(2004) Citizen Vince (19 page)

Beans shakes his head in wonder. “I been wondering where Sticks went. You had him on a job this whole time, boss?”

John looks up but doesn’t answer.

Beans turns back to Vince. “Boy, you must’ve shit your pants.”

“A little.”

“Still, it takes balls to come back here,” Ange says hopefully, glancing over at John, who doesn’t seem to hear. “Don’t it takes balls, John?”

Vince has the feeling that Ange is serving as his default attorney in this, arguing his case in front of John.

Vince looks from John to Ange and back. “Yesterday I went to see old Dom Coletti and made good with him.”

Beans smiles. “No shit. Old Cold Blood? How’s he doin’? I heard he had an attack or something. Moved into a little apartment in Bay Ridge.”

“Yeah,” Vince says. “A stroke. He doesn’t look good. I paid him what I could and made arrangements to pick up the rest. So at least I’m square with him.” He cuts a glance to Johnny, who doesn’t reveal anything. “I was hoping I could do that with you, Mr. Gotti. I was hoping I could square my debt.”

Johnny takes a drink of his whiskey and looks up at Vince with eyes that register nothing but their own opaqueness.

DETECTIVE CHARLES PULLS
up to Dupree’s hotel, puts the car in park, and turns the key off. He says he’ll get Dupree the file on Marty Hagen in the morning and they can start going through the names. Charles yawns. “So, are you married, Seattle?”

Dupree spins the ring on his finger. “Yeah. Couple of years.”

“Kids?”

“Not yet. My wife is getting her degree. After that we want to have a baby.”

“Yeah? What’s she gonna be?”

“A speech therapist.”

“No shit.” Charles lifts his head, eyelids heavy. “So she’ll do…what…what is that?”

“Speech therapy—therapy for people who have speech problems.”

“That makes sense.”

Dupree reaches for his door handle. “So you can help me get Hagen’s file tomorrow? ’Cause I don’t want to screw with the marshals service. It might take weeks.”

“Oh yeah, fuckin’ feds. I’ll get you the file.”

“I’ll take care of it from there. You don’t need to waste your Sunday with me.”

“Aw, we come this far. I wanna see it to the end.”

“It’s not necessary,” Dupree says.

“I need the overtime.”

“Put in for it. I’ll tell your lieutenant you were with me all weekend.”

“Nah, I’ll save you a lot of time looking for the places you gotta go. And I might even know some of the guys, like Pete Giar
dano.” Charles reaches up to turn the key. “Besides, I leave you alone and you get killed, it’ll be my ass. So I’ll pick you up about noon. Okay?”

“No,” Dupree says, as firmly as he can. “Thank you.”

“What?” Charles looks over at him. He laughs. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me?” Then his face reddens and drains. “You don’t want my help?”

“No.”

Charles stares for a long time. Dupree wants to pull away, but he feels challenged, and he stares right back.

“You know what I love about guys like you?” Charles asks finally. “You think you know all about the world. You think the job is a certain thing and your life is a certain thing and you can just go along, fuck-all blind. Well, you know what? One day, ten years from now, you’re gonna realize…it ain’t about who’s a nice fuckin’ guy or who deserves trouble. It’s about how there’s us—” He backhands the city. “And them.

“And one night, when you’re walking down a dark shit-smellin’ hallway with junkies all around and you hear the click of a forty-five next to your fuckin’ ear, it’ll all be clear to you and you’ll realize that having those guys behind you is the only thing worthwhile in this world. That’s why they put us in the same uniform, why they give us the same shield. Because that comes first, Seattle! We’re brothers. Just like your real brothers. If your fuckin’ brother needed help, if he was sick, what would you do?”

“Call my mom and ask why she didn’t tell me I had a brother.”

“Fuck you, Seattle,” Charles says.

Dupree opens his mouth to say something, but decides not to press his luck. He steps onto the hotel sidewalk in front of a line of cabs, their drivers leaning back and sleeping. Dupree thinks hard about what the big cop said (
if your brother was sick
) as he watches the unmarked police car pull away from the curb. He looks back at the cabs.

JOHNNY LOOKS UP
from his cards, as if he’s decided something. “Lift your shirt.”

Vince lifts his shirt to his neck and spins.

“Pants.”

Vince waits a moment, then unbuckles his pants, and drops them to his ankles. The guys at the table make a point of not looking up—all except Johnny.

Satisfied that Vince isn’t wired, Johnny asks: “So what will you do?”

