Trust (12 page)

“Go to Aruba?” he had said. “How can I go there, I dunno where the place is? And anyway, we’re running out of money. I better sell a car pretty soon. I better sell three Cadillacs tomorrow night, is what I better do.”

“Well,” she had said, “if you didn’t still insist on always betting on those games that you think you’ve got a lock, we wouldn’t have that money thing, all the money problems. We had enough money, get us through Christmas. And you blew it all on football.”

“Look,” he had said, “just listen to me. There was not a thing wrong with those bets.”

She had snickered. “Nothing wrong with them,” she’d said, “except they were big losers.”

“I had the right teams, those three locked games,” he had said. “The only difference between me losing three thousand dollars—”

“Seven,” she had said absently. “You bet one on the first, and then you lost that. So you doubled up on the second. And when you lost that, you did it again. Add
up one and two and four—it isn’t three you get, chum.”

“I told you I didn’t double down,” Earl had said. “I told you I didn’t do that.”

“Earl,” she had said, “you always do that. And, you always deny it. It’s like you won’t clean the toilet, and I mention it, and you say it isn’t yours. You tell me that you go at work. It’s the same with the betting’s it is with the toilet: it’s your shit but you won’t admit it. If Allen didn’t decide in October, take me that Chicago meeting, we’d’ve been right up shit’s creek, ’stead of just getting by.”

“Now there is a guy,” Earl had said, “there’s a guy that I’d like to be. There is a guy that leads a charmed life. The last time that Allen thought about money, he called up the people who print it. ‘I’m thinkin’ of going to Europe this summer. You guys gonna have enough stock?’ ”

“Yeah,” she had said, “well just keep in mind that he didn’t get it betting on dumb football games.”

“The difference,” Earl had said. “Those were good bets. I already told you that. The difference, you know what the difference was there? All three of those damned games combined? The first one I miss the spread because the Pats don’t kick a field goal, and then don’t score a touchdown, either. Field goal would’ve done it for me, but, no, they don’t do that. The second one, Packers up by two, the fucking spread is four, they’re practically at midfield and the clock is running out, and what do they do, go for first down, let the time expire? No, sir, they don’t, they try the field goal, forty-five yards in the wind,
and they hit the goddamned thing.
The third one, I am in pig heaven, Giants up
by two touchdowns with three minutes left to play, and they have got the ball. Fumble, score. Niners kick off, now I’m up by seven. First fucking play from scrimmage and they throw an interception which the Niners bring back and score. Now it’s dead even. Got a push, okay, the money back. Niners kick off, less’n a minute, another goddamned fumble and another fucking field goal and I tear my ticket up. Those were not stupid bets I made. Those were damned good bets. It’s just, nobody knows, you can’t predict those things.”

“Huh,” she had said, “that’s what you think. I happen, think you’re wrong. I don’t know the guy’s name, and I don’t know where he lives, but the guy who’s got your money, I think he can predict. And he does pretty good at it. Pretty goddamned good, taking money from you of all people, think it’s all on the up-and-up. Must give him a million laughs, too. You think he’s just maybe smarter?”

“Ahh,” he had said, “can it, willya? Now I’m gettin’ all depressed. Isn’t there something we can do, get our minds off all this shit we always seem to be in?”

“You wanna take in a movie?” she had said.

“Nah,” he had said, “for something that costs money, it’s too much like TV. Just leave me alone, I guess. I’ll get over it. ’S funny, though. When I was in, especially after about a year, and I still had a long way to go, and it just hit me, you know? That I’d been in the can all this time, and I’d stood up pretty damned good, and I still wasn’t even halfway, my release date. It seemed like I’d been in there all my life, you know? Doing the same things every day, wearing the same fucking clothes. Seeing the same fucking people, half of which’re fucking animals, eating the same fucking
food. When I was playing the ball there, about six weeks before the first practice, I used to go on the wagon, you know? No more beer for me. Go out running every morning. Lift the weights and all. Watch the diet, get my sleep, ‘got to report in shape,’ And then all through the season, I’d have two beers after games, never more’n two, and none the day before a game. I left more parties early? And it worked like a charm. And I hated it, and the only way I got through it was by knowing that when the grass started turning green, I could stop. Go and relax. So it was what? Five months? Six months at the most, and I was having fun. Prison I was not having fun. And it was not six months I’d been in there. It was a fucking year. And I wasn’t even close to having fun again.

