Dangerous Boys, page 8
“What’s up?” he said in his typical baritone, directing it to Chuckie.
Chuckie held a finger up for him to wait then quickly looked over the pieces I was holding. “I got VCRs coming out of my pooper, fellas. These are nice, though, so I’ll take them. The components are very nice. Kyocera. And that’s a Bang and Olufsen table, definitely want that. Okay, yeah, we can do something here. Barney, take this shit and put it on my desk, then come back out and keep these nice young ladies company while I work some numbers.”
Without comment or acknowledging us, Barney took the stack of items from my arms and strode off toward the back where Chuckie’s office was. When he returned, Chuckie took the pillowcase from Aldo and carefully emptied it on top of the big box of blenders. This way there was no issue with what was in it. They’d both seen the items: a pile of jewelry and several pieces of fine silver from some sort of tea set.
Once Aldo nodded his approval, Chuckie swept it all back into the pillowcase. “I’ll be back in two shakes of a hobo’s dick,” he said, bouncing away to his office. “Everybody play nice while I’m gone, don’t make Daddy mad.”
Barney stood before us, arms folded over his chest, staring at us like we’d just peed on his leg.
Several fans were blowing on high and positioned all over the place, but it was still hot there, and I just wanted to get paid and get out. I lit a cigarette and took a couple deep drags while Aldo and Barney eyed each other with disgust.
“Ain’t seen you around in a while, Genaro,” Barney said after a moment. “What you been up to? Still blowin’ fishermen for twenties down Weld Square?”
“Yeah, worked the same corner with your mother last night. She said to give her a call, never hears from you anymore. I think that’s what she said, anyway. She was taking this giant black cock in the ass and another one in her mouth at the time so it was hard to understand her. You know how it is.”
Barney’s droopy eyes slid toward me. “Hell you lookin’ at, Lionetti?”
“Fuck’s your problem, man?” I snapped. I was tired, sore, disgusted, hot, and not in the mood for his or anybody else’s bullshit. “We’re just doin’ some business here, all right? Cool out.”
“Cool out,” he scoffed. “Listen to this fuckin’ guy.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Calm down, Mary.”
“How about you make me, fuck-head?” I dropped my cigarette to the cement floor and stepped on it. Aldo moved in front of me before I could get any closer to him.
The slightest twitch of a smile curled the corner of Barney’s mouth. “Let him come, Genaro. Anytime, tough guy. Fuckin’ guinea faggots are all alike. Bigger balls than brains.”
Aldo turned toward him, still between us, and responded before I could. “Now that’s some funny shit,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder at me. “This fuck talkin’ about brains. Hell would you know about brains, Barney? Only guy senior year with a wife and three kids.”
“One of these days, Genaro, it’s gonna be you and me.”
“Now’s good. I’m here now.”
Barney stared at him, said nothing.
“Oh, that’s right,” Aldo said. “You don’t do so much as scratch that pimple you call a dick unless Chuckie tells you to. I forgot. He told you to stay and you’re staying. What a good boy.”
Everybody remained quiet for a few minutes.
When Chuckie came back, he had cash in hand. “Okay, I can definitely move that jewelry, and I can melt those silver pieces down. Silver’s high right now, getting good prices for it. I can go twenty-five hundred. Cash moe-nay, ya filthy cowfuckers.” He held out the pile of cash, but Aldo left it hanging there. “Problem-o?”
“Can’t go an even three, huh?”
“If I could go an even three, I’d have an even three in my hand.”
Aldo took a deep breath, let it out slow. “How’s twenty-eight sound?”
“Like three hundred more than twenty-five.”
“Tell you what. I’ll take twenty-seven.”
Chuckie dropped his hand to his side and seemed to think about it a minute. “I can maybe go twenty-six, but that’d be it. That don’t work, gonna have to tell you to screw on this one.”
“You got air conditioners?”
“Do I have air conditioners? I’m Chuckie D, of course I have fucking air conditioners.”
