Gone Bamboo (23 page)

"So, what happens now?" said Frances, letting out a deep breath.

"We go on," answered Henry. Not so sure.

41

W
ithout Frances, Henry felt disconnected, lost. He wandered,
aimless and useless, unable to take pleasure in anything, seeing no light anywhere. What had seemed charming about his island yesterday looked squalid and somehow menacing today. He drove the scooter around for most of the day, unable to stay in one place, unable to relax, stopping at each beach, each bar, only long enough for one drink.

Leaving the Mariner's Club, he took the mountain route back to the pond, the scooter handling differently without Frances holding on in the rear. On top of the mountain, he cut the engine and just stood there awhile, listening to the crickets and geckos chattering in the dark. A few hundred yards ahead, the road took a steep drop down the other side of the mountain to the sea. The road was ungraded and unbanked; one could easily fly right off the side of the mountain, and Henry considered that option, toyed with the idea as if playing with himself, not serious, just to see how bad things were.

But Frances would be out in a couple of days. He had the hotel bill to pay. Dinner reservations at Frogs. Bad manners to kill yourself. Realizing how drunk he really was, Henry started up the scooter and drove cautiously home.

The pitiably empty bed at his hotel put him right back into the hole. He cracked a bottle of tequila and sat out on the balcony, his feet up on the rail. He tried, for an hour, to drink himself to sleep, his head filled with faces: Frances. Jimmy Pazz. Tommy. Cheryl. He considered going over to Cole Bay, scoring some gummy, gasoline-scented, jungle-brewed cocaine, thinking for an ill-considered few seconds that that might make him feel better. But even the memory of that taste in the back of his throat made him gag. No way out. No way to fuck up with honor. No way to forget. Just go forward. He lay back in his chair and drank some more.

Henry didn't know how long he'd been out when he became aware he was no longer alone on the balcony. A few feet away a dark shape sat studying him, the glow from a cigarette illuminating a patch of pale, unshaven skin. Henry struggled to sit upright, one hand reaching behind his back for the gun that wasn't there.

"You look like shit," said the voice.

"I know you," slurred Henry, paralyzed with drink. "You're the marshal dude. From the dock that day. You must like it here. You came back."

"I know who you are," said Burke. "And I know what you are."

Burke moved forward in his chair so Henry could see his face in the moonlight. He looked almost as bad as Henry did. Dark circles ringed his eyes, he hadn't shaved in days, and Henry realized that he too had been drinking. In Burke's hand a few ice cubes melted in a water glass of Henry's tequila.

"War hero. Two fucking tours . . . and you end up selling out to the French. I know what you are. What you do."

"You don't know shit," said Henry, too drunk to care. "Have another drink. And fuck you."

"Froggies not have enough work for you? Was that the problem? Havin' a hard time keepin' Dragon Lady in beach towels?" Burke paused and took a long swig of watery tequila. "Don't worry. This isn't official. I'm on my own time."

Henry said nothing, focusing on a narrow corridor of moonlight on the wave tops and wishing he was sober.

"I met the wife," said Burke, bitterly. "Made me look like a jerk. Got me all fucked up in the head. They sent me home . . . and look what happened."

Henry looked over at Burke, wondering where the gun was, expecting one. Burke didn't move, one hand on his drink, the other rubbing his face now.

"My witness . . . my whole team . . . gone. I . . . I . . . told them . . . I said I told you so. They don't like that. You don't get points for being right when everybody else is wrong, do you? No. I'm an embarrassment. I'll be lucky to be a fucking guard at a convenience store." Burke sat up a bit, making a show of putting aside his drink. "I saw you at the hospital. Visiting the little woman?"

"Yes," said Henry.

"I thought it was you, you know. When I came down. But it wasn't you, was it?"

Henry just shook his head sadly.

"I had it all figured out. You're the one got Danny . . . gave Charlie a new asshole. I'm right about that part. I should have got that right away. Tall, dark, Spanish speaker.
Habla Espahol?
Yesss. And a king-hell sharpshooter from what I can tell. Oh. I can't touch you. Officially. Oh no. Too sensitive . . . James fucking Bond over here . . . our man Flint. . . The French pimping you out like a two-dollar whore."

"So what do you want?"

