Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

“The hell you drying dishes for?” O-Bop asks him. “Get a dishwasher.”

“They’re expensive.”

“No they’re not,” O-Bop says. “You go to Handrigan's, pick out a dishwasher, it comes off the back of the truck, Handrigan gets the insurance.”

“I’ll just wipe the dishes.”

But a week later, him and O-Bop are out taking care of business and Siobhan’s at home when the buzzer buzzes and two guys come up with a dishwasher in the box on a hand truck.

“What’s this?” Siobhan asks.

“A dishwasher.”

“We didn’t order a dishwasher.”

“Hey,” one of the guys says, “we just humped this thing up here, we ain’t humping it back down. And I ain’t telling O-Bop I didn’t do what he said for me to do, so why don’t you just be a nice girl and let us hook up the dishwasher for you?”

She lets them put it in, but it’s a topic of discussion when Callan gets home.

“What’s this?” she asks.

“It’s a dishwasher.”

“I know what it is,” she says. “I mean, what is it?”

I’m going to give fucking Stevie a beating is what it is, Callan thinks, but he says, “A housewarming present.”

“It’s a very generous housewarming present.”

“O-Bop’s a generous guy.”

“It’s stolen, isn’t it?”

“Depends on what you mean by stolen.”

“It’s going back.”

“That would be complicated.”

“What’s complicated about it?”

He don’t want to explain to her that Handrigan has probably already put in a claim for it, and for three or four others just like it, which he’s sold for half-price in a “soup-and-sandwich” scam. So he just says, “It’s complicated is all.”

“I’m not stupid, you know,” she says.

No one’s said anything to her, but she gets it. Just living in the neighborhood-going to the store, to the cleaner's, dealing with the cable guy, the plumber-she feels the deference with which she’s treated. It’s little things-a couple of extra pears tossed into the basket, the clothes done tomorrow instead of the day after, the uncharacteristic courtesy of a cabbie, the man at the newsstand, the construction guys who don’t hoot or whistle.

That night in bed she says, “I left Belfast because I was tired of gangsters.”

He knows what she means-the Provos have become little more than thugs, controlling in Belfast most of the things that, well, most of the things that he and O-Bop control in the Kitchen. He knows what she’s telling him. He wants to beg her to stay, but instead says, “I’m trying to get out.”

“Just get out.”

“It’s not that simple, Siobhan.”

“It’s complicated.”

“That’s right, it is.”

The old myth about only leaving toes-up is just that-a myth. You can walk away, but it is complicated. You can’t just up and stroll. You have to ease out, otherwise there are dangerous suspicions.

And what would I do? he thinks.

For money?

He hasn’t put much away. His is the businessman’s lament-a lot of money comes in, but a lot goes out, too. People don’t understand-there’s Calabrese’s cut, and Peaches’, right off the top. Then the bribes-to union officials, to cops. Then the crew gets taken care of. Then he and O-Bop cut up whatever’s left, which is still a lot but not as much as you think. And now they have to kick into the Big Peaches Defense Fund… well, there ain’t enough to retire on, not enough to open a legit business.

And anyway, he wonders, what would that be? What the hell am I qualified for? All I know about is extortion and strong-arm and-face it-turning the lights out on guys.

“What do you want me to do, Siobhan?”

“Anything.”

“What? Wait tables? I don’t see myself with a towel over my arm.”

One of them long silences in the dark before she says, “Then I guess I don’t see myself with you.”

He gets up the next morning, she’s sitting at the table drinking tea and smoking a cig. (You can take the girl out of Ireland, but.. . he thinks.) He sits down across the table and says, “I can’t get out just like that. That’s not how it works. I need a little more time.”

She gets right down to it, one of the things he loves about her-she’s bottom-line. “How much time?”

“A year, I dunno.”

“That’s too long.”

“But it might take that long.”

She nods several times, then says, “As long as you’re headed toward the door.”

“Okay.”

“I mean steadily toward the door.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

So now, a couple of months later, he’s trying to explain it to O-Bop. “Look, this is all fucked-up. You know, I don’t even know how it all got started. I’m sitting in a bar one afternoon and Eddie Friel walks in and then it all just gets out of hand. I don’t blame you, I don’t blame anybody, all I know is this has got to end. I’m out.”

As if to put a period on it he puts all his hardware into a brown-paper grocery bag and gives it to the river. Then goes home to have a talk with Siobhan. “I’m thinking of carpentry,” he says. “You know, storefronts and apartments and shit like that. Maybe, eventually, I could build cabinets and desks and stuff. I was thinking of going to talk with Patrick McGuigan, maybe see if he’d take me on as an unpaid apprentice. We have enough money set aside to see us over until I can get real work.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“We’re gonna be poor.”

“I’ve been poor,” she says. “I’m good at it.”

So the next morning he goes to McGuigan’s loft on Eleventh and Forty-eighth.

They went to Sacred Heart together and talk about high school for a few minutes, and about hockey for a few more minutes, and then Callan asks if he can come to work for him.

“You’re shitting me, right?” McGuigan says.

“No, I’m serious.”

Hell yes he is-Callan works like a mother learning the trade.

Shows up at seven sharp every morning with a lunch bucket in his hand and a lunch-bucket attitude in his head. McGuigan wasn’t sure what to expect, but what he really didn’t expect was for Callan to be a workhorse. He figured him to be a drunk or a hungover druggie, maybe, but not the citizen who walks through the door on time every morning.

No, the guy came to work, and he came to learn.

Callan finds he likes working with his hands.

At first he’s all thumbs-he feels like a jerk, a mook-but then it starts coming along. And McGuigan, once he sees that Callan is serious, is patient. Takes the time to teach him things, brings him along, gives him small jobs to screw up until he gets to the point where he can do them without screwing up.

Callan goes home at night tired.

End of the day, he’s physically worn out-he’s sore, his arms ache-but mentally he feels good. He’s relaxed, he’s not worried about anything. There’s nothing he’s done during the day he’s going to have bad dreams about that night.

He stops going around to the bars and pubs where he and O-Bop used to hang out. He don’t go around the Liffey or the Landmark no more. Mostly he comes home and he and Siobhan have a quick supper, watch some TV, go to bed.

One day O-Bop shows up at the carpentry studio.

He stands there in the doorway, looking stupid for a minute, but Callan ain’t even looking at him, he’s paying attention to his sanding, and then O-Bop turns around and leaves, and McGuigan thinks maybe he should say something but there don’t seem to be nothing to say. It’s like Callan just took care of it, that’s all, and now McGuigan don’t have to worry about the West Side boyos coming by.

But after work, Callan goes and searches out O-Bop. Finds him on the corner of Eleventh and Forty-third, and they walk over to the waterfront together.