Shorts - Thriller 2: Stories You Just Can't Put Down (16 page)

“I dunno. When he does wake up, he needs to go down to University Hospital and treat himself to a neurological.” C.T.
shakes his head. “I smacked him pretty hard. Stupid asshole. Good thing the gun wasn’t loaded. They’d be finding little pieces of Jeff all over Washington Beach for the next year.” C.T. takes his pistol out of its pocket holster and begins reloading the 9-mm hollow points back into the clip, keeping an eye on the parking lot so as not to give anyone walking by a heart attack.

“Aren’t you glad it wasn’t loaded, though?” Andy asks.

“Not really.” C.T. slips the clip home and ratchets a round into the chamber. “If he had come out from under the covers with a derringer or something we’d both be laid out on a cooling board down at Schoedinger’s right now, instead of taking in the local ambience.” C.T. wipes his hand across his face, inhaling deeply, watching a middle-aged and grossly overweight couple walking in their general direction, looking like a pair of twin dirigibles that have come untethered at a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. “Now,” C.T. said, gesturing, “let’s see what our involuntary benefactor has bestowed upon us.”

Andy hands the wad of bills to his dad. It is, indeed, not a Michigan roll at all, it’s just the opposite, in fact, a roll of fifties on the outside and the rest Benjamins. “How much did you loan Jeff?” C.T. asks.

“Three hundred.”

“You dumb-shit.” C.T. starts pulling bills off the roll. “Would you like that in fifties or hundreds, sirrah?”

“Fifties.” C.T. looks at him. “Please,” Andy says. C.T. counts off six bills. “Next time remember the First National Bank of Dad. You’ll deal with a higher class of lender.” He begins counting the rest of the roll while doing an eerily on-target impression of a stoned-out Jeff. “Gee, Andy, I don’t have any money—five hundred—ya see, dude, Rakkim really fucked me over, man, I don’t have any money—seven hundred—I’m sorry, Andy, but it’s Rakkim’s fault, and my rent is due, and I don’t have any money—nine hundred fifty—maybe you can stall
Kozee for a few days, but I’m tapped out, I don’t have any money—one thousand, three hundred, fifty.” C.T. exaggerates shuffling the wad into a neat pile and tapping it, imitating Oliver Hardy. “I should drive back there and shoot that little cunt myself for being a lying sack of shit and causing my heartbeat to race.”

“What are we going to do with the rest of the money?” Andy asks.

“We’re going to donate it to the Sisters of the Poor Claires.” Andy is staring at C.T., incredulously. “What do you think we’re going to do with it? We’re keeping it. Interest on your loan, collection fees…why, by the time we total everything up, Jeff may still owe us some money.” C.T. puts the rest of the money in his pocket and says, “Now look, you need to keep bugging Jeff about what he owes you. If you stop asking him, it’ll look strange, and he’ll wonder about your sudden largesse. But what’s the lesson here?”

Andy shrugs, but answers, “I should have come to you?” C.T. shakes his head. “That, too. But remember what I said about your problem being Jeff? He’s not your friend. He hung your ass out to dry.” C.T. shakes his head again. “Shit. Hippies. Drug dealers. Fucking Kozee. What are you doing with these people anyway? I taught you better than that.”

Andy doesn’t say anything. He has no answer, not one that will make C.T. happy, anyway. He does have a question, though. “What about Kozee?”

C.T. stares out the windshield for a minute, then starts the car up. “I’ll take care of that freak,” he says.

Kozee is laughing.

C.T. doesn’t think he’s said anything funny, but Kozee is mightily amused. He throws his head back now, really into it, laughing his ass off.

For being a whack-job, Kozee has taken really good care of his teeth, C.T. thinks, a few fillings here and there but otherwise everything is straight and white and sparkling. C.T. can see all the way back to Kozee’s second fucking molars, the guy has his mouth open so wide.

Kozee and C.T. are sitting in what used to be a 7–Eleven. It’s a blind pig now, not even officially a store, but there are some chips and loosies on the counter and beer in the cooler, the forty-ouncers that the mulies love and that are sold with impunity 24/7. The candy on the counter appears to get dusted once a year whether it needs it or not. There’s an occasional rustle in the dark corners of the store and in the aisles, and C.T. thinks that at some point a year or two ago Orkin should have been called in.

