The Art of Disposal (12 page)

“Go on,” Dan said, “before I call up Eddie.”

The threat rattled Eugene. Not because he was scared of Eddie, but because he was scared of losing us. I don't think he had many visitors.

“Hepp yourself een kitchen. Many drinks,” he said. He handed me the remote control and added, “many channel for to vaiting.” He crumpled his beer can, threw it in the box, and went to the foyer. I heard the zippy sounds of the vinyl shower curtain as Eugene lifted one end of the package, opened the basement door, and dragged it down the stairs. There was a steady thump: Ricky's head or feet bouncing down each stair. Dan called out:

“Pick it up and carry it for Christ's sake! He was a friend of ours.”

“Not friend now,” Eugene called back. “Now eet's like pig.”

“
He's
like pig,” Dan the Man said to me.

We heard his footsteps coming back to the top of the stairs, and then the slamming and locking of the basement door. Neither one of us moved or spoke. I waited for that first awful sound, and I'm willing to bet that Dan the Man was doing the same thing.

Then it came. A sputtering start of a small engine, like the coughing of a demon. Then the hacking cough smoothed out and the engine ran proud. I heard a disco drum beat, quite faint, creeping up the stairs with the louder sounds of the engine.

“Ricky C,” I said.

Dan the Man cupped his hands over his kneecaps. The saw blade whined, struggling to get through gristle and bone. Dan's hands squeezed tighter and tighter, until they almost turned white. Emotion has to get out one way or another.

“His old lady,” he said. “She won't get to bury him.”

“I know,” I said.

“She knows what's what, but she don't have to know it was us that done it.”

“I'm a bad liar,” I said.

“So get better.”

“What do we say to her?”

“You ain't seen him. That's it,” Dan the Man said.

The saw blade engine sputtered in the basement, and the hint of disco drums and breathy vocals floated around like a strange dust in the air. We sat for a minute, listening to the various bangs and clings and electric motors. The disco beat sat awkwardly in the blank spaces between the drone of the power tools.

“Eastern Europeans,” Dan said. “Bet you a million dollars that sick fuck is responsible for at least one or two missing girls. Or boys.”

“But here we are,” I said.

“What's with you?” Dan said, his voice full of poison. “I'm sick of your high and mighty bullshit.”

I sat there like a stone.

“I done some time at community college,” he said. “I read a few books in my day. Parts of The
Carmelozov
Brothers even. Let me save you a lot of time. There ain't no answers. There ain't no good guys. Some guys are bad, and some guys are worse. Has that Ukrainian ever killed an innocent broad? I don't wanna know. Hands off is what I say. He works for us. That's what you might call a morally amphibious situation.”

I was about to correct him, but smartly stopped myself. I watched a cartoon frog hop through my mind, eating tasty flies and hating himself with every chomp. A morally amphibious situation. It made me smile.

Eugene must've hit the stop button on his cassette deck, because the glittery drum beat died, and the world felt empty, and the heavy feet of Eugene tramped up the stairs and back into the living room. He wore a bloody apron, goggles, and long rubber gloves.

“Beer,” he said, like a war doctor demanding morphine. He stomped past us and went to the kitchen. I heard the crisp pop of a can-tab, and the gurgling sound as he gulped it down.

He came back into the living room and stood there facing us, his hands on his hips in a womanly sort of way, and he heaved and puffed out air, and wiped at his sweaty forehead every so often with a shirtsleeve.

“Are vee doing zuh melting sing?” he said.

“Whatever gets it done,” Dan the Man said.

“Vun week in zuh barrel.”

“What about the teeth?” Dan said.

“Yank-id. You vunt one for to keep?”

“What am I, the tooth fairy?” Dan said. Then he got up from the sofa and looked at me. “Come on. Let's double-check.”

The three of us walked down the narrow basement staircase. It was ten degrees cooler down there, and it smelled like concrete and mold and chemicals. Two bathtubs sat smack in the middle of the floor, and a shadeless light bulb dangled from a taut cord above them, like it had decided to hang itself rather than face another day in that dismal room. One wall was covered with pliers, saws, hammers, hatchets, and knives. An ABBA poster, showing the four band-mates dressed in black clothes and wearing white fedoras, was carefully pinned above a workbench.

“Where is he?” Dan said, peeking into both of the tubs.

“Gone in zuh can,” Eugene said, and pointed at a blue barrel in the corner of the basement.

