Mr. Abercrombie’s huge hands worked the wheel. Sirens broke the night, coming in their direction. Russ felt water coursing down his waxen cheeks, and it wasn’t sweat. Abercrombie’s rumble filled the car.
“Bigger cut for everybody without Trip, and I won’t have to listen to the girls at the club complain no more either. And truth is, I was getting tired of that attitude of his. Not that smart. Sheesh, what an asshole.”
“I wanted to tell him—”
Three cop cars zoomed past, a carnival of light and noise. The black car continued toward the Queensboro Bridge. Russ sighed and Mr. Abercrombie shook his head.
“Like you said, Ickes, he served his purpose. And the way he treated you — an old friend like you — it was long overdue. It’d been me, I’d’ve taken care of it long ago. He had it coming, so enough with the guilt already. You can’t blame yourself. Trip is brown bread. Dead.” Mr. Abercrombie glanced over at Russ. “Are you all right, Ickes? Are you crying?”
“I wanted to tell him...”
“Hey, cheer up, pal — everything’s gonna be fine. We’re gonna make mucho bucks together, you and me.” With something almost like affection, Mr. Abercrombie dropped a gorilla hand on Russ’s shoulder, near his windpipe. He turned and looked at Russ. “Come on, champ. Make me rich.”
Rough justice
by James Hime
200 Park Avenue
I should be sitting here trying to figure out how to say goodbye to my wife.
Instead, I’m sitting here thinking I should have known the wheels were fixing to come off this thing the instant I spit that cough drop onto the Contessa’s nipple in full view of the Hell Bitch.
That was all the omen a man could ask for.
I get to my feet and look down at Katy, all hooked up to her feeding tubes and what have you. Laid out like some old person. Instead of the vibrant and amazing young woman I married not all that long ago.
All I can think to say is, “I’m sorry, darling.”
She looks at me and her eyes are wet. “Don’t, Billy. Please don’t.”
She reaches for my hand and I let her take it and squeeze it and hold it to her sunken cheek, and I can feel her tears on my skin.
I bend down and kiss her forehead and whisper that I love her, and then I retrieve my hand and walk out of the hospital room and take the elevator down and go outside and hail a cab. I tell the driver to take me to the NYPD’s Midtown North Precinct house.
That’s when I see the guy walking toward me with his hand inside his coat.
I need to back up some. To the Day of the Cough Drop Incident. To what happened that afternoon.
And to what happened even before that, on the morning of the Incident.
And, come to think of it, to what happened the night before that...
It happened in the Hell Bitch’s office on the afternoon of the Day of the Cough Drop Incident. Half the floor could hear it and it was horrible.
It was the complete works. Screaming, invective, cussing. What a fuck-up I was. How I had embarrassed her and the firm in front of one of our most important clients, a woman with connections across the Continent. Who would no doubt tell the story of my faux pas to many extremely rich and important people, potential clients, who would make up their minds on the basis of that anecdote alone never to do business with us.
On and on it went.
I sat across the desk from her and played mental rope-a-dope. Covered my ego with a blank expression and watched the spit fly from the Hell Bitch’s mouth as she yelled at me and I wondered why I hadn’t had sense enough to pursue a career in dentistry. Wondered what made me think coming to Wall Street to practice law in-house at a secretive private bank was a good idea in the first place.
When she started to wind down I thought, Well, there’s no time like the present.
I said, “Okay. For at least the fifteenth time, I apologize.
I’ll write a letter of apology to the Contessa. I’ll offer to have her dress cleaned. But there’s one more thing you need to know. Something else happened this morning.”
I told her about my ride uptown with Stu Spagnoletti, and I watched the fear and paranoia rise up in her like a fever. When I was done, her eyes were wide and her hands were shaking and she looked like a clown in some carnival of the deranged.
She stood, pulled herself erect to her full five feet, and screamed, “GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OUT!”
I was only too happy to oblige.
On my way back to my office I stopped by Frank Biallo’s. I’m not even sure why. Maybe just to be in the presence of a fellow sufferer. As I got there, the guy who delivered the interoffice mail, a stooped old man who wore a blue smock and whom everybody called Sarge, was walking out and taking the helm of his mail cart.
I looked in just as Frank was fishing an inner-office envelope out of his inbox. It bulged oddly. Frank opened it and extracted a paper ball. He smoothed it out on his desk and examined it and looked up. “I guess Stecher didn’t like my memo,” he said.
“I have a suggestion.”
“What’s that, Tex?”
“Let me go to my office and call home. Then let’s you and me go get drunk.”
Frank hesitated. He looked at the crumpled paper on his desk. “I think maybe I’d better stay here and do some rewriting.”
I shrugged. “Suit yourself, podna.” I turned to go.
“Hey, Tex?”
“What?”
“You okay?”
I grinned. “Fine as frog hair.”
When I got to my office I called Katy. “I’m not completely sure but I may have just gotten my ass fired.”
“Oh, Billy. I’m so sorry. Maybe it’s for the best.”
“Maybe.”
“Why don’t you come home?”
“In a while. I want to go for a walk. Maybe get a drink.”
“I’ve got good news.”
“Yeah?”
“Stu already found work for Hiram. And a place for him to live.”
I hesitated. “Great. What’s he doing?”
“Limo driver.”
“Katy? I need you to tell Carmen something and ask her to pass it along to Stu.”
“What, honey?”
“Stu asked me for a favor this morning. Tell her to tell him I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to deliver for him.”
“Okay.”
When I hung up I checked my e-mail. There was one from the Hell Bitch, sent after I’d left her office, telling me to be at a working group session on the Park Avenue deal the next morning at 10 o’clock. I thought, Great. Guess I still have a job after all.
But I knew there was no point in hanging around there the rest of the day — I was fried. I shrugged on my suit jacket and overcoat and headed out into the blizzard.
That’s the night the Hell Bitch disappeared.
But for that storm I doubt there would have been any Cough Drop Incident to begin with. So blame it on the execrable New York weather.
The morning of the Incident the snow had started at day-break and I found myself standing on the sidewalk outside my apartment building trying but failing to hail a cab, and by that time the streets were a mess. After I’d been at it ten minutes I looked at my watch and decided maybe I’d best just walk. I was of course utterly unaware that, before the day was out, I would perpetrate a cough drop assault on a client and then endure the cussing-out from the Hell Bitch that I have already described.
A black Town Car slid to the curb and out of my building came Stu Spagnoletti, accompanied by a guy who looked like he could bench press the Brady Bunch. They were both dressed in double-breasted overcoats and fedoras and they made straight for the Town Car, but when Stu saw me he stopped and said, “Billy!”