“ ‘If I can just last it out,’ I used to think. “If I can just get through this, just make it to the end, someday I’ll get out and I’ll have fun again.’ Then I’d think: ‘Maybe I made a mistake. I must’ve made a mistake. I heard it wrong in court or something. They got the papers wrong. Or maybe I read them wrong.’ And I’d get up off my bunk and go through them again, and nothing’d changed. It was still five to seven, and the minimum time to be served was still two and a half, and I’d still done only one. Jesus, it was discouraging.”

She had frowned. “Two and a half,” she had said. “Two years and a half? I thought you only did less’n two.”

He had snorted. “Only less’n two,” he had said. “Nobody who’s done any real time says ‘only.’ I did nineteen months. They changed the guidelines for nonviolent crimes, ’less they were mob related. Which course mine was, but I wasn’t sentenced under that
part. It didn’t exist, I went in. So I came under the new ones, and I got out about five months early. Which of course meant at least half the guys on the street thought I turned snitch in the can, and I’m lucky I wasn’t clipped.”

“Didn’t they know, on the street?” she had said. “Didn’t they understand that?”

“Honey,” he had said, “you really want a tough assignment for yourself sometime, you try explaining, a guy with a gun, on a contract out on your ass, that the reason you’re out is that
they
changed the rules. It’s not because you turned rat. This is very difficult, a very hard thing to do. The guy with the gun is not thinking about Federal Prison Regulations. He is not even thinking about making you dead. As far as he’s concerned, he’s past that. You are whacked. Now the question on his mind is: Where’s he dump the body? Are you too big, the trunk? His mind’s not on regulations. It’s on practical things. The practical problems he’s got. I knew a guy in the jar that said he did a few guys. I think he was telling the truth, too. And he said to me: ‘The worst thing, the very worst thing, you got to take a guy out, is when he figures it out. What you’re there for. Well, it’s natural, I guess. He tries to talk you out of it. He will not shut up. He simply will not shut up. I did a guy in a bar once. Right inna fuckin’ bar there. S’posed to do him, the woods. And why did I do what I wasn’t supposed to? Because he wouldn’t shut up.’

“No,” Earl had said, “your average hit man, from you he does not want a lot of conversation. It’s a very tricky thing. I doubted I could pull it off. So the first thing I did, I got out, was go around and see a man
and have a talk with him. Explain the situation, so nobody acted hasty, before they knew the facts. And he believed me, thank the good Lord for that, and His Blessed Mother, too, because I know for a fact he ditched two contracts on me from some real quick-tempered guys.

“But you know something?” he had said. “I still, I
still
, even after I was out and my ass was reasonably safe, I still wasn’t having any fun. I didn’t expect, you know, what I had. Before they caught up with me there. But, Jesus, at least some, now and then. It’s hard when you haven’t got money.”

“I know what we could do,” she had said. “I know exactly what we can do. You’re not going home. I can’t go home either. Us two, we just don’t exist. But I can still cook. I know how to cook. And I’ll fix us Thanksgiving dinner. Right here.”

“We haven’t got the stuff,” he had said. “Don’t you have start all that shit about a month ahead? My mother always did. I bet she still does. The onions and the stuffing, the soupy mashed potatoes and the goddamned squash. All that stuff. Relishes. Christ, I hated those relishes. Looked like a monkey threw up in a dish. Green stuff and red stuff and yellow stuff, and brown, all swimming around in this juice that looked like you stepped in cat puke or something. Supposed to dip the Ritz crackers in it. Yummy, yummy, yummy.”

“Oh,” she had said, “you can have all that stuff, if you want. But you don’t have to. We’ll keep it simple. Just a nice, small, frozen turkey. Not a chicken. A real turkey. But a small one. Eight, ten pounds. And some nice thick mashed potatoes, and some dressing and green beans. And maybe, this once, two whole bottles
of wine. Wouldn’t that be nice? It’ll really be nice, Earl, you know? And then ice cream for dessert. We’ll get some celery, and some dip, and a couple six-packs of beer, and you can turn on the TV, and watch the … Lions, is it?”

“The Lions,” he had said, “always play Thanksgiving.”

She had nodded. “My father always watched. I thought that that was them.” She had waggled a finger at him. “But no betting on them, baby. You can’t watch, you’re gonna bet.”

“Huh,” he had said. “I never watched the games I bet on. ’Cept the ones I was in. Too damned nerve-racking. Besides, I got no money to bet, and Zack won’t let me have credit no more.”

