His apartment’s the kind of dump everyone who looks like him lives in. Barely any furniture. A wooden chair. A card table. Mattress on the floor. A boombox and some tapes. The kitchen’s bare. Glowing red light leaks in from the neon sign above his second-floor window for the pork store downstairs. Charlie’s not sure what people think about when they think about Bay Ridge, but a place like this probably doesn’t come to mind.

  “Where’s what you owe me?” Charlie says.

  “Next week,” Greg says, his voice strained. “Just give me until next week.”

  “Sure, yeah, let me wait like an idiot. I’m an idiot to you, huh?”

  “You’re not an idiot.”

  Two grand’s not a ton but it’s enough, and if Charlie lets Greg slide, no matter whose son he is, word gets out to every shitheel in the neighborhood that he’s gone soft before he’s even really gotten going again in this racket. He never asks what the loan was for or where the money went. He probably shot it straight into his veins, the scumbag. Whatever. Charlie doesn’t feel bad that Greg’s old man cut him off and he needed to come knocking on his door. He’s owed, that’s that.

  “Charlie, please,” Greg says. He says it like this: Cholly, please. Nails on a goddamn chalkboard.

  Charlie plays through his options. One thing’s for certain. Killing the kid wouldn’t be smart. No matter how disgusted Stacks is with Greg, he’s still blood. More than blood. A son. A lost son is still a son. A flop of a son is still a son. In fact, killing Greg might finally give Stacks some sort of purpose when it comes to his outcast youngest, allowing him to forget all the ways the kid had let him down and focus on revenge.

  “What do you have?” Charlie says. “You have something for me.”

  “I don’t, I swear. Next week.”

  “I mean, something else.” Charlie lets go of Greg. He goes over to the boombox on the floor in the corner and sits down next to it. He picks up the stack of tapes and traces his finger over the spines. “Poison, Warrant, Tesla, Ratt, Scorpions, Slaughter, Kix. This is the shit you like? You’re washed-up, kid, huh? This stuff’s been out of fashion for a decade.”

  “It’s what I liked growing up.” Greg sits up. He puts his hands around his neck, seems to confirm with himself that he’s still breathing.

  “That’s sad. And you never made the switch to CDs? CDs are it. Tapes are for idiots.”

  “Yeah, well, I like tapes. CDs are too futuristic. Tapes, they feel like they fit my world.”

  “Your world? That’s funny.” Charlie pauses. “What else you got for me? In lieu of what I’m owed.”

  “Like collateral?”

  “Nah, not like that. Consider it a gift for my trouble.”

  “I don’t have anything, man.”

  “Nothing? No junk squirreled away? No check your mother wrote you so you could make rent?” Charlie sets the tapes down and reaches under his shirt, taking out his piece, just so Greg can see it.

  The punk doesn’t blink. He’s been around guns his whole life. Probably sat down to spaghetti more than once and clinked his fork against a hidden weapon. “You’re not gonna kill me,” Greg says, somehow sweating harder. It’s like a movie trick. Sweat just gushing from his pores, his hair shower-wet. “Sure, my old man hates me right now, but he’ll still dump your ass in a vat of acid.”

  Charlie smiles. “I guess I’ll take your tapes and your boombox. That’ll have to do for now.”

  “Aw, don’t take my music, man. That’s my only company right there.”

  Charlie looks around. Scans the bare floor and the dirty walls. His eyes come back to the stack of tapes. He notices that one of the cases, Poison’s Flesh and Blood, is missing an actual cassette. But there’s something else in there. He puts the gun in his lap, reaches over, and grabs the tape case, knocking the others out of the way. He opens it. A red bowling pin key chain drops out, attached to a small brass key. In yellow curlicue script on the fob is the name of the bowling alley a few blocks away, Ridge Lanes. A blocky faded number six is printed under that, followed by the address and phone number for the dive joint. “This is a key to a locker. What do you have stashed in there?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t even know that key was in there.”

  “I look like about ten different kinds of asshole?”

  “Shit, man.” Greg laces his fingers through his wet hair and lets out an exhausted breath. He looks like he’s been gambling for twenty-four hours and he’s got nothing left. He looks like he just got fired from a substitute teaching gig for being a degenerate. “Man,” he says again, following the exhausted breath with an even more exhausted breath that becomes a flittering laugh.

  “Where’d you learn to talk like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like some burnout hippie.”

