Reed Coleman - Onion Street

Bobby just stared at the letter, open-mouthed, stunned. Then in a whisper, said, “But the bomb, who did — ”

“Jimmy Ding Dong is my guess. C’mon, Bobby, think. Tony had to protect his interests. He couldn’t afford to let Samantha fuck up your sweet deal. See in the letter where Sam talks about the investigation being compromised, and that she couldn’t be sure who to trust anymore. I bet you if you find out who was in her unit, you’ll find a crooked line back to Tony P.”

“Huh?”

“That apartment she lived in, some guy claiming to be her father rented it for her. Only it wasn’t her father. It was another cop. If her landlady hadn’t forgotten about the suitcase Sam had stored in her attic, Sam’s death would’ve gone down forever as a screw-up by some half-assed radical group. Don’t you see, Bobby? Susan Kasten had nothing to do with Sam’s death. For all we know, Sam and Marty just went for a hot dog at Nathan’s that night and had no idea the bomb was in the car. The only explosives the Committee had were the dummy explosives you supplied them with, but it wasn’t dummy explosives that blew up Sam and Marty all to hell. It was Tony P protecting you, his cash cow. That’s why Jimmy Ding Dong tried to run me off the road in Pennsylvania. They thought I was on to something about Sam. The irony is that if Jimmy hadn’t tried to kill me, I probably would’ve put down my trip to Koblenz as a painful waste of time.”

“But why didn’t the cops do a better investigation if Sam was one of their own? They always go nuts when another cop gets killed.”

“Because no one knew she was a cop. That was the whole point. Read the letter again. Her name wasn’t on the books, she got paid in cash, and she had only one contact whose real name she didn’t even know. It protected her from being exposed, and it protected the cops who could deny any connection to her. I hope that half a million dollars was worth it to you, Bobby.”

“Do you want some of it, Moe? I’ll cut you in for half. You and your brother can go into business, take care of your folks, never have to worry about anything again.”

I felt myself squinting at him in disbelief. I couldn’t quite believe I’d heard what Bobby had just offered. “Are you outta your fucking mind? I don’t want your blood money, Bobby. Forget all the junkies whose lives you and Tony are ruining. You can probably rationalize that away, but you can’t rationalize away what happened to Sam. You’ll be repaying that debt the rest of your miserable fucking life.”

“You’re right,” he said, swallowing his words. “I’ll never stop repaying it. I promise.”

“Well, it’s over now. I won’t turn you in, Bobby. I should, but I won’t. Tony P would have you killed the second you got inside because he could never trust that you wouldn’t rat him out. I don’t want that on my conscience too. I figure you’ll have to run anyway because without your magic get-out-of-jail number, you’ve become a liability to Tony. Either way, you’re fucked.” I turned to go.

“There’s one problem,” Bobby called after me.

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“It’s not over. I have one more run to do. That’s what Tony and Jimmy were doing here before, letting me know.”

“But you’re not protected anymore.”

He laughed. “You think they give a shit about that now? Besides, Moe, it’s not like I have a choice.”

“Yes, you do. You have to run anyway. Why not run now, before this last shipment? I’ll help you get out of here tonight and you can be on a flight to Mexico before they know you’re gone. With all your money, you can get to Europe and make a nice life for yourself. You’ll even have your guilt to keep you company.”

He shook his head no. “Can’t do it.”

“Why the hell not?”

“For one thing, even if I get away, you’ll still be here. And …”

“And what?”

“Tony and Jimmy have Lids.”

“How?”

Bobby shouted, “Hey, you told me to find Lids, right? Wasn’t it you who said I had all the connections? So I used my best connection, and Tony had the number you gave me traced. Tony said he would keep Lids safe. I had no reason not to believe him. How the fuck was I supposed to know you’d gotten yourself tangled up in all this shit?”

He was right. When I asked Larry to help me find Lids, I hadn’t thought anything through. Now I’d helped deliver Lids into the hands of the man he feared most. After a moment of quiet came the revelation: Whether he did the one last drug run or not, Bobby, Lids, and I were all on the roster of the soon-to-be deceased. Bobby and I seemed to hit on that realization at about the same moment. We were both looking off into space and then, as it came to us both, we turned toward one another, our eyes locking together in mutual understanding and fear. If this was what seeing the future was like, I wanted no part of it. We are all born into this world under penalty of death, but we don’t walk around with destiny on our shoulders. Now I felt like I would snap in half under its weight. Bobby too, from the look of him.

I said it first. “We’re all dead, you know that, right?”

“I know. Tony P may be a fat gavone and a buffoon with his stupid magic tricks, but he’s not stupid. Believe me, the guy’s smarter than you think. He makes all kinda money.”

“That’s why we’re dead. He knew your deal with the cops was gonna come to an end sooner or later. What, did you think he was just gonna give up the drug trade and happily go back to car parts and fireworks?”

“I never thought about that. All I could see was the money,” he said, his face turning red with shame. In all the time I’d known Bobby, I’d never seen him red-faced. “Besides, I haven’t been doing a lot of clear thinking since Sam got killed.”

“Well, think about it now. The whole time you’ve been doing these runs, Tony and Jimmy have probably been looking for another way to transport the heroin and to cut you out of the deal. My guess is the only reason you’re not dead yet is because all the pieces of their new system of getting the heroin out of the airport aren’t in place yet.”

Bobby seemed surprised. “Get outta here.”

“Christ, Bobby, use your brain. If you’ve made a hundred grand, that means he musta cut you in for what, half?”

“Forty percent.”

“Did you really think he was gonna keep giving up almost half of the profits?”

“Like I said, Moe, I haven’t been thinking.”

“The most fucked-up part of this, Bobby, is that I’ve admired you my whole life. I wanted to be like you. Shit, I wanted to be you. You always seemed to know where you were going and how to get there, and I’ve always felt lost.”

Bobby didn’t say anything to that and then he mumbled, “I can’t die yet.”

“Do you know where they have Lids?”

“Tony said they’ll have him at the drop and that when I deliver the last shipment, they’ll let him go.”

“Yeah, and Santa will come down the chimney holding the Tooth Fairy’s wing and the Easter Bunny’s paw.”

“What can I tell you? That’s what he said, that he’d let Lids go if I did this last thing for him.”

“Is this drug run the same as the others? You park in the lot outside the Eastern terminal at JFK, they load your trunk, and you deliver it?”

“That’s how it’s always works.”

“Okay, I think maybe there’s a way to keep us alive.”

“You can’t go to the cops. Like you said, if I go away, Tony P will have a hit put on me. I won’t last five minutes inside.”

“For once in your life, Bobby, you don’t get a say in things. You do what I tell you or you won’t live to see the inside of a prison. When’s the drop set for?”