I sat down next to Franklin. He stuck his hand out to me, looked down at the ground while we shook. My hand is not small but it was lost in his dry leathery mitt. He didn't squeeze too hard, though, there was a gentleness in him you would never expect, looking at the guy.
"Hi, Franklin." I had to shout to be heard over Roscoe's band. "You like the music?"
"Too loud," he rumbled back at me. "Hurts my ears."
I leaned forward and looked over at Bookman. "Your son is an honest man."
"Yes, he is. How are you?"
"Thirsty. Can I get you something from the bar?"
He nodded, waggling an empty Budweiser bottle.
"How about you, Franklin? Can I get you something to drink?"
He glanced at me and looked down. It was the most eye contact he'd ever give you. It was incongruous that this huge bear-child could be so shy. "I don't drink," he said.
"How about a Coke?"
He looked up at me then, almost a full second before he looked away. I could see his father out of the corner of my eye, leaning in to hear. "You want to buy me a soda?"
"Yeah, Franklin, I do."
He thought about it. "All right," he said. "Ginger ale."
"Coming right up." I slapped him on the back as I stood up, thinking, This guy is freaking huge, then remembering. Franklin was a navy destroyer piloted by a little boy.
I walked through the door from the big room into the small room where the bar was, pausing to let my eyes adjust to the relative darkness of the place. The bar itself was an oval-shaped affair in the center of the room, stools around the perimeter, TV in one corner with the sound turned down. They were showing a Red SoxYankees game, and I never cared about the Yankees, so I ignored it. I leaned on the bar and nodded to Hobart, the guy who'd rented me the Subaru. He was sitting on the far side. He nodded back, then pointed down the bar with his chin. Thomas Hopkins was at the far end.
Hop was drunk. There were three guys clustered around his stool, watching the baseball game. Hop was in civvies, drinking shots and beers, and he had that slow-motion, unfocused, fog-brained look that guys get when they're deep into a run. The bartender came over to take my order. He was an older guy with a gray brush cut and a navy tattoo on his forearm. Hop's eyes followed every move the man made as he went to get my two Buds and the ginger ale. My guess was that Hop's drinks were getting low and he didn't want to run dry, not for a minute. I been there, that's the place where there's something rising up inside you and the only way to keep it down is to keep hitting it with something, alcohol or dope or sex or whatever it is that works for you. Hop's eyes passed by my face once or twice but he didn't seem to remember me. I paid the bartender, left him a couple of bucks, but as I turned to go, I saw recognition dawning on Hop's features. I thought I saw alarm in the bartender's eyes, but Hobart sat and watched, impassive. I glanced his way as I turned to go, and I thought maybe he was amused by the two of us, Hop and me, just a little bit.
Bookman stood up when he saw me coming. Franklin started to rise but Bookman leaned over and said something in his ear. Franklin nodded and sat back down. I handed Bookman his beer and put the ginger ale on the table in front of Franklin. "Thank you," he rumbled, and when I didn't reply, I heard him say, "You're welcome," softer, to himself. I stopped then, admiring Bookman for teaching his enormous kid that it made a difference how you talked to people. I patted Franklin on the back again, silently apologizing, I suppose, for my uncouth ways, and resolved to myself that I would be more careful from here on out, at least around him. Bookman caught my eye, jerked his head at the back door. He patted Franklin on the shoulder. I couldn't hear him but I could read his lips.
"Stay here, I'll be right back."
Roscoe's band was getting louder as the night wore on. The two of us stepped through a side door. I watched Bookman look back at his son before the door swung shut, leaving us in the relative gloom and quiet of the parking lot. He'd noticed me watching.
"I probably shouldn't worry about him," he said.
Must be like worrying Godzilla is going to hurt himself, I thought, but I didn't say it. "That's your job."
"I guess it is." He took me by the elbow, led me a few steps away from the building. "I made a few phone calls this aftahnoon," he said. "That Russian's name is Alexander Postrozny. His cahd says he's from Jersey City, so I talked to a detective from theyah. Guy told me Postrozny is a scumbag. His word, not mine. Said Postrozny's a hiyed gun, they suspect he's tied to the Russian mob." He stared at me. "You ready to tell me what this is all about?"
The side door to the VFW opened, then, and Bookman and I were briefly bathed in light until the door swung shut behind some kid and his fat girlfriend. She was shorter than him, and she was fat in a muscular way, sort of like a hippopotamus, I guess, like if she caught you, she could rip your liver out and eat it if she wanted to. "G'night, Sheriff," they both said, and waved at the two of us. "G'night." She had a huge butt that rolled back and forth when she walked. Bookman and I watched the two of them cross the parking lot and get into an ancient pickup truck and drive away. It has to be pheromones, or something like that. A man gets a sniff of the right one and something terrible happens to his brain.
"Nicky's mother is dead. I don't have legal custody." You start with the truth, or a small piece of it, and then you build your structure on that. "She was Russian American. Her father's brother is in the Russian Mafia. The family wanted to take Nicky away from me, and there's no way I could compete with that kind of money. So I took him." It was a good lie, especially for something I came up with on the fly. I had to do it. Bookman wanted a story, but if he found out I had two million bucks that I took off some Russian scam artists, and that I was keeping it in a storeroom in Hackensack, I'd be lucky if I ever saw Nicky again. Maybe with a thick sheet of Plexiglas between the two of us.
"Postrozny gave me the name of a motel down in Machias as a local address," Bookman said, "but when I called down theyah, they didn't know who I was talking about. I can't exactly put out an APB on the son of a hoah, he's not wanted for anything. If you was smaht, you'd stay out of sight fah the next few days."
"I'll do my best. Thanks for the heads-up." He looked at me then, and again I could feel myself being scrutinized, and I wondered what was really going on behind that bland expression. "How you making out with your reconstruction project?"
