Cogan's Trade (18 page)

“What gun thing?” Cogan said.

“I was goin’ huntin’, for Christ sake,” Mitch said. “Me and another guy. You know Topper?”

“No,” Cogan said.

Mitch finished the beer. The waiter arrived with the drink. “You didn’t bring him a beer, I bet,” Mitch said.

“No, sir,” the waiter said. “You only wanted the one, I thought.”

“You thought wrong,” Mitch said. “Bring him a beer, too. I just drank the man’s beer on him.”

“I don’t want any more,” Cogan said to the waiter. “It’s all right.”

The waiter nodded.

Mitch shrugged. “Okay,” he said, “don’t have no more. Yeah. Topper. Nice guy. Lives out on Long Island. We move out there, guy tells me, I should look him up. ‘Getting old,’ he says, ‘still a nice guy.’ So I do. Likes to fish.”

“I went fishing once,” Cogan said. “Got onna fuckin’ boat. All these guys, drinking beer. I look at the guy. What is this?’ I say. ‘I can go the ball game, I want
to watch guys drinking beer.’ It was awful. It was rough and all them guys, drinking beer, they all start throwing up. Fuck fishing.”

“This’s surf casting, he does,” Mitch said. “You go out and you stand on the beach and all. It’s pretty good.” Mitch drank half of the martini. He belched silently. “It’s just, the only thing wrong with it is, you got to get up too early. But what the fuck, he wants to go. My wife starts in on me. ‘Jesus Christ,’ I tell her, ‘leave me alone, all right?’ You ever been shooting geese?”

“No,” Cogan said. “That’s the trouble, I work. I work all night and all day and then I go home and I go to bed. So naturally, I take a few days off, I still live the same way. My wife, now what my wife’s always telling me, I’m working too hard. And that’s true. See, I had this one operation, and it’s all right, but anybody can see what’s happening, it’s just a matter of time, the state starts taking all kinds of action, and it’ll still be there, no question about that, but it’s not gonna be as good. So I started, I started up this thing with the cigarettes, and I got that thing going pretty good. Six months after I take it over, it’s going like a bat out of hell. So, good, I hadda get a guy and give him some of it, I still supply him but he runs the locations I got west of here and I just take care of the others. So, it’s getting better. But it drives her batty, we go some place and we get there and then I can’t sleep. I’m not used to going to bed so early, and I stay up and then I sleep late and we can’t do nothing. ‘You’re exhausted,’ she tells me, and I am. But I tried changing it back and forth and I can’t do it. I been at it too long. I oughta get into something else, I guess. Better hours.”

“You got to change every so often,” Mitch said. “That’s one of things, the union thing? It went to hell,
well, I didn’t like it. But I was doing it a long time, I was, in a way I was kind of glad too, you know? That’s what Topper says. He’s seventy, at least, he doesn’t do things any more. He was telling me that. ‘The trouble with you guys,’ he says, ‘you spend your whole life, you’re doing the same thing and all you’re ever doing’s getting old. You’ve got to keep trying new things.’ So I listened to him, we’re goin’ down the Maryland shore, there, a whole bunch of people’re just taking over this motel and they’re all the right kind of guys, we’re gonna hunt geese. So, we go down there, I, there was probably a couple hundred cops around the place? And we’ve got the shotguns in the trunk. Oh, fuckin’ beautiful. ‘Where’re you going? What’re you gonna do? Where’re you from?’ So we don’t say anything, naturally, I mean, they done a lot of things but this isn’t fuckin’ Russia yet, I think, and everybody’s standing around and now they’re gonna start searching cars. And I’m gonna ask them, they got any warrants or anything, and I’m really gonna do it. Topper takes hold of me. There’s four or five of them standing around, I was really afraid he was going to say something. Just shakes his head. Doesn’t even do that, really. Topper’s all right. I don’t say anything.

“So,” Mitch said, “they open up the cars and there’s the shotguns, me and Topper’s car. It was Topper’s wife’s car, actually. Two shotguns right there. I just bought the fuckin’ shotgun, for Christ sake. I went down the place and I bought the fuckin’ shotgun. I hadda have my wife’s uncle sign for it, of course, but I actually went out and paid for the thing. Nobody gave it to me or anything. I never even used it once. Guy looks at them. Then he comes over. Treasury. I’m under arrest. Felon in possession. You think, you think I said
a single word to them? No. But what does he say: ‘Mister Mitchell,’ and then he starts telling me. So, it probably just happened, they know my record and everything. I look at Topper. Nope, they arrest him, too. They know his name. I’m thinking: pretty soon I start asking around, see how come these guys know when I’m gonna take a shit and everything.