He and Kozee are behind the counter at a small table, the only people in the store. The rest of Kozee’s crew is outside, because, after all, C.T. is older and soft-looking, and if Kozee had muscle in the room with him, it would look like he couldn’t handle things, right?

Kozee, at the tail end of a laugh, leans forward. “Y’know, everyone says you’re straight up, but you’re out of your mind. Your son—Andy, right?—owes me five, three on the loan and two on the vig. And I’m gonna lend him money again and again and again.”

C.T. is trying to keep it calm. It’s been a long day, and it’s not even half over. Worse, he is in danger of missing that all-important one-o’clock feeding. He is thinking of how easy it would be for him to kill this goon; it would cause more problems than it would solve, but he is within a minute or two of past caring. He says, “I don’t like repeating myself—”

Kozee half rises out of his chair, and leans over into C.T.’s face. C.T. can see that it registers with Kozee, just with an eye blink, but still it registers with Kozee that C.T. doesn’t lean back or give
ground. “Listen, you old fuck, you don’t tell me what I do. I didn’t get all this—” He pauses for a second, because C.T. is looking around at the half-empty shelves while Kozee is talking to him, looking at the paper on the floor that seems to move on its own, the dust everywhere, and his eyebrows slightly raised, like he’s thinking whoopee-shit, disrespecting him. This pisses Kozee off. He pokes his finger toward C.T.’s chest to get his attention back.

At least he tries to.

Kozee suddenly can’t move his finger. C.T. has grabbed Kozee’s finger in midpoke. He thumps it down on the table that’s between them, and he comes up with some sort of little knife out of nowhere, it looks like one of those guillotine blades and he’s wearing it like a ring. The blade is pressed against Kozee’s pointer finger, right where the finger meets his right hand.

“I don’t like being interrupted, either,” C.T. says softly. “Now sit down, slowly, and I’ll talk, you listen. I’ll walk out of here with a promise from you, and you’ll still have your hand in the same shape it was when I walked in, so you won’t have to explain to your crew of little pussies how the head pussy got his finger cut off by an old man.”

Kozee slowly sits down. This old fuck, he’s pulled a knife out of nowhere, caught his finger and had it down on the table so fast it would take longer to tell about it, like that fat old blind guy on the reruns of
Kung Fu.
Kozee, for the first time since he was ten years old, before he started hitting his growth spurt, is actually scared.

“Now listen to me,” C.T. says, slowly, like he’s talking to a cat. “You’re not to lend money to my son anymore. His credit is no good here. You give him no reasons, no hassles, you just tell him no. In return, you get to keep your finger. And as a show of good faith, I keep quiet about that strap-on hooker you visit. The one in the second-floor walk-up on Hudson and McGuffey. With
the lifesize naked dummy she keeps in the window to tell her clientele that she ‘be open for bidness.’”

Kozee’s eyes at this point are wide-open. Nobody is supposed to know about that shit. He can’t believe the shit that this old fuck knows, how he talks, how he acts, not even breaking a sweat and the guy is serious, he
will
take Kozee’s finger. Kozee wants to kill this clown, but the guy is reading his mind again.

“Yeah, I can read your mind,” C.T. says, “and it’s the shortest book in the library. If I’m struck by lightning or a car or something, the MPEG of you and your whatever winds up on muchosucko-dot-com and a half-dozen other Web sites before my body’s even cold. And I’ll take more than just your finger if you come after me. Are we solid?”

Kozee nods. He is furious and scared and is thinking that he will kill this old guy if he ever gets the chance but at the same time he knows he’ll never get the chance.

“Oh,” C.T. says, “one other thing. Don’t even look at my son. You’ll pray for St. Joseph to give you a quick and happy death.” He runs the edge of the blade softly, almost gently, across Kozee’s finger before he releases his grip and then he snaps his finger and the blade disappears, like he’s a sideshow magician or something. Kozee looks down and sees a thin line of blood at the joint, and for just a second he’s afraid to lift his hand off of the table, for fear his finger will still be lying there. C.T. gets up and throws three bills on the table—one, two and three—and looks around again, a contemptuous look on his face. He walks through the door without looking back, and gets into and starts up his car like he’s just left church or something and he has nothing else to do for the day. Kozee is furious, he’s trembling so badly he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop. One of his boys comes in to use the bathroom, and as he walks by the table he is staring at Kozee’s hand.

