Sugar Pop Moon (24 page)

On my way to the sink I hear the front door open. Very few people have the key, so I duck behind the arch that separates the back area from the game room and poke my head out. It's Pearl. A brown hat sits atop her tiny ears and a long black overcoat is draped over her full figure. She's weeping and a shiny stream of mucous is leaking out of her nose. I'm tempted to tell her to stay out of my sight until she can keep her tongue off of other guys' necks, but I swallow the urge. I step into the game room.

“Your father told me what happened,” she says between sobs. “Thank the Lord you're okay.”

She walks over and hugs me, sandwiching my wrapped right arm between us. Then she says into my ear, “I'm sorry.”

Sorry for what? Sorry that I had to send a bullet through a man's skull to stay alive? Sorry that she led me on and then dropped me like yesterday's racing form? Sorry that she can't bring herself to fall in love with a zebra-nigger-lackey-coon?

Every cell in my battered brain is screaming at me to turn away, but I can't. As of this moment she's the only person in my life who isn't stained with blood.

“Santi's dead,” I tell her. “So's Gazzara and so's Hector.” I leave out the bartender because she doesn't know him, and I don't want to get into the whole story, especially the part about the bargain-basement hooker.

“I know,” she says, her weighty top lip shaking. “Your father told me how you rescued that young boy.”

Knowing my father, he stopped at Pearl's place this morning, a white bandage plastered across the back of his head, and told her I was a hero. He wanted to help, but it's too late for me and Pearl.

“He also told me you saved his life,” Pearl says.

I'd love to take credit for saving the champ, but he wouldn't have even been in the cellar club if it weren't for me.

“I think it was the other way around,” I say.

“How's your arm?” she asks.

It feels good that she's asking.

“I'll be okay,” I say, rubbing my bandages with my left hand. “I owe the doc one. He cleaned us up, no cops, no hospitals, no paperwork.”

I try pouring a glass of water for Old Man Santiago with one arm but Pearl has to do it for me. When we get back to the booth, the old man is just the way I left him—he's got his face in his folded arms, sobbing.

“I've got to tell my wife,” he says again. He gets up and walks through the game room, wobbling from side to side, like a ginned-up rummy after a night at the Pour House. I walk him to the door, and when Pearl's not looking I reach into my pocket and pull out the blood money Johalis had earmarked for Jimmy. I put it where it belongs.

“Here,” I say to him, slipping the wad into his hand. “You need it more than I do.”

He nods and takes it. He'll pull that money out of his pocket in a day or two and not even know where it came from.

He leaves and I lock the door behind him—he'll never be back now that Santi is gone. I don't care that I've got nothing to hand Jimmy now. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't give the old man the dough to bury his own son.

I walk over to Pearl and she asks me what I said to Old Man Santiago.

“I gave him a couple of bucks,” I say, knowing I'm screwed. Now I've got to face Jimmy with nothing. I might as well have put a gun in my mouth. Luckily, I'm getting used to the taste of metal.

Johalis swigs a shot of bourbon. We're sitting in cabin 11 at Gwendolyn's Cozy Cottages off Route 27 in New Jersey. Outside, a blue and brown sign says we're in a roadside family hotel, but it's nothing more than a handful of log cabins blanketed by a foot of snow and surrounded by frosted oak trees. The place should be called the Getaway because nobody would consider coming here unless they were running from something. The regulars seem to be truckers and hookers, and now they can add to their register a one-armed albino hiding from a stuttering bootlegger and his roster of crooked cops.

Our cabin feels no bigger than a telephone booth and looks like a cross between a cheap hotel and an abandoned ski lodge. The air smells like damp cedar and the brown carpet stinks of stale whiskey. The smoke from Johalis's Lucky Strike isn't helping.

“Right now every cop in Philly is out for our hides,” Johalis is saying, sitting on the edge of the bed. “The clean cops are doing their jobs and the dirty ones are hunting us for Denny Gazzara. Either way, we're cooked.”

I'm slumped in a tattered armchair across from Johalis, my bandaged right arm resting helplessly in my lap. My father is next to me, sitting on a worn orange couch.

“I'm only concerned 'bout the clean cops,” my father says, no doubt wishing he could wash the blood from his hands and the guilt from his soul.

“Squaring it with the clean ones is easy,” Johalis says. “It's not like they weren't after Joseph Gazzara, too. I got some news on that creep.”

He's holding a flask of whiskey and a Lucky in his right hand, the cigarette wedged between his first two fingers.

“Joseph Gazzara could've cared less about the devil—he was nothing but a two-bit thief. He worked the docks, lifting entire containers of Cuban sugar cane. He even went to Cuba and set up bogus shipments, so nobody ever knew the sugar was missing. At some point, when he was down there, he ran into a witch doctor with connections. He cut a deal to ship albino bones to Cuba for sugar, tobacco, rum, whatever he could get. He got a Santerian sicko up here—Hector—to do his dirty work, and he probably made some big bucks for a while. To him, it was nothing but another grift. But to the people in Philly, it was a lot more than that. Every albino in the city owes you one.”

He tips his flask toward me, takes a healthy sip, and smacks his lips together as he swallows.

My father says the bastard had it coming, but I'm too nauseated to speak. I'm picturing my legs, hacked in half and packed in ice on a ship bound for Cuba. I grab the flask from Johalis with my left hand and down a double shot to settle my stomach. The image I've got in my mind is so gruesome I practically gargle with the liquor before swallowing it.

