Richard Price - The Whites

“This job is such bullshit, I swear to God,” Yasmeen said.

Billy took a sip of beer, brushed someone else’s crumbs from the tabletop. “And what do you hear about Eric Cortez these days?” he asked.

“Cortez? I haven’t checked on him since forever.”

“No?” Looking out the window.

“But I still see Raymond Del Pino’s family a few times a year. It’s so hard for them to get over losing him, you know?”

“So you don’t know he’s in a nursing home out in Queens.”

“Cortez is?” Yasmeen perked up. “Really? Why?”

“He was shot in the head and stuffed into a garbage bag upstate.”

“That’s… Are you shitting me? Wow.”

“His brain’s a bucket of mush, and the only time he can move is when he has a seizure.”

“If I go visit him, can I bring my camera?”

“You know how I know? They investigated me to see if I was the actor. They wanted to collect my guns.”

“You?” dumping a ton of Splenda in her mug. “Why you?”

“They thought the shooter might be a cop. So when I ran his name, they thought I might be trying to track him down to finish what I started.”

“You ran his name? Why’d you run his name?”

“You know what they asked me? If I had any leads for them.”

“And you said…”

“That I didn’t.”

“But why the fuck did you run his name to begin with?”

“Because this is freaking me out.”

“What is?”

Billy took her napkin and wrote:

Tomassi Bannion SweetP Cortez

Yasmeen’s phone rang. “Excuse me,” she said, pulling it out of her coat pocket, then half-turning away.

Even with the cell pressed to her ear Billy could make out the tinny wail of her younger daughter’s voice.

“What’s wrong,” Yasmeen asked wearily, massaging her temple. “OK, whoa, who’s pinching you… Jacob. Fat Jacob or Black Jacob… Is he there? Put him on the phone… Just, Simone, if you don’t put him on the phone right this second,” rolling her eyes at Billy. “Is this Jacob? This is Simone’s mommy. Listen to me, you know that monster that lives under your bed? Your parents tell you he’s not real, but they’re lying to you. Not only is he real but he’s a friend of mine, and if you lay one more finger on my daughter I will make sure he comes out from under there when you’re asleep tonight and sucks your eyes right out of your head, you hear me? Yes? Good. Now give the phone back to Simone… Stop crying and give the phone back to Simone.”

Yasmeen hung up. “I hate bullies.”

“Is he dying?” Billy asked.

“Is who dying.”

“Pavlicek.”

“Is Pavlicek dying? Is that what you just asked me?”

“He’s my friend, if you know something I don’t know just say.”

“Huh,” Yasmeen starting to flush as she snatched up Billy’s list of Whites. “So, what are you asking, do I know if he’s got some kind of fatal sickness that made him lose his rudder and go rogue on all these scumbags?”

“I didn’t say that.” Billy’s turn to flush. “I just want to know how sick he is.”

“The guy’s healthy as a horse, he’s worth something like thirty million dollars, and he lives like a king.”

“That’s good,” he said. “That’s what I want to hear.”

“So what else, you think he misses the good old action-packed days of yesteryear? He’s bored? The fuck is wrong with you, Billy.”

“I don’t know where you’re going with this.”

“Where I’m going with this?”

“I just asked about his health.”

“And why the hell were you running Cortez to begin with. Who told you to do that. And Sweetpea? Denny said you were walking around with some fucking Missing poster for Sweetpea Harris. And yeah, I was being nice about it before, but you hired some PI to investigate John’s medical records, didn’t you.”

Having fucked everything up now, elephant-stomped across every line, Billy belatedly opted for silence.

“But you know what?” Yasmeen shrugged her coat back on as if about to storm out. “Even if you’re not a paranoid delusional and somebody out there’s taking these shitheads out, so what? Who cares? Animals like these?” Jabbing at his list as she rose to her feet. “They tend to breed. And so when they go young? It’s called the trickle-down effect, our gift to the future.”

“Are you hearing yourself?” Billy sputtered.

“Are you hearing your self?”

The conversation was over.

“Fucking Billy.” Yasmeen dropped back into the chair, her eyes suddenly shining like wet steel.

“What’s wrong.”

“Besides listening to you?”

“Besides listening to me.”

A tremor set up house in the fingers of her right hand and Billy passed her the rest of his beer, which she drained like a Viking. He ordered her another.

“Yazzie, what’s wrong.”

“I’m sorry I’m just so tense all the time these days,” swiping at her eyes with the dirty suede sleeve of her coat. “I think I’m going through menopause.”

“What are you talking about, menopause, you’re forty-three.” Billy grateful for the change of subject.

“It could be early onset, you know? I lay in bed at night, I’m hot I’m cold I’m clammy I’m burning. I’m driving Dennis crazy.”

“You always drive Dennis crazy.”

“I have nightmares about my kids, all these bad things happening to them. I sit up in bed sometimes, I’m drenched, the whole bed. And my first thought is that it’s blood, I’m covered in blood, but since about three months ago, I don’t even get my period anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t miss having it, but all this other shit that goes along with losing it? And I think animals can sense it. We went down to Florida right before New Year’s to visit Dennis’s parents? I took Dominique to feed these ducks and they went crazy, chased us, I swear to God it had to be a mile. If I had my gun we’d of had duck for dinner, the whole family. I just want it to be over.”

“You should talk to somebody,” he said.

“I am talking to somebody, you moron, I’m talking to you.”

They sat there in silence for a long moment, ignoring the few students starting to wander in for lunch.

“I just want to stop having these dreams about my kids,” she said, tagging the waiter for a third beer. “Sometimes I wish I never had kids, so many bad things can happen to them, but it never bothered me when I was in sex crimes, just now. This fucking menopause, maybe it’s a good thing to have your period, a little blood loss every month, you know, like a pressure valve. How about Carmen, she’s not menopausal yet, right? What is she, forty?”

“Thirty-eight.”

“She’s so lucky.”

“Maybe it’s not menopause,” he said. “Maybe you’re pregnant.”

“Right. Do me a favor, ask your wife how long this thing lasts.”

“She’s a triage nurse.”

“I don’t know, Billy, you’re all worried about Pavlicek? Maybe you should worry a little about me instead.”

“You’ll be all right,” he said, running out of safe things to say.

Thirty minutes into packing up Marilys’s one-and-a-half-room apartment, Milton more than got it: of course she was half a loon when it came to believing in her own bad dreams, the place was a virtual botanica, the high shelves above the two-burner stove and the cabinet beneath the bathroom sink housing a riot of spirit oils: Ogun, Pajaro Macua, 7 African Powers, Angel de Dinero, Angel de Amor, and Amarra Hombre, a.k.a. Hold Your Man, the last two also in mist form. And then there were the jars of spiritual floor wash in the back of the closet: Court Case, Steady Work, Money Shower, Chain Breaker, Do What I Say, Obey Me, Adore Me, and, once again, Hold Your Man, Milton wondering as he packed if she had been sneaking some of these concoctions into his house all along, washing the floors and walls but most important, he knew, the door frames, thresholds, and windowsills, in an effort to land him. He was fine with that, flattered in fact, but now that the potions had done their job, where the hell was she?