The Burning Soul

his ankles.

‘You should have settled down like me,’ said Joey. ‘If you do it right, it removes the need for all that kind of nonsense, or most of it. Why don’t you pull up a chair and take the weight off your soles?’

Tommy stayed where he was. The gun hadn’t moved. It was still pointed at Joey, who was unarmed. There was no gun in his desk drawer. He had no call to have one. He was Joey Tuna, the go-between. When he had to be, he was Joey Tombs, the dispenser of justice, but it was justice that had been agreed upon beforehand, settled upon by wise heads. It was always the right thing to do.

‘This place hasn’t changed,’ said Tommy. ‘I think those may even be the same papers on your desk.’

‘There’s no cause to change what has always worked, Tommy. I make money. Until the downturn, we were even growing a little every year. We do things right here. We dot the i’s and cross the t’s. We’re so clean, the IRS is sure that we’re dirty. It was like that when I took over the business from my uncle, and God willing it will stay like that when I’m gone.’

He didn’t flinch as he spoke those words. He wasn’t going to give Tommy the satisfaction. Anyway, it wasn’t over yet. He might still talk the younger man around.

‘You remember when I gave you your first job here?’ he said.

‘I remember,’ said Tommy. ‘Cleaning up guts and scales and slime. I hated the smell of it. I could never get it off my hands.’

‘Clean work always smells dirty,’ said Joey. ‘Honest work.’

‘Sometimes dirty work smells dirty too. It smells of blood and shit. It smells like this place. I think you’ve been here so long that you’ve become confused. You can’t tell the difference anymore.’

Joey looked affronted. ‘You know, you were always a lazy bastard. You didn’t like hard work.’

‘I had no problem with hard work, Joey. My old man worked the piers, and my mother cleaned office floors. They taught me the value of honest labor. It was you who dangled the soft option in front of me, the promise of easier money.’

‘So you’re blaming me for what you’ve become? There’s a coward talking, if ever I heard one.’

‘No, I’m not blaming you. It wouldn’t have mattered who suggested it to me first, I’d still have turned. I was a kid. Stealing from trucks, breaking into warehouses – that was all second nature to me. Still, you opened the door. You showed me the way. I was always going to fall, but you were the one who gave me the push.’

Joey reddened. He licked at his lips, and the fighter in him was revealed. Under other circumstances, he would have been rolling up his shirt sleeves by now and balling his meaty fists.

‘I looked out for you too,’ he said. ‘Don’t you forget that. When you overstepped the line, when you got above yourself, I stopped them from hurting you. There were men who wanted to break a hand, a leg. That bastard Brogan wanted to blind you for dealing on the side, but I spoke up for you. I told them you were ambitious, that you could make something of yourself with the right guidance. You got off lightly: a bit of a beating, when it could have been much worse. And when they were done, I gave you the space to work. It was the making of you. I was the making of you. When Whitey thought you were a threat, I talked him down. You’d be rotting under Tenean Beach or in a shallow grave by the Neponset River if it wasn’t for me. I told him you were sound. I told them all that you were sound. I gave them my word on it, and no more could a man ask for than the word of Joey Tuna. It was always sound. You judge a man by his soundness, Tommy. You know that.’

‘And are you looking out for me now, Joey? Do you have my best interests at heart.’

‘You’re in trouble. You’re vulnerable. It’s when a man is vulnerable that temptation comes knocking. There are people who want to know that you’re sound, that’s all. A sound man has nothing to fear. So they came to me. They always come to Joey Tuna. I bear no grudge and no man bears a grudge against me. Both sides can always sit down in safety when Joey Tuna is involved. It’s been that way for forty years.’

‘Like you said, why change what’s always worked, right?’

‘That’s right. Never a truer word spoken.’

‘So why change now? I don’t see a neutral man here.’

‘I have everyone’s best interests at heart, Tommy. All we wanted to do was talk with you, clear the air.’

‘Is that why Oweny’s boys have been looking for me, to clear the air? I never took them for the conversational kind. Most of them can’t put two words together without stumbling or swearing.’

‘You’ve been keeping your head down, Tommy. People were worried. They didn’t know where you were. You could have been lying dead in a ditch by the side of the road.’

‘I could have been sitting in the Federal Building, you mean, spilling my guts like a fish on one of your blocks.’

‘People were concerned. They just wanted to be sure.’

‘That I was sound.’

‘Exactly, that you were sound. I knew you were, Tommy. I told them so. I said to them, “Tommy Morris is sound. I’ll prove it to you. I’ll bring him in, and we’ll talk, and you’ll see the kind of man he is: a sound man.” I came looking for you, Tommy, but I couldn’t find you. When that happens, well, you can’t blame someone for being concerned.’

‘So you enlisted Oweny’s boys to help you.’

‘Oweny has his own questions for you. He wants to buy you out. He wants to do it right.’

‘Is that so?’

‘You know it. Oweny’s sound too. Always has been. Just like you. Two sound men.’

‘Oweny, sound? If Oweny was a fish you wouldn’t feed him to birds. He was always a traitorous little shit. You know that Oweny’s boys kicked down the door of a friend of mine? Two nights ago. They roughed her up. She lost teeth. They wanted to know where I was, but she couldn’t tell them. I hadn’t been to see her in weeks. I was keeping my distance from her to protect her, and look what happened.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Joey. ‘A man should only raise a hand to a woman as a last resort.’

‘Funny thing is, I didn’t think that Oweny knew about her. I’d been very careful. I’ll bet you knew about her, though. You know everyone’s affairs. That’s why you’re the man to turn to, because you have your finger on the pulse.’

Joey laid an index finger on his desk, the pulse finger itself, and tapped it hard on the wood to emphasize each word as he spoke: ‘People. Were. Concerned! You weren’t going to come in of your own volition. You had to be made to come in.’

‘Is that why they took my niece?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I told your boy Martin the same.’

‘She’s my sister’s girl. She lives in a quiet little town, far away from any of this. Did you find her? Did Oweny find her?’

There was something in Tommy’s tone, a kind of madness, as he spoke about his niece, that sent a deep ache of fear through Joey’s belly, as though Tommy, knowing that he himself was doomed, had fixed upon the girl as his salvation. Joey had seen it before in men who were about to die. They began obsessing upon a friend, a parent, a picture in a wallet, a Miraculous Medal, anything to keep out the reality of what was coming.

‘We don’t kidnap little girls, Tommy. That’s not our style.’

‘Yeah? Since when?’

‘Jesus, Tommy, what do you think we are, pedophiles? Deviants? Oweny doesn’t have her. People don’t do that, not to their own, not sound people. They just wanted to talk. If they had the girl, they’d have let you know. A message would have been sent, and then the girl would have been allowed to go home once you’d come in. Our people wouldn’t behave any other way. We’re not like the Russians. We’re not animals.’

Tommy nodded. The gun wavered in his hand. Joey saw his advantage, and pressed it.

‘Come on, now, Tommy. Put the gun away and we’ll forget about this. I’ll make some calls. I’ll let everyone know they can relax. I’ll tell them that Tommy Morris is as sound as he ever was. Sound as a bell, eh, Tommy? Sound as a bell.’

Tommy began to button the overalls. They were too small for him, and he struggled with the buttons, but he didn’t look down.

‘And the meet? The sit-down where Oweny didn’t show but you did? Martin seemed to think that a message was being sent.’

‘A message? Sure, Tommy, there’s always a message. The message was that you should come in and clear all this up, put people’s minds at rest. Now you’ve had it from the horse’s mouth.’