Retirement Projects

  Chapter 17

  My mood was briefly lifted by the exchange with Julia, for various reasons, but once the glow of virtue faded, my anxiety and depression returned, nourished at least partly by the realization that Victor Carogna had apparently now penetrated my life from yet another direction, in the form of a yapping little rodent. And god knows what his relationship with Julia had been. I finished the kitchen floor without feeling any of the expected therapeutic effects kick in, so I decided to go out for a nice long walk.

  I don't see myself as a bitter person. But there are days when the fog is in, the typical San Francisco summer pattern, and taking my bagel walk or whatever I'm up to just to get out of the apartment and away from the sound of splashing orange juice, I notice how really ugly this city can be, and I can get pretty bloody-minded. Those are the days – they can happen in any major US city – when practically everyone you meet on the street seems to be broken or damaged. Some are obvious cases, like the homeless in the doorways with the trickles of pee that lead back to their rag nests, and the emaciated, faded, and who-knows-how-old ladies hunched over their cigarettes and hacking on every street corner. But there are lots of other people out there with something indefinable about them that suggests their lives are in more disarray than your basic Monday morning should imply. Something about their clothes or their expression makes you give them a wide berth. And around and through and over them all the supposedly respectable bourgeois is driving his dumptruck-sized SUV like a getaway car, making 2-wheel cowboy left turns through the rush hour intersections and blowing his horn way too long at anyone who gets in his way, screaming out the window at the cowering pedestrians and the hacking old ladies without even bothering to take the cell phone away from his potty mouth, and running over pigeons (most of which seem to have one foot missing or deformed) that pop like exploding paper bags under his superfat radial tires. And the sky is gray and dirty, and the buildings are gray and dirty, and the streets are piled and stained with all the leavings of the uncivil human race: dried vomit in front of the bars; pizza crusts and unmatched sneakers and broken CD players where someone has camped for the night; the flattened cups and sticky fossilized ponds left behind by hoodwinked puppet consumers who found they couldn't finish that two-liter Slurpee after all; the constellation of black spots (gum? spit? blood?) on the sidewalks where the loiterers are wont to gather to watch the street go by; and everywhere the imprint of the human sole molded in rich chocolatey dogshit.

  I'm just trying to lay the groundwork for what came next in my new life; the point being that I'm an unlikely candidate for homicidal maniac, and yet there are days when it's probably a good thing that I don't keep a gun in the house. The news about Leilah and Victor Carogna arrived on exactly one of those gray, ugly days. Or maybe it became that kind of day when I received the news. Was it enough to make me reach for my gun, or rather for his gun?

  That's what I was trying to decide during the walk that was supposed to soothe my racing pulse and create perspective. But there were those black spots all over the sidewalks, everywhere I went. Nor was my mood improved by finding my crushed bike out in front of the house again. After assessing the original damage, I had properly consigned it to the recycling bin; and yet, here it was again. Now it seemed to have another twist or two in the frame, and some brown stains on the seat that looked like blood. It was reassuring, in a way. If they were serious, why didn't they just, say, knock a few teeth out, or snap my left arm, leaving the right arm healthy to threaten Victor Carogna with? But no, they were like "I'm going to count to three, and then you'll have to have a time out." At one point, when the ragpicker/meth dealer was still living in the ground floor apartment, Leilah and I had gotten used to seeing our trash again after we'd thrown it away. The guy would be selling our old sofa cushions out on the front steps. But with the meth dealer having been evicted, I now had to imagine Arthur, in his business suit, lifting the crumpled bike fastidiously out of the recyling bin, carefully bending it or having his friends drive over it a couple of times in their Humvee, and then sprinkling goat’s blood on the seat.

  I left the bike where it was this time, and just kept walking. But someone was obviously trying to keep my mind focused on my problem, because I kept sensing that I was being followed, just like in bad movies. I'd look back over my shoulder, and an ornately sneakered foot would be disappearing into a doorway. Or I'd loiter in front of a vintage clothing store, and to my left, at the intersection, someone would. . . STOP. And I'd see the bill of a baseball cap, worn backwards, poking out from behind the light post. All this took its toll, and in my growing anxiety I began seriously to contemplate Arthur's proposal.

