The Art of Disposal (15 page)

“I got bad news,” I said. “About Dan.”

Eddie didn't say anything. His smile went flat, but he kept on picking at that slice of bread and tossing the crumbs onto the sidewalk.

“Cancer,” I said.

“Limp-nodes,” Eddie said.

“He told you?”

“Weeks ago.”

“That prick asked me to tell you. Said you didn't know.”

“Having his fun I guess. Anyways, it ain't so bad. He's getting better.”

“He's dying,” I said.

“Who is? Dan? Dan the Man? I don't think so.” Eddie shook his head, smiled, and threw some more breadcrumbs. “He's gonna be fine.”

“Uh-uh. He told me—”

Eddie stood up and hurled a whole piece of bread at a nearby tree, like he was pitching a baseball, and a mob of sparrows flitted after it, and pecked and cheeped and danced around.

“He's gonna — be — fine,” Eddie said, pointing a finger at me.

“Sure,” I said. “He's gonna be fine.”

Eddie sat back down. Took a few deep breaths. Twisted his head and cracked his neck. He wore a pale empty face, and he ran his fingers along the edge of the table, and his lips formed frantic silent sentences. I sat there quietly, listening to all of the things he didn't say. After a few minutes, he passed me a thick yellow envelope.

“From Frank Conese,” he said. “I've had it for a while now, but it just didn't feel right, you know, opening it, so soon after Ricky. But you can use it now. Traveling money.”

I opened it up and thumbed through the bills. Ten grand. That's what Ricky's life was worth. I counted off five and gave it back to Eddie.

“Thanks, Champ.”

“Your house, your plan,” I said.

“Be careful in New York.”

“Because of Frank?”

“No,” Eddie said, but he swallowed weird, like he'd choked on the word. “No,” he said again, clearly, as if to erase the first attempt. “Frank's good people. Frank's all right.”

New York is abrasive. Every time you grab a bite to eat, it's a big deal. You have to stand up, in an alleyway, to scarf down a slice of pizza before the crowd swallows you up. There are too many goddamn people. A studio apartment the size of a backyard shed runs you three grand a month. The only good things in New York are the girls and the squirrels. The girls are dolled-up, even if they're just heading to the 7-11 to buy some cigarettes. And I've never seen a tamer squirrel. They'll run right up to your feet and practically point a gun in your face if they see you eating a pretzel.

The Big Apple's all right I guess, but I don't need a big bite of it. A small bite every once in a while's enough for me.

I met Frank Conese at an espresso bar called Calasso's. He was seated outside, under a tall umbrella, looking every bit like the head of a crime family. His face was paunchy and tan, he smoked a cigarette with a short black holder, and he wore Jim Jones sunglasses. Another man, about the size of a small truck, wearing a t-shirt and a gold chain with a crucifix, sat next to him. One of his eyes was missing—and he wore no patch—and the skin on that side of his face looked like hot fryer oil had dripped down it. I did my best not to notice, but I didn't do a very good job.

“Mister Lynch,” Conese said, standing up and shaking my hand. “Is it Ron, or Ronnie?”

“Either or,” I said, trying my best to shake with a firm grip. There's an art to a handshake, and you're being sized-up the moment somebody takes your hand.

The truck-sized man didn't stand up. He sat with folded arms, and stared liked he'd already decided just how much he hated me. We sat down. Conese waved a hand and a waitress appeared, spiky blonde hair, taut, young, beautiful, as if he'd just imagined and created her that very moment.

“Two more, Leila,” Conese said, slurping down the last of his first. “You'll never have a better espresso,” he said to me.

The waitress vanished. Conese leaned over and picked something up from the seat of an extra chair, hidden under the white table cloth. A box of cigars.

“For Eddie,” he said, placing it in front of me on the table. “Me: I don't get it. Pricey, cigars. And Eddie goes through them.”

“He sure does,” I said.

“This is Mudcap,” Conese said, introducing me to the goon.

I stretched across the table and offered my hand.

“Mudcap isn't one for formalities,” Conese said. “I pay him to look tough, and he does a pretty good job of it. Between you and me though, I saw him cry at the end of that movie
Rudy
, when they carry him around the field.”

“Mudcap, huh? There's a name,” I said.

