God's Pocket - Pete Dexter (18 page)

“
Is that you, Mickey? I didn't know you was here."

"Yeah, we're all over here in the dark. Right,
Bird'?" Bird didn't say anything. So he said, "We're all
over here," again, and the old woman found them with the light.

"It's the whole block," she said, coming
toward them.

"Same as before. Arthur?" He didn't answer.

Tony the nephew said, "Hey, how long is it going
to be? I can't do nothin over here without light."

"You hush," the old woman said and came the
rest of the way to Mickey and Bird. When she put the flashlight on
Bird's face, Mickey saw it was frozen. She said, "You hush,"
softer now. She handed the flashlight to Mickey and pulled Bird's
head into the lap of her dress, and patted the back of his head. It
was still dark, so Mickey didn't have to find something to do with
his eyes.

In about five minutes the old woman said, "You
hush," again, and Bird did. His breathing smoothed out, and a
minute later he stood up, smoothing his hair, wiping at his forehead
with the backs of his hands. "Jesus, Mick, I don't know,"
he said.

"It's nothin'," Mickey said. "Nobody
knows what they're doin'. Get yourself a beer. I gotta go back tothe
house, see about the funeral, but I'll come back and drink one with
you."

"The funeral?" Bird said. "Shit, I
forgot. My brains ain't payin' attention to me. How's Jeanie doin'?"

"She's with her sisters," Mickey said.

"That's good," Bird said. "You don't
appreciate your family, then somethin' like this happens, right? She
takin' it all right, though?"

Bird seemed normal again. He wasn't frozen up and he
wasn't hugging anybody. He seemed like somebody you could talk to.
"Actual1y, she's got some idea somethin' else happened out
there," Mickey said. "I don't know where it come from, but
there it is."

"Let's get outta here," Bird said. He took
the flashlight from Mickey and led them all out into the flower shop.
Aunt Sophie, Mickey and Tony. The colored boy said he'd as soon wait
in there. They walked through the shop and out the front door, and it
wasn't until they were outside that Mickey got a look at Bird's face.

He made up a rule of life: don't ever say somethin's
normal until you can see their face.

If Bird's eyeballs had puckered and whistled "The
Battle Hymn of the Republic," he couldn't of looked crazier than
he did then. Shaking and scared and pissed and worried all at the
same time, and no focus to any of it. He held onto himself as much as
he could and said, "I'll be okay in a minute. I just got to
remember how to get back."

Mrs. Capezio took his sleeve. "Where you want to
go, Arthur?" she said.

He talked to himself. “I don't give a fuck, I don't
give a fuck .... " She looked at him and frowned. "You got
a nice home, Arthur," she said. "You got no reason to talk
like that."

He held onto himself as much as he could. "I
can't remember now," he said.

Mickey said, "I shouldn't of worried you about
Jeanie."

Bird began to breathe through his teeth again. "I'll
find out about that for you," he said. "I swear to Jesus. I
tried to cut your meat but the electric went off . . ."

Mickey said, "You can't do nothin' about the
electricity."

Bird put his hand on Mickey's arm. "I'll find
out about Leon for you," he said. He allowed his aunt to put an
arm around his waist and walk him across the street toward their
house. “I'll do that, Mick," he said. "You got my word."

Mickey said, "Don't worry about Jeanie, she's a
little funny in the head right now. It happens .... " He wanted
to tell him to stay out of the business about Leon, but it mattered
to him to say he would help. Mickey watched him follow the old woman
into the house, and he thought it would be a long time before Bird
could help anybody.

Aunt Sophie tried to put him to bed, but Bird went
into the bathroom instead. He brushed his teeth and changed shirts
and spit on his shoes and wiped them off with a towel from a motel in
Phoenix, Arizona. Where was Arizona? Who gave a fuck?

That was more like it.

