I call back and say “Please understand what I’m up against, Doris,” and she says “And you try and understand me. If I can’t respect you, how can I still see you? Bye.”
Next day Penny calls and says “How’d it work out?” and I tell her and she says she’s sorry and tells me to hold on and she comes back to the phone and says “I just spoke to Larry and it’s all right with him, if it is with you, since he feels you’ve nothing to lose now and he’s already put the time in to show you how, to work for us at the same job if you adapt to our policy about those asterisks and things.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“He has no hard feelings for you anymore.”
“Neither do I much for him, I think, but I still can’t go along with it.”
“Good enough, but the word from here is to still keep your trap shut.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You acting stupid again?”
“Don’t you even have the slightest regret about what you do?”
“Right now no, goddamnit, no. Now what do you have to say to me but your acting stupid again?”
“I understand. I’ll keep my mouth shut. And as for all the problems you caused me and your own ethics: fuck you,” and I hang up.
Larry calls me a minute later and yells into the phone “Don’t you ever speak to Penny like that again, don’t ever, I’m warning you, don’t.”
“All right, take it easy, I won’t,” and he hangs up.
JACKIE
The badly decomposed body of an unidentified man was found floating in Billowy Bay off Motorboro Airport at 4:15 P.M. by a Port Authority police officer.
So?
Know who it is? No.
Jackie. Jackie?
Jackie, Jackie. Jackie Schmidt.
I see. Jackie Schmidt. Floating in Billowy Bay. What’s that, a little article?
Under Area News.
And you can tell who it is just by reading this little thing in the paper?
I’d known he was thrown in there. First shot, then thrown.
Does it say anything about the man being shot?
Doesn’t have to. I know.
But if he was shot, wouldn’t they also say it?
They haven’t found where yet, but they will.
And there can’t be another unidentified man thrown in the same day? Of course not.
It doesn’t have to be the same day. It takes time to get decomposed. In fact, it couldn’t’ve been the same day.
How long you think it takes?
Days. Maybe two weeks. Badly decomposed, three. That’s when they threw Jackie in. Shot, took his clothes off, boom, in the water. Today’s Thursday? Then three weeks today. It’s him. So what are we going to do about it?
What do you mean? Nothing. It’s done. Jackie’s dead. I knew about it. Now I read about it. I was only telling you, thinking maybe you knew and if you did, then who from? And if you didn’t, that you’d probably be interested.
You mind my making an anonymous call to this paper so his wife could know?
Jackie not coming home for three weeks, she knows. So will everyone else in time.
How? He’s unidentified and decomposed. And no clothes you say. Nothing at all?
Stripped clean. Wrist watch. Socks. Even his gold star.
I don’t know why they didn’t say nude in the newspaper, but all right. Did he also have no fingerprints on when you people threw him in?
I didn’t throw anybody in. Neither do I know who did. I just know some people who know who did and why and how it went. Gambling debts. But in bad, and loans. Things like that. Worse. Taking on additional big debts with another group and not paying off the first one a dime before he did and then telling both groups to go eat it. Now if he’d just been in deep with the first people and told them to eat it, they would’ve only broken his arm. But taking on two big debts way way over his head and telling them both to eat it and then going to another city to take on a third, well that was too much. The first two met and, with the third’s approval, decided to dump him. As for your fingerprints, I guess not. Why bother, for they’d also have to kick out all his teeth and fill in his chin cleft and scars. Besides, they didn’t want to make it impossible for him to be identified.
Then you’ll have to explain to me. Why only take off his clothes and in other words only go halfway with his unidentification when they know Jackie has a record and will eventually be identified? Time to give them a cover or get the people who did it away?
No. They thought it’d be a good lesson to whoever might think he can beat out on two big debts to two vaguely related groups and to tell them both to go eat it besides.
But how these people who are supposed to get the lesson supposed to find out it’s a lesson and then one meant for them? By reading of an unidentified decomposed man found floating in the bay who could’ve gotten there through some long sleepwalk? How did the groups even know it was going to make the paper, nothing as the article was. And if they did, that it’d even be read?
Whisper and word got passed around starting a month ago. Jackie’s betting. Jackie’s welshing. Jackie’s in very steep. Jackie won’t cough up a note for them and told both of them to eat it raw. Jackie could get a leg broke talking and acting that way. If anyone’s a pal of Jackie’s, give him the word? Jackie’s missing. Hey, anybody see Jackie or hear from him the last few days? Then, body found. Man. Hmm, bay you say? Tomorrow or the next day we’ll read he’d been shot with a small-caliber bullet so close and clean that it almost got lost behind the back hairs of his head. Everybody will know who it is and what for. As for the newspaper, that’s not the important thing. If it didn’t get in, someone would phone them. What’s more important is that the people this lesson’s directed to get to know it slow.
These groups never seemed that clever to me to plan it so smooth.
Listen, we’re no psychologists and know little about the subject, but in what these groups do and their customers, they are. They haven’t studied it but just know.
So I’ll forget my call and even thinking about it.
You’ll see for yourself. Jackie’s wife will claim the body in a few days and there’ll be a funeral and we’ll attend.
We were his such good friends and nobody will mind?
No one. Neither his wife, who’ll be compensated for the lesson. And the people who did him in will even expect it of us and some of them will be there too. They play it decent, very orderly and good manners, something Jackie didn’t do or have. That was his problem. Not much brains too. Hand in hand with his gambling, that can kill you. Being a smart ass besides, you’re dead.
I’ll remember that.
It can save your life.
Lookit, a life worth saving might as well be my own. I’ll remember that. You know, I don’t think I like this business anymore. Money’s good and not too many hours and so far steady, but too much excitement for me and you never know who to trust. Your friend’s your friend one day, next day you’re fingered by him on maybe even a lie and with his or her thumb pressed down on your throat goodbye.
There’s a lot depending on it for everyone, that’s why. You just got to do what’s expected of you till you get the right to give orders and advice. That takes time and you got to want it. No matter what, never think you’re absolutely safe. Like with any job, any business. Draw up your own parallels.
But even when you’re right up there, company president and the rest of it, do something wrong and you can get it in the head.
Not if you do nothing wrong. Everything’s protected. Or let’s say, all your moves are almost already made. Sure, accidents happen, flukes out of nowhere. New people move in, alliances fall apart and develop, but then you got to know who to be for. All in all though, you got to just stay in line.