"I want Charlie fucking Wagons. He's alive, isn't he?"

Henry said nothing.

"He's gotta be. French are saying sweet fuck all on the subject. Say he went up with the house. But that's not what happened, is it?"

"He's dead. Leave it alone."

"The fuck I'll leave it alone. Five marshals dead. I trained some a' those kids . . . The case ruined. And they blame me. Of course. They blame
me."

"I tried" was all Henry could say. He felt sympathy for the wreck of a man across from him. He was a danger to no one in his present condition.

"Have another drink." He poured a large splash of tequila into Burke's water glass.

"I want him back. I want Fat Jimmy Calabrese frying like a big juicy steak in the electric chair. You know they got the death penalty back now."

"Yes. I read that."

"I want my fucking witness back. I want my fucking witness back or things are gonna get real fucking hot for you down here - your little vacation paradise you got for yourself. Maybe . . . maybe I can't, take you back. Maybe Washington don't want to know about you, and maybe the French love you like they love pussy . . . but I can still make things complicated. I been talking to the press. What do you think? You think they'd be innerested in a guy like you?"

"You're not getting Charlie," said Henry, his voice an affectless monotone. "Ever."

"What? Are you pals? You shoot him in the ass. You clip his boy Danny . . . now you're blowin' each other? I don't fuckin' get it. What I can tell, Jimmy's pals fucked you real good. And the lovely wife . . . I don't know how bad she is, but I take it she's worse than you."

"She is."

"So whassa fucking problem? I mean . . . who are you fucking loyal to anyway?"

"I'll give you Jimmy," said Henry. "How about that?"

42

H
e wore a hat. Always taking care to stay out of the sun. He let his beard go in the last days of summer, cutting it down to a neat Vandyke. He watched his skin go from a dark brown to a golden brown to an ashy palomino, then, finally, white.

The day before he left, he plucked his eyebrows, changing their natural shape entirely. The effect of such a simple adjustment was remarkable, and he had to hide in their rooms so that no one would see him. He made Frances cut his hair.

"I can't believe you're making me do this," she said, holding his ponytail and hesitating with the scissors.

"Cut it," said Henry.

"You look geeky enough. Believe me. No one will recognize you. I hardly recognize you."

"Cut it."

She chopped, and Henry's ponytail fell to the tile and lay there, sad looking, like a dead pet.

It was already getting light when Paulie turned the Olds into the driveway of his Howard Beach home, a modest, two-story, aluminum-sided structure with a birdbath in the front yard and an American flag hanging limply from a pole next to the front door.

He parked the car, got out, and reached into the back seat for the two bags of groceries he'd picked up at the 7-Eleven on the way home from Brooklyn. Two economy-size bottles of diet cola, four rolls of toilet paper, assorted cold cuts, hermetically sealed in plastic, a box of Count Chocula breakfast cereal, five cans of crab and tuna catfood, a loaf of Wonder bread, a six of lite beer, coffee filters, and a pint of Ben
&c
Jerry's Cherry Garcia. He hoped he hadn't forgotten anything - he'd lost the shopping list somewhere between Jimmy's office and Eddie's Clam Casino in Sheepshead Bay, where he'd closed the bar, playing rummy with Chickie Scalice.

He walked slowly to the front door, keys at the ready in one hand, the two bags in the other, opening the screen with his foot. Leaning on the edge of the stoop, half into the hydrangea, was a copy of the Sunday
New York Times,
a paper Paulie did not subscribe to. Assuming it was a fortunate mistake and looking forward to reading the sports section over a bowl of Count Chocula, he leaned down to pick up the thick stack of banded paper, got his hand around it without spilling any groceries or dropping his keys, and was standing up again when he felt the cold barrel of a gun pressed hard against the back of his skull.

"Hello, Paulie," said the voice.

"Hey, hey . . . take it easy," said Paulie, freezing.

"Let's go inside, Paulie," said the voice. "Don't turn around. Just open the door like a good boy, nice and quiet, and step inside."

Breathing heavily, Paulie put his key carefully in the lock and opened the door. The pressure of the gun in the back of his head did not abate until he was standing inside his darkened foyer, the door closed behind him.

"Can I turn around?" he asked. "I ain't carryin' nothin' but groceries."

