The Art of Disposal (23 page)

But I knew what was up with Bullfrog. He's a drug dealer. He's not a killer. I bet if I could've looked inside of his mind, I would have seen a terrible loop where an innocent truck-driver gets shot in the back of the head, over and over. I would've seen a Rosary, half-buried under some brush on an unmarked grave. I would've seen an owl, dropping out of the heavens like the dark cape of some murdered hero.

Eddie says there's no better smell in the world than a walk-in humidor. Shelves of unsmoked cigars smell like bricks of chocolate and coffee and earthy cedar boxes. Eddie's heaven is a walk-in humidor that goes on and on forever.

My heaven? A rural cabin with a pond and a damp meadow, and the nightly croaking of leopard frogs, and Emily rocking on the front porch swing.

Marcia's heaven? A dungeon full of helpless chumps, each of them fixated on her and willing to do whatever she says.

My rash had been acting up, and one of my ears was off balance. I went to see Doc Brillman, and when I walked through the doors and saw Marcia sitting there, I wondered what was so great about her. In the right light, when I thought of all the things we'd done behind her husband's back, she looked like a well-dressed pig.

“Hello Mister Lynch,” she said with extra formality.

“Yeah, sure,” I said, and scrawled my name on the paper.

She lowered her voice. “What's wrong?”

“I'm tired. Real tired. And my right ear is funny.”

“Tonight? Nine o'clock? I told Kevin I'm going out with Elise.”

“So go out with Elise.”

“Did I do something?”

“Ask Kevin,” I said.

Her face—the one she put on for the world—cracked. I took a seat near the aquarium that I knew so well, and watched the blue and gold cichlids. The water was clear and fast. The nurse called me back and put me on the scale. One hundred and seventy five pounds.

I sat on the metal examination table and looked at the “human body” diagram with its too-red heart; the “what smoking does to your lungs,” with the tar-coated weeping cilia; and the sheets of typing paper that change every time Doc Brillman's kid draws something new. There was a new one today, of a lake full of whimsically lopsided fish.

The door opened. “Hello,” Doc Brillman said.

“Those fish are good. Picassoesque. Your kid's got talent.”

“Thanks,” he said, beaming. I bet he'd thought it a hundred thousand times, and it felt good to hear someone else give the stamp of approval.

We started in on the usual Q and A, and Doc Brillman took my blood pressure and had me breathe in and out a few times while he listened through a stethoscope with closed eyes, like God was giving him the answers to life's greatest mysteries. Then he put the otoscope into my ear, and peered into my brain through a blinding white light.

I had an ear infection. Doc Brillman said it could happen from getting stagnant water in your ear, and had I slipped and fallen into any mud recently?

“My whole life is one big mud-hole,” I said.

Doc Brillman laughed.

He wrote me a prescription for some antibiotics, and I buttoned up my shirt.

“A one hundred percent legitimate illness,” he said.

“I always knew I'd get something, Doc. What about this rash?” I said, turning my arms this way and that.

“Change your sheets,” he said.

He walked me back to the waiting room, and talked about his daughter's upcoming art show at the middle school, and I was glad he tagged along. When Marcia saw Doc Brillman by my side, she painted on her professional face in a matter of seconds.

“Ear infection,” Doc Brillman said to her with a smile. “And it's a real one!”

Marcia clapped her hands and tilted her head, but her eyes told a darker story than the jovial fun-poking one that Doc Brillman was writing at my expense. I played along and took a bow.

“The world is full of germs, and they're all out to get me,” I said.

I drove home feeling mighty good, and then my phone started rattling on the passenger seat. I didn't answer it. I don't talk on the phone while I'm driving. Any time I see a nitwit driving with a phone cradled to his ear, or looking into his lap and writing a text message, I consider unloading a few rounds into the back of his head, to do the world a favor.

It started raining, and my wipers could barely keep up with the downpour as I drove along. So I pulled off when I got to the Totsy instead of heading all the way home. Then I looked at the missed call. Marcia. I listened to her voicemail, the basic gist of which was that I'm an insensitive prick, and there are a dozen other guys who'd kill to “get with” a “hottie” such as herself. I started laughing, she sounded so ridiculous. And I didn't call her back. I didn't call her back because she told me I had
better
call her back, or she was ending it with me. What a nut.

Now, you want to talk synchronicity? Here's one for you.

