‘Got trouble,’ he started, and his voice went high-pitched at the end and I knew there was something he was excited about.
‘Trouble? Kinda trouble?’
‘Got skinned by some asshole Puerto Rican motherfucker for eight grand and change,’ Roberto said.
Slapsie pulled me up a chair and I sat down facing the fat guy. ‘Eight grand? What the fuck you talkin’ about? What Puerto Rican motherfucker?’
‘Puerto Rican motherfucker who skinned me for eight grand this morning,’ Roberto said. ‘That Puerto Rican motherfucker.’
‘Whoa there, slow the fuck down, Roberto. What the hell you talkin’ about?’
Roberto took several deep breaths. He murmured some Italian prayer under his breath. His shirt was black beneath the armpits and he smelled ripe like a sour watermelon.
‘Took a long shot on a mare that should’ve made it no further than the boneyard,’ he said. ‘Thing was nothing more than three pints of glue and a handbag. Took a thousand dollars and knew I had it made… dumb stupid motherfuckin’ Puerto Rican asshole wouldn’t know one end of a horse from the next. So anyways and whatever, I took the fucking bet, okay? I took the goddamned stupid fucking bet and the boneyard mule came in just before a pony that’d lost its rider halfway down the lane. Figured I had it made. Cut for Don Ceriano, cut for me, and we’s all happy as Larry for the weekend. Puerto Rican motherfucker comes down with his tab and claims an eight-to- one payback placing first in the line-up. I tells him he’s got a mouth full of shit and a head full of piss, and then in comes three of his asshole Puerto Rican motherfucker friends, and they got heat on them, one’s got a lead pipe and whatever the fuck. He shows me the ticket, and even my blind grandmother, may her soul rest in peace amen, coulda seen that they scratched out the name of the boneyarder and wrote in the name of the winning horse.’
I was watching Roberto with both my eyes going the same way. Roberto was family, as good as family got, but he had a reputation for varnishing the lies with a gloss of truth. He knew well enough that any lie around this place walked with mighty short legs, but that wouldn’t have stopped him hitting on the race winnings for a few grand. From what I could see he was telling the truth, and already my mind was asking premature questions.
‘So these assholes demanded a payback of eight grand, and shit I didn’t wanna die, Ernesto, I really didn’t wanna die today, so what the fuck was I gonna do? There was four of them and one of me, and you know I don’t move so fast these days, and they had heat and they had a freakin’ lead pipe, and it was right there in their eyes that they didn’t give one single scrawny rat’s ass about whacking me and taking everything I got.’
Roberto started blubbering then, shaking like Jell-O near a drum roll, and I gripped his shoulder and held it firm and made him look in my eyes and tell that what he was saying was the truth so help him God.
‘Sure as shit is brown and the Pope ain’t never got laid,’ he said.
‘It’s the fucking truth, Ernesto… those asshole Puerto Rican motherfuckers took eight grand off of me and Don Ceriano, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna do.’
‘Where’re they at, Roberto?’
He looked surprised. ‘Who?’
‘The goddamned Puerto Ricans, Roberto, who the fuck d’ya think I mean? Jeez, goddammit, Roberto, sometimes you are the dumbest motherfucker ever to walk the face of God’s green earth.’
‘The bowling alley down on southside, you know?’
I shook my head. ‘No, I don’t fucking know, Roberto. What bowling alley?’
‘Near Seventh and Stinson-’
‘I know where he means,’ Slapsie said quietly.
‘So I’m gonna go down there, Roberto, and I’m gonna find me some Puerto Ricans living the high-life with eight grand and change, and I’m gonna sort this thing out. But I’ll tell you once and once only… I go down there and you’ve pissed down my back and told me it’s rainin’ then I’m gonna come back and cut your goddamned pecker off and make you eat it, you get it?’
‘It’s true, all of it’s true,’ Roberto said, and then he started crying and blubbering again.
I stood up. I looked at Slapsie. ‘You come with me, and you,’ I said pointing to another of the crew. I turned back to Roberto. ‘I’m gonna leave one of the boys here to take care of you ’til we get back, okay? You try any weird shit and he’s gonna ventilate your fucking head, you understand?’
Roberto nodded. He nodded between one sobbing wretched sound and the next.
Me and Slapsie and the younger guy, kid with bad skin and crooked teeth called Marco who was related to Johnny the Limpet in some way or other – we took the car and headed southside. Slapsie drove, he knew the way, and within twenty-five minutes we’d pulled up outside some beat-to-shit bowling alley with a small greasy-looking diner attached to the side like a malignant tumor. Outside there was one teenager, couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen, and from the look of him he was as high as Vesuvius on some filthy-smelling shit these assholes always smoked.
I nodded at Marco. He got out of the car and walked straight towards the kid. A handful of words. The kid nodded and sat down on the ground. He pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, lowered his head until his chin touched his chest and he stayed there like a sleeping Mexican outside a five-dollar bordello.
Me and Slapsie came from the front of the car. Slapsie carried a baseball bat, a good solid wooden thing with a four-inch nail hammered through the head. See him coming like that and you’d piss your pants and reaffirm your belief in the baby Jesus. I smiled to myself. Adrenaline pumped like a jailhouse bodybuilder.
The door wasn’t locked. Me and Slapsie went through quietly. Could hear voices as soon as we were inside, that and the thunder of a bowling ball making its way down one of the lanes, the clatter of pins as the ball made its target, the whoops and hollers of three or four dumbass Puerto Rican motherfuckers who’d figured their luck was in when they took down Roberto Albarelli for eight grand and change.
They saw Slapsie first. The one nearest us couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. He looked for a second like someone had asked him to cut his own pecker off, and then he started screaming at us in Spanish. The second Rican came up behind him. He looked pissed, real pissed, and then the third one came, and the third one was reaching in back of his pants waistband for what could only have been his heat.
Slapsie was a big guy, big like Joe Louis, yet when he decided to run he ran like one of those small greyhound niggers, all stick-bones and painted-on muscles and not an ounce of fat to share around.
He came alongside the first guy and pushed him aside, the second one too, and then he let fly with his bat and caught the gun-puller in the upper arm with the four-inch nail.
Can’t remember a scream that ever sounded quite like that before or after. Later I figured it must have been the acoustics of that place, for the sound that erupted from his mouth was like some strange prehistoric bird. He went down like a bag of bricks and lay there for some time. Slapsie kicked him sideways into the bowling lane and he didn’t move. I don’t know whether he was out cold or frightened stiff, but whichever it was it was fine by me.
I approached the taller of the Ricans. In my hand I held a.38, just loose at my side but enough so they both could see it.
‘Eight grand and change, please,’ I said.
The taller one looked at me kind of weird. I shot him in the left foot. He went down silent, didn’t even utter a sound, and but for the scrabbling of his foot on the glossed surface of the floor you wouldn’t have known he was there.
‘Eight grand and change, please… and don’t make me ask you again or you’ll be leaking out through a hole in your fucking head.’
The shorter one made a move. Slapsie had him gripped by the back of his neck before he went a foot.
‘You wanna play a ball or two?’ I asked Slapsie.
Slapsie grinned. ‘Sure… ain’t played this shit for years.’
‘Put his head in there,’ I told Slapsie, and Slapsie dragged the kid across the floor and pushed his head down into the bowling ball return chute. I could hear him screaming. Sound echoed out from the chute like he was calling me long-distance from Poughkeepsie.
The first ball Slapsie threw went like a rocket along the lane and would’ve broken any number of pins had his aim been any good.
‘Throw like a bitch,’ I said, and Slapsie laughed.
