(2004) Citizen Vince (29 page)

Ray stares. “Bullshit.”

“He sent me back to kill you, Ray.”

Ray’s face is cold. “I don’t believe you.”

“You can’t go back there,” Vince says. “You can never go back. Ray Sticks is dead. Just like Marty Hagen. We died the minute they put us in the program. And we only got two choices now. We can be ghosts, running around thinking we’re still alive. Or we can be somebody else.”

Ray rubs his head.

Vince leans forward. “Let’s go to the marshals, Ray. Tell ’em Gotti knows where you are now. Tell ’em everything. Start over. See if we can’t make something with this life.”

Ray looks down at the stacks of bills on his lap.

“Ray, if you take that money…if you go see the mailman, then you’re the same stupid fuck you’ve always been. You’ll never be anything but a ghost who used to be Ray Sticks, walking around thinking you’re alive. And when everyone looks at you, all they’ll see is the hole where you used to be.”

Ray stares at him and Vince sees in his eyes a glimmer of recognition, of hope.

“Look at me,” Vince says. “I might be the least productive person in this country. I’m thirty-six years old, and other than this baking job I’ve never worked an honest day in my life. But today I voted. And my vote counted the same as everybody else’s. Now, maybe it doesn’t matter to those assholes out there, but to me…well, it’s something.”

Ray brushes his fingers across his forehead. He looks over at Beth, and then up at Vince. He looks outside, where the wind is shaking down the sidewalk trees. But when he looks back at Vince he seems unchanged. “Turn around and drive,” he says.

VINCE AND BETH
hold hands in the front seat. They drive in silence down Third Avenue, the sign for Dicks Drive-in looming two
blocks away. When Vince stops at a light, the wind rocks the car gently from side to side. Ray seems distracted.

“You know why I don’t believe you?” he asks. “About John?”

Vince looks up in the rearview.

“Because you didn’t do anything. If John really sent you after me, you would’ve tried something by now.”

Vince looks back at the road. “At first, when Ange asked me, I sat there thinking about how I could do it. Where I could buy a gun. Maybe I could shoot you from a distance. Hit you with a car. Try to get you in some situation where I could surprise you. I even thought about hiring somebody. But who am I gonna hire that’s better than you?”

Ray shrugs, accepts the compliment.

Vince pulls into the parking lot of Dicks Drive-in. “But the whole time I’m thinking that, I also knew I couldn’t do it. Not if I mean the things I just said. So…I told ’em that I couldn’t do it. And that’s when I decided to try talking you into giving up and going straight.”

“You told John Gotti no?” Ray laughs. “Now I know you’re lying.”

Vince puts the car in park and turns off the motor. He looks across the parking lot, to where Clay is waiting at the outdoor picnic tables.

“Look,” Ray says, “nobody talks but me. Got it?” He starts stuffing the money in his pants pockets. He bulges with hundred-dollar bills, sick with money. “You try anything, I shoot the girl and then I shoot you. Got it, chief?”

Ray and Vince climb out. They look across the parking lot. Beth slides out the driver’s-side door, the last one out of the car.

Across the lot, Clay sits alone.

“That your guy? The colored guy?”

“Yeah,” Vince says.

Beth makes expectant eye contact with Vince—as if asking
what now?
and Vince is glad they can’t talk so that he can’t tell her that he doesn’t really have a plan, that the speech he gave in the car
was
his plan.

“Lenny!” Ray shouts back into the car. “Come on.”

He doesn’t move. Ray slaps the hood. “Len. Let’s go!”

“Get Lenny,” Ray says.

Vince bends down in the car, slides across the seat, and feels the side of Lenny’s neck. His skin is cold, clammy. He can’t find a pulse. He tries Lenny’s wrist. Nothing. He looks at Lenny’s shoulder. The knife is gone. Vince climbs out.

“Is he coming?” Ray asks.

“No,” Vince says, and looks at Beth, whose face is set, determined.

Ray shakes his head as if he should’ve expected such weakness from Lenny. “Well, we’ll take care of that later.”

They walk across the empty parking lot to the picnic benches, where Clay sits by himself. As they reach the table he rises, reaches in his back pocket, and produces the brochure for the sports car he wants to buy. “Hey, Vince.”

Vince points from one to the other. “Clay Gainer. Ralph LaRue.”

Ray shoots Vince a glare.
“Ray,”
he says. “My name is
Ray
.”

