Damaged Goods (2 page)

Jackson-Davis searched for his soul. Tried to find it in his dark blue eyes. He’d been told that his eyes were sad. “Hurt-like” was the way Betty Ann, his first and only girlfriend, had put it. And hurt-like was what he’d put on Betty Ann one sweltering August night when she said she didn’t love him any more. Enough hurt-like to put her in the hospital for a month.

Not that Jackson-Davis had waited for the doctors to count Betty Ann’s broken bones. Betty Ann Strothers had enough brothers, uncles, and cousins living around Ocobla to field both sides of a football team. And they
all
kept shotguns in the back windows of rusting Chevy pickup trucks.

“I might be slow,” Jackson-Davis said to his reflection, “but I wasn’t dumb enough to stick around.”

He’d hitched a ride all the way to Augusta, Georgia, then stolen a car and headed north, just stopping long enough to commit the odd burglary in the odd little town. Somewhere along the line—somewhere in Maryland, if he remembered right—he’d come through a farmhouse window to find a woman napping on the sofa.

The hurt-like he’d put on her was a lot more satisfying than rolling around on a blanket with Betty Ann. In fact, it pleased him so much, he decided to repeat the experience four days later in the town of Cobleskill, New York. That mistake had cost Jackson-Davis fifteen years of his life, because the stupid woman had picked up a knife and he’d gone and killed her, and the cops had gotten him an hour later on the Interstate. He was never sure how they picked him out, but the bloodstains on his white T-shirt had left no room for a claim of mistaken identity.

“Ole Jilly, he saved me from a life of shame,” Jackson-Davis said. “Without ole Jilly, them niggers down to Clinton would’a tore me a new asshole for sure. Reckon for a fact I owe Jilly a big one.”

As Jackson-Davis turned his attention back to the windows of his soul, the steel gate at the entranceway to the Southport Correctional Facility slid off to one side and a tall, bearded figure stepped through. The man stopped for a moment, let his head swivel from side to side, then began to walk toward the parking lot.

Jackson-Davis didn’t recognize the man at first. It’d been a few years, of course, and Jackson’s memory wasn’t all that good under the best of circumstances. Plus ole Jilly had a thick, bushy beard, which he’d never had in Clinton, and his hair—what he had left—stuck out in a curly brown halo that only called attention to the prison-gray skin on the top of his head.

“Move it over, Jackson,” Jilly Sappone called through the open window. “We gotta get outta here before I go off.”

Wescott slid over without a word, waited patiently while Jilly drove aimlessly through the New York countryside. For the better part of ten years, he’d survived by following Jilly Sappone’s advice. Jilly had taught him how to make a shank, where to hide it, when to use it. In the course of his instruction, Jackson-Davis had learned patience; he’d learned that, being slow, it didn’t pay to rush into things like he’d rushed into that woman’s house when he knew she’d seen him through the window. No, what it paid to do was hold his tongue, try not to think until Jilly told him what was what.

“Jeez,” Jilly finally said, “I almost lost it back there.” He pulled the car off the road, slid the transmission into park. “The goddamned screw was suckin’ a piece of hard candy. Slurp, slurp, slurp. Like a baby suckin’ a tit. It got on my nerves, Jackson. But I’m better, now.” He rolled down the window, breathed the spring air, stared at the forest across the road. How long had it been since he’d seen a tree? Three years? Four? In Southport, you never saw the sun. That was part of the punishment.

“Real pretty, ain’t it, Jilly? Real homey like. Kinda reminds me of Ocobla.” Jackson’s thin lips moved apart to reveal a set of tiny, yellow teeth. “Nice weather for gittin’ out.”

Jilly grunted, turned back to face his partner. “You done what I told you, Jackson?”

Jackson-Davis took a few seconds to get the sequence right before he spoke. “Sure I did, Jilly. Went direct to Aunt Josie after I got out. Took the subway and, boy, that was weird. Never did see a train go under the ground like that. More people on that subway than
lived
in Ocobla.”

“Get to the fuckin’ point, Jackson.”

Jackson-Davis listen to the rumble in Jilly’s voice, heard it as thunder before a storm. Thunder before a shitstorm.

“Well, Aunt Josie was real good to me. Sent me off to Cousin Carlo on Long Island. Carlo was real good to me, too. Had me doin’ deliveries and things. And he give me a little
house,
first place I ever had all to myself.”

“This house in your name, Jackson?”

“Pardon?” Jackson-Davis stalled for time. He had no idea what Jilly meant by “in your name.”

“Did you sign anything? When you got the house?”

“Uh-uh. Just moved in.”

“That’s real good, Jackson. You get me that address?”