“You already
deed zuh melting sing
?” Dan said, imitating him.

“Vie I lie?”

“Nothing personal. Eddie says to check: I check.”

We walked over to the barrel. Eugene took a crowbar and pried off the lid. We leaned over and looked inside. A slick green film. Right in the center of it, a tuft of Ricky's greasy hair bobbed up like an onion in a stew-pot. Eugene grabbed a weathered two-by-four and pushed against the hair and scalp until it vanished.

“Gimme that,” Dan the Man said. Eugene handed him the stick.

“Here. Make sure he's really in there,” Dan said, handing it to me.

“You do it,” I said.

“Give it a stir.”

“I don't know,” I said.

“Don't be such a baby,” Dan said.

“Ha!” Eugene said. “You two fight like married vuhmans.”

I eased the two-by-four into the barrel, like I was taking its temperature. Right away I felt chunks of this and that; things brushing along the stick like lake slime along an oar. I gave it a slow two-armed stir and watched for one of Ricky's hands or feet to float up to the top. Nothing did. I guess he was heavy enough to stay down.

“Yeah, he's in there,” I said.

Back upstairs, Eugene cracked open another Olympia and turned on the television. Vanna White was flipping letters while a crowd applauded.

“Seet, seet,” he pleaded. “Vee watch zuh Veel of For-toon.”

Dan the Man shook his head, no, and counted out the money.

Eugene took the bills, brought them up to his nose, and breathed them in like they were fresh-cut lilacs.

“Ain't you forgetting something?” Dan the Man said.

“Like vuht?” Eugene said.

“The necklace. The gold chain.” Dan held his hand out and waited.

“I sot you no like eet, else I surely gave eet back,” Eugene said, producing Ricky's gold chain from his pants-pocket like he was performing a magic trick. He dropped it into Dan's open palm, and the chain curled into a solid mass.

“Eastern Europeans,” Dan said, right into Eugene's face, like he was condemning half a continent. Then we left the cabin.

Eugene didn't shut the front door for quite a while. You could feel his eyes on your back, and the strange yellow light from the house poured out like it wanted to come along with us.

“I knew he'd try to keep that chain,” Dan the Man said as we walked to the car.

“Because he's Ukrainian?” I said.

“Because he's a creep. And he listens to ABBA.”

“Good point,” I said.

“
Abba
,” he said, like he was spitting out an almond husk that had been stuck between his teeth for a few hours.

“Dancing Queen's all right,” I said.

“Not for a guy who lives alone in the woods.”

“Maybe they're big in the Ukraine.”

“Eastern Europeans,” Dan said again.

“Hey—you like Sade,” I said.

Dan the Man had the key in the car door, and he was looking at me over the roof of the Park Avenue. “Everybody likes Sade,” he said. “That broad can sing.”

He coughed, and a wheezing fit carried right through as we got into the car. He waved his hand as if to tell me that he was all right, and he reached under the seat for his bottle of water. He drank some, and then he rubbed two fingers along the side of his neck like there was a gold coin hidden in one precious spot that he'd yet to find.

“What's with you?” I said.

“I'm fine,” he said.

“I got a great doctor,” I said. “You should go see him.”

Dan put the car in gear. I saw Eugene's silhouette, standing like a cigar-store Indian in the living room window. I couldn't see his eyes, but I could feel them sending loneliness out into the woods, cone-shaped, like some kind of dreary sonar.

Eddie told me that Eugene lived mostly off of a legal settlement. His old man, some kind of government official, hanged himself with a belt after getting sent to the nuthouse back in the Ukraine. Eugene's Mom sued, and in an effort to hush-up some kind of corruption and negligence, the institution settled. Eugene gets a check every month for the rest of his life, but so what? He's broken. His only friends are Vanna White, Pat Sajak, and the never-ending cans of Olympia beer.

We drove toward Love's Auto-Mall to dump Ricky's Buick Park Avenue. Ever since we clipped off his little toe, I hated seeing Gideon Cash. He had this edge about him now. He talked a lot of smack: like since we'd hurt him once, so what if we hurt him again?

