Richard Lange - Dead Boys - Stories

Belushi returns with a bottle of Heineken and hands it to me, then drops onto one of the pillows. It feels a little hippy-dippy, but I join him. I wish he’d open a window or at least twist the blinds to let some sun through. It’s like an animal’s den in here, or the end of some dark road. I imagine bones in the shadows, jagged rocks, old burned wood. He takes a noisy hit from a purple bong and asks in a high, choking voice whether I’m nervous about tomorrow’s job.

“Sure,” I reply. “I’ve barely been sleeping. You?”

“I’m a fucking mess,” he says with a smile. “This is the last one. The big one. Your old lady doesn’t know what’s up, does she?”

“No way. No. She’d flip.”

“How are you going to explain coming into money?”

I shrug to avoid answering. I’ve given the matter a lot of thought, but he doesn’t need to know that. He’s got plenty of other things to make fun of me about.

“You and Moriarty have been friends for a long time, huh?” I say.

Belushi lights a cigarette. The ashtray is a coiled rattlesnake with red rhinestone eyes.

“Yep. Me and the buttfucker go way back. He’s my favorite Martian. The same spaceship stranded both of us on this prison planet, and we’ve been looking for a way off ever since.”

“Is that right?” I reply.

“It is,” he snaps.

“Can you do this?” I ask, flashing the Vulcan salute from Star Trek .

He laughs and says, “Make it so.” Picking up the remote, he turns on the stereo. Strange music fills the apartment, layer upon layer of squealing guitars over a flat chunk chunk drumbeat. It sounds like a factory coming apart in a hurricane. Belushi’s fist keeps time, pounding against his knee. There’s a poster on the wall of the pope marching with Nazis.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Belushi says, gesturing at the TV and guitars and everything, “but I need this money as much as you.”

“I understand,” I reply, and I guess I do. There’s more than one kind of miserable.

“I’m going to miss you when this is over,” he says.

This blindsides me, but I nod and say, “And I’ll miss you.”

I CARRY MARIA’s coffee in to her, set the cup on the dresser while she’s getting ready for work. She smiles at me in the mirror when I crouch beside her and rest my chin on her shoulder. I run my hands up under her nightgown and cup her breasts. Turning my face to her neck, I tongue the beauty mark there and inhale deeply. I need to memorize it all in case something goes wrong.

“You have dark circles,” she says. “Still not sleeping?”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

The big day is finally here. I could be rich by nightfall, or dead. What a wide-open feeling. I can’t put my finger on it.

Sam is sitting on the living room floor in front of the TV, a bowl of cereal in his lap. His eyes are locked onto the screen, where a cartoon spaceship goes down in flames.

“Invader X neutralized,” he declares, imitating the voice of some hero in a visored helmet.

I remember the joy of losing myself like that as a child. What a gift it seems now. I resist the urge to pick him up, to intrude, and instead sit on the couch and love him from afar.

The three of us leave the bungalow together, and I walk Maria and Sam to the Sentra. She’ll drop him off at kindergarten on her way to school. I kiss them both and wait to make sure the car starts, because the battery hasn’t been holding a charge lately. It’s hard to let them go this morning. Tears sting my eyes as the car crests the hill in front of our complex and pops out of the shadows and into the ravenous sunlight.

THE PLAN IS to meet at three o’clock in the parking lot of a minimall a few blocks from the bank. Until then it’s business as usual. The Guatemalans are already up on their ladders when I arrive at the house in Los Feliz. El Jefe steps out of his BMW and watches me unload my truck. He’s smoking a cigar and drinking from a quart carton of orange juice.

I’m painting up under the eaves this morning, which is nice because it keeps me out of reach of the sun, but hell because of the spiders. If this was my job, I’d have sprayed the webs down with a garden hose yesterday and let the wall dry overnight, but El Jefe’s not much for prep, so I use a brush to sweep the webs away. They’re as thick as cotton in places, and studded with dried-out flies that jump and crackle. The webs wrap around me when they fall, cling to my face with ghostly tautness, and slither into my lungs on the current of my breath. And the monsters that spun them! Fat black spiders drop like poison rain. I swat them away when they scrabble over my arms, my neck, but it’s too much. I have to take a break, sit on the lawn with my head between my knees.

After lunch I begin to work myself up to sticking my finger down my throat. That’s how I’ll get away, by vomiting and telling El Jefe I’m too sick to keep going, maybe blame it on a spider bite. I’m prying open a new can of paint when my phone rings. It’s Maria. There’s worry in her voice. Sam has fallen at kindergarten and may have broken his leg. She can’t leave school right now and wonders if I can pick him up and drive him to the hospital. No problem, I say. Relax. Everything’ll be okay.

“Jefe!” I yell, approaching his car at a run. “I’ve got to go. It’s an emergency.”

He rolls down the window. Chilled air breaks over me like a wave. “I’m not paying you for today, then,” he says. “You have to work the whole day to get paid.”

“Do Whatever you want. I’ll pick my shit up later.”

It’s not until I’m driving away that I think to look at my watch. Quarter after one. I’m supposed to have a gun in my hand and a bulletproof soul in less than two hours.

SAM IS LYING on his back on a cot in the school nurse’s office. He stares at the ceiling, afraid to move, his face pale and sweaty.

“I’m hurt,” he says, “but not bleeding.”

He whimpers when I scoop him up, cries for his shoes, which the nurse has removed. She gives them to him, and he twines his fingers through the laces, clutching them tightly. I shield his eyes from the sun as I carry him across the parking lot. A bell rings behind us, doors open with a whoosh, and hordes of screaming children run for the playground.

He lies across the seat of the truck. The top of his head rests against my thigh. He looks up at me as I drive, his bottom lip held between his teeth. I know he’s in pain, but he doesn’t complain once, though every block seems to have a pothole that makes the truck shake like an unwatered drunk.

“Want to play music?” I ask. He’s not usually allowed, but I need to see him smile. I turn on the radio and say, “Go ahead.”

He reaches out tentatively, as if this might be a trick, and pushes one of the buttons, changing stations. When no scolding follows, he sets to work in earnest. We listen to snatches of some rapper, the Eagles, news, a Mexican station, and back again, and he laughs at the cacophony he’s creating. I feel awful for ever depriving him of this pleasure, for ever slapping his hand and shouting, Knock it off .

Meanwhile my partners are waiting, and the ticking of my watch grows louder with each passing second. If I don’t show up, they’ll call the job off, but I know Moriarty and his completion principle. He’ll just plan another, and that’s unacceptable. I want this to be over now. I want to be a citizen again. I want to spend my fucking money.

I lay my hand on Sam’s chest. His heart is beating as fast as mine.

“I’ll teach you a song,” I say. “Oh, the monkey wrapped his tail around the flagpole. .”

WHEN THEY WHEEL Sam off for his X-rays, I call Maria at school. Her phone is off, so I try the office. The secretary puts me on hold, then comes back on to ask if I’d like to leave a message, because Mrs. Blackburn is unavailable at the moment.