“Address?”

“The bitch, the fuckin’ bitch,” Jilly roared. “What the fuck is the matter with you?”

Jackson-Davis felt his mind slide into a familiar whirl. Thoughts flew by like dry leaves in a twister. He usually handled this particular situation by striking out at the closest breathing object, but when the closest breathing object was Jilly Sappone …

“Awright, Jackson,” Jilly continued. “Slow it down. My wife, Annunziata. If you recall, I told you to get her address before you came up. I admit that was a long time ago. Anybody could forget a thing they got told that long ago.”

Jackson’s face suddenly lightened. “Well I guess you just pegged me wrong, Jilly, because I sure did get your wife’s address. Aunt Josie wrote down a whole bunch of addresses and give ’em to me. Guess I jus’ forgot for a minute.”

Jackson-Davis handed over a carefully folded sheet of paper, and Jilly read it slowly, trying to absorb the facts without going off. His wife, Annunziata, who now called herself Ann, had divorced him (which he knew), then remarried a Con Edison worker named Paul Kalkadonis (which he didn’t know), and had a kid, Theresa-Marie, now four years old. Six months ago, Paul Kalkadonis had been electrocuted on East Twenty-Fifth Street when a thoroughly stoned coworker with a known history of drug abuse failed to throw a switch. Ann was now suing and, according to Aunt Josie, the only relevant legal question was exactly how many millions Ann Kalkadonis was going to get.

So you take care of her,
Josie had concluded,
and the rest of them except for Carmine. Carmine’s not for you.

“I brung ya these here, Jilly. Aunt Josie said they might help.”

Jilly Sappone looked down at the small, pink tablets in Jackson Wescott’s palm and knew exactly what they were. Dilaudid was what the docs called them; pink dope is what they were called on the street. Jilly had never injected himself with heroin, because he was afraid of needles, but somewhere in early adolescence he’d learned that opiates relieved the pressure. Not that dope made him a nice guy. No, the shitstorm was always there, but when Jilly Sappone was stoned, he could sometimes decide when the winds would blow. Sometimes.

He took the Dilaudid, popped one in his mouth, dry-swallowed, put the rest in his pocket. Drugs being as common behind the walls as out on the street, Jilly had used whatever was available whenever he had the money throughout most of his prison years. That had ended when they transferred him over to Southport. Cons in Southport didn’t mix with other cons and there was no such thing as a contact visit, so he’d learned to do without. Or, he’d
tried
to learn. What had actually happened was that he lost control almost every time they opened the door of his cell.

“What else, Jackson? What else ya bring me?”

Jackson-Davis popped the glove compartment, removed two pistols, a nine-millimeter automatic and a .38-caliber revolver, held them up for Jilly’s inspection.

“See? I didn’t forget a damn thing.”

Jilly took the automatic, checked the slide and the clip, then stuck it in his belt. The weight of the nine-millimeter Colt felt good, as did the touch of cool metal against his skin.

“Ya did great, Jackson.” Jilly rubbed the top of Jackson-Wescott’s head for luck, then put the Buick in gear and pulled back onto the road. “Aunt Josie didn’t give ya no money, did she?”

“Nossir. Aunt Josie said you was gonna ask. She said I should tell you to get your
own
damn money.”

By the time Jilly Sappone pulled Carlo’s Buick to the curb, some five hours later, he was, in his own judgment, ready for anything. He’d dropped another tab of Dilaudid somewhere east of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and the drug, as it washed gently through his body, had taken him all the way down. Down to the point where he could look at the other cars on the road and not feel like an alien. Fourteen years in a world where progress meant slopping a fresh coat of institutional green paint on cinder-block walls had left him without any real sense of time and place. Sure, he was down on the Lower East Side of Manhattan again. No doubt about it, he’d driven from Southport to Ludlow Street without hesitation, knowing exactly where he was going and what he intended to do when he got there. But that didn’t mean that Jilly thought he was going home. No, home was where he’d be a month from now, when the pigs caught up with him. Home was the four walls of a prison cell, or the four sides of a coffin.

“Hey, Jackson. Wake up, boy.”

Jackson-Davis came out of his nap ready to fight. That was because he was confused. He raised his fists, blinked twice, then recognized his prison partner’s face. No shitstorm; Jilly’s brown eyes were dead lumps of wet brown paint. That was enough to calm Jackson down, though it had zero effect on his state of confusion.

“This ain’t home,” he said. “I mean this ain’t where Cousin Carlo put me. This ain’t where I thought we were goin’.”

“I know that, Jackson. We’re just makin’ a little stop to pick up some money. Plus, I gotta visit my wife, show the bitch how much I love her. You see that plumbing supply store across the street.”

