The Art of Disposal (39 page)

“Twenty-five,” she said.

“A deal's a deal,” Carlino said. “I was just playing.”

She lowered the knife, walked away from him, leaned against the card table and crossed her legs.

“Now there's a woman,” Carlino said. “You want a job? A real job. Not the kind of shit Frank had you doing.”

“I just want my money,” she said.

We stayed there for half an hour. Carlino sat in the corner with a Ziploc baggie of ice on the back of his head. Leila fixed up the cut on my hand. Bullfrog smoked a Newport and helped himself to a drink from the bar out front—but not until he smelled it a few times; the thought of poison still large in his mind. I sat on the floor, back to the wall, looking at the corpses of Conese and Dante and Mudcap, splayed out like fallen soldiers. I asked Carlino if it bothered him to see them dead: these guys that he spent so much time with.

“That's life, Sam. Frank had his good points. Hell, so did Mudcap. But Dante? Uh-uh. That guy was worse than scum. You can't really be friends with a guy who worked for the Zetas. In the old days, Dante ran a kidnapping ring. Shit like you see on the news. They'd snag some white girl from San Diego or Houston, and they'd ship her to some hellhole in Mexico. Beat her. Get her hooked on smack. Break her down. Some of them girls are still down there somewhere, in the backrooms of shitty brothels, never to be found again.” Carlino rubbed his thumbs together and looked at the floor. “I think about that, and it bothers me.”

I picked up Mudcap's marble eye, and I poured some Pellegrino mineral water over it, and rubbed it with my shirt.

“You keepin' that?” Carlino said.

“Unless you want it.”

“Why the hell would I want it?”

“Souvenir.”

“Souvenir? What is this, Disney-Land?”

Leila went down to the store room and brought up a bag with the thrift store clothes that she'd bought in our sizes. We changed out of our bloody rags. Bullfrog could barely get his jeans buttoned, and we all looked like bums—but it worked. I gave Leila the bag with her dough in it. She left the rubber bands on the packets, but she flipped through the edges of the bills and smiled. I reminded her that all she had to do was play dumb when the cops came around asking questions. They wouldn't ask too many. They don't care too much when one gangster kills another. Not when there are real murders to solve, and missing kids that need to be found.

Carlino got on the phone with Bud Hanigan, a middle-man between the made guys and the reputation savvy white-collar Corporation members: the ones with legitimate interests in real estate, construction, and energy companies—and Carlino was already announcing how he was the new guy in charge of the west side, and was Bud going to back him or what?

Then he hung up the phone.

“Get a load of this guy,” Carlino said, walking up and patting Bullfrog's shoulder. “Who knew the brother had it in him? Meet the man who killed Frank Conese.”

“Somebody had to do it,” Bullfrog said.

Carlino picked up the brass owl and let it bob up and down in his palm, like he was guessing the weight of a cantaloupe at the market.

“I told you owls was good luck,” Bullfrog said.

“Don't even, Bullfrog—you was always scared of 'em. Bad luck, he says. Bad luck.”

“They
were
bad luck. For Frank Conese.”

“Why do they call you Bullfrog?” Leila said.

“It's what my Auntie called me. She raised me. I was always kinda fat. She said I was her little bullfrog.”

“Well it ain't no name for a real gangster,” Carlino said. “I'm thinking
The Brass Owl
.”

“That's pretty dope,” Bullfrog said, nodding. He adjusted his shirt. “The Brass Owl. Kind of mysterious.”

“Sexy,” Leila said, perched on the edge of her seat like a beautiful songbird.

“Yeah,” Bullfrog said, nodding along with her. “Sexy.”

“Please,” Carlino said. “She's a dyke.”

“And you're a dick,” Leila said, crossing her arms.

“Sounds like a sitcom,” Bullfrog said. “The Dyke and the Dick.”

“Yeah,” Carlino said. “I could see that. Like starring that Seinfeld broad, and what's-his-face.”

“Dick Van Dyke?” I said.

“Can we finish up here?” Leila said.

“Women,” Carlino said.

“You don't know much about them,” Leila said.

“Who does?”

“Touché,” Leila said.

“The Brass Owl,” Bullfrog said again.

“It does have a good ring to it,” I said.

Leila showed us to the back door that opened up to the alley behind Calasso's. I was carrying a trash bag with our bloody clothes in it, to be thrown into some random dumpster on the walk back to the Hyatt.

