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Gray keeps his eyes on Jeff but jerks his head at the other guy, the one wearing a black ski mask, and nods toward the closet. Black steps over to the walk-in and begins digging through the mess on the floor and finds the suitcase. He opens it up and hesitates for a second. He doesn’t want to stick his hand into the underwear, which is so filthy that it’s almost twitching, but he does anyway and after rooting through it for a couple of seconds he pulls out a thick wad of bills, folded over with a rubber band around it. He doesn’t say anything, just takes it over and holds it in front of Gray’s line of vision. Gray sticks his chin out and nods, and Black peels off ten bills, making sure that they’re not going to walk out of there with a Michigan roll.
Jeff is terrified. He looks like Linda Blair in The Exorcist, sweating and his eyes all wild. His head is pi
“Fuck me,” C.T. says, leaning back in the driver’s seat of his car, Andy next to him. They’re parked out toward the street in a medical building parking lot off of Cleveland Avenue in Westerville, just a couple of guys who look like they’re waiting for a wife or a girlfriend getting an MRI or Pap smear or some fucking thing. Two ski masks-one gray, one black-are sitting on the console between them. “Fuck me. Who would have figured Jeff for Captain America?”
“Yeah, well Captain America died last year, and Jeff is still alive,” Andy says. “You think he’s awake yet?”
“I du
“Aren’t you glad it wasn’t loaded, though?” Andy asks.
“Not really.” C.T. slips the clip home and ratchets a round into the chamber. “If he had come out from under the covers with a derringer or something we’d both be laid out on a cooling board down at Schoedinger’s right now, instead of taking in the local ambience.” C.T. wipes his hand across his face, inhaling deeply, watching a middle-aged and grossly overweight couple walking in their general direction, looking like a pair of twin dirigibles that have come untethered at a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. “Now,” C.T. said, gesturing, “let’s see what our involuntary benefactor has bestowed upon us.”
Andy hands the wad of bills to his dad. It is, indeed, not a Michigan roll at all, it’s just the opposite, in fact, a roll of fifties on the outside and the rest Benjamins. “How much did you loan Jeff?” C.T. asks.
“Three hundred.”
“You dumb-shit.” C.T. starts pulling bills off the roll. “Would you like that in fifties or hundreds, sirrah?”
“Fifties.” C.T. looks at him. “Please,” Andy says. C.T. counts off six bills. “Next time remember the First National Bank of Dad. You’ll deal with a higher class of lender.” He begins counting the rest of the roll while doing an eerily on-target impression of a stoned-out Jeff. “Gee, Andy, I don’t have any money-five hundred-ya see, dude, Rakkim really fucked me over, man, I don’t have any money-seven hundred-I’m sorry, Andy, but it’s Rakkim’s fault, and my rent is due, and I don’t have any money-nine hundred fifty-maybe you can stall Kozee for a few days, but I’m tapped out, I don’t have any money-one thousand, three hundred, fifty.” C.T. exaggerates shuffling the wad into a neat pile and tapping it, imitating Oliver Hardy. “I should drive back there and shoot that little cunt myself for being a lying sack of shit and causing my heartbeat to race.”
“What are we going to do with the rest of the money?” Andy asks.
“We’re going to donate it to the Sisters of the Poor Claires.” Andy is staring at C.T., incredulously. “What do you think we’re going to do with it? We’re keeping it. Interest on your loan, collection fees…why, by the time we total everything up, Jeff may still owe us some money.” C.T. puts the rest of the money in his pocket and says, “Now look, you need to keep bugging Jeff about what he owes you. If you stop asking him, it’ll look strange, and he’ll wonder about your sudden largesse. But what’s the lesson here?”
Andy shrugs, but answers, “I should have come to you?” C.T. shakes his head. “That, too. But remember what I said about your problem being Jeff? He’s not your friend. He hung your ass out to dry.” C.T. shakes his head again. “Shit. Hippies. Drug dealers. Fucking Kozee. What are you doing with these people anyway? I taught you better than that.”
Andy doesn’t say anything. He has no answer, not one that will make C.T. happy, anyway. He does have a question, though. “What about Kozee?”
C.T. stares out the windshield for a minute, then starts the car up. “I’ll take care of that freak,” he says.
Kozee is laughing.
C.T. doesn’t think he’s said anything fu
For being a whack-job, Kozee has taken really good care of his teeth, C.T. thinks, a few fillings here and there but otherwise everything is straight and white and sparkling. C.T. can see all the way back to Kozee’s second fucking molars, the guy has his mouth open so wide.
Kozee and C.T. are sitting in what used to be a 7-Eleven. It’s a blind pig now, not even officially a store, but there are some chips and loosies on the counter and beer in the cooler, the forty-ouncers that the mulies love and that are sold with impunity 24/7. The candy on the counter appears to get dusted once a year whether it needs it or not. There’s an occasional rustle in the dark corners of the store and in the aisles, and C.T. thinks that at some point a year or two ago Orkin should have been called in.
He and Kozee are behind the counter at a small table, the only people in the store. The rest of Kozee’s crew is outside, because, after all, C.T. is older and soft-looking, and if Kozee had muscle in the room with him, it would look like he couldn’t handle things, right?
Kozee, at the tail end of a laugh, leans forward. “Y’know, everyone says you’re straight up, but you’re out of your mind. Your son-Andy, right?-owes me five, three on the loan and two on the vig. And I’m go
C.T. is trying to keep it calm. It’s been a long day, and it’s not even half over. Worse, he is in danger of missing that all-important one-o’clock feeding. He is thinking of how easy it would be for him to kill this goon; it would cause more problems than it would solve, but he is within a minute or two of past caring. He says, “I don’t like repeating myself-”
Kozee half rises out of his chair, and leans over into C.T.’s face. C.T. can see that it registers with Kozee, just with an eye blink, but still it registers with Kozee that C.T. doesn’t lean back or give ground. “Listen, you old fuck, you don’t tell me what I do. I didn’t get all this-” He pauses for a second, because C.T. is looking around at the half-empty shelves while Kozee is talking to him, looking at the paper on the floor that seems to move on its own, the dust everywhere, and his eyebrows slightly raised, like he’s thinking whoopee-shit, disrespecting him. This pisses Kozee off. He pokes his finger toward C.T.’s chest to get his attention back.