“You’re talking funny.”
“I been talking funny for a month,” he said. “Now, why don’t you give me a kiss.”
“He’s coming.”
“So what,” Andre said, grabbing the soft part of her thigh and squeezing. “Maybe we’ll let him watch tonight.”
“You’re sick,” she said, and licked his neck.
“I think you’d like that,” he said, and swirled his own tongue in her ear.
The rear door opened. Russo slipped in, brushing the rain off his shoulders, and said, “Hey, hey, cut it out. There’s a motel about two miles up Route 12 with HBO, can you save it?”
“We might let you watch tonight,” Andre said.
Russo cracked open a can and shifted in his seat.
“You want a beer?” he said. “I got some sandwiches too.”
Andre busted out laughing and Dani did too.
“You’re both fucked up,” Russo said, sniffing the air with that big nose and tugging at the collar of his yellow Polo shirt with its tiny blue horseman.
Andre made Russo go inside the motel office and get two connecting rooms on the end. Inside, they put their bags down and met at the little round veneer table in Russo’s room. Russo set out three silver cans of beer and Andre took out some needles, surgical tube, a Bunsen burner, and a spoon. He lit a Marlboro and let it dangle from his mouth while he got to work. Dani slipped her jean jacket off, lit a cigarette of her own, and watched him, the blue flame of the burner reflecting double in her dark eyes.
“Lie on the bed,” Andre said when the needle was ready. He inhaled deeply and stubbed out his cigarette.
She stubbed out hers too, then lay down in the sagging middle of the dingy bedspread and held out her arm. Andre wrapped her upper arm with the tube, stuck the needle into her vein, and removed the tube while he shot her up. Dani’s eyes rolled up. She began to moan and squirm lazily on the bed.
Andre grinned at Russo and said, “You want to go next?”
“Sure,” Russo said, raising his can and drinking some of the beer.
After he set it down, he lit up a Newport before he looked at Andre, exhaled the smoke, and said, “Now that she’s in la-la land, I want to ask you something.”
“Ask,” Andre said, tapping some powder from the bag into the spoon without taking his eyes off it.
“I heard you say something to her earlier about her cut,” Russo said, taking a drag, the ember burning bright.
Andre looked up and noticed that as Russo brought the beer can to his lips it trembled slightly. So did the Newport.
“You giving her some of yours?” Russo asked, taking a gulp and replacing the cigarette.
Andre’s grin grew wide and he narrowed his eyes at Russo through the smoke and said, “No. I was talking about her cut. She’s with us. She gets a cut.”
“’Cause the way I see it,” Russo said, opening another can of beer, taking another drag, and studying the table in front of him, “it’s you and me are partners. I don’t see me giving part of my share to her. It was you and me all along, and now all of a sudden she’s here. And I know she’s your girl, but that doesn’t make her a partner…”
Russo looked up to see Andre studying him and said, “Well? That’s fair, right?”
“I think the liquor’s talking for you,” Andre said.
“We’re gonna make five million dollars and I want my half!” Russo screamed, banging his fist down on the table.
57
THE BEER CAN WENT OVER. Beer foamed out of it in a bubbling pool that started to run across the small table toward Andre. He didn’t move, even when the river of beer ran over the lip of the table, spattering the leg of his jeans. Andre just stared and smiled. Dani groaned happily from the bed.
With the cigarette hanging from his mouth, Russo jumped up and began to mop the spilled beer away from Andre as if he were hoarding gold. The cigarette fell out of his mouth and hissed out in the mess. Russo used his bare bruised arm to sweep it onto the rug, then dried it on his leg as he sat back down.
“Jesus, I got shot in that Haitian deal. You fucking shot me in the leg, man. I could have talked and gotten off and you’d be in jail,” Russo said. The corners of his mouth were pulled tight and he ran his hand over the stubble of his scalp, knocking off the black cap. “You don’t want that.”
“Are you gonna cry?” Andre said.
Russo’s face was twisting up, wrinkling that nose and making his eyes squint.
“I want my share, Andre,” he said, starting to blubber. “This is all because of me. It isn’t fair!”
Andre took a deep breath and sighed through puckered lips. In one quick movement, he reached down, pulled the gun from his waist, snapped home a round, and had it pointing directly in Russo’s face.
Russo winced and turned his head away, bringing his hands up as if he could block the bullet. Andre sprang to his feet, sending the chair clattering into the wall.
“You want a share? You want your own big share?” Andre said through gritted teeth. “Fuck you!”
The gun blast was deafening in the small space and it even got Dani’s attention.
“Wow,” she said.
Russo was on his side, rabbit-kicking away at the carpet as if his feet could take him away. But the blood coursing from a dark hole just in front of his ear began to slow to a dribble and his kicking became nothing more than a dying tremble.
“Fuck,” Andre said.
He stuffed the gun back in his pants and cracked open the door, peering slowly outside until he was sure no one was around. He waited there for several minutes. Not even a light went on. He went back inside and began to look around. From the bathroom he grabbed a towel and began rubbing the surfaces of everything he or Dani had touched. Doorknobs. The spoon. The needle. The chair. The faucet in the bathroom.
He loaded their bags back into the old truck, then heaved Dani over his shoulder and slumped her down in the front seat. He made one last check, leaving the bag of heroin, before tossing the towel down in the pouring rain and jumping back into the truck. He turned north onto Route 12 and checked his rearview mirror.
His mind started gnawing over all the things he could have done differently, starting with the shooting and going all the way back to when Russo showed up in the first place. He should have gone to Seth then. He had a good thing going and now he had fucked it up just like everything else. He wondered if it was the curse his old man had put on him when Andre beat the hell out of him with a tire iron. He thought about that bloody mess and his old man’s words: I’ll fuck you over from the grave, I swear.
But in a funny way, beating his old man’s head in was what got him on the road to independence. From that time on, people respected him. He was nobody’s fool, not even Bonaparte’s. He was the one who got the women and the drugs and the kicks, and that’s what money was for anyway. He’d beat this trap same as he had the others. How could he be down when he had the drugs and the girl, and hadn’t it been a kick to see the look on Russo’s face right before he shot him? Not a lot of people got to see that.
He smiled at Dani and flicked his finger against her ass. She groaned, eyes fluttering, and smiled at him.
Andre sighed deeply and smiled back.
His heart rate had started to even out and he was thinking about where he’d dump the gun when he saw the flashing lights in the rearview mirror.
“Fuck!” he said, punching his foot to the floor.
Dani looked back and slowly said, “Wow. This is so fucked.”
There was more than one car now, and even as he accelerated up that dark wet highway, they seemed to be closing in. His mind raced to think of a place where he could turn off. Turn off the highway and run. He could survive in these woods if he had to. He’d done it before.