Had he gone somewhere to make a 911 call? He went upstairs to shower and shave and put on fresh clothes. His wife and children were gone, and in the silence he could hear the wind rattling the dry fronds of his palm trees against the eaves. From the bathroom window, the sunlight trapped inside his swimming pool wobbled and refracted like the blue-white flame of an acetylene torch. The entire exterior world seemed superheated, sharp-edged, a garden of cactuses and thorn bushes, scented not with flowers but with tar pots and diesel fumes.
What had he done last night?
Dropped the dime on Hugo? Dropped the dime on himself?
He sat at his breakfast table, eating aspirin and vitamin B, washing it down with orange juice straight out of the carton, his forehead oily with perspiration. He went into his office, hoping to find relief in the deep, cool ambience and solitude of his bookshelves and mahogany furniture and the dark drapes on the windows and the carpet that sank an inch under his feet. A bright red digital 11 was blinking on his message machine for his dedicated phone-and-fax line. The first message was from his wife, Esther: “We’re at the mall. I let you sleep. We have to talk. Did you go out in the middle of the night? What the hell is wrong with you?”
The other messages were from the restaurant and the club:
“Cheyenne says she’s not going on the pole the same time as Farina. I can’t deal with these bitches, Nick. Are you coming in?”
“Uncle Charley’s Meats just delivered us seventy pounds of spoiled chicken. That’s the second time this week. They say the problem is ours. They off-loaded on the dock, and we didn’t carry it in. I can’t put it in the box, and it’s smelling up the whole kitchen.”
“Me again. They were pulling each other’s hair in the dressing room.”
“The code guy was here. He says we have to put a third sink in. He says he found a dead mouse in the dishwasher drain, too.”
“Nick, there were a couple of guys in here last night I had trouble with. One guy had navy tats and a beard like a fire alarm. He said he was gonna be working for us. I kicked them out, but they said they’d be back. I thought maybe you needed a heads-up. Who is this asshole?”
“Hey, it’s me. There’s some flake on top of the toilet tank in the women’s can. I had Rabbit clean the shitters spotless early this morning. Farina was in there ten minutes ago. When she came out, she looked like she’d packed dry ice up her nose. Nick, babysitting crazy whores is not in my curriculum vitae. She wants your home number. You want me to give it to her? I can’t process these kinds of problems.”
Nick held down the delete button and erased every message on the machine, played and unplayed alike.
It was seventeen minutes to one o’clock. Hugo’s driver would be at the house at three P.M. to pick up the signed documents that would make Hugo Cistranos his business partner. The 25 percent ownership ceded to Hugo would of course be only the first step in the cannibalization of everything Nick owned. Nick sat in the darkness, his ears filled with a sound like wind blowing in a tunnel.
He had never confessed to anyone the fear he had felt in the schoolyard in the Ninth Ward. The black kids who took his lunch money from him, who shoved him down on the asphalt, seemed to target him and no one else as though they recognized both difference and weakness in him that they exorcised in themselves by degrading and forcing him to go hungry through the lunch hour and the rest of the afternoon, somehow freeing themselves of their own burden.
But why Nick? Because he was a Jew? Because his grandfather had adopted an Irish name? Because his parents took him to temple in a neighborhood full of simpletons who would later believe The Passion of the Christ was solid evidence that his people were guilty of deicide?
Maybe.
Or maybe they smelled fear on his skin the way a barracuda smells blood issuing from a wounded grouper.
Fear, the acronym for “fuck everything and run,” he thought sadly. That had been the history of his young life. And still was.
He punched his wife’s cell phone number into the console on his desk.
“Nick?” her voice said through the speakerphone.
“Where are you?” he said.
“Still at the mall. We’re about to have lunch.”
“Drop the kids at the country club and come home. We’ll pick them up later.”
“What is it? Don’t lie to me, either.”
“I need to show you where some things are.”
“What things? What are you talking about?”
“Come home, Esther.”