  “I mean, I am who I am, you know? I’m how I got made.”

  “How you got made is stupid.”

  “I don’t know squat about that key.”

  “Walk over to Ridge Lanes with me. Let’s see what’s in this locker.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You’re going to. Stand.” Charlie flips the Poison tape case onto the floor, the two halves shattering apart. He puts the locker key in his shirt pocket and grips the piece in his right hand. He gets up and watches as Greg makes a production of rising first to his knees and then to his full height, huffing and puffing the whole time. Greg’s probably about five-five tops, a tiny bastard like his old man, six inches or so shorter than Charlie. Charlie remembers another Post headline about Greg: THE NAPOLEON OF BAD DECISIONS.

  “You want me to go over to Ridge Lanes with you and open this locker?” Greg asks.

  “I got, what?” Charlie says. “Shit in my mouth? I’m speaking another language? Let’s go. Now.”

  Greg shakes his head and lets out one more dramatic sigh. “This is a real spot you’re putting me in here, man.”

  “You don’t even know about this key? It’s a mystery to you? What kind of spot?”

  They leave the apartment, walking down a long dark corridor full of smells from the pork store—sandwiches and sawdust and fried cutlets—and then down the stairs through a heavy black door stickered with ads for nearby car services. Charlie tucks the gun back under his shirt. On the sidewalk, a woman with a shopping cart is collecting soda cans from the trash. It’s late afternoon, the light in the neighborhood gone pink and hazy.

  They walk down Fourth Avenue, crossing over to the other side at Seventy-Sixth Street. Charlie half expects that Greg will bolt, but he doesn’t. He continues to walk and sweat. They don’t talk.

  Ridge Lanes is on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Seventy-Fourth Street. The painted sign out front is decrepit. A bowling ball with two pins crossed over it on one side. The name of the place in the same curlicue script from the keychain in the middle. A small, sloppy panel depicting the view from the neighborhood’s high ridge of New York Bay. Charlie read somewhere once that way back the neighborhood was called Yellow Hook before the yellow fever ruined that. He thinks that Yellow Hook Lanes would be a much better name for a bowling alley.

  They go in. It’s all sad sounds. Balls rolling. Pins clanging. Tinny music over bad house speakers. It’s not crowded but it’s not empty either. Three men standing around a high table with a pitcher of beer look up at them. They know Greg. They laugh. One of them pours beer into three plastic cups. It’s late afternoon. The bowlers of the world are getting drunk.

  Greg leads the way to a wall of blue lockers next to a small arcade full of ancient pinball machines.

  “What are we gonna find in here?” Charlie asks. He takes the key out of his pocket and inserts it into the number six lock.

  Greg is jittery.

  Charlie turns the key and pulls open the locker door. A black duffel bag is crammed into the little space. He pulls it out and drops it to the floor. “What’s this, huh?”

  “Man, it belongs to these guys in Jersey,” Greg says.

  “Why do you have it?”

  “It’s just, like, a thing that happened.”

  Charlie kneels and unzips the bag. He looks inside and smiles. Dough, lots of it. Banded stacks. Bricks of junk. A goddamn windfall if ever there was one. “Jesus Christ, Greg. What is this?”

  Greg thrusts his hands into his wet hair. “Man, you know, we were gonna use it to get back into my old man’s good graces. We knocked off these guys in Jersey.”

  “What guys?” Charlie zips the bag closed and stands. He picks it up, putting his arm through the shoulder strap.

  “Some fucking nobodies.”

  “This belonged to some nobodies?”

  “Yeah. You know the types. Rich kids. Me and Rainey did it. Nothing’s ever been easier. I was gonna pay you what I owed you. I just had to figure some things out. You can’t take it, man. It’s my old man’s now, okay? You take it, I’m fucked, Rainey’s fucked, and you’re fucked.”

  “Your old man knows about it?” Charlie asks.

  “Kind of.”

  “How’s he kind of know?”

  “He doesn’t know, okay? Not yet.”

  “And these rich kids, tell me about them.”

  “Their names are Don and Randy. We blackmailed them. Had this hard drive full of incriminating shit. Their fathers are big-shot politicians.” Greg pauses. “Come on, man. Please. I’ll give you a cut.”

  “Who else you tell about this? Maybe your brother Vito?”

