Deadly Lullaby (10 page)

Sitting on my postage-stamp patio in old khaki shorts and a wifebeater, enjoying the morning sun while nursing a bottle of Miller High Life, I note that my backyard is even more patchy and weed-infested than it was before I went to prison. The soil back here has been infertile for years, and Lorraine always claimed my father's cremated remains were the cause of it. Knowing she was superstitious to the point of lunacy, I should have known better than to tell her the story that inspired this delusion.

Just after we married, at the height of a vodka-fueled rage, I removed my father's urn (a milk carton, actually; I converted the ceramic urn that originally contained his ashes to a flower vase) from its place of honor under the garage workbench and dumped his ashes in the southwest corner of the yard. Then I watered them down with a bladder-full of piss. Lorraine genuflected upon hearing this story, saying my father's vengeful ghost haunted the soil and would allow no vegetation to thrive here. To say we hotly debated this theory would be to put it mildly. After I basically told her she was a lunatic, she said, “You're in denial about your father. You'll never be able to cope with his memory until you make peace with his ghost.”

This memory bubbles to the surface and I say out loud, “Oh, really, Lorraine?” while rising from the wrought-iron chair on my patio. For what could easily be the thousandth time, I amble over to the southwest corner of the backyard and piss on the bare patch of ground that passes for my father's grave.

“Ahh,” I say. “Here's coping with your memory, you cocksucker.”

I am almost finished urinating when this raspy voice chimes in behind me. “Reel in that hose, man. It's me.”

I look over my shoulder to find Chief standing on my patio. He wears the same tired suit of clothes he wore yesterday—black suit, white shirt, black tie—except now they appear completely exhausted. He has two takeout sacks and a bottle of Jack Daniel's clutched in one hand, and a green, battle-scarred Coleman cooler in the other. He places both sets of goodies on the wrought-iron table beside him and walks over to me, his loping stride reminding me of the so-called Bigfoot depicted in that sketchy home video taken in the wilderness of Northern California.

He gets close and says, “You been desecratin' your old man's grave again?”

I reel in the hose, zip up, check my watch. “Where have you been?”

He scrunches his unibrow and stretches out his hands, palms up in a
What the fuck?
gesture. “You said be here at nine and now it's nine.”

“You are always a half hour early, at least.”

“You're just gonna hav'ta get used to me bein' right on time, man, especially in the morning. I'm gettin' old.”

“Bullshit,” I say. “You are in your prime, just like me.”

He shakes his head and pats my shoulder as he leads me back to my chair on the patio, saying, “That's right, sure, sure,” humoring me as if I am a demented nursing-home patient.

We get to the patio and he snatches my empty beer bottle from the table, gives it a little shake. “This soldier's dead,” he says, and pops the top of the cooler, reaches into it, comes up with an icy bottle of Miller High Life and hands it over after twisting off the top. “Here's one that's got some real fight in it, been on ice all night….Have a seat and I'll be right back.” He takes the sack with him through the back door to my kitchen.

He returns with a plate of food in each hand, placing one on the table before me along with a plastic fork, a folded paper napkin, and two bottles of hot sauce, one green tomatillo and the other Tabasco. Three soft tacos are on my plate, ground beef ones wrapped in grease-spotted paper with the
El Matador Taco Truck
logo on it, and a baked egg on the side that comes from the Nickel Diner on Main.

Chief's plate contains the same food items as mine except double the portions. Blessed with the metabolism of a nuclear reactor, he is a mountain of a man but nowhere near as fat as his food intake would suggest.

He squeezes his body into the chair across the table from me and sighs, eyeing our food with anticipation. “Man, a taco-and-egg breakfast on your patio. Just like old times, huh?”

“Better than old times. The here and now beats hell out of old times any day.”

Chief clinks the neck of his beer bottle against mine. “Here's to suckin' wind.”

We drink and dig in to breakfast.

He makes a taco disappear in two, three bites. Chewing, he says, “Babe, how many friends you think we lost over the years?”

I would be less put off if he had lifted one of his butt cheeks off the seat and farted. “By
lost
you mean
whacked?
”

“What else?”

