“
I think I have seen her,
yes.”
Marcus had lost his menace. It seemed
pointless. Small as Danny was, why couldn’t Saida take care of it?
It must be something like how she felt about water bugs. She was
capable of crushing them herself, but she didn’t like to hear the
squish.
“
So. She thinks you’re
looking at her,” Marcus said.
“
I’ve said hello to her. She
seems very nice. I hope I haven’t done anything to upset
her.”
“
You’re a sex
criminal?”
Danny paused, not a guilty pause but
recognition that this was heavy enough to stop the conversation for
a moment.
“
I’ve got a conviction.
Yeah, I do. It’s not right how they railroad you.”
“
I don’t have time for that,
but you better leave her alone. If you see her coming, you better
hide around a corner.”
“
Now wait a second. If I see
her coming, the last thing I should do is hide around a corner. If
you want, I won’t speak to her or anything, but as soon as I start
to slink around like a criminal, that’s when the misunderstandings
start.”
“
We don’t need
misunderstandings.”
“
I respect this—what you’re
doing. You a Redskins fan?”
“
What?” Marcus glanced down
at the old burgundy sweatshirt he was wearing. “Yeah. I mean,
sure.”
“
You watching the game
tonight?”
“
We don’t have ESPN, because
our TV is kind of—it’s not important.”
“
Kickoff is eight-thirty. If
you want, stop by. I’m 1K.”
Saida was at school that
evening, at a study group where they pretended they were running a
business and made displays on really shiny pieces of oak tag. She
wouldn’t be back until late. And that’s how Marcus found himself in
the apartment of a sex criminal, drinking Rolling Rock and
watching
Monday Night
Football
. When Marcus was five beers in, he
asked Danny about his arrest.
“
It wasn’t right,” Danny
said, without bitterness, more like he was describing a friend’s
comic misadventures. “They’ve got this thing up in Boston where
they put a lady cop on the T—in a little tube top and short shorts.
Then when some guy gropes her, they arrest him. I even knew about
the program. I’d read this thing in
The
Globe
; they had pictures of these women,
the bait. They were beautiful. I mean, they were the kinds of girls
you had to say, what are you doing working for the Boston Police
Department instead of—I don’t know—just sitting around and letting
men buy you things?”
“
So they showed the
undercover cops in the paper?”
“
I saw this lady on the
subway. And it
is
a train, you know? So there’s lots of starts and stops, and
people do jostle up against each other—that happens. So I saw this
lady. Now, I’m not saying I didn’t hope that the motions of the
train would position our parts in exciting alignment. I hoped for
all that, but it really was some short stops that brought us
together—mostly. But next thing I know six or seven cops grabbed me
and booked me. Half that train was cops, and they really needed a
bust that day. That’s how come I’m a sex offender.”
Marcus got up for another beer just a
little too fast. He had a lower tolerance than most people expected
from a 270-pound man, and he had to steady himself against the
flimsy wall of the kitchen. He could probably punch right through
into the next apartment if he wanted. What was the pervert going to
do, call the cops? If he punched through the wall, then at least he
could tell Saida that he’d done something. Maybe he’d do it
later.
“
And try finding a good job
with that on your record,” Danny said.
“
How do you get
by?”
“
They’ve got some programs,
foundations to help us out. This wealthy sex offender died without
any children; he left his money to a fund for the rest of us. I
have to live off that.”
“
That doesn’t really seem
right. I mean regular guys—who never touched a woman wrong—we have
to work for a living.”
“
Jesus, man. I’m kidding.
There’s no fund for sex offenders. I’ve got some very serious cash
flow problems. But luckily I know a way in to some
money.”
“
How?”
The question of
how
would hang in the air
for the next few weeks. In the meantime, Marcus became a regular at
Danny’s apartment, and he never got around to punching a hole in
the wall.
CHAPTER 3
Duane’s left index finger still gave
him a little pain when he gripped the steering wheel—likely the
bone was broken and the flesh was a nasty pulp. He didn’t think it
was infected, though. It would all heal fine, but it was a reminder
that things were going off the rails, falling apart. The whole
organization was going to hell.
The idea of seeing Tony made
him sick, but Top had written him a stern text message:
Make this meeting with T
.
Duane always heard people with straight jobs complain that they had
to sit at meetings listening to worthless noise without killing
everyone in the room. But that was exactly what he was driving to
Newburgh for. It was going to be useless and stupid, and he
wondered if he would be able to keep himself from doing something
harsh.
Tony and Top were both
ex-army—buddies from those days. At least that’s the way Tony told
it. It was hard to believe he’d been military. If that’s what the
army was coming to, we’d all be speaking Chinese in ten years.
Hell, we’d be speaking Swedish if we really had an army full of
imbeciles like Tony. The Swedes could row over in one of those
Viking longboats, then just march to Washington while Tony worked
on a cigarette and grinned—
I’m supposed to
do something, bro
?
Yeah, Tony was bad and getting worse.
Duane had seen it before: users rotting out their minds. It wasn’t
that Duane didn’t understand—heroin was wonderful, a delight, the
only way God really let you know there was something pure and holy
within reach. But Tony had worn out the meager connections of his
brain. He was left with just greed and a streak of
self-preservation. And now Duane had to drive an hour to get
scolded by this man who was actually the cause of the trouble. Was
Tony Braxton really going to try that on him?