All you can do. They sit, Clay and Vince on one side, Beth and Ray on the other. Vince holds his hand out beneath the table, hoping Beth will hand him the paring knife, but she just stares at him, that same placid look. Don’t do it, Vince thinks. Jesus,
don’t do it.
Clay opens the brochure, slides it across the table. “First thing, before we go any further, I gotta ask up front, do you have a problem with me buyin’ this car?”

Ray takes the brochure, turns it over in his hand. “You bet your ass I got a problem. You work with me, you drive a Cadillac. Or a Mercedes, something with class. You can’t drive this cheap Japanese shit. This ain’t a car, it’s a fuckin’ wristwatch.”

Ray hands the brochure back to Clay, who shoots Vince a told-you-so glance.

“Okay,” Vince says to Ray. “You got everything you wanted. Let Beth go now.”

“Maybe later,” Ray says, smiling.

And that is when Beth leaps up, and the suddenness of her movement causes Ray to turn to face her, giving her the perfect angle, and Ray is so shocked he doesn’t move or even get a hand up as Beth drives the small paring knife into his chest with all the force a hundred-pound woman can muster. All three men at the table gasp and jerk back as the knife slams into Ray’s breastbone, and it takes a moment for Vince to realize what has happened, Ray staring straight ahead, unhurt, the broken blade clattering on the picnic table, and valiant Beth, wonderful Beth—driven now by instinct—flailing away at him with nothing but a plastic knife handle.

Ray hits Beth in the mouth, and she falls off the picnic bench to the ground. Ray leaps up, puts a foot on her throat, pulls the gun from his waistband, and points it at Vince, who has picked up the knife blade. “Gimme that fuckin’ blade.”

Vince stares at a spot over Ray’s shoulder.

Ray holds the gun up to Vince’s face. “Gimme the fuckin’ knife.”

Ray kicks at Beth, who covers her head with her arms. “You’re gonna eat this knife now,” he says to her. He waves the gun at Vince again. “Gimme that fuckin’ blade, chief.”

The wind stops, expectant, and for just a moment it’s quiet—Vince still staring at the spot over Ray’s shoulder, until finally he holds out the knife and Ray reaches for it, and just as he does, a shadow falls across his arm, a meaty hand lands on his shoulder, and another deftly plucks the gun from his hand.

Ray spins and comes face-to-face with Ange, wearing a dark overcoat and smiling warmly. Another guy stands a few feet away, in sunglasses. Vince doesn’t recognize him.

Ray is confused. “Ange?”

“Ray. How’s it goin’?”

“Ange?” They stand close, feet at shoulder width, everyone
tensed, the wind flapping their overcoats. Beth looks up at them from the ground. Without looking away from Ray, Ange hands the gun behind him to the second guy, who puts it in his coat pocket.

“What—” Ray swallows. “What are you doin’ here?”

“Donuts told us where to find you.”

Ray looks over at Vince, comprehension still a few seconds away.

Ange puts his hands in his pockets. “John wants you to come home, Ray.”

“Yeah?” Ray shifts his weight, looks wobbly. “Well…that’s…that’s…Yeah. I mean, this fuckin’ place. Yeah. Thank God.” He laughs uncomfortably and turns back to Vince. “See, I told you they’d want me back.”

“Sure,” Ange says. “We need you back, Ray.”

“You’re the best,” says the second man, as if reading from a script. “A legend.”

Ray continues to stare at Vince, and then his eyes trail off and focus on a point behind him. It’s odd the way Ray’s hands just hang there, like he doesn’t quite know what to do with them now.

“I’m sorry,” Vince says quietly.

This brings Ray back and he blinks a couple of times, then wipes his mouth. “Fuck you,” he says, and he turns to Ange with a big, almost-brave grin. “I was goin’ nuts here. This fuckin’ guy”—he jerks his thumb toward Vince—“thinks he knows everything.” He looks down at Beth, who has crawled away. “…the broads here stab you in the back…and there ain’t a fuckin’ dime to be made…don’t get me started on the pizza. You can’t believe the fuckin’ pizza here, Ange.”

“Well, you won’t have to worry about the pizza anymore,” Ange says.

Something occurs to Ray, and he reaches in his pockets for the bundles of cash Vince and Beth were going to use to buy the house. “And hey, I got some money, Ange. For John.”

