Another Broken Wizard (12 page)

At this last bit, Escalita stomped on Joe’s foot with her overflowing high-heeled shoe.

“I mean for Jim. Those girls are nice enough, but nowhere near as hot as Escalita here. I mean, Jim, is my girlfriend hot or what?” Joe announced, making Escalita blush and smile all at once. Then Joe’s cell phone rang. He puzzled at the number, then rose and walked away to take the call.

“… I might know what you’re talking about, but I might not … Who told you that? ... Well, you should have them call me ... No, then they can pick it up … I’m just saying they shouldn’t have told you anything … It doesn’t work that way … Okay, okay, if you’re a friend of Jeffy, I guess you can come by … But have Jeffy call me first … It’s just that I have a bunch of people here … call him and have him let me know …” Joe said into the phone, annoyed.

It was the first of several such calls throughout the night. He turned his attention back to the table.

“I’m just saying that there will be more ladies here soon. So sit tight, relax. Ladies and drinks and friends, and I’ll be able to pay you back before the night is out
no problem
,” Joe said to me.

“There’s no hurry on that. Really,” I said.

Joe drank his Budweisers, Russ his root beers, and me my whiskey. The radio was the loudest thing coming from the living room. The party wasn’t exactly a rager. But I liked it better that way.

“Then the other night, Sully called again. And he actually said he was going to take my eyes out and show them to me, so I’m like ‘okay you fucking moron, how are you going to show me my own eyes?’ Then the line goes quiet for a full minute. Literally, an entire minute. And I can hear him breathing. Finally, after an eternity of thinking, Sully says ‘I’m gonna do them one at a time,’” Joe said, and laughed his hyena-like laugh.

There was a knock on the door. Russ put a businesslike look on his face and picked up the gun. I followed him down the hall, partly for the sordid spectacle of it, partly because Joe and Escalita had started to make out. The big black guy at the door didn’t even have to give the password. He gave Russ a big hug.

“Careful Corey, I have a gun.”

An even bigger white guy with small eyes and an all-green Boston Red Sox hat followed him. After Corey introduced himself, the bigger guy introduced himself as Gino. Then there were three pale, small girls overwhelmed by their winter coats. They waved pale hellos to me, a stranger. In the living room, I noticed that the TV and cable box were gone. Joe and Marissa had made the apartment party-proof, putting everything in one of the bedrooms.

Back in the kitchen, Joe, Corey, Russ and one of the pale girls had found something to argue about. One of the girls, Tara, took off her winter coat. Her shirt half-revealed a graceful pair of breasts. Joe took Corey into his room and both returned ready to argue against and for pacifism, respectively, with renewed vigor.

“Christianity is probably the single biggest transformation in recorded history. And Jesus was totally a pacifist. The early church was mostly pacifist. And they sure won,” Corey said. He slugged down a Miller Lite with a bend of his massive arm and cleared his sinuses with vigor. I was glad to see him staunchly on the side of pacifism.

“Yeah, it really worked. Tell that to the fucking martyrs,” Joe said.

“In the long run, it was the martyrs’ side that won,” Corey offered.

“True. True,” Joe said, nodding his head and leaning his kitchen chair back.

Joe aimed a huge, devilish grin at me.

“Jim, do you want to get truly fucked up tonight?” he asked, his look defying the gravity of responsibility, legality and even the most obvious safety concerns.

“Yeah. I have to go to the hospital tomorrow. But whatever.”

Then Joe’s phone rang, and I watched him have more or less the same obstinate negotiation as before. I guess he was being cautious, like he said.

“Oh shit, get in here, it’s almost New Years!” Marissa yelled out from the previously dormant living room. We all piled in from the kitchen.

My cell phone said the year had ten minutes left. Joe started making out with Escalita. Tara, with her graceful neck and low-cut shirt distracting all of creation from the faint acne scars that poked through the grainy Technicolor of her makeup, looked around, but not at me, to see where to go.

“We should get out the TV,” Marissa said. But she had settled back onto the couch.

“I’ll just find it on the radio,” Joe said.

