William Lashner - Past Due

“Was he indicted?”

“Oh yes, convicted too. Conspiracy. Drug trafficking. I think there was a racketeering count along for good measure. Ten years, but he wasn’t a kingpin and so was eligible for parole and time off for good behavior. He’d be out by now.”

“And the girl?”

“I remember her, remember her quite vividly,” he said. “Her name was Chelsea Cartland. She helped with the money, helped break down the big shipments, added the cutting agent, bagged it into salable quantities for the customers. She pled guilty, received only sixteen months. A slap on the wrist, really, nothing more. But she was very pretty, very young, and the judge seemed smitten with her.”

I could understand that, how a judge could be smitten with a woman like Chelsea, I could understand it completely.

It was starting to come clear, the crimes of the past that were visiting themselves upon the present. Amidst the warning from Dante and the violent threats from the thugs that night, and the gentle caution issued by my Good Samaritans, who had come into my life, I now was sure, to deliver their message just as clearly as had the goons who had come before them, it was all starting to come clear. A drug conspiracy awash with money. A friendship turned bitter. A lovely sad-eyed woman with a perfect body. A small-time loser who fell into something from which he never recovered. And between everything was a single link holding it all together, a link that could provide some of the answers if I could squeeze it just enough.

Derek Manley.

I had seized from him already a car, a stack of stolen electronics, and I had my man out searching for more. He wasn’t going to like that, no he was not. And I had the feeling, yes I did, that it would not be long before Derek Manley got hold of me.

Unfortunately I was right.

“WHAT THE HELLyou want from me, Vic?”

“How about,” I struggled to gasp out, “you letting go of my crotch.”

“Not until we get this straight,” said Derek Manley, his angry face an inch from mine, his foul breath warm on my cheek, one huge hand grabbing hold of my lapels, forcing my chest up against a brick wall, the other, well, you ever see the back of a garbage truck close down on a sack of trash? “Tell it to me, Vic. What the hell you want?”

“To sing bass again?”

“You a singer?”

“No.”

“Then that makes you a smart-ass. You a smart-ass, Vic?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t like smart-asses.”

“Please.”

“You ain’t so funny now.”

“No.”

“Shut up.”

“Okay.”

“You got a red face, you know that. You must got some Irish blood in you. You got some Irish blood in you, Vic?”

“My grandmother.”

“She was Irish?”

“Ukrainian.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Let go and I’ll explain.”

“I don’t want no explanation. I want you to stop your squeezing.”

“Me?”

“You’re killing me, you son of a bitch.”

“Me?”

“You.”

“Let go.”

“You let go.”

“You.”

“You.”

“Please.”

“Fuck.” Manley’s face twisted in some sort of fearful rage and he let out a bellow that deafened me with its frustration.

In response, I let out a scream of my own, filled with pain and fear.

And so there we were, in that dank and stinking alley, face-to-face, screaming and bellowing like a couple of wild apes.

Then he let go.

I fell onto the wet cracked cement like a limp bag of mush, pulled my knees to my chest. My hands covered my crotch as I tried to catch my breath amid the sickeningly thick snakes of pain twisting through me. I felt like throwing up, I felt like crapping, I felt like checking to see if my soldiers had survived the battle.

Manley himself, seemingly exhausted by his rage, slid down against the wall until he was sitting beside me.

I manfully tried to stop my sobbing.

He shook his head, ran his fingers through his crew cut, let out a whoosh of breath.

If someone had looked in at that very moment, they might have misconstrued.

“Yo, Vic,” he said softly, “you want a cigarette?”

“I’m having a hard enough time right now breathing without one, thank you.”

“Funny how that works, ain’t it?” he said as he shook out a cig.

“Yeah. Funny.”

“They wouldn’t seem to be connected to the lungs.”

“They’re connected to everything.”

He flicked open a lighter, spun the wheel, leaned over to light his cigarette. “I guess I got a little carried away.”

“A little.”

“But you have no idea how I’m getting squeezed here.”

“I think I have an inkling,” I said.

“No hard feelings?”

“Screw yourself.”

“Fuck it, then. So sue me.”

“Don’t worry. I will.”

“Yeah, well, stand in line. Twenty years busting my gut and I got nothing to show but debts I’ll never pay, a company that’s owned by the bank, a pint-sized mobster chewing on my butt, and a girlfriend what won’t even let me pinch her tits no more because I can’t no longer take her out in the style to which she’s grown accustomed, even though it was me what accustomed her to it in the first place. And it ain’t like they’re the greatest tits in the world neither. But a man likes to get in a pinch or two, you know? Oh, Jesus, ain’t life a poke in the gut? This ain’t the way I planned it all when I was starting out, I’ll tell you. I had different ideas than this. But the thing is, Vic, the thing is, and I know’d this from the start, I ain’t all that smart. That’s the problem right there. I just was never smart enough.”

The snakes slowed their twisting and the pain eased just a bit. I carefully pushed myself up until I too was sitting, right beside Manley. His legs were stretched straight ahead of him, his basketball-sized belly was flopped on his lap, and he was sweating. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, coughed, inhaled.

“I’m too old for this,” he said.

“We got the Eldorado.”

“Rothstein told me. And my piece of the club, whatever that’s worth.”

“Not much, I figure.”

“Tell me about it. Most expensive hand job in the history of the world. What else you looking for?”

“Whatever you got.”

“Why?

“We’ll stop if you give us a name.”

“Whose?”

“The guy who hired you to rough up that guy with the suitcase twenty years ago.”

He laughed lightly, blew out a thin stream of smoke. “You’re a stupid son of a bitch. You don’t understand what the hell you’re messing with.”

“Why don’t you tell me, then?”

“Take everything I got. It don’t make no difference. I can’t give you what you want. Take my balls. Go ahead. What with my new situation, they’re not doing me no good no more. Take them.”

“No, thank you.”

“It don’t matter. I can’t give you what you want.”

“Why?”

“ ’Cause I give you that, I’m dead.” Manley shook his head, stubbed out his cigarette. “It’s complicated. You know I got a son. Stashed away some place in Jersey. Hidden from everyone. Whatever I’m into, it don’t affect him. Except that I’m his sole support. I fall behind in my payments, the little bugger’s begging in the street. And he’s got this problem with his eyes. And he don’t breathe so good. That’s the only thing I keep up, even before the girlfriend who ain’t letting me near her tits no more. The support and the insurance, in case something happens to me. And I’m good as gone, already. No place left to go. I knew it, soon as you asked them questions in that deposition. I been hiding out ever since, but it’s closing in on me, I can feel it. Why are you being such a prick, anyway?”