The Deed (28 page)

“It’s just a glass,” said Vinnie.

“Why’n’t you slow it down a little with the sauce.”

“I’m fine,” Vinnie replied. “I just got up to drain the lizard. You just keep Dances with Hookers occupied.”

“John,” said Freddie, taking his seat again as Vin staggered off toward a men’s room, “he’s the boss’s son. Fuck him, and fuck the boss. You and I have more important things to discuss.” When the Indian remained impassive, Freddie added, “‘The treasure map,’ that’s your phrase, not mine.”

The Indian looked up, met his eyes. “I was drunk. I misspoke.”

Freddie chuckled. “Yes, you were drunk,” he said amiably. “And that’s how I know you weren’t shitting me. The fact is, John, you
did
say something to me—so
that
tells me you could use a little help. If you could land this one yourself, you would’ve done it already. I’m not going to ask you if I’m right, because I
know
I’m right. And so do you. So why bullshit each other?”

The Indian was silent; he drank a great draft of his liquor and let his gaze drift back to the dance floor.

“Hold on a second,” said Freddie, seeing Vin staggering back toward them. He got up and peeled a twenty off the wad in his pocket, handing it to Vinnie as he approached.

“Injun Joe wants to treat you to a lap dance,” he whispered conspiratorially. “I wouldn’t say no, if I were you.”

Vinnie looked over Freddie’s shoulder with a touch of concern, then smiled. “Well, business is business. Which girl?”

Freddie shrugged. “Player’s choice.”

“Now, I know you’re on to something, and I don’t know what it is,” Freddie continued, retaking his seat. “But it’s big, that’s obvious. The way I look at it, the only reason you said shit to me is that you correctly recognized that I’m the type of guy who can help you get it.”

“I was drunk,” reiterated the Indian, still focused on the dancer.

“You’re drunk now,” said Freddie, and the Indian laughed, turned away from the stage at last, and matched Freddie’s intense gaze.

“How do I know you can help me?” said the Indian.

Freddie nodded, happy with the turn of conversation. “Let me tell you who I am,” he said slowly, leaning forward. “I’m a problem solver. I make sure whatever is supposed to happen happens. When people have to go to jail, when nice restaurants need to burn down, when people have to get their hands broken or their heads kicked in or go bottom fishing in the Hudson, I’m the guy who sees to it that it happens.” He gave a cheery double thumbs-up sign to a grinning Vinnie, being led to a couch at the wall by an inhumanly busty blonde. “There is absolutely no trouble I can’t get you out of,” Freddie continued, “there’s nobody I can’t get to, and there’s nothing that has to be done that I can’t get done.
That’s
who the fuck I am.”

The Indian remained silent for a moment, drinking. Freddie marveled at the sheer quantity of crappy well liquor he’d downed…he put it at even odds whether or not the man could stand up.

“This has nothing to do with the casino deal,” said the Indian.

“Yeah, I know,” said Fred. “For the record, this is also not about the people I work for, or that drunk dipshit over there, or your bitch wife—no offense, but you told me the score—or anyone else. This is about you and me. You know what the score is; I’m going to make all the roadblocks disappear.” He paused. “Come on, I’m Old World. You have my word, we’re partners. Let’s figure it out together.”

The Indian slowly turned his eyes stageward again, where a somewhat prettier brunette, already down to a thong and a prayer, was thrashing entertainingly to the crashing percussion of Vicki Sue Robinson’s “Turn the Beat Around.” Freddie wondered if he’d somehow lost him, as the Indian remained silent, watching the flesh spin. Finally, though, he spoke.

“It
is
a treasure map,” he confirmed in a low tone, and Freddie leaned forward in his chair.

Just two dozen steps away, but completely out of hearing range thanks to the din, Vinnie observed their conversation with something like despair, helpless to intervene. The stripper, now completely nude, had straddled his lap and was busy whapping him in the face with her 44DD breasts, one after the other: left, right, left, right, to the beat.

“Okay, okay, sweetheart, that’s
enough,
” he ventured again between blows, craning his neck to try lip-reading whatever the hell was going down. “Come on, no shit—cut it
out.
”

She paused the action, sulking. “It’s part of the whap dance,” she pouted.

“Well, I don’t
want
it,” said Vinnie, straining to look past her. “Now couldja shut up a minute?”
Shit, shit, shit,
he thought.

“Fine,” she replied, angrily pasting him one more time in the jaw with her right jahoobie. “Fag.”