He stood up straight and looked at himself in the
mirror. He oiled his hair and tucked it in behind his ears, and he
could feel it snug against his head, like a cap. Aunt Sophie knocked
on the door with a water bottle. "You feelin' better, Arthur?"

"Fine," he said. "I'm goin' out for a
little while, Doll. Be back in a couple of hours."

"Arthur," she said, "you oughta rest.
You didn't look too good."

He opened the door and showed her he was handsome
again. She put her hands on her hips.

"You looked worse,"' she admitted. She
liked oily-haired men. He leaned over and kissed her cheek, and she
squeezed the back of his arm. Bird went out the front door and found
the new Cadillac parked against the curb. Nothing down, the first
payment—$448—due June I5. They'd give him two weeks, so he'd have
the car till July. If they came earlier, who gave a fuck? He got in
and hit the buttons until all the windows were rolled down. He drove
fifty miles an hour all the way to Snyder and his hair never moved.
He made a right turn, then double-parked beside a heavier, darker
Cadillac in front of Vinnie's Italian Bakery. He walked past the girl
at the counter, feeling strong, and went right to the office and
knocked on the door. Vinnie would be there, he was always there this
time of day. If he wasn't, who gave a fuck about that either?

Vinnie answered the door himself even though there
were a couple of his nephews in the room with him to do that. He was
pissed off at his nephews. He said, "Yeah?"

Bird stepped inside. Vinnie had known Arthur Capezio
forty years, but it wasn't friendly enough between them to come in
uninvited. One of his nephews moved toward Arthur, but Vinnie shook
his head. He didn't want nothin' from his nephews.

“
What is it?" he said.

Bird sat down on .a chair beside the window where he
could keep an eye on the Cadillac. He said, "Vinnie, I got a
favor to ask."

Vinnie said, "You don't mind if I sit down ....
" Everybody had a favor to ask, nobody had time to show a little
respect. Vinnie Ribbocini had been like Angelo's right hand, but
since the new people started running things, that didn't count no
more. Actually, they wasn't new. They'd always been there, but nobody
noticed. They was muscle or go-fers mostly. Sons and nephews of men
with brains and experience and balls, who'd used that to come into
the business, but nobody ever took them serious. Angelo didn't—to
him they was like children, in a hurry for everything, always pushin'
to get into the shit business—and look what it got him. And now
Vinnie's own nephews, tellin' him he ought to go along, that it
looked bad 'cause he wouldn't kiss ass. The new people had discovered
respect, and they was in a hurry for that too.

"Lissen," he said to Bird, "I know
things is dryin' up for you right now. You don't have to come pushin'
in here like some fuckin' punk kid to tell me that. I'm in the middle
of business here, where's your fuckin' manners?"

Bird shook his head. "It ain't that, Vinnie."

"And where's my fuckin' truck? I throw you a
bone, you gonna keep my truck to show you appreciate it?"

Bird explained. He said the electric went out so he
couldn't unload it. "I got a favor to ask," he said again.
Vinnie threw open his arms. "There was a problem down at Holy
Redeemer," he said, "buildin' a new hospital or somethin',
and this guy got killed. Leon Hubbard. Nice boy. And the boy's mother
married a guy who works for me. A good guy, and his old lady's goin'
crazy 'cause they ain't tellin' her what happened?

"So what?"

“
So maybe you could send a couple guys over and
find out. I don't mean do nothin', just to find out. Bounce somebody
around a little bit so they'll talk to you."

"Then what?" Vinnie said.

"Then nothin'. Then I tell the guy, and he can
tell his wife or do what he wants with it."

Vinnie scratched the bottom part of his left ear. The
bottom part was all he had left on that side. The truth was, he
didn't know what was going to happen one day to the next, just like
the old men he knew who been around forever, and walked around now
talkin' about Angelo like he was still alive. Vinnie didn't
particularly like Arthur—at the bottom he was weak—but he didn't
have nothin' against him either. "And that's all?" he said.
"There's no problem over there, just a couple of guys to push
around?" It was straightforward and easy, the way things used to
be.

