what’m I tryna say? The importance of business ethics.”
The boys didn’t look happy to hear it.
“How can you say that, Saul?” said Freedy.
“Mr. Medeiros,” said Saul.
“How can you say that?” said Freedy, compromising by dropping the Saul; at the same time glancing at the window, hoping to gauge the distance to the ground. Surprisingly far from upstairs at Ronnie’s: that would be the fucking slope to the river, why Ronnie had that basement with the weights, why they were friends.
“How can I say what?”
“Ethics. When you’re the one that called the cops.”
Saul and his two boys all wrinkled their foreheads. “What the fuck are you talking about?” said Saul.
“The statie over at my place right now is what I’m talking about.”
“Nothin’ to do with me,” said Saul. “Never called a cop in my life, never will, except for setting up a payment or some other legitimate business purpose.” The boys nodded their heads. “So don’t question my ethics. You’re the one broke the laptop agreement.”
“The laptop agreement?”
“You forgot?” said Saul. “Forgot we talked about laptops, you and me? Then all of a sudden-no laptops. Okay. I’m reasonable. If there’s no laptops, there’s no laptops. Supply don’t meet demand. Happens all the time-why you got scalpers. But if it turns out there is laptops all along, is laptops but I’m gettin’ some bullshit story there isn’t laptops, then what’s a reasonable, ethical businessman s’posta do?”
“There were no laptops,” Freedy said.
“What’s that-some hallucination on the kitchen floor?”
The boys got a kick out of that one.
“There’s just the one,” Freedy said, “and it wasn’t for sale.”
“How come is that?”
“I was keeping it.”
“Getting into programming?” said Saul.
The boys liked that too.
“I needed it for research,” Freedy said.
“Research?”
“Nothing you’d be interested in. It’s a family matter.”
Pause. “Family.”
“Right.”
“Family,” said Saul, “is very funny coming from you.”
The boys nodded.
“What’s that mean?” said Freedy.
“Means we now come to the main event, laptops being like the undercard.”
“Lost me,” said Freedy.
“Don’t you worry-I’ll find you,” Saul said. “Refresh your memory-didn’t we talk about family, you and me? Or are you tellin’ me you forgot that too? Not surprisin’, your ma being a hippie cocksucker down at the old Onion. I done some checkin’, unnerstan’ why you might want to forget the importance of family. Forget family legends. Forget Cheryl Ann.”
Family legends? Cheryl Ann? And that wasn’t very nice about his mother. Was this some kind of Portagee shit? These people were stuck in the past, going nowhere, total losers. It pissed Freedy off to be in the same conversation with them. This was America, after all. “Is this some kind of Portagee shit?” he said.
The drumstick fell from Saul’s hand. “I hear you right?”
Freedy put his drumstick tidily in the ashtray by Ronnie’s bed. “I mean Christ almighty, Saul, Mr. Medeiros, whatever. Is that what this is all about? Portagee shit? Were you getting a piece of Cheryl Ann too? Or-” It suddenly hit him. “-or is it the new one, the schoolgirl from Fitchville South?”
Okay, maybe he wanted that last one back. But how did that work? How did you get things back? Besides, it was another one of his amazing insights. He could believe it, Saul and the sophomore, easy. So he said it. You had to be who you are, had to be who you are and make it work for you-right from the infomercials. Nothing wrong there. But jeez, that girl from Fitchville South: how could she do it with an old prick like that, hair on his nose? Freedy found himself smiling at the thought, shaking his head, maybe not the best time for that either.
Ronnie made a little noise in his sleep, coma, whatever it was, a relaxed sound, almost happy.
“Boys,” said Saul, not loud, almost a question.
“Now, Mr. Medeiros?” said the smaller one, Freedy’s size, or maybe a bit bigger, Freedy realized.
Saul stepped aside.
The boys came into Ronnie’s bedroom, reaching inside their satin jackets. They pulled out tire irons. ’Course, you had a wrecking yard, you had tire irons.
Freedy felt jacked right away, like he was full of andro, stoked on meth. Was he? He’d have to think about that later. Right now he had to deal with the boys. Just because you were big, just because you were strong, just because you dug beating the shit out of somebody, just because you weren’t afraid, none of that made you a fuckin’ leg breaker. What made you a fuckin’ leg breaker came from inside, and the boys didn’t have it.
Ronnie’s bedroom wasn’t big. It could scarcely contain Freedy, the boys, Ronnie and his bed. But that was neither here nor there, whatever that might mean. What was here and there was the smaller of the two boys, the one just a bit bigger than Freedy, moving in on him first. No surprise there: you expected the smaller guy to be quicker. He was quick, had that tire iron swinging sideways at Freedy’s head-smart, much harder to block than a high-low-had the tire iron swinging at him quick. But not crow-quick, and even crow-quick might not have been quick enough. Freedy ducked: takes some nerve to just duck, but it works. Didn’t even duck a lot, only the two or three inches necessary. The tire iron actually clipped his ponytail, for a moment floating free of gravity before his ducking head pulled it down.
The smaller big boy spun halfway around from the force of the missed blow. Freedy kicked him good and hard behind the knee; weak spot on most everybody. Freedy heard a cracking sound-that Thanksgiving sound, he felt like a kid again-and the smaller big boy went down.
Bit of a surprise at that point. The bigger big boy turned out to be just as quick as the smaller one, maybe quicker. He actually connected with the tire iron, actually made Freedy feel pain, shoulder temporarily out of service, maybe the arm too. Someone shouted: might have been Freedy. Then the big boy was on him, like a house. Three hundred pounds or more, saliva slobbering down, some growling: disgusting. Three hundred pounds on top, Freedy on the bottom, one arm not in tip-top shape. Oh, yeah: and the tire iron raised up high, cocked back, now coming down at his head. But what was this? Freedy felt something funny under his hand-left hand, but that was the only one working at the moment-almost as though some angel had put it there. His fingers closed around it-the goddamn KFC chicken bone, dropped by Saul, pig that he was, and gnawed on a bit. One end could almost be called sharp. That was the end that Freedy jabbed up with, up and up with his kind of quick, right up the nose of the bigger big boy, way, way up. The bigger big boy stopped whatever he was doing at that moment, whatever he was doing consciously. The tire iron left his hand, flew across the room, crashed into something; the bigger big boy fell on Freedy, lay there still.
The boys didn’t have it, not what it takes inside.
Problem was, while Freedy struggled to get out from under all that weight, he forgot about the one other guy in the room besides him who did have it inside, who was a fuckin’ leg breaker, as he should have kept in mind the whole time. Just because a guy is old and scrawny and has that sickening hair growing on the top of his nose doesn’t mean he hasn’t got it.
Saul Medeiros kicked him real hard in the balls. The look on his face when he did it was the genuine fuckin’ leg-breaker look. All the air left Freedy’s lungs, and there was no hope of getting more anytime soon. Uncle Saul reared back to give him another one. He wore filthy, oil-stained shit-kickers, what you’d expect down at the wreckers.
But at that moment, when things didn’t look so good, Ronnie came through for him. He sat up, squinting, and said, “Can somebody close the goddamn shade?”
Saul glanced at him, an expression on his face that might have amused Freedy at some other time. A glance that lasted for a second or less, but enough time for Freedy to dig down deep, start a sideways turn, lash out with