A hand slipped up and down his sides, patted the small of his back, traveled briskly around his waistband. "Sure," said the voice. "Turn around."

At first he didn't recognize the man in front of him. He was tall and thin, with a sickly complexion, hair cropped close to the skull, receding on top. He had a neat beard, and he wore gray sweats and athletic shoes like he'd been jogging. The headset to a Walkman hung around his neck. Paulie thought that was a nice touch.

Things were bad. That much he knew. Paulie knew the kinds of people in his business who were likely to come visit you with a gun at five-thirty in the morning, and he was running down in his mind who he might have pissed off lately.

"You can put the bags down, and the paper," said the man.

Paulie obediently put the groceries on the floor, leaning them against an umbrella stand. A sneakered foot came up and kicked him in the belly.

"Whatchoo do that for?" he asked, keeping his voice down in spite of considerable discomfort.

"Sorry," said the man. "Just trying to impress upon you the gravity of the situation."

"A
wwww
, jeez . . . it's you, ain't it, Henry?" said Paulie, finally recognizing the voice, the way the man spoke. He looked into the cold, unblinking eyes, glanced down and saw the silenced gun, and realized he was never going to eat that bowl of cereal. "You look like half a fag."

"Really? You think so?"

"I don't mean that in a bad way," said Paulie. "I mean . . . I know you ain't one."

"It's my fiendishly clever disguise, Paulie," said Henry, turning his head a fraction of an inch to listen to a passing car. "You know," he said, returning his full attention to Paulie, "I'm awful pissed with you . . . I'm seriously, killing mad at you, in fact."

"Yeah . . . I can see that."

"My wife . . . she got shot up pretty bad down there. My friends . . . they're dead, Paulie. My home . . . well, I just don't feel safe there anymore. You can see that, can't you?"

"Yeah, sure. I unnerstand." Paulie was thinking about his wife in the upstairs bedroom. Would she wake up when Henry pulled the trigger? Would the sound of the shots, or of his body falling to the floor, wake her up, bring her downstairs? "Believe me, I unnerstand," he said. I'm dead already, he was thinking. He wasn't going to plead for his life or anything. He wouldn't crawl or make excuses. This was how it ended. He found himself hoping the cold cuts wouldn't go bad, hoping maybe, at least, Henry would take him somewhere else to shoot him, the backyard, or the garage. He shook his head sadly, thinking about his wife's reaction when she found his body.

"Let's go sit down somewhere," said Henry, wagging the gun. "Have a nice talk. You got a kitchen? Down there?"

Paulie sighed and led Henry down the unlit hallway to his small kitchen. The sun was coming up over the airport now; light streamed through the yellow and orange daisy print curtains, illuminating the worn linoleum floor he'd promised her he'd replace but never had, the faded wallpaper, the brand-new refrigerator, swag from some hijacking Jimmy'd got a piece of. The refrigerator door was festooned with colorful magnets of fruit and vegetables, each holding down a child's crayon drawing.

"Very talented," commented Henry. "Whose?"

"My niece."

"She doesn't live here, though?"

Paulie shook his head and sat down where Henry was waving him with the gun. Henry sat across from him, resting the weapon on a stack of
Self
magazines and mail-order catalogs, the barrel level with Paulie's throat. He identified the gun as a .22-caliber Hi-Standard, with silencer, and noticed, too, that Henry was wearing gloves. He looked around his kitchen, missing it already.

"Where's Jimmy?" asked Henry. "Right now, I mean. Will you tell me that, please?"

"You gonna kill me anyways, Henry, right?" said Paulie, shrugging rather heroically, he thought. "So why I gonna tell you somethin' like that?"

"I don't care
why
you do it, Paulie," said Henry, in a flat, uninflected monotone. "As long as you
do
tell me. And understand me, please . . . you
are
going to tell me . . . If I have to lift your eyeballs outta their sockets with a fucking butter knife, one at a fucking time, you
are
going to tell me. So don't be silly. I'm a
very
determined man right now."

Paulie shuddered slightly, sweat running down his back into the crack of his ass, making him itch. He squirmed in his chair, but still he shook his head, his lips pursed.

"You know I did two tours in Vietnam. Did you know that?" said Henry.