“Used to work in the mines. Coal mines. Pennsylvania. That ugly half of his mug? Got blown off a little. Mudcap's some kind of coal miner word—part of the explosives. But I'm not familiar. I'm a city boy. You?”

“Here and there,” I said.

“Military kid?”

“Orphan,” I said.

Conese raised his chin and blew some smoke. The waitress showed up with our espressos. I took a sip and Conese watched me enthusiastically, waiting for my review.

“Damn good,” I said. It was, too. There's no such thing as a mediocre espresso. They come in two varieties: terrible and amazing.

“Sorry about Ricky,” Conese said. “This life of ours… it's hard. We all have to do unpleasant things. Ricky made his own bed.”

“I'm just glad it was us, instead of him,” I said, aiming a thumb at Mudcap.

Frank Conese laughed. “I like him,” he said to Mudcap. “Says what he means.”

Mudcap looked as thrilled as a cemetery statue.

“How's your room?” Conese said. He'd put me up at the DoubleTree, and paid for my first night. I was picking up the bill after that.

“It's got HBO,” I said.

Frank grinned, drew on his cigarette, exhaled, and took a sip of espresso. “Eddie says you're good. Careful. Loyal. How's Eddie doing?”

“His dog passed away,” I said.

“Shame,” Conese said, and shook his head and made a clicking sound with his tongue and the roof of his mouth. “And Mister Nussbaum?”

“Dan the Man?” I said.

“I never did like that name. It's both juvenile, and smacking of hubris.”

“He's all right,” I said, picturing those dark rings under Dan's eyes.

I noticed a fat man with a mustache at a nearby table, supposedly reading a newspaper. But he seemed more interested in us. One of Frank's toughs, no doubt.

“I appreciate your willingness to do these jobs for me,” Conese said. He pulled his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose, and peeked over them like an old lady. “Some guys get a real kick from wet work. Are you that kind of guy?”

“No,” I said.

Conese nodded thoughtfully, and finished off his espresso. “So here's the job,” he said, pulling out a little scrap of paper and handing it over to me.

I was slated to hit a guy named Nelson Scott, who lived in a little brownstone in Queens. That was all I knew about him. Name and address. That's the way I like it. Ignorance is bliss in my line of work. It was a big job, involving me pairing up with a burglar associate: a guy who could open the front door to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, after hours, and do it so elegantly that you'd swear he had a key and a reason to be there. I met him in the early evening, a block away from the brownstone, and we walked there together. He opened the door like a master magician, with just a quick flash of a few sharp tools. We never spoke a word.

I set up my gear and poked around the house. Killing time—literally.

The whole house was ticking and tocking. Cuckoo clocks, mantelpiece clocks, grandfather clocks, skeleton clocks, and hundreds of glass domes with mechanical pocket watches. Some of them were mint, others were in different stages of rust and decay. In the corner of the living room sat a workbench with sets of watchmaker tools. I clicked on the light above it and studied the little screwdrivers and tweezers. I grabbed the handle of a large metal press and worked it up and down. The house was so calm that my head started buzzing, and it felt like I'd dreamed up this antique oil-scented world, askew of the modern one, a few feet away, outside the front door.

There was a black and white photo, thumb-tacked to the wall behind the workbench, of an old man with a beard, holding a pipe in one hand, mugging for the camera in that serious way that they used to do back when photography was something you got dressed up for.

The watchmaker's father? Or maybe it was his mentor; the man who taught him how to work on fine timepieces. The dead man in the photograph seemed like a guy you'd play chess with. The kind of guy who could give you all the answers.

I flipped through some papers in the desk drawers. Nothing much. Receipts and such. Then I saw an ink sketch of watch gears and springs, framed and hung on the wall.
Time is an uncompromising measurement
, was written in a nice hand below the sketch. I got the feeling that the old man had drawn the picture many years ago. I could almost see him drawing it, puffing on his pipe near a brass lamp on a rainy night.

I walked back to the living room and flopped down in a chair. I stretched out my E string garotte and thought about how true it was. Time does not compromise. One thing happens and then another. Each of us stuck in our own cramped canoe, all being swept in the same direction by the great sea of time. All we can do is wave a quick hello, maybe reach out and hold hands for a minute, as the sea takes us to the place where everyone goes.