“Well, Richie here needs one.”
“Okay, but let’s wrap this first. I’ll go twenty-six, cool?”
“How much them air conditioners run, Chuckie?”
“Depends what size you want, I got two kinds. Big ones and little ones.”
Aldo looked at me. “What size you want?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “What’s the difference?”
“You want to cool off a room or a whole apartment?” Chuckie asked.
“Whole apartment, I guess.”
“Then you want the big one. See how that works?” He rolled his eyes. “Six bills, retail. For you, a buck and a half.”
“Tell you what,” Aldo said. “You give us the twenty-five in cash and one of them big-ass air conditioners, and we’ll call it even, yeah?”
Chuckie nodded. “Yeah, all right. That’ll work.”
“Cool.” Aldo took the cash and pocketed it without counting it. He knew Chuckie would never stiff us, and counting it out would be seen as a sign of disrespect. “Good deal.”
“Barnabas,” Chuckie said, fiddling with his nose, “go get me an A/C.”
Barney turned and disappeared between the rows of boxes.
“How’s your uncle?” Chuckie asked Aldo.
“Mean as a motherfucker.”
“Tell him I said hello next time you see him, huh?”
“Sure, no problem.”
Barney returned carrying a large box, put it down at my feet, then moved back behind Chuckie and assumed the same stance he’d had before.
Aldo and I both shook hands with Chuckie, made sure to give Barney a couple dirty looks, then took off with our cash and an air conditioner still new in the box.
We all stood around Ma’s IROC, outside Aldo’s place, a small cottage in the woods of Westport he rented from his uncle, about ten minutes outside the city. Counting out the cash, Aldo divided it up into little stacks for each of us. Even though Petie wasn’t on this job, he got a cut the same as the rest of us. It’s how we did things. How we’d always done them. When one of us got paid on a job, we all got paid. Ray-Ray was the only one who didn’t enjoy that perk, because while he was a good friend, and we had his back and he had ours, he wasn’t really a member of our core group. On this one, everybody got four hundred and fifteen bucks. The extra ten dollars went to Aldo. As leader, he always took whatever overages existed once things were divided equally, the figures rounded up or down to make it easier. Besides, what kind of assholes stood around tossing coins and busting balls over a quarter here or a dime there?
After a few minutes of shooting the shit, Ma, Ray-Ray and Fritz took off, leaving me and my air conditioner alone with Aldo. We loaded it into the trunk of his car, a gunmetal gray 1976 Camaro he’d put a lot of work and money into, then sat on the front steps of his house. It wasn’t dark yet, more like dusk, and although we weren’t far from the city at all, it always felt like a whole other planet out this way. He’d only been living there a little over a year, but I’d been there a lot and always preferred it to hanging around in the city.
“Always so quiet here,” I said.
“Took me a while to get used to it. The whole yard and trees and shit, all the privacy. Couldn’t sleep at first without the sounds of traffic and all the other bullshit. But then I started likin’ it, kinda came around, you know? It’s peaceful.”
“Peaceful works.”
“Yeah, it’s good. I mean, the place is a shoebox and it’s older than dirt, but it beats a shitty apartment in some fucked up neighborhood in the city. No offense, but I already had enough of that to last me a lifetime.”
“Me too.” I lit a cigarette. “Candy out?”
“Yeah, she’s closin’ tonight, won’t be home until around nine-thirty, probably, so after I drop you off home I’ll go by Petie’s and give him his cash, make sure things are still calm with him and Tammy.”
“He’ll wet himself.”
“Always does.”
“Better get your ass back here and take a shower before Candy gets home,” I told him. “You smell like Catholic schoolgirl pussy.”
“Best kind.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Idiot who got you four hundred bucks and a free air conditioner today.”
“Just sayin’, you got a girl like Candy who loves you, and you treat her like shit and cheat on her every chance you get.”