“You get back home,” I said to her. “And remember: you weren't here. And don't quit right away. Answer their questions. Play dumb. Scared even. And don't spend any of that money. Not right off the bat. Save it. And when you do spend it, spend it small. A little here; a little there.”

“Should I call you and Mom when I get to summer camp?” she said.

“Hey now,” I said.

She hugged up to me and gave me a kiss on the neck, and, it could have just been me—I'm guilty of thinking that any broad who looks my way is probably interested—but it felt like she stayed nestled there for a long time, and boy did she ever smell good, a lot like Marcia, with that apricot hair and a dab of perfume on each wrist.

She pulled away, and her eyes were green and bright.

“That's it?” I said.

“You're happily married, with three kids—remember?”

“I am?”

“That's what you told me.”

“Boy am I ever dumb.”

“Not as dumb as the other ones,” she said.

Then I was out in the black night of the alleyway, and the grimy back door to Calasso's clicked shut. Carlino and Bullfrog were waiting for me about fifty yards up the alley near the sidewalk.

“Hurry up, Sam!” Carlino said.

We walked back toward the Hyatt, trading stories, and we passed an apartment building with a dumpster in a dark spot, and I walked over and dropped the bag of clothes like it was any other day and I was just some chump who lived there. Then we walked on, and Bullfrog complained about the jeans Leila gave him, and Carlino looked around with dreamy eyes and talked about wringing every last drop of dirty money out of this city.

Then, about a half mile from the Hyatt, Carlino hailed a cab.

“Best to split up,” he said.

“This is goodbye then,” I said.

“For you and me. I'm stuck with this fat black bastard over here,” he said, aiming his thumb at Bullfrog.

“Prick,” Bullfrog said. Then he grabbed me and gave me a bear-hug; literally lifted me right off the ground. “Be safe, man. I'm gonna miss you, Ronnie. You tell me if you ever find Eddie, all right? You write me or something. I sure hope Eddie Sesto ain't dead.”

“I will,” I said. “I will.”

Bullfrog wiped his eyes, walked to the far side of the cab and got in.

Carlino held out his hand. We shook. He grinned.

“You ever need anything,” he said.

I nodded.

“Where you headed?”

“South,” I said.

“I'll be seeing you, Ronnie.”

“No, you won't,” I said. “Be careful, you and Bullfrog.”

“We will,” he said. “We're the A-Team, baby. Ain't no one stopping us.”

Carlino slid into the cab, shut the door, and as it rolled away, he rapped twice on the window, and tapped his hand to his forehead and flung it off again, like a military salute. His head was down, and the cab was dark, and he rolled away like a sinister insect, just hatched after years in a damp cocoon. He wanted blood. He wanted money. It was good to have a guy like Carlino DiTommaso on your side. It was bad to be on his bad side.

I watched the yellow cab get smaller, weave between a few cars, and come to a stop at a red light a block away. The streetlamps and city windows winked like a million eyes. Bullfrog pressed his face up close to the rear window, like a child. He waved slowly, like his hand was going through oil, back and forth, back and forth. I held my arm up and waved back.

I miss Bullfrog sometimes. He had a heart of gold. Even Carlino, when you dig through the layer of filth, is just a guy who loves things and hates things and wants to survive for eighty some years on this terrible spinning rock. These people come into and out of your life, and even if they're lost causes, you still think of them sometimes. You can't help it.

While I was fueling up my car at about the two hundred mile mark on the long drive back from New York, I got a call from the watchmaker. I'd forgotten all about that pocket watch.

“It's running?” I said.

“Tip top,” the watchmaker said.

“I'll stop by this evening.”

“Cash or cards only. No checks.”

“I'm a cash man,” I said.

“Me too, Mac.”

It was just me again, alone with the car radio and that nagging voice in my head that won't stop analyzing, reflecting, criticizing, debating, fantasizing. That bastard won't shut up. I'd pay a hundred grand for one day of absolute nothingness. Maybe I should get into meditation. There are only two ways to get your dose of nothingness: blackout drinking and drugging, or a sincere and focused path of spirituality. The first is a dead end; the second requires hard work.