"No. . . I din't know that."

"You?"

"Me? No . . . bad back. I woulda, but . . ."

"I served for a while with a bunch of fellows, Vietnamese, Cambodians, called PRUs. Nice enough boys once you got to know them, but hell on the enemy. We did some ugly things over there, Paulie. Real, real ugly. Things hadn't been going well for us. Sometimes we had to know things.
Had
to know, if you see what I'm saying. I didn't much like that kind of thing . . . Still don't. But . . . lives were at stake, and I did them. Like now, Paulie. Way I see it, lives are at stake here too. So don't just sit there like a dumb lump and think you aren't gonna tell me what I want. Because that's bullshit. You will. Everybody does. Everybody."

"Fuck you, Henry. Sorry," said Paulie, keeping his voice down.

"Hell, just looking around this kitchen . . . why, I see four or five common household objects which properly applied'll have you bucking up and down and shitting yourself. They tend to do that, I'm afraid, shit themselves. You won't even
know
what you're telling me, okay? But you
will
tell me. I'm a serious man."

"Fuck you. You ain't gonna do nothin'."

"Fuck
me?"
said Henry, getting loud. "Fuck
me?
Fuck
you!
You think I'm some sort of nice guy, I don't go in for some a' your Sicilian hijinks before? Is that what you're thinking? That was then. This is now. I'm talking about protecting my
wife,
asshole. My home! You think for a second what you'd be willing to do, right now, keep me from walking up those stairs and feeding your wife's tits into the toaster. I've got to think about Jimmy fucking Pazz for the rest of my life? No way. I will cheerfully,
cheerfully
eat my fucking breakfast outta your wife's empty fucking skull, I have to, Paulie!"

He tightened his hand on the gun, and the muzzle wandered around over Paulie's body for a while, looking for someplace painful.

"Can't you just take me out the fuckin' garage an' get this over with, Henry? I don't wanna wake her."

"My
wife . . .
My
wife," said Henry, his face tightening.

"I'm sorry about that," said Paulie. "Really. You . . . you got a legitimate beef wit' me. I see that. You wanna take me outside, inna garage, put a few inta my head . . . I can't complain. I unnerstand that. But, c'mon . . . You wouldn't do nothin' to my wife, would you, Henry? She didn't do nothin'. That wouldn't be right."

"I'm sorry too, Paulie. But I just
have
to know."

Paulie did not like the look on Henry's face at all. He was getting ready to do something, he could see that. He considered diving for the gun, pictured himself dead, stretched out on the kitchen table. He thought about what Henry had said, about shitting yourself, how undignified that would look.

"Paulie?" came a thin voice from the stairs. "That you, honey?"

Paulie went pale. Across the table, Henry's face showed uncertainty for the first time as the padding of slippered feet drew closer. Neither man moved.

"Oh! You've got company," said the tiny woman in the canary yellow housecoat. She might have been pretty once, without the curlers, the slippers with the bunny faces on them - a pleasant, child's face, gone to fat under the frosted curls. "You get everything on the list? Remember the food for kitty?"

"Yeah, yeah. I got it," said Paulie, his voice cracking.

"Crab and tuna flavor? She don't like the other kinds."

"Yeah. I got it."

Henry had just slipped the gun onto his lap, mind racing. He was stunned by what happened next.

Mrs Caifano leaned over and, without a moment's hesitation, picked up the silenced pistol, holding it between her fingers like a schoolmarm impounding a slingshot. She headed off to the foyer.

"What I tell you, Paulie, about bringing guns inta the house? You tell your friend. House rules . . . He can pick up his thingy when he leaves. It'll be right in the drawer there."

Henry sat dumbstruck, listening as the middle-aged woman in the housecoat shuffled sleepily down the hall, dropped his gun into a bureau, closed the drawer, and returned carrying the two bags of groceries.

She immediately set about putting away the perishables.

"You're being very rude, Paulie, not introducing me."

"Sorry, Marie. This is Henry . . . Henry; my wife, Marie," said Paulie, looking sheepish.

"A friend from work? You boys work together with that terrible man?"

"Yes," said Henry, finding his voice. "Work." He felt utterly foolish, wondering whether Paulie was going, at any second, to come lunging across the kitchen table at him.