After he hung up, he wondered if his need was as naked as it sounded. He sat in a deep, stuffed leather chair and rested his forehead on his fingertips. It had been raining the night he met Esther twenty-three years ago. She was waiting for the streetcar under the steel colonnade at the corner of Canal and St. Charles Avenue, in front of the Pearl, where she worked as a night cashier after studying all day in the practical nursing program at UNO. There were raindrops in her hair, and in the neon glow of the restaurant’s windows, she made him think of a multicolored star in a constellation.
“There’s a storm blowing off Lake Pontchartrain. You shouldn’t be out here,” he had said to her.
“Who are you?” she replied.
“I’m Nick Dolan. You heard of me?”
“Yeah, you’re a gangster.”
“No, I’m not. I’m a gambler. I run a cardroom for Didoni Giacano.”
“That’s what I said. You’re a gangster.”
“I like ‘white-collar criminal’ better. Will you accept a ride from a white-collar criminal?”
She had on too much lipstick, and when she twisted her mouth into a button and fixed her eyes speculatively on Nick’s, his heart swelled in a way that made him take a deep breath.
“I live Uptown, just off Prytania, not far from the movie theater,” she said.
“That’s what I thought. You are definitely an Uptown lady,” he said. Then he remembered his car was in the shop and he had taken a cab to work. “I don’t exactly have my car with me. I’ll call a cab. Could I borrow a dime? I don’t have any coins.”
It was 1:26 P.M. when Nick heard Esther pull into the driveway and unlock the front door. “Where are you?” she called.
“In the office.”
“Why are you sitting in the dark?” she said.
“Did you lock the front?”
“I don’t remember. Did you go somewhere last night? Did you get into some trouble? I looked at the car. There’re no dents in it.”
“Sit down.”
“Is that a gun?” she said, her voice rising.
“I keep it in the desk. Esther, sit down. Please. Just listen to me. Everything we own is in this file case. It’s all alphabetized. We have a half-dozen equity accounts at Vanguard, tax-free stuff at Sit Mutuals, and two offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands. All the treasury bonds are short-term. Interest rates are in the dumps right now, but by next year gas prices will drive bonds down and rates up, and there’ll be some good buys out there.”
“I think you’re having a nervous breakdown.”
He got up from his chair and took both of her hands in his. “Sit down and listen to me like you’ve never listened before. No, no, don’t talk, just listen, Esther.”
She sat on the big square dark red leather footstool by the leather chair and watched his face. He sat back down, leaning forward, his gaze fixed on her shoes, his hands still clasping hers.
“I got involved with some evil men,” he said. “Not just lowlifes but guys that got no parameters.”
“Which guys?”
“One was a button man for the Giacanos. His name is Hugo Cistranos. He used to work for Artie Rooney. He’s for hire, on the edge of things. Hugo is kind of like a virus. Money has got germs on it. You do business, sometimes you pick up germs.”
“What’s this guy got to do with the restaurant or the nightclub?”
“Hugo did something really bad, something I didn’t think even Hugo would do.??
?
“What does that have to do with you?” she said, cutting him off, maybe too conveniently, maybe still not wanting to know how many pies Nick had a finger in.
“I tell you about it, you become a party to it. Hugo says it’s on me. He says I ordered him to do it. He’s trying to blackmail us. He might kill me, Esther.”
She was breathing faster, as though his words were using up the oxygen in the room. “This man Hugo is claiming he killed somebody on your orders?”
“More than one.”
“More than—”
“I have to deal with it this afternoon, Esther. By three o’clock.”
“Someone may kill you?”
“Maybe.”
“They’ll have to kill me, too.”
“No, this is the wrong way to think. You have to take the children to the river. Hugo has no reason to hurt you or them. We mustn’t give him any reason to do that.”
“Why does he want to kill you if he wants to blackmail you?”
“Because I’m not going to pay him anything.”
“What else are you planning, Nick?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I see it in your face. That’s why you have the gun.”
