Setup on Front Street (5 page)

"Yeah, right. But you're still with
him?"

"Well, yeah. Just … just not as often
as I used to be."

"What do you mean?"

She shifted her weight on the bed and
crossed her legs.

"We used to see each other a lot, you
know, like two or three times a week. This was right after you left and I was
so alone and …"

"I know, honey. Go on."

"Anyway, we stayed like that for a
long time until Rita found out about us. Now we don't see each other too often.
He comes around once a week for the money and then —"

"He comes around here to collect your
money?"

I reached for the dice in my pocket. I
ground them together with as much fury as my hand could muster.

"Yeah. But we actually spend time
together about once every two or three weeks. He swears, though, that we'll …"

I put an index finger to her lips.

"Norma, listen. He's lying scum.
Outside of the money, he doesn't give a shit for you. He's got you in here …"
I covered the room with a hand gesture.

"Don Roy," she said, "you
don't understand. I mean, I've been doing this for three years now." Her
voice was flat, in a scary kind of way, and her reddened eyes came up to meet
mine. "The first two years were all for BK. Now I'm doing it for myself.
I'm making good money and instead of giving it all to him, I get to keep most
of it."

"What do you mean by good money?"

The thunder moved closer. I heard rain
tapping the roof.

"About
eighteen hundred a week. I still give BK a little, `cause he's still gambling
and he needs it."

"You
still
cover his losses?
How much?"

"Not all of them. I only give him
about eight or nine hundred a week, sometimes more. He actually loses more, but
I don't give it to him. I think he's got some way of stealing the rest of it
from the city. But sometimes I don't give him anything at all. Those are the
weeks he wins. Baseball season is coming up and he can pick those games pretty
good."

"Oh yeah, BK's just a regular champ at
picking baseball winners."

She twitched a little. "But it's not
like before, I told you. I get to keep a lot for myself. Sometimes as much as a
thousand a week."

I groaned again.

She went on: "Most of the girls make a
lot more than that, but they're a lot younger'n I am and they get the best
customers." She'd calmed herself by now, while I unraveled.
"Plus," she added, "I get to control the men for a change,
instead of the other way around."

My mind reeled. Norma … my Norma. I swear,
if BK had been in that room with us, I'd've taken him out right then and there,
no questions asked.

She moved around again on the bed but her
cheap polyester dress didn't move with her, clinging to her in all the wrong
places. She adjusted it a little, then straightened up.

"You remember I told you what it was
like with my first husband?" she said. "All the time hitting me and
everything. And then my second one, you know, a real control freak. Mind games
all the damn time, till I went damn near crazy. And my father before
them."

"But
I
never treated you that
way."

"No, you didn't."

A sweet hand went up to my cheek, caressing
it. For just a moment, love sparkled in those faded blue eyes, hypnotic love.
And all the rage in me fell away, just like that.

"You was always real good to me, and I
never forgot it. You was really the only man ever treated me right."

I softened about as much as possible.
"So why … why don't you just tell BK to shove it?"

"You've been gone a long time, Don
Roy. I really didn't think you were ever coming back. And like I said, I can't
make this kind of money waitressing."

I groped for words. "Yeah, but —
but you —"

"When you left, remember, I was living
in that shit trailer over on Stock Island. Remember? Scumbags and drug dealers
everywhere? I was afraid to step outside. You remember that? Well, now I've got
my own apartment at Ocean Walk, that new complex up on South Roosevelt. It's a
great place and I'm paying for it myself."

I still choked on the words. They wouldn't
come.

She said, "I've got a real nice car,
too. A Toyota. I mean, I didn't get it new — it's an '88 — but it
looks real nice. More important, I saved up and paid cash for it. So it's all
mine.
You know what that means to me, Don Roy? To pay cash for a nice car?"

Yeah, I
knew. The first time I'd done it, it meant a lot to me, too.