  “I didn’t tell nobody else. Just Rainey knows. Like I said, we were gonna use it to get back in my old man’s good graces.”

  “By stashing it in a bowling alley locker?”

  “The wheels were in motion before you fucked everything up. I worked hard on this scheme. You can’t just stroll in and commandeer everything. I still got a couple of people’s ears, money or no.”

  “I’m gonna hold on to this,” Charlie says.

  “Please, man,” Greg says. “I’m begging you. No. That’s it. That’s my life right there. Take what I owe you. Take double. Take triple. But leave the rest.”

  Charlie’s got the bag balanced on his back, the strap cutting into his shoulder. It’s heavy. It’s the best thing that’s happened to him in a long time. It was the best thing that had happened to Greg in a long time too. He doesn’t feel anything for the guy.

  “Rainey’s gonna be pissed,” Greg says.

  “I’m not worried about Rainey,” Charlie says.

  “Please, dude.”

  Charlie reaches out with his free arm and pats Greg on the elbow. “I knew something good would come of you.”

  Greg sits down on the carpeted floor. The carpet looks like a million little golden mazes. He leans his back against the blue lockers.

  The radio is playing a song that gets blasted at every wedding. Charlie can’t place it. A song idiots line up and dance to.

  Greg cries into his hands. The open locker above him, emptied of its treasure, must remind Greg what it’s like to have nothing where he should have brains. He’s crying and sweating. A bum if ever there was a bum. A place like this, it’s full of losers. He’s just another one. The worst of all.

  “Come on,” Charlie says. “Let’s go.”

  “Go where?” Greg asks.

  “Back to your place.”

  Greg gets up. They walk the few blocks back to his apartment. Greg’s nervous in a different way now. He’s muttering the whole time. Charlie’s not sure what he’s going to do, but he knows he needs to do something. If he leaves with the bag, there’s no way Greg doesn’t call Rainey and his brother Vito straightaway. Rainey’s not much, but Vito’s trouble. Greg keeps begging to split the dough. Fifty-fifty, he’s saying now. He’s shaking, like he needs a fix worse than ever.

  Back in the apartment, Charlie tells Greg to relax. He tells him to go ahead and shoot up. Greg nods. He gets his stuff and sits on the floor. A baggie of dope, a spoon, a lighter, a needle, a tourniquet. He ties off his arm and cooks the junk on a spoon, holding a lighter under it with a shaky hand. He shoots up right there. Charlie watches his eyes roll back. Greg goes limp against the wall. He finally looks peaceful. Charlie wonders if it’s junk from the stash he’s shooting up. Probably. He bets it’s top-notch. Whatever the deal is with these rich Jersey kids, they don’t peddle in street-level shit.

  Greg’s off in junkland now. The needle is in his lap. Lighter and spoon on the floor next to his leg. Charlie has to deal with him. The Brancaccios won’t know it was him. They’re probably waiting for the call that tells them Greg has OD’d.

  Charlie goes into the kitchen and looks under the sink. A spray bottle of multipurpose cleaner. A bucket with some brushes. Stiff sponges and overturned bottles of knockoff-brand dish soap. Behind all that, he finds a tray of rat poison. Blue rocks. He pinches up a few of the rocks and holds them in his palm. He goes over to where Greg is. He crouches next to him and picks up the spoon. Charlie shot up in the old days. He knows the steps. He places the poison on the spoon in a heap with a few drops of water, letting it dissolve, and then uses the lighter to cook it like he’s cooking dope. When it’s transformed into hot liquid, he grabs the needle and sucks it all up. The tourniquet is still on Greg’s arm. He’s dazed. Way out of it. Charlie lifts his arm by the elbow and he uses his free hand to find a clean injection site among the trail of track marks. He finds a spot. The vein’s ready. He shoots the rat poison into Greg’s blood.

  Almost immediately, Greg convulses. Charlie takes the needle out and wipes it down. He wipes the spoon and the lighter down next. He wipes the cassette tapes down. He wipes down everything he remembers touching. Greg is dying, and Charlie’s covering his tracks. When he’s found eventually, it’ll look like suicide. It’ll look like Greg couldn’t take being a junky fuckup anymore so he shot up poison. The cops won’t spend much time hunting for clues.

  Charlie knows he needs to take care of Rainey next. And then he needs to find these Jersey guys. He doesn’t want them to come hunting for what Greg and Rainey stole.

