‘I know exactly what I’m saying. Seven years from now I’ll be waiting at the gate and you’ll be married to money.’
‘Frank, what is wrong with you? You want me to be the bad guy? Okay, I’m the bad guy. You want to hit me now? Will that help? What do you want to do to me? What do you want, Frank?’
Slattery sits silent, his thick neck red.
Naturelle stands up and smooths the wrinkles in her silver dress. ‘When you see Monty, tell him I went home. Tell him I’m waiting for him there. And Frank? If you remember this conversation tomorrow, if you get the urge to send me flowers, or call up and apologize? Don’t.’
Slattery watches her walk away. He watches the dreadlocked men intent upon their impossible chess game. He watches his hands, sitting open on his lap, meaty-palmed, crook-fingered. This way is better, he tells himself. This way there won’t be any temptations.
Nineteen
If you transported a man from the Middle Ages into this nightclub, thinks Jakob, he would surely believe himself damned to hell, imprisoned among a swaying horde of ill-lit souls who wet the dance floor with their sweat, boys and girls and girls and boys, no couples, everyone dancing together or everyone dancing alone.
We are in hell, thinks Jakob. The great bad kiss has sobered him and given him an immediate hangover, his tongue dry and heavy, his stomach dyspeptic, his skull throbbing in time with D. J. Dusk’s bass line. He needs to speak with someone, to confess his crime, to come up with a plan, but he’s sure nobody here can help him. Slattery won’t pay attention, or else will laugh and make a joke of it. Monty won’t understand the problem. Naturelle? Naturelle will think I’m a pervert. And why should they care, anyway? They have more important things to worry about than a stupid, stupid kiss.
He asks a bouncer where the telephones are and the giant, never looking at Jakob, unfolds his arms, gestures vaguely with a long finger, refolds his arms. Jakob finally finds the phones in a narrow corridor across from the bathroom marked XX, a cute touch he would normally find aggravating but now scarcely notices. A line of women snakes out the door, most of them slouched against the wall, resting their feet and inspecting the ash on their cigarettes.
Jakob picks up the nearest phone and shudders as the receiver comes free in his hand, the chrome-encased wire dangling like a severed umbilical cord. He carefully replaces the receiver in its cradle and moves to the next phone, deposits two quarters, dials Brooklyn.
LoBianco picks up on the eleventh ring. The only man Jakob knows who has never bought an answering machine.
‘Anthony? It’s Jakob. Were you sleeping?’
‘They’re playing Shane. I must have seen this movie forty times, and it still gets me. Alan Ladd was a bit of a fattie, wasn’t he? A bit of pork on him. Different times. Women used to like their men meaty. You know what I realize, watching this? Jack Palance is the real star. Look at those eyes. He looks more like a snake than a snake looks.’
‘I really need to talk with you.’
‘You are talking with me. That’s what we’re doing. We’re talking.’
Jakob looks at the line of women propped against the wall, exhausted suspects waiting to be fingered by a witness behind one-way glass. ‘I did something really stupid just now. Can you pay attention for a minute? Are you drunk?’
‘What have you done?’ asks LoBianco, perking up. ‘Have I inspired you? Have you crossed to the other side?’
‘What?’
‘Let me guess. It was a kiss.’
Jakob drops his forehead onto the plastic partition separating the telephones. ‘Yes.’
‘Oh-ho, oh-ho, well, this is cause for celebration, my boy. I think I deserve a little credit, no? For my prod. My little push. Just a little push in the right direction. It’s often that way. It’s like jumping into the deep end; you need your father there, you need someone to goad you on. So who was this boy, mm? Where did you meet him?’
‘What are you talking about? I kissed Mary D’Annunzio.’
‘Mary D’Annunzio?’
‘I’m in a nightclub and I was drunk and she’s drunk or stoned or whatever and . . . okay? I kissed her. I kissed Mary D’Annunzio.’
‘Who?’
‘D’Annunzio! Jesus, Anthony, you taught her in the fall. Mary D’Annunzio!’
‘The little raven-haired actress? Ah. Well, it’s a roundabout way of getting there, but maybe that’s best.’
‘Anthony, are you hearing me? I kissed a student of mine!’