Eddie really put the cuffs on him. He cozied right up to Art Love—the greasy fat bastard who owns the dealership—and started paying him a little something to keep the VIN operation going. Eddie made it clear that if Gideon ever left the business, so did our money. He told Gideon that he worked for us until five of the original nine grand was fully paid (answering the age-old question, how much is a little toe worth? Four thousand bucks, it turns out). But even reduced to five grand, the thirty percent interest would keep Gideon stuck in a dead end job—literally.

His walk was a tiny bit off, but you'd never know he was missing that pinky toe. Not unless he took off his sock and showed it to you. I thought back to that day when Gideon slunk into the office, his head low, his cap in his hand, to renegotiate the terms of his loan…

“What did you do with it?” he asked Eddie about his toe.

“I ate it,” Eddie said.

Gideon laughed. A guy who can laugh at his own problems is a hell of a lot better than one who can't. Then he turned to Dan the Man.

“He didn't really eat it, did he?”

“On a plate. With a fork and a bottle of Dijon mustard,” Dan the Man said.

“Al Dente!” Ricky said in mock Italian, and he kissed his fingertips and flicked them out and open, like he was setting free a tiny bird.

“You dumb twat,” Dan said to Gideon. “The only toe Eddie'd eat would be attached to some tasty Asian broad.”

“You know where I can find one?” Eddie said with a steely grin, tapping a book of matches on his desk. He held up the matches, kind of using them to point at Gideon. “You find me an Asian girl, and we'll forget the five grand.”

I was replaying those scenes in my mind, thinking how sad it was that Ricky Cervetti would never say “Al Dente!” again, when we reached Love's Auto-Mall. We parked at the chain-link fence and Dan blinked the headlights off and on a few times. A minute passed. Then Gideon Cash materialized from the hazy blue darkness. He nodded, raised a hand, unlocked the gate, and we pulled through. Dan the Man stopped next to Gideon and rolled down the window.

“We're closed,” Gideon said. He leaned in and surveyed the backseat.

“Just the car,” Dan the Man said.

“If I crush the car, how you gonna get back home?” Gideon said, kind of proud of himself, like he'd thought of something that had never crossed our minds.

“You're driving us,” Dan the Man said.

“Hundred bucks,” Gideon said.

Dan the Man looked at me. “This guy's a full-fledged taxi service all of a sudden.” Then he looked back at Gideon. “You got a Turban and a meter too?”

“Look—I get up outta bed when Eddie calls, I open up shop for you,
and
I gotta drive you back home? Come on, Dan. Don't Jew me.”

Not a whole lot of guys have the balls to make a Jewish crack right to Dan the Man's face, so it was an outright shock to hear some chump like Gideon Cash bust out a line like that. I closed my eyes and waited for a gunshot, thinking maybe we'd be visiting Eugene's basement again before the night was through.

Dan the Man chuckled. “Finally growing some balls,” he said. “And right after his wife up and leaves him.” He rolled the window up.

“He wants to act tough—let him,” Dan the Man said as we drove back to the crusher, the wheels crunching over a million pebbles. “Guy can't even raise five thousand bucks. Christ, you'd think his family'd give it to him or something.”

“But are you gonna Jew him,” I said with a grin, “or give him the hundred bucks?”

“Hey now. That ain't cool,” Dan said. “Eddie should send you to one of them, you know, whatchamacallits for Suits who look at asses.”

“Diversity workshops?” I said.

“Yeah, yeah. Coexist, man.”

The crusher sat there before us in the darkness, like the carcass of a dinosaur. We got out and shut the doors, and the sound echoed through the stacked rows of dead cars.

“It ain't true anyway,” Dan said. “That whole cheap Jew thing.” He lowered his voice. “But I will say this: my old man was tighter than the bark on a tree.”

“Does it bug you when Eddie calls it his
shy
operation?” I said. I held my hands up to the sky and yawned. The night air was cool and the moon hung sideways under a veil of tired fog.

“Why would it bug me?” Dan said.

“You know.
Shylock
? The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare?”

“It's anti-semantic?” Dan said.

“Semitic,” I said. “And yeah, Shylock was a Jew and he really stuck it to the folks who borrowed from him.”

Right then Gideon Cash walked up, carrying a boxy flashlight. He set it on the ground, put his hands in his coat pockets, leaned stiffly forward like a scarecrow, and looked at us like he was studying two unwelcome birds in his corn field.

“Did you know that Bill Shakespeare was anti-Jew?” Dan said to Gideon.

Gideon frowned in a gentle way and shook his head, like he was considering a point of some importance.