Brotherly Love (31 page)

Slowly, she shook her head no.

"Fifty-five thousand," he said. "We do
it right now, it’s only fifty-five thousand."

And she stood up, went into the closet and came out
with a suitcase. And a few minutes later he got the bottle, and
settled into a spot on the bed to watch.

"You know," he says now, "it looks
disloyal, you walking after I get burned out .... "

She is holding a pair of red shoes as he speaks, and
for a moment she seems to lose her purpose. She stands still,
surrounded by the suitcases and the evidence of what she is doing,
and she thinks it over.

And in the end, she
decides to keep the red shoes.

* * *

S
he finishes packing and
Jimmy follows her downstairs.

"There’s other ways I can get the money,"
he says.

She stares out the window, waiting for her sister.
The suitcases are all over the living room, he has no idea how many
there are. She is sitting on one of them.

The sister is younger than Grace and lives in Cherry
Hill, just across the Delaware River in New Jersey. He allows for
traffic and thinks he might have another fifteen minutes, and then
she is gone.

"It seemed like the least complicated thing,
asking your father," he says, "but there’s other ways."

Her makeup is done now, her hair is brushed and
shines; she took care of that before she called. He hears the words:
"Bring the station wagon."

He is drawn to her appearance, even now. Looking at
her, he reminds himself that it isn’t just anybody who has a woman
like this to lose. It establishes a standard, he thinks; anyone who
has ever seen them together knows his standard.

Even as she is on the way out the door, Jimmy Measles
sees himself in her reflection.

"I could borrow the money," he says. "I
just thought of a guy."

She keeps her eyes on the street, watching for the
station wagon. It’s a Volvo—the sister also has a Mercedes, one
child and no husband. Her father keeps her in cars and in the house
in Cherry Hill. Jimmy Measles remembers the father, taking him aside
at the wedding reception.
You ever raise your
hand against my daughter, I’ll have somebody to cut it off.

He smiles, everybody’s a gangster.

"And what’s this guy you thought of going to
do when you can’t pay him?" Grace says.

He does not answer.

"He’s going to send some fucking monster to
the door to tell me to get your ass out of bed, only this time maybe
you aren’t home."

He sees that happen as she says it; and he is lost in
remorse.

The bottle is on the floor near his chair. He picks
it up, holding it at eye level, and pours until the glass is half
full. The umbrella lies at the bottom, barely stirring under the wash
of new vodka.

"Sometimes you’re in the wrong place at the
wrong time," he says finally. "Sometimes that’s the way
things happen."

A horn sounds outside, and Grace stands up without
saying another word. She squares her shoulders under the weight of
the first two suitcases, and steps out the door, leaving him there
like someone she’d met while she was waiting for her plane.

He goes into the kitchen, drops some ice into his
glass, and sits at the table until she is gone.

Even with the sister
helping, it takes a long time to get all her luggage out of the
house.

* * *

T
hey are somewhere in
Delaware when Michael turns the conversation from horses to fighters,
and then to Nick and Harry.

"What I’d like to do," Leonard Crawley
says, "is have the little motherfucker in the street, see how he
does there."

Leonard looks in the rearview mirror to see if Peter
is listening. He senses Peter sliding away from Michael’s
protection; he senses that Peter feels it too.

Most of the people Leonard Crawley has known, he has
hurt. Until he hurts them, there is something to settle. Some fear to
quiet. He has never reflected on whose fear it is.

He locks on Peter’s eyes, half a second, feeling
it, and then looks back at the road. "All that shit with rules,"
he says, shaking his head, "useless in the street."

They are out on I-95 South again, on the way back to
Maryland. Michael’s man has found him another horse.

Peter tries to remember the things Michael has bought
in the last year that he doesn’t need. The limo, a condominium in
Atlantic City, a fur coat and now a horse.

He looks in the mirror and sees Leonard Crawley
watching him again. Leonard smiles.

Peter leans forward until he can see Leonard’s
face, the wires holding it together. "Lemme ask you something,
Leonard," he says, "you think Nick’s kid ate breakfast
this morning through a straw'?"

"That wasn’t the street," he says. "What
I said, I’d like to have him in the street."

Peter lets go of the front seat and drops back into
his spot next to Michael. His cousin is smiling, seeing Leonard has
bothered him. Peter looks out the window. It frightens him to hear
them talk about Harry and Nick.

"So tell me something," Michael says a
little later, "what harm does it do, the kid makes a few dollars
while he can?"

"You don’t understand the way they live,"
Peter says.

"What, they don’t like money‘?"

It is quiet a moment, and Peter says, "They like
things the way they are."

Michael smiles at that, Leonard’s face appears in
the rearview mirror, and he is smiling too.

Peter turns to stare at his cousin. "You think
Nick doesn’t know his kid can fight?" he says. "He taught
him. He’s been where that kid would go, and it’s not worth it.
They got enough right where they are, not to throw it away doing
something they don’t want to do."

"The kid don’t like to fight."

Peter closes his eyes. "He likes to fight,"
he says slowly, "he just doesn’t want to sell it."

"You ever thought," Michael says a little
later, "maybe it isn’t the kid that don’t want to sell it?
Maybe it’s just the old man, afraid he’ll lose him."

Leonard Crawley smiles in
the rearview mirror. Peter sits forward again, his hand on the front
seat. “I been wondering about something, Leonard," he says.
"You figured out yet how to suck dicks through those wires or
what?"

* * *

T
he horse’s name is
Helen’s Dream, and he is a monster.