Vince is fixing his clothes. “I’m sorry?”

“If…” He dips his chin forward and catches a belch just before it leaves his mouth. “If I cancel this contract, what will you do?”

“I don’t know.” Vince is amazed that he hasn’t even thought that far, that he hasn’t considered what would happen beyond this point. He can tell by the look on Johnny’s face that the answer is important. As soon as Vince poses the question to himself, he knows the answer…and hopes it’s the right one. “I guess I’d go back to Spokane. I’d mail you the rest of the money and…I’d just live.”

John stares, so Vince continues.

“I rent a little house there. Got a job I like. And friends.” Again, he finds himself thinking of Beth. “I wouldn’t mind trying to make a go of it. You know, legitimate.”

Johnny finishes his drink. He looks at his cards, then at Ange on his right. “What’s the bet?”

“Five to you, John.”

John looks down at his chips. He has exactly five hundred. He looks up at Vince again. His eyes are slits. His head moves in tiny figure eights. His tongue takes a full second to wet his lips. “How much money you got?”

“Well, I gave four to Coletti today and—”

John waves his hand. “How much fuckin’ money you got?”

“On me? I have another six thousand, but it’s all the money I have. Like I said, I’ve been saving to open a restaurant, but when I get back I figured—”

John holds his hand out.

“I was hoping I could pay you when—”

Gotti’s hand remains out, bobbing like a boat on rough water.

Vince looks around the table, then reaches in his pocket, pulls out the thick roll, and drops it in Johnny’s hand.

Johnny Boy drops it in the pot. “I see your five hundred, bump you…how much did you say?”

“Six thousand.”

Carmine and Beans stare at each other, then at Ange.

“Call me!” John spits. “Call my fucking raise, Ange.”

They just stare. Finally John leans across the table and grabs a handful of Ange’s chips and throws them in the middle. “Call my fucking raise!” He reaches over to Beans and Carmine, too, rakes chips with his arms, until Vince’s roll of cash is surrounded by mounds of chips.

“There!” John yells. “Pot’s right!”

The guys don’t know what else to do, so one by one they show their hands. Beans has queens. Carmine has a queen-high straight. Ange has two pair. They stare at Gotti, who looks past his cards at the twenty-five thousand in the center of the table. Then he looks up at Vince.

“Be on a fuckin’ plane tomorrow,” Johnny says.

Vince looks at the pot—where his money sits.

John looks at the money, too. “I don’t care if you have to hijack the thing, be on a goddamned plane by noon.”

“I will,” Vince says.

“You got two weeks to send the rest of my money.”

“Okay.”

The other guys stare at John’s cards, still curled in his big hands.

“And if you ever come back here, I’ll do you myself, you rat fuck son of a bitch.”

Vince nods.

They are all quiet for a moment, staring at John’s cards—even Vince, who has been handed back his life.

Finally, Ange clears his throat. “Uh, John?”

The big man sighs and drops his cards on the table. A six and a two. He’s got nothing. Not even a pair. The guys don’t know what to do. John stands up and walks to the window, stares out. Vince takes the opportunity to back away from the table and edge toward the door. He looks back briefly and sees the guys at the table, still staring at the pot, and Gotti at the window, his round shoulders pulled in on his chest like an old man. Just as he closes the door behind him, Vince sees Johnny turn back toward the table, as if he’s just gotten an idea—or had a change of heart.

DETECTIVE CHARLES DRIVES
down Sixth, turns on B, and tools along the curb for a block. He sidles next to a hooker carrying her heels in her hand and she smiles, bends down, and jaws with him. “Hiya, Charlie. Buyin’ or sellin’?”

“Neither.” He offers her a drink from the bottle at his side. “You seen Mario?”

“He was down with the fellas earlier,” she says, and points down the block. She straightens up and Charles drives away, goes two more blocks, and parks in front of an old apartment building, soot brown with a rusty exoskeleton of fire escapes. He takes a long drink from the whiskey bottle, screws the cap, and climbs out of his car. He reaches in the backseat and pulls out two shoeboxes. Two Dominican men are sitting on the stoop, drinking from beer bottles. “Guys,” Charles says, “how’d you make out tonight?”

The men say they did okay and one of them soul-shakes Charles’s hand.

“Seen Mario?”

The guy jerks his head toward the building. “He upstairs wif’ some patch he pick up downtown. You want me drag his ass down here, Charlie?”

