The Power Of The Dog (12 page)

“What?”

“ ‘What?’ ” Friel mimics. “Get down on your fucking knees, you little cocksucker.”

O-Bop is pale anyway, but now Callan sees he is like white. He looks dead already, and maybe he is, because it looks for all the world like Friel’s going to execute him right here.

O-Bop is shaking as he lowers himself off the stool. He has to lower his hands to the floor first so he doesn’t just topple over as he gets to his knees. And he’s crying—big tears spilling out of his eyes and streaming down his face.

Eddie’s got this shit-eating grin on his face.

“Come on,” Callan says to Friel.

Friel turns on him.

“You want part of this, kid?” Eddie asks. “You need to decide who you’re with, us or him.”

Staring Callan down.

“Him,” Callan says as he pulls a .22 from under his shirt and shoots Eddie the Butcher twice in the forehead.

Eddie looks like he can’t fucking believe what just happened. He just looks at Callan like What the fuck? and then folds up. He’s lying on his back on the dirty floor when O-Bop takes the .38 from his hand, sticks it in Eddie’s mouth, and starts jerking on the trigger.

O-Bop’s crying and shrieking obscenities.

Billy Shields has his hands up.

“I got no problem,” he says.

Little Mickey looks up from his Bushmills and tells Callan, “You might want to think about leaving.”

Callan asks, “Should I leave the gun?”

“No,” Mickey says. “Give it to the Hudson.”

Mickey knows the Hudson River between Thirty-eighth and Fifty-seventh streets has more hardware at the bottom than, say, Pearl Harbor. And the cops ain’t exactly going to drag the bottom to find the weapon that rained on Eddie the Butcher. The reaction at Manhattan South is going to go something like Someone blanked Eddie Friel? Oh. Anyone want this last chocolate glazed?

No, these kids’ problem is not the law, these kids’ problem is Matt Sheehan. Not that it’s going to be Mickey that goes running to Big Matt to tell him who popped Eddie. Matt could have reached out one ham-fisted hand to the judge and lifted some of the weight off Mickey on this hijacking beef, but he couldn’t be bothered, so Mickey doesn’t figure he owes any loyalty to Sheehan.

But Billy Shields the bartender will trip all over himself to get a marker with Big Matt, so these two kids might as well go hang themselves up on meat hooks and save Matt the aggravation. Unless they can take out Big Matt first, which they can’t. So these kids are pretty much dead, but they shouldn’t ought to stand around and wait for it.

“Go now,” Mickey says to them. “Get out of town.”

Callan tucks the .22 back under his shirt and gets an arm under O-Bop’s elbow and lifts him up from where he’s crouching over Eddie the Butcher’s body.

“Come on,” he says.

“Hold on a second.”

O-Bop digs into Friel’s pockets and comes out with a wad of crumpled bills. Rolls him on his side and takes something out of his back pocket.

A black notebook.

“Okay,” O-Bop says.

They walk out the door.

Cops come in around ten minutes later.

The Homicide guy, he steps over the pool of blood forming a big, wet, red halo around Friel’s head, then he looks at Mickey Haggerty. Homicide guy is just up from Safes and Lofts, so he knows Mickey. Looks at Mickey and shrugs like What happened?

“Slipped in the shower,” Mickey says.

They never get out of town.

What happens is they walk out of the Liffey Pub and follow Mickey Haggerty’s suggestion and walk right over to the river and toss in the guns.

Then they stand out there and count Eddie’s roll.

“Three hundred and eighty-seven bucks,” O-Bop says.

Which is disappointing.

They ain’t gonna get very far on three hundred and eighty-seven bucks.

And anyway, they don’t know where to go.

They’re neighborhood guys, they never been anywhere else, they wouldn’t know what to do, what not to do, how to act, how to function. They oughta get on a bus to somewhere, but where?

They go into a corner store and buy a couple quart bottles of beer and then get under an abutment under the West Side Highway to think it over.

“Jersey?” O-Bop says.

This is about the limit of his geographical imagination.

“You know anyone in Jersey?” Callan asks.

“No. Do you?”

“No.”

Where they know people is in Hell’s Kitchen, so they end up slamming a couple more beers and waiting until it’s dark, and then they slip back into the neighborhood. Break into an abandoned warehouse and sleep there. Early in the morning they go to Bobby Remington’s sister’s apartment on Fiftieth Street.

Bobby’s there, having had another fight with his old man.

He comes to the door, sees Callan and O-Bop standing there and pulls them inside.

“Jesus Christ,” Bobby says, “what’d you guys do?”

“He was going to shoot Stevie,” Callan explains.

Bobby shakes his head, “He wasn’t going to shoot him. He was going to piss in his mouth, is all. That’s the word out.”

Callan shrugs. “Anyway.”

“Are they looking for us?” O-Bop asks.

