Bust (27 page)

The store was quiet again. Moving quickly, Bobby hoisted himself up onto the counter so he was sitting next to the register and reached into the open cash tray. Then he wheeled himself to the back room and found some more money in the old woman’s pocketbook. The whole score only came to a thousand bucks and change. It wasn’t as much as if he’d gotten them to open the safe, but what could you do? He’d just have to make it up on the next job and the job after that. He put the money and the Uzi into his gym bag, closed the zipper all the way, and, with the smell of cordite rocking his brain, wheeled out into the twilight.

Heading across the street, Bobby saw the cops get out of the squad car before the cops saw him. He went for the Uzi again when he saw another cop across the street aiming a gun at him, yelling “Stop, police!” Shit, why’d he put the Uzi away? He had his hand in the gym bag when the first bullet went into his leg. He laughed, didn’t even feel it, but the bullet sent his wheelchair out of control. The laundry truck, shit, it was coming right at him.

He was one of those “There but for the Grace of God” guys; one of those guys that thought if you went out of your way to ignore someone else’s bad shit then the same bad shit was liable to boomerang and smack you in the head.

J
OHN
R
IDLEY
,
Everybody Smokes in Hell

Max was on line at the checkout counter at Grace’s Marketplace on Third Avenue, buying some vegetables to steam for dinner, when he heard these two young guys talking.

The bigger guy said, “Did you hear what happened on the West Side?”

Max’s hangover had kicked in big time and, although the guy was talking in a normal tone, it sounded like he was screaming directly into Max’s ear with a bullhorn.

“No,” the other guy said, sounding just as loud. Max had taken two Advils, but they were doing shit.

“This afternoon,” the big guy said, “couple hours ago. This guy in a wheelchair robs this liquor store on Amsterdam Avenue and loses it. He goes in with an Uzi and starts shooting up the place — kills the owner and his wife.”

Now Max was straining, listening closely, as the guy went on, explaining how the guy was run over and crushed to death by a laundry truck.

“That’s it,” the other guy said, shaking his head. “I’m moving to fuckin’ Jersey.”

As the guy went on, talking about something else, Max said, “Excuse me,” then more softly because of his aching
brain, “excuse me, I just overheard what you were saying — about this guy in a wheelchair.”

“Yeah,” the guy said. “Pretty fucked up, huh?”

“You didn’t, by any chance, hear what his name was, did you?”

“Yeah, it was, I don’t know — something Spanish. Ramirez, Rojas...”

“Could it have been Rosa?”

“Maybe,” the guy said. “I wasn’t really paying attention too much to that part.”

He was staring at Max like Max was some wino or something. Max didn’t get it. Before he left the office, didn’t he have all those Altoids? There was a goddamn guarantee on the packet, wasn’t there?

Max left the vegetables in the shopping cart, and jogged back to his townhouse, nearly out of breath when he got there. His heart, fuck, it felt like it was about to explode.

He turned on the TV, expecting to find out that it was all a big mistake, that there were two crazy cripples with Spanish names in this city. But, sure enough, the reporter, live at the scene, said, “... police are releasing no other information about the gunman right now, but we have learned that Robert Rosa was an ex-convict who had been arrested several times for gun possession, armed robbery, and related charges. He was not married and it is not known whether he has any relatives.”

At first, Max was elated, but then he realized that his troubles were far from over. The police were probably searching Bobby’s apartment at this very moment. It was only a matter of time until they found that cassette.

Max turned off the TV and sat on his living room sofa in silence, the only noise coming from the refrigerator buzzing in the kitchen. At any moment, the police would come to the door, demanding to be let in.

He had to see Angela. He’d been thinking about her all last night, and most of the day today, wondering what was going on in her head. He knew she still loved him or why would she have lied to the police to protect him? Sure, she was covering her own ass as well, but she could have done that just as easily by letting him burn. Unless she figured he’d turn on her if she turned on him. Which he would have.

