The Turnaround (23 page)

“Anything?” said Kruger.

“Nah,” said Baker. “Nothin. Didn’t even find a dollar.”

Baker went to the bar on wheels and scanned the bottles. He wasn’t much of a liquor man, preferring the control that came with the predictable effects of beer. The occasion did call for a little something, though. He passed over a bottle of vodka, had white birds flying across its side, and picked up a bottle of scotch, Glen something or other, aged for fifteen years. He sloppily poured a few fingers’ worth into a tumbler and had a taste. It was smoky and it bit, and he walked it over to a chair set across from the couch. It was a matching chair, covered in red linen, and he noted the height of it and that it would be a good place to take the boy when the talking got to something else.

“So,” said Baker, swirling the scotch in the tumbler. “Let’s get down to why we here.”

“It ain’t good,” said Dixon bitterly. “You forced me into my own place at the point of a gun.”

“You and me gonna get along better if you don’t try to act so big and bad.’Cause we both know you’re not that type.” Baker looked at Kruger. “Lower that gun, Cody. We don’t need it. Leastways, I don’t think we do.
Do
we, Dominique?”

“What do you want?” said Dixon, the air gone out of him.

“I’m gonna get to that. Want to tell you a story first.” Baker had a healthy sip of scotch and placed the tumbler on the glass of the table before him. “When I was up at Jessup, I got to know a lot of fellas out of Baltimore. That’s a different breed of criminal they got up there. I’m not sayin they more fierce than the boys come out of D.C. Just different.’Cause they do all kinds of unnatural shit to get what they want. I knew this one hitter, shot his victims with a little old twenty-two. Shot’em in the same place every time, somewhere down at a special bone in the neck. He said it was guaranteed darkness. This other dude, Nathan Williams, went by Black Nate, used to take off drug boys by cracking a bullwhip right on the sidewalk. I’m sayin, this man carried no gun.
Only
a bullwhip. Wore it coiled up on his side, like a gunslinger wears a holster. Corner boys would give it up immediately, just drop their packages right at his feet. That was Black Nate.

“But there was this one cat, he outdid them all. I’m gonna call him Junior. When Junior was a teenager, he hooked up with some stickup boys, rip-and-run artists who were robbing drug dealers. Eventually, the rest of his crew got doomed or went to prison, and he lit out on his own. Junior only went after the big boys, never the kids on the corner. What he wanted was to find out where the money was, and he’d do anything to get that information. Threatening to kill a dude doesn’t work all the time,’cause they know they dead anyway if they give up the bank or their connect. And torture, that’s just loud and messy. So Junior, he got to sodomizing motherfuckers to make them talk. You know what that word means, don’t you, Dominique?”

“I know,” said Dixon, the corner of his lip twitching on the reply.

“Yeah. A dude just responds to the mention of it. You tell him you’re gonna steal his manhood, and he gonna answer any question you ask, all the livelong day.”

“What do you
want?
”

“I want your inventory, man. I want your list of clients. I want to have all these nice things you got. You don’t deserve to keep havin them,’cause I’m stronger than you. Law of the jungle, right? I know you heard of Darvon.”

Dixon nodded his head. He knew the name that Baker was reaching for, but he did not correct him.

“Now, we both aware that you’re movin weight. So why don’t you tell me where you keep it at?”

“I don’t have it here.” Dixon spread his hands. “I don’t have it
any
where right now. I already moved it to my dealers.”

“Not all of it, man. Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid, because I am not.”

“It’s gone.”

“Gone, huh. You just sold Cody and Deon a couple pounds, what, two nights back? And you, supplying half a zip code of dealers? Nah, I don’t think it’s gone. You got plenty left, I reckon. So you lyin to me. And I don’t like that, Domi-nique.”

“Look, man —”

“Thought I told you to call me Mr. Charles.”

“Mr. Charles. Let’s call Deon. Deon knows how my operation works. He’ll tell you I move it in and out real quick.”

“Deon got no say in this.”

“Where’s he at?”

“He ain’t here.”

“I can see that, but —”

“What I mean is, he can’t help you.”

Baker finished his scotch in one long pull and placed it loudly on the glass tabletop. He stood from the chair as if sprung and moved behind it.

“Get up, boy, and come over here.”

