Bobby Gold Stories (8 page)

"What the hell's the matter with you, Eddie?" he said, sitting down across from his old friend. "Your life looks like it's
turning to shit."

"It is shit," said Eddie. "Fuckin' guineas ruinin' my fuckin' life. Got the IRS crawlin' up my ass, got Tommy's people tryin'
to put me outta business, the cops with their noses up my ass, and my wife . . . my wife's takin' the kids and the house."

"Maybe you're taking a few too many pills, Eddie? You thought of that?"

"I know. I know. I need them. I got a preshription. The doctor says I gotta take them."

"Which doctor?" Eddie always had five or six writing scripts for him at any given moment. His fucking dermatologist wrote
him Demerol and Dilaudid and Ritalin and Tranxene. Bobby looked at his friend and boss, sagging into the couch in his bare
feet and stained dress pants, and knew he was looking at a dead man. What could Eddie say now that would make him feel any
better? "I'm sorry"? Seeing Eddie dead would give Bobby no pleasure at all. He could easily just reach over — the state he
was now — pinch off his nose with one hand, clamp the other hand on his mouth and watch him go. Eddie was too fucked up, too
out of shape to put up much of a struggle.

"This place smells like a Chinese whorehouse," said Bobby, getting up and sliding open the glass doors to the balcony. "Jesus!
Get some fucking air in here." He stepped out onto the balcony, looked out across the East River and the Coca-Cola sign and
Yankee Stadium. It was freezing cold, a few snowflakes floated down and then up again with the updraft from the street. Eddie
joined him after a few seconds, his robe wrapped tightly around him, his hand gripping fabric under his chin. Eddie collapsed
into a chaise lounge, spilling his drink.

"I'm fucked," said Eddie. "Unless something happens to Tommy, I got no future. You gotta make him go away, Bobby. You gotta
do him."

"I gotta do Tommy Victory, Eddie?" spluttered Bobby. "You want me to do Tommy? A made fucking guy? What good is that gonna
do, Eddie? What the fuck good is that gonna do for anybody?"

"Show them who to respec'," said Eddie, eyes nearly closed. "Show them who they're fuckin' with . . ."

"That'll work. That'll work great. How long you think they gonna let you live after that? Are you outta your fuckin' mind?
You gotta get permission do something like that - and you ain't ever getting permission, Eddie. You even ask, they'll kill
you right there. When's the last time those guys ever sided with a Jew over a guinea?"

"Bugsy Seigel," shouted Eddie. "Meyer Lansky!"

Two Jews.

"Uh . . . give me a minute . . . " mumbled Eddie. "I'll think of one."

"It never happened, Eddie. Never. And you ain't no Meyer Lansky. You're a fuckin' stumblebum. You're an unreliable, stuttering,
drooling, out-of-control fuck-up with his hand in the fucking cookie jar — and you ain't earning enough - you haven't been
earning enough for a while - to make them overlook it any more."

"Fuck you! What do you know? You don't know me, man . . ."

"I know you, Eddie. I know you in my fucking bones. I known you since I was a skinny kid. I know you for eight fucking years
in the jug, smellin' dirty socks and dried jiz and loose farts, you asshole. You sold me out. You fucking dropped a dime on
me. And I ain't killing nobody for you no more and I ain't hurtin' nobody no more for you. You can pop your fuckin' pills
and drink your fuckin' Coronas and fuck your he-shes and do whatever you want to do 'cause you're not even worth me killing
anymore. You're dead already. Worse than dead. Look at yourself!"

Eddie just lay there, staring out into space from under heavy lids. Bobby could hear him breathe, a thick, rasping sound.
A few seconds later, he was asleep.

B
obby took a yellow cab over to 9th Avenue, the Bellevue Bar at 39th, and found a seat at the end. He should probably call
Tommy, arrange a sit-down, work out an arrangement in keeping with the new, inevitable restructuring. He should have killed
Eddie. Rented a car, taken him out for a drive. Problem over. Anybody still loyal would understand. And Eddie's enemies would
appreciate the gesture. But he just didn't have it in him.

There'd be people trying to kill him soon, Bobby understood. If he said nothing. Met with no one. Did nothing. If he just
sat here every day, drank himself into insensibility day after day, let them do what they had to do — let the gears turn,
the world outside go on without him - sooner or later, someone would come through that door and kill him too.

Nobody at the bar talked to him. When Bobby nodded, the bartender came over and gave him another drink. Soon he was drunk,
tapping his fingers to the jukebox. "Love Comes in Spurts," Richard Hell and the Voidoids. He was deciding whether he wanted
to try and live, about what would have to be involved. He'd need a gun. And a car. And money. He had the airweight and the
H&K in the floor safe of his apartment, with a stack of emergency money totalling about 50K. He could get a car no problem.
Just a phone call and a taxi to Queens. His Aryan "brothers" would help — for a while — where the Italians would be unsympathetic.
He wouldn't kill Eddie. He wouldn't set him up. But he'd leave him to the wolves this time.