“Oh,” she had said, “this is going to be fun. The market opens at eight, right? We’ll both get up early and be waiting there, when they open the door. And we’ll both do the shopping, quick like a bunny, and then you can drop me back here. I’ll put the turkey in the fridge to thaw, and the next morning when we get up, I’ll put the bird in the oven. Show those relatives of ours: we can do things too.”

He arrived at work on Wednesday twenty minutes later. “It was Penny,” he said. “My crazy girlfriend. Last night she gets the wild idea in her head, all of a sudden, nothing on earth is going to be worth doing if we don’t have Thanksgiving dinner. So, practically still dark out, we get up this morning and go to the store. The milkman’s still making deliveries? That’s how early it is. And as soon as it opens, we go in, and we fill up the fuckin’ carriage with more stuff’n I ever bought in my life. The smallest turkey we could find
weighs almost fifteen pounds, for God’s sake. We’ll be eating it forever. And I drive her back home, help her carry it in, and that’s why I’m getting here late.”

Waldo forgave him. “You should marry that girl, Earl,” he said. “She’s a very good-lookin’ head, and the two of you get along good. This hell-raisin’ stuff is great when you’re young, but nobody stays young forever. Settle down, pal, you still got the choice. Settle down, and have a nice life.”

Right after lunch, Earl called the apartment to find out how Penny’s hearing on the marijuana charge had turned out, but he got no answer. He imagined her pacing the hallways of the Brighton-Allison District Courthouse, chain-smoking stale Newports and swearing to herself. He called her again at 2:30, getting no answer, and then at 3:10, with the same result. Shortly before 3:30 a woman about nineteen with a bleached-blond boy cut, white vinyl Eisenhower jacket, tight, faded blue jeans, and low white vinyl boots with chromium chains across the insteps made what he called “a dreamboater” visit to the metallic maroon ’sixty-five Chevy Impala hardtop that occupied the featured place on a platform in the center of the lot. She stood beneath the red, white, and blue plastic pennants that flapped in the breeze over the car and admired the highlights of the sixty-dollar paint job Waldo had bought to conceal poor repair of serious collision damage to the right front quarter panel and door. She did not ask to sit in the car, and did not deduce, when they were up on the platform, that Earl had a reason for showing her the clean interior only from the driver’s side—he was not sure she would be sharp enough to notice that the passenger-side door was badly out of
line, and made grinding, groaning noises when it was opened and shut, but he saw no point in taking chances.

“I figured,” he said to Fritchie, when she left at 4:15, “that even though she obviously doesn’t have the money, her boyfriend might. Or her father. And she might make such a pain in the ass of herself with that horrible sharp voice of hers, one of them might loan her the money, just to shut her up.”

“Be all right if they don’t decide to come down here, see it for themselves,” Fritchie said. “Maybe even want to drive it, or something. That’ll crease it, if they do.”

“Oh, come on,” Earl said. “The tires’re new. There’s no tread wear, tip them off. It’s not like I’m gonna let ’em take out One-twenty-eight or something, and you don’t even notice that shimmy till you get up to fifty or so.”

Fritchie laughed. “I can’t help it,” he said, “but I love it when Waldo gets gypped on something. He brought that bucket in here from the auction down at Bridgeport, and he’s really pleased, himself. ‘Fifty bucks I got this for. Whaddaya think of that? Not a speck of rust on the thing. This is a Florida car.’

“ ‘I think you got took, boss,’ I tell him. ‘What’d they use to paint over that filler, huh? Finger paint like my kids get in school?’

“ ‘Ahh,’ he said, ‘I’ll ship it over Mikey’s there. He’ll make her shine like new.’ So naturally I’m the one who has to drive it over, but first I have to take Davey over the tire place, West Newton—he’s getting snow treads on his wife’s car, and he’s gonna drive me back here. So we’re running a little bit late there, and I take her out on Route Nine, and the fuckin’ thing starts to
shake its guts out, soon’s I get over forty. I’m fighting the wheel like it’s a goddamned gorilla, and the goddamned gorilla is winning. So I say to him: ‘Hey, you follow me, Mikey’s, stay pretty close on my tail, right? See if what I think’s going on, see if you see anything.’ So he does that, and we get to Mikey’s and he tells me exactly I expected. ‘She runs like an old dog I had that got hit on the ass. Sideways, you know? You go in a straight line, that baby, right down the damned center-line, the front wheel’s a foot closer to it’n the back wheel behind it is. That rat just ain’t tracking right.’