“No, Hector, I haven’t, just like your parents probably never wondered why you didn’t get into Harvard.” Sidney thought he’d try to change the subject and said, “How d’you end up with a name like Hector, anyway?”
“My dad was half Spanish.”
“Which half?”
“On his mother’s side, obviously.” He glanced across at the old man and said, “My name’s Murphy.” The old man nodded his understanding and pointed forward, telling him to keep his eyes on the road.
The old man was senile, that was clearly the problem. Or else he’d done loads of coke or something back in the day. He acted all prim and proper, but these guys were all young in the ‘70s and he’d seen Casino, he’d seen Scarf ace - they were all the biggest cokeheads.
“Oh, man, this friend of mine had a cousin called Tamara and she’d get wasted at parties when she was, like, sixteen, and let us play Tamara’s Ti… Well, I won’t say the word, I know you don’t like words like that, but I’m referring to her, you know, her bre…” Hector wasn’t sure if even breasts would be out of bounds. “Her chest things, packets, whatever.”
Sidney was staring at him, dumbstruck. It was bad enough when his nonsense was actually related to the here and now, but this new story had apparently been plucked out of the ether.
“I know the word you’re looking for, but that still doesn’t make it any clearer. What on God’s good earth are you talking about?”
“Give me a minute, man. This game. See, she’d strip naked to the waist and lay on a table and let all us guys snort coke right off her… you know, the things we were just talking about.” He was overcome briefly by the memory of the last such party, the summer before last. “And she was loaded up top, if you know what I’m saying. She was nice.”
“Why would you tell me that story?” Sidney was wondering if this kid had frazzled something in his brain and had lost any sense of discernment or understanding of what might be an appropriate story for the company he was in. “Seriously, what is it about me that made you think I might want to hear that story? Better than that, tell me what suddenly inspired you to share it with me! I’m curious, Hector, I really would like to know… Actually, forget that, I don’t want to know what’s going on in your mind, but I’d like to know why you thought that was an appropriate story to tell on this occasion.”
Hector had changed his mind. Clearly, the old man hadn’t done enough drugs back in the day. If he had, he wouldn’t be quite so uptight now. And man, was he uptight.
“It’s just a story, you know. Just something I thought of. I mean, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? Like, we’re two buddies on a job together, talking about stuff, swapping stories.”
“You hear me telling any stories?”
“I bet you could tell some stories, things you did back in the day.” He was about to give the old man a playful punch on the arm but didn’t, thinking he probably wouldn’t go in for that kind of thing, either. Besides, he was old, really old, and a playful punch on the arm could be bad news – it could cause a blood clot or something serious like that.
“Back in the day! You don’t know what you’re talking about. And we’re not buddies, and we’re not on a job together – you’re tagging along to watch me, to learn some people skills. That’ll actually involve you watching and keeping your mouth shut.”
“I’m all eyes and ears, no mouth, trust me.” With an afterthought, he said, “Does that mean no stories at all?”
Sidney had to hand it to him, the kid was persistent. “It means no stories like that one. I have a daughter who’s sixteen.”
“Is her name Tamara?”
“If her name was Tamara I’d be chopping you into pieces in a dumpster right now.”
“Hey man, I was only joking.” Though clearly, it was completely wasted because the old man’s sense of humor had been sucked out of his nose by aliens or something – they probably had it in a jar on their home planet right now, realizing they’d stolen the wrong one. “I knew Tamara wasn’t your daughter. For one, she’s eighteen now, not sixteen, and she’s my friend’s cousin, you know.”
“I was joking too,” said Sidney, realizing that even the broadest brush strokes of humor were wasted on the punk. “I haven’t chopped anyone up in a dumpster in nearly twenty years.”
Now they were getting somewhere. “You really did that!”
“No, I’m still joking.” He remembered what Mr Costello had said about showing him the ropes, giving him the right moral guidelines. “Hector, you have to understand that we’re in a serious business, and you don’t run a serious business on threats and violence. Sure, sometimes threats and violence are necessary, just to make people understand how serious you are about your business ethic, but it is always the option of last resort.”
Hector waited a couple of beats, wondering if the old man was finished. For someone who didn’t like talking, he was good at churning out the boring speeches. God help them all when his daughter got married. On the good side, he guessed the old man was talking about the job, Nolan – the option of last resort.
“Can I do him?”
It was pointless, thought Sidney. He didn’t know if there was such a thing as a clinical moron, but this kid Hector was about as close as anyone was ever likely to get.
“Can you do who?”
“Nolan. The option of last resort.”
“Kid, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You just leave everything to me when we get to Nolan’s place. You just watch and learn, remember?”
“Sure, I remember,” said Hector. It was pretty frustrating though, knowing he’d have to watch this fossil blow Nolan’s brains out when he was itching to do it himself. That was how people learned, by picking up the gun and pulling the trigger.
“I had someone pull a gun on me once. Threatened to shoot me in the… well, you know, he threatened to shoot me so I wouldn’t ever have kids, in the groin-type area.”
The guy with the gun had clearly been a generation too late, but Sidney decided to play this one straight, giving the punk the benefit of the doubt, offering him the opportunity to give a little background. “So he wasn’t a friend?”
“He’s not a friend anymore,” said Hector. “He was my best friend until he pulled a gun on me. Never seen him since, and if I saw him again, I’d pop a cap in his… well, I’d hurt him. He was a motherfu… He wasn’t nice, if you know what I’m saying.”
“What did you do?”
This guy was just like his parents. Hector couldn’t believe it. Old people were always just too quick to jump on top of them. What did you do? You must have done something. There’s always two sides to every story. Always the same thing.
“I didn’t do anything. Why would you assume I’d done something?”
“Hector, I’m not a cop, I’m just asking what happened. If it helps, why did your friend pull a gun on you?”
“It was nothing. I was doing his girlfriend, that’s all.”
“You were doing his girlfriend?”
“Yeah, you know, I was… that word, the word I apologized for, I was…”
“Hector, I know what you mean. I was just questioning how that constitutes nothing at all.” The kid looked baffled and Sidney wondered if he was just so completely out of step, that morals had disappeared completely. He hated to think any of his own children would end up like this. “Do you consider it normal to date your friend’s girl?”
“I wasn’t dating her, I was…”
“Hector, I know!”
“Well, yeah.” The old man obviously thought he’d been around the block a couple of times, but Hector could clearly teach him a thing or two. “Let me tell you, this had always been my policy and I’ve had more girls in more ways than you could imagine. See, for one thing, you don’t have any of the responsibility – no taking them out, no buying them stuff. For another, it’s easier, you know, because there’s only one other guy. With a single girl, you’re up against all the other guys in the world. So ask yourself, why be in competition with every guy when you can just be in competition with just one?”