‘On the cheek? A chaste peck on the cheek?’
‘Open mouth. And I might have touched her breast.’
Jakob looks up and sees the line of waiting women intently listening to his conversation. A girl with red pigtails waggles her eyebrows. ‘Hubba hubba,’ she says.
‘Anthony?’ Jakob whispers into the phone, turning his back on the women.
‘You’re not supposed to do that, you know,’ says LoBianco.
‘Yes, thank you, I’m aware of this.’
‘I wouldn’t panic. She’s not the type to rat you out. It would go against her whole ethos. She’s a passionate little girl, she reads Guevara’s Guerrilla Warfare, she won’t blab to the authorities.’
‘That’s . . . I don’t know. I can’t believe I did this.’
‘Give me a moment, the ice has melted.’
Jakob peeks over his shoulder and the pigtailed girl grins at him. He buries his face in his shirt and listens to the sounds of gunfire coming over the telephone line.
‘Still there, my boy? Ah, that’s it for Palance. He was quick, though. He nicked Ladd with a forty-five, but Ladd’s too much man for one bullet. Oops. Look what I’ve done. The thing about vodka, Jakob, the thing to remember: it never stains. There we go.’
‘So what should I do? Should I talk to her? Apologize? Pretend nothing happened?’
‘Woman trouble. Always seemed like such a mess, that whole field. My father was a great playboy, a great lover of women. And what did he ever get? My mother. And then me. Serves the bastard right.’
Jakob bangs his head against the partition and waits, holding the receiver down by his hip. Finally he lifts the phone again and speaks with as much calm as he can muster. ‘Anthony, please.’
‘Say this for him, though: he was terrifically fertile. He couldn’t unzip his fly without making somebody pregnant. According to neighborhood legend, illegitimate LoBiancos litter the five boroughs. I’m rumored to have a mulatto brother in Flatbush.’
‘Nobody uses the word mulatto anymore.’
‘No? Half-breed? Well, regardless, all that loving got him nowhere. He mounted one filly too many and that was the end of him. Something popped in his brain. Spent his last six months drooling while my mother sat in the corner, knitting. The greatest sweaters she ever made. There they were, drooling and knitting, Antonio in the bathroom masturbating. The All-American Family. Took Dad six months to get it right, to finish the job. He was a big man before. The bed used to look small with my father in it. But after the stroke the bed kept growing and growing, until it swallowed him up.’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Jakob. ‘I don’t—;’
‘And then he was dead. A little dead man draped in a giant’s skin. Six months after I die they’ll come up with a cure for death. I read about it. They’ll make you drink this goop, and in the goop are ten million robots the size of your cells. And the robots will go swarming through your body, destroying all the bad things. It’s coming, Jakob. Death is a rotten idea and some bright boy will end it. They’ll have to murder all the rabbits in the world, testing the goop. But if it’s to save somebody’s daughter, and it’s always somebody’s daughter, then fuck the rabbits. Let them grow thumbs and war on us.’
‘Listen—;’
‘I can’t tell a story straight, can I? That’s my problem. I hate straight stories. My father, my father, he’s the star. One of his mistresses had the audacity to show up at our apartment, a few days before the end. My mother was very disturbed at how ugly
she was. Oh, she had the face of a fiend. But everyone was very polite, and drank coffee, and watched Dad drool. And later Mother said, “Can you blame the girl?” and I thought she meant, for being ugly. Of course I could. I blamed the ugly woman for being ugly, and the dying father for dying, and the kind-hearted mother for mothering. Everyone is equally responsible for the shit they bring into the world.’
Jakob holds the receiver to his ear and says nothing.
‘You understand, my boy? I can’t help you. And you can’t help me. Nobody can help anybody.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
‘The trouble with this world,’ says LoBianco, ‘is it has nothing to do with what people believe.’
Jakob’s face grows hot; he feels the anger surging through his body and he welcomes it – a pure, clean anger burning away the complexities, the shame and self-loathing and fear.
‘And the trouble with that philosophy,’ Jakob says, speaking very quietly but enunciating each word carefully, ‘is you end up by yourself, drinking bad vodka and watching late-night movies and not giving a shit about anyone.’
