(2004) Citizen Vince (26 page)

They park at the far end, in the dark dark, outside a one-story row of motel doors—as the headlights roll across the face of the building, Vince can see the doors are marked with odd numbers between one and nine. There are no other cars in the gravel lot.

“Nine,” Lenny says. He nods toward the end of the building. “Knock once and then put your hands on your head. I’ll open the door and then you go in.”

“No password? You ought to have a password.”

“Shut up, Vince.”

They climb out of the car. Vince closes the door behind him and walks across the parking lot, the gravel crunching beneath his feet. He goes over it in his mind: the first part is going to be the toughest. Make it through the night and you’re home. Vince stands in front of the door, calms his jangly nerves, and knocks once. Then puts his hands on his head. From behind, Lenny reaches around him and opens the door. It swings into a dark room, lit only by a lamp on an end table. He pushes Vince inside.

They step into a narrow motel living room—a couch, a chair, a TV, and an end table—connected to an even smaller kitchenette, a Formica table, and one kitchen chair half on the living room
carpet. There are two closed doors off the living room, most likely leading to a bedroom and a bathroom.

“Sit,” Lenny says. Vince sits in the chair. Above the couch is a strangely calming painting of a mountain landscape, with a line of black trees in the foreground. It’s one of those paintings you can’t quite get your arms around because the perspective is all fucked up—the foreground trees less focused than the mountains they shield. Still, he likes the trees. You could hide forever in a forest of fuzzy trees.

The bedroom door opens then and out comes Ray Sticks, wearing his dark slacks and a dress shirt open to a V-neck T-shirt. No shoes. He slicks back his black hair. “Hiya, chief.” Ray leaves the door open behind him and it takes a second for Vince’s eyes to adjust before he sees, in the windowless bedroom, on the bed, huddled against the headboard…Beth. Her cast is gone and she’s holding that red arm tenderly against her side. Her left eye is bruised.

“He broke my arm!” she says, and starts crying.

Vince’s head falls forward to his chest—his
plan
suddenly seeming naive and reckless. Goddamn it.

Ray looks into the bedroom and back. “Technically, I rebroke her arm.”

Vince forces himself to open his eyes. He looks past Ray into the bedroom. “Are you okay?” he asks.

She nods once. Pats her hair down and sets her face in anger toward Ray.

Vince says, “Look, I’m not giving you anything until I see her walk out that door.”

“That door?” asks Ray. He stands above Vince, smiling.

But it is Lenny who begins pacing around the room and speaking: “Look, Vince, I told you from the beginning this could go easy or it could go hard—”

Ray looks back at Lenny, then smiles at Vince, goes to the kitchen, and opens the refrigerator.

“And you chose the hard way,” Lenny says. “I didn’t want—”

“You don’t need her,” Vince says to Ray’s back. “Let her go.”

Lenny slaps him. Vince’s face barely moves. “Hey! Up here! I’m talking to you, motherfucker!” Lenny says.

But Vince continues to address Ray. “I mean it. I won’t tell you anything until she’s gone.”

Ray turns and smiles over his shoulder. “Sure. Whatever you say, chief.” He grabs two apples, a paring knife, and a dish towel, and returns to the living room.

Lenny looks from Vince to Ray and back. “What the hell’s going on here? Why are you two talking to each other? Talk to me.”

Ray ignores him. He spreads the dish towel out on the coffee table, sets the apples and the knife down on it. He sits down on the couch.

Vince can’t take his eyes off the knife. “Let her go and you can have the mailman. He wants to talk to you. He wants to steal more cards.”

“So call him,” Ray says. He picks up one of the apples and the knife. “Invite him over.”

“I can’t tonight. It’s too late. He unhooks his phone. I’ll call him in the morning. We meet at this restaurant. I’ll take you there.”

Ray begins slicing the peel off one of the apples. “I don’t know. Morning’s a long time away, chief.”

Vince leans forward. “I got some money.”

Ray laughs. “Yeah, your girlfriend was saying something about that. Said you two were gonna buy her a house.”

Vince tries not to show his deep disappointment.

Ray wipes the knife blade on the towel. “We decided we’d go down tomorrow and withdraw the money. Have a little party.” He winks.

Lenny stares at Ray. “What the hell’s going on here? What’s everyone talking about? This is my deal now.”

Ray stands, reaches in his pocket, and comes out with a twenty-dollar bill. “Go get us something to drink.”

Lenny looks from Ray to Vince to Beth and back. “It’s three-thirty in the morning. Where am I supposed to find something to drink?”