  LILY

  Lily Murphy is standing outside the bodega on the corner of Eighty-Sixth Street and Twenty-Fourth Avenue, around the corner from St. Mary’s church, where she’s due in ten minutes. She’s smoking a cigarette from the fresh pack of Parliament Lights she just bought inside. She had hastily taken off the cellophane and watched it blow away up the sidewalk. With her free hand, she’s drumming her fingers against her thigh. She’s nervous. She’s stupid for doing this. It was a stupid fucking idea. If she could go back a couple of weeks and talk herself out of it, she absolutely would.

  Two weeks ago, to the day, was her twenty-first birthday. She’d come back home to Brooklyn that morning—her mom wanted to throw her a party. She’d just graduated from York College of Pennsylvania in May. Her lease in York had run out, and she was crashing on a friend’s couch. A townie named Christine. They were getting wasted a lot. Most of her friends who’d graduated had moved on, gone back to their hometowns for summer jobs or started jobs elsewhere or, worst of all, had gone off to get married and start families. Lily was floating. The truth was she would’ve preferred to stay in York for her birthday, see some live music and get drunk with Christine, but her mom had begged her to come home. What her mom probably hadn’t realized was that she was coming home coming home. That is, she was putting the little she’d accumulated in her four years at York in her dumpy car and coming back to Brooklyn indefinitely. She and her mom never talk things through. It’s a problem.

  Her mom split up with her former stepfather, Danny, three years ago. Lily was glad she no longer had to return from college to share a space with her squirt of a stepbrother, Bobby. Bobby and Danny are still around, living in the same apartment where they’d all lived previously. Her mom was distressed when Lily arrived and said she was coming home to live because her mom had a new apartment and new boyfriend but also because she was worried that Lily had no prospects. Being back in Brooklyn was, at least, better for work possibilities, Lily argued. Maybe she could get something in the city, temp or otherwise. What was her mother going to do, turn her away?

  Lily moved in. There was a room for her. All her childhood stuff from the old place boxed up and ready to be unpacked. A new single mattress on a cheap, ancient frame. A small window overlooking the alley next to the three-family house on Eighty-First Street where the apartment was, only a couple of blocks from their old place with Danny and Bobby. She sold her car for three hundred bucks.

  The problem is that Lily doesn’t want the kind of jobs her friends are getting. She’s not interested in business or law or medicine or whatever. She was an English major, and she wants to be a writer. Is a writer. She knows she can get a job waiting tables, but she’d done that at a pub in York, McMartin’s, and she’d been a pretty terrible server, the kind that people tipped a lot because they pitied her. What she wanted and wants is time to work on the novel she’s writing.

  Nor does Lily want to find a partner and settle down. She had a bad breakup with a college boyfriend, Micah, and she’s had no real interest in dating seriously since. They’d gone together for over a year, spanning the spring semester of sophomore year to the summer after junior year. The first two months were okay, but then he slowly revealed himself to be a psycho. After they broke up he dropped out of college and moved back to Westchester County to take a job in his father’s landscaping business. He called her a lot for a few months and then quit. She thought it was over. As soon as she came back to Brooklyn, though, he started calling again. Fifteen, twenty times a day on her mom’s new line. She’s not even sure how he got the number. Her mom keeps insisting that all Lily has to do is tell him to back off, insinuating that she’s been wishy-washy or even leading him on. She feels like she’s been clear, but Micah keeps right on bugging her. Lily’s uneasiness about him is clawing at her subconscious constantly. He was never violent, but he came close a few times, and she knows that boys like him often cross the line.

  The birthday party—which was just Lily; her mom; her mom’s new boyfriend, Dave; Father Andy from church; the Santangelos; her high school friend, Martha; and the Pentavecchias—had turned into a brainstorming session. What could an aspiring writer, just out of college, do for work in Southern Brooklyn? That was the question on the table. And, oh, all these motherfuckers took such pleasure in her situation, how lost she was. There were the ones, like Gianluca Santangelo, who aimed to convince her that a good old-fashioned city job couldn’t be beat. He worked for the EPA. “I just hang out half the time,” he said. Laura Pentavecchia suggested getting part-time work at Flash Auto—they were looking for a new secretary. Her mother and Dave said they had an in at some urologist’s office in Dyker Heights, where she could easily get a gig answering phones and shelving charts. None of that was for Lily.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29