"Listen, Norma …"

I swallowed hard, struggling to find the
right words. They had to be just right or else, because I only had one shot at
saying them. I took a long breath.

"Right now, you might think you like
this shit. You're pulling in a dime a week and paying your rent."

She inhaled so I could hear it, getting
ready to interrupt with a lot of bullshit about how she could do this as long
as she wanted.

I shushed her. "Just let me finish.
You've been in the business long enough now to know what every hooker knows:
that somewhere out there is that one wacked-out psycho who's looking to cut you
up or to strangle the life out of you, and you're hoping he never finds you. Or
at the very least, that he gets off on doing it to someone else before he gets
around to you."

"That's not going to happen. Not
here."

"You say that now. But let me tell
you, if that ever did happen, I could
never
live with myself, knowing
that I had this one opportunity right now to get you out of this racket once
and for all. So...I'm asking you to quit. To come with me and be my woman. And
let me be your man."

"But my —"

Another index finger to her lips.

"Money won't be a problem. I'm getting
a big windfall — call it an inheritance — next week. I'm talking
major money. We can take it and live like human beings. We can even leave the
island if you want to."

I pulled her close to me. Right up on my
chest again with my arms all the way around her.

"Norma, don't you see? This is what
I've always wanted. What I waited for the last three years I spent out there in
hell. You wouldn't believe the shit I put up with waiting for this day. I
forgive you, I forgive you everything. Please say you'll do it."

"Oh, Don Roy, I …I …"

She moved her head to look up at me,
locking my eyes into hers. "I've always hoped you'd come back to me. Do
you really mean all that?"

"You know I do, honey."

"Then, yes. Yes. I'll do it. Because I
love you, baby. I love you so much. Yes! I'll do it! I'll quit. For you. For
us."

I held her so tight, burying my face in her
hair.

Beneath the Walgreen's perfume, I caught a
whiff of her natural human scent. I'd never forgotten it. It made me high as I
breathed it in deep. It swelled my nostrils, stirred my loins, gentle as a
tropical breeze.

But more powerful than a September
hurricane.

"As of this moment," I whispered,
"you're free of BK. I'll see to it."

She squeezed me as hard as she could. We
lay down together, and as I gathered her in my arms, great sheets of rain
slapped the tin roof to a rolling clap of thunder. Very rare for this time of
year.

IT
rained most of the night. I was up and showered early, then out into the cool,
wet street at about quarter of eight.

I didn't know what time BK arrived at his
office, but I knew he wouldn't be there yet. I wanted to see him before he
walked in.

You want to talk serious shit to a big
shot, especially if it involves an underlying threat, you don't do it in his
office if you can help it. That's his turf.

He's the one sitting behind the big desk
with all the phones and the switches and everything at his fingertips, while
everybody's kissing his ass. In there he's king shit. He feels like you can't
touch him, and in a way, he's right.

But out in the street or in a parking lot,
when he's on his way to the throneroom, he's just another square moe going to
work. Out here, he's still vulnerable and he knows it. This is my turf, this
in-between zone where I could hammer my point home in full stereo.

I went to the city garage where I waited
across from his parking spot.

I skipped breakfast; eating would take the
edge off. But as I stood around in the damp concrete structure, I felt a sharp
desire for a cigarette. It was the kind of pang I used to have back in the
joint when I was trying to quit. It promised me that if I grabbed that one
smoke, then I could really stay quit afterward.

You know, the tension, the stress, that
builds on you in prison day after day is tremendous. The strain piles up on
you, no matter what. You've got to find some way of working through it, of
relieving it, or else you don't make it in there.

I tried a lot of things. I lifted weights,
I read a lot, anything to take my mind off it. A lot of times I wanted to light
one up just to ease the load, it was so damn heavy. I only wanted one cigarette
then, like I do right now.

Just one.

But I couldn't leave to go buy any because
I didn't want to miss BK, so I beat back the craving.

