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Andy is telling C.T. that he borrowed money from Kozee, who is a whack-job. Everyone knows it. He’s a DLR—Doesn’t Look Right—and only a wet brain or someone fresh off of a Greyhound bus would ever do business with him. Even the girls who troll the Ohio State North Campus bars, with their tramp-stamps and thongs showing and who shave once a week whether they need to or not, find Kozee a little too outside of the box for what they have in mind.
Kozee fills a doorway wide and high, all muscle, bald head, cold blue eyes, veins ru
And Andy borrowed money from this guy, even after hearing how Kozee had gotten into the unsecured loan business. A Mex named Jeffe had been ru
So nobody is fucking with Kozee. He is, as they say, shitting behind the tall cotton. Kozee is like a mutual fund; he’s involved in enough different enterprises so that if one dries up another usually picks up. Kozee took up a loan-sharking operation a few weeks ago when the mayor of Columbus, a high yellow with movie-star looks and the requisite ability to look competent without having a clue, declared a hapless war on drugs. So Kozee drops drugs and starts lending money at an interest rate that makes Chase Visa look like a benevolent enterprise. You don’t want to be late with Kozee. He doesn’t hire some bitch to call you every day and inquire about your payment. He breaks your door down and beats your ass. And this is the guy Andy goes to for a loan.
Andy’s thing with Kozee, however, is only part of the elephant pissing on C.T.’s morning. Andy’s stupidity isn’t limited to a business transaction with a psycho; no, Andy’s wires are crossed worse than that, as becomes evident when Andy starts talking about Rakkim.
C.T. knows Rakkim, a big guy, an underachiever in his midthirties who for seven years has been delivering pizza for Midnight Crisis, a twenty-four-hour North Campus pizza joint. Midnight Crisis has been described as “employing the unemployable since 1993,” and “unemployable” certainly applies to Rakkim, who up until a couple of months ago was a quiet guy who walked around oblivious, as if listening to an iPod through headphones or something, except that he doesn’t own an iPod. The only time that C.T. had seen him at all animated was in the Midnight Crisis party room at Rakkim’s thirtieth birthday party, which featured cake, liquor and a red-headed hooker from a High Street strip club, who gave Rakkim a lap dance and a blow job while those assembled, including the woman’s husband, howled in beery approval.
According to Andy, however, Rakkim has been acting like a little bitch for the last few months. Some third-string Ohio State tailback had given Rakkim shit about paying for a large pepperoni and slapped him across the face. Rakkim, totally out of character, had jacked the guy’s jaw, breaking it. All of a sudden, Rakkim becomes a legend in his own mind, acting out. Among other things—and this, according to Andy, is the cause of his instant problem—Rakkim hasn’t paid for a nickel bag that Jeff had fronted for him the month before.
C.T. remembers Jeff from when Andy was in high school, a quiet kid who wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful. According to Andy, Rakkim has no complaints with Jeff about the quality of the bag or shorting on the weight; Andy solemnly assures C.T. that Jeff would never do such a thing. Andy is pretending to be oblivious to the eye fuck that C.T. is giving him across the table at him. C.T. wondering, how do you know this? Now, Andy says, Rakkim just won’t pay Jeff, or return his phone calls, he’s just ignoring Jeff, blowing him off.
Jeff, according to Andy, is not a big-time dealer. Like a lot of the Washington Beach guys who deal small and local, he sells only to his friends with just enough markup for his own stash and to make his rent and lights. It’s a fragile street economics model that collapses if someone in the chain doesn’t come through. And Rakkim didn’t come through.
What has C.T. ready to play Whack-A-Mole with his son’s head in Lisa’s is that Andy has interjected himself into this mess. A couple of months ago Jeff, for whom budgeting is a science on the order of quantum physics, had been short for his rent. Andy, being a bro, and not wanting Jeff to interrupt his dealing, had slid a few Benjamins to Jeff. Now Jeff is telling Andy that since Rakkim had stiffed Jeff, Jeff had to stiff Andy. The result was that Andy was short, so…
“I went up to see Kozee,” Andy says. C.T. is looking at Andy across the dining table as if he was a turd floating in C.T.’s coffee. Lisa’s Café is quiet, only the two of them as customers, C.T. listening to this utter bullshit and torn between fatherly love and disgust. He begins mentally ticking off the various problems here—the borrowing of money, the drug involvement, the total fucking stupidity he is hearing come out of his son’s mouth—and shakes his head as he looks out of the front window.
Traffic on Indianola is quiet this early in the morning, and the sun is out, promising the first decent day after months of a bitterly cold and depressingly gray winter. C.T. had his breakfast sandwich cut into neat little squares and it’s now gone, though he ca
C.T. shakes his head and looks at his son. “You remember Brando’s first line in The Godfather, Andy?” C.T. says, looking at him over the top of his coffee cup. Andy shakes his head, says no. C.T. widens his cheeks by grimacing, then does a more than passable Don Corleone, asking Andy, “Why didn’t you come to me first, instead of going to a stranger?”