“Go to the river with the children.”
“They’ll have to walk in my blood to hurt our family. You understand that?” she said.
AT THREE P.M. sharp, Nick walked out to the curb and waited. His neighborhood was marbled with shadows from the rain clouds that had moved across the sun. A blue Chrysler came around the corner and approached him slowly, the tires clicking with gravel embedded in the treads, like the nails on a feral animal, the driver’s face obscured by a dark green reflection of trees on the windshield. The Chrysler pulled to the curb, and the driver, a man with a wild orange beard, put down the passenger window. “Howdy,” he said.
“I tried to call Hugo and save you a trip, but he’s not answering his cell,” Nick said. “You got another number for him?”
“I’m supposed to be picking up some signed contracts,” the driver said, ignoring the question. His teeth were wide-set, his complexion florid, like that of a man with perpetual sunburn, his wrists relaxed on the crosspiece of the steering wheel. He wore shined needle-point boots and a long-sleeve print shirt tucked inside beltless white golf slacks; the hair on his chest grew onto the ironed-back lapels of his shirt. “No signed contracts, huh?”
“No signed contracts,” Nick said.
The driver looked into space, then opened his cell phone and dialed a number. “It’s Liam. He wants to talk to you. No, he doesn’t have them. He didn’t say why. He’s standing right here in front of his house. That’s where I am now. Hugo, talk to the guy.”
The driver leaned over and handed Nick the cell phone through the window, smiling, as though the two of them were friends and had mutual interests. Nick put the cell phone to his ear and walked into his yard between two lime trees bursting with fruit. He could feel the humidity and heat rising from the St. Augustine grass into his face. He could hear a bumblebee buzzing close to his head. “I haven’t said no to your offer, but I need a sit-down before I finalize anything.”
“It’s not an offer, Nicholas. ‘Offer’ is the wrong word.”
“You used the name of this guy Preacher. He’s the guy who’s supposed to give me cold sweats, right? If he’s a factor, he should be there, too.”
“Be where?”
“At the sit-down. I want to meet him.”
“If you meet Jack Collins, it’ll be about two seconds before you become worm food.”
“You’re saying you can’t control this guy? I’m supposed to give you twenty-five percent of two businesses so I can be safe from a guy you can’t control?”
“You’re not giving me anything. You owe me over a hundred thou. I owe that to other people. If you don’t pay the vig, the vig falls on me. I don’t pay other people’s vig, Nick.”
“Was your driver at my club last night?”
“How would I know?”
“A guy answering his description got thrown out. He was shooting off his mouth with my manager. He claimed he was going to be working there. You want the sit-down or not? You called this guy Collins a religious nut. If I get to him first, I’ll tell him that.”
There was a long pause. “Maybe your wife gave you a blow job this morning and convinced you you’re not a pitiful putz. The truth is otherwise, Nick. You’re still a pitiful putz. But I’ll call Preacher. And I’ll also have those transfers of title rewritten. Forget twenty-five percent. The new partnership will be fifty-fifty. Give me some shit and it will go to sixty-forty. Guess who will get the forty.”
Hugo hung up.
“Got everything worked out?” the driver of the Chrysler said through the window.
PETE AND VIKKI got exactly sixteen miles up a dark highway when the car Pete’s cousin had sold him on credit dropped the crankshaft on the asphalt, sparks grinding under the frame as the car slid sideways into soil that exploded around them like soft chalk.
When Pete called, the cousin told him the car came with no guarantees and the cousin’s car lot did not have a complaint window for people with buyer’s remorse. He also indicated he and his wife were leaving with the kids early in the morning for a week of rest and relaxation in Orlando.
Vikki and Pete removed two suitcases and Vikki’s guitar and a bag of groceries from the car and stood by the roadside, thumbs out. A tractor-trailer rimmed with lights roared past them, then a mobile home and a prison bus and a gas-guzzler packed with Mexican drunks, the top half of the car cut off with an acetylene torch. The next vehicle was an ambulance, followed by a sheriff’s cruiser, both of them with sirens on.
