The Art of Disposal (24 page)

“You do what you gotta do in the can, homie,” he said to me, and lifted up an arm like it was a wing and flapped it a few times.

“Dante did a nickel on a drug charge,” Frank said.

“But I walked on murder,” Dante said with pride. His voice was deep, and it rattled like there was a stone lodged somewhere in the back of his throat.

“What's E-W-M-N?” I said.

“Evil, Wicked, Mean, and Nasty. But I ain't as scary as I look.”

“Don't you believe it,” Frank said. “Dante was with the Zetas.”

“No mas,” Dante said.

“See that shamrock with the A-B?” Carlino said to me. “That's Aryan Brotherhood. How you like that? A Beaner with a white power tattoo.”

“
Lah-teen-o
,” Dante said to Carlino. One eye twitched. Then he looked at me.

“I joined up with the Brotherhood, on the inside, wair-o, only 'cause they're heavy. No one'll fuck with you. Heh-heh.”

Dante let out these dainty laughs; a strange counter-melody to his deep voice. A running commentary from his inner brain, pleased with what he was saying.

“On the outside, Zetas sometimes do business with the Brotherhood. Same enemies. The enemy of my enemy is my amigo. Heh-heh-heh. The Brotherhood spouts a lot of hate speech, but it's mostly to get dumb wair-o's to join up. Thick-neck crackers lifting weights. Heh-heh-heh. Power in numbers, comprend-ay? It's organized crime, plain and simple; like you guys do here on the outside. Heroin, prostitution, gambling. Mucho dinero.”

“He's half Injun too,” Mudcap said.

We all turned and looked at Mudcap, sitting there like a statue with folded arms. Every time he said something, you kind of felt like a Bullmastiff had somehow acquired speech for just a moment, and you'd better pay attention to what it said.

“Hitler's rolling over in his grave,” Carlino said. “A Beaner-Indian, and card-carrying member of the Aryan Nation.”

Dante put Carlino in a mock headlock, and Carlino pushed his way out of it and threw a fake punch or two in return.

Frank offered me a drink, and I figured I'd better take it, just in case it was the last thing I ever tasted in this world. He went to the minibar and pulled out two tiny bottles of whiskey.

“Six dollars a piece: can you believe that shit?” he said, and unscrewed the cap of one bottle and dumped the contents into a tumbler. “Have a seat.” He motioned toward the round white table near the window, where Carlino and Dante had already both sat down.

Then Frank sat down. The remaining chair put my back to the door. I didn't want to sit down but I didn't want them to know that I was scared, either. So I sat down. I looked over my shoulder a few times, in case Mudcap was unwinding a length of wire for my neck.

Frank and Carlino and Dante looked at me, and the hum of the hotel air-conditioner seemed as loud as the blades of a landing helicopter. I placed my right hand in my lap, close to the butt of my Beretta. Frank Conese tapped his finger on the table.

“Tell him why they call you Bars,” Frank said.

Dante looked at me. “To join up with the Brotherhood, I had to do a blood-in.”

“That's some dumb L-A gang shit right there,” Carlino said. “Blood in, blood out, homie.”

“Yeah, well I never blooded-out, homie.”

“They after you?” I said.

“They leave him alone now,” Frank said, dumping his own tiny bottle of whiskey into his tumbler. “Ever since he put a Brotherhood soldier into a coma.”

“Boss,” Dante said and raised an eyebrow. “Can I finish the story?”

“Yeah, yeah. Go on. Go on,” Frank said and took a drink.

“So there I am. Been joined up with the Brotherhood for a few weeks, comprend-ay, just to cover my ass. Heh-heh-heh. Got to take sides in prison, wair-o, and you gots to do it quick. Heh-heh. You don't mix in the can. Honkees with honkees. Brothers with brothers. Latinos with Latinos.”

“Beaners,” Carlino said.

“
Lah-teen-o's
, peenchee wair-o,” Dante said. “Put a new guy in the can, and he goes right to his own kind. No koom-bah-yah, can't we all just get along shit.”

“But you joined up with the honkees,” Carlino said.

“Sola-mentay 'cause I was Zeta, and they got word from the street to help me. Else they'd've never had me as a full-on member. And it cost me plenty, poot.”

“Who gives a shit?” Frank said. “Get to the good stuff.”

“Stacy Huggins—top dog of the Brotherhood, on the inside—he tells me who I gotta do, you know, to blood-in.”

“Stacy,” Carlino said, and rolled his eyes.

