Rob Thurman - Slashback

I was about to refuse when Cal, who thought I was an idiot on the subject, intervened. Things were things, whether you scavenged them, bought them, or people were stupid enough to just give them to you. He had the same attitude about money. He snatched the five one-hundred-dollar bills out of Goodman’s hand and elbowed me. “Nik, go on. Change the tire.”

He elbowed me again when I didn’t move and asked Goodman innocently, “What kind of watch is that? It’s really cool. I don’t have a watch. We’re too poor.” He drooped, a sad victim of a rapacious economy. His eyes had the bleak thousand-yard stare straight out of the pictures of children from Depression-era photos I’d seen in my history books. “I’m always late for school ’cause of it, the no watch. I miss so much class I can barely read. I’m shockingly illiterate. I’m afraid they’ll kick me out and I’ll end up living in one of those cardboard boxes on the street.” Finishing mournfully, he added with the perfect touch of wistfulness, “I wish I had a watch like that.”

Goodman’s smile was back and as amused as ever. More so actually. It showed more brilliant white teeth than a human being should have. With that in his arsenal, he’d leave Sophia in the dust when it came to swindling a mark. “You’re shockingly articulate to be so shockingly illiterate. Nik? That’s what your brother, Cal, called you, correct? Nik, do you think you could change my tire before your brother talks me out of my watch, clothes, and future firstborn son?”

“It doesn’t look like I have much choice.” I didn’t. Pride had to bow before money that meant college and that future I would make for us. “Naive of you to assume he wouldn’t get your car too though. And it’s Niko. Only Cal calls me Nik.” I caught the keys he tossed me and headed for the car.

There was a noncommittal hum that said Goodman wasn’t as worried or gullible as Cal believed. “Niko and Cal. I don’t suppose you want to tell me your last name.” Cal had shown his true colors when he’d opened the door: suspicion personified in a pair of sneakers. I was more subtle at showing it, but I was the same.

“What do you think?” I said mildly. They say what people don’t know won’t hurt them. I said what people don’t know wouldn’t hurt us. Cal’s version was what people don’t know won’t make him stab them in the foot. Three different variations and all true.

Goodman wasn’t offended by the answer. He wasn’t offended by Cal or me in any way and wasn’t that peculiar? Particularly with what Cal was currently doing. “Fair enough,” he replied as he moved his hand and wrist above Cal’s head as small fingers had drifted with invisible stealth toward his watch. Almost invisible as Goodman saw the movement clearly.

Twenty minutes later the car was ready to go and so should’ve been Goodman, but he lingered several minutes talking about nothing whatsoever but making it somehow fascinating like con men do before he finally squared his shoulders as if he had an unpleasant task ahead of him. He was reluctant, I realized, to leave. He didn’t want to go. Someone not wanting to leave us, there was a first.

That was definitely Cal talking, I thought with fond exasperation.

“Here’s my card.” He handed it to me. “If the two of you make it to the Big Apple in the next eight or so years and need a job, look me up. It’s rare that I don’t have some sort of business going. I’m an entrepreneurial soul. I can always use the help.”

“You’re not a car salesman?” I asked, surprised. With the Jaguar, the suit, and the whole Goodman experience, snake-oil mouth included, I’d finally mentally labeled him with that.

“Cars?” He gave an intrigued quirk of his lips. “I haven’t done that yet. It’s a thought.”

I tucked the card in my pocket. “Eight years is a long time. You’ll forget all about this.”

He climbed behind the wheel of the Jaguar and flashed a wicked, knowing grin. “Eight years is nothing and I never forget anything I don’t want to.” He took a last look at our shack of a house and went solemn as quickly as if a switch had been flipped. “Life gives hard lessons to mold brave boys into great men.” Eyes remaining grave, he gave one last smile. “Tell your brother to take good care of the watch.”

Now I did smile. “It’ll be pawned before your car makes it off the block.”

He laughed. “Tell him to at least get three thousand for it. I paid ten.” Then he was gone, the roar of the car’s engine the only thing left. It hung in the air, a predator’s lazy howl, even after the Jaguar disappeared from view. Strange guy. Nice enough, but. . strange. Strange to be giving when I knew his kind were more into taking. Strange with the “I know you” and playing it off as if we reminded him of friends “gone but yet to come”? I knew an accidental truth when I heard it. He had thought he knew Cal and I’d seen and heard that same bloom of recognition with me. Strange that he’d want to help us years from now when most would forget us before they made it a mile down the road, because people generally weren’t like that. People helped themselves and their own. Anything else would be as strange as Rob Goodman himself.

I pulled his card out of my pocket and bent the thick creamy stock between thumb and forefinger. It had been a strange experience altogether. It couldn’t have been much stranger, if I thought about it.

“What a nut job,” Cal proclaimed as he moved up beside me, holding up the watch to admire it in the afternoon sun.

“Maybe.” I didn’t necessarily agree, but as for Goodman’s good-natured ways and his willingness to throw money around like beads at Mardi Gras: things that seemed too good to be true always were. Decision made, I let the card flutter from my hand into the garbage can at the curb.

If there was anything we didn’t need more of in our lives, it was strange.

I picked up the lid Cal had left lying carelessly on the ground beside the can as always and wedged it in place. It was trash day Monday. That meant that I’d have to get up early, around three a.m. that morning, to make sure Junior didn’t have Kithser’s body stuffed in his own garbage can. Cal would insist.

The things you did for little brothers.

Cal

Present Day

The things you did for big brothers.

I gave a philosophical-a big word Nik had taught me-sigh as I tossed the man in the Dumpster face-first. Catching his kicking feet as he bellowed in rage, I snapped, “Stop dicking around. I’m trying to do a good thing here and that’s not a big hobby of mine.”

If anything, the flailing of the feet doubled. It wasn’t as if I could hear what he had to say if he was choking on garbage anyway. I grabbed an ankle and yanked him back out to dump him on the cracked asphalt of the alley. Landing on his ass, he snarled and tried to scramble backward. “Hey, asshole, cut it out.” I pulled my Desert Eagle from its holster under my jacket and pointed it at him. “That?” I nodded at the garbage container. “Wrong place. This?” I glanced at my watch. “Wrong time. Me?” My lips curled, then bared teeth in a wolfish grin. “Totally wrong fucking guy to mess with. Now stop moving and answer my damn questions.”

This little interrogation was going down in broad daylight, but in this part of town, the fact I was holding a gun on a steroid-popping, greasy-haired semi-brain-dead shithead wasn’t going to raise an eyebrow. If I got any reaction at all from a passerby, it’d probably be a thumbs-up and an offer to help dispose of the body for half the take. This guy had nowhere to go and nothing he could do.

Too bad he was too stupid to know that.

He propelled himself to his feet and charged me, fists swinging. They were big fists. He was a big man, but being big doesn’t mean you can fight. You’re only as good as the last ass you kicked. From the looks of him in motion that had been either a hundred-pound starved druggie or a five-pound ankle-biting pooch.