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I thought of Durkin and the hundred dollars Id given him. "I shouldnt take this from you," hed said. But he hadnt given it back.
"I never touched cocaine again," Mick said. "And do you know why? Because it was too fucking good. I dont ever want to feel that good again. " He brandished the bottle. "This lets me feel as good as I need to feel. Anything more than that is unnatural. Its worse than that, its fucking dangerous. I hate the stuff. I hate the rich bastards with their jade snuff bottles and gold spoons and silver straws. I hate the ones who smoke it on the streetcorners. My God, what its doing to the city. There was a cop on television tonight saying you should lock your doors when youre riding in a taxi. Because when your cab stops for a light theyll come in after you and rob you. Can you imagine?"
"It keeps getting worse out there. "
"It does," he said. He took a drink and I watched him savor the whiskey in his mouth before he swallowed it. I knew what the JJ&S twelve-year-old tasted like. I used to drink it with Billie Keegan years ago when he tended bar for Jimmy. I could taste it now, but somehow the sense-memory didnt make me crave a drink, nor did it make me fear the dormant thirst within me.
A drink was the last thing I wanted on nights like this. I had tried to explain it to Jim Faber, who was understandably uncertain of the wisdom of my spending long nights in a saloon watching another man drink. The best I could do was to suggest that somehow Ballou was drinking for both of us, that the whiskey that went down his throat quenched my thirst as well as his own, and left me sober in the process.
HE said, "I went to Queens again Sunday night. "
"Not to Maspeth. "
"No, not to Maspeth. Another part entirely. Jamaica Estates. Do you know it?"
"I have a vague idea of where it is. "
"You go out Grand Central Parkway and get off at Utopia. The house we were looking for was on a little street off Croydon Road. I couldnt tell you what the neighborhood looked like. It was full dark when we went out there. Three of us, and Andy driving. Hes a grand driver, did I tell you?"
"You told me. "
"They were expecting us, but they didnt expect wed have guns in our hands. Spanish they were, from somewhere in South America. A man and his wife and the wifes mother. They were dope dealers, they sold cocaine by the kilo.
"We asked him where his money was. No money, he said. They had cocaine to sell, they didnt have any cash. Now I knew they had money in the house. Theyd had a big sale the day before and they still had some of the money around. "
"How did you know?"
"From the lad who gave me the address and told me how to get through the door. Well, I took the man in a bedroom and tried to talk sense to him. Talked with my hands, you might say. He stuck fast to his story, the little greaseball.
"And then one of the lads comes in with a baby. Get up off the money, he tells the man, or Ill cut the wee bastards throat. And the babes screaming through all this. No ones hurting him, you understand, but hes hungry or he wants his mother. You know how it is with babies. "
"What happened?"
"If you can believe this," he said, "the father as much as says we can go to hell. I dont think you do thees, he says, looking me right in the eye.
" Youre right, I told him. I dont kill babies. And I told my man to take the babe to its mother and have her change his diaper or give him a bottle, whatever would stop his crying. " He straightened up in his chair. "And then I took the father," he said, "and I put him in a chair, and I left the room and came back wearing my fathers apron. One of the lads- Tom it was, you know Tom, behind the bar most afternoons. "
"Yes. "
"Tom had a gun to his head, and I had the big cleaver that was my fathers also. I went over and tried it out on the bedside table, just took a good whack at it and it collapsed into a pile of kindling. Then I took hold of his arm just above the wrist, pinning it to the arm of the chair, and with my other hand I raised up the cleaver.
" Now, you spic bastard, I said, wheres your money, or dont you theenk Ill take your fucking hand off? " He smiled with satisfaction at the memory. "The money was in the laundry room, in the vent pipe for the dryer. You could have turned the house upside down and never found it. We were out of there in no time, and Andy had us safely home. Id have been lost out there, but he knew all the turns. "
I got up and went behind the bar to pour myself another cup of coffee. When I got back to the table Mick was gazing off to one side. I sat down and waited for the coffee to cool and we both let the silence stretch for a while.
Then he said, "We left them alive, the whole household. I dont know, that could have been a bad idea. "
"They wouldnt call the police. "
"They couldnt do that, and they werent well connected, so I didnt think theyd come back at us. And we left the cocaine. There was ten kilos of it that we found, shaped like little footballs. Im leaving you your coca, I told him, and Im leaving you alive. But if you ever come back at me, I said, then Ill come back here. And Ill wear this- pointing to the apron- and Ill carry this- the cleaver- and Ill lop off your hands and feet and whatever else I can think of. Id do no such thing, of course. Id just kill him and be done with it. But you cant scare a drug dealer by telling him youll kill him. They all know somebody will kill them sooner or later. Tell them youll leave them with some pieces missing, though, and the picture sticks in their mind. "
He filled his glass and took a drink. "I didnt want to kill him," he said, "because Id have had to kill the wife too, and the old woman. Id leave the baby because a baby cant pick you out of a lineup, but what kind of a life would I be leaving it? Its got a bad enough life already, with that for a father.