  One problem was the lack of a gun. Would Victor Carogna really lend me one? I had no doubt that he would, and by now I was beginning to take some pleasure in the thought of threatening him with his own firearm, with the additional irony that it was he who had taught me to shoot. I tried to imagine the scene: a dark and narrow street, slick with rain and lined with old brick buildings, a single defective streetlight buzzing and flickering a tired orange light. Victor Carogna emerges from the back door of one of the buildings – his favorite Italian restaurant, whose owner knows him from his days on the police force and always saves him a prime table, from which he has a good view of any celebrities who might drop in for a quiet meal. On his skinny 70-year-old arm is a stunning young brunette in spike heels.

  I'm waiting in a doorway a couple of buildings down the street, my borsalino pulled low over my eyes, against the rain and for anonymity. Victor Carogna gallantly holds open the door of the – what does he drive? I think it's an old Oldsmobile Cierra – while his shapely escort slips into her seat with a low, husky laugh and the provocative whisper of soft nylon surfaces rubbing together. The sharp click of Victor Carogna's heels as he walks around the rear of the car, opens the driver side door, and folds himself, somewhat creakily, into place behind the steering wheel. I pull my collar up and move forward, holding the Glock 17 out of sight against my right thigh. I tap on his window with the knuckles of the first two fingers of my left hand. A sardonic smile, weary with the knowledge of too much evil, twists the scar of his mouth as he recognizes me and lowers the window. The brunette draws in her breath sharply as she sees me aim the Glock directly between Victor Carogna's glittering eyes.

  “Evening, Ducelis,” he says, pulling an unfiltered cigarette out of the pack in his shirt pocket and inserting it nonchalantly below the handlebar mustache. “I suppose you need a ride home.”

  I ignore his deliberate disrespect. “I've been asked to inform you that there are people who are deeply concerned about the threats you've been making to some friends of theirs. They're suggesting that it would be in your best interest to desist immediately.”

  “Who the fuck writes your dialogue,” says Victor Carogna, cupping his hands to light the cigarette.

  “You should think about your wife, Carogna.” My next rehearsed line. “What would happen to her if you didn't come home some night.” By now the brunette is huddled against the far door, her elegant bare shoulders shaking with silent sobs, or maybe laughter. Victor Carogna looks up at me, exhales a long sigh of smoke in my face, turns the key in the ignition. I reach through the window with my left hand and grab the front of his shirt, yank him forward until our faces are nearly touching. I can smell his rank Camel breath.

  “Don't fuck with me, Carogna! You may think you know me, but you don't.” I'm barely raising my voice, but making sure he can hear the menace in it.

  “My shirt,” he says. I let go, with a little push, keeping the Glock pointed just above the bridge of his nose. He takes a moment to readjust his collar and necktie, then pushes the window button. I have to yank my arm out, with the Glock, to keep it from getting trapped inside the car. Without looking at me again he puts the car in gear and begins to maneuver out of the parking spot. He's leaving me no choice. I point the Glock at a spot just abo
ve his left ear and squeeze off two quick shots. The car window spiderwebs, then sags like a thick, transparent fabric. Blood mixed with Victor Carogna's icky brain matter spatters the left shoulder and abyssal cleavage of the brunette, who's frozen in her seat, wondering who's going to take her home now.

  Never mind. It was an impossible scenario, other than in its depiction of my total failure to intimidate Victor Carogna. For one thing, the idea of shooting someone in the head, even that bastard, didn't work for me. It was just too invasive. I could probably put a couple of slugs in his chest, though. I take the bus to Cupertino (is there one? Public transportation in that part of the world, with its herds of snorting SUVs, is very primitive) with all the commuters late in the afternoon, the Glock 17 tucked in the briefcase I haven't used since retiring from the classroom. Backpacks are too suspicious these days. Having located his house, I loiter until late at night in the local Subway, nursing a raspberry Snapple. At 11 pm I ring his doorbell, and when he opens the door, already unpacking the sardonic smile, I put two neat holes in his Arrow shirt, just above the left nipple. He falls backward without a word, like a tin soldier, and lies at attention on the thick carpeting, the smile still on his face. Margaret sits in her wheelchair, staring at me across his carcass, her hands pressed to her sunken cheeks. . . Shit.

