Manslaughter with a firearm could get them each fifteen years. Avern worked a deaclass="underline" they drew the Southern Michigan Prison at Jackson, Fontana forty-two months, Krupa, forty.
While they were down a client came to Avern complaining about drive-bys fucking up his business. "Man, nobody wants to walk in a crack house all shot up." Avern thinking about a professional hit man service: relieve the client, who'd be an immediate suspect, from being involved. Hire bad guys to hit bad guys. Why not? Contracts without contracts. He could reach in his files not even looking and pull out shooters, but they were mostly all kids, gangbangers, hard to control. He thought of Carl and Art, both at Jackson in D Block, grown men, white, unaffiliated. Not big guys but tough monkeys, both of them. He'd tell them to look each other up, and if they hit it off come see him, he had something for them.
Carl Fontana was fifty-two, five-seven, wiry, losing his sandy hair, a bricklayer who hated doing patios with designs to figure out. But thirty years ago in Vietnam Carl was a tunnel rat, his size getting him the job. Crawl into a hole with a. 45 and a flashlight. Carl said, "I can't tell you how fuckin scary it was." But he did it, he went in. He came home and did county time for raising hell, a couple of aggravated assaults, before settling down with the bricks. Carl told Avern you didn't just lay 'em one on top the other, each brick was different.
Arthur Krupa, forty-eight, five-nine, stocky, came out of high school wanting to be a gangster or a movie star who played gangsters. He didn't know anybody in Hollywood, but had an uncle who was connected. Art pulled a store burglary to prove himself and his uncle got him in. But, Jesus, it was boring collecting from the books, have to listen to 'em bitch and call him names in foreign tongues. Art thought he looked like John Gotti, but no one else did.
That time at the Caucus Club Avern ordered another round the same way, martini with anchovy olives, a couple of Molsons with shots of Crown Royal on the side. These guys were blue-collar down to their white socks.
Avern said, "If I can get you five a year that's a hundred grand each. But five might not be possible. You're gonna have leisure time in between. You might want to look into home invasions, see if you like it."
Art said, "I've done it."
Avern said, "You'll be shooting criminals if you need to think about it."
Art said, "I 'magine mostly smokes."
Avern said, "You don't see a problem picking up guns?"
Art said, "In this town?"
Avern said, "Barbra Streisand sang here at the Caucus when she was eighteen years old." Avern was sixty-one, active in a theater group. "I remember her doing 'Happy Days Are Here Again' real slow."
They'd been in business now a year and a half, five home invasions that paid okay, but only four hits. They blew another one trying to pop the guy in his car, firing at him doing sixty up Gratiot and the fucker spun out of control and got hit by a truck. They had a shotgun now for when they'd try him again. The hits were three black guys-first you had to find the fuckers, never where Avern said to look-and a Chaldean drug dealer who owned a gas station/convenience store. There were a bunch of Chaldeans in Southfield, Carl said, from Iraq, towelheads but they weren't Muslims. Art had dealt with Chaldean bookies. He said what's the difference, a fuckin towelhead's a towelhead.
Avern told them about the next hit saying it would be the easiest one yet. "The front door's unlocked. Walk in and shoot the old man and walk out. Make it look like you broke in. The houseman, Lloyd, will be in bed. Montez, the contractor"-Avern no longer called the one paying for the hit a client-"lives there but won't be around. He says he'll pay you in two days, meet you at a motel on Woodward." Avern saying, "I got the name of it here someplace."
They were in Avern's office on the twentieth floor of the Penobscot Building, drawings of old guys in wigs and robes on the wall behind him, like cartoons but weren't funny. Carl watched him looking for the note on his desk and asked why this Montez couldn't have the money ready, at the time.
"I just told you he won't be around, doesn't want it to look like he's involved in any way." Avern said, "Here it is," and handed the note across the desk to Art. "The University Inn, near Wayne."
"This Montez isn't a dealer," Carl said, "but can put his hands on forty grand, cash?"
"Don't worry about it."
"Yeah, well, you're all set," Carl said. "How'd he know you could get this done for him?"
"I'd see Montez at Randy's, different places. When he was a kid I used to represent him at Frank Murphy arraignments, get him a plea deal. Now we have a drink and talk. He asks my advice about things, his future."
"He ask you how to get his boss knocked off?"
Carl felt Avern was holding back, not telling the whole story. He listened to Avern saying the old man was feeble, incontinent. Changing his diapers, feeding him, had become a full-time job. "The old man wanted Montez to whack him, put him out of his misery, but Montez couldn't do it. He was ready to die, so Montez agreed to find somebody. I accept that as his reason," Avern said, "and thought, why not help out, make a few bucks."
Art said, "Come on, let's go."
Carl said, "Montez is getting something out of this."
Avern said, "Well, yeah, he's in the old guy's will. He must be."
But didn't say a word about a girl sitting in the chair with him topless, her jugs and her face painted.
From the start Carl had a bad feeling about this one. First listening to Avern making it look simple, and now in the Anchor Bar, talking to Connie on the phone till she hung up on him. Going back to the table, Art sitting there with a rum and Diet Coke watching the hockey game on TV, Carl wanted to blame Connie for how he felt.
Art said, "Fuckin Wings, man. Yzerman scored, they're up four two over the Rangers."
Carl sat down and picked up his Seven and Seven. "I got two calls, but she won't tell me who they were."
"Connie?"
"I told her I'd drop off a bottle of vodka and I forgot. She goes, 'You don't do nothing for me, I don't do nothing for you.'"
Art said, "She's got a car, for Christ sake."
"They took her license again, third D.U.I. in the last year and a half. I tell her, 'Jesus Christ, can't you drink without getting smashed every time?' She goes, 'What would be the point?'"
"It might've been Avern," Art said. "You want to call him?"
"He won't be there," Carl said.
Art brought his watch up to find some light in this joint and raised his face to look at it, his hair combed back like John Gotti's, no part in a full head starting to turn gray. "You ready?"
Carl lit a cigarette. He picked up his drink saying, "This old man isn't a criminal. Avern said we'd be shooting bad guys."
"We get in there," Art said, "check the liquor cabinet, pick up a bottle of vodka. We could look around some, see if there's anything we like."
"I'd just as soon go in and get out," Carl said.
Art said, "You aren't in the mood now, are you? Any time you talk to her you tighten up. You have to explain to me sometime why you don't fuckin walk out on her. Connie, you know, 'cause I heard you say it, isn't even that good-looking. The only thing she's got going for her is that red fuckin hair, man, the way she fixes it. You stay at my place more'n you stay with her." Art checked his glass, rattling the ice.
"Let's go do it."
They took Fontana's red Chevy Tahoe across downtown to the parking lot behind Harmonie Park. On the way back to pick it up they'd stop in Intermezzo right there and have a few to unwind. They walked up to Madison and then east a short way to the Michigan Opera Theatre and stood on the empty sidewalk smoking cigarettes pinched between the fingers of their black kidskin gloves, waiting for the performance to let out.
Art said, " Tales of Hoffman," looking at the poster. "You ever see one?"