“I don’t treat her like shit, I just don’t spoil her is all. You do that to a chick they start believing they’re so special their pussy’s lined with diamonds. Look how good you treated Mariana, and—”
“You really gonna bust my balls about her?”
“I’m just sayin’, you treated her like a princess. How’d that work out for you? If you treat them too good, chicks get comfortable and either bail on you or stick around and start breakin’ balls, tryin’ to change you and make you into some sorta version of them with a dick. Like some kinda…what do you call those guys with no balls?”
“Eunuchs.”
“Yeah. Eunuchs. I knew you’d know that, all the readin’ you do.”
“It’s just a word, Ally.”
“Well, it’s a word I don’t want anybody to think I am. I love Candy, I do, but things won’t always be like this, man. Who knows what could happen, today, tomorrow, next week? Remember that asshole guidance counselor, O’Brien? Where do you see yourself in ten years? Ten years. Only place I see myself is right now, man. Right here, right fuckin’ now. Figure even if I get lucky and don’t wind up dead or in prison, one day it’ll still be all over and I’ll have to stop runnin’ around anyway. I won’t always have all this hair, this look, this body. I live long enough, I’ll end up a fat, old bald-ass Italian fuck. Belly hanging down, dick all shriveled up, balls swinging down by my knees and shit. So fuck it, until then, I’m gonna have fun, and if that means I get a chance to lay somethin’ down like that sweet little piece of ass today, then trust me, I’m layin’ it the fuck down, man. Every time. Then I’ll come home and be with Candy and sleep like a baby, because I know it’s got nothin’ to do with her.”
“Hey, you don’t have to explain yourself to me, dude. I’m just sayin’ you should be careful. You lose Candy, you’ll never find another one like her.”
“She ain’t goin’ nowhere. I make her cum so hard she says she sees Jesus sometimes.”
“Jesus?”
“The Christ.”
“That can’t be good.”
“It’s a religious experience, is what she’s sayin’. You know, it’s so good.”
“She sees Jesus you should probably call an ambulance, bro.”
“What can I say? My cock gives her near-death experiences.”
“Fuck makes you think I wanna hear this shit?”
“Doesn’t happen with the little quickies, only those big motherfuckers. You know, the ones where they shake and their eyes roll up in their heads? You touch them and they start vibratin’ all over the place, twitchin’ and shit, can’t talk, just lay there droolin’? First time she had one of those, I swear to God, I thought she was havin’ a fuckin’ stroke, scared the shit out of me.”
“Great. Next time she sees our Lord and Savior, tell her to tell Him I said what’s up.” I took a drag on my cigarette, exhaled through my nose. “So what’d you need to talk to me about? You know, besides your fuckin’ crank and your girlfriend’s magical twat.”
“My uncle wants us to come by and see him.”
“Us?”
“Yeah.”
“We in trouble?”
“Nah, just said he wants to discuss an opportunity with us.”
When someone like Aldo’s Uncle Lou said he wanted to see you, you went and got seen. We’d done small jobs for him before for a few bucks now and then, but usually Aldo went to see him alone first. I’d come in on it afterward, once things were set. Me going along for the initial rundown hadn’t happened before. Couldn’t figure out if that was good or bad.
“He give you any details?”
“Nope. He’ll get into it when we’re there.”
“You know anything else about it?”
“You know what I know.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“I’ll set it up.” He gave me a slap on the back. “Come on, let’s get out of here so you can get that air conditioner to your mom and I can get Petie his cash.”
I looked to the sky. Couldn’t see the sun anymore through all the haze, but it was still so hot I was sweating buckets. Part of me wished we could stay here for a while, go inside and play Aldo’s Atari or something. Anything but going back to the city, going home, and whatever the hell was waiting for me there. Never knew what kind of shape my mother would be in, if I’d find that prick Bronski sniffing around or God knows what else.
“You ever think about just takin’ off?” I asked.
“Where the hell am I gonna go, Richie?”
“Anywhere. Wherever. Just somewhere besides…here…”
“You all right?” he asked, brow furrowed. “What’s the hell’s the matter with you lately?”