Ray just stares at him, until finally Lenny grabs the twenty and starts to turn for the door. Ray grabs Len’s shoulder, reaches into his coat to his waistband, pulls out the gun he was packing, a black semiautomatic, and puts it in the back of his own waistband. “I don’t want you to shoot your balls off,” he says.

Lenny looks briefly at Vince—a shudder of understanding, maybe—but he goes out for booze anyway.

“That guy’s a fuckin’ idiot,” Ray says when Lenny’s gone. “How could you work with such morons?”

“You take what you get.”

“I guess.” Ray walks to the bedroom door, the knife still in his hands. Beth shrinks beneath his eyes. “Honey, your boyfriend and I are gonna talk awhile. You get some rest.” Then he closes the bedroom door and sits on the back of the couch, his feet on the cushions, so that he’s still above Vince. They stare at each other.

“She’s nice,” Ray says.

Vince looks back at the painting behind Ray, those black trees inscrutable.

“You know who I am?” Ray points to his own chin with the knife.

“Yeah,” Vince says. “I know who you are.”

“Say it.”

“Ray Sticks.”

Ray smiles at the sound of his name, like a thirsty man getting a drink. “So you
are
from back there.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s what Lenny said, but I just thought he was full of shit. So who were you? Would I know you?”

“No,” Vince says.

“You a mechanic? Work in somebody’s crew back there?”

“I stole credit cards. Same as here. I wasn’t connected.”

“Oh.” Ray is disappointed. “That’s too bad.” He sits back on the couch and considers Vince. “So you’re nobody, but then you come here—and you know a few things…how to play cards. All of a sudden you’re the man, right? King of the gangsters.” He laughs. “Shit.”

Vince is quiet. He watches Ray shave the peel off the apple, just taking the thinnest layer of rind, so that the white apple underneath is still tinted red. Ray looks up, his thick eyebrows arching. “I hate peels. I don’t like crust on my sandwiches either.”

He finishes one apple, then sets it down—raw and exposed—and starts on the other one. “So what do you think about this place?” Ray asks.

“Spokane?” Vince shrugs. “I like it.”

“No, you don’t. You can’t.”

“I like it a lot.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah.”

“You wanna know what I hate most about this place?” Ray asks.

“What?”

“The pizza. You can’t eat it. It’s a fuckin’ crime. I mean, come on. Where the fuck do you go for a slice around here?”

“You get used to it,” Vince says. “I’ve kind of developed a taste for deep-dish.”

“No! Come on! How can you eat that shit? It’s pepperoni on French toast. You can’t get used to a thing like that. What kind of place is it, you can’t get a fuckin’ slice of pizza? Or a sandwich? You ask for a fuckin’ cheesesteak in this town, they look at you like you’re askin’ ’em to grill a fuckin’ baby.”

Vince smiles in spite of himself. “You ever try to catch a cab?”

Ray’s hands go to the top of his head. “I been in both of ’em.”

They laugh.

“And the fuckin’ drivers!” Ray is incredulous.

Vince nods. “I know. I know. It’s like a whole town of old people. Even the young people drive like old people.”

“I never seen anything like it. So polite, it makes you wanna puke. I’m here a week, I pull up to one of them…
four-way stops
. What the fuck is that?”

Vince laughs. “I know. I know.”

“Four assholes sittin’ there, each with their own fuckin’ stop sign, everyone staring at everyone else like it’s a damn tea party. Sit there ten minutes mouthin’ to each other, ‘You go. No, you go. No, I insist. No, really.’ I tell you, chief, one of these days I’m gonna drive up to one of them four-way stops, pull out my gun, and shoot every one of them motherfuckers in the head.”

Vince is smiling, nodding. Glances at the bedroom door.

“And what about—”

Vince is up and across the room before Ray can finish the sentence, and while he’s quickly disappointed, he’s also duly impressed by how quickly the big man uncoils and comes off the back of the couch with a glint of stainless, and the sharpness of the point of that paring knife in his cheek, just below his eye, and it’s that pain and the force of Ray’s big hand on his throat, squeezing, that convinces Vince to let go of Ray’s shoulders and allow himself to be pushed back into his chair.

Vince coughs and feels his tender throat, then runs his hand over the slash in his cheek. It’s small, little more than a nasty shaving cut. And yet he remembers the tip of the knife against his cheekbone, just below his eye socket, and the sound of his own bone being scraped makes him shiver.

Ray stands above him, holding the knife, a look of sheer boredom on his face. “Let’s see.”

Vince pulls his hand away and shows the big man the cut.