He needed another drink. He chugged a quarter bottle of Stoli then, thinking
That was the problem, never should’ve switched to whiskey
, left the townhouse and headed toward Third Avenue to hail a cab. Was he staggering a little? Nah, just nerves, that’s all. It was all perspective, how you looked at the picture. He muttered, “
So you had a wee dram.”
Then, horrified, he thought, What was that? Scottish? Jesus. “Coulda been a contender.” Fuck, get a grip.

“Columbia Presbyterian Hospital!” he shouted at the driver.

The twenty-minute cab ride sobered Max up a little, but at the hospital he was still half-drunk and it took him a while to find Angela’s room.

A cop on duty recognized Max immediately.

“Hold it right there, Mr. Fisher.”

The cop was short, heavyset, with curly hair. He stood up with his hands on his hips, sticking out his chest.

“I wanna see Angela Petrakos,” Max said.

“Yeah, I bet you do, but I can’t let you in there.”

“Why not? I’m not charged with anything.”

“I still can’t let you in there.”

“Did someone tell you I couldn’t see her?”

The officer thought this over for a second then said, “No. But I still think it’s best.”

Max was in that weird zone of half hung over and feeling like he was seeing everything through glass, very
dirty glass. For a mad moment, he was ready to take a swing at the guy.

He said, “Unless you want to embarrass yourself when I start making phone calls to your boss, I would suggest you let me inside there. The woman works for me, for Christ’s sake.”

Max was trying to summon up the old powerbroker Max, before his life went in the toilet, and maybe it was working. He thought the cop looked a little worried. Nothing like sticking it to the boys in blue to restore the old Max Fisher confidence.

The cop said, “All right, you can talk to her, but just for a couple of minutes, and I’m comin’ in there with you.”

Max was expecting Angela to look like hell, but it was just the opposite. She was sitting up in bed, watching TV, and she looked almost normal. She wasn’t wearing as much makeup as usual, but she was wearing bright red lipstick and her hair was nice. Her breasts looked great too. Who said hospital gowns weren’t sexy? He looked over at the cop and had a feeling the guy was thinking the same thing.

Looking back at Angela’s face, Max couldn’t tell if she was happy to see him or not. He had to be very careful now.

“Surprise,” Max said.

Angela continued to stare at Max with a blank expression, then she smiled slowly. But Max still couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

“What are you doing here?” she said.

“I just thought I’d stop by and pay a little visit,” Max said, “see how you were doing.”

The cop was standing in the corner of the room, watching them.

“I’m doing okay,” Angela said.

“Yeah, I can tell that,” Max said. “I mean it. You look
dynamite.” He nodded toward the TV. “I see you’re watching the news. So I guess you saw about the robbery. That guy in the wheelchair. Crazy, huh?”

Angela nodded slowly.

“So... you should be feeling a little better, I’d think. Not out of the woods yet, but things are looking better.”

“The doctors said I was really lucky,” Angela said. “If the bullet in my chest had been an inch over to the right I’d probably be dead. They still think it’s a miracle I made it with all the blood I lost.”

Max’s vision was still blurry and it was hard to concentrate. He knew there were things he wanted to say to Angela, important things, but he couldn’t think of what the hell they were.

“So is that why you came here, just to see how I was?”

“No,” Max said, “I also came here to tell you that I miss you — at the office I mean. I miss having you around, and I miss... I miss a lot of things about you.”

“The doctors told me if I keep improving I might be out of here by next week.”

“That’s terrific,” Max said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the cop raise his arm and point at the watch on his wrist. “Look, I just want you to know that I appreciate your sticking up for me. It showed me that deep down you really do care. It meant a lot. Everyone else at the company walked out on me, pretty much. First sign of trouble and it was adios, amigo, sayonara, nice knowing you. But you were loyal, and...” He felt something swelling up inside him, the same feeling that had hit him that night years ago in the bar of the Mansfield Hotel. And look how well that had worked out for him. But, hey, sometimes, you just feel what you feel, and you’ve got to go with it, or whatever.

“I know none of this was your fault,” he said, some of the words slurring, “and I just want you to know that I
don’t blame you for anything. The thing is I can’t stand living in that big house all by myself. What I’m trying to say is, when you get out of here, I think we should get married.”

