Mr. Hooligan (8 page)

Behind him, Harvey said, “You all right there, Riley?”

“Yeah,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut. “Just a little … just a little dizziness. Gimme a couple minutes and I’ll be my old self.”

Riley had been saying that for years.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Riley, Harvey, and Gertrude were sitting at a table on the deck, cups of coffee at their elbows, table piled high with invoices, order forms, Quicken spreadsheets, calculator. All business here. Turo had been sent home to return at opening time. The three of them had been plugging away for the last two hours with no headway.

Harvey rubbed an eye with the heel of his palm, and Gert, shaking her head, tossed a pen on the papers. “We can’t do it. Unless we come into an infusion of cash but otherwise…”

Riley was the only one trying to stay positive. “Okay, look, what if—”

“Good god, you’re not listening?”

“I’m listening, Gert.”

“Look here.” Gert pushing a spreadsheet forward for him to read, Riley following her finger down to a column of figures. “That’s funds available. After regular expenses, that’s all we have to work with.”

“Twenty-eight thousand five is a start.”

“Are you serious? They want
two hundred thousand
.”

“I told you, I can start collecting on the back room, what the poker players owe me.”

“Whoop-dee-doo. Add eight thousand more.”

Harvey said, “We’re fucked, Riley. We need to get the money from elsewhere, a loan, something.”

Riley saw the hint, ignored it. “What if we forego salaries for a couple, three months?”

Gert’s tight lips crimped tighter. “We can’t do that. We have bills to pay.”

“And I don’t? Like I don’t have a child?”

Gert said, coolly, “You the one that had that back room built. I didn’t realize you didn’t get a permit.”

“Your husband was in charge of that.”

Harvey said, “You’re blaming me now? I used the guy you recommended, I didn’t know he didn’t pull a permit.”

“Okay, good, I’ll forego
my
pay then, damn.”

Gert shook her head. “Still far, far from the goal.” Picking up the spreadsheet, reading. “What we can do, however, is finally collect all outstanding tabs.” She lowered the paper and smirked. “Like the sixteen thousand Carlo Monsanto and his crowd owe, for starters.”

Riley knew it was another dig, but let it go. “No problem. I’ll tell Carlo again. But his tab isn’t the only tab.”

She leaned forward to scan another page. “Some others here … piddly compared to that, few hundred at most.”

Riley finished his coffee and sat back, fingers laced across stomach. He sensed them waiting.

Gert examined the spreadsheet again, scratching her scalp with a pen. “We’ll need to take out a loan. Can’t see any other way. And we’ll need time to collect on those tabs.”

Riley nodded. “I have some savings. I’ll contribute that. See what else I can scrape up.”

Harvey and Gert, as if on cue, reached for their coffees and sipped. It was the offer they’d been waiting for all along. “That would be a big help,” Gert said. A finger rimming the cup. “About how much altogether?”

“About eighty thousand.”

Harvey cleared his throat. Looked away, looked at the papers on the table. “I may have hit the dog, but the health department thing, you the one insisted on keeping Turo, that boy so dense and incompetent he can’t do the easiest thing like clean this place properly. I’ve been telling you, but, no, you still want to keep him.”

Riley furrowed his brow. “What’s wrong with you, Harvey? I’m here devising a financial solution out of this shit, shit that
you
caused, and you’re over there still wasting time playing the blame game?”

Gert hooded her eyes with a hand and said, “Look here, stop this. Just … stop. So”—raising her head and exhaling—“eighty thousand, Riley. Plus about twenty from our funds, and let’s say,” scanning the spreadsheet, “we collect, realistically, about twenty thousand in outstanding tabs. That’s only one twenty.”

“But like I said, I might be able to scrape up some more.”

“
Scrape up
? Eighty grand more?”

Riley thought it over. Had to accept it; the answer was no.

“And what about time? We need some time.”

He stood up, gathered some papers. “Finished with that?” he said, motioning at their cups. He took the cups away.

Gert said, “Where you going?”

He kept walking. “I’ll take care of this.”