"That's it," Bird said.

Vinnie shrugged. "When
do I get my mick back?"

* * *

Peets knew Old Lucy wasn't coming to work, but he
kept looking for him. That was how he first spotted the men across
the street. There were two of them—Jews or Italians, he could never
tell which was which—sitting in a black Thunderbird with a roof
that looked like rippled water. The Thunderbird was parked on the
side street in the no-parking zone at the end of the block, where
buses stopped.

Peets saw them about three-thirty, and then he
noticed them again just before four. One had sunglasses and one of
them didn't. Outside of that, you couldn't tell them apart. Peets
didn't wonder what they were doing, he was thinking about Old Lucy
and the seconds he'd sat in the cherry picker watching while Leon was
flashing his razor in front of the old man's face. He thought about
it, and he still didn't know why he hadn't moved when he could. It
was like something you watched because you couldn't do nothing about
it. Something that had to be played out because the time had come.

He threw that out. In one way it had to happen, but
it didn't have to be there, with Old Lucy. The old man came to work
on time, he did his job. Peets owed him his nine dollars an hour, he
owed him a place to do his work. He went over it again, how it had
looked, trying to decide when he should of gotten off his ass and
done something.

At four o'clock he let the crew go, but Old Lucy was
still on his mind. He cleaned up by himself. First the cement mixer,
then he covered the cement sacks, then he covered the cinder block.
Anything you didn't cover in the city was gone in the morning. He
went to a pile of scaffolding they'd delivered that morning and
stacked it. There was a reason to everything. When he couldn't find
it, he stacked scaffolding or books or pennies, or he'd make beds the
Marine way, or line up everything in the refrigerator by colors. And
after he'd put order to something else, whatever he was trying to
figure out seemed to fall into order too.

He worked half an hour after the crew left,
straightening up. And when there wasn't anything left to straighten,
he began to shovel a load of sand out of the pickup, so he could use
the truck in the morning. He was standing in the pickup bed when he
heard the doors slam, almost together.

The men came across the street, one of them walking
straight to the truck and the other one going around the fence to the
front of the hospital, and then coming toward him from behind. The
one who had come straight looked around, in no hurry at all, like he
was checking the work. "You the boss?” he said.

Peets did not care for the question. He picked up a
shovel of sand and tossed it in the pile near the man's feet. The man
stepped back, checked his pants and shoes. Peets had only seen pants
like that on television, on Spanish dancers. The other one was at the
side of the truck.

"I'm the only one here," Peets said.

The one in back of him said, "That's a fact."
Peets waited.

"The thing is," said the one who had come
straight, “somebody got kilt here yesterday, and there is some
feeling that it didn't happen the way the cops said." Peets
stared at the man and held onto the shovel. "We was wondering,"
he said, "if you was here when it happened.”

Peets kept his eyes on the one in front and thought
about the one in back. "This guy who got it, he was an important
guy. He was important to important people, and they don't think it
oughta happened at all, and then not to tell the truth . . ."

Peets said, "He always said he was important,"
and threw another shovel of sand on the pile on the ground. The man
moved back this time. He held out his hands.

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way,"
he said.

While he said that, the other one fit his lingers
into a set of artificial knuckles. He closed the fist, opened it,
closed it again. The knuckles stuck out maybe a quarter inch. The one
in front of Peets said, "What's it going to be, home boy?"

It was rush hour now. There was blocked intersections
and bus smoke and a steady line of nurses and assorted white uniforms
coming out of Holy Redeemer Hospital. And nobody looking. Peets had a
sudden vision of these two going to visit Old Lucy. He said, "It
happened the way I said to the police, and you Jew boys can do it any
damn way you want—hard or easy—and it don't matter to me."

The one behind him screamed, "Jew boys!"
and punched the side of the truck with the artificial knuckles.