The finger, Kozee sees, is still bleeding.

Three days later Andy calls C.T. at 6:00 a.m. in the morning. “Guess who wants to talk to you?”

“Jeff,” C.T. says.

There’s a long silence on the line. “Did he call you, too?” Andy asks.

“No. Did he say what he wanted?”

“He wants—” Andy pauses and tries to contain himself, but he can’t help laughing “—for you to help him with a problem.”

“That’s what I do,” C.T. says. “Have him call me.”

The following Tuesday C.T. and Jeff are sitting in Lisa’s. Jeff has a circular bruise in the middle of his forehead from where C.T., while wearing his ski mask, had pressed his .38 special, and another lump along the right side of his head where C.T. had pistol-whipped him. C.T. has been listening to Jeff lay everything out, from Rakkim ripping him off to borrowing money from Andy to getting robbed by a couple of heavy-duty mokes who are now, apparently, in the wind.

When he’s done, C.T. doesn’t say anything for a minute, just sits and sips his coffee, then asks the waitress for a refill before he starts in on Jeff.

“First of all. You tried to pull a game on Andy.” Jeff starts to protest, but stops when C.T. raises his hand like a traffic cop. “Don’t ever do that again. When we’re done here, you’re gonna pay Andy back his three hundred, and another hundred for his troubles.” Jeff doesn’t look happy, but nods his head. C.T. says, “I can’t fucking hear your brains rattle. Is that a yes or a no?”

“Yes, yes, sir, I’m sorry,” Jeff says. C.T. waves it away.

“Okay. We understand each other.” C.T. takes a sip of coffee, and looks at the waitress for a moment, bending over a table across the room. The woman is new at Lisa’s, maybe her midthirties, probably too young for him, but she looks good in a pair of jeans, bent over a table, taking an order. She is the type of slum
goddess that the Clintonville neighborhood has attracted by the busload for decades. He imagines her for a moment on a hotel balcony, kneeling in front of him, then turns back to Jeff.

“Now, your problem isn’t these mokes who ripped you off. Your problem is Rakkim. He owes you money. You get it from him. What he owes you and then some. For your trouble.”

“How I am supposed to do that?” Jeff says. C.T. takes another sip of coffee, and stares at Jeff over the rim of the cup. The coffee, he thinks, is really good this morning. The old hippie who owns the place is home where he belongs so he can’t fuck it up. C.T. looks at the waitress again and she smiles over her shoulder at him.

C.T. smiles back at her, then smiles at Jeff.

“How about,” he says, “I’ll show you.”

Lawrence Light is no stranger to the world of financial skullduggery that his character Karen Glick tackles in
Too Rich To Live
and
Fear and Greed.
As an award-winning reporter covering Wall Street, Larry writes about the world Glick investigates. His real-life experience has given him insider information on the corrupting force of greed. And has given him his own share of enemies along the way.

“The Lamented” takes a slightly different turn as it examines the toll greed can take on the human conscience, even in characters who seem to lack one of their own. When their past pays them a visit, some unsavory individuals discover how easily the line between reality and imagination is blurred. But when all is said and done, payback is as unavoidable as it is deadly.

W
hen the man he’d killed a year ago walked into the bar, Joe Dogan was surprised. So surprised that he fell off his stool.

Dogan lay on his back on the sticky floor, his eyes as rounded as the moon, and mouthed words silently. His glass rolled away from him, trailing bourbon.

Brad Acton, dead a year now, smiled, showing his fine teeth. Brad’s well-cut suit fit just right on his trim, tall body, and his well-cut blond hair flopped just right down his noble forehead. Brad seemed delighted to be here, even though this had to be the seediest bar in Camden, New Jersey, arguably the nation’s seediest city. When he was alive, he had been perpetually delighted, and everyone was delighted by him.

With a smile as bright as the day outside, Brad took a step toward where Dogan lay sprawled.

Dogan managed to make a sound: “Noooooooooooo.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. It must be the booze. A few times before, after tipping too many wet ones, he’d had hallucinations.