“What you mean?”

Riley went around the bar, dropped the cups in sudsy water in the sink. “I mean I’ll take care of it, don’t worry about it. Lopez will get his money, we won’t have to spend ours and everything’ll be cool.” He snapped off the coffeemaker, dried his hands on a towel.

“You’re gonna get another eighty grand, in addition to your eighty grand.”

“That’s right.”

“And it won’t cost the bar anything?”

“That’s correct.”

Harvey and Gert exchanged a look.

Riley folded the towel on the bar and waited for questions he knew were brewing. None arrived. They’d rather not ask where the money would come from. They were going to spend it, thank him, treat it like a business expense to be repaid over several years maybe, and carry on with their guiltless lives, and he couldn’t fault them. If he were in their position, he’d probably do the same. Except he wasn’t so sure about the guiltless part. Their practiced silence about the source of his money and how it benefited them was a hypocrisy that aggravated him. Made them, in his eyes, less honest than if they’d simply acknowledged that it was “dirty” dollars, and that they were no more righteous than he.

Riley got his keys from the office, checked e-mail, traipsed into the kitchen and pulled two roaster chickens from the freezer for tonight. Since Lindy’s had started a menu of
panades, salbutes,
and chicken enchiladas, he was the only one who consistently remembered to prep food, encourage the cook to maintain the quality. Forget that it brought in good money on weekends—or no, Gert wouldn’t forget that, money being her primary concern. The work? Someone else could do that.

He was in no smiling mood, so better to split. But Harvey stopped him on the way out. “Yo, just remembered. Last night, how’d it go?” The friendly bantering Harvey now. “She say yes? Tell me.”

Riley put his hands in his pockets, shook the keys. “She said she loves me.”

“Uh-oh.”

“No, no, it’s just that she wants to get married but didn’t plan on it being so soon. She says she wants to be sure about her answer.”

“Think she’s scared?”

“Maybe. We’re having dinner tonight at her place. Says she’ll give me an answer tonight.”

Harvey said nothing.

Riley appreciated that Harvey did not make of this an opportunity for humor. When it came to emotions, they weren’t often open with each other, probably like most men who are friends. But when a man speaks plainly and directly about an affair of his heart, listening silently and nodding like Harvey was doing was the most considerate response.

“Good luck, buddy. I’m crossing my fingers.”

Riley’s irritation dissolved. He left, thankful for Harvey’s grace.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Monsantos lived in a broad three-story wood-frame on Albert Street, with a red zinc roof and a steep stairway with a second-floor landing. Old man Israel and his wife occupied the second floor; a divorced Monsanto sister, her two boys, and Carlo lived on top. The ground floor was half a storeroom in the rear and half Monsanto’s Dry Goods. It was an untidy shop with an arched doorway, a perpetually dusty store window, and bare concrete floor.

Riley picked his way past the tables of cheap men’s shoes and Chinese-made flip-flops and around a messy rack of grandmotherly dresses. There were a couple of customers in there, a woman at one counter being tended by Carlo, and an old lady and a little boy admiring soccer balls and rubber basketballs on shelves behind a glass counter that displayed pocket knives. Riley could’ve sworn he saw some of those very knives when he was about this boy’s size.

Riley caught Carlo’s eyes and Carlo nodded. Riley stepped off to the side, scrolling through missed calls on his cell phone, thinking of calling Sister Pat to say he’d drop by.

Carlo had taken down a bolt of brown cloth and put it on the counter. He unfurled it some, and the woman rubbed the cloth between thumb and forefinger. “Color is right, but, I don’t know, it’s too stiff.”

Carlo, with his slicked-back hair and loose, flowery shirt, smiled. “You mean you don’t like it stiff?”

The woman pulled her hand away and stepped back, chin tucked in. Carlo rolled up the cloth. “We have something else you might like, same brown, in polyester.”

The woman said, “No, that’s fine,” tugging her purse higher on her shoulder. “Thank you very much,” and she made her escape.