“Listen, poot: Stacy Huggins would cut off your wop balls and mail 'em to your Mah-dray. Comprend-ay? Well, the A-B'd been having trouble with this guy named Little Jack Rusk. Dude was a junkie, wair-o. You'd be surprised how much smack's on the inside. War on drugs. What a joke, homie. You can't even keep 'em out of a controlled environment. Pffft. War on drugs, my ass. Heh-heh-heh.

“Little Jack owed money to the Brotherhood. The junkies get dinero from their family on the outside, and from working their little peanut jobs. Heh-heh. And they get so in debt, and they tell their Mah-dray they'll get shanked if they don't pay. It's a racket. And it's easier to work it on the inside than it is on the outside. Half the bangers in prison, they're actually
better
criminals once they get back out. Heh-heh-heh. It ain't a correctional facility, poot. It's a crime school.

“Stacy tells me it's him; it's Little Jack Rusk I gots to kill. We set it up so I'd get put into Little Jack's cell, while his celly's off at his job in the woodshop. Heh-heh. Crooked guard opens the door for me, shuts it, and waits down the row.”

“I love this part,” Carlino said.

“I got to work fast, comprend-ay? I beat the guy to a pulp, but after a few dozen hits, he's still gasping for air and begging me to stop. Well, I get real angry, and I shove his head against the bars a few times, but he still ain't dying, comprend-ay? So I push—I mean
push
—his head right between a set of those bars. See, his head is too big. His head don't fit. I don't think anyone's head would fit.”

He paused and licked his lips.

“Well, I made it fit,” Dante said and nodded proudly, and looked around the table, making eye contact with all of us (except Mudcap, of course). Then he took a sip of his drink and lit a cigarette.

“That's why they call him Bars,” Frank said.

I heard a 747 landing at the nearby airport. The air conditioner hummed. Frank tapped a finger. Dante cracked his knuckles. I looked at a terrible painting of a red rose in a glass vase, hanging on the narrow strip of wall near the sliding glass door. Carlino coughed once or twice. Finally, when I was just about to jump up out of my seat, Dante spoke up.

“I still can't believe it, wair-o: Max Finn, no mas.”

“Yeah,” Carlino said, shifting in his chair. “That truck driver, he was fast. Gun under the seat.”

“No funeral,” Dante said. “That shit ain't right.”

“Couldn't exactly bring him back and leave him on his family's doorstep.”

“I'm glad he's dead,” Frank said. “Snorted more than he sold.”

Dante sniffled.

The room got quiet again. The air conditioner moaned and struggled. Carlino looked at me quickly, then looked away.

“Decision time,” Frank said. “I know what you told me before, but I need to hear it again. I need to know that you're with us, one hundred percent.” He put his fingers up to his bottom lip and groomed it like he was picking off fine pieces of sand. “Now don't get me wrong: I like Dan the Man. Nice guy. But once he's gone, well…”

“Buy a sympathy card. Write your heartfelt condolences,” I said. “I'll take it to Dotty.”

Silence. The hum of that air conditioner. Frank Conese ran his tongue along his upper teeth; you could see it below the lip, moving like a cat under a sheet.

“Ron's just upset,” Carlino said. “He's solid.”

“Eddie Sesto was a close friend,” Frank said. “It's hard losing friends. Gets harder and harder to find new ones. I'd like to think you're my new friend.”

“I don't know what I gotta do to reassure you,” I said. “How's about I buy you lunch? There's this little place I like: Monroe's. I'll even buy you a slice of apple pie.”

Dante laughed. So did Carlino.

“No disrespect,” I said. “You're the boss. What you say goes. I like Eddie, but I like myself a whole lot more.”

“What do you think?” Frank said, looking at Dante.

“Es verdad,” Dante said. “He means it.”

“You passed,” Frank said to me.

I exhaled for what felt like a minute. I had another drink, and we played a few hands of spades. Frank and Carlino smoked cigarettes, and Dante “Bars” Delgado chomped on a cheap, machine-made drugstore cigar; the kind that would make Eddie Sesto cringe.

Dante told us stories about life on the inside; how the Brotherhood is so powerful that they make things happen on the street—like killing witnesses, prosecutors, and judges. I laughed and drank and held my cards. I'd passed the test. If I would've failed, well, Mudcap wasn't in that hotel room just to tip the pizza guy.

Frank Conese was circling overhead with his kettle of vultures, just waiting for Dan the Man to croak. And when he did, Eddie Sesto was next on the list.

