Cogan's Trade (2 page)

“I didn’t have no bad days,” Russell said. “I was in them tunnels almost two years and I didn’t have no bad days. I wasn’t buying up Mustangs and teaching little dumb shits to drive, but I didn’t have no bad days, either.

“The thing of it is,
Squirrel
,” Russell said, “when I was having them days, I didn’t know for sure at the time that I wasn’t gonna have a bad one, you know? I started out, I thought it was all just a matter of balls. I don’t wanna hurt your feelings or anything, but I always had the balls, you know? And I thought, I felt pretty good, because I thought that’s all it was and I had them so I was all right. Then I see, I seen them cart out a couple guys that went in there and put them in the green bags, you know? And a couple of them, they didn’t have no balls when they come out, on account they didn’t have no luck, they went in that time, and no cocks either, and that carbon black, don’t do a thing for cuts and stuff. Fuckin’ booby traps go right through it, like it wasn’t even there.

“So that gets me to thinking,” Russell said. “I’m no good at thinking. But that gets me to thinking, and I
see, well, I’m in the shit, is what I am, and I can’t personally do nothing about it. All I can do is, I can have the balls and the luck, but the only thing I know about is the balls. I just can’t have no bad days. Only, I don’t know no way to do that. So, I used to come out, and I know, tomorrow I go in again, and the only thing I can think about is, I used up another day. That’s all. So I smoke something. And it helped.

“Then I start looking at them other guys,” Russell said. “I see them, I was still thinking, and they’re all, most of them, at least’re smoking. And them guys that’re doing the grass, you know? Very heavy on it, and they slow down some. I was, I was keeping track of things. I could see it happening to me, it was happening to them, I got it a little bit and I begin to see, that’s what, them other guys, they started on it, it was probably just a little bit for them, too, when they start. You start forgetting things. All you want, you don’t care about things, you know? Very funny thing. And then, some of the guys that’re older, they drink a lot. And pretty soon they’re sick a lot. And that’s bad. Their hands shake. They’re not paying attention either. And you get in there, there’s the wire or the dink or something, well, you’re gonna have to have a lot of time to think about it or else you’re not gonna have no time at all. You can’t let yourself get slow.

“So I try the horse,” Russell said. “You got to have something. So I get some of that nice white shit, and what I did was, I used it after, right?
After
I come out again. I haven’t got to go back in tonight. First I snort it. Then, a couple times I did it the other way, but mostly I snort it. But I used it. And I liked it.

“Okay,” Russell said, “it don’t, it makes you feel great, but it don’t actually do nothing for you, you
know that. When you’re in there, doesn’t protect you at all. But you been in, and you got out, and you got to go back in again and you don’t want to think about that, maybe you’re not gonna bring yourself out, you go in again, use up all your luck thinking. So then it’s very fuckin’ nice. Don’t slow you down. Just makes you feel good, and that’s what I was after.”

“Sure,” Amato said, “and that’s what you’re gonna be after when you’re getting ready to go in on this thing I got, and you’re gonna get it and you’re gonna be flying and you’re gonna go in stoned up to your ass and some poor bastard’s gonna start hollering or something and he’s gonna get shot, and a very good thing that a kid in his fuckin’ right mind couldn’t fuck up is gonna get fucked up. That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”

“He’ll be all right, John,” Frankie said.

“
Maybe
he’ll be all right,” Amato said. “Maybe he won’t be all right. Maybe
you
won’t be. I don’t want nobody getting hurt on this. There’s nothing, there’s no reason why anybody oughta get hurt on this, the guys that go in or the guys that’re in there when the guys go in. This’s money, just money, nothing else. No fuckin’
shit
and stuff that’s gonna get everybody all pissed off and everything. It was something that was gonna be around, it was something like that, all right, I could maybe take a chance. I could take a couple guys that I was afraid’d maybe cock off and wreck it, and take their word for it, they’re gonna be all right. So all right, they go in, and they cock off and wreck it, it was a bank or something, it’s gonna be there next week for two guys that’ve got more sense, all right. But this isn’t. It’s not like that. You fuck it up, it’s fuckin’ gone, it’s gonna disappear. I got to think about this. I got to be sure. I’m gonna talk to some people.
I’m gonna take my time about this thing, as much time I got, anyway.”

