice, cutting through the noise. Everything is quiet again. Except for Frankie. The feeling is gone.

“Who is?” asks Roy. The other cars have slowed down. The Caprice keeps pace.

“The next stop. The guy. He was a diamond broker. Died from a stroke, no kids, just the wife. Way I figure it, they’ve got a lot of bucks, probably in cash. We can pull off a bigger number this time, I’m thinking. Maybe a few grand—”

“I’m tired,” Roy says. “I’m going home.”

“Aw, c’mon, we’re on a roll—”

“I’m going home.”

Frankie tries to argue, but Roy doesn’t answer. For every point that Frankie makes, Roy drives another silent mile. It’s a lopsided battle, and it’s over before it started.

Frankie’s apartment building is all glass and steel, a modern monument Roy doesn’t understand. Once, he asked Frankie
what it cost him to live there, and when Frankie told him the rent, Roy didn’t know whether to hit his partner upside the head or cry alongside him. He tried to explain to Frankie about investing, about putting money away. About buying a place instead of renting when you could afford it. But Frankie and Roy are Frankie and Roy, and their nights are as different as their days are similar. Frankie buys a new car every six months. Frankie buys a new ladyfriend every two. Frankie is always looking for the next score, because Frankie is always in debt.

“You give me a call tomorrow morning,” he says to Roy as he climbs out of the Caprice. “I got a lot set up for us.”

“We’ll see,” says Roy. “I’m real tired, I gotta rest.”

Frankie stops, steps back. Concerned. “Don’t do this to me,” he says. “There’s a club down south we can pick off with the zoo gag. Maybe five grand.”

“We’ll see.”

Frankie leans in the open window of the car; his hair brushes against the roof, pulls back the skin on his sloping forehead. His sunken eyes bug out. “I got guys I gotta pay off, okay? I don’t like to admit that, but I got these guys.”

“So you want a loan?”

“I want a
score
. Look, just call me, okay?”

“Sure,” says Roy. “I’m tired, that’s all.”

“And do me a favor, partner—take your fucking pills.”

Roy doesn’t wait around anymore after that. The Caprice can still move fast when it has to.

Six years ago, Roy bought this house. The neighborhood is nice. Nothing too fancy, but steady. Staying in place. Holding
value. The yard is well maintained, the surrounding homes are kept up, and no one bothers anyone else. No one cares. Perfect. The house itself is not large, only three bedrooms and two baths, but there’s just Roy and only Roy, so it’s bigger than he needs. One of the bedrooms is a bedroom. The second bedroom is an office. One chair, one desk, one lamp. It’s where Roy keeps his records, his files. Where he writes his letters. The third bedroom, the back bedroom, is currently in use as a den, though no one but Roy ever goes inside. There is a couch in there that folds out into a bed, an old black-and-white television set with bent rabbit ears, and, in the corner, a dressing table and bureau with nothing inside. The walls are covered with art purchased at hotel-suite sales, twenty-dollar watercolors meant to keep the room trashy. Ugly. Uninteresting.

Off to the far side of the room, next to the empty bureau, there is a ceramic horse, four feet high at the shoulder and just about as long. It is blue and yellow. Knotted piping runs up and down the sides, spiraling decorations with chipped paint. The horse’s eyes are a dulled, muted black. It stares blankly at the television all day long. Around its neck is a hardened rope, stuck there as if a real horse were turned into ceramic just seconds before being dragged into servitude. The rope is yellow, the paint matching with the rest of the statue. This is the way Roy likes it.