“Plumbing?”

“Yeah, as in pipes and faucets.” Jilly looked at his partner, shook his head affectionately. He knew, from long experience, that Jackson-Davis had to be brought around slowly. If you took him through it one step at time, he’d do whatever he was told.

“Well, I don’t see no pipes, Jilly. Them windows is so dirty, I can’t see nothin’ a’tall.”

“How ’bout the
sign,
Jackson. Can’t ya see the goddamned sign?”

Jackson-Davis turned his hurt-like eyes on Jilly Sappone. “And I ’spose you ain’t heard that I cain’t read. Like it’s some damn mystery.”

“If you can’t read, how’d ya get a driver’s license?”

“Hell’s bells, Jilly, what kinda license? I started into drivin’ my daddy’s plow when I was nine years old. That’s my license.” He dropped his eyes to the floor, folded his arms across his chest. He would have pouted, but his lips were much too thin to bring it off.

Jilly reached out, squeezed Jackson’s knee. “Hey, Jackson, I didn’t mean nothin’. I knew ya couldn’t read; I just forgot for a second.” He paused, bit at his lower lip. “Things was pretty bad in Southport. I’m lucky I could remember my own name.”

Jackson-Davis raised his eyes to meet Jilly Sappone’s. “I heard about that, Jilly. Heard Southport was a real bad joint.”

“Ya got that right, Jackson. When you’re alone by yourself from morning to night, there’s always somethin’ gets to ya. For me it was the faucet in my cell. It leaked a little bit, ya know what I mean? Like drip, drip, drip. Only sometimes, instead’a drippin’, the fuckin’ thing boomed. Like giant footsteps bouncin’ off the walls: boom, boom, boooooom.” He put both hands on the steering wheel, pushed himself back against the seat, cocked his head to one side. “The thing about it, Jackson, was the screws wouldn’t fix the drip. Like they fuckin’
knew
what it was doin’ to me. Like it was part of the package. So I had’a find some way to keep the noise from gettin’ inside of me and what I did was I thought about what I had to do if I got out. Ya followin’ me so far?”

Jackson-Davis nodded solemnly. Jilly, he knew, loved to go on about things. Like Reverend Luke preachin’ hellfire and damnation to his Ocobla flock. What Jackson Wescott had to do was what he’d done then, sitting beside his ole ma on a folding chair. He had to wait it out. Wait for ole Jilly to get to the point.

“Tell me something,” Jilly finally said, “ya still go out lookin’ for women?”

“No, I ain’t. I ain’t done nothin’ like that.” Jackson-Davis tried to look indignant, like he was insulted or something. But the truth was that except for one lousy month fifteen years ago, he’d never been out on his own. Yeah, maybe he did look at women on the street and think about what he done with Betty-Ann, but then he ran back to his house and waited for Jilly. Waited for Jilly Sappone to come out of jail and tell him what was what.

“Ya remember when I used to talk about plannin’ what I was gonna do when I got out?” Jilly slid an arm across his partner’s shoulder.

Jackson-Davis nodded solemnly.

“What I figured was that some of the people I used to run with owed me a little payback. Like I don’t know how much time I got on the outside, but whatever it is, I’m gonna make it so nobody forgets me. You catchin’ my drift?”

Jackson-Davis nodded again, stared up at Jilly Sappone’s bushy beard, thought, Jilly sure does look like one of my ole ma’s prophets. Cept for the hair. Ain’t none of them prophets was bald. Maybe they was Pentecostal prophets; maybe you can’t be no Pentecostal prophet unless you got hair on your head. Course, my daddy was bald. But my daddy didn’t go for the Pentecostals. …

“Jackson?”

“Yeah, Jilly?”

“Are you with me?”

“Damn, Jilly, you know as well as me that I
gotta
be with you. Bein’ as how you helped me out when I first come up to Clinton, I can’t see as I have no choice. Fact is, all that’s happenin’ here is I’m waitin’ on y’all to tell me what to do.”

J
IM TILLEY STOOD BESIDE
the Roberto Clemente Boxing Gym’s single ring and half watched his adopted son, Lee, shadowbox along the ropes. A part of him evaluated his son’s quick hands and smooth, practiced footwork, deciding that, no doubt about it, Lee Tilley, at thirteen years old, had all the tools. The only question was whether or not he had real desire and that particular question wouldn’t be answered for several years. That was when the street kids who were stepping into gyms all over New York for the first time would have enough experience to get into the ring with Lee Tilley. In the meantime, Lee was the king of the juniors, a 115-pound. YMCA badass, “Tilley the Terrible” in PAL tournaments.