Legs (18 page)

And I gets a good look at
that face which I can't reckonize and maybe nobody on this earth
gonna reckonize over again, because it been beat so bad it ain't no
face at all. It just a head full of beat-up old flesh. I feels sorry
for that poor fella 'cause he got his. No doubt 'bout that. But I
say, Jesse, feel sorry for this man when you gets back to your bed.
Right now, get yourself busy puttin' that head back in with the rest
of him. Now I don't like it nohow, but I pick up that old head and
opens up the canvas so's I can put it back in and, oh God A'mighty,
there's two hands and a foot side by side like the Lord never
intended nobody's hands and foot to be put together. And I opens up
the canvas wider and oh God A'mighty, they ain't one whole piece of I
that poor fella no more. He is in ten, fifteen pieces, oh my Jesus, I
gonna die. I put that head back where it used to be and fold that
canvas up the way it used to be. Then I look around on the floor for
any little blood drippin's I might of spilt, but I can't see none. I
can't see none they might of left either, so I guess they got it all
mopped up with them newspapers Mr. Fogarty picked out. Oh, sweet
Jesus. And I go back out of the coolin' room then, and back into the
house. I ain't worried now whether they gonna find me out there,
because they ain't. It just like it was before I seen it the first
time. Now I'se worryin' about somethin' else, which is how I gonna
get myself and the boys out of this here butcher shop. I sure can't
do it right away or they gonna know I knows more'n I s'pose to know.
So I lays there thinkin' 'bout how long it'd be before it be right
for me to go my own way and take my boys with me. And wonderin' where
we gonna go, 'cause we ain't had no job good as this in mighty a
year. But I ain't worryin' now 'bout no job. I worryin' 'bout the
jailhouse gettin' me, and what my boys gonna do then? I'se still
thinkin' 'bout this when I hears the car pull into the yard and I
looks out and there comes Mr. Murray and somebody I can't see and
they pulls in the gay-rage again but with one of Mr. Jack's trucks
and stays 'bout five minutes and they back out and close the door.
Then good-bye. They gone. I know the canvas and the head and the rest
of the pieces of that poor ol' boy done gone too, but I don't move,
'cause it's daylight just beginnin', and ain't nobody gonna see Jesse
Franklin in that barn today. Not any of those fellas, not Mr. Jack,
not any stranger, not Jesse hisself. Jesse is gonna stay clear of
that ol' gay-rage till somebody come who got business to do in it.
And when it all simmer down, Jesse gonna take his boys and he goin'
waaaay 'way from here. These is bad people, cut a man up like that.
How he gonna make it all back together again come judgment time? Bad
people, doin' that to a man. "

* * *

It was Fogarty who told me how Charlie Northrup got
it, told me later when he was figuring out where his life went, still
drunk, still ready to muzzle any pussy that showed itself. He never
changed and I always liked him and I knew all along why Jack kept him
on—because he was the opposite of Murray. He was Fogarty, the
group's nice guy.

I liked him in that context, probably because of the
contrast. I no longer think it strange that Jack had both
kinds—Fogarty kind, Murray kind—working for him. Jack lived a
long time, for Jack, and I credit it to his sense of balance, even in
violent matters, even in the choice of killers and drivers, his sense
that all ranges of the self must be appeased, and yet only appeased,
not indulged. I make no case for Jack as a moderate, only as a man in
touch with primal needs. He read them, he answered them, until he
stopped functioning in balance. That's when the final trouble began.

Charlie Northrup drove his car to the Biondo farm at
dusk to keep his appointment with Jack. Fogarty said Murray and Oxie
were on the porch, rocking in the squeaky, green rockers while Jack
waited inside.

"I don't go inside," Charlie said at the
foot of the steps.

"Then you wait there," Murray said, and he
went for Jack, who came out through the screen door and walked down
the stairs and put his hand out to shake Charlie's hand. But it
wasn't there.

"Never mind jerking me off," Charlie said.
"Get to the point."

