I got out of the Chevy and trotted up the porch steps, my keys in my hand. I was fumbling through them when a panel truck roared around the corner from Haines Avenue and scrunched to a stop in front of 214 with the leftside wheels up on the curb.
I looked around. Saw no one. The street was deserted. There’s never a bystander you can scream to for help when you want one. Let alone a cop.
I jammed the right key into the lock and turned it, thinking I’d lock them out — whoever
Big men were running across the lawn. Three of them. One had a short length of pipe that looked to be wrapped in something.
No, actually there were enough guys to play bridge. The fourth was Akiva Roth, and he wasn’t running. He was strolling up the walk with his hands in his pockets and a placid smile on his face.
I slammed the door. I twisted the thumb bolt. I had barely finished when it exploded open. I ran for the bedroom and got about halfway.
Two of Roth’s goons dragged me into the kitchen. The third was the one with the pipe. It was wrapped in strips of dark felt. I saw this when he laid it carefully on the table where I had eaten a good many meals. He put on yellow rawhide gloves.
Roth leaned in the doorway, still smiling placidly. “Eduardo Gutierrez has syphilis,” he announced. “It’s gone to his brain. He’ll be dead in eighteen months, but you know what? He don’t care. He believes he’s gonna come back as an Arab emirate, or sumshit. How ’bout that, huh?”
Responding to non sequiturs — at cocktail parties, on public transportation, in ticket lines at the movie theater — is dicey enough, but it’s
“The thing is, you got in his head. You won bets you weren’t supposed to win. Sometimes you lost, but Eddie G got this crazy idea that when you lost, you were losing on purpose. You know? Then you hit big on the Derby, and he decided you were, I dunno, some kind of telepathic gizmo who could see the future. Did you know he burned down your house?”
I said nothing.
I said nothing.
“Carmo, I don’t think my friend Georgie’s listening. I think he’s dozing off. Give him a wake-up call.”
The man in the yellow rawhide gloves swung a Tom Case uppercut, bringing it from hip level to the left side of my face. Pain exploded in my head, and for a few moments I saw everything on that side through a scarlet haze.
“Okay, you look a little more awake now,” Roth said. “Where was I? Oh, I know. How you turned into Eddie G’s private boogeyman. Because of the syph, we all knew that. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been some barbershop dog. Or a girl who jerked him off too hard at the drive-in when he was sixteen. Sometimes he can’t remember his own address, he has to call someone to come get him. Sad, huh? It’s those worms in his head. But everybody humors him, because Eddie was always a good guy. He could tell a joke, man, you’d laugh until you cried. Nobody even thought you were real. Then Eddie G’s boogeyman turns up in Dallas, at my shop. And what happens? The boogeyman bets on the Pirates to beat the Yankees, which everyone knows ain’t gonna happen, and in seven games, which everyone knows the Series ain’t gonna go.”
“It was just luck,” I said. My voice sounded furry, because the side of my mouth was swelling. “An impulse bet.”
“That’s just stupid, and stupidity always got to be paid for. Carmo, kneecap this stupid sonofabitch.”
“No!” I said. “No, please don’t do that!”
Carmo smiled as if I’d said something cute, plucked the felt-wrapped pipe from the table, and swung it at my left knee. I heard something down there make a popping sound. Like a big knuckle. The pain was exquisite. I bit back a scream and sagged against the men who were holding me. They yanked me back up.
Roth stood in the doorway, hands in pockets, smiling his happy placid smile. “Okay. Cool. That’s gonna swell, by the way. You won’t believe how big it’s gonna get. But hey, you bought it, you paid for it, you own it. Meanwhile, the facts, ma’am, nothing but the facts.” The goons holding me laughed.
