Dog Eat Dog (8 page)

When measurements for alterations were taken (he could cuff the slacks himself), Diesel pulled out a fat roll of one-hundred-dollar bills and counted out cash. The manager took the money, but he also eyed the tattoos, and Troy was sure he thought they were drug dealers. Nobody else paid that much cash. Check or credit card was how the squares did it. Troy would have to get the big green American Express card and either Visa or MasterCard. You had to have those to fulfill the façade.

When they walked back onto the sunny street, he carried the clothes in a bag on a hanger. He would be dapper enough for anywhere they went—dressed for success, he thought with a smile. If he had nowhere else to dress so expensively, he would certainly wear the outfit on capers. A talisman? Not quite. When he was in reform school and already half-committed to crime, he saw a photograph of his idol, Legs Diamond, when the gangster was killed. Face and head were blown away, but the elegance of the three-piece Glen Plaid was plain—and the shoes were high-topped kangaroo skin. Very comfortable, very expensive. That was when Troy decided to get as sharp as possible before going on a caper. If he got busted, he wouldn’t arrive in jail looking like a bum. Very particularly he wouldn’t return wearing the “hot dog” dress-out shoes issued on release. Men who returned wearing dress-outs were ridiculed and laughed at.

At a Macy’s, he picked up everyday clothes, twill pants and chambray shirts, sweaters and Rockport walking shoes. As they headed toward the Mission District, they pulled over and gave a homeless begger the bundle of prison issue.

“You hungry, brother?” Diesel asked.

“Yeah.”

“Remember Paul Gallagher?”

“Was doin’ time for illegal abortions?”

“That’s him. He owns a steakhouse not far away.”

“Sounds good.”

“He won’t let us pay either.”

“Sounds even better.”

The beef tenderloin parted under light pressure from the steak knife, reminding him of the once-a-year rib steaks served in prison. Tough to start with, they were cooked to a texture approaching leather, but still, they were in demand. Extra guards were put in the mess hall to keep convicts from doubling back for seconds—and when the serving lines ran out before everyone had eaten, it was a tense moment. If they disliked the ham steaks in replacement, stainless-steel trays could sail across the mess hall like a cloud of Frisbees. As Troy savored another bite, he remembered a preference for pork chops when he was young—before he knew better.

“Great steak, huh?” Diesel said.

“Very good.”

“Lemme tell you what bein’ state-raised does. I used to think that you had to cook a steak well done. I didn’t know any better until I was out about a year.”

“Who pulled your coat?”

“Jimmy the Face.”

“How’re you and the old mafioso getting along?”

“We’re ace deuce. I beat the shit out of who he says, and he gives me money for it.” Diesel glanced around to make sure nobody else could hear; then he tilted his head closer. “About a year ago, he gave me a contract. I think some of those guys back east—Brooklyn or Jersey—sent it to him. The guy was on bail on one of those RICO laws and they were scared the feds would roll him over into a Valachi. In a way it was easy because I locked my mind and didn’t fuckin’ think about it. Afterward it fucked with me for a couple weeks. The old lady even noticed how fuckin’ jumpy I was.” Diesel paused. Troy watched the big, beefy face and sensed that Diesel had never mentioned a word of his worries to anyone else. To whom else might he confide? “I’ve fucked up a lot of dudes,” he continued. “I hurt that one guy pretty bad, that nigger that tried to stick me in the joint. He still walks like a drunk. But this one I’m tellin’ you about, that’s the first I ever knocked out of the box.

“They set him up. Sent for him. I was waitin’ in the parking lot with a twenty-two and a silencer. He went and knocked on the door. They weren’t there. When he went back to his car, I stepped up behind him and put one right in his head. He dropped. Boom.” Diesel snapped his fingers to illustrate how quick. “Then I put a Baggie around his head so he wouldn’t leak in my trunk. He’s up there in the mountains under the dirt with a sack of lime. Ain’t much left now except maybe his teeth.

“Afterward I started thinking about going to hell … all that crazy ass shit that those fuckin’ nuns and priests stuck on me. I know it’s bullshit … but it’s hard to get away from ’em.”