Slowly, warily, Dogan opened his eyes. The bar was empty again. The light from the revolving beer sign was the brightest thing in this dark place. It twinkled off the treasury of neatly shelved booze bottles. The afternoon shined beneath the door. The bartender—

Wobbling, Dogan climbed to his feet. He steadied himself with a good, strong grip on the edge of the bar. “I need a drink,” he bellowed.

Where the hell was the bartender? The little weenie had diligently poured his drinks without complaint, even when Dogan drove the two other customers out, threatening to kill them if they didn’t stop yapping about politics.

His .45 lay on the bar. Dogan hefted the gun and admired it in the light from the revolving beer sign. Nice, powerful weapon.

Oh, yeah. The bartender left after Dogan had waved the .45 in his face. Dogan remembered now. Couldn’t the jackass tell that Dogan was only kidding around?

“That’s the gun you killed me with.”

Dogan gulped painfully, as if he were swallowing an entire lemon down his suddenly parched throat. He turned around with elaborate, jaw-clenched care.

“It’s in better shape than you are,” Brad said, pleasantly enough. He stood a mere two feet from Joe. The breezy, confident way Brad acted—this could have been another election campaign stop for him.

Dogan tried to say, “You can’t be here.” Instead, it came out as: “Yaaaacunbur.”

“Why not?” Brad said. “It was a year ago tonight.”

Dogan was breathing at a marathoner’s tempo. He could hear his heart slamming wildly inside his rib cage, as though it wanted to escape.

“Joe, Joe, Joe. What am I going to do with you? That no-show county job that Robert Stagg arranged for you isn’t doing won
ders for your character. Drinking in the middle of the day? Your job is supposed to be on the roads. Hard work, but honest work.”

“I—I—I—I—I—I—I—I—I—I—I…”

Brad’s smile grew still more incandescent. “Robert and you and I really must get together. Tonight makes sense. How’s tonight for you?”

He reached out to shake Joe’s hand. Like any masterful politician, Brad was a skillful and eager shaker of hands.

Dogan screamed and backpedaled in panic. He knocked over several barstools and fell hard on his butt. He lost his hold on the gun. It went spinning off on the floor. Making wounded animal noises, Dogan crawled away from the bar. With hands and knees scurrying, he did not dare look back at Brad.

“Robert Stagg only paid you ten thousand to kill me,” Brad said. “I’m worth a lot more than that. Ten thousand? Chicken feed. Too bad the Justice Department is going to bag him. And on a corruption charge, not for my murder. How is that justice?”

Dogan stopped crawling when his head hit the jukebox. Fortunately for him, drink dulled the pain. The collision jolted the juke to life. It played an old Michael Jackson tune, the one with Vincent Price. He slumped against the machine, staring at the fading tattoo that decorated his thick forearm: a heart pierced with an arrow.

Fearfully, Dogan raised his gaze. He brought his fingers, sticky from the filthy floor, to his stubbly cheeks.

Skanky’s Tavern was empty once more.

Dogan clasped the jukebox to get up. He moved unsteadily, whether from the shock or from the bourbon, to the bar. En route, he successfully stooped to collect his .45 from the floor. He knew he had to leave before Brad appeared again. But first—

Dogan trudged behind the bar and hoisted the bourbon bottle. He glugged down torrents of the blessed stuff, burning his gullet and soothing his nerves. The bottle emptied, Dogan threw it against the wall. It shattered satisfyingly.

Checking around for Brad, Dogan stalked—actually weaved—out of Skanky’s. He shoved the .45 into the pocket of his ratty jacket. The early spring sun assaulted his retinas. He stumbled as the pink, purple and green circles swirled. Then they disappeared, and he could see again. With his head tilted back, the first thing he saw was the soaring mass of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge over the wrecked rooftops.

His chin fell to his chest. Two small kids, maybe around nine or ten, were messing with his motorcycle. One had the stones to sit on it, his pipe-stem arms extending to the handlebars. “Vroom, vroom,” he cried with joy as he twisted the throttle in imaginary acceleration.

Dogan pulled out the keys to his Harley, but dropped them on the stained sidewalk. “Get off my damn bike, you little bastards,” he roared at them. Then he slowly reached down for the keys, taking care not to fall over.