"What's that?"
"Hopkins."
"Oh," he said. "Well, I got his attention, I can tell you that. Might take a day or so, but he'll come around, he's too smart not too. Not always easy to grow up, you know. Generally involves a little discomfit." I didn't have anything to say to that.
We went back inside and sat down. Roscoe's band filled the air with French Canadian voices that were by turn pleading, mournful, angry. I was surprised by the number of people who got up and stomped their way across the dance floor, swirling and shouting in time to the music. I felt like I was on a small island of relative peace, sitting next to Franklin and his father, surrounded by noise and furious activity.
I asked Franklin if he wanted another ginger ale. He lumbered to his feet. "I'll get it," he said. On his far side, Bookman's eyes went wide in surprise.
"You sure?" I asked him.
"Yep," he said, without looking at me. "My turn." He gathered up the empties.
"Franklin, you got money?" his father asked him.
"Course I got money," Franklin said, and he headed off toward the bar. Bookman stared at me across Franklin's empty chair.
"I don't know what you did to that kid," he said. "Sometimes days will go by befoah I get that much out of him."
I shrugged my shoulders. I didn't know what I had done to him, either, but I felt good for having done it. "I don't know," I said to Bookman. "Maybe he was ready."
Bookman shook his head. "Maybe," he said. I was getting to like the guy, and I had to keep reminding myself that Bookman was a cop, a policeman who could ruin my life, take Nicky away from me, put me behind bars for the foreseeable future if he found out the truth.
Franklin came back, looking pleased with himself. He plopped the bottle down in front of me. "Budweiser," he said.
"Thank you, Franklin."
"You're welcome," he said.
The two of them got up and left soon after, and they took that island with them, that small patch of tranquillity. I finished the beer Franklin had bought me, got up, and walked through the back door of the place into the parking lot. From the outside, you couldn't hear music, all you got was the thump of the bass and muffled shouting. It was a clear and cold night. I leaned against a pickup truck, watching a bunch of swallows feeding in the airspace over a field adjacent to the parking lot. Swallows flying always remind me of movies of World War II dogfights, Messerschmitts and Spitfires.
Behind me, the door burst open and Thomas Hopkins stepped out into the night. His three friends were behind him, and they looked somewhat more sober than he did. One of them had Hopkins by the elbow, but he tore himself loose. "There you are," he slurred, "you son of a hoah. Goin' round, stickin' your nose where it don' belong. Fix you."
The guy who'd been trying to restrain him took another stab at it. "Not now, Hop, this ain't the right"
"Fuck away from me," Hop snarled, turning on his friend and shoving him away. The guy held his hands up in surrender, looked over at me and shrugged.
"You want me to go call Bookman?"
"Nah. Hoppie's too fucked up to do anything," I said. "Ain't that right, Hoppie?"
Hop shook his head unsteadily. "Bassard," he said. "Take you drunk or sober."
"You sure you want to do this, Hop? Nothing good can come from it." He didn't say anything, just shuffled a couple of steps closer to me. I didn't react, I just watched him, because he'd looked too drunk to walk on his own, but then he lurched at me, threw a left uppercut that was surprisingly quick. He didn't miss me by much. I danced back out of the way. "All right, all right," I said. "Hold up." I shrugged off my leather jacket. Good thick leather, it'll slide right off you. Hop tried the same thing with his woolen jacket but it bunched up around his elbows, trapping his arms behind him. "That was probably a mistake, Hoppie," I said, and I took a step in his direction and threw a nice stiff left right onto his nose. It rocked his head back sharply, and he staggered back. Not having his arms for balance, he tripped and went down.
I hadn't been sure about the other three, but what they did was start laughing. "Way to go, Noo Yok," one of them said.
Hop was pissed, though. He rolled around on the ground until he had his knees under him, then he jumped back up to his feet and got his jacket back up over his arms. He rushed me, making incoherent noises in the back of his throat. He paid no attention to the blood that was running out of his nose and down his face. He seemed much more sober than he had just seconds ago, and he started throwing quick hard punches. The guy had hands like rocks, but I got my arms up in time, and his punches bounced off my elbows and shoulders. Hop's friends started laughing harder, which only made things worse. Hop changed tactics then. He grabbed me by my shirt and started grappling for my head. I tucked my chin and cracked him on the nose with my forehead. I knew it had to hurt, but he showed no sign of it. Even drunk, the guy had a horrible strength, and he had me by the head and left arm. His friends were still laughing, probably at both of us now.
My right arm was free, though, and I was starting to get angry myself. I held him straight up with my left arm and hit him in the guts with four of the best right hands you ever saw. He let go of me and staggered back, holding on to his midsection. His eyes went wide and his legs got rubbery, then suddenly he pitched forward. I caught him by the back of his collar just in time to keep him from planting his face on the bumper of a parked car.
"Noo Yok's got quick hands," one of Hop's friends said. Hop threw up convulsively right then, splattering the car he'd almost hit. The three of them howled.
"Hey," I said, holding Hop away from me. "One of you stooges want to take over for me here? He's your guy, not mine."
One of them stepped forward. It was the guy who had tried to restrain Hop a half a minute earlier. "Thanks for catching him," he said. "His face is bad enough as it is."
"It was reflex. I had time to think about it, I might have let him kiss that car."
"Ayuh," the guy said. "We would'na let him hurt ya, if things had went the other way."
For whatever reason, I believed the guy. "Well, thanks. You better get him looked at. I think his nose is broke."
The guy grabbed Hop by the head and rolled it back, looked like Michael Jordan palming a basketball. "Oh, Christ," he said. "Eric, bring your pickup around, we'll throw Hop in the back and ride him over to Doc's." He looked back at me. "Hop's gonna be some ugly in the mawnin."