I held an old Scientific American magazine over my head and ran through the pouring rain, into the eerie red dark of the Totsy. The regular losers were slumped at the bar, running an experiment to see if the eighteen-thousandth drink of their life would actually make them feel any better. Lucky, in particular, looked about due for a mercy killing. Some drunks get so haggard and red-faced and crater-nosed that even a brand new Brooks Brothers suit wouldn't make them presentable.

I sat down in my favorite booth, under the Jean Harlow drawing, and Becca came by and brought me an iced tea.

“Sorry to hear about Dan,” she said. “Sorry I was mean to him.”

“Guy his age shouldn't be hitting on you.”

“Yeah… but you men have it tough in some ways. You don't have a whole lot to offer us—except back-hair and pee-stained underwear.”

“I've only got
one
of those.”

“Yeah? Which one?”

“Wouldn't you like to know.”

“Gross,” Becca said. She laughed and walked away.

I grabbed one of the Weekly Traders (a free magazine with ads for private sales. Cars and boats, pure-bred dogs and such), and thumbed through it. I was reading an ad for a 1981 DeLorean—
only 79,000 miles! Minor body damage
.

The guy was asking twenty grand for it. Fat chance. I imagined myself behind the wheel of a DeLorean, and wondered if I could pay someone to install a realistic looking flux-capacitor, when someone slid into the booth opposite me and snapped me out of my fantasy.

It was Kevin. Yeah, that Kevin.

“Ronnie. Remember me?” he said.

“Sure,” I said. “How's Martha?”

“Marcia,” he said. “And don't play like you can't even remember her name.”

I folded up the Weekly Trader and took a sip of iced tea.

“You here for revenge? To throw a few punches?” I said.

Becca, bless her soul, showed up right then and asked Kevin if he was having a drink; and I told her to put whatever he wanted on my tab. He ordered a tall beer.

“Can't say it came as much of a shock,” he said when Becca walked away.

I didn't say a word. I wondered if he'd brought along a gun. Maybe he was thinking of going out with a bang on the nightly news.

“There's a tendency to blame the other guy,” I said, “when in reality he didn't do shit except get a piece of what she was serving up. It's
her
you should be mad at. If you want revenge, I'd turn around and go knock on your own front door, buddy.”

Kevin's eyes were a hazy red like Mister Z's: Bullfrog's meth-head connection. That got me to thinking about Mister Z, and I wondered what it was like to really believe you were an alien from another world. Then I got to thinking how weird it would be if it turned out that Mister Z really
was
an alien, and how that would make for a good movie. Maybe that's how he ended up on drugs. Scared and lonely, and no way back home.

“That bitch loves to run me over. Then she backs the car right up, lines it up real good, and runs me over again. I'm done with her.”

“Smart move,” I said.

“I know who Eddie Sesto is,” Kevin said.

Becca showed up and gave Kevin his tall beer. It was shaped like an hour-glass, and it was sweating. Kevin picked it up, nodded at me, and drank about half of it in a disgusting series of frog-like gulps. Some of it ran down his chin, and he mopped it up with his sleeve. He puffed his cheeks and exhaled.

“I needed that,” he said.

“I guess.”

“I know about Eddie Sesto,” he said again.

“Yeah, well I don't. Who the hell is Eddie Sesto?”

“Your boss,” he said.

Jesus, just what had Marcia been telling this guy? I never told her exactly what I did for a living, but she knew I wasn't running a non-profit.

“I'm not here to make trouble,” he said.

“Well—you're doing a pretty good job of it.”

We stared at each other.

“After you finish that beer, I think you should be on your way,” I said.

Kevin took another few gulps, ended the life of the tall beer, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve again. Then he leaned a little bit across the table.

“I want you to kill her,” he said.

The rash on my arms was itching like it was getting paid overtime. That chump husband of Marcia's: I couldn't stop thinking about what he'd said. I watched the end of an old Columbo episode on channel 6, and I drank a few cups of coffee and paced around my crummy apartment. I fed my fish, and checked the temperatures on all of the aquariums. I asked Vern what he would do in this situation, and he opened and closed his mouth like he was saying, “I'd eat that nitwit for breakfast.”

The fat noisy broad was still glued to her lawnchair, smoking cigarettes that she'd bought, no doubt, on the taxpayer's dime. I wondered if unfortunate Brandi was still struggling with her homework at night, living above that nest of hillbillies.