“Yeah,” Charlie says. “But don’t tell him it’s me. Tell him there’s someone down here wants to buy weight from him.” Charles hands each man a shoebox. They take out the shoes and smile at them. “Did I get your sizes right?”

“Yeah, you did good, Charlie.” When one of the guys has his new shoes laced, he climbs off the stoop and starts upstairs. His feet glow in the new shoes. While he’s gone, Charles walks back to his car, opens his trunk, and pulls out a tire iron. Closes the trunk.

The first Dominican comes down the stairs with another guy—smaller, with black-rimmed glasses and a ponytail. The little guy is smiling at first, until he sees Charles. He holds his hands out in front of him, then breaks out in a full run. But the big cop has the angle and is on him before he makes it five steps.

“I din’t do nothin’, Charlie! I promise I din’t tell nobody nothin’!”

Charles doesn’t listen, just holds him by the ponytail and swings the tire iron; it thuds against the smaller man’s arms and head. His glasses go skidding across the sidewalk and clatter against a parking meter. “I told you not to fuck with me, Mario.”

Mario pulls away and scrambles against the stoop of the apartment. One of the guys there kicks him back toward Charles. Mario feints left and darts right and Charles drops the wrench to chase him. He catches Mario around the legs and they crash into the brick building, their long shadows grappling alongside them between the spaced streetlights. It takes Charles only a second to overpower the smaller man.

“I promise, Charlie! I din’t say shit to no one! Please, Charlie!”

Bent at the waist, Charles drags Mario by the hair back toward
the stoop. He reaches behind himself to grab the tire iron where he dropped it. But it’s not there. He feels around, then straightens up and looks over his shoulder to the guys on the stoop.

“What the fuck?” But the guys on the stoop are empty-handed, too, staring past the big cop.

Charles turns and punches Mario as hard as he can, in the side and the face. “Where is my fuckin’ tire iron?” But Mario’s hands are empty, covering his head, and he’s sobbing, and it’s not until Charles turns his head a few more degrees that he sees Dupree step out of the shadows with his tire iron.

“Dookie?”

“You can’t do this.”

“Do what? I’m questioning a fuckin’ suspect here.” He lets go of Mario, smiles, and suddenly lunges toward Dupree, getting a firm grip on Alan’s shirt before the tire iron cracks against his skull.

Charles is knocked back a few feet and lets go of Dupree’s shirt, but amazingly, the big cop doesn’t fall. The men on the stoop scramble back into the building. Charles watches them, then turns to look over his shoulder at the open back door of a cab. “You tailed me in a fuckin’ cab?” He laughs, then reaches up and feels the bolt rising above his temple. “Gimme the wrench.” He takes a step toward Dupree, who hefts the tire iron again and steps back.

“Mario!” Dupree yells. The kid looks up at him. “You got relatives somewhere?”

Mario hesitates. Charles looks from Dupree to Mario and back. “Mario,” Charles growls. “Don’t you fuckin’ move, Mario!”

“Mario!” Dupree yells again. “Go!” Finally Mario scrambles up, picks up his glasses, and sprints away. Dupree and Charles watch him go.

Charles smiles, even and cool. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“You were right,” Dupree says. “You do need my help.”

Charles laughs at him, and rubs the lump on his head. “You just let a major drug dealer go, Seattle. You are so fucked.” There’s
a slight rattle to his voice. “Now gimme that tire iron.” He laughs again and Dupree is amazed at his tolerance for pain. “Come on. I’ll drive you back.” He rubs his head, turns to go back to his car, and…with speed that belies his size—reaches into his jacket and has the gun unholstered and aimed in the same amount of time it takes Dupree to step forward and swing the tire iron again, catching Charles flush in the mouth.

Teeth crack, blood mists, and Charles’s face jerks to the right like it’s been yanked by wires. The gun clatters to the sidewalk and Charles lurches down the block, fighting to keep his balance, his body just ahead of his pigeon toes. “Waith,” he says, “waith.” He sprays blood as he speaks. Amazed that the man could still be standing, Dupree admires him just a bit as Charles tries to get his feet under him, listing down the sidewalk, until he finally topples: face, chest, and arms all hitting the sidewalk in a heap like a fallen tree.

VINCE’S FEET HIT
the sidewalk; he breathes deeply the damp air. So that’s it. You’re free. You can fly wherever you want, be anything. And yet…haven’t you always been free to some extent? The question is whether you could do those things you had the freedom to do…the lake and the crows.