“ ‘Just for your information,’ the guy says to me,” Mitch said, “ ‘you might be interested to know, we picked you up at the Throg’s Neck Bridge this morning. You guys’ve got to learn some day, stop having these conventions.’ So there I am. I’m probably gonna go to jail for a fuckin’ shotgun I bought in a fuckin’ store, I was gonna use to shoot geese with, for Christ sake.”

“Jesus,” Cogan said.

Mitch finished the martini. He signaled to the waiter, pointing to Cogan’s empty stein first.

“You’re hitting that stuff pretty hard, aren’t you, Mitch?” Cogan said.

“I was up all night,” Mitch said. “I can never sleep, I’m going some place the next day onna plane. Them things make me nervous. Then, I come in like this, I got to sleep before I’m good for anything that day. I’m gonna go the hotel, we finish here, get some sleep. I told the doctor, he was gonna put me back on the cortisone, it started up again after that thing in Maryland, and I said: ‘No.’ I don’t care what it is, I’ll change my pants three times a day if I have to, I got to get rid of this weight I got on me. Only I think, well, Topper feels responsible. And he looks, he’s little and he’s old and he didn’t take a pinch for about thirty years, I think. So, they’re probably gonna both be his shotguns. I was just doing an old man a favor, driving him down there and all.”

“Yeah,” Cogan said, “but if they don’t …”

“I do time,” Mitch said. “It’s very simple. If they’re not his guns, I do time. I did it before. If I have to, I can do it again. They’re gonna have to practically turn themselves inside out, get me more’n three even with the rap sheet I got, for that. Oh Jesus, do them guys love arresting you. They just love it. They get somebody, they finally get a guy, they know his name, Jesus Christ, you’d think some of them’re little kids. Like to bash them right inna mouth, they like it so much. Bastards. But, big fuckin’ deal. I do a year. I don’t like it, but shit, that’s the way it goes.”

“Rough onna wife, though,” Cogan said. “That’s the one thing, you know, Carol can never get it off of her mind, I might get bagged and have to go to jail. Most of the time she don’t give me any shit, except about the way I’m out all the time and everything. But every so often, well, they hooked four guys there and they got them in front the grand jury and they asked them, who’s the guy they’re looking for, you know? Like you say: the guy, they know who he is. And naturally they don’t say anything. And then they get this immunity.”

“They been doing that down in Brooklyn,” Mitch said. “They got everybody in the slammer, and what’d they do? They wouldn’t say anything.”

“Yeah,” Cogan said. “So, the same thing, they go to jail. And if they don’t tell them, which they’re naturally not gonna do, they’re gonna have to stay there. So they’re in the can. And my wife was saying, well, I told her, I said, I’m not big enough. And I’m getting out of it anyway, fast as I can. Guys like me, they don’t even know I’m around. Those’re much bigger guys’n I am. But I can see it. I think, I don’t think she could take it, really, something like that happened. Every time they
come in and ask for the toll sheets, there, everybody knows, they talk about it the cafeteria. And she gets all worried and everything. ‘Just promise me one thing, you’ll stay away from phones where they know you.’ So, I do. But I’m almost out of that anyway. I don’t think she could take it, really, something like that happened.”

“None of them can,” Mitch said. The waiter delivered the martini and the beer. Mitch drank the beer. He wiped his mouth. He belched, softly. “The last time, the last time she actually took out the papers. And I didn’t blame her. She was a lot younger then. But when we’re trying that thing, the last day? The jury’s gonna get the case that day. I get up and she’s already up. I dunno how long that is, but I was up at five or so to take a leak, and she wasn’t in bed then. She says: ‘Doesn’t look good, does it?’ Well, what the hell, it didn’t. The cop lied on the stand, of course, put me in the place at nine-thirty, it was at least after ten when I got there that night, and the jury believed him, of course. So, I say, no, it didn’t. And we go in the bedroom, get dressed. And I’m putting my pants on and I’m watching her, she’s getting dressed, I dunno how she does it, the way she drinks and everything, but she always hadda nice body, and I was thinking, you know? Now I’m goin’ away again, and she’ll start beating the shit out of the sauce and everything, and I know she’ll play around. Shit, I mean, I don’t like the feeling it gives me in the nuts, knowing it, but I wouldn’t even ask her, you know? Just because I’m inna can, she’s supposed to go without it just like she’s inna can with me? So she looks at me. ‘This’s the third time I’ve had to do this, Harold,’ she says. She never called me Mitch, and she knows I hate that name.

