Underworld

home near Third Avenue, where twenty or thirty men were smoking and talking.

'Maybe this is not a good idea,' Juju said.

'Just be sure you don't laugh.'

'What am I gonna laugh?'

'Show some respect,' Nick said. 'We want them to think we're family.'

Nick shoved him and they went into the viewing room. Women sat in folding chairs saying their beads and there were sofas against the walls, younger women looking strange in black, sealed away from knowing, with several small girls placed among them, grave and pale.

They went up to the casket and looked in. It was an old man with nostrils gaped wide and the hands of a carpenter or mason, copper fingers rough and notched.

'Here's your body. Soak it up.'

They knelt at the casket.

'He doesn't look that bad,' Juju said.

'I think they plucked his eyebrows.'

'I thought it would be different,' Juju said.

'Different how?'

'I don't know. White,' Juju said. 'The whole face chalk white.'

'They put makeup and grooming.'

'White and stiff, I thought.'

'He's not stiff, this man?'

'He could almost be asleep. If he slept in a suit.'

'So you're disappointed then.'

'I'm a little, yeah, disappointed.'

'Why don't you say it louder,' Nick said, 'so they can drag us out to the street and beat us to death.'

'This was a bad idea of yours.'

'We're supposed to have an envelope,' Nick said.

'This was a bad idea. What kind of envelope?'

'If we're family,' Nick said. 'A mass card or money.'

'I thought an envelope is when you get married. Not when you die.'

'An envelope is when you do anything. They're always doing envelopes.'

'This was a bad idea. I'm ready to leave.'

'Too soon. Say a prayer. Show them you're praying. Show them respect,' Nick said. 'Women in black dresses. We don't show respect, they tear us apart.'

In a corner of the poolroom a guy named Stevie hawked up a wad of pearly phlegm, called an oyster, and spat it down the neck of his Coke bottle.

Juju said, 'I ask you for a slug of soda, you do this?'

'Hey I didn't say no.'

'But you do this? You spit in it?'

'You asked for a slug. I'm saying. Take two slugs.'

Stevie cleared another oyster out of his throat and spat it into the bottle and handed the bottle to Juju.

'But you do this? You hack up this big thing, which you think nobody in his right mind's gonna drink from a bottle that has this big thing floating in there.'

'You want a slug. Hey. Take a slug. Take whatever.'

'So you're giving me your whole soda, you're saying. Take whatever. If I'm crazy enough to drink it.'

'What's mines is yours,' Stevie said.

Juju smiled falsely, a look with a mocking quality. Then he drank the whole thing down in one long slug. He followed with a small gassy belch and tossed the bottle back to Stevie.

Nick watched in admiration.

Later that night he took Mike the Dog out for a walk. He walked along the hospital wall and then went east through the empty streets. He stood across the street from the building where the woman lived. There was a bed in the front room, stripped of sheets, an empty bed cranked up, easy enough to see just to the right of the stoop, the curtains half drawn, a lamp lit nearby, and he stood there a while smoking.

When he got back with the dog, two men were coming down the poolroom steps. He thought he recognized one of them from the poker game and they came down the steps in a kind of rumble, making the dog back off.

Mike was alone, at the counter, doing his tally.

'Where'd you take him, to the men's room at Grand Central?'

Nick wagged a thumb at the men who'd just left.

'I know those guys?'

'I don't know. You know those guys?'

'Serious business, right?'

'I might as well tell you,' Mike said. 'You'll hear about it anyway.'

'What?'

'You remember the guy who sat by the door when we ran the games?'

'Sure. Walls.'

'Walls was not here the night of the holdup.'

'I thought that was interesting.'

'A number of people did. And a number of people who were here that night thought that one of the three holdup men.'

'Wait. They wore masks, right?'

'Could have been Walls. Mask or no mask. And of course Walls has not been seen since. So you can imagine the interest being shown in his whereabouts. Not to mention two of the players are very close,' Mike said, 'to the organization.'

'The organization. And now?'

'Walls has been seen.'

'Walls has been seen. They found him.'

'And he's shit out of luck. In a Puerto Rican grocery about a mile from here.'

'What's he doing in a Puerto Rican grocery?'

'Buying a green banana. Hey. How the hell do I know?'

Nick laughed. The news excited him. He found it satisfying even though he liked Walls, he admired Walls, based on the few words they'd exchanged that one time. They'd found him and killed him. He told himself to remember to get a paper first thing in the morning. It was bound to be in the papers, this kind of thing.

'He took your money too,' Nick said. 'Not just the cash on the table.'

Mike stood on a chair to turn off the TV, which was running without the sound.

'I'm not looking to celebrate,' he said. 'This is a thing it brings the wrong kind of attention. I have the precinct I have to keep greased so they don't close me down. The robbery was bad enough. This thing brings homicide detectives and reporters coming around.'

'How'd they do it?'

'How'd they do it. They shot him. Bang bang.'

'I know. But how? How many guys? What kind of weapons?'

Photograph of blood-streaked body with towel covering head for decency sake.

'They shoot anyone else? They get away in one car, two cars?'

'I don't know. I didn't ask.'

'He was armed, this Walls, when they shot him?'

'I don't know,' Mike said.

'They shot him in the head or what?'

'Nicky. I say all right. Go home and get some sleep.'