Finally, about nine-thirty, his Dodge came
sloshing through the garage entrance. He slid into his spot and got out without
seeing me.

"BK," I called out as I approached
him.

He turned. He was not pleased with what he
saw: that's right, me again. He dragged out his standard smile anyway, taping
it onto his face.

"Don Roy, what's up?"

"Let's sit in your car for just a
minute."

"Sit in my car?"

"There's a little matter I need to
clear up with you. It won't take long."

"Well, I don't know, I've got to get
inside. There's some things I've got —"

I stood between him and the back steps of
City Hall.

He knew.

"Like I said, this'll just take a
second. You won't miss anything inside."

We got into his car. It wasn't fancy at
all. I made it to be around an '86. Cloth seats, a few coins in the ashtray and
around the console, takeout napkins on the floor, remnants of a Wendy's soft
drink in the cupholder, leftover sections of a newspaper in the back seat.
Didn't he ever clean it up?

He wasn't looking at me, but he knew I was
taking up a lot of space, even spilling over into his. Things were very tight
in this front seat and he twitched in discomfort.

So far, so good.

"I saw Norma last night."

Up went the eyebrows in faked surprise.

"Oh, really? Is she all right? Give
her my best, will you?"

"The ride is over, BK."

"Ride?
What ride?"

"You know what I mean. From now on,
whatever you owe Mambo is
your
problem. She does not give you another
nickel. And on top of that, she's not seeing you anymore, either."

At first he wasn't sure what facial
expression to wear, whether to keep his wide-eyed "what-do-you-mean"
look going or just to admit the whole thing.
 
Embarrassing confessions weren't really in the front of his playbook,
though. So for a split second, it looked like he was going to keep up the
charade as a natural politician-type reflex.

But then he realized I had him, that I
really knew what I was talking about.

He said, "Hey now, whatever she and I
want to do is our business, Don Roy. You can't tell me —"

"I can and I am telling you. The ride
is over."

"Listen, if she wants to help me out,
then she's entitled —"

"I don't think you quite understand
me. She doesn't want to. She's back with me now for good, and your little gravy
train has reached the end of the line."

Lucky for him I was a lot calmer this
morning than I was when Norma laid all this on me last night.

"Who the hell do you think you are,
telling me what I can and can't do?"

I'd expected this, the indignation,
perfectly timed.

I knew I
had to tread very lightly here, yet leave a big footprint. Like I said earlier,
this is the mayor, not somebody you can easily shove around.

"BK,
I'm just stating a fact, and the fact is that the money lake has dried up.
You're gonna have to get it somewhere else."

His lips closed tightly, then through
gritted teeth he said, "You know, I could go in there and get your
probation officer on the phone. I can get you sent back to prison today for
doing this."

Time for the trip out to the end of the
limb while BK revs up the chainsaw.

"For doing what? You mean for telling
the mayor, who just happens to be a degenerate gambler, that he's gonna have to
pay off his own illegal sports bets from now on, that my woman isn't going to
do it for him? Like she's been doing for the last three fucking years as a
prostitute. And if you bring cops out here to bust me, that's what I'll tell
them. And that's what my lawyer will say in open court. That you're using your
position to railroad me back inside just because I've upset your sweet little
deal involving gambling and prostitution."

There was
anger in his eyes, all right, but I could see the fear behind the fire.

Just to
make sure he totally understood, I added with a raised eyebrow of my own,
"And isn't there an election coming up in the fall? This isn't really the
kind of thing that would make you look real good in the eyes of the voters,
now, is it?"

He opened the door. As he started to climb
out, he turned back to me, saying, "You will live to regret this. You and
that cheap fucking slut!"

Instinctively, I wanted to reach over and
slap him, but before I could, he was out of the car, so I never made the move.
Just as well, because that
could
have violated me back inside.

Probably would have, too.

He walked to the door of City Hall. I
didn't follow him.

Instead, I called out, "Remember what
I said, BK. The ride is over."