"Don't talk nasty, Charlie," Jack said, "or
I'll forget we're brothers. "

"Brothers. You got some rotten fucking way of
being a brother. What you done to me, you're a bum in my book, a bum
in spades."

"Listen, Charlie. I got something to say to you.
I ought blow your face off. Anybody talks to the federals has a right
to get their face blown off, isn't that so?"

Fogarty said Charlie shut up at that point, that he
obviously didn't think Jack knew.

"I got some good friends who happen to be
federals," Jack said.

Charlie kept quiet.

"But the way I look at it, Charlie, I blow your
face off and I lose all that money I'd have had if the federals
didn't pick up my cargo. And what I figure is, set up a working
relationship with Charlie and he'll pay me back what I lost. All we
do is cooperate and the problem is solved."

"Cooperate," said Charlie, "means I
give you my shirt and kiss your ass for taking it."

"Partners, Charlie. That's what I got in mind.
Partners in an expanding business. I produce the business, you
provide the product. We split seventy-thirty till you pay off the
debt, then we reduce it, fifty-fifty, because we're brothers.
Business doubles, triples at higher prices and a locked-up market.
It's brilliant, Charlie, brilliant."

"You know I got partners already. They're
nobody's patsies."

"I take the risk about your partners."

"I don't want no part of you," Charlie
said. "I wouldn't hold onto you in an earthquake."

Charlie stopped walking. They were under the maples,
a few feet from the porch, Jack in a tan suit and Charlie in his
sweat shirt.

"
I said it before, Jack. Stuff it up your ass.
You're not talking to a man without power. Play with me you're not
playing with some apple-knocker up here, some dummy saloonkeeper. You
know my friends. I'm done talking about it."

He walked away from Jack, toward his car.

"You stupid fucking donkey," Jack said, and
he looked up at Oxie and Murray, who stood up and pointed their
pistols at Charlie. Fogarty remembered only his own rocker squeaking
at that point. He kept rocking until Murray gave him the gesture and
then he got out of the chair and in behind the wheel of Northrup's
car and drove it back into the garage with Oxie and Murray inside it
holding their pistols against Charlie's belly. Fogarty remembered
Jack climbing the porch steps and watching them all get in the car.

"Now, Charlie,"
he said, "you got to get a lesson in manners."

* * *

Murray always wore steel-toed shoes and I never knew
that either until Fogarty told me this whole story. He used a gun or
the long, pointed, three-cornered file he carried (his improvement on
the ice pick Flossie remembered) when necessary, but he used his feet
when he could. The story is he took lessons from a French killer he
met in jail and who used to box savate style. Murray had the rep of
being able to kill you with one kick.

He kicked Charlie in the
belly as soon as they got out of the car. Charlie doubled up but
charged Murray head down, two hundred and forty pounds of wild bull.
Murray sidestepped and kicked Charlie in the leg. Charlie crashed
into a wall and bounced off it like a rubber rhino. Murray the shrimp
gave a high kick and caught Charlie under the chin, and as Charlie
wobbled, Murray kicked him in the kneecap and he went down. Murray
kicked him in the groin, creased his face, crunched his nose with the
side of his shoe. He danced around Charlie, kicking elbows, ribs,
shins, calves, and thighs, kicking ass and back and then kicking
Charlie's face lightly, left foot, right foot, lightly but still a
kick, drawing blood, rolling the head from side to side like a leaky
soccer ball.

* * *

Fogarty left the garage and went inside the house. He
poured himself a double whiskey and stood looking at a fly on the
front screen door. Jack and Kiki came down the stairs, Jack carrying
Kiki's suitcase.

"Can I see you, Jack?" he said and they
went out on the porch, and Fogarty said, "I don't need that
stuff going on back there. That cocksucker's not going to leave any
face on the man. "

"All right. The Goose and Oxie can handle it
alone."

"The Goose is a fucking maniac. He oughta be in
a cage."