“I missed your eye. You’re lucky.”

Ray stands there a minute more, looking around the room. “Okay,” he says, as if he’s glad they’re through with that silliness.

He wipes the spot of red off the point of the knife, and then sits on the back of the couch again. He halves, then quarters, then eighths the apple, tosses a piece to Vince, who catches it. Ray looks like he forgot something for a moment. “Where were we?

“Oh.” Ray smiles and claps his hands. “What about the broads? Have you ever seen such ugly broads? I don’t know whether I’m supposed to bang ’em or have ’em chase sticks.”

LENNY COMES BACK
with a three-quarters-full bottle of Kahlúa.

“What the fuck is that?” Ray asks.

“Kahlúa. It’s a coffee liqueur.”

“You brought me chocolate fuckin’ milk?”

“You can make White Russians. Or…them mudslides.”

“Mudslides.”

“Yeah.”

“Mudslides.” He looks at Vince. “We’re gonna fuckin’ make mudslides.”

Lenny looks from Vince to Ray. “I couldn’t find any open stores. It’s four in the morning, Ray.”

“So where’d you get this?”

“I drove to my house.”

Ray looks to Vince and shakes his head.
You believe the shit I have to put up with?
He opens the Kahlúa and sniffs it. Takes a drink. “Mudslides?”

“Okay, Vince, here’s how it’s gonna go down,” Lenny starts. “You’re gonna set up a meeting with the mailman. Introduce us.”

But neither Ray nor Vince even bothers to look at him.

“So did they give you that name?” Ray asks. “Vince? That’s a good name.”

“I picked it,” Vince says.

“So what’s your real name?”

“Marty.”

“Yeah, Vince is better. I’m supposed to be Ralph LaRue. You imagine? Ralph fuckin’ LaRue? Come on. I tried it awhile, but I couldn’t do it.”

“You get used to the new name.”

“I ain’t changing my name for these fuckers.” He thinks of something else. “Hey, what kind of training you get for that baking job?” Ray offers the bottle of Kahlúa.

Vince takes it. “Six months at the community college.”

Ray cocks his head. “So what’s that like?”

“Making donuts? I like it,” Vince says.

“You takin’ a percentage?”

“No.”

“Laundering money?”

“No.”

“Straight skim?”

“No,” Vince says. “I just…make donuts.”

Ray cocks his head. “I don’t get it.”

“It’s…rewarding. What about you? What are you supposed to be?”

Ray eats an apple slice. “They got me in fuckin’ diesel repair classes.”

Vince smiles.

“Me. Repairing the fuckin’ big rigs, right? Can you see that?
It’s your fuckin’ drivetrain, motherfucker.
Right?” Ray shrugs. “Turns out I ain’t much of a student. My teacher said I got bad concentration. Gave me a fuckin’ D.” He takes the bottle back from Vince. “Guy was a prick.”

Lenny has been standing with his hands on his hips. “Okay, if you two are done catching up, maybe someone can tell me what the hell’s going on here.”

“Sit down,” Ray says, sliding a skinned apple slice into his mouth.

“No. You listen to me, Ray.”

“Sit. Down.”

“No. I don’t know what you think—”

“Sit. The fuck. Down.”

Lenny’s face reddens. “Goddamn it, Ray!”

“Lenny,” Vince says quietly.

“No! I’m tired of this. I brought you in on this, Ray. This is my thing.”

Ray stalks across the room, puts his forearm in Lenny’s neck, and pushes him backward, against the wall. Then he plants the paring knife against his shoulder and drives it slowly in, just above the collarbone. Lenny squawks and claws for the knife, protruding from his left shoulder. His legs kick at Ray’s shins and he makes high-pitched peeps as he tries to get his hand on the handle.

Ray pulls the handgun from his waistband and points it back at Vince, who has started toward the two men. Vince stops. Then Ray puts the barrel of the gun in Lenny’s mouth. “Shut the fuck up.”

The squawking stops.

“Where is my twenty bucks?”

“Wha…Wha?” Lenny mutters with the gun barrel in his mouth.

“I give you twenty bucks, you come back with a half-gone bottle of chocolate milk from your house? Where the fuck is my twenty bucks?”

Lenny winces as he pulls the twenty from his pocket. Hands it to Ray.

Ray puts the money is his pocket. He pulls the gun out of Lenny’s mouth. “Okay. Listen. You make another sound, I’ll shoot you. You understand what I’m sayin’? I’m tryin’ to talk to this man here. I’m tryin’ to figure out this whole credit-card deal and I need you to be quiet.”