Maybe that was a faint smile on the kid’s face; or maybe it was just the shadows from the clouds outside, coming in the window, filling this overcast room with more of the same.
“Your father told me all about how you have this habit of, wherever you go, falling in with bad company… but like most fathers he can’t conceive of his son being bad company. I think it’s just as funny as you probably do, that he really thinks he saved you in the nick of time, from the horrors of addiction… He actually thinks he stumbled onto that heroin stash minutes before you were to put a match under a spoon of the stuff and fill your hypo and stick it in and another hopeless junkie is born. He was so goddamn relieved when he brought you here and you weren’t hooked on anything stronger than grass. I guess there really is such a thing as a generation gap. You and your old man make your money different ways, that’s all, and he runs a gambling house but he gambles himself, so he finds it hard to understand that a guy who deals in dope rarely uses himself. Especially the hard stuff. Or maybe he can’t see that just because you’re his kid… won’t let himself see it, maybe.”
Yes it was a smile. Faint, but a smile.
“When he told me about the quantities of grass and H he found in your room, and your car, I figured he was just exaggerating, remembering through his emotions. But when I thought about it, it made sense… You had junk in quantity because you’re a dealer. A major dealer, maybe… maybe dealing to dealers. Something. How much heroin did he flush down the john? Hundred thousand bucks worth, maybe? That would hurt. No wonder you got pissed at Pop. And then he starts this half-ass citizens’ group, and hurts business even more, and embarrasses you in the eyes of the people you deal with, above you and below you both. I mean, shit. A kid can only take so much.”
He was sitting up, now, and his smile was gone. He wasn’t back doing his catatonic act, though; he was pretending to be bored, or maybe he just was.
“Little towns are where a lot of the major dope deals go down these days, am I right? We’re talking about distribution on pretty large scale, I’d guess. Too much heat in the bigger cities for that anymore. I’d bet West Lake was where you were making your drops, not Des Moines. How long you been in the business? Since you were fifteen? Thirteen? What the fuck. The old man’d be proud of you. He taught you the importance of money, and how you ought to hustle it up for yourself. You were a hell of a student, too. But my one question is this, junior. Did somebody bigger than you tell you the old man had to go? Or did you decide that yourself?”
And he spoke.
He said, “Blow it out your ass.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
It had been sheer speculation up to this point; but once Frank Jr. opened his trap, all suspicions were confirmed.
He rolled over on his side, away from me.
I took him by the arm and pulled him over, made him face me.
“I took a chance coming here,” I said “But I had to find out. And I did, and you’re coming with me.”
“You came, to the right place, asshole,” he said. “Because you are out of your fuck-ing mind.”
“Maybe so, but I’m still not crazy enough to think I can convince your dear old daddy that junior wants to make him dead old daddy. But you could do it. Not willingly, but with you there to have to try and knock down my story, well, it’s going to be worth a try.”
“What the fuck’s it to you?”
“Five thousand dollars.”
“Aw, Christ, I can get you that. I can get you more.”
“Sorry. That’d be unethical. Besides, I don’t like to work for anybody who hasn’t gone through puberty yet. Also, I got this aversion to father killers. Call me picky, if you like, but we all got our little quirks.”
“I’m not going with you.”
“I think you will. I got a roll of nickels in my jacket pocket, here, that’s going to be in my hand when I hit you, if you make me. Not the latest in anesthetics, but it’ll do. Or we could go to the doctors and tell them you want ’em to contact your father, so you can talk to him. That’s okay with me, too. Up to you.”
“And suppose I just tell them you’re some fucking crank and they should throw you the fuck out of here.”
“I don’t think they’ll do that to the miracle man who gave you back the gift of speech, now, do you? So come on. Let’s just walk out the side door, to my car, and we’ll go see what’s happening back in Des Moines.”
I let go of his arm and he got off the bed and slid onto the floor, and I turned a little to let him by me and then the little bastard was on me, tight little hands on my throat, and I was going over on my back, landing hard on the cold tile floor, and he was on top of me, squeezing my throat, fingernails digging in, and he wasn’t particularly strong but he’d got me by surprise and had dug in good before I got my arms out from under him and punched him on one ear, which shook him, and he let go of my throat but one hand found its way into my hair, which he proceeded to pull, and his other hand was a fist, hammering me in the upper chest. I was trying to slide my hand inside my jacket pocket, to get that roll of nickels and give him a shot that’d put him out now, when the sound of a groan filled the room, that might have been a moose in heat or King Kong annoyed or Roger.
Roger, coming across the room faster than he should’ve been able to.
And then he was lifting Frank Jr. off of me, pulling Frank Jr. off, and squeezed him, protectively, the grotesque features of his face twisted with concern, confusion, excitement, and as he squeezed Frank Jr. I heard things snapping, like twigs, popping, like flashbulbs, and as I saw the boy go limp and his head roll back, showing large lifeless eyes looking at nothing, I realized the snapping twigs and popping bulbs were the things inside Frank Jr. that held him together, that made the machine of his body function, but this was something Roger didn’t realize, and he kept hugging the boy.
Boy did he hug him.
And suddenly there wasn’t anything left to do but try to get out of there before Roger looked for someone else to turn his attention to.
35
When I got back, she wasn’t there. It was evening now, close to seven, and maybe she was at the Barn, behind the bar, making drinks for people.
I doubted it. With Ruthy dead, Lu would be leaving town, maybe already had. Hitting Tree now would be out of the question. Her back-up “man” gone, possibly murdered, Lu had no choice but get the hell out.
You just don’t hang around when a job goes sour, and it can’t go much more sour than your partner getting electrocuted in a bathtub.
But when I looked in the closet, her things were still there. It was a relief and a disappointment. A relief because the notion of maybe seeing her again was something I hadn’t been able to let go of yet; a disappointment because I’d tried to work this thing around so that she’d be forced out of it. She was supposed to be gone.
The phone was on the wall in the kitchenette. The dirty dishes from the late breakfast I’d fixed were still in the sink. I called the Barn and asked for her. She wasn’t there. I wondered whether that was good or bad, then asked to be put through to Tree.
I wondered if he’d heard about his kid yet.
“Quarry… where the fuck are you?”
So he hadn’t heard. After all, I’d told him to hole up in a motel all day somewhere, and he hadn’t been at the Barn for more than an hour or so probably, and Iowa City evidently hadn’t tracked him down yet. Well, I wasn’t about to break the news.
“Des Moines,” I said. “I won’t be coming out tonight. I’m leaving.”
“There were a couple of cops, just here… They left not five minutes ago. I don’t have to tell you what they were doing here, do I?”