I was stuck on a lot of bad thoughts about Dan the Man. I wondered if he and Dotty were still eating dinner together and watching
Wheel of Fortune
, pretending like there were plenty of consonants left on the board—and still lots of vowels to buy.

I was stuck on what to do about Marcia and Kevin. Problems were sticking to me like remoras on a shark. Maybe that's why there are monks and hermits. Maybe the only solution is to dispose of the whole damn world and live in a tiny hut somewhere high above the sea.

But then there's the loneliness.

Say an old man's wife dies first. Well, the first thing you can count on is that the toilets will get permanent yellow rings. An old man alone is never pretty. It's just him and a beer and a television, and a three-toothed dog, or an ornery yellow cat that's only in it for the free chow.

But there is a rare breed of old bachelor, the kind who prunes his trees and sweeps the kitchen floor; the kind that puts out an American flag on Memorial Day. My Grandpa Jim Hallot was that sort of lonely old man. I think about him quite a bit. Some people get a whole room of their own in your mind, and they go on living there, going about their business, not knowing they're dead, materializing haphazardly when you're trying to fall asleep on a summer night.

Jim Hallot wasn't really my Grandpa, but he sure acted like one. Probably better than a dozen genuine Grandpas. Stella took me down the road there quite a bit, and she'd always say, “we're off to see your Grandpa Jim,” and I would be as happy as a turtle in the sun.

Most of the mobile homes out there were sunken and tired. The kind of places where drunks go to hide and die. But Grandpa Jim had a silvery Airstream right out by the highway, and it was a sort of oasis that would cause cars to slow down just a little when they passed. There were flowers all around it, some in the ground and some in half-whiskey barrels, and there was always a steady buzzing of bees and hummingbirds.

Stella would drop me off out there for a day or two, when things were bad at home, and she would sip lemonade under the awning, and Jim would rock gently on the swing he'd rigged up on the bough of a solid oak tree, and Stella would say to him, “oh how I wish we had a charming little garden like this one.”

Jim would take a swig of lemonade and then pucker his lips and say, “Hoo-eee. Now that's tart, but it sure does wet your whistle.”

“Now Jim,” Stella would say, “why don't you get married again? It's been twelve years ago Helen died.”

“Why would I go and do that?” Jim would say. “Helen was an absolute angel, straight from cloud nine. Have you seen the old crows around here at the church luncheons? Whew. I danced with one the other night, and hoo-ee, she was as nasty as a bag of mangy cats.”

I'd watch the trail of dust as Aunt Stella's car weaved its way back down to the farm, and Grandpa Jim would put his hand on my shoulder and say, “how's about we go out to the shed? I got me a new Martin house I built. I'm painting her a little bit at a time, but I'm downright stumped. Been waitin' for you to help me pick out the right colors.”

That's what I loved about my Grandpa Jim. I was never in the way. He made you feel like a birdhouse wouldn't turn out quite as good without your help. Kids need to feel that way. So do adults. I bet you'd hear a hell of a lot less car horns in this world if each and every person had just one other person patting them on the back and saying, “hey, that was some nice work you did right there… good job.”

Grandpa Jim had two big cardboard boxes full of hardcover books. Every time I went over there, I'd go through them. Crime and Punishment. Moby Dick. Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson. Poe, Hawthorne, Woolf, Hesse, Joyce, and some H.G. Wells and Jules Verne to lighten things up a bit. Grandpa Jim would lend me one book at a time, and he'd say to me, “old Helen, she'd be glad someone was thumbing through 'em. Whew. They sit pretty heavy. I dabbled with 'em a bit, but they're above my pay grade I guess. I'd rather watch Jackie Gleason.”

Me and Grandpa Jim would sit on the swing, and the chainlinks would creak just so, like they enjoyed your company. It was the rare car or truck on that country road, but we played the car game anyway. Grandpa Jim always picked red and I always picked blue, and the first to get three of that color won the game.

Sometimes Blind Shannon would come down the road with her white cane and her German Shepherd, and I would run down the gravel driveway and call out to her so she knew I was there for the weekend. The German Shepherd was a handsome dog. He was trained to be indifferent, so no matter how you talked to him or scratched at his ears he would only stare straight ahead and wait for Shannon to make a move.

I loved and lusted over Shannon. My Grandpa Jim used to drive her to the grocery store and help her shop, but on days when I was over there he'd let me do it, and he'd even give me the keys to his old Ford pick-up truck.