Yap, yap, yap-yap-yap. I peeked out the window, and there she was with a cell phone glued to her ear, yapping to that waste-of-space husband of hers. I imagined aiming a crossbow right at that ugly melon she called a head. Zmmmmmph! A silent bolt, right between the eyes. And who would be the worse for it, really? Her kids? Not the way she talked to them. No way, buddy. They'd probably thank me for it some day.

I drove over to Walgreen's and picked up a bottle of Calamine lotion and some Advils, too. I didn't even have a headache. But I was figuring on getting one sometime soon.

I knew the only thing that would really stop my arms from itching was to come clean and tell Eddie about Marcia's husband, so I stopped by the office. It was just Eddie, sitting at his desk with some paperwork in front of him. I sat down and gave Eddie the details, and asked him what we should do about it.

“Mister married women,” he said, and plucked at his suspenders. “Now you got an angry husband to deal with. A dumb, angry husband. What's the point of even giving you advice?”

“He's not so angry,” I said.

“So what does he want?” Eddie said.

I looked down. “He knows what I do… sort of.”

Eddie shook his head.

“He offered me a job,” I said.

“Jesus,” Eddie said.

“Says he'll split the life insurance with me.”

“How much?”

“Half million.”

“Pretty sweet pot.”

“Pretty sweet,” I said.

“And you're gonna do it?”

“No way.”

“There's hope for you yet, Champ.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“What kind of idiot asks someone to kill his wife?” Eddie said. “Life insurance. It just don't pan out. Never. Them insurance guys, they ain't so dumb.”

“That's what he is,” I said. “An insurance guy. Knows all the tricks. Says he can guarantee we don't get caught.”

“Prison's full of guys who knew they wouldn't get caught. You call a meeting with him. Tell him you don't ever want to see him again. And you tell him he's got it all wrong about you. You're just a salesman, that's all.”

He bit his lower lip.

“You make it crystal clear: that dumb wife of his is all wrong about you.” Eddie held up his right hand and opened his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. He looked through the gap. “And if he keeps pressing, you tell him he's
this close
to finding out just what you really do for a living—the hard way.”

I nodded.

“You think he'll wise up?” Eddie said.

“I think so.”

“If there's any chance… if you think he might… well. You know what to do,” Eddie said.

“Sure, boss,” I said. “But let's hope it doesn't come to that.”

So there I was, in a big steaming pot of different problems. As soon as you solve one problem, there's another one. And another one. Like a goddamn factory line.

Next day, Carlino called me up and said we were having a meeting, and I said, “what time did Eddie say?” And he said, “this ain't really an
Eddie
kind of meeting, all right?”

Frank Conese was in town, staying in the old Red Lion by the river. Carlino drove me over there, and when we got out of the elevator and walked down that paisley carpeted hallway, past little Mexican women with vacuum cleaners, all the time I was rehearsing what I would do if they tried to snuff me out. It was hard to come up with much. I pictured myself as cool as Dirty Harry, pulling my gun and casually dropping every bad guy in the room, like it was as easy as spreading some soft butter on a warm piece of bread.

But that's the movies. Here in the real world, when you go into a meeting outgunned and outnumbered, if they want you dead—you're dead. Hell, no guns will even get drawn. They get you quick and quiet, the way that we got Ricky Cervetti. All you can do is try to get used to the idea of spending eternity in a cavern of absolute silence, blacker than a country night, and being so utterly erased that you aren't even there to process how empty you feel.

Carlino knocked, and Mudcap opened the hotel room door. He was wearing that marble in his eye-socket. I heard Eddie's voice…
sometimes he wears a marble, with wavy lines and all, right in that socket
…

Frank Conese was standing up, a glass of almost-empty whiskey in his hand. Then I saw a guy I'd never met, and that made me nervous.

He was Mexican. Dark mustache and goatee just starting to gray, same as his caterpillar eyebrows. His arms were too big for his body. I could picture him wearing a bowler hat, no problem. He was covered in tattoos. “La Raza” on his neck; a black hand on one arm; a hollow teardrop under one eye; the letters “A-B” over a green 3-leaf clover on a forearm; and the letters “E-W-M-N” across one set of knuckles. There were many, many more: all of them locking together like a poorly designed puzzle drawn by an untalented kid.