Dixon stood slowly from the couch. He walked unsteadily to where Baker stood. Baker backed up to give him room.

“Now turn around and face the back of this chair. Put your hands on the shoulders of it.”

“What for?”

“Right now.”

Dixon did as he was told. His hands gripped the back of the chair. He had to bend over to do it, and as he did he realized what was happening, and he said, “No.”

Baker produced a knife from the right patch pocket of his jacket. There was a button on the imitation-pearl handle, and he pushed it forward. A blade sprang from the hilt. At the unmistakable sound of it, Dixon shut his eyes. Baker, close behind him, touched the blade to Dixon’s neck, brushed it delicately there until he came to the bump of Dixon’s carotid artery, where he applied more pressure but did not break the skin.

“Where the marijuana at?” said Baker.

Dixon could not raise spit or speak.

“Let me help you find your tongue, boy.”

With his free hand, Baker reached around and undid Dixon’s belt buckle, then tore the button from the eyehole on the front of his slacks. He pulled down roughly on the slacks until they dropped to the floor, gathering at Dixon’s booted feet. Dixon stood in his boxer briefs, his bare legs skinny and shaking. His eyes had filled with tears.

Cody Kruger was nearby, the gun hanging at his side, the color drained from his face. He seemed to have lost his bravado. He looked very young.

Still holding the knife to Dixon’s throat, Baker stepped in and pressed himself against Baker’s behind.

“You feel kinda emotional now, huh,” said Baker. “But see, from where I’m standing, this ain’t no thing. All that time I was inside? Shoot. Your asshole is just another hole to me. I feel the same way about your mouth.”

“
Please,
” said Dixon. A string of mucus dripped and hung from his nose.

“Please what? You want me to?”

“I’ll tell you where it is.”

Baker chuckled. “For real?”

“In a white van. Parked beside my car. The keys are in my pocket, the
left pocket
of my pants.”

“Get the keys, Cody,” said Baker.

Kruger retrieved the keys, gingerly, from the pocket of the slacks heaped at Dixon’s ankles.

“I’ll take care of it, Mr. Charles,” said Kruger. He seemed eager to leave the apartment.

“You go ahead,” said Baker. “Take your car and put it behind the van. Load whatever he’s got in there into the Honda. Mind that no one’s watching, hear?”

“I will.”

“Hit me on my cell when you’re ready to go.”

Baker stayed behind Dixon, hard and tight against him, after Kruger had gone. Baker could feel a quivering in Dixon’s shoulders.

“Cry if you need to,” said Baker. “It’s hard to learn who you are.”

“I wanna sit down.”

“Go ahead,” said Baker. “But we ain’t finished yet.”

ALEX AND Vicki made love after he had come home from his visit with the Monroe brothers. It was unexpected for both of them, happening at once as Alex slipped into their king-size. He had expected her to be sleeping, as she almost always was when he came to bed, but she was awake, and she turned toward him and fitted into him the way a wife and husband do, comfortably and naturally, after so many years. They kissed and caressed each other for a long while, because this was the best part of it for both of them, and completed it with Vicki’s strong thighs squeezed against him, her lips cool, Vicki and Alex coming quietly in the darkness of the room.

Afterward, they talked about his night, Vicki’s head on his chest, Alex’s arm around her.

“He wasn’t angry with you?”

“The older brother? No. Indifferent is more like it. He paid his debt, and I guess he’s past hating. It’s like he didn’t care about my presence one way or the other. He’s trying to get beyond everything that’s happened to him. It hasn’t been easy to do that.”

This led to a discussion of Charles Baker, and the mistake James had made in editing the letter.

“Are you worried about this Baker character?” said Vicki.

“No,” said Alex. It was a lie.

“But what if he comes around? You promised the younger brother that you wouldn’t involve the police.”

“I never promised anything,” said Alex. “Besides, there’s no sense in worrying about it now.”

It felt good to be with Vicki, naked in bed, talking as they had not talked for a while. He told her about his tentative plan to turn the business over to Johnny, and she was happy and held him tightly and admitted that she was also scared, asking him what would come next, after he let their son take control of the coffee shop.

“I’m a young man,” said Alex. “I am. I’ve got another twenty years of work in me, maybe more. This time it’s not going to be about obligation. It’ll be about passion.”

“But what will you do?”