Ange smiles. “That’s unnecessary, Ray, but I’m sure it will be appreciated.” He steps forward, takes the bundles of cash, and puts his arm around Ray. “You’re a good man. Always thinking of the guys.” He leads him away, like a guy leading his little brother from a baseball game. Ray goes willingly. Ange steers him across the parking lot and over the curb to another lot, next door, the second man falling in a few feet behind. They walk to the back of the lot, where a square, four-door rental car is parked. A third man climbs out of the car and motions Ray into the front passenger seat.

Just before he climbs in, Ray looks once more across the parking lot to the table, to Vince. He raises his hand as if he might wave, but it just hangs there, and Ange nudges him. Ray disappears into the car. Vince stares at the windshield of the rental, but it does nothing but reflect the gray clouds back at him.

Vince helps Beth off the ground and she sits next to him on the picnic bench. “Can we go?” Clay whispers.

“I don’t think so,” Vince says. “I think we’d better wait.”

After a second, Ange climbs out of the car and walks back across the lot, the wind raising his black-and-silver hair like whitecaps.

“You were supposed to have him here at nine,” Ange says.

“I had to vote.”

“No shit? Who’d you vote for, Donuts?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Sure,” Ange says. “I understand.”

Ange looks around the parking lot.

“Ange, this is my girlfriend, Beth.”

She waves her good hand.

“What happened to your eye?” He nods his head toward the rental car. “Did Ray do that?”

She nods. “He broke my arm, too.”

“I’m sorry. The guy’s an animal. You have my apologies.”

“And this is Clay. My mailman.”

Ange shakes his hand. “Your dentist here, too, Donuts?”

Vince smiles. “I gotta ask you, Ange…the money that Ray has—it’s not his. It’s mine. I was gonna use it to buy a house and if—”

Ange holds up his hand. “Come on, Donuts. You know I can’t do anything about that. That’s John’s money now.”

Ange looks around the parking lot, takes in the freeway behind him, and the streets leading toward downtown: covered with squat brownstones and a few taller office buildings, the whole thing surrounded on both sides by gently sloped, tree-lined hills, like a city someone started building and then quit. Cars move languorously on the surface streets. In front of the restaurant, a streetlight sways gently in the wind. “So this is it? This is the place you were so excited to get back to?”

“Yeah,” Vince says. “This is where I live.”

“It’s not really what I pictured. It’s less…I don’t know.” Ange shrugs. “Just less.” He looks at the car across the parking lot, then back at Vince. “But I’m sure it’s nice.”

“So…are we square, John and me?” Vince asks.

“Yeah.” Ange tugs on his shimmery slacks and seems to be searching for something profound to say. Finally he points a thick finger at Vince. “Be good.” He walks across the parking lot to the rental car, the wind ruffling the edge of his coat. He opens the back door on the driver’s side and climbs in.

They watch the car pull out onto the street and drive away. For a minute, the only sound is the wind raking the trees.

“I’m not gonna get my car, am I, Vince?”

Vince doesn’t even look over at Clay. “No.”

THEY LIE ON
the couch all afternoon—Vince staring at the ceiling, Beth curled up on his chest. Kenyon toddles around the coffee table in a diaper, a sweatshirt, and slippers with bells on the toes. He jangles to his bedroom and brings out his toys one at a time to show
Vince, holding them up proudly. He brings out a stuffed frog and holds it for Vince to see.

“Frog,” Vince says.

Kenyon looks at it, drops it, and ambles back to the bedroom. He comes back with a windup train.

“That’s a train,” Vince says.

The boy drops it and turns, all business, as if some little-kid handbook has instructed him that this is the proper way to act when you have a guest at your home.

“Football.”

They don’t talk about what happened, how Vince convinced Ange to come to Spokane and do the job himself, or what likely happened to Ray. They don’t talk about the money they lost, or the house. And they don’t talk about what happens now—although Vince thinks she must have some idea. They take turns sleeping, the other one watching Kenyon, who brings his toys back and forth from the bedroom in some frantic toddler inventory, pausing once to touch Beth’s new white cast. She told the doctor in the emergency room that she was in a car accident, and they seemed to buy it. Then she and Vince went to the bank and canceled the home loan. “Oh, well,” was all she said. They left Lenny in his car at Dicks and called the police anonymously from the bank.

“A top,” Vince says.

Kenyon’s expression doesn’t change. He drops the top and simply scuffles off to the bedroom again.

Vince can feel Beth—her weight evenly distributed from his legs to his chest. He likes the feeling of having all of her touching all of him. He watches her back rise and fall with each breath. And her shoulders. He runs his hand through her hair and kisses the crown of her head.