Two minutes later, a second cruiser appeared far down the road, its flasher rippling, its siren off. It came steadily out of the south, a bank of low mountains behind it, the stars vaporous and hot against a blue-black sky. The cruiser seemed to slow, perhaps to forty or forty-five miles per hour, gliding past them, the driver holding a microphone to his mouth, his face turned fully on them.
“He’s calling us in,” Pete said.
“Maybe he’s sending a wrecker,” Vikki said.
“No, he’s bad news.” Pete widened his eyes and wiped at his mouth. “I told you, he’s stopping.”
The cruiser pulled to the right shoulder and remained stationary, its front wheels cut back toward the center stripe, the interior light on.
“What’s he doing?” Vikki said.
“He’s probably got a description of us on his clipboard. Yep, here he comes.”
They stared numbly into the cruiser’s approaching headlights, their eyes watering, their hearts beating. The air seemed clotted with dust and bugs and gnats, the roadway still warm from the sunset, smelling of oil and rubber. Then, for no apparent reason, the cruiser made a U-turn and headed north again, its weight sinking on the back springs.
“He’ll be back. We have to get off the highway,” Pete said.
They crossed to the other side of the asphalt and began walking, glancing back over their shoulders, their abandoned car with all their household possessions dropping behind them into the darkness. A half hour later, a black man wearing strap overalls with no shirt stopped and said he was headed to his home, seventy miles southwest. “That’s pert’ exactly where we’re going,” Pete said.
They paid a week’s advance rent, twenty dollars per day, at a motel on a stretch of side road that resembled a Hollywood re-creation of Highway 66 during the 1950s: a pink plaster-of-Paris archway over the road, painted with roses; a diner shaped like an Airstream trailer with a tin facsimile of a rocket on top; a circular building made to look like a bulging cheeseburger with service windows; a drive-in movie theater and a miniature golf course blown with trash and tumbleweed, the empty marquee patterned with birdshot; a red-green-and-purple neon war bonnet high up on the log facade of a beer joint and steak house; three Cadillac car bodies buried seemingly nose-first in the earth, their fins
slicing the wind.
“This is a pretty neat place, if you ask me,” Pete said, sitting on the side of the bed, looking through the side window at the landscape. He was barefoot and shirtless, and in the soft light of morning, the skin along his shoulder and one side of his back had the texture of lampshade material that has been wrinkled by intense heat.
“Pete, what are we going to do? We don’t have a car, we’re almost broke, and cops are probably looking for us all over Texas,” Vikki said.
“We’ve done all right so far, haven’t we?” Pete began talking about his friend Billy Bob Holland, a former Texas Ranger who had a law practice in western Montana. “Billy Bob will he’p us out. When I was little, my mother used to bring home men, usually late at night. Most of them were pretty worthless. This one guy was more worthless than all the rest put together and then some. One night he smacked both me and my mom around. When Billy Bob found out about it, he rode his horse into the beer joint and threw a rope on the guy and drug him out the front door into the parking lot. Then he kicked him into next week.”
“Your lawyer friend can’t help a fugitive. All he can do is surrender you.”
“Billy Bob wouldn’t do that.”
“We have to get your disability check.”
“That’s kind of a problem, isn’t it?” Pete stood up and propped one arm against the wall, gazing out the window, his upper torso shaped like a V. “That check should have come yesterday. It’s just sitting there in the box. The government always gets it there on the same date.”
“I can ask Junior to get it and send it to us,” she said.
“Junior doesn’t quite look upon me as a member of his fan club.”
Vikki was sitting at the small desk by the television set. She stared emptily at the decrepit state of their room—the water-stained wallpaper, the air-conditioning unit that rattled in the window frame, the bedspread that she feared to touch, the shower stall blooming with mold. “There’s another way,” she said.