Peter has never seen a horse this size before, but he
is sure that nothing this heavy can run.

Michael stands in front of the stable half a minute,
his mouth cocked into a smile, and then takes a roll of bills out of
his pants pocket.

"Eight thousand,"
he says. "Right?"

* * *

M
ornings, they visit the
horse.

A wasted, clubfooted trainer named Carlos meets them
at the stall and reports on the animal’s legs, which are always
sore, or his chest, which is always congested, or—on days that he
has worked out—that he has bled from the nose.

In spite of the bad news, the horse affords Peter a
certain relief. Michael does not seem as interested now in the boxing
career of Harry DiMaggio.

Michael touches the animal while Carlos offers his
reports. He runs his hands up its neck and then down the slope of its
nose, carefully, as if he is feeling for something, and then when the
report is finished, when the clubfooted trainer has told him again
that the horse isn’t ready to run, Michael backs away from the
animal smiling, taking him in, and he says, "Lookit the size of
this motherfucker, would you?"

Some days, Michael goes to the track by himself. He
feels safe there, believing that something in the old Italians’
rules won’t let them shoot up a stable and kill innocent horses.

Some days Peter goes with him, and some days they
pick up Jimmy Measles, who comes out of his house now as if he were
coming out of a coma. Somewhere time is missing.

Jimmy settles into a seat, carrying a bag
usually—apples or carrots for the horse—and begins one of his
stories, and sometimes for a little while, crossing the bridge into
New Jersey, things are the way they were before the club burned. At
the track, Michael sends him for coffee or Danish or to find the
trainer.

Peter watches them touch, Jimmy and Michael, he sees
the skin blister, day by day.

Jimmy Measles will not move away from him, though. He
feels safest when he is close to the source of his trouble, getting
Michael to laugh at his jokes, reminding him of the food he sent to
the hospital, of the way he took care of him at the club.

Sometimes Peter walks off and wanders through the
stables, unable to watch. Nick has a word for the feeling,
skeeved
.

He looks at other horses,
stopping to rub their noses—they all seem to be the wrong size
after Helen’s Dream—thinking of a way he can tell Jimmy Measles
he is wasting his time.

* * *

M
ichael sticks a cigar in
his mouth and stares out over the infield—the two ovals of the
track, dirt and grass, and inside them the pond. It is late
afternoon, and beneath him an old couple poses for pictures in the
winner’s circle with their horse and jockey.

Jimmy is on one side of Michael, Leonard is on the
other. Peter is sitting two rows higher in the private box, alone,
drinking a beer, his shoes on the seat in front of him.

"What I’m wondering, Jimmy," Michael
says, looking straight ahead, "is when I’m going to see some
of my fuckin’ cash."

He is sitting with twelve hundred dollars’ worth of
bad tickets in his pocket, the program crushed in his hands, his
pulse visible in his jaw. Even Leonard Crawley knows better than to
say anything now.

Jimmy Measles swallows what is left in his cup and
begins to explain his problems with the insurance.

Michael stops him. "I don’t want to hear
nothing about some prick at the insurance company. I want to hear
when I’m going to see the cash."

"The minute I get paid, you got the cash."

Michael nods, still looking out over the infield,
thinking that over. "I hope that’s soon enough," he says.

And then, before he lets go of the view of the track
and unwrinkles the program to begin looking for a big horse, before
he sends Jimmy Measles back to the window to place his bets for the
next race, he says, "You understand what I’m saying here, that
this is business."

And Jimmy Measles turns to look at Peter, and he
smiles.

His face goes gray, as if the smiling itself drains
his blood.

No one wishes Michael more
luck with the ponies than Jimmy Measles.

* * *

J
immy Measles calls Peter
at six in the morning to ask if he is driving to the track or going
over with Michael.

Peter picks him up in the Buick.

In the car he asks, "How long is it before I got
a problem with Michael?"

Peter closes his eyes. The traffic is coming into the
city from Jersey on four lanes of the Ben Franklin Bridge. He hears
horns, and thinks of driving like this, with his eyes shut, until
something outside the car stops him.

He opens his eyes, finds that he is still in his own
trafiic lane.

He takes a deep breath and lets it seep out, a slow
leak.

"The thing with your cousin," Jimmy says,
"with all due respect, he never says I got a month or a week or
five minutes to come up with the cash, he just says time’s running
out. It makes you more worried than just knowing it was here .... "

Peter drives the car.

Jimmy says, "I think this guy at the insurance
company, he’s ready to come across with something."

Peter nods, staring into the traffic.

"It isn’t the same guy," Jimmy Measles
says. "They took the other guy off it, and this one, he said he
wants to get me off his desk."

Peter pulls into the far right lane, gives the man in
the tollbooth a dollar.

"What I was wondering," Jimmy Measles says,
"could you talk to Michael about it. I bring it up, it only
reminds him he’s pissed off."

Peter drives away from the city, passing the topless
clubs along Admiral Wilson Boulevard. He remembers that Michael owns
one of them; something he bought and turned over to someone on this
side of the river to look after.

"Pal1y?"

Peter takes the ramp to Highway 70, and follows it to
the track. Jimmy Measles stares at his hands, waiting for Peter to
tell him what to do.

They stop at the gate in back and Peter shows the
guard an owner’s pass. They drive slowly through the stable area.

"The way I see it," Jimmy says, looking out
the window, "the insurance guy worries a while, and then he gets
tired of the whole fucking thing and makes everybody happy."