Way Past Legal
Norman Green
For Christine
Contents
Prologue
IT WAS CENTURIES BEFORE they got their white man's names.
One
TIME, A GUY ONCE TOLD ME, ain't nothing but one
Two
THE MAINE COAST GETS WILDER and more beautiful the farther
Three
THE LITTLE BASTARD WOKE ME UP at five o'clock in
Four
WE USED THE SUBARU and a twenty-foot piece of chain
Five
I WOKE UP WONDERING if the Russians were the kind
Six
I STILL HADN'T HEARD FROM BOOKMAN, and I was trying
Seven
I CAME TO IN A ROOM painted pastel green. The
Eight
I WOKE UP AROUND FIVE O'CLOCK that morning. It took
Nine
THE PAIN IN MY SHOULDER got me up early. I
Ten
I CHECKED OUT OF THE HOTEL in the morning and
Eleven
LOOK AT ANY MAP OF THE STATE OF MAINE and
Twelve
"OH, SHIT," Bookman said. I took off and left him
Thirteen
THE FOG CAME OUT OF NOWHERE, or maybe it came
Fourteen
I GUESS EVERYTHING LOOKS BEAUTIFUL after the bullet with your
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Norman Green
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
IT WAS CENTURIES BEFORE they got their white man's names. At first it was only him, paddling down the St. Croix, though there was no one there to call it that. He was looking for the right place to leave his children. He was almost to the mouth of the river, the place where it emptied into the ocean, when he decided to pull his canoe up onto dry land and camp for the night. He was, in fact, in the act of doing so when he saw them. The moose was pregnant, the deer was not, and they were both out in the cold water swimming with the strength of fear, oblivious to the power of the current. The wolves ringed the spot on the riverbank where their quarry had entered the water, hesitating, and then, as if tethered to a single will, they leaped in to continue the chase. He stood there with the freezing water swirling around his ankles, watching with mixed emotions. It was right that the deer and the moose should flee, right that the wolves should follow, but it was wrong that the bay should kill them all. Even as he thought this the current seized the group of swimming wolves and sprayed them out into deeper water, where the currents ran even faster. Already it was too late for them.
He closed his eyes and waved his arm slowly to stop them all where they were, then opened his eyes to see what he had done. The large ungainly humpbacked one, closest to shore, that was Moose Island. Out in the current, low and green, that one was Deer Island, and the smaller ones, farther out in the bay, fanned out from one another and from the larger islands, those were the Dog Islands. He waited there on the bank until sunrise to make sure that the thing he had done was right. When he was sure, he got back into the canoe and paddled away, leaving his children there on the bank behind him, almost as an afterthought. But the bay, denied its prey, had its revenge. At flood tide, the juxtaposition of the islands and currents created the phenomenon that came to be known as the Old Sow, a howling vortex of malevolent sea, a devourer of canoes, ships, and men.
But by flood tide, he was far, far away.
One
TIME, A GUY ONCE TOLD ME, ain't nothing but one goddam thing after another. I met the guy in Ossining, New York, last time I was up there. I was a guest of the state, and so was he. He was like me, I suppose, a little too smart for his own good. Not smart enough to figure a way out of the life, not stupid enough to enjoy it. I heard he got shanked after I got out. I never found out why. I suppose it doesn't really matter. These things happen. Right?
The reason I remembered the guy, I was trying to figure out what got this whole thing started. You never know, when it happens, what's going to change your life, what's going to bounce you out of the rut you been in, send you flying off in some new direction. It might have been that guy and his theory of time, it might have been that I was worried about Nicky growing up to be like his old man, it might have been that I didn't want to have to kill Rosey, because we'd sorta been friends for too long, but I really think it was Leonid.
I don't know who he was, the paper didn't say. They named a meteor shower after him, though, I read about it in the
Post.
I know, another bad habit. The
Post
said it was the last time any of us would see it, because it wasn't coming around again until 2099, by which time I will be dead, and so will you, along with everybody you ever knew. I don't know why it bothered me. I mean, shooting stars, who gives a shit. Right? But I couldn't get it out of my head, this idea that tonight, this thing is coming by, doesn't matter if it's a big deal or not, you, my friend, and I are both gonna be worm food before it happens again. Little Nicky might make it, if he lives to be a hundred and five, but growing up in foster homes in Bushwick, you gotta figure his chances are not good.
