Reed Coleman - Onion Street

“You’re wrong. You wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t do that, but I’m not sure there’s anything Bobby wouldn’t do if a lot of money was part of the equation.”

Aaron wasn’t believing it. “Big money or not, Bobby’s a shrewd guy. He wouldn’t risk going away to prison for — ” I was already laughing before he could finish. “What’s so funny?” he wanted to know.

“I swear I’m not laughing at you,” I said. “In fact, even though it looks and sounds like laughter, I’m really crying.”

“You’re talking crazy, Moe.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Aren’t you going to open the white envelope? It’s addressed to Whom It May Concern, not to her mom or dad.”

“Not now,” I said. “Not here.”

“When?”

“I’m not sure,” I lied. I knew exactly where and when I was going to open it.

“What about the photographs? Are you — ”

“I’ll handle it.”

“Okay,” he said, but his expression was full of worry. Rightfully so.

My brother knew my heart better than I thought he did. What was even more amazing was that in spite of knowing that I was basically an aimless fuck-up, he trusted me. That I hadn’t expected, because I wasn’t sure that I’d ever done anything to earn his trust. Sometimes, I guess, you just have to trust somebody. I was about to test that theory out.

Bobby was sleeping when I walked into his room at Coney Island Hospital, but it wasn’t the sleep of angels. His face, his long brown hair were bathed in sweat. His fingers twitched. His head jerked violently from side to side. His lips curled and moved. His arms struck out wildly at an invisible enemy. Maybe it was a nightmare. Or maybe he was being crushed beneath the weight of his deals with various devils. I didn’t much care either way, as long as he suffered. I stood there watching him for what might have been an hour, trying to feel something other than anger. I think I could have stood there for days and not felt anything else. Eventually Bobby’s night terrors calmed, and he fell into a more restful sleep. I sat down, reading while I waited. He stirred again at around eleven, this time opening his eyes. I got up. I wanted to be standing over him when he woke.

“Hey, Moe.” He yawned, stretching his muscles, not without pain. “What time is it? How did you get in here with — ”

I might have told him what time it was. I might have told him that I had called Detective Casey to make sure I could get past the relief cop at the door without any hassles. I did neither. What I did instead was to toss something onto Bobby’s chest.

He grabbed at it. “What the fuck is this?”

“It’s a dead cop’s badge.”

“What the — ”

“Shut up, Bobby. For once, just shut the fuck up. I’m already sorry for saving your life. Don’t make it worse.”

“About that,” he said, “about saving my — ”

“Twice, Bobby. I saved your worthless life twice. So please shut up. Shut up!”

He put his hands up in surrender. “Okay.”

“We’ll talk about the badge later. First, I wanna talk about this.” I handed him a photo of the big guy loading up his trunk with drugs. “Are the bricks heroin or cocaine?”

“Where did you get this?”

I ignored him. “Heroin or cocaine?”

He bowed his head. “Heroin.”

“What a perfect setup, huh, Bobby? By volunteering to be Detective Casey’s rat inside Susan Kasten’s bomb plot, you got a pass from the cops that would let you drive all the heroin you could carry through the streets of New York without risking a day in prison. If you got stopped, like we did that day you got a flat tire coming back from the airport, you just told the cop to call the number Casey gave you and the cops would send you on your way. Those weren’t dummy explosives in your trunk that day. It was heroin, right?”

“Right.”

“You musta gotten a fucking hard-on when Casey explained to you about the number to call if you ever got jammed up. Me, I wouldn’t’ve been able to see a way to turn that into profits, but that’s always been the difference between us, Bobby. You could always see all the possibilities in any deal, whether it was trading baseball cards or smuggling heroin.”

“Everybody’s good at something, Moe.”

“Well, I guess that makes it all okay. Hitler was good at killing Jews, and you’re good at making money. So, whose idea was it to use your cover to smuggle drugs, yours or Tony P’s?”

He looked like he was going to deny Tony Pizza’s involvement, but didn’t bother. “From when I worked for him a few summers back, I knew Tony was involved in all sorts of smuggling: jewelry, car parts, electronics, fireworks. You know about the fireworks. Everybody in Sheepshead Bay, Brighton Beach, and Coney Island knows about the fireworks, even the cops at the 60th and 61st precincts buy their fireworks from him. At worst I thought Tony would ask me to move some hot jewelry or bottle rockets.”

“Bottle rockets. If this wasn’t so fucked up, I might even laugh at that. But I guess when you went to him and told him about your sweet setup, he had bigger plans than bottle rockets.”

Bobby shrugged his shoulders. “Once I told him, I couldn’t take it back, not if I wanted to keep breathing.”

“Not if Jimmy Ding Dong knew about it.”

“No excuses, but even after Tony mentioned drugs I thought the worst I’d be doing was moving some pot. Not even you could get bent outta shape over a little pot. I swear, I didn’t know it was heroin until I moved the first load. I told Tony I didn’t like it, but he just told me that was too bad for me, that I should just take the money and keep my mouth shut, so that’s what I did.”

“I thought you two were old pals, you and Tony P,” I said.

“Guys like Tony and Jimmy, they don’t have friends. They see you as an asset or a liability.”

“Better to be a living asset than a dead liability.”

“Especially with drugs. Drugs are big money, Moe. Big as in huge block letters in neon lights. Big as in Times Square on New Year’s Eve big.”

I was curious. “How much have you made?”

His face lit up in spite of himself. That always happened when he talked money. “A hundred grand, give or take, and that’s just from the deal itself.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve invested almost all of it in the stock market. It’s already up to almost half a million.”

“Such blasphemy,” I said with mock scorn. “Karl Marx is spinning in his grave.”

“Fuck Karl Marx.”

“What about Samantha?”

Bobby didn’t like that. “What’s Sam got to do with this? Why bring her name up?”

“Because you got her killed, you asshole. That’s her badge on your chest. Sam was a cop.”

He sat up in bed and swung his legs over the side. “What the fuck are you talking about, Moe?”

I pulled the letter out of my pocket and threw it at him. “Read up, Bobby.”

As he did, I explained to him how I’d gone to Koblenz, and about the discrepancy in her age. I told him about Sam’s dad being a Pennsylvania state trooper, and how Sam had wanted to follow in his footsteps.

“It all adds up,” I said. “She was determined to be a cop, only no one knew about it. See there in the letter, where she explains that she was recruited to be in a special program to infiltrate radical groups using nontraditional means to finance their agendas. And when she hooked up with you, she thought she had hit the daily double. You were connected with every radical group at Brooklyn College and with major heroin trafficking. Just one problem. She fell in love with you. She had enough evidence on you to put you away for a hundred years, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.”