She lifted one leg casually off his lap, disembarking with petulant slowness; for Vinnie, this was the last straw. “Okay, just
get off,
” he hissed bitterly, trying vainly to clear his line of sight by giving her upraised pelvis a gentle shove.

“BAD TOUCHING!” she shouted at the top of her lungs, poking him in the chest. Within seconds a scowling, squinty-eyed meat mountain of a bouncer was plowing through the sea of guys toward Vinnie, like a bloated great white homing in on a tiny, bleeding piece of chum.

LOWER EAST SIDE
, 10:30
P.M.

Torrents of rain pelted the taxi as it slid left to right across the puddled tarmac and gently into the curb, bumping Jason awake as it shuddered to a stop.

“Where are we?” he asked sleepily, trying to peer out through the raindrop-crazed window.

“Second Avenue,” replied Nick, to his left, leaning forward to hand a crisply folded bill through the Plexiglas gate in the bulletproof driver-passenger firewall. “Receipt, please,” he said, unlatching his door.

“Why are we stopping?” Jason wondered, rubbing his eyes and trying to shake off the foggy buzz.

“I thought we’d get one more drink,” Nick replied, accepting his change. “The night’s still
kinda
young, anyway.”

“I don’t know; I’m pretty toasty,” said Jason, but Nick was already lurching out of the street side of the cab and into the rain; as the door slammed shut, Jason watched his friend do a half-crouch hustle across the street, an upraised arm protecting his perfect hair from the downpour until he could disappear into a doorway.

“Fuck,” he said, and fumbled for the latch on his own door. He stepped out of the cab and into a shin-deep puddle, where his legs failed him and he stumbled hard to his knees, throwing up a majestic splash mirroring the burst of pain that flared in his brain.

“Oh, for Chrissakes,” said the cabbie. “Couldja close the door?”

Leaning on the taxi for support, Jason staggered to his feet, slammed the door, and hobble-hopped across the street, soaked to the bone already and no doubt bleeding and fractured. At the far side, he followed his friend’s still-steaming trail through a wall of beaded strings and into the dry haven of the Rastaria.

The Caribbean-themed bar was one of their regular stops; Jason had been here literally dozens of times. The colorful, hole-in-the-wall first-date joint featured fine music, impressively overpriced drinks, and enough of a freak factor to coax blazing conversations out of the tiniest spark of commonality. Rastaria’s bar and restaurant were separated like island from water by a long, low “bamboo wall” of painted plaster, and only the funked-up, first-generation reggae—Bunny and the Wailers, Echo, some Marley for the tourists—bridged the two worlds. To the left as you entered, waitresses in bikini tops and Bermuda shorts buzzed around circular tables with thatched umbrella roofs; to the right, a room-length tiki bar rode along the long wall, whereupon curling plastic monkeys, little rubber whales, and other Hong Kong trinkets topped great goblets of red and orange flaming or frozen concoctions no Jamaican would be caught dead drinking.

It was along the bar, unsurprisingly, that Jason spotted Nick, now joined by Becky and J.D., drinking up a storm.

“Hey,” said Becky, spotting his approach. “Congratulations!”

“What’s this—a party?” Jason grinned.

“I took the liberty of inviting a few friends,” said Nick, casually dangling a twenty out over the bar, in search of service.

“What’s the occasion?”

“You quitting your job, dumbbell!” gushed Becky, obviously thrilled by the sheer decadence of declaring this worthy of celebration.

“Welcome to unemployment hell, my friend,” said J.D., turning from the bar with two tequila shots and handing him one.

Jason grinned at the familiar drawl, even as his heart sank. He was far too inebriated for the partying to proceed at this pace; already he was haunted by the ghostly image of his head framed by a toilet seat later.

This is going to take sound buzz management,
he realized, reaching for his glass. “Thanks,” he said, eyeing the oversize shot. “I guess I don’t exactly have to get up early tomorrow.”

“That’s the spirit,” said J.D. “Come taste the smoldering heart of old Mexico.” He drained his shot glass in a single smooth movement, an old West gunslinger, and set the empty upside down on the counter with a satisfying click.

“Paul’s here, too—he’s trying to get a table,” said Becky. “So, Jason, I want to hear all about it. What are you gonna do now?”

“I have no idea,” Jason replied, stalling his own shot. “I just know I don’t want to think about it tonight.”

“Amen to that,” said J.D. “I think that tequila’s aged quite long enough, my friend.”

Taking the hint, Jason took a deep breath. For all his weariness, he felt socked in and ecstatic.