“John,” Frankie said, “I need dough. I was in the can a long time and I haven’t found anything. You can’t fuck around with me like this.”

“My friend,” Amato said, “my wife, Connie? Makes great roast pork. She stuffs it, you know? It’s really great. The other night she makes roast pork. First time since I been home. I couldn’t eat it. I told her, I said: ‘Connie, don’t make no pork for me, ever again.’ But I used to love it, I always said it’s the best thing she makes, and she’s a good cook. I mean, a really good cook. That’s why she’s so fuckin’ fat all the time, she likes to eat and she likes to cook and she cooks great and she eats it. ‘Bacon,’ I said, ‘ham, I don’t care if it does come off a pig. But no kind of pork. You make baked beans, all right? Don’t gimme none with the pork on it. The beans I’ll eat. Not the pork.’ And, well, I went down the clamstand and I ate in my fuckin’ car, and I haven’t, until a month ago I didn’t eat with my family for almost seven years. I still ate down the clamstand. Something got fucked up once, you remember that? I picked a wrong guy for something, everybody’s in a hurry, we got to move, we need the dough, this and that, he’ll be all right, and I, it, I was worse’n the rest of you. So we take him, and I knew, he’s a guy I’m really not sure about. I couldn’t tell you what it was, I just knew it, this was a wrong guy. But I take him anyway. And he was a wrong guy, and I eat greasy, shitty pork, seems like every day, almost seven years, and my kids’re growing up and my business, it’s all right, it’s not doing as good as it should be, and I’m in the can, and now, I can’t get that back, you know? So now, I can’t eat my favorite things any more, because they remind me, I’m, from
now on I’m taking my time, and that’s all there is to it. No, I don’t care about you, what’s bothering you. We can do something, great, we’ll do something. If we can do it safe and without fucking up something that’s really good and getting ourselves in the shit again. But I ate the last fuckin’ pork I’m ever gonna eat. I had my last fuck-up. Call me Thursday. Thursday I’ll know. I’ll let you know.”

R
USSELL STOPPED
about four feet from Frankie on the second underground platform of the Park Street MBTA station. “All right,” he said, “I’m here. We going out there or what?”

Frankie leaned against one of the red and white pillars. “Depends,” he said.

“Don’t depend on me,” Russell said. “I been up since quarter five. I’m
all
beat to shit. And I also, I got a chance to get laid if I don’t go out there.”

“Don’t people get laid at night any more?” Frankie said. “My sister, we’re kids, you couldn’t keep Sandy inna house at night if she was tied up. Now she’s out Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. I been there five weeks, she’s never home them days.”

“Must be a fireman,” Russell said, “night guy inna fire station. Young guy, too, she’s not going out, weekends.”

“Or a fuckin’ cop,” Frankie said. “It’d be the same thing with a cop. I said to her: ‘None of my business, Sandy, I just hope you’re not rolling around with some fuckin’ cop, is all.’ She looks at me. ‘Why?’ she says. ‘What’ve you guys got that cops haven’t?’ I pity that kid.”

“You oughta pity yourself,” Russell said.

“I do,” Frankie said. “She never had a clean shot, though. She always got around pretty good, I don’t mean that. She just never hadda clean shot.”

“Nobody ever had a clean shot,” Russell said. “What the fuck else is new? I was talking to this girl, she wants me to come over there this after. I said to her, look, I
hadda be some place. What’s the matter, tonight? She’s gotta work. She gets off late. I don’t care. I been up late myself before. She’s a nurse. She says: ‘Look, I’m gonna wash old men’s asses and everything all day. Then I’m gonna be out on my feet. You think I wanna get laid, after that? That what you think? I don’t.’ ”

“That oughta be something,” Frankie said. “I can just see what kind of broad she’s gonna be, you can screw off an ad inna paper. Beautiful. Probably got a couple handfuls of broken glass in there.”

“Look,” Russell said, “you ought to know. I was pounding sand up my ass almost four years. I would’ve fucked a snake, I could’ve got somebody, hold it for me. These broads, okay, you wouldn’t want to rape them if you saw them, you know? But they got the fuckin’ plumbing.”