I thought about the years I'd spent with the Sesto crew, and the guys who died in the beginning: Tall Terry, Al Da Paolo, Thin Y No. Then I thought about the souls more recently departed: Ricky Cervetti, Dan the Man, Greedy Pete Bruen, Irene (and probably Eddie) Sesto. Maybe they were all playing pool at some fancy club on Cloud Nine, with red and blue neon lights, walk-in humidors, fine wines, premium whole bean coffee, and slinky broads who look and act like they're auditioning for a part in a James Bond flick. I could see Tall Terry and Dan the Man arguing about the merits of nine ball over eight ball, and Eddie Sesto racking them up and saying to just go ahead and break the goddamn balls already. I was overcome by this desire to join up with them instead of starting a whole new life. How many stories can one guy live?

“The dead guys got it easy,” Dan the Man had said to me. “It's the living guys gotta worry all day and night.”

I let the car drift over into the other lane, and I had a staring contest with the blinding headlights of an SUV charging toward me. It honked and flashed its lights. In the shadows, near a patch of scrub-brush sailing by at sixty-some miles per hour, I saw Dan the Man, holding up a pocket watch and shaking his head at me: no, no. I tied a rope to that pocket watch and pulled myself back into the quiet lonely now. I didn't really want to die. Not like this, at least. Too messy. And the poor bastard driving the SUV might get hurt, and then I'd just be some creep on the local news who'd flipped his lid and killed the wonderful hardworking father of two sweet American kids. So I drifted back into my own lane and told myself that I'd only nodded off for a second, and boy was I ever lucky to be alive.

I checked back into the Moonbeam Motel. I took a hot shower and thought about my next move. There was the matter of my stuff in the storage locker. I didn't want to deal with it. So I didn't. I'd rented the thing under a false name anyway (and not my good one), so when it went into default they'd just auction off the whole lot of it. A guy can always buy new pots and pans.

Two suitcases and a duffel bag full of money. That was my whole life.

I stopped by the watchmaker's house. The sound of the running pocket watch was like the sweet song of a chirping bug. I held it to my ear, and it beat strong and clear, ticking and chugging like a miniature train was inside of it. The second hand on the bottom of the watch face went round and round in perfect increments. I paid the watchmaker, and he served coffee—good coffee—and he said I should get fifteen years out of that watch before it would need to be serviced again.

“It's modern oils,” he said. “These modern oils are so much better. It only takes a few drops, and they don't turn to gunk like the old ones.”

He gave me a handwritten receipt, and a piece of paper with some scribbles and diagrams showing how he'd tested the watch in three positions. I didn't understand it, but I liked the way it looked. I held the watch to my ear again, and I imagined the characters who might've carried that watch over the years. A worker at the railroad station, checking it on his lunch break; some guy with a black hat whose wife had saved up and bought it for him as a Christmas present. There were a hundred good stories inside of that watch, lost in the machinery. Even the watchmaker couldn't get those out.

I wrapped it up in a clean sock and put it in the glove-box of my car, and I hoped it wouldn't get jostled around too much. I worry about that kind of stuff. Things breaking. Things spilling. I like to have things in order; to feel like everything is safe.

I wondered if Eddie Sesto was safe. If I was in a glass-half-full kind of mood, I'd see him alive and well, smoking a cigar and sitting by the side of a lake with a fishing pole; if it was a glass-half-empty mood, I'd see him dead, black and bloated, twigs and yellow leaves scattered over his body in a blackbird woodland under a flat gray sky.

I made it to Rittman the morning of my third day on the road. The sun was barely up, and it drenched the empty farm-town in a garish orange light. I parked in front of the old water tower. How small the town seemed now; how large it had seemed when I was a boy.

An old man walked past me, tipped his hat, said hello. Across the street, a fussy little man rattled his keys and opened up the doors to the local bank. I looked around in disbelief, half-expecting to see some Stetson hat-wearing outlaws gallop into town on black horses and rob the bank, old-west style.

Nick's Diner was still in business. I ate two over medium eggs and a side of whole wheat toast. I drank a few cups of diner coffee (not too bad) and washed down my daily set of vitamins. When I looked up, an old woman was staring at me. I nodded. She didn't nod back.

My next stop was my Grandpa Jim Hallot's old house, the one where he'd dropped the Silver and Gold Dollars into the basement pipe. I'd done a little research on them. Grandpa Jim had given me a coin book, with some of the more important ones circled, or struck through with a yellow hi-liter.