Over Diesel’s shoulder, Troy saw Paul Gallagher approaching and was glad for the interruption. It was poor underworld protocol to talk about one’s crimes if unsolved, and this was especially true of murder, which had no statute of limitations. If you knew nothing, nobody could wonder if you might snitch. Troy preferred to know nothing unless it involved him, and Diesel’s contract for Jimmy Fasenella failed the criterion. He indicated with his eyes that someone was near. Diesel stopped talking as Paul Gallagher arrived with a grin. “You don’t get steaks like that in the penitentiary. How ya doin’, big T?”

“Doin’ great today, my man. You’ve got a nice joint here.”

“Yeah … but people don’t eat red meat like they used to.”

“You look like you’re doing okay. All the tables are full.”

“It’s the first time in weeks. We only did twenty dinners last night.”

“Like I told you,” Diesel said, “if things get too bad, we can always repaint the place.”

“What’s a paint job gonna do for business?” Troy asked, making both men grin. “Okay, hit me with it,” he said.

“Tell him,” Gallagher said.

“You buy the paint and thinner and you start painting—and there’s an accident that starts a little fire. You open the doors to get the smoke out. A tarp falls on a hot stove top, a can of thinner gets kicked over. All of a sudden it’s too big to handle. No way they can say it was deliberate. Cool, huh?”

Nodding, Troy asked, “You thought of it?”

“Hell, no! The mob does that shit all the time back east … so why not out here?”

“Sounds like a winner to me,” Troy said—and it did. Without a confession there was no way to disprove an accident. It was much better than setting a fire in the night. The police could prove that in five minutes.

Gallagher insisted on their having dessert and coffee. Troy thought it was the best coffee he’d ever tasted.

“Man,” said Diesel, “I remember you knocking down that instant coffee. What were you, a Nestlé’s man or a Maxwell House?”

“Maxwell House. But after this, I don’t know if I could drink it again.”

“Hell,” Gallagher said, “they sell coffee now they didn’t even have back then.”

“I know. This has a great taste.”

“Hawaiian Hazelnut.”

Diesel glanced at his watch and let out a sound.

“What’s up, bro’?” Troy asked.

“Oh shit. The old lady expected me to call two hours ago.”

“Go call her. Blame me.”

“I don’t have to do that. She’ll blame you all by herself. Are you sure you don’t wanna come home with me? Wait’ll you see my kid. He’s fuckin’ big, man. Tough, too, and mean …” Diesel spoke with pride; being tough and mean were virtues in his view of the world. It was what he had been taught throughout his life.

“I’ll see him,” Troy said, “but not tonight. I kinda wanna be loose. Walk around the city. You know Gigolo Perry?”

“Uh-uh. I know who he is by reputation, but he left the joint a long time before I got there. He owns a club on the other side of Market, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah. I’ve never seen it, but I’ve got the address.”

“Want me to drop you there?”

“No. I was thinking about that Holiday Inn in Chinatown. I can walk to North Beach.”

“Hey, bro’, North Beach ain’t what it used to be.”

“Nothing’s like it used to be. What time can you come for me tomorrow?”

“Whenever you say.”

“We gotta drive to Sacramento and hook up with Mad Dog.”

“We
gotta
do that, huh?”

The voice inflection was not lost on Troy. He looked at the hard set of Diesel’s face and started to ask questions, but Gallagher arrived. The meal was on the house, but they should tip the waiter. He walked them to the door and gave Troy a hug of affection by way of good-bye.

The long summer twilight was still on the city. A clock in a jeweler’s window said seven-thirty. In San Quentin the evening meal was over. Shower unlock was in progress, and in the cells the convicts were watching the Giants-Dodgers game on the little TVs that prison officials used for mental pacifiers. Some left it on throughout the test patterns in the night and the predawn morning citrus report. Troy had once smashed a cell partner’s TV. The fool never shut it off; he was fixated on “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune” and other audience participation programs, so much so that he had to answer the questions aloud, and was usually wrong. It distracted Troy. Subtle comments were unavailing, so finally Troy waited for unlock, carried the TV out of the cell, and threw it over the tier. “If you don’t have a cell move tomorrow morning, you go with the TV.” “Hey, man, I didn’t know you took it personal.” The cell partner moved, but Troy carried a shiv and magazines for body armor for a few days, just in case it wasn’t over. He wished he hadn’t lost his temper. He watched movies and sporting events, football, basketball and boxing, and public service programs. When he tallied the hours, he thought they were mostly a waste, junk food for the mind. How many more books could he have read? Not that the printed word was panacea; most popular novels were pablum, too. During his decade in prison, his taste had changed immeasurably.