  The whole fucking thing was ridiculous, of course. The idea of me shooting or even scaring anybody was absurd. That's been the problem with my whole life, in fact – an inability to believe that I could do any of the things I really want to do. Other people seem to just assume they can become cardiac surgeons, high-profile trial lawyers, judges, politicians, superstar musicians, published poets, critically acclaimed novelists, and hit men, and a lot of them go out and do it, without apparently giving it too much thought. Not Ducelis, though. No matter how much I may have wanted to do some of those things, and even tried, lamely, to do one or two of them, in the landfill of my psyche there had always been the sad worm telling me that those things were for other people, not for me. For me, it was always enough of a victory just to pay the rent and have enough left over for burritos. Snagging a woman like Leilah had been a bit of a surprise, I must admit, but I still didn't know how it happened, and in any case it had now been revealed as the illusion it must always have been.

  Or maybe it wasn't! Maybe Leilah had seen something in me, something stronger, more forceful than the mild-mannered schoolmarm, but after 25 years had finally gotten tired of waiting for it to express itself and had run off with the snaggle-toothed birdwatcher, who at least knew who he was. Maybe this was my wakeup call, I told myself.

  I stood, transfixed, staring sightlessly at the covers of the books laid out in the window of a used bookstore. Sixty years old. If not now, when? Maybe it was time to take a few risks, to imagine a bigger future for myself and go after it. Not that I thought being a hit man represented a big future. But wasn't I being backed into a corner here? Fight or flight – that was the question.

  Down the sidewalk to my left, the bill of the baseball cap still loitered behind the light post, trying to look innocent and waiting for me to move on. But suppose I failed to move on, and finally took a stand instead? If I was going to have any future, the first step might have to be to shoot my way out of this saloon. Blowing away Victor Carogna, I told myself, or at least being MENTALLY PREPARED to blow him away, might not only get me out of the mess I was in but might have the side effect of snapping my psychic chains and opening whole new worlds. Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul! – another thing my mother always used to say. Time to ditch this dark room, the doubts and fears that had restrained me all my life, and move out into the next, more spacious, chamber of existence.

  All this was in the nature of pumping myself up, of course, and I only half-believed any of it, probably less than half. But what was I going to do, sit grading metaphorical homework papers until the garbage truck rolled over me, instead of my bike? Better to take my fate in my own hands, I thought. More realistically, I'm afraid there was a part of me that resonated to the idea of grabbing the whole scraggy bundle, my life, with all its dangling loose ends, and tossing it in the trash can. What was in it that was worth saving, really – my inadequate pension check, my pointlessly clean apartment, my missing wife, the scarf I could never finish? That feeling, I suppose, was what allowed me to ignore the possible legal consequences of what I was planning.

  The knitting group was due to meet at my place on Sunday afternoon, the day after tomorrow. I could call Victor Carogna up and ask him to bring the gun with him. That way, I'd at least have the option of following Arthur's plan and getting him off my back. I might not do anything with it. But maybe I would, maybe desperation would drive me to it, and maybe Victor Carogna would surprise me and back off if I seemed determined enough. I knew I couldn't pull the trigger. He probably knew that, too. But would he be sure? I could pretend to be freaked out or on drugs. Or maybe I could actually take enough Sudafed to start tweaking. Tweakin'. That might put just enough doubt in his mind to make him cautious. In any case, once I had the gun I could plan how to confront him with it. I couldn't think any farther ahead than that. You may have noticed I'm not James Bond.

  As I entered the hallway of the apartment, a sneakered kid in a baseball cap rolled by on a noisy skateboard, pointed at me with his finger and thumb, and made that shooting noise with his mouth.