“You drunk as a monkey,” shouted the one sitting on the bike. Both kids tittered.

The keys retrieved, Dogan drew himself upright. He didn’t like kids. He didn’t like blacks. The truth was he didn’t like anybody. And he double-disliked anybody messing with his bike. Even Christ himself had no business messing with Joe’s bike. And Christ hadn’t been to Camden in a long while.

Dogan struggled the gun out of his jacket pocket. The sight was caught in some fabric. He ripped it free.

“White man’s packing,” the kid on the bike cried out and he jumped off agilely. Laughing, the two of them ran away.

Stewed as he was, Dogan realized he shouldn’t be brandishing his weapon on the street. Not for fear of cops, who were as scarce as a brontosaurus in the fossilized ruins of Camden. This neighborhood, Dogan knew, was Mister Man’s turf, called H Town, for heroin. To the north was Dope City and to the south was Crackville. But in this swath of Camden, Mister Man was
the absolute ruler, his power akin to Kim Jong-Il’s. In H Town, no one pulled out a piece unless Mister Man okayed it. Mister Man had the monopoly on firepower here. Dogan stuffed his .45 back into his pocket and jerkily mounted his bike.

He kick-started the Harley Night Rod into life. In a flash of chrome, he sped his 7,000 r.p.m. screamer through the rutted roads of H Town, past the unending series of boarded-up, graffiti-marred row houses and stores, past the dry fire hydrants, past the dead streetlamps. He headed for Wilson Boulevard, where he could open her up. If a cop stopped him, he had the juice to skip away free. Robert Stagg would ensure that.

What Joe Dogan needed was wind through his hair. What he needed was to wipe out the daytime nightmare of Brad Acton, dead a year now.

The memorial ceremony for Brad Acton droned on ad nauseam. The marbled, colonnaded lobby of the county courthouse overflowed with worshippers, recalling how their beloved Brad had been snatched from them a year ago today. The courthouse sat on Market Street, a drab strip of bail-bond offices and pawnbroker shops. It was the largest employer in Camden; make that the largest legitimate employer. A concrete, Depression-era monument to the futility of government to bring about a civil society in Camden, the courthouse was festooned with too many blown-up photos of the late, great Brad.

Robert Stagg, a high-level county official, sat in the front row and suffered through the sentimental twaddle about the “historic Acton legacy.” Both New Jersey U.S. senators and the governor were on hand. Up at the podium was that moron Denny Shaughnessy, blathering about how Brad was “the best freeholder this county has ever seen.” A few seats down from Stagg was Denny’s wife, crying bitterly. Brad had been screwing her for years.

“Brad would’ve been our next congressman from the First District,” Denny was saying. “Then a year ago, at midnight, some son of a bitch gunned him down. On his own doorstep. In Haddonfield, for God’s sake.” Denny, a fellow freeholder from the suburbs, was offended that a crime would occur in wealthy Haddonfield. Violence was too gauche to be permitted there. It was as if Haddonfield had become Camden.

To Stagg’s right was Brad’s widow, who still looked great if you didn’t look closely. She wore a Donna Karan suit that needed dry cleaning. Her knees were spread like a schoolgirl’s. She chewed her brunette hair.

Everyone had been dismayed that Stagg had married Diana Acton, so soon after Brad’s death. But since Brad’s murder had devastated her, they got used to the idea.

“Take me home, Robert,” Diana said in that little-girl’s voice she had adopted lately. “This is all stupid.”

“If they ever find the coward who murdered Brad,” Denny ranted, “I want him to swing from the highest tree.”

“This will be over in a moment,” Stagg whispered to his wife, containing his exasperation at her, at Denny, at the whole idiotic ceremony. He wanted it to be over, too.

“There’s no need for it,” Diana went on. Stagg shushed her gently. He had always treated her gently, even when he shouldn’t.

“I played football at Haddonfield High with Brad, and thanks to him, we won the state championship two years in a row,” Denny said, calming down some.

With rancor, Stagg recalled his service as team manager, when he waited on Brad like a servant, when he was the target of the team’s jokes and pranks, when even Brad called him “Stagg the Bag” for his shapeless body.