"Because look how he called my bluff. I dont think you do thees. The bastard didnt care if I did it. Go ahead, kill the baby, he can always start another one. But when it was a question of his hand winding up on the floor, why, he wasnt so fucking tough then, was he?"
A little later he said, "Sometimes you have to kill them. One runs for the door and you drop him, and then you have to take out all the rest of them. Or you know theyre not people who will let it go, and its kill them or watch your back for the rest of your life. What you do then is scatter the drugs all over the place. Grind the bricks to powder, pour it on the bodies, tread it into the rug. Let it look like dealers killing each other. The cops dont break their necks to solve that kind of killing. "
"Dont you ever take the drugs along?"
"I dont," he said, "and Im giving up a fortune, and I just dont care. Theres so much money in it. You wouldnt have to deal in it, you could sell the lot to someone. It wouldnt be hard to find someone who wanted to buy it. "
"No, I dont suppose it would. "
"But Ill have no part of it, and I wont work with anyone wholl use it or traffic in it. The cocaine I left behind the other night, I could have got more for it than I took in cash from the dryer vent. There was only eighty thousand there. " He lifted his glass, set it down again. "There should have been more. I know he had another stash somewhere in the fucking house, but Id have had to chop off his hand to get it. And that would have meant killing him after, and killing the lot of them. And calling the police later, telling them there was a baby crying in a house on such-and-such a street. "
"Better to take the eighty thousand. "
"Thats what I thought," he said. "But theres four thousand right off the top for the lad who told us where to go and how to get in. A finders fee, you call it. Five percent, and I shouldnt wonder he thought we got more and were cheating him. Four thousand for him, and a good nights pay for Tom and Andy and the fourth fellow, whom you dont know. And whats left for myself is a little less than what I paid to get Andy off the hook for the hijacking. " He shook his head. "I always need money," he said. "I dont understand it. "
I talked some about Richard Thurman and his dead wife, and about the man wed seen at the fights in Maspeth. I took out the sketch and he looked at it. "Its very like him," he
said. "And the man who drew it never saw the man he was drawing? You wouldnt think it could be done. "
I put the sketch away and he said, "Do you believe in hell?"
"I dont think so. "
"Ah, youre fortunate. I believe in it. I believe theres a place reserved for me there, a chair by the fire. "
"Do you really believe that, Mick?"
"I dont know about the fire, or little devils with fucking pitchforks. I believe theres something for you after you die, and if you lead a bad life youve got a bad lot ahead of you. And I dont lead the life of a saint. "
"No. "
"I kill people. I only do it out of need, but I lead a life that makes killing a requirement. " He looked hard at me. "And I dont mind the killing," he said. "There are times I have a taste for it. Can you understand that?"
"Yes. "
"But to kill a wife for the insurance money, or to kill a child for pleasure. " He frowned. "Or taking a woman against her will. Theres more men than youd think wholl do that last. Youd think it was just the twisted ones but sometimes I think its half the human race. Half the male sex, anyway. "
"I know," I said. "When I was at the Academy they taught us that rape was a crime of anger toward women, that it wasnt sexual at all. But over the years I stopped believing that. Half the time nowadays it seems to be a crime of opportunity, a way to have sex without taking her to dinner first. Youre committing a robbery or a burglary, theres a woman there, she looks good to you, so why not?"
He nodded. "Another time," he said. "Like last night, but over the river in Jersey. Dope dealers in a fine house out in the country, and we were going to have to kill everybody in the house. We knew that before we went in. " He drank whiskey and sighed. "Ill go to hell for sure. Oh, they were killers themselves, but thats no excuse, is it?"
"Maybe it is," I said. "I dont know. "
"Its not. " He put the glass down and wrapped his hand around the bottle but didnt lift it from the table. "Id just shot the man," he said, "and one of the lads was searching for more cash, and I heard cries coming from another room. So I went in there, and theres one of the boys on top of the woman, with her skirt up and her clothes ripped, and shes fighting him and crying out. "
" Get off her, I told him, and he looked at me like I was mad. She was choice, he said, and we were going to kill her anyway, so why shouldnt he have her before she was no use to anybody?"
"What did you do?"
"I kicked him," he said. "I kicked him hard enough to break three ribs, and then before I did anything else I shot her between the eyes, because she shouldnt have to put up with more of it. And then I picked him up and threw him against the wall, and when he came stumbling off it I hit him in the face. I wanted to kill him, but there were people who knew hed worked for me and it would be like leaving a calling card behind. I took him away from there and paid him his share and got a closemouthed doctor to bandage his ribs, and then I packed him off. He was from Philadelphia, and I told him to go back there, that he was finished in New York. Im sure he doesnt know to this day what he did that was wrong. She was going to die anyway, so why not have the use of her first? And why not roast her liver and eat it, why let the flesh go to waste?"