“So all we gotta do is find a squeaky clean cop,” my father says.

I appreciate the champ's morals, but he's dreaming if he thinks we can walk away from three bodies.

“I'm not telling the cops that I murdered Denny Gazzara's brother,” I say.

Johalis nods. “You're right, you don't know who to trust. We'll worry about the cops after we settle up with Gazzara.”

“And that's an even bigger problem than you think,” I tell him. “You two weren't at that tree farm.”

“Don't matter,” my father says. “We gotta sit down with Gazzara and let him know it was self-defense.”

He shrugs as if there's no other solution, but his plan's got more holes in it than a watering can. One of them is too big to ignore.

“Denny Gazzara's not the talking type,” I say, my voice getting louder. “What do we do when he pulls out his machine gun?”

Nobody says it, but we all know the answer is that we'd have to pull one first.

“We won't walk out alive,” I say. “He's got too many triggermen.”

“What about McCullough?” my father says. “He's got his money now. Maybe he'll take care of Denny for you. Let the two thugs fight it out.”

I can't tell the champ or Johalis that I gave the money to Old Man Santiago.

“Jimmy could make things a lot worse than they are now,” I say. “If he goes at Gazzara and misses, Gazzara will be on us twice as bad.”

“Then we've got to sit down with Gazzara when his boys aren't around,” Johalis says.

“Man to man,” the champ says again, nodding in agreement. “No triggermen.”

I get up and crank the window with my left hand to let in some fresh air and common sense. The snow is coming down again, and with it comes the germ of an idea. Tomorrow is December 22, a busy day, I'd imagine, at a Christmas tree farm. If it keeps snowing this heavily, we might have a shot at crossing the farm and reaching Gazzara's cabin without being seen by Frank or any of Denny's other triggermen. That would put us face to face with Gazzara, minus the bullets.

And if that happens, then maybe I can spend Christmas in Harlem, helping Old Man Santiago stumble his way through the holidays.

The Auburn slips and slides as we inch through the blanket of snow building up on Route 27. Inside the car, the only sounds are the howl of the wind, the squeak of the wipers, and the grunts coming out of the champ's mouth as he wrestles with the steering wheel.

To our right the frosty peaks of spruces and firs reach for the blue, snow-filled sky. If I didn't know I was staring at a camouflaged barrelhouse, I might think the blizzard belonged on a holiday postcard.

“The shop is around this bend,” I say as we ride alongside the tree farm. “The cabin is up ahead.”

We're figuring Gazzara's boys will be holed up in the store until the snowstorm lets up, so we don't shoulder the car until we're about a quarter-mile past the shop and much closer to the cabin. Johalis runs through the plan, which takes all of ten seconds. He and I will make our way to the front of the cabin. We'll knock and hope Denny answers. The champ will go around back just in case any loose gunmen think about throwing us a surprise party.

I've got my revolver holstered on my right shoulder since I'm now forced to shoot with my left hand. I'm also carrying my brass knuckles in the left pocket of my overcoat. I tug my hat low, wrap my scarf around my mouth, pull on my leather gloves, and, to take the edge off the blinding snow, slip on my dark glasses. I step out of the car and my right foot sinks into a knee-high drift; an icy frost seeps down my boot and bites at my calf and ankle. The flakes whip my face—I feel as if a plague of chilled thumbtacks is pricking my cheeks. I pull my scarf up to my eyes and lead Johalis and my father through the rows of Christmas trees, each a powdery pyramid extending three feet over our heads.

The cabin was tough to find on a clear day and it's doubly hard in a whiteout. I stop to get my bearings. It can't be more than a hundred yards away—I'm just not sure which hundred.

Tapping me on the shoulder, Johalis points over his head and to our right. A trail of smoke is spiraling toward the sky. There must be a chimney below.

“Okay,” I tell him, and then turn to my father. “Champ, you're around back.”

My father lumbers forward—he'll keep going until he spots the cabin and then he'll circle around to its rear entrance. Johalis and I need to head toward the front. We squeeze between the trees, their frozen branches banging at our knees as we move to our right. We make it through the third row when a mound of snow slides off a spruce and pelts my face. As I shake it off, I hear voices. I motion to Johalis that I've found the cabin. We stop in our tracks and crouch behind a tree.

The steady hum of the swirling wind is broken by the sharp
rat-a-tat
of a machine gun. It's coming from the cabin and must be targeting my father because it's not shooting at us. I crawl forward, my body slithering in the snow with my slinged arm beneath me. I'm trying to spot the triggerman, but I can't see shit with these damned glasses on. Johalis pulls out his pistol, gets down on one knee and aims up at the roof of the cabin. He squeezes off two shots but the patter of machine gun bullets continues.

I hear hurried footsteps crunching in the snow—my father's two rows to our left and running back to us. The triggerman isn't letting up—he's spraying a row of trees as if he's throwing down metal grass seed. Bullets are ricocheting off stones and ripping chunks off spruce trunks.

The champ cries out in pain and I hear him hit the ground. I bolt to my left, stumbling through the man-made forest, not caring that branches are ripping through my clothes and flesh. Johalis shoots at the cabin but he's no match for that Tommy gun. I toss the fucking sunglasses so I can get a good look at my father.