I flicked my cigarette away and stood up. “Nothin’.” I forced a smile and wiped my sweaty hair out of my eyes and back off my forehead. “Just talkin’, that’s all.”
Aldo eyed me with suspicion. He’d known me a long time. “You sure?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Of course.”
But I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t even be sure at that point if it was him I was trying to convince or myself. Didn’t matter, I guess, long as one of us believed it.
The old black-and-white flick playing on TV when I got there was still on. With the end table lamp and ceiling fixture off, that same console set we’d had for years provided the only light in the living room, except for what little bit of daylight was still hanging on and seeping around the sides of the drawn window shades. The sound was turned down, but I recognized the movie. Key Largo. I’d seen it a few times before. Good one. Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Edward G. Robinson. I liked the old movies, and the local channel showed them every afternoon and early evening. At the beginning, the host, an older guy in a bad suit and hair dyed rubber-tire-black, introduced the films and shared trivia about the movies and stars. Midway point, during a commercial break, he’d be back, spinning a big drum full of cards viewers had sent in. He’d select one and announce the day’s winner. They’d have until the end of the movie to call in and claim their prize, which was usually either cash or a gift certificate to a local store. When the movie was over he’d come back on and tell the viewers if the winner called in or not. Either way, there’d be another drawing and more prizes the next day. Now and then they’d play a good one, but the movies usually sucked. Most people watched for the prizes. My mother sent a card in every month for years, but the sonofabitch never picked her name.
The movie was almost over, and the scene playing reminded me of the time I watched Key Largo with Aldo. He rooted for Edward G. Robinson, the bad guy, through the whole thing, and was pissed when Bogart killed him and saved the day. He always sided with the villains. Even when we watched wrestling, from the time we were kids, he cheered for the heels and booed the good guys.
On the couch, my mother stirred, coughed a little, and came awake.
“Hey,” I said, turning and crouching down next to her. She was still in her robe, but she’d kicked her slippers off. “You okay?”
She squinted, like she couldn’t quite see me. “Richie…what’s that noise?”
“It’s your new air conditioner, Mom. I set it up in the window.” I pointed to the far wall. “Left your bedroom door open, you need to do that when it’s running and it’ll cool off the whole place, okay?”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I told you I’d get one, didn’t I?”
She was weak, but tried to get up. When she couldn’t pull it off after two tries, I gently took her by the shoulders and sat her up. A bunch of empty beer bottles lay scattered across the floor, and her kit was on the table next to the couch. We both pretended not to notice.
“Wow, will you look at the size of that thing?” She squinted again. “It’s kinda loud, though, no?”
“The real powerful ones make a little noise. We’ll get used to it.”
“How did you—”
“It’s paid for. Fair and square, don’t worry.”
“Promise me you didn’t steal it, Richie. Promise me right now.”
“I promise.”
“You know it’s a mortal sin to lie to your mother. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know that. I’m not lying.”
She smiled and wiped some spittle from her chapped lips. “I can feel it already.”
“It’s cooler, right? I got it set so in a little while the whole place will be nice and cool. We’ll be able to sleep better now, huh?”
She took my hands in hers, gave them a squeeze, then pulled me in and kissed me on the cheek. “Thank you, sweetheart. You’re a good boy.”
Her hands were clammy. I gently put them back in her lap. “Did you eat?”
“No, I…” She rubbed her eyes. “Wait. What time is it?”
“Going on eight. Almost dark out.”
She reached over to the table for her cigarettes and lighter, nonchalantly tossing a tissue over the syringe, spoon and ashtray. “You’re never home before dark,” she said, pushing a cigarette between her lips with a shaking hand. “What’s the occasion?”
“I’m probably goin’ back out,” I told her. “I just wanted to get you set up and cooled down.”
“Why don’t you stay and we’ll have dinner together, huh? We haven’t done that in so long, Richie. We used to all the time when you were a little boy, remember?”