A heavy topic for this early in the morning, but I decide to roll with it; this is, after all, Chief I am talking to, a very morose man. “To the extent I ever think about this at all it is to make sure nobody adds my name to the list.”

He acts as if he did not hear me. “I counted 'em last night and came up with sixteen.” He squints and grimaces.
“Sixteen.”

I shrug. “Considering the nature of our business and the length of time we have been in it, that number does not astonish me—especially when you consider well over half of those guys got burned because they were total dumbasses.”

He tries on a smile. “No shit. Remember Mickey Bocko?”

I take a drink of beer. “The Mouse, yeah, Jesus. If the Mouse had caught Alzheimer's, his IQ would have shot up a hundred points.”

“Hah,” he says, “that's a good one,” and stomps his foot. “And what about Paulie Tramunti?”

“What about Paulie, shit. Paulie was so stupid he looked to the Mouse for advice.”

Chief slaps the table and shakes his head. “You're right, you're right, a hunnerd percent. That ree-tard did whatever Mickey told him to and it got both of 'em killed, fuckin' morons.” He chuckles, sighs, unwraps another taco.

I allow him time to inhale a taco before saying, “Chief, why dwell on such things? The Macky thing bugging you?”

He pauses to think, his hand set to shove an egg in his gob. “Nah, it ain't what you'd call buggin' me. It just got me thinkin', is all.”

“Not that rare an activity for you.”

He flips me off, sucks up the egg, checks his watch, and talks with his mouth full. “See, the thing is, this time yesterday Macky was barkin' at me about collectin' from this mutt who owes him money. Now Macky's fuckin' ashes.” He swallows, gulps beer, goes, “Ahh,” and says, “And, you know, first thing I thought about when I opened my eyes this mornin' was, ‘Man, I gotta get that money for Macky or he's gonna yell at me again.' Then I thought, ‘No, I won't be hearin' from Macky no more.' ” He shakes his head. “It made me sad.”

“Sad.”

“Yeah, sad. Not that I miss the fucker or nothin', but it made me sad that another guy I work with bit the dust, you know? You won't believe what I did after.”

“Unfortunately, I probably will.”

“I called Macky's cell.”

“If you tell me he answered, you will have to get off my property—
now.
”

“His voicemail greeting answered, dummy. It was fuckin' creepy. I never heard it before, so he must've just put it on there, like, yesterday, just before, well, you know…You gotta hear it.” He takes his cellphone from his shirt pocket, punches a couple buttons and holds it between us. “Listen, I got the speaker on.”

“Hey, asshole, you got the right to remain silent. If you wanted to exercise that right, why the fuck did you call? So leave a message. Just remember that anything you say can and will be used against you by certain alphabet agencies that can
suck
my
stiff cock
if they're listenin'.”

Chief clicks off the phone, shaking his head in bemusement.

I say, “Creepy, yeah, and funny, especially for a hump like Macky.”

“I didn't know he had a single funny bone in his body. He sure didn't show it at work, the dickhead.”

“So why did you go to work for him?”

“Macky needed some temporary help and Joe loaned me out for a while. Was fine with me. Macky's main guys were just regular assholes. The guys Joe's got runnin' his show now give regular assholes a good name.”

“Donsky and Fecarotta.”

“Right. You met 'em?”

“Yes. What is your problem with them?”

He grows sad, the skin of his face practically sliding off. “You remember Hymie Berman?”

I have to think about it. “Yeah, I do,” I finally say. “A skinny Jew, practically a kid when I knew him. Ran a book out of Culvert City and did B-and-E jobs on the side, a good safe man. Sure, Hymie, yeah, a stand-up guy. What's he up to?”

“Not much—like,
nothin'.
He's one of the sixteen guys I just added up, courtesy of Donsky and Fecarotta. Hymie had this pretty wife, man, a real Jew doll, you know? Fecarotta got handsy with her at Guido's bar—you know the joint, over on Santa Monica?—and the fucker wouldn't take no for an answer. She went to the bathroom to get away from him and he followed her in there, tried to fuckin' rape her. She ran out screamin' and Hymie popped him one or two, flat laid him out.” He smiles. “You get Hymie riled, he was a match for anybody….Anyway, next thing you know, Hymie's disappeared. Fecarotta whacked him, betch'a anything, and Donsky helped him.”