“Find the New Year on the radio? That’s fucked up,” Gino offered from the folding chair he dominated. He wore a Celtics basketball jersey over a t-shirt. The bong sat at his feet.

“I know, right, like it’s a time machine or something,” big Irish Tom said.

Joe started turning the knob through the FM stations until he found the shouting, the crowd noise, the local accents, the higher octave to which the Massachusetts cold will raise the voice, all of the right signs. It was a classic rock station, broadcasting live from Copley Square. The radio blared the forced excitement of the pre-countdown. Joe and Escalita made out next to the bloody hole in the sheetrock.

“Get a room, you two,” Tara said with a peevishness in her voice, and slid into the seat on the other side of the couch from me.

Joe held out his middle finger and kept kissing until Escalita finally became embarrassed. I leaned back and then forward to see what or who Tara was looking at. Finally, the radio started counting down at sixty. Marissa started counting down with them, then lost interest. We all counted down from ten. At zero, we all yelled. Corey and one of the small, pale girls kissed. Russ and Joe made out with their girlfriends. Tara looked around, but not at me. Marissa gave me a big, comical kiss on the cheek. Tom and the guy in hospital scrubs stood around dazed.

After the hullaballoo, I went into the kitchen get another drink. Joe followed, with his phone on one ear and his finger in the other. I looked at him quizzically and he swiveled away from me.

“… Is he okay? ... I mean, what does ‘stable’ mean? ... What hospital … And you’re sure it was Sully and them? ... They’re not still hanging out on Green Street, are they? ...You don’t know anyone who knows where he lives, do you?” I heard Joe say into the phone, before he walked into his room and shut the door.

After a few minutes, Joe threw open his door, walked past me into the living room and told Tom, Corey, Russ and Gino to come into the kitchen.

“You guys know about the thing that happened with Sully a few weeks back? Now Sully and some of his friends just put Smitty in the hospital. They tried to curb him, but I guess he crawled off and they broke both his collar bones. He’s so fucked up that he’s in intensive care,” Joe said.

Marissa came in, then Tara, and the story re-circulated, with Smitty doing this and Sully doing that, and Smitty going here and Sully calling these guys and Smitty talking to these other guys. My head spun from the murky complexity of the story, the parking lots, nicknames, street names, suspects and so on.

“Fuck. We should call the cops,” Corey said.

“And tell them what? That me and Smitty and some other guys brutally fucked up Sully without much good reason and this was his revenge? That’s a case they’ll really want to make. Anyway, I can’t call the cops right now,” Joe said, nodding to Corey, who nodded back.

“Joe, I know what you’re thinking, but really, what are you going to do tonight?” Corey asked.

“I’m going to find them.”

“You can’t go after these guys. I used to know some of the guys that Sully’s with now, and they don’t give a fuck,” Corey said.

“
I
don’t give a fuck,” Joe interrupted.

“I’ll drive you over to the hospital. You’re just drunk and pissed off right now,” Russ offered.

The argument continued at some length, with Joe determined to drive around until he found Sully. Corey, Russ, Gino and I told him to let it go, at least for tonight. The bottom line was that Joe was a big guy, and a brawler, but not the one-man vengeance machine he imagined himself to be at that moment. Corey wouldn’t go with Joe to Main South, where Sully’s friends lived. Russ wouldn’t lend him his gun, even just to wave around and maybe hit someone with—and just for the night, as Joe put it. Gino said we should all just get high and chill out until tomorrow, and the rest of the living room agreed.

24.

Thursday, January 1

“Fuck you all. I’m going out to find these motherfuckers,” Joe concluded and grabbed his coat.

I followed. To try and calm him down, I said. Truth is, I didn’t have all that much to say to the other people at the party by that point. The cold, the action, the dim possibility of danger all sobered me. The stars showed through the bare branches of the trees clear and bright. Joe’s white Buick started on the third try. He revved the engine, then squealed out of his parking spot.

“Go easy. The cops are out in force and you’re over the legal limit.”

“Fuck that, man.”