Yeah, his name wasn’t really Tony
Braxton. That was just some hilarious joke someone had come up with
at some point, and now Duane had to tell people, with a straight
face, that Tony Braxton would have ten kilos in a week; or Tony
Braxton would be coming to the meet. It was bad enough to have a
two minute phone chat with Tony, but to have to drive an hour to
sit down with that fuck monkey face-to-face?
Fuck monkey? Duane hadn’t
said that in a while, maybe not since high school when he
practically used it as Cyril’s name. Not that
Cyril
was any better for a name. He
felt pretty lucky that his mother had gone with Duane for her first
child and Cyril for her second. Duane could remember summer days,
his brother sitting out on the sidewalk, reading in a beach chair.
He would sneak up quietly and smack the book out into the street.
So that guy, Cyril the Brain, had made it through college in three
years, then a so-so job, and then he just hit a wall. Duane had
laughed hard when he heard Cyril was unemployed and trying to sell
his furniture on Craigslist. It was so funny that Duane went to see
the golden boy in his crap studio apartment.
“
There’s so much money out
there,” Duane had said. “You want to make some?”
Cyril poured himself a bowl of cereal,
and Duane put a hand on his little brother’s shoulder.
“
Are you scared of me—men
like me?”
“
Like you? Not
really.”
“
Why not?”
“
Why would you do anything
to me? Why would a man like you do anything to me?”
“
They’re not all levelheaded
like I am.”
“
Okay, then we’re talking
about men who are
not
like you.”
Duane smacked Cyril in the
head—hard so it hurt, but also as a joke.
Take that, inchworm.
“
I don’t need to be reminded
of how smart you think you are.”
Cyril cocked back a fist—the playfight
continues? But Duane gave him a serious look.
“
No. Do not.”
“
Just kidding around,” Cyril
said, sounding about seven years old.
“
I’m trying to help you. I’m
trying to do you the biggest favor of your life. So just listen,
and don’t try to be smart. Some of these dudes are a little
psychotic. They just are. Most are more like me: you don’t give
them any reason for agitation, then it’s smooth doing business. You
don’t have to prove you’re the macho man with a steel cock. You
know what I mean?”
“
Sure.” Cyril fought the
impulse to giggle.
“
You never even had a
ticket, right?”
“
No.”
“
You’re a good driver with a
clean record and a pretty, Caucasian face.”
“
Thank you for saying
that.”
There was a fairly strong resemblance
between the two brothers, but it was easy to tell just by looking
at them that Duane was the harder, angrier man.
“
You can say no. But do it
now. If you say yes, and I get you in—then you’ve got to do it
right.”
“
What are we talking about?”
Cyril asked, still in groggy breakfast mode.
“
What do you think?” Duane’s
anger was rising again.
“
Specifically, I
mean.”
“
Oh.” Duane weighed the
question and found it reasonable. “It’s just driving. But it’s
important. And you’ll make more money than you would have even if
everything had worked out in—fucking botany school? Whatever you
were doing at college.”
Duane had sold the job pretty hard,
but he thought he’d been honest. The money he’d been making had him
feeling like he was a big deal, and when Tony Braxton sounded him
out about drivers, he thought it would be a shame if Cyril missed
the easy money.
As it turned out, the only time the
brothers did anything together was when Duane brought Cyril—in a
cardigan sweater for fuck’s sake—to see Tony that first time. It
was early afternoon at a bar in Rockland County without windows.
That was back before Tony had turned into a complete
disaster.
“
This is your brother? Are
you a puss like Duane?” Tony asked.
“
Watch it,” Duane
said.
“
What, he can’t take
it?”
“
You insulted me,
Tony.”
“
How?” Tony gave a stupid
grin.
“
Look, you wanted to meet
him. Here he is.”
Cyril still hadn’t said a word, but he
looked up evenly at Tony.
“
You can do this?” Tony
asked.
“
Yes,” Cyril
said.
“
There’s no reason you
should ever get picked up. It just shouldn’t happen. If you get
stopped, take a ticket—that’s fine. I’ll even pay it. If they want
to search, tell them to get a warrant. If they don’t have one, do
not let them inside the car. If they bring in the dogs and you get
arrested, then just do the time. If you try to do anything else,
you’ll end up dead. You get that, right?”
“
Yes.”
“
That’s something you
understand?”
“
That is something I
understand.”
Cyril was calm and his voice was deep
and even; Duane was a little impressed.
“
Okay. Good enough,” Tony
shrugged. “You want to drive tomorrow?”
“
Yeah, I can do
that.”
“
Here you go.” Tony handed
Cyril a cell phone. “Don’t let the batteries run out and don’t call
anyone with this. We switch these pretty often, so you have to keep
up. Can you handle that?”
“
Yes, I can.”
Usually at the end of a job interview
there’s the opportunity to ask a few questions—what’s the policy on
sick days; is there a softball team? Walking out to Duane’s car,
Cyril still had one important question.
“
If I want to stop—can I
just do that? Just stop?”
“
You haven’t even done one
job, you’re thinking of quitting?”
“
I’m just looking at the
long term.”
“
Good thing you didn’t ask
Tony.”
“
So I can quit if I
want?”
“
No one reasonable is going
to hurt a courier just for stepping down.”
“
But some of them are
psychotic—you told me that.”
And now Duane was a lot less impressed
with his little brother’s cool.
“
Look, Cyril, it’s possible
that the first time you make a delivery the guy you meet will
decide to slice off your tongue and make you eat it in a sandwich.
That could happen. This isn’t preschool.”