‘Yes. Well, that’s true too.’
‘Good night, Anthony.’ Jakob hangs up the phone and walks away, the pigtailed girl whistling in his wake.
Twenty
‘So?’ asks Kostya, grinning. ‘You like her?’
‘She’s very nice,’ says Monty.
‘Does she have three teeth? Eh? No, I think she has many teeth. I think you like her.’
‘I said so, didn’t I? She’s very nice.’
Kostya nods. ‘Very nice. Come, Uncle wants to see you.’
Monty follows the Ukrainian down the long, dimly lit corridor. It seems to him now that he is distant from this scene, that he is watching himself walk behind the glass of a static-ridden television. He watches, exhausted, as a pale-skinned actor playing Montgomery Brogan marches forward. And though he knows he ought to be afraid, Monty the watcher cannot summon any fear for Monty the actor.
He has not seen or spoken with Uncle Blue since the trial; his only source of information has been Kostya, who sugarcoats everything, and the lawyer Gedny. But nobody ever knows what goes on in Uncle Blue’s mind.
Kostya knocks on a steel-plated door and turns to wink at Monty. A balding man smoking a cigarette opens the door and closes it behind him. He nods at the two of them and they hand him their pistols. Checking the safeties, he shoves the guns under his belt and then, cigarette clenched between his teeth, carefully pats them down. It occurs to Monty that he is not checking for weapons. When he has finished his search he raps on the door and it opens. Kostya and Monty enter the room. The balding man follows them inside, hands their guns to one of the Zakharov twins, and walks out of the room again, closing the door behind him.
They’re posting a guard, thinks Monty. He knows that something is wrong, but he is too tired to think through the tangles. Only the thick pulse of the drumbeat can be heard down here: steady, distant cannon fire.
Monty has been in this room before, the club manager’s office. He stares at the celebrity photographs on the wall and waits. Uncle Blue sits behind the desk reading a newspaper, the fingers of one hand combing through his black beard. Senka Valghobek sits on the front of the desk, smoking, heavy gut bulging beneath an unraveling diamond-patterned sweater – a sweater, he once told Monty, that his dead wife knit for him twenty years ago. Valghobek nods at the newcomers and smiles, flashing a broken front tooth, his eyes deepset beneath a single brush stroke of eyebrow. He gestures at the black plastic chairs, and Monty and Kostya seat themselves. The redheaded Zakharov twins stand behind them; Monty has never been able to tell them apart. They were athletes in the old country, Red Army boxers, small but frighteningly fast. Monty gets along with them but he knows they despise Kostya, considering him a braggart and a liar. One of the twins takes the pistols over to Uncle Blue and places them carefully on the desk.
Uncle Blue folds his paper neatly. ‘Montgomery,’ he says. ‘How is the party?’
‘It’s all right,’ says Monty. ‘Thanks for setting it up.’
‘The first time I went to prison, I was fourteen years old, a skinny little boy. Very afraid. By the time I came out I had my beard; I was a grown man. I went back to my hometown, I found my mother, I kissed her. And she screamed.’ Uncle Blue smiles. ‘She did not recognize me. I have been in three different prisons, Montgomery, in three different countries. You know what I learned?’
Monty shakes his head and waits.
‘I learned that prison is not a good place to be.’
Kostya laughs. ‘I knew that before I went.’
‘Nobody’s talking to you,’ says Valghobek. ‘Keep your mouth shut.’
‘Seven years is a long time,’ says Uncle Blue. ‘Some men would do anything to avoid seven years in prison.’
Monty waits.
‘Your father’s a hard-working man,’ says Valghobek. ‘Where’s his bar? In Bay Ridge? Eighty-sixth Street and Sixth Avenue, am I right?’
‘Yes,’ says Monty.
‘At least he has a short commute,’ says Valghobek. ‘He can practically walk to work. Where does he live? Seventeenth Avenue? And what was the cross street? Eighty-first? Eight-oh-two Seventeenth Avenue. Is that right? The first floor. That must be noisy, living on the first floor. But he doesn’t walk to work, does he? He drives. A 1987 Honda. Should I tell you how many miles he has on that car?’
Monty says nothing.