“Once Brad became a freeholder, he started to turn around our county seat,” Denny said. “If he’d lived, Camden would be cleaned up. Brad always kept a promise.”

The county’s white, bucolic suburbs surrounding Camden pretended to be impressed by that pledge, Stagg remembered ruefully. The truth was the wealthy suburbanites didn’t care about blighted inner-city Camden, the county’s shameful dark heart, a drug-ridden, gang-run hell. When Brad agreed to back Stagg for the Board of Freeholders, the county’s governing body, Stagg bravely said he’d campaign on resurrecting the city of Camden, too. Brad told him not to bother; he had that covered.

So Denny Shaughnessy nattered away, Sheila Shaughnessy sobbed and Diana Acton—she insisted on keeping the name from her first marriage—twiddled her thumbs in her lap. Robert Stagg wished she had taken a bigger dose of Halcion.

His attention wandered around the lobby, transformed nauseatingly into the Saint Brad Cathedral. He knew almost everyone in the crowd. And he liked that they gazed at him with respect, much as they had with Brad. He had been asked to speak, of course, yet had demurred out of concern for Diana. He needed to be at her side constantly.

Stagg’s eyes bugged out.

There. In the crowd, by the elevators. Standing tall. The blond hair over his forehead. Smiling as if every day was his birthday. Staring at Stagg.

Stagg whimpered involuntarily.

“What’s wrong, Freeholder Stagg?” asked Jimmy Sparacino, the Democratic Party’s county chairman, who sat to Stagg’s left.

“Nothing, nothing, nothing.” The vision of Brad had vanished in the throng.

“I wish you’d spoken today,” Sparacino whispered. “You were Brad’s best friend. I understand about poor Diana, but…”

Sparacino liked to refer to Brad’s widow as “poor Diana.” Luckily for her new husband, Diana was far from poor. She had inherited a load from her rich family, and Brad’s fortune had passed to her, also. Now it was Stagg’s.

Stagg thanked the chairman for his concern. “This is a rough day for her,” he said in a low voice she couldn’t hear. “All the memories rushing back—it’s hard to handle.”

When Brad chose Stagg to run, Sparacino had objected, saying, “Stagg’s fat, he’s bald, he’s ugly. The only reason to vote for him is he’s your gofer.” Since Brad’s death, Sparacino had changed his mind and come to value Stagg’s brains. As he should, having none himself.

At long, painful last, the ceremony ended. The dignitaries stood up to greet, gab and guffaw. Smiling is to politics what dribbling is to basketball. But Stagg wasn’t in the mood to play the game today. He took Diana’s arm and led her out.

He passed the U.S. Attorney, Javers, who was flanked by his young Dobermans in their Brooks Brothers suits. They regarded Stagg hungrily. “We’ll see you tomorrow morning at nine, Freeholder Stagg,” Javers said from somewhere above his bow tie. “Sharp.”

Stagg couldn’t meet the man’s eyes and instead looked to the side, toward the crowd. “Talk to my lawyer, Mr. Javers, not me.”

As they reached the crowded door, Diana said, in her nursery school cadences, “What did that mean-looking man in the bow tie want?”

“Some nonsense Justice Department fishing expedition about the widening of Salem Turnpike in Lindenwold. I pushed it through the board.” Stagg didn’t mention to her that the road project benefited a monster shopping mall that went in a year later. Or let on who owned the mall.

Diana walked like her old regal self. Perfect posture, proud stride. Too bad she didn’t talk like her old self. “The ceremony was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

“Whatever you say, Diana.” In fact, this was Diana’s only sensible utterance in a long time. “I know this was difficult for you.”

“It’s stupid because Brad is alive.”

“Alive?”

Her laugh was one he’d never heard before, almost like a crow’s cawing. “He was here today. I talked to him. Why have a memorial ceremony when he’s alive?”

Stagg grimaced. “You’re mistaken, Diana. I myself saw someone in the crowd who looked a lot like Brad. But Brad is dead. We’re all on edge today.”

As they reached Stagg’s Volvo, parked in his designated spot, his cell phone rang. The display read Homey the Clown. He groaned and flipped it open. “Freeholder Stagg,” he said, full of entitlement and self-assurance.