His cell phone rang and he heard objects noisily knocking together on the other end. A second later, "Pusherman" off the Curtis
Mayfield album was playing over the receiver. Eddie, in a sentimental mood, playing him tunes over the phone. The soundtrack
to better times.

BOBBY'S NOT HERE

B
obby Gold nowhere in sight; 5:30 A.M. in the NiteKlub office with Lenny, in ludicrous-looking ski goggles, working the power
saw, Nikki wetting the blade down with water from a kitchen squeeze bottle. Halfway through the second metal pin on the revolving
money drop in the safe and Lenny is bathed in sweat, his goggles beginning to steam up.

"Jesus! This thing is taking forever!" says Lenny, turning off the drill for a second and listening for the sound of the floor
waxer. "You sure that guy's still got his Walkman on?"

"He's always got his Walkman on," says Nikki, wiping Lenny's brow with a paper towel, hands like Lenny's - in surgical gloves
from the kitchen. "C'mon. You're almost through there. Keep at it."

Lenny turns on the drill and proceeds, bits of metal bouncing off his goggles, stinging his face, lodging in his teeth.

"Ouch!" he complains. "That hurt!"

"Pussy," says Nikki.

Finally the sound of the saw changes pitch, the shelf falls free of the last pin. Lenny yanks it out and hurls it into a corner.
"I've gotta piss like a racehorse."

"Use the trash," suggests Nikki, pointing at a plastic wastebasket.

While Lenny empties his bladder, Nikki reaches her arm (longer than his) down into the safe and starts pulling out banded
stacks of cash. There are a lot more of them than they'd expected.

"Uh . . . Lenny," she says. "You see this?"

Lenny, zipping up his fly, turns and looks. The pile of cash on the floor is large - and getting larger. "Holy . . . shit!"

"No kidding! . . . Holy . . . shit is right!" says Nikki, suddenly damp, a few strands of hair glued to her forehead. "There
wasn't supposed to be that much — was there?"

"Let's get the fuck out of here," says Lenny.

Lenny leaves first: down the back kitchen stairs, through the service entrance to the hotel. Nikki drops the duffel full of
cash out the window and into his arms before following a few moments later. Two hours later, the money divided up and hidden
— for the moment under a pile of sweaters in Nikki's closet — the two are sitting in the cellar of Siberia Bar, leaning forward,
heads close, talking.

"What's the matter?" asks Lenny, bothered by Nikki's stunned expression, the way she keeps shaking her head.

"I'm alright."

"No. Really. What's the matter?" he repeats.

Nikki slams back her third vodka shot, her eyes beginning to fill up. "Everything is different now, isn't It?"

"What do you mean?" says Lenny, playing the tough guy.

"I mean . . . How do we go to work tomorrow? It's gonna be a shit-storm in there. How do I look anybody in the eyes? They'll
fucking know."

"Who are you worried about? The Chef? Ricky? What? Nobody's gonna think it was us! Who would think it was us?"

"There was so much. There wasn't supposed to be that much. I'm worried. I admit it. I'm worried."

"Fuck them. They're idiots. They'll never find out as long as we don't tell them."

"I'm worried about Bobby. I don't want him to lose his job."

"Bobby!? Bobby!! That security goon? Fuck him! He's not a cook! He's not one of us! What do you care about that asshole? Are
you fucking that guy?"

"Yes," says Nikki. "Yes. I'm fucking that guy. I've been fucking that guy for months!"

"I can't believe this!" shrieks Lenny. "You're doing the head of fucking security?!" His hands trembling, Lenny takes a pull
on a beer, missing his mouth and slobbering on his chin. "You're not going to tell him anything? You're not that stupid."

"I won't say anything," says Nikki.

"You better not!" Lenny thinks about this for a while. "In fact . . . In fact . . . if it looks like he's getting close to
figuring anything out — you better tell me. You will tell me, right?"

Nikki waves him away, dismissing the prospect. "I think you should bug out tonight, Lenny. You can have the money. Okay .
. . maybe I'll keep some . . . but you can have most of it. Go to fucking Florida or something. But you should go. That's
a lot of money there. You should be fine."

"What are people gonna say, I disappear the day they find somebody cracked the fucking safe? They'll know!"

"We didn't think this out too good, did we?"

"What do you mean? Stick with the plan. We stick with the plan. That's what we should do!"