Dan the Man taught me to always check things out yourself. The guy who hired you might be an idiot, or—more likely—he might be waiting to slice your own throat in a nice secluded location. But I felt all right about Frank Conese. This was no set-up. Just like the Da Paolo hit from Eddie, this was Frank's way to test my loyalty to the Corporation. Mudcap could have done this job. Frank didn't need me in New York: he wanted me there.

I sat in that ticking-tocking room, and I thought about how much time I spend alone, and how maybe it's not so good for a person. The worst part about loneliness is dinnertime. I can deal with the rest of it just fine. But there's something about making a sandwich all alone: spreading the mayo on the bread, grabbing a handful of sprouts, slicing the sharp cheddar cheese; halving an avocado, scoring it, spooning out the green flesh. It feels ponderous in a soundless room. And then when you've made this beautiful breaded wonder, and you dump some jalapeño potato chips on your plate and place a peperoncini carefully on the side, what then?

The quiet hangs like a gray cloud. You hear yourself chewing no matter how loud you turn up the television. You finish eating and rinse off your plate. You swallow your vitamins and look out the window at the sparrows on the fence.

If there really is reincarnation, I hope I come back as a bird. I don't care what kind. I just want to fly. But there's something about birds that makes me think they're the souls of good people. So I guess I'm not coming back as a bird.

Then I thought about Marcia, and how she's never really there—not the way Emily was. Sweet Emily. With Marcia, everything is rushed. It has to be. She'll swing by and test out the bed springs for a half an hour, but then she's buttoning up her coat, checking her hair in the mirror, and giving me a kiss goodbye. I'll never get my
Leave It To Beaver
house with the white picket fence. Not with her. I could've had it with Emily, but I blew it.

A broad like Marcia is just as bad as any mob guy I ever met. At least we dispose of people in a matter of seconds. She's been killing her husband slowly for years.

Get this. One day I'm out with Eddie, talking business over a sandwich at Monroe's. People are coming and going, the place is a blur, me and Eddie have a nice little table by the window looking out on the Japanese garden. And who comes walking in? You guessed it.

And who's she with? You guessed that too.

Now, any broad that had a heart at all would have just ignored me and Eddie; pretended she didn't even see us. That's what I was planning on doing with her. But she sauntered right over to the table, arm in arm with The Great Kevin.

“Oh my God, Ron, how are you?” she said. “This is my husband, Kevin.” Then she clarified things for Kevin. “Ronnie is a patient at the office. But he's so much more than that. He's like an expert on fishtanks. He takes care of that aquarium.”

She couldn't have made her voice sound more thrilled. She acted like she'd just run into Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie having coffee with The Olson Twins.

“I used to have an aquarium,” Kevin said. “When I was a kid.”

I couldn't tell if he was trying to zing me, but a lot of guys will say something like that if they think you have a childlike hobby.

“What kind of fish?” I said.

“Cardinal Tetras. A few Clown Loaches too.”

I almost dropped my fork. Marcia's chump husband knew his tropical fish. I felt sick to my stomach. I wondered if my itchy rash would start up again, and I'd have to go back to Doc Brillman for some ointment.

“Maybe we could share your table—if it's all right,” Marcia said.

Eddie waved his hand as if to say, “are you kidding me?” And before I knew it, I was sitting elbow to elbow with a guy who worked the same dark places where I clocked in. I had to sit through a whole lunch's worth of it, with a fake grin on my face, while Kevin talked about Whole Life versus Term.

A day or two later when I was alone with Marcia at my apartment, I asked her what in the hell she thought she was doing bringing Kevin to my table like that.

“What's the big deal?” she said. “I thought it was fun.”

“Yeah, well I didn't. I don't want to know anything about your other life. Anymore than I have to anyway. And what about
him
?”

“What about him?” she said, and flipped her hair.

“How would you feel if the shoes were switched?”

“They wouldn't be! Kevin is trustier than a good dog,” she said, slinking up to me. She had some new lingerie. Black fishnet hose and satin panties. And damn if she didn't look as tasty as a slice of homemade apple pie. You can forgive a girl for almost anything if she rubs up against you and whispers the right words when she breathes in your ear.