“Hey asshole, I’d rather not go to jail tonight, not for some bullshit DUI. Get your head together. Take a fucking breath. You want to do this thing you’re talking about? Then be smart,” I said.
Smaht
.

Joe stared off. The car bumped its way down his potholed mess of a street. He applied the brake more judiciously and seemed collected by the time we reached Lincoln Street.

“You’re right. I’m going to be rational. I am going to find these fucks, one by one and get them.”

“Do you even know who they are?”

“Not off the top of my head. I think I could recognize one or two of them. But I have some idea of where they hang out,” Joe said.

Another reason I agreed to join him was that I didn’t think we would find the people he was looking for. We skirted downtown and drove down Green Street, which was busy with people going from bar to bar, getting in and out of double-parked cars. Joe jammed his car into a tight spot by an abandoned auto-repair garage, like one more crooked tooth in an overcrowded mouth. I followed Joe into The Dive Bar, where a tall, fat guy with long blonde hair found Joe immediately.

“You heard about Smitty?” he said.

“Yeah, what happened?”

“I guess one of Sully’s friends saw Smitty here and called Sully. Well, I guess he got a bunch of guys together and they got Smitty when he went out to his car.”

“Do you know where Sully went? Where his friends went?” Joe asked.

“No. I don’t really know those guys.”

“I’m getting some people together to fuck these guys up big time. You in?”

“Naw man. I’m pretty tanked. I’m just going to chill out tonight. But hang out a minute. Let me buy you a drink.”

“No thanks. I’ve got to go.”

When we got outside, I remembered that we were almost thirty years old. That was why no one wanted a part of his feud. Back when we were nineteen, twenty, I had seen some really violent things happen, and had even been marginally involved a few times. I wasn’t a badass, but I was there. But the real crazies from those days were gone. Luke was in jail now, gone away for carjacking, then after a month of freedom, for attempted murder. Mike Fahey was dead. Malachi, famous for having bitten off someone’s ear in a fight, had joined a carnival, I heard. Another old friend, Tony Howard, was in Worcester after a stint in jail, but was now too angry and violent to have around. They were the guys Joe was looking for that night. But the guys who were still around had mostly grown content with the bars, and their rage didn’t go too far past maintaining a goatee or keeping a fully loaded bong at home.

Joe walked us past the cover charge at the Lucky Dog Music Hall, where the band had finished for the night. Tired of following him, I saddled up to the bar and ordered a drink. He went around the room, doing more telling than listening from the look of it. But his call to arms had no takers there either.

“Have a drink,” I said when he had circled back from a far corner of the room.

“We have to go. I think I know where to find these guys.”

“Okay then, have a shot,” I said, hoping to induce him back to the less dangerous pleasures of civilization.

We did a shot of well whiskey, then went back outside. Joe nodded to the cops parked on Green Street. We pulled out of the parking lot in a choppy eleven-point turn. We crossed under the railroad and highway bridges, around the vast failed downtown mall, and then downtown, past the big high-rise apartment that looked like it had been flown in from Houston.

Past Chandler Street, the storefronts and apartment houses were run down. The lights flickered unevenly behind the convenience-store signage. We were in Main South, a rough part of town. The cold that night was unyielding. But people were out, walking down the street or just standing around, looking furtively over their shoulders or just eyeing the traffic. Joe turned off Main Street, and down a narrow street lined with three-deckers in disrepair.

“Where are we going?”

“I’m looking for Sully’s car.”

“That’s it? That’s what we’re doing—looking for a car?”

“Yep. It’s a black Toyota,” Joe said.

“Toyota what?”

“I don’t know. It’s one of the smaller ones. But it has silver rims, the spinning ones on it.”

“Okay, I’ll look out for it on my side.”

We cruised the narrow streets between Chandler Street and Webster Square and saw a lot of cars. At one point, I did see a small black car with garish, shiny wheels parked on my side of the street. I stiffened in my seat and waited until we were a few streets away before I said anything at all.

“So what’s up with Escalita?” I asked.

“She’s been my girlfriend for about two months. She’s pretty sexy, isn’t she?”