“ ‘Look,’ I tell her,” Mitch said, “ ‘you never know
what’ll happen.’ ” He drank some of the martini. “ ‘What’s gonna happen, you never know.’

“And she says to me,” Mitch said, “ ‘Well, you think you know what’s gonna happen, and I think it’s gonna happen, and I don’t know if I can take it again.’

“So it happened,” Mitch said, “and then the papers come up and I was gonna sign them, let her have what she wants if this’s what she wants. She went through it twice. The girl don’t owe me nothing. She probably is sick of it. But then, I asked her to come up and see me, and I said: ‘Margie, look, you know? You want this, you’re really sure, you can have it. But what’s it gonna get you, huh?’ She was, she was thirty-nine, forty, then. ‘You’re still gonna have the kids, you’re still gonna have to know, I get out, I’m not gonna be in here forever and you’re gonna have to see me when I see them. I’m not gonna stop coming around, seeing them. And, we been together a long time. Unless, unless you really got somebody else you really got to have, okay?’ See, I knew she was seeing this guy. So, she don’t answer me. And I say: ‘Look, do this for me. Don’t do nothing now. You had, you know, when I come out last time, we’re both a lot younger then and all, and you hadda decide then.’ And she looks at me: ‘And you promised me then,’ she says, ‘you promised me then, you were all through. And here I am again, and you’ll promise me now, again, and I’ll wait five years and get six more, and then you’ll do something again.’

“ ‘Margie,’ I said,” Mitch said, “ ‘what can I say to you? I know. You’re right. But all I’m asking, you can do, wait’ll I come out again. Because, I dunno who the guy is,’ ” Mitch said, “and I did, of course. I knew about it two days after she was with him the first time. I don’t blame him, either. ‘I oughta at least, you oughta at least
do this for me: I oughta be around the same’s he is. Because we always got along all right.’ And she starts crying and shaking her head, and I really thought. But she didn’t. And it was all right. I think, you know, you know anything about kids? Probably not.” Mitch finished the martini.

“You’re not having any more of those things,” Cogan said. “You’ll fall on your ass if you do.”

“I can handle it,” Mitch said. “I was drinking before you got out of your father’s cock. Don’t tell me what I do.” He signaled the waiter. He pointed twice at Cogan’s empty stein. “Nobody knows anything about kids,” Mitch said. “But, it’s really hard on the kids. I think it was that, probably, what did it to them, the way they hadda be and all. They’re no good. Oh, they’re good enough. My daughter’s all right. But my son, he won’t have nothing to do with me. And I think, this’s the funny part, all right? I think it probably was that, that she did it for, and it probably would’ve been better for them if she didn’t. I think that’s why she drinks so much, now.”

“I thought she was all right,” Cogan said, “we’re down in Florida, there.”

“She was,” Mitch said. “Look, when I was down there she was all right. When I
went
down there. She really was. I believed it. But see, that was the first time she was all right, and since then, I seen what happened. I talked to some guys, everybody that’s got somebody like that, and the first time they shake it, you know, you always think they shook it and that’s the end of it.
They
always think that, they think that themselves. But they never do. Nobody like that’s ever all right again, ever. I came back, there, I was home about a month and we’re going at it left and right, this and that, well, look, I
dunno what it is, you know? But I wasn’t sorry I hadda come up here, lemme put it that way. She was going at it again. They can’t stay away from it when they get like that. The best they can do is, they can stay away from it for a while. I think something finally happens to them. I go away, I go away on this thing again, she’ll go down the slide once and for all before they get the gray suit on me. And this time, boy, I find that out, I get the papers again from her, this time I sign them. It’s too fuckin’ rough for me.”

The waiter brought two steins of dark. He set them both in front of Mitch. Cogan said: “Check.” The waiter nodded. Mitch drank half of the first stein.

“It’s a terrible amount of shit, you got to go through,” Cogan said.

“Hey,” Mitch said, “look, you know? What can you do? Do the best you can. Think I’m gonna leave the country like some fuckin’ draft dodger or something? Fuck that. It don’t make no difference anyway. What’re we doing?”

“We got this,” Cogan said, “we got two guys. There’s actually four guys, but one of them’s probably not around and I’m not sure, we really want the other one. So, we got two guys, for sure, and one of them knows me, so here you are.”