He eyes me up and down, smirking, then walks over. It’s a fluke that he catches me while I’m actually doing work. Every once in a while, I get restless and stock merchandise or handle the cash register or some other menial task. Mostly when I’m there I hang out in the backroom reading racing forms or magazines. It’s lucky Joey walks in when he does; it helps convince him I’m just a blue-collar working stiff.
“I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes,” he says, still grinning his half-smirk. “Fuck, I thought they were just bullshit rumors. Lenny March working an honest job. Don’t tell me it’s true about you having a wife and kids also?”
“Yeah, it’s true.” I look past him to make sure no one’s standing nearby. “I never thought I’d see your face again. Not after you ratting me out to Vincent DiGrassi.”
“His boys give you a good beating, huh?”
“Yeah, I’d say so.”
Joey points to the small circle of red puckered skin on my cheek. “You get that from him?”
I nod. “It was part of a test to see if I was a rat. I passed, I guess you and Steve didn’t.”
Joey’s eyes dull a bit. He’s still grinning but it’s forced now. “I always regretted that,” he says. “But you don’t know what they were doing to us to make us talk.” He runs a thumb over the full length of his scar. “And besides, you got off easy compared to Steve and me.”
I soften as I look at him and remember the old days when we ran together. It’s a shame that he and Steve fell apart the way they did when DiGrassi put them to the test, but I guess they just didn’t have what it took.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“How about buying you a beer or two.”
“No problem. The cooler’s back against the wall. These days I’m drinking Michelob. You want to break up a six-pack, go for it.”
He laughs. “Not here, Lenny. Someplace quiet where we can sit down and talk. How about it?”
“Where do you have in mind?”
“Connolly’s Pub. One block down. What do you say?”
For years I had thought about looking him and Steve up and kicking the shit out of them. Those feelings have passed. Now I’m curious what he wants to talk about. Of course, I could leave with him now – no one here has me on a clock, but I want to keep up the pretense of working a real job. I tell him I get off at six and I’ll meet him then. He tells me he’ll be there. After he leaves, I go back to stacking bottles. When I’m done, I head to the backroom and pick up the day’s racing form. I was given a “can’t miss” tip for later that night at Suffolk Downs, and figure I might as well play the rest of the ponies while I’m there.
I walk into Connolly’s Pub at quarter past six and Joey’s waiting at the bar, trying to look casual about it. He orders a couple of beers and we take them to a table in back.
“I still can’t believe you’re working a nine-to-five job,” he says, shaking his head.
“Eight to six,” I say, correcting him.
He takes a long pull on his Bud, wipes a hand across his mouth. “We ran together long enough back in the day. I know you, Lenny, I know what you’re made of, and I don’t buy that you can be happy living this bullshit life.”
“People change.”
“Not you.” He’s shaking his head angrily, takes another long pull at his Bud, emptying it. “Fuck, I saw first hand the things you used to do, and the look in your eyes when you did them. No one was a badder muthafucka in the day. And the guy I’m looking at now is the same fucking person. So don’t feed me any bullshit about people changing.”
He brings the Bud to his lips, realizes the bottle’s empty and leaves the table. When he returns he has a couple of fresh beers; the Michelob he hands to me. His demeanor is calmer, more relaxed. He leans forward and asks me if I want to hear what he has to say. I nod. He edges even closer, his eyelids drop a quarter of an inch. He’s got his back to the room while I’m facing it, but he knows I’ll warn him if anyone comes nearby.
“The two of us, we can each make thirty grand next week,” he says, his voice low enough that I have to strain to hear him.
“I told you before I’m out of the game.”
“Sure you are.” A thin smile creeps over his lips. He edges even closer so he’s leaning halfway across the table. “You know those bank machines popping up all over the place? I’ve got someone on the inside giving me a schedule of when a certain bank refills theirs. When it’s done, it’s with twenties, about ten grand worth. Next week I’m going to hit ten banks, all within a three-hour span. By the time the bank realizes what’s going on it will be too late for them to do anything about adding security.”
“Why do you need me?”
“It’s a two-man job.” Joey’s lids drop even further, the little I can see of his eyes is hard stone as they stare at me. “You got one guard in the armored truck, another reloading the machine. It’s mostly a smash and grab, but you need someone keeping the guard in the truck occupied.”
“What about your inside man?”
Joey makes a face. “It’s a she, and no, she’s not the one to do this with me.”
“Problem is, neither am I. I’ve got a wife, kids, and a steady job. Sorry, Joey.”
He smiles at me as if I’m kidding him. Slowly it wears off once he realizes I’m not, and what’s left behind is the hard look of a stone-cold killer.
“You’re full of shit,” he tells me.
I shrug. “It’s the way it is now.”
“You’re only kidding yourself. A fucking blind man can see that.”
I don’t say anything.
I can see the decision being made in his eyes on what he’s going to do next. “Are you going to rat me out?” he asks.
“If I didn’t back then to DiGrassi, I’m sure as fuck not going to do it now. Besides, I wouldn’t want my wife knowing I used to hang out with people like you.”
He accepts that. Without a word he gets up and walks out of the bar. I sit and finish my beer.
chapter 14
present
It had been a long time since I remembered dreaming. I knew I had dreams as a kid, but couldn’t remember any since then, at least none since I was out of elementary school. That night I woke up from a doozy of one. More than that, the dream jolted me awake, and left me sweating through my underwear and sitting up fast in bed with my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my temples.
The dream had me at a funeral home, stuck inside a room filled with coffins one stacked on top of the next. There was an unfamiliar man keeping me company. He looked almost like a cadaver himself with red rouge painted on his cheeks and sparse thin hair slicked back with grease. He was dressed in a black suit that was too small on him; it made his sleeves and pants legs pull up showing inches of his bony arms above his wrists and his white socks stretched high above his ankles. He stayed mute, refusing to say anything to me. I couldn’t place ever seeing him before, but he acted as if he knew me.
“What am I doing here?” I asked him.
He smiled showing tiny baby teeth, and gestured that I should look inside the coffins. I wanted to flee the room, I certainly didn’t want to open up any of those coffins, but it was as if I had no choice. Almost like I was a marionette being controlled by strings. I struggled to unstack the coffins. It was hard work, back-breaking work, especially since I didn’t want them falling and breaking open, but eventually I lowered them on to the floor and took the lids off. Inside were badly decomposed bodies. The stench was horrific. There wasn’t much left of any of the corpses, only ragged skin covering their skulls and parts of their bodies, but somehow there was enough left of their faces so I could recognize them as the people I had killed.