“What kind?”
“Guys that have been Inside, women on the track.... I don’t know ... maybe you’re right. I could talk to anybody I wanted, probably.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“Have a woman, talk to a man, be around people and not have them know about me.... I did it when I went out to see Norden but that’s not because I fit in. I was invisible to those people. In Times Square, they all knew. And when they don’t.... You believe that three punks tried to take me off in a parking lot on the Island?”
“Heeled?”
“No!” he snorted. “Three punks and one little knife between them ... and I’m
“Jesus! They must of been...”
“They just couldn’t see, kid,” Wesley explained. “I could walk right up to them and they’d never know ... but I couldn’t talk to them.”
“The women ... maybe I could...”
“No. I left that ... I left it in the jail, or maybe before.”
“You could get it back.”
“It would cost too much now—what would I do with it? I know what I have to do ... just not
“I don’t know either,” the kid said.
“Well, you better fucking find out. Carmine sent me to the library to find out
“I haven’t had a woman since I moved in here.”
“You better stay in touch with that too, kid. Stay in touch; stay close to it all. After I go, you don’t want to be all alone.”
“Wesley...?”
“Carmine and Pet were always together, right? I was alone until I had them. When Carmine checked out, he left Pet behind. And Pet left me behind for you, right? When I go, you’ll be alone ... and we don’t have enough bullets for them all, kid. It was all for fucking nothing unless you can make it happen—I know that now. I came out to avenge Carmine. I did that. Why aren’t I dead and home with him?”
“I don’t know, but...”
“Pet wouldn’t have gone unless he knew that I was okay to leave. I can’t go either until you are.”
“I’m not ready ... you’ve still got stuff to show me.”
“Show you what? I’ve taught you just about everything I know about how to kill.”
“But...”
“But there has to be something more, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s the mystery, kid. The part I don’t know about. But I’m going to figure it out before I leave.”
“Politics?” the kid asked.
“Politics? I don’t know. I know this—when I was overseas I learned some things. Say it takes thirty grains of rice a day to keep a man alive ... what happens if you give him forty grains?”
“He’s happy?”
“Enough not to kill you, anyway. What happens if you give him twenty grains?”
“Then he comes for you.”
“Okay, sure. But why the fuck should he spare your life for thirty lousy grains of rice? Why shouldn’t he want the whole thing for himself and grow his
“People own land....”
“Is that right? And where’d they get it from?”
“They bought it?”
“From who? You keep going back far enough, kid, what you find out is, they fought for it.”
“So?”
“So why don’t the sorry motherfucker getting the thirty grains of rice fight for it too?”
“The law—”
“Was written by the motherfuckers who got the land
“Yeah. And they got the police and the army and everything else to protect that land.”
“That isn’t all, kid. What you think the Welfare Department is all about? Or the fucking methadone ... any of that giveaway shit?”
