“So they’re taking me away, fuckin’ old deputy, his uniform’s got soup all over it, and they’re all crying, my mother’s crying, Sandy’s crying, Janice’s crying, she’s havin’ fuckin’ hysterics. I should’ve told her, go out and throw the bumper around, always helped me when you wouldn’t come across and I sure can’t help you now. And the deputy, he wouldn’t let them talk to me and I was still punchy, I was on his side. I just got ten and I never even got a hand-job off this broad and now I got to go through this? Pissed me off. I said to him: ‘Get me out of here.’ And she’s gonna do this, she’s gonna do that, it was awful. So, I was in about three months, Sandy comes to see me. Janice’s married. It don’t mean anything.”
“Broads’re different now,” Russell said. “You been in too long. This broad, this broad means it. You can tell. She’s gonna do it, and then the guy that’s with her when she does it, he’s gonna have to explain a lot of things, and that I can’t do. You can’t do it either. She needs a good leaving-alone.”
“I can make up my own mind,” Frankie said.
“She wouldn’t give me a chance, for God’s sake,” Russell said. “ ‘We gonna do it again?’ Absolutely. Just gimme a minute or so, get it up again. ‘I can do that,’ she says, and she blows me. Well, you know, I haven’t been out that long. I’m still pretty eager. And, I knew what was gonna happen. But I didn’t tell her, and she got herself a pretty good mouthful. Which she kind of gags on, naturally, and she sits up and wipes her mouth off and she looks at me and she says: ‘Thanks a lot, you bastard.’ I say, I said, ‘Look, I didn’t know. I mean, you act like you know what you’re doing.’ ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Yeah, you probably think I like the taste of come.’
“So I told her,” Russell said, “Goat-ass always did. Fuckin’ guy couldn’t get enough of the stuff. Said it kept him young. ‘I never liked it myself,’ I tell her, ‘but he did, and I don’t know.’ So she says: ‘You turd. You’re all turds aren’t you, you turd. There isn’t one of you that’s not a turd.’ And there’s this big song and dance. We’re lying there and, it’s a really nice apartment, got all these African masks on the wall and everything, and she’s bitching and moaning, the first time wasn’t any good either, it’s never any good, she keeps on hoping, and it turns out, it’s not even her place we’re in. I thought it was her place. It belongs to this guy she’s going with, the stereo, all the rest of it, it’s all his. He’s in school. He’s gonna get himself some kind of thing and then he’s gonna do something and it’s all gonna take him about a million years or something and she don’t get nothing from him, so she calls up guys, put ads in the Phoenix, ‘Ex-con, long dong, love and affection.’ I mean, she don’t say that. But that’s what it is. So I say to her: ‘Cut the shit, all right? You wanna get laid? I come here, get laid. Never mind all this other shit.’ And she’s rubbing me up. And she says: ‘Well, he thinks he knows everything. And he doesn’t think I know anything. So he can treat me any way he wants. But he can’t.’ And then she says, she says she’s gonna kill herself. So I look at her, and this girl really means it. Remember the way Greenan looked there, it was all over the place, they’re gonna kill him and he was walking around with a board under his shirt, remember the way he looked?”
“He knew it wasn’t gonna do any good,” Frankie said.
“And he was right,” Russell said. “Can’t wear no board in the shower. Well this broad, she looked the same way. I mean it. She did. So, Jesus, that’s all I need. I gotta tell some fuckin’ cop how come I’m inna guy’s place, I don’t even know, and this girl kills herself and I don’t know nothing about it? For something like that they bring back the chair. So I say, well, it can wait, we make it again, right? And we do. And then, after, I’m gonzo. That broad’s hoopy. I’d, if I was you I’d stay away from that broad, Frankie.”
“I’ll think about it,” Frankie said.
“Okay,” Russell said, “I’ll tell her. She’s supposed to call me. See, you can’t call her there, because the guy’s apparently there some times. So she has to call you. She’s supposed to call me tomorrow. She was supposed to call me today, actually, only, I was out. Jesus, you should see the thing I got this morning. I got this big black fucker, German shepherd.
“Guy I know,” Russell said, “calls me. Last night. He’s looking over this place in Needham. Guy that owns it’s supposed to have a pretty good coin collection. Those medals they’re selling now? Made of silver and stuff. I can get in there like I was getting into bed,’ he tells me. The both of them work and they haven’t got no kids. But they got this goddamned dog in there, looks like a fuckin’ wolf or something.’ So he tells me, I get the dog outa his way, I can have the dog. Plus he’ll gimme a fifth, what he gets.
“So I go over there,” Russell said. “The house’s back from the street and all, lots of trees and stuff. Beautiful. And we go around the back, there’s the dog in there, jumping around like he’s gonna go out of his mind or something. Barking and everything. ‘Okay,’ I say, let the bastard out.’ I’m not going inside and tangle assholes with that monster. ‘Let him out?’ the guy says. ‘You must be crazy or something. He’ll kill both of us.’ Well anyway, he racks up the window and that fuckin’ dog comes out of there like his ass’s on fire. I hadda couple wool shirts on my arm and he makes this whipass flying jump at me and knocks me on my ass, but I got the arm up and all he’s doing, he’s chewing the hell out of them shirts. And I’m, he keeps trying to spit them out and I won’t let him. And he’s growling like a mad bastard. So, I get this stick in his mouth. Now he’s not chewing, ack, ack, ack. Then I put six phenobarbs down his throat and I take the stick out and he’s got to swallow and I put the stick back in. He almost bit the fuckin’ stick in half, for Christ sake, and I had it way the hell back in there, too. Then, I got this rope, and I tie, I hadda slip knot in it. Tie his mouth shut onna stick. Tie his feet, the guy’s helping me. I get him inna car. I had Kenny’s car. He’s a great dog, boy. If I can ever sell him to somebody, find somebody that wants a dog to kill people with.”
“What’d he get in coins and stuff?” Frankie said.
“Nothing,” Russell said. “Guy put them inna bank.”
“Bullshit,” Frankie said.
“No bullshit,” Russell said, “I know the guy. He came right around. Showed me what he got. Couple cameras, portable color, some silver stuff. He had the paper the guy got, the guy put the stuff in the bank. Guys borrow money some times. It happens.”
“That’s what I oughta do,” Frankie said. “I oughta go down the bank and borrow myself some money. They probably wouldn’t mind, last time I did it I was inna can for doing it, I had a gun.”
Frankie turned the 300F up the Bedford-Carlisle exit ramp on Route 128. At the island he turned left on Route 12 and crossed 128 on the overpass. Beyond 128, Route 12 was dark.
“Once they see what a nice fellow you are now, and all,” Russell said.