In the dark, Alex stared up at the ceiling, pale white from the moonlight seeping through the bedroom blinds.

After Vicki had gone to sleep, Alex got out of bed and went to the kitchen, where he poured himself a glass of red wine. He took it to the living room and had a seat in his favorite chair. His intention was to sit here, nurse his wine, and wait for Johnny to come home. Go upstairs at the sound of Johnny’s car as it pulled into the driveway, so as not to embarrass his son. A young man Johnny’s age didn’t need to know that his father still stayed awake at night, worrying about his son.

Having lost one boy, he found it hard to let the other stand on his own. But he knew he’d have to do that so he and Vicki could move forward. The window was closing. As the years progressed, it seemed to Alex that time moved faster. He wanted to be rid of
that thing,
the pinch on his shoulder that had nagged him for thirty-five years. Now it felt possible. He was ready to be rid of it and run to what was next.

Alex was glad Ray Monroe had walked into his shop. He was glad to have met James. In a way, it was as if the clouds had broken, if only just a little.

Alex thought of the Monroes and the conversation that had gone on in the garage hours earlier. The usual topics discussed among men, the rhythmic banter, the gentle ribbing that went on between brothers. A look that had crossed Ray Monroe’s face.

And he thought:
Something is not right.

Twenty

P
ETE WHITTEN walked into Pappas and Sons around two thirty, after the lunch rush, when most of the customers had cleared out. He took a seat on the stool closest to the register, where Alex stood counting cash. Alex stopped, put a stack of bills into the tens bed, and closed the register drawer. He reached across the counter and shook Whitten’s hand.

“Pete.”

“Alex. Long time.”

“Too long.”

It had been over twenty years. The last he’d seen Pete, not counting when he’d seen his photograph in the newspapers, was at the funeral of Billy Cachoris’s father, Lou Cachoris. Mr. Cachoris had died in the eighties, a dozen years after the incident in Heathrow Heights. Some said he deliberately drank himself into his grave after the murder of his son, but that was Greeks being Greek about death; the newspaper said that the cause of his passing was cancer of the brain.

It was at the viewing of Lou Cachoris, held at the Collins Funeral Home on University Boulevard, that Alex had run into Pete, recently married and sporting a wide-shouldered, wide-lapeled suit with a red power tie. His hair was gelled and spiked with Tenax, in the de rigueur “punk” businessman look of the time. If he had been outside he would have been sporting Vuarnets.

“Meet my wife, Anne,” said Pete.

Alex said hello to her, a good-looking blonde, thin waist, thin ankles, wearing something expensive, and introduced them both to Vicki, wearing something off the department store rack. They all seemed aware of their status and where their lives were or were not headed, though they were only in their twenties, and still, Alex was proud to be with Vicki and to show her off. She looked, well,
nicer
than Anne.

Alex had debated going to the service, knowing that he would be on the receiving end of the
mootrah,
the whispers, long faces, and stares from the Cachoris relatives. They all knew he had been in the car that day and had done nothing to help his friend. But he felt that it was proper, due to his relationship with Billy, to pay his respects to the father.

After talking with Pete and Anne, Alex went to the open casket. He kissed the
ikona,
did his
stavro,
and looked down at the corpse of Lou Cachoris. His face seemed to have been flattened by a mallet. Someone had slipped a photograph of a teenage Billy under the sleeve of his burial suit, and Alex impulsively bent forward and kissed Mr. Cachoris’s forehead. It felt as if he were kissing one of the artificial apples his mother had always kept on their dining room table. He said a silent prayer for Billy, and for the way things had gone for the father and son. As he opened his eyes, an uncle or cousin was standing next to him, telling him quietly and firmly that the family didn’t want him there and that it was time for him to go.

He looked around, not seeing Pete or his wife, who had already left the building, and got Vicki’s attention. They walked out together as the priest from Saint Connie’s arrived. Going down the center aisle of the viewing room, Alex felt many gazes directed at him, the boy who had not stood beside his friend against the
mavres,
who now carried the mark, the ugly eye. Out in the lobby, he heard the attendees begin to sing the “Everlasting Be Thy Memory” song, which was supposed to make everyone feel better but instead made them feel sadder than shit. That, at least, was how it felt to Alex whenever he heard that song thereafter. Sadness, and something close to shame.