"The Goose knows what he's doing. He won't hurt
him too bad."

"He's gonna kill him. You said you didn't want
to kill him."

"The Goose won't kill him. He's done this
before."

"He's a sick son of a bitch."

"Listen, don't get your balls out of joint.
Drive us to town. Have a drink in the village while we have dinner.
Change your mood."

So Fogarty drove them in, and Jack checked Kiki in at
the Saulpaugh to get her away from the farm. He moved her around like
a checker. Fogarty drove Jack back to his own house at midnight and
went to sleep himself on the porch sofa where he was awakened at two
in the morning by the private buzzer, the one under the second porch
step. Jack was at the door almost as soon as Fogarty got himself off
the soda. Jack was wide awake, in his red silk pajamas and red silk
robe. It was Oxie at the door.

"Northrup's shot," Oxie said.

"Who shot him?"

"Murray."

"What the hell for?"

"He had to. He acted up."

"'
Where are they?"

"In Northrup's car, in the driveway."

"You half-witted cocksucker, you brought him
here?"

"We didn't want to leave him no place."

"Get him over to the farm. I'll meet you there
in ten minutes."

Fogarty pulled up behind the Northrup car which Oxie
had parked in shadows on the farm's entrance road.

"He looks dead," Jack said when he looked
at Charlie's crumpled frame in the back seat. The seat was full of
blood near his head.

"He ain't peeped," Murray said. "I
think he's a cold fishy."

Jack picked up Charlie's hand, felt it, dropped it.

"What happened?"

"I was past Newburgh when he got the rope off,"
Murray said.

"Who tied him up?"

"Me," said Murray.

"He got free and swung a tire iron and hit me in
the neck," Murray said. "Almost broke my neck."

"I was followin' in our car and I saw him
swerve, almost go in a ditch," Oxie said.

"Where'd he get a tire iron?"

"It musta been down behind the seat,"
Murray said. "It wasn't on the floor when we put him in."

Jack kept nodding, then threw up his hands in a small
gesture.

"You had to shoot him?"

"It was only one shot, a fluke. What am I
supposed to do about a guy with a tire iron?"

"You're a fucking maniac. You know what this
could cost me? Front pages. Not to mention a fucking war." He
hit the roof of the car with his fist.

"What do we do with him?" Oxie asked.

"Get some weights, we'll put him in the river,"
said Murray.

"Goddamn this," Jack said. He kicked
Northrup's fender. Then he said, "No, the river he could float
up. Take him in the woods and bury him. No, wait, they could still
find the son of a bitch. I want no evidence on this. Burn him."

"Burn him?" Fogarty said.

"Use the fire out at the still. You can make it
as big as you want, nobody pays attention." And then he said to
Fogarty, "If he's dead, he's dead, right? A lump of mud."

"What about Jesse and his kids?"

"Go see them. Tell them to stay away from the
still tonight."

"You can't burn a man's body in that pit out
there," Fogarty said. "It's big but not that big. "

"I'll take care of that," Murray said.
"I'll trim off the edges."

"Christ Almighty."

"Try not to burn down the woods," Jack
said. "When you're done, let me know. And you won't be done till
there's nothing left, even if it takes two days. And then you clean
out the pit and sift the ashes and smash the teeth and the bones that
don't burn, especially the teeth. And scatter the pieces and the dust
someplace else."

"Gotcha," said Murray. It was his kind of
night.

"Speed, you better give 'em a hand," Jack
said. "Drive and stand guard. He don't have to touch anything,"
Jack told Murray.

"What does he ever touch?" Murray said.

Fogarty's stomach was burbling as he drove Northrup's
car inside the barn. Murray said he needed a lot of newspapers, and
so Fogarty went into the house and got some and told Jesse to stay
clear of the still until he was told he could go back. Fogarty walked
slowly back to the barn, feeling like he might puke. When he saw what
Murray had already done to Charlie with the hatchet, it shot out of
him like a geyser.