Angela looked shocked. Her mouth sagged open. “Are you serious?”

“Oh, I know it’ll be hard for a while,” Max said. “I mean, getting over everything and everything. But eventually we’ll get used to it.”

“But the police are still—”

Max waved his hand dismissively, knocking into some big tube. “I have a good lawyer, and I’ll have him handle your case. And then when it’s all behind us, we can do everything we talked about doing — travel, go places, see things. What do you say?”

“I can’t believe you’d propose to me after... after everything,” Angela said, and he thought she looked like she was about to start crying.

“Say yes,” Max said. “I hope I didn’t have to schlep all the way up to Harlem for nothing.”

She still wasn’t answering. He was about to get on his knees, do the proposal in style, when she closed her eyes, maybe to squeeze back tears, and said, “Of course I’ll marry you. Why wouldn’t I?”

That night Max made a decision. If he somehow got through all of this, he was going to change his life — make up for everything he’d done. Innocent people had died and, while he knew it wasn’t all his fault, he also knew he was at least partly responsible. He was a stand-up guy, could take some blame. He was going to quit booze and start going to a synagogue. Better yet, he’d read that damn Zen book, if he could ever find it. Yeah, that’s right, to hell with Judaism, he was going to finally see what this Buddhism shit was all about. Maybe there was something
to meditating — maybe sitting Indian-style, thinking about nothing, was the answer to all his problems. He didn’t care what he had to do, he was going to make big changes in his life and things were going to be different.

Max woke up feeling refreshed. His memories of the previous day were a little foggy, but he remembered proposing to Angela. Eh, what the hell? Maybe it wasn’t something he would have done sober, but that didn’t make it a mistake. After all, what were the odds of him having two fucked up marriages in a row? Maybe marrying Angela would be the best thing that had ever happened to him.

After he showered and shaved, he took a walk over to the newsstand around the corner and bought a copy of the Sunday
Post
. He felt great, whistling the song from
The Bridge on the River Kwai
, then he looked at the paper and the screaming headline PERVERT! Under the headline was a big picture of Bobby Rosa. He read the article standing in front of the newsstand. There were two full pages, all about Rosa. The police had discovered hundreds of pictures in his apartment of women — women in bikinis, women in their underwear, peeping tom shots taken through windows, upskirt shots, down-blouse shots. Many of the pictures were hung up on the walls in his bedroom and bathroom, but the police had found boxes of additional pictures in his closet, including the ones of Max and Angela having sex. But the most shocking news was that the police had found a gun in Bobby’s apartment that had been used in the Riverside Park shooting. Max couldn’t understand this at all. He knew Bobby had some screws loose, but the maniac had gone biblical. Max definitely didn’t feel like whistling anymore.

The whole thing was so confusing now, Max had a throbbing headache. He bought copies of the
Times
and
the
Daily News
, but their stories basically repeated the same information as the articles in the
Post
. The only good news, as far as Max was concerned, was that there was no mention in any of the papers of the police finding the incriminating cassette tape in Rosa’s apartment. But how long would it be before they did?

He had a feeling that his life was about to go down the shitter again.

At a deli on Lexington Avenue, he bought a bouquet of red and pink roses, then he took a cab up to the hospital. A different cop was on duty in front of Angela’s room. This one let him into the room without a hassle. Angela was sleeping. Max tiptoed up to the bed and woke her up with a soft kiss on the lips. Not his special, the hot one that never failed, but one with concern, damn it, plenty of real compassion in there. Angela’s eyes opened suddenly, like she didn’t know where she was, but then she saw Max’s face. There was a moment of horror at first and then her expression softened into a smile though her eyes still looked strained and unhappy. He figured he must’ve woken her out of a bad dream or something.

At work the next morning, Max had his receptionist get Andrew McCullough on the phone.

“I have another job for you,” Max said. “I want you to represent Angela Petrakos.”

“Angela Petrakos?” McCullough said. “You’re kidding, right?”

He hated the prick’s tone, like he thought he was so high and mighty because he was the lawyer and not the guy who constantly needed one. “Why would I kid about that?”