Rosario is this guy that I work with from time to time. I was just a burglar before I met Rosey, not a great one, but pretty good. I did all right. Rosey was more of an armed-robbery guy. First thing we did together, it was a card game down in Canarsie, it was just him and me. They ran the game on Friday nights, we watched the game four Fridays running, make sure nobody too heavy was there, then on the fifth Friday, we hit them. We wore ski masks so none of them would know who we were, and it went down easy even though it was just the two of us, mostly because Rosey's a scary guy whether he's got a mask on or not. He's slightly taller than I am, maybe six foot two or three, and he's a few pounds heavier, he probably goes around two-thirty-five or two-forty. He got his physique for nothingas far as I know, Rosey has never had to lift a weight or run a mile. Everything I have to work hard for, he gets for free. The thing that sticks in your mind, though, is not his build. I guess you would have to call it his aura. They say God gives you the face you're born with, but you earn the one you die with. Rosey had eyes that looked like they had seen a lot of pain, though how much of it he bought and how much he sold is anybody's guess. It's not just in his eyes, either, it's in the way he holds himself, it's on his face, it's in his bones. You meet the guy, you know instinctively you gotta watch him. People shake hands with Rosario carefully, and I've known him long enough to know that he's worse than he looks. Rosey's one of those people who believes that you were put here on this planet to be miserable, to suffer, and to die. It's almost as though he knows he's predestined for trouble, so he's never surprised to see it coming, and he never runs away from it. Rosey looks like he's right on the edge, all the time. You just know, he thinks he needs to pop you, he's gonna do it. He won't have to think about it much, not until it's over with.
So anyhow, when you hit guys that know how to hit back, you have to be careful, you have to be absolutely certain you can't be recognized, you have to plan thoroughly so nothing goes wrong, and you can't go stupid afterward, either, buying jewelry for your favorite hooker. Most guys in the game find those rules too restrictive, believe it or not.
The last job I did with Rosey, there was this brokerage house run by a couple of Russians. They had a stock scam running, it was your basic Ponzi scheme, and they were getting ready to pull the plug. The trickiest part of a scam like that is cashing out, okay, because everybody is worried about getting screwed or going to jail. Most of the money we couldn't touch because it's already in some bank in the Cayman Islands or someplace, but there are certain elements involved that don't trust banks of any kind, they got to be paid off in cash. Now the brokerage house is in Manhattan, but the Russians are running it out of an apartment house in Vinegar Hill, which is this neighborhood down on the Brooklyn waterfront, used to be mostly factories but half of them got people living in them now. The place is too big for me and Rosey to take down by ourselves, so Rosey picks up three other guys, one guy to drive and two to handle the exits while Rosey and I go in. I'm only twenty-eight, right, already I'm getting gray hairs from this shit.
So we go in, and right away two things go wrong. One, there turns out to be way more money there than we thought there was gonna be. I mean, way more, the kind that comes with serious heat. We weren't even out of the place and I'm hearing the wheels turning in everybody's head. And two, the doorman must've called the cops, because we were just a couple of blocks away when the sirens started up. We got away clean, but now you got the cops looking at the Russians and the Russians looking at the cops and all of them looking for us. One whisper of this gets out, one little peep, and it's all over. We dumped the car we used over in Fort Greene, down by the projects. We transferred the money into a van we had parked there ahead of time. The three guys Rosey picked up to help out, their eyeballs are spinning, they're all excited, they never seen so much money. They had agreed beforehand to a flat fee of ten grand apiece, but now that's out the window. They're looking at each other, then at Rosey and meman, I can practically smell it coming.
The thing is, a job where the payoff is too small is actually better than a job where it's too big. Five guys and a bunch of cardboard boxes full of money in one van, we had achieved critical mass. That's when you get too much fissionable material in one spot, right, once the chain reaction starts, it's not gonna stop until it runs out of fuel. Rosey climbs into the back of the van. "Mohammed," he says to me. "You drive."
What can I tell you, street names tend to be dramatic.
I'm driving down Flatbush Avenue, I hear him bust open one of the boxes. The shit's in all denominations, but they got it banded into ten-grand bundles. I watch him in the mirror, he's got this box cradled in his arms, he looks like a proud papa, he's in love. He hands each one of those characters one banded stack of hundreds. Half-inch thick, ten grand, that's what they agreed to, but now they're all disappointed, we're screwing them. He should have given them one of the fatter bundles, made up of tens and twenties instead of hundreds, it would have made them happier. As it was, it started to look like the whole thing might blow right then and there. I still had the piece I used in the stickup. I started looking for a place to ditch the van in case one of these guys decides to renegotiate. Rosey got them calmed down, though. "Look," he said, "me and Mo, we got to stash this money in a safe place until the heat is off. What I'm giving you is just for now, it's just to tide you guys over, you hear me? Then, when it's safe, we gonna make a good split. Don't worry, I gonna take care of you all." We were supposed to ride them down to Red Hook, this neighborhood where one of them lives with his mother, but I pulled over on the corner of Flatbush and Fulton Street.
"Okay," I told them. "Out."
"Why you leavin' us way over here?" It was one of the two that had gone up with us. "You 'posed to drive us home."
"You're a rich man now. Take a fucking cab." I'm half turned in the driver's seat, I've got the pistol in my hand but I'm not showing it.
"Hey, bro," Rosey says to the guy. "Gimme a break, okay? We din know there was gonna be this kinda money in there. We gotta get it under cover before the heat comes down. Every cowboy in Brooklyn gonna be all over this, it ain't smart to be drivin' aroun' with this shit. We don' got a lotta time. You unnerstan'?"
"Yeah, yeah." They weren't happy about it, but they got out, slammed the side door to the van closed behind them. Rosey climbed back into the front passenger seat. He rolled the window down and stuck his head out.