‘Your father,’ says Uncle Blue. ‘I like your father. A hardworking man. He has had bad luck, some very bad luck. It made me sick what happened to your mother. Everyone in the neighborhood loved her. You remember her, Senka?’
‘Sure. She was a beautiful woman. A real sweetheart.’
‘I want to help your father,’ says Uncle Blue. ‘I could use a man like that, a hard-working man, a man I could trust. He is very experienced, am I right? He could manage one of my clubs, make good money. I could take care of your father. Do you understand what I mean, Montgomery?’
Monty keeps his eyes on the floor and speaks very quietly. ‘You don’t need to do this. I never said a word to anyone. You don’t need to bring him up.’
‘I asked you a question, Montgomery.’
‘I understand exactly what you mean.’
‘I have a good job for your father,’ says Uncle Blue. ‘We’ll help him with the money he owes. Maybe I’ll buy the bar, put him to work on Third Avenue. What do you think?’
‘He likes his bar.’
‘He likes his bar, good, we’ll work something out.’
Uncle Blue turns Monty’s gun in his hands, judging its heft, checking the slide’s action. He ejects the magazine, peers at the top cartridge, slaps the magazine back into the pistol’s butt.
‘Good weapon. Accurate?’
Monty nods.
‘Polymer frame, very good, easy to clean. And reliable? No jams?’
Monty shakes his head. He feels a slithering in his bowels.
Uncle Blue smiles. ‘Have you ever fired it? At somebody, I mean?’
‘No.’
‘No. Good. It is a toy for you. Not toy, prop. A prop for you. Like an actor. Am I wrong? With the gun you feel more . . . dangerous?’
‘I never said a word to anyone. They came after me to get to you. I know it, you know it. They don’t care about me. But I never said a word.’
‘I believe you,’ says Uncle Blue. ‘When you get there, Montgomery, figure out who is who. Find a man nobody is protecting, a man without people. And beat him until his eyes bleed. Let them think you are a little bit crazy, but respectful, too, respectful of the right men. You’re a good-looking boy; it won’t be easy for you. But remember, I was fourteen when I first went. And I survived.’ He nods and stares into Monty’s eyes. ‘We do what we have to do to survive.’
Uncle Blue points at Kostya, and the Zakharov twins grab the Ukrainian from behind and throw him to the floor. One of them jams his knee into Kostya’s back; the
other presses the muzzle of his pistol into Kostya’s ear. They tell him something in Russian and the big man stays very still, his face mashed against the bare concrete floor.
Uncle Blue watches this activity before nodding at Monty again. ‘You should have told us before.’
‘Told you what?’ asks Monty. He’s not looking at Kostya. He doesn’t want to see. He doesn’t want to hear the man’s frightened, ragged breathing.
Valghobek shakes his head and exhales smoke through his nostrils. ‘How many people knew you kept the stuff inside the sofa cushion? Eh? Your girlfriend, Kostya, who else? You must have figured this out before.’
‘Monty,’ moans Kostya, ‘please, Monty—;’
The twin holding the automatic pulls back the slide, chambering a bullet, but Kostya keeps moaning anyway, ‘Monty, please, Mont—;’ until the other twin slams his face into the concrete, twice.
Monty closes his eyes.
‘Kostya dimed you out, little brother,’ says Uncle Blue. ‘He made a call and stole seven years from your life.’
‘Of course he did.’
Uncle Blue squints at Monty through the cloud of cigarette smoke. ‘You should have told us.’
Monty opens his eyes and stares back. ‘You should have known it yourselves. You told me to trust the man, and I trusted the man, and now I’m gone seven. It took you this long to figure it out? They touched him, and he had two strikes so he touched me. Nothing very complicated about it.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ says Valghobek. ‘This man, this whore, sells you federal and you don’t care? You turn the other cheek? Why didn’t you tell us?’
‘Nobody asked me.’
Uncle Blue waves away the smoke between their faces and leans closer. ‘Calling out a rat doesn’t make you a rat. It’s justice.’ He picks up Monty’s gun and hands it to Valghobek, who carries it over to Monty.
‘I don’t want it.’
‘It’s yours,’ says Uncle Blue. ‘You know how to use it?’