Bobby doesn’t answer. He’s too busy pulling down blinds.

“Bobby, do you have any coffee?” Callan asks.

“Yeah, I’ll make some.”

Beth Remington comes out of her bedroom. She’s wearing a Rangers jersey that comes down over her thighs. Her red hair is all tangled and droops down around her shoulders. She looks at Callan and says, “Shit.”

“Hi, Beth.”

“You gotta get outta here.”

“I’m just going to get ‘em some coffee, Beth.”

“Hey, Bobby,” Beth says. She flicks a cigarette out of a pack on the kitchen counter, slips it into her mouth and lights it. “Bad enough I got you crashing on my couch, I don’t need these guys. No offense.”

O-Bop says, “Bobby, we need some hardware.”

“Oh, great,” Beth says. She flops down on the couch next to Callan. “Why the fuck did you come here?”

“Nowhere else to go.”

“I’m honored.” She gets drunk a couple times and does the dirty with him and now he thinks he can come over here, now he’s in trouble. “Bobby, make them toast or something.”

“Thank you,” says Callan.

“You’re not staying here.”

“So, Bobby,” O-Bop says, “can you hook us up?”

“They find out, I’m fucked.”

“You could go to Burke, tell him it’s for you,” O-Bop says.

“What are you guys still doing in the neighborhood?” Beth asks. “You should be in like Buffalo by now.”

“Buffalo?” O-Bop says, smiling. “What’s in Buffalo?”

Beth shrugs. “Niagara Falls. I dunno.”

They drink their coffee and eat their toast.

“I’ll go see Burke,” Bobby says.

“Yeah, that’s what you need,” Beth says, “to get sideways with Matty Sheehan.”

“Fuck Sheehan,” Bobby says.

“Yeah, go tell him that,” says Beth. She turns to Callan. “You don’t need guns, what you need is bus tickets. I got some money …”

Beth is a cashier at Loews Forty-second Street. Occasionally she sells one of the theater’s tickets along with her own. So she has a little cash tucked away.

“We have money,” Callan says.

“Then go.”

They go. They go all the way up to the Upper West Side, hang around in Riverside Park, up by Grant’s Tomb. Then they come back downtown; Beth lets them into Loews and they sit in the back of the balcony all day, watching Star Wars.

Fucking Death Star’s about to blow for like the sixth time when Bobby shows up with a paper bag and leaves it by Callan’s feet.

“Good movie, huh?” he says, and takes off as fast as he came in.

Callan eases his ankle over to the bag and feels the metal.

They go into the men’s room and open the bag.

An old .25 and an equally ancient .38 police special.

“What?” O-Bop says. “He didn’t have flintlocks?”

“Beggars can’t be choosers.”

Callan feels a lot better with a little hardware at his waist. Funny how quick you miss not having it there. You just feel light, he thinks. Like you might float up off the ground. The metal keeps you on the earth.

They sit in the theater until just before it closes, then carefully work their way back to the warehouse.

A Polish sausage saves their lives.

Tim Healey, he’s been sitting up there half the fucking night and he’s hungrier than shit waiting for these two kids, so he gets Jimmy Boylan to go out for a Polish sausage.

“What you want on it?” Boylan asks.

“Sauerkraut, hot mustard, the works,” Tim says.

So Boylan goes out and comes back and Tim wolfs down that Polish sausage like he’s spent the war in a Japanese prison camp, and that solid sausage is converting itself to gas in his intestines just when Callan and O-Bop are coming in. They’re in a stairwell on the other side of a closed metal door when they hear Healey cut loose.

They freeze.

“Jesus Christ,” they hear Boylan say. “Anybody hurt?”

Callan looks at O-Bop.

“Bobby gave us up?” O-Bop whispers.

Callan shrugs.

“I’m gonna open the door, get some air,” Boylan says. “Christ, Tim.”

“Sorry.”

Boylan opens the door and sees the boys standing there. He yells, “Shit!” as he raises his shotgun, but all Callan can hear is the explosion of guns echoing in the stairwell as he and O-Bop let loose.

The tinfoil slides off Healey’s lap as he gets up from the wooden folding chair and goes for his gun. But he sees Jimmy Boylan staggering backwards as chunks of him are flying out the back of him and loses his nerve. Drops his .45 to the ground and throws his hands up.

“Do him!” O-Bop yells.

“No, no, no, no, no!” Healey yells.

They’ve known Fat Tim Healey all their lives. He used to give them quarters to buy comic books. One time they’re playing hockey in the street and Callan’s backswing breaks Tim Healey’s right headlight and Healey comes out of the Liffey and just laughs and says it’s okay. “You’ll get me tickets when you’re playing for the Rangers, okay?” is all Tim Healey says.

Now Callan stops O-Bop from shooting Healey.

“Just get his gun!” he hollers.