"The plan? There was no plan, Lenny. You know what my fucking plan was? You know how stupid I am? My plan was to take the
money and get out of the fucking business for a while and maybe rent a nice place somewhere where there's water and maybe
a beach and buy some clothes and a TV and like . . . live like a normal person for a while. That was what my plan was, Lenny.
You know . . . a nice boyfriend . . . hole up behind some white picket fucking fence with a garden and like, live like a regular
person. You know . . . he goes to like . . . work . . . wherever that is . . . and I putter around the house. I order shit
outta catalogs . . . make myself a midday martini . . . watch soap operas . . . cook, like, tuna noodle casserole. Friday
nights he comes home, we get dressed up, go out to dinner and maybe a movie — after which we go home and he throws me on a
big four-poster bed and fucks me till my nose bleeds."

"Are you fucking kidding me? Are you nuts? I feel like . . . it's like
Invasion of the Body Snatchers!!
What is with you? My fucking partner is going Suzy Homemaker on me? What the fuck!?"

"I always wanted to putter," says Nikki, glumly, not looking at Lenny when she says it.

"Putter? You want to putter?"

"You know. Do normal shit. Whatever it is people do. You know. When they're not like us."

"This is great," says Lenny, returning from the bar with a Jager shot and two beers. "This is great. I don't even know you
anymore. You couldn't a said this before? You're going out with the head a fuckin' security . . . you got some weird-ass idea
you're gonna turn into some kinda suburban housewife or some shit. We put down the biggest score of our fucking lives — I'm
thinking, buy a couple a kilos a coke and turn that over and, like, open our own place or something — "

"I'm not opening a restaurant with you, Lenny, I said that. I always said that."

"I thought you were kidding. I thought . . . Jesus, Nikki," says Lenny. "I thought you liked me. I thought. You know . . ."

Nikki just shakes her head and then leans forward and gives Lenny a sisterly hug. He tries clumsily to kiss her but she turns
her head away, avoiding his mouth.

"I see. I see what it is now," says Lenny. "I'm outta here tonight. I'm outta here tonight before you fucking tell the fucking
ape-man and blow everything. You . . . you . . . fucking whore!"

Nikki is up in a flash. She reaches back and pops Lenny a good one in the right eye that knocks him back into his seat. Two
customers look up quizzically but immediately look away as Nikki glares right back at them and Lenny bursts into tears.

Nikki cradles Lenny in her arms on the hardwood floor of her tiny apartment. They're both still in their coats. Lenny is still
crying, his nose running profusely, chest heaving with suppressed sobs. Nikki is petting the back of his head like he's a
child, saying, "That's okay . . . that's okay." Though, of course, nothing is okay now.

The money has been divided, Nikki keeping only a relatively small share — getaway money should things really turn sour. It's
morning already — and Nikki can't remember a time the cheeping birds and early morning garbage trucks have sounded so sinister.
Lenny's money is in an airline bag, ready to go.

"You should get out of here," says Nikki. "Take your money, get on a train. Go someplace nice and live a little. Get yourself
a fucking girlfriend. You're a rich guy, now, Lenny. You'll have to beat them off with a stick."

"I want you to be my girlfriend," snivels Lenny, his face collapsing all over again.

"That ain't gonna happen, Lenny," says Nikki, wiping tears off his receding chin with her sleeve.

Lenny gone, morning commuter traffic in full swing outside her window, Nikki lays on her bed, staring at the ceiling. This
was something she never should have become involved in. "Story of my life, right?" she says out loud.

Her cut, still in the nearly empty duffel bag, sits on the floor — more an affront than a windfall. It isn't the prospect
of cops she is worried about. Or the chaos and paranoia and whatever else awaits her when she goes in for work today — if
she goes in for work today. It wasn't Eddie Fish — who always struck her as a pathetic little shrimp anyway — or what he might
do. She could stand up to an interrogation. She'd hide the money somewhere and she'd ride it out. She doesn't feel guilty
about taking money from a dishonest shithole like NiteKlub - probably go out of business in a few months anyway (a la carte
dinners were getting slower and slower and the party business was drying up for the season). The owners had already skimmed
their money out, that was for sure. Only a matter of time till they were all out of work. They deserved it. They'd probably
barely notice the money had gone missing. One night's fucking receipts — okay, there had been a disconcertingly large amount
in there this time —but what would really happen now? It isn't getting caught that bothers her. She wasn't going to get caught.
It isn't guilt. Or fear — not much anyway. Who'd suspect a chick? Especially now, with Lenny gone? She closes her eyes and
tries to forget about the whole thing — pushing the office, the safe, the bag of money on her floor out of her mind. But something
keeps intruding. Keeps waking her up, eyes wide open, her breathing getting faster, a painful, swelling ache in her chest.

It's Bobby.

That bothers her. It really does.