“What’s troubling Mr. James this fine morning?” Carlo said, climbing the stepladder with the bolt of cloth, sliding it up on a shelf.

“Man, I must be getting wrinkled like you if you’re thinking I look worried.”

Carlo came down from the ladder and shook Riley’s hand across the counter. “Must be worried ’cause I can’t tell you the last time you set foot in here.” Gripping Riley’s hand, he said low, “Ready for Monday night?”

“As always.”

“No change of heart?”

“Not even palpitations.”

“So what I’m hearing you say, you’re gonna keep on working with us? Continue making good money for your son and your retirement?” Carlo still holding Riley’s hand. “How’s that boy, Riley?”

“Getting tall. And sorry, but this is the last job for me.”

Carlo narrowed his eyes, nodded, sizing up the truth of that. Riley knew him long enough to know that’s exactly what he was doing. Of the two brothers, Carlo was the more shifty one, more volatile, would just as soon hug and offer you a drink as threaten you, which was one reason why some people in the street called him the Serpent. Another reason was that he resembled one, oiled hair, stoop-shouldered and smooth-cheeked, an overbite. Look at this, unbelievable, still gripping Riley’s hand and thinking he was being intimidating.

“You sure, Riley?”

Years ago, that might’ve worked, but not anymore. Riley was too experienced to be mistaken for a pushover. Now, Carlo’s act was merely tedious, the clip of his pocket knife showing as always. Abruptly, he released Riley, his face not as congenial as before. “So what then? To what fabulous surprise do we owe this visit?” Lolling his head, adopting sarcasm.

“Just popped in to see Israel. He available?”

Carlo went down the counter, picked up the phone on the pillar. He spoke into it, saying if your uncle’s up there, tell him Riley’s down here to see him. He listened, said all right, hung up with a loud clack and turned around. “Go ahead on up.”

Riley headed through the store, past a mound of garden hoses and a row of wheelbarrows, toward the door in the shadows at the back. He stopped, turned around. “Hey, Carlo?”

Carlo lifted his chin.

“Think you could hook me up with a little something when I get back down? Half ounce, say?”

Carlo strolled away, pausing to rearrange bolts of cloth on low shelves, drop a pair of scissors into a drawer. “Don’t know, Riley, that depends.”

Riley shifted from one foot to the other, working on patience. “On what?”

“On a C-note.”

“For a half ounce?”

“Half ounce of White Widow. That’s what’s in stock. Furthermore, another half ounce? Just two days ago at the bar I dropped off—” He nodded. “Okay, okay, I see it now, Mr. Riley is diversifying. Got his hands in a little side
dealing
. I see how it is.”

“It’s not like that. Seriously.”

Carlo tilted his head back, appraising Riley. “So you say, so you say. Awright, half ounce. But let’s get this straight, you reselling my stuff you need to step up to a bigger cache, quit playing small change and wasting my time. I might could offer you better pricing even.”

Riley thought, Yeah, whatever, and headed out the back door and into the cool concrete backyard, in the full shade of the building, and up the steep stairway. Whenever he climbed these stairs, he wondered how old Israel negotiated them and why he just didn’t get another house, it’s not like he couldn’t afford it.

Before Riley could knock, the door opened and a little boy with a pageboy haircut greeted him. “My uncle says to tell you, could you please have a seat out in the parlor ’cause he’s on the toilet.”

“Boy!” Israel hollered from another room. “What’s the matter with you?”

The boy scampered away, feet resounding on the wood floor, down a corridor. Riley took his place on the settee—that’s what the Monsantos called it, not
couch
—covered in heavy, transparent plastic. It was next to the speakers of an old hi-fi—not
stereo
. Nothing about this room seemed to have changed in twenty years. Same bouquet of artificial flowers with stems stuck in green Styrofoam in the same wooden bowl on the same dark mahogany coffee table atop the same ultracolorful—though more faded—Mexican rug. Same statue of the Virgin laced with rosaries in a corner, and the same old photos on the wall, a memorial to the Monsanto ancestors from Yucatán.