“My son has implied he hates those guys, too. Well, he hates Donsky. Fecarotta he has never met.”

He nods, makes quick work of another taco. Before long he begins to act uncomfortable, as if working up the courage to broach the subject that has troubled him all along. “So, uh, how's your son dealin' with you whackin' Macky?”

I do not respond right away, instead taking in a forkful of egg. “We talked this morning,” I finally say. “He is dealing with it the way we agreed he would.”

“Which is to say he ain't gonna tell on you.”

“Of course not, Chief. Jesus. He is my son.”

“Don't get sore, man. It's just that he's a cop, you know? Understand what I'm sayin'?”

“Yeah, yeah, rest easy. You were an innocent bystander. Your name will never be brought up.”

“So nobody's brought my name up so far?”

I shake my head. “Nobody but me and Leo know you were there, at least nobody now sucking wind. Leo will tell no one, trust me—he promised. The last thing my son wants is for anybody to know
he
was there. You understand what
I
am saying?”

He nods, absorbing everything I have said. “So if one of us tells on the other, it's like we're telling on ourself, too.”

“Mutually assured destruction,” I say. “A check and a balance.”

“I got it,” he says, pauses a bit then says, “You mind telling me why Macky got whacked?”

“C'mon, Chief, surely you have that figured out by now.”

He shrugs. “Joe and Tarasov got mad because they thought Macky was gettin' too close to the Cambodians.”

“Yeah, see, you know as much as I do. Joe and Viktor need money—bad, from what I understand. Macky was content to coast on the hold he had on gambling and prostitution and farm out his retail drug work to the Asians. Joe and Tarasov want to expand the drug business and are willing to fight for it. Macky, rest his soul, was not.”

“I heard Macky say more'n once that the drug business wasn't for the white man no more.”

“If it was up to me, the coloreds could have the drug business all to themselves. I have a bad taste in my mouth from my one foray into it.”

He shakes his head. “What did you get, six years?”

“Nine, Chief,
nine.
For smuggling smack.”

“That sucks,” he says, and becomes pensive. “This Tarasov guy, what do you know about him?”

“Quite a bit. Me and Tarasov met in prison and became friends. He got out like two years ago. Actually, I played a part in him and Joe getting together.”

“I didn't know you and Tarasov were friends.” He grins. “My guess is Macky didn't know that neither.”

I smile. “A strategically kept secret.”

Something occurs to him. “So have you talked to Joe since yesterday?”

“Yes, several times. We met yesterday afternoon.”

“And you didn't tell him I was at the warehouse when you whacked Macky.”

“Like I said, Chief, your name never came up.”

“I hope he don't ask me to work for him again. I don't want to deal with his nasty twins.”

“Hey, Chief, it is a free country. Just say no.”

“Easy for you to say,” he says, and will not meet my eyes with his; he fidgets in his seat, no longer acts interested in his food.

“Chief,” I finally say, “something else weighing on your mind?”

He blinks and squints his eyes as if he just walked into bright sunlight from pitch dark, presses his lips into a thin line and shrinks in his chair as he lights a cigarette. “Yeah, I need money.”

“All right, how much you need?”

He shrugs back. “I dunno, three grand or so? Rent's comin' due and—”

I halt his awkward plea with a show of my palm. “The job we have late this week, maybe next, will net you more than that.”

My last job, hopefully—
ever.

Chief brightens. “You have a job for me this week?”

“I do, yes, like I said—this week, maybe next.”

“How much is it worth?”

“When it's completed, say, sixty grand to you. I will gladly advance you ten of that before you leave today.”

The big hump beams as if he has fallen in love, batting his eyes at me like a fag gorilla. “Talk to me.”

I withdraw a slip of paper from my hip pocket with two addresses written on it, slide it across the table to him. “I need you to follow this guy. His name is Errol Ovando.”