Looking from the car window out at San Francisco, probably America’s loveliest city, Troy was surprised at the number of homeless. It was something new to him. In his childhood the few bedraggled creatures wandering about with dirty hands held out were invariably older white men, brains in a permanent fog from alcohol or insanity. Now every corner had someone with a sign or a spray bottle to wash windshields, and most were young black men.

A billboard had a dog pulling a blanket from a man in bed. It reminded him again: “We gotta go see Mad Dog tomorrow or the next day.”

“I gotta tell you something,” Diesel said. “Something I’ve never mentioned to anyone. I wanted to, ’cause it fucked with my head.”

“Give it to me.”

“Two months ago, Mad Dog called my pad. He called two or three times and got Gloria. It was a Friday and I was doin’ a favor for Jimmy the Face. When I finally talked to him, he’s busted in Portland on some chickenshit credit card beef. But if he don’t make bail by Monday morning, the parole officer would see his name on the booking list and slam him with a parole detainer. He wanted me to come bail him out.”

Diesel continued with the story, at one point inserting the scene of the dispute after the ship payroll robbery. As he told it, he relieved it in his mind. He ended with the opening of the freezer: “… my hair stood up. I swear it did. I got my ass out of there. I kept lookin’ to see if their bodies turned up somewhere, but I don’t think they did. If you wanna do a little work, it’s easy to put a body where nobody will find it—except maybe some fool-ass archeologist five hundred years from now.”

“He doesn’t know you know?” Troy asked.

“No way. I was outta there so fast—”

“Right.”

“I haven’t talked to him since then.”

Troy saw it plainly, the dead bodies of mother and child frozen solid. It made him shudder inside. He had never killed anyone, partly because he understood the gravity of taking life, and partly because circumstances had never come together, but he knew how common it had been since Cain and Abel, and he knew a lot of killers. He had friends who’d killed, many in anger from a dispute or for revenge, a few who had killed a cop or a store owner in a shootout, a few for money in a contract killing—but maniac killers were outside his sphere of experience. He knew about Mad Dog’s paranoid nature. Was he too dangerous to have around? Would it be too dangerous to cut him loose? Would that stimulate all his paranoid ideas?

On the other hand, Troy knew that Mad Dog respected him more than anyone in the world. He remembered the reform school night of years ago.

“You know what,” Troy said, “I can handle him.”

“He scares me a little. You never know what’s in his mind. You remember what him and Roach did to that guy in the East Block. What was his name, Carrigan or something. They were all tight buddies. Remember? They stabbed him about twenty times, didn’t they?”

“Yeah, but he threatened Roach, talked bad. He should have known they weren’t friends anymore.”

“Any way you say, Troy. I’m with you. But I wanted you to know what was happening with the guy.”

“I’m glad you told me. I know he’s crazy. We’ll watch his ass. If he acts too crazy—” Troy shrugged, a gesture that said nothing and yet said everything. “You ready to go to L.A.?”

“Whenever you say.”

“Just a couple days. I’m not even going to check in with the parole officer. They don’t look for you for jumping parole. They wait until you get picked up—”

“Or somebody fingers you.”

“That, too—but nobody’s gonna finger me. If they just stop me, I’ve good ID, don’t I?”

“Oh, yeah. It’ll stand up against everything but a fingerprint check.”

Diesel wheeled the car through the narrow, twistly streets of Chinatown and turned up under the porte cochere of the big Holiday Inn.

A doorman was instantly at hand.

“What time you gonna be here?” Troy asked.

“Ten … eleven … whenever you say.”

“Call me when you leave the house.”

“Will do.”

They clasped hands and Troy got out.

Diesel pulled away.

6

Alone in his room on the eleventh floor of the Holiday Inn, Troy took off his shoes and socks. It was the first time since his arrest that he’d walked barefoot on carpet—or barefoot on anything except cold concrete. He doused the lights, sat on the bed, and dug his toes into the thick, soft carpet, meanwhile looking through an open window, the cool night in his face, out across San Francisco’s hills and the dark bay dotted with lights from ships and buoys. How did he feel being free after so long in the cage among the numbered men? In a way he felt less different than he had anticipated. Men had told him of weird fears, bolts of confusion and panic. He felt none of that, but he did feel a sense of the unreal. He would look at the world and see distortions that reminded him of abstract art, Dali or Picasso.