“Cruz?” Fingers said, to make sure they were on the same page.
Moss raised his eyebrows, as if to say, “Who else?”
“That’s probably why he works alone, right?” Fingers said.
Moss motioned to the waitress. “Well, he ain’t working alone on this job. If he’s gonna act this way, he might need a talking to.” He cracked his mighty knuckles for emphasis. The waitress, a blond with a young, firm body, and a face and voice that were middle aged from years of smoking, came over.
“Darling,” Moss said, “may I have a cup of coffee and a dessert menu? Any time you get a moment.”
Over his apple pie with whipped cream on top, and two cups of coffee, Moss half-listened as the little monkey chattered away. Hell, let the boy talk. He was just working out his nerves before the job.
“You know what it is?” Fingers said, talking low and fast, glancing around between every statement to see who was looking. “It’s this: I like killing people. That’s why I feel like I got the best job in the world, you know? I go out on a mission, and I know we’re gonna do somebody, I’m like right there, man. I’m ready. I look forward to it.”
That’s how the monkey sometimes talked. He called them “missions.”
“Look at this fucking hand,” Fingers said. He held up the hand with the three missing fingers. He touched his pinky to his thumb, rapidly, three times, like a crab with its pincers. The hand was permanently discolored, an angry lobster red.
“I like this hand. You know why? Because it’s a war wound. I ever tell you how I fucked up this hand?”
Of course he had. Probably three times. But here it came again.
“I blew it up, see? I had a fucking bomb in my hand. And it blew up.” He pointed at Moss with the angry red pinky. “But that’s the kind of life I lead. Action. Everybody should lead such a life. I like to go out on missions where I know there’s gonna be some action.”
“What do you think of this job?” Moss said.
Fingers shrugged. “Retrieval duty. Whatever. I don’t really like it, but I don’t criticize. It looks like a boring one. But you know, maybe we’ll see some action. Who knows? You know, I do what I’m told – I steal a car, whatever – and I shut up about it.”
The fingers of his good hand drummed on the table.
Moss sipped his coffee. Retrieval duty. He didn’t mind it. Money was money. No fuss, no muss. Pick up the old man, find out what he did with the money, and get it back if possible. Then bring the old boy down to New York, with the money or not.
The money.
The money, the money, the money.
The dossier said the old boy had killed Roselli and made off with $2.5 mil from the fat man’s safe. Moss mused on this for a moment. He had met Roselli a few times when Moss was bouncing at the club on Bell Boulevard in Queens, knocking around the college boys when they got out of hand. The fat man used to come in there, sometimes alone, sometimes with a couple of guys from his crew, sometimes with a fake tit platinum blonde on each arm.
He had wagged a fat finger at Moss one time. “When I talk, you listen. Understand? When I say jump, you jump.”
He had said this to Moss. To Moss! Didn’t he realize Moss could snap his neck with one hand?
Moss snorted. Roselli was a fat, bossy fuck with a big mouth. Sooner or later, he might have killed the man himself.
In any case, this trip wasn’t about Roselli. Nobody missed Roselli. This trip was about don’t fuck around, and give us back the money you took. The money was the reason there were three of them on this job. One man, on his own, might stumble upon all that money – it was just too tempting.
Moss waved it away. He made plenty of money. The way he saw it, he exchanged his time and his peculiar talents for a high standard of living. He lived alone in a big three bedroom condo in Long Beach, a place he hadn’t been back to in the past month. He had ten suits and fifteen pairs of shoes. He owned a big damn Hummer H2 which he almost never had the opportunity to drive. He had silk shirts and silk sheets. He was busy and that suited him fine. On rare days when there was no work, all he did was he sat on the beach and watched the waves crash. At night, he went to the clubs, sucked down the booze, and threw money away on the whores. He spent big money, and you know what? He could live this life forever.
He wasn’t about to risk all for a one-time grab at the brass ring. Not even thirty yet, and he had already put too many dumb fuckers out of their misery for trying exactly that. He knew, he knew: it was a dumb play. You don’t get away with it. It was a lesson the old boy was about to learn in spades.
And Cruz?
Moss didn’t like that fucker. He didn’t like that pocked up face or those beady little eyes. He didn’t like the way he talked down to you, like he was above it all somehow. Cruz was getting old himself. To Moss, he seemed like a guy about to take a fall.
And that was good.
“What do you think, slim?” Moss said to Fingers. “Is it time to get ourselves some wheels or what?”
“Travis, you get down off that goddamn tree!”
From his perch on a white plastic chair on the back porch of Darren’s single-wide three bedroom trailer, Hal had an ample view of the wreckage of his friend’s life. The trailer sat on cinderblocks, surrounded by thirty similar trailers in a house park optimistically named Metro Gardens.
Hal mused on the name. There was nothing metropolitan about this place, and there were no gardens in evidence. The lot was hard-packed earth, with thick bushes along the edges of the property, and the Androscoggin River just past them, close enough to bring the mosquitoes in the spring and summer. The bushes served to obscure the river and the ancient, decaying factory on the other side.
The property was fenced along the river, so the kids from the trailer park wouldn’t be tempted to ford their way across and break into the abandoned factory. Nothing but trouble over there. Nine year-olds smoking pot. Thirteen year-olds having sex. Rejects, maniacs and predators of all kinds would haunt a spot like that. Nobody in this trailer park would want their kids going over there. But it did no good. Hal could see two gaping holes in the fence right from here.
He took a slug of beer and chased it with a sip of Jack Daniel’s. He shrugged his big shoulders. In any case, on a cool October day like today, the skeeters were all gone, and it was still just warm enough to sit out and barbecue back here. Darren had gone back inside to replenish the little six-pack cooler from whence they took their beers.
While Hal waited, the sun went down across the open trailer park from him. In the fading light, he watched Darren’s three kids, ages nine, eight and four, and Darren’s wife Lynn. Lynn, never particularly attractive, had reached her mid-thirties, and was becoming fatter, more sallow, and ever more disagreeable by the day. Come to think of it, that last child, the four year old, was probably a trap set by Lynn – she hadn’t worked since the first one was born, and one more child had put the final nail in the coffin of Darren’s dream that she might ever get another job.
The kids raced around the lot with all the other trailer trash children, shouting and screaming. Travis, the eldest, was the offending tree climber. Lynn stood by a circular clothes hanger, smoking cigarettes and talking with two other mommies going to seed. Now and then, she would turn her attention to the kids and unleash instructions or abuse, depending on what the situation warranted.
Living in a trailer with three kids and Lynn. Man. Not for the first time, Hal reflected that his friend Darren was like a flashlight without a battery. He had worked low-paying, back-breaking shit jobs his entire life. This is where he had ended up. Without Hal’s influence, Lynn would probably be the extent of Darren’s sex life, and he wouldn’t have an extra dime to put in his pocket.
Darren was being sucked under. Lynn spent what she could, and Hal knew, was constantly critical – where
