“But—”
“Get packed, probie,” he said. “You’ve got a week back home before you head to Beantown. It’s there you’ll learn to be a man. I’ll get us some coffees while you shower up.”
After O’Connor left, I hesitated. Could still taste Leeza on my lips and smell her scent in the air. Showered, removing more traces of Velez, but not all. Have to scrub my soul for that.
“In the house of the hangman
do not talk of rope”
I was a zombie.
Before Philly, I may not have had a firm handle on who Todd Rosen was, exactly. No, I was dead inside. Not dead, exactly. The dead can’t feel the hurt the way I can. No, was like one of those patients on the operating table who wakes up in the middle of their surgery unable to move, but exquisitely aware of the scalpel. Christ, wished the doctor’d just cut my throat and gotten it over with.
It was impossible for me to believe how deeply I’d entwined Leeza Velez into the fabric of myself. Fucking crazy that I could feel so utterly emptied and alone over a woman who’d shared herself with me for a solitary night. For all I knew Leeza Velez wasn’t her name. Maybe that was it. Her distance had let me create a life for us, a life for her not only that didn’t exist, but would never, could never exist. All of it woven out of a dangerous smile, brown skin, and meaningless kisses.
Brooklyn, Nicky, my dad were strangers to me, worse than strangers. Guess that’s what O’Connor wanted: vertigo, discomfort, disorientation. Had never been so off balance in my life. Sidewalks where Nicky and I had scratched our initials in wet cement with a stick, seemed foreign to me now. For fuck’s sake, I was foreign to my own self.
It was Axel’s again. Nicky’s idea, of course. Said it was fine when he asked if that suited me. What did it matter? Once pain hits a certain threshold, you might as well see how much you can take. And man, I was like a flashing neon sign, alternating between deadness and the pain. On. Off. On. Off. On... But it was more than Leeza. It was what I’d become, what I’d let myself be turned into. Looked at myself in the mirror behind the bar. Christ, I thought, a cop, a fucking cop!
Nicky threw his arm over my shoulder, kissed me on the cheek. “C’mon, Todd, drink your beer and cheer up.”
“You ever meet anybody that cheered up on demand?”
“Griffin.”
We both had a laugh at that. Didn’t last long.
“Jesus, pal, I never seen you like this. Wanna talk about it?”
“What’s to talk, Nick? She walked out on me.”
“Did you see it coming?” he asked.
“Maybe. Guess I didn’t really know her.”
“Who knows any woman?”
Wasn’t inclined to argue.
He checked his watch. It was getting close to ten. On O’Connor’s orders I’d ask to meet with Boyle. Nick had made the arrangements. Shrugged his head that we better get moving. Stood with my beer glass in hand, prepared to chug the rest, when some drunk asshole stumbled into me. The rim of the glass smacked me in my teeth and the beer poured onto my jacket.
Next thing I knew, Nicky had me in a bear hug. The drunk was laid out, donating a generous amount of blood to Axel’s barroom floor. He made a feeble attempt to rise up on his elbows and knees. Kicked him full in the ribs as Nick tried forcing me to the door.
“Holy shit!” he said, struggling to get me into his car. “Are you like seriously deranged?”
Couldn’t answer, the adrenaline burning inside.
“That guy was six six and you dropped him with one punch.”
For the first time in my miserable life I was raging.
“Fuck on a bike, bro. Even I would be afraid to take your ass on. That bitch made a man of you. You’re one dangerous motherfucker all of a sudden.”
Dangerous, yeah, that was me. He only knew the half of it.
“Let’s go,” was all I said.
Riggio’s Clam House was a hole in the wall, but a legendary one. Situated at the corner of Emmons Avenue and Ocean Avenue, directly across from the footbridge that spanned the ass-end of Sheepshead Bay, Riggio’s had been the setting for countless shady deals and more than one mob hit. In the summer sometimes, Nicky and me used to take the bus down here and fish off the bridge. Seemed like a million fucking years ago. But so did every good thing in my life. Exercised the good sense not to try and recall what those were.
Although I had asked for the meet, it was Boyle picked the location. The prick had nothing if not a sense of drama. With him it was hard to know the reasoning behind his decisions. Him and his donkey-fucking logic. Did he just want to stick it to the guineas by talking shop on their turf? Did he already know I was a cop? Would Griffin be waiting to put one in my ear? The setting was convenient enough. Could dump my dead ass directly in Sheepshead Bay or haul it to the marshlands of nearby Gerritsen Beach. Maybe he had a boat waiting and would drop my weighted body in the Atlantic off Manhattan or Plumb Beach. There was no shortage of places to dump a body in this part of Brooklyn. Or maybe Boyle just liked raw clams.
When we got there, Nicky parked around back. The stink of the discarded seafood rotting in the dumpsters overwhelmed the smell of the sea itself. Thought, no, that rotting smell was me. If Griffin was waiting around the turn, who gave a fuck?
“What are you smiling at?” Nick wanted to know as we turned the corner.
“Nothing, Nicky. Nothing.”
Boyle and Griffin were seated at a table in the rear of the dimly lit clam house. It was what you’d expect, red and white checked tablecloths, flickering candles, and Chianti bottles covered in wicker and dripped wax. Boyle got up to greet me as if I was a brother gone for five years instead of a flunky gone a month or two. Hugged me, slapped my back, tousled my hair. Griffin curled up the corner of his mouth. Said nothing. That was like effusive for him.
“Sit!” Boyle ordered. We did. “I heard of your troubles, boyo. Nothing will gut a man like a woman. You learn your lesson and move on. In the future, you won’t let it happen to you again. If the opportunity should ever arise for me to teach you boys how it’s done, how to deal with a woman proper, I will. That’s me word. Do you think she was stepping out on you?”
“No.”
“Were you on her?” he asked.
Could feel the rage again. Tasted it. Fuck, rage had flavor and it was nothing like bacon or pussy. How could this prick even ask me that?
“Never,” I heard myself say, the rage subsiding, slightly.
Boyle must’ve seen it in my eyes. Seemed well pleased. “Let’s order.”
Boyle ordered about two dozen clams of various sorts, so I guess that cleared up any questions I had about why we were here.
During dinner, Nick described what I’d done to the big man at Axel’s. Now it was Griffin who seemed impressed. Actually stopped chewing for a second.
“Listen, Todd,” Boyle said between bites of cheese cake, “I’ve a partner in South Boston could use an extra hand for a coupl’a weeks, someone from outside his patch, if you catch my drift. Would you be interested in doing me the favor? Seems to me you could use the distraction and I would be inclined to show my appreciation.”
“Would I get to use my hands?”
“Idle hands are the devil’s playground, so it’s said. Well, the devil don’t do much playing in South Boston.”
Later learned, and at quite a cost, his assessment was as wrong as wrong could be.
“When do I leave?”
“Not before dessert, at least. Eat up.”
“He was one of those guys, that rare breed, that when people mentioned his name they’d automatically lower their voices and mentally make the sign of the cross.”