A badly coordinated heavyset man appeared on the southerly platform across the tracks. He wore white coveralls and carried a blue plastic pail. He turned his back and stared at the tile wall. He put the pail down. He put his hands on his hips. On the wall in red spray paint were irregular letters eighteen inches tall. They read:
SOUTHIE EATS IT
. He stooped and removed a steel brush and a can of solvent from the pail.

“I wished I could look at things like that,” Frankie said. “I can’t seem to get my mind on anything. I thought, I used to think, boy, if I ever get out of this fuckin’ place, they just better get all the women out of town that day, you know? But you know what I do? I sleep all the time. You were to just leave me alone, I think that’s really what I’d do, the way I feel right now at least. Just sleep and sleep and sleep. That’s why, this thing, I dunno how it is, what he’s got in mind. I admit, he’s kind of a crazy bastard. But he’s at least got
something in mind, you know? I haven’t. He come out and the day he come out, he was looking around. And I keep thinking, it’s all I do, Jesus, if I could just get some money. I could go out and live like I was a regular human being. But I can’t, I haven’t come up with anything, no way to get no money. Dean, my brother-in-law, he’s not a bad guy, basically, he don’t say anything. You know what he does? He reads catalogues. All them catalogues, come inna mail? Son of a bitch, he works, he goes to work at noon, noon till eight-thirty, down the gas station. He comes out, he reads catalogues. Fuckin’ electronics catalogues. And she’s, he’s down there, busting his hump, up to his ass in oil and stuff, she’s out fuckin’ some guy. So I’m sleeping on his couch and I’m drinking his beer, he don’t know me. He’s from Maiden. Where’s he know me from? They got married, I was inna can. But he still, he tells me, ‘Look, don’t tell Sandy, all right? Because you tell her and she’s probably gonna start wondering, how I find this out. But you probably wanna get your ashes hauled, there’s this broad I know, she works, her husband thinks she gets off at midnight, I guess. She gets off about ten.’ So I say to him, well, I don’t tell him, I was inna big hurry for names, Sandy’d be the one I’d ask, he don’t need that kind of favor from me. So I just say, I appreciate it. But I haven’t got no place to go, where I can take a broad, you know? I haven’t got no car. I got less’n thirty bucks. I mean, what am I gonna do?

“So he says,” Frankie said, “he says him and Sandy’ll go out, I can use their place. Yeah, and probably one of the kids isn’t gonna get up inna middle of the night and come out, see how come I’m making so much noise, getting laid onna couch. It’s not gonna work, and that’s it, it just won’t work. I got to get some dough and I
can’t, this thing John’s got, it’s the only thing I got in front of me right now. I got to listen to the guy.”

“Shit,” Russell said, “listen to him. I’m willing to listen to him. He just didn’t want to say anything in front of me that I could hear. Fuckin’ guy, he don’t like me. Okay. But I’m not gonna go around and check myself into something I don’t even know what I’m getting into or anything. I did that before. I’m not doing that again. This thing I’m doing, I can do that. It’s probably gonna take me longer, get what I need from it, but I can do it. I’m picking my own spots from now on. I don’t have to sit around and take no shit from the Squirrel.”

“Okay,” Frankie said, “that’s what I’m saying. You can take it or you can leave it alone, and that’s fine. I wished I was you. But me, this’s at least ten apiece the guy’s talking about. You don’t want the ten, all right. But I do. And I haven’t got no place else to get it. You have.”

“Not that much,” Russell said. “I’m not gonna get ten out of this. Five, seven’s more like it. No ten. You gimme ten and I’ll be gone so fast it was like I never was here. I know exactly what I’m gonna do, I get that kind of dough. But, I don’t have to get it from what he’s gonna, that he’s got in mind to do. It’s gonna take me a while longer, but I can get it from what I’m doing anyway, and that, that’s on balls, see? Balls. It’s something I think up myself, how I’m gonna do this. So, the guy don’t like me? All right, I still don’t have to kiss his ass, I don’t want to. Fuck him. So it’s up to you and him. It’s up to you guys. You want me, you want me in this, I’ll come in. He’s the guy with the big ideas. Fine. You want to go and get somebody else, also fine. Don’t matter to me.”