“Fuck me,” C.T. says, leaning back in the driver’s seat of his car, Andy next to him. They’re parked out toward the street in a medical building parking lot off of Cleveland Avenue in Westerville, just a couple of guys who look like they’re waiting for a wife or a girlfriend getting an MRI or Pap smear or some fucking thing. Two ski masks-one gray, one black-are sitting on the console between them. “Fuck me. Who would have figured Jeff for Captain America?”
“Yeah, well Captain America died last year, and Jeff is still alive,” Andy says. “You think he’s awake yet?”
“I dunno. When he does wake up, he needs to go down to University Hospital and treat himself to a neurological.” C.T. shakes his head. “I smacked him pretty hard. Stupid asshole. Good thing the gun wasn’t loaded. They’d be finding little pieces of Jeff all over Washington Beach for the next year.” C.T. takes his pistol out of its pocket holster and begins reloading the 9-mm hollow points back into the clip, keeping an eye on the parking lot so as not to give anyone walking by a heart attack.
“Aren’t you glad it wasn’t loaded, though?” Andy asks.
“Not really.” C.T. slips the clip home and ratchets a round into the chamber. “If he had come out from under the covers with a derringer or something we’d both be laid out on a cooling board down at Schoedinger’s right now, instead of taking in the local ambience.” C.T. wipes his hand across his face, inhaling deeply, watching a middle-aged and grossly overweight couple walking in their general direction, looking like a pair of twin dirigibles that have come untethered at a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. “Now,” C.T. said, gesturing, “let’s see what our involuntary benefactor has bestowed upon us.”
Andy hands the wad of bills to his dad. It is, indeed, not a Michigan roll at all, it’s just the opposite, in fact, a roll of fifties on the outside and the rest Benjamins. “How much did you loan Jeff?” C.T. asks.
“Three hundred.”
“You dumb-shit.” C.T. starts pulling bills off the roll. “Would you like that in fifties or hundreds, sirrah?”
“Fifties.” C.T. looks at him. “Please,” Andy says. C.T. counts off six bills. “Next time remember the First National Bank of Dad. You’ll deal with a higher class of lender.” He begins counting the rest of the roll while doing an eerily on-target impression of a stoned-out Jeff. “Gee, Andy, I don’t have any money-five hundred-ya see, dude, Rakkim really fucked me over, man, I don’t have any money-seven hundred-I’m sorry, Andy, but it’s Rakkim’s fault, and my rent is due, and I don’t have any money-nine hundred fifty-maybe you can stall Kozee for a few days, but I’m tapped out, I don’t have any money-one thousand, three hundred, fifty.” C.T. exaggerates shuffling the wad into a neat pile and tapping it, imitating Oliver Hardy. “I should drive back there and shoot that little cunt myself for being a lying sack of shit and causing my heartbeat to race.”
“What are we going to do with the rest of the money?” Andy asks.
“We’re going to donate it to the Sisters of the Poor Claires.” Andy is staring at C.T., incredulously. “What do you think we’re going to do with it? We’re keeping it. Interest on your loan, collection fees…why, by the time we total everything up, Jeff may still owe us some money.” C.T. puts the rest of the money in his pocket and says, “Now look, you need to keep bugging Jeff about what he owes you. If you stop asking him, it’ll look strange, and he’ll wonder about your sudden largesse. But what’s the lesson here?”
Andy shrugs, but answers, “I should have come to you?” C.T. shakes his head. “That, too. But remember what I said about your problem being Jeff? He’s not your friend. He hung your ass out to dry.” C.T. shakes his head again. “Shit. Hippies. Drug dealers. Fucking Kozee. What are you doing with these people anyway? I taught you better than that.”
Andy doesn’t say anything. He has no answer, not one that will make C.T. happy, anyway. He does have a question, though. “What about Kozee?”
C.T. stares out the windshield for a minute, then starts the car up. “I’ll take care of that freak,” he says.
Kozee is laughing.
C.T. doesn’t think he’s said anything funny, but Kozee is mightily amused. He throws his head back now, really into it, laughing his ass off.
For being a whack-job, Kozee has taken really good care of his teeth, C.T. thinks, a few fillings here and there but otherwise everything is straight and white and sparkling. C.T. can see all the way back to Kozee’s second fucking molars, the guy has his mouth open so wide.
Kozee and C.T. are sitting in what used to be a 7-Eleven. It’s a blind pig now, not even officially a store, but there are some chips and loosies on the counter and beer in the cooler, the forty-ouncers that the mulies love and that are sold with impunity 24/7. The candy on the counter appears to get dusted once a year whether it needs it or not. There’s an occasional rustle in the dark corners of the store and in the aisles, and C.T. thinks that at some point a year or two ago Orkin should have been called in.
He and Kozee are behind the counter at a small table, the only people in the store. The rest of Kozee’s crew is outside, because, after all, C.T. is older and soft-looking, and if Kozee had muscle in the room with him, it would look like he couldn’t handle things, right?
Kozee, at the tail end of a laugh, leans forward. “Y’know, everyone says you’re straight up, but you’re out of your mind. Your son-Andy, right?-owes me five, three on the loan and two on the vig. And I’m gonna lend him money again and again and again.”
C.T. is trying to keep it calm. It’s been a long day, and it’s not even half over. Worse, he is in danger of missing that all-important one-o’clock feeding. He is thinking of how easy it would be for him to kill this goon; it would cause more problems than it would solve, but he is within a minute or two of past caring. He says, “I don’t like repeating myself-”
Kozee half rises out of his chair, and leans over into C.T.’s face. C.T. can see that it registers with Kozee, just with an eye blink, but still it registers with Kozee that C.T. doesn’t lean back or give ground. “Listen, you old fuck, you don’t tell me what I do. I didn’t get all this-” He pauses for a second, because C.T. is looking around at the half-empty shelves while Kozee is talking to him, looking at the paper on the floor that seems to move on its own, the dust everywhere, and his eyebrows slightly raised, like he’s thinking whoopee-shit, disrespecting him. This pisses Kozee off. He pokes his finger toward C.T.’s chest to get his attention back.
At least he tries to.
Kozee suddenly can’t move his finger. C.T. has grabbed Kozee’s finger in midpoke. He thumps it down on the table that’s between them, and he comes up with some sort of little knife out of nowhere, it looks like one of those guillotine blades and he’s wearing it like a ring. The blade is pressed against Kozee’s pointer finger, right where the finger meets his right hand.
“I don’t like being interrupted, either,” C.T. says softly. “Now sit down, slowly, and I’ll talk, you listen. I’ll walk out of here with a promise from you, and you’ll still have your hand in the same shape it was when I walked in, so you won’t have to explain to your crew of little pussies how the head pussy got his finger cut off by an old man.”
Kozee slowly sits down. This old fuck, he’s pulled a knife out of nowhere, caught his finger and had it down on the table so fast it would take longer to tell about it, like that fat old blind guy on the reruns of Kung Fu. Kozee, for the first time since he was ten years old, before he started hitting his growth spurt, is actually scared.