Bust (8 page)

Angela knew that when a woman asked another woman that, it was a given that some kind of bitchiness was on its way.

“Sure,” Angela said.

Diane was always trying to lose weight — lately she was on The Cabbage Soup Diet. Maybe she was going to ask for some diet advice, get some crack in that Angela should try the diet too, not that she needed to lose weight or anything because she looked
so good
. Yeah, right.

But instead Diane said, “Is there something going on between you and Max?”

“Max?” Angela said.

“You know...” Diane said, “I mean you’re always going into his office, locking the door...”

“Who told you that?”

“No one. I just noticed it myself and I was just wondering, that’s all.”

“There’s
nothing
going between me and Max,” Angela said as though the idea repulsed her. But, just for effect, she held her stomach like she was going to throw up and said, “That’s really disgusting. I mean, how gross is that? Could you imagine going down on that flabby belly?”

“I knew it couldn’t be true,” Diane said. “I mean, it’s bad enough working for him. Who would want to sleep with him?”

Angela hoped Diane would forget all about it, but she’d have to watch her closely just in case. Then, walking away, she thought,
And hon, the diet, it’s like, not working.

That night Angela said to Dillon, “You know what that asshole said to me today? That I should add a cup size to my breasts.”

They were in bed, passing a joint back and forth. Dillon took his hit and passed the joint to Angela then said, “So?”

“So?” Angela said. “What do you mean, So?”

“I mean, So? Like so what so.”

Jesus, he sure knew how to annoy the shite out of a person.

“What? You don’t like my breasts either?”

“I didn’t say that,” Dillon said. “I happen to like your tits, but I like your arse better.”

“Thanks a lot,” Angela said.

“You’re welcome.”

Angela sat up, looking down at her breasts. “I don’t care what anybody says — I like them just the way they are.”

Dillon sat up and started rolling another joint under the lamp on the night table. Angela, leaning over, started kissing his back and stomach. He had the smell of peat, the smell of the bogs, but she liked it. She said, “You know what else he told me. He said he wants to marry me.”

“So?” Dillon said. “You gotta marry him so we get his money, right? That’s the plan, right?”

“Yeah,” Angela said.

She’d been hoping Dillon was going to propose himself one of these days. Dream on.

Dillon licked the edge of the rolling paper and sealed the joint. He lit up and took a long hit, then passed it on to Angela. Dillon said, “Dunno why I smoke this shite, it hasn’t had an effect on me since the eighties. Now you give me a double of Bushmills, I can whistle the whole of the Star Spangled Banner.”

She’d always gotten a big kick out of this — Dillon claiming that pot had no effect him. Meanwhile, he’d smoke a joint, then pick up a shot of Bushmills and try to put it in his ear.

His voice already getting really slow, he asked, “See... what... I... mean?”

The day of the murder Angela kissed Dillon goodbye before she went to work, knowing it would be the last time she’d see him before Deirdre Fisher was dead. Dillon was in the dining area, sitting on a chair reading his book.

He held up a finger, said, “Listen to this.” Then in his richest, most gorgeous voice intoned, “This is from Shunryu Suzuki... What do you want enlightenment for?... You may not like it.”

She didn’t get it, said, “I don’t get it.”

He laughed, said, “Tis few do.”

Dillon said he loved New York, called it his
twisted
city,
and she wanted to add, “Yeah, matches your lips,” but never did because she was afraid of his temper. Although Dillon had never hit her, she thought he was the type who could. Violence simmered in him. It was never turned off — just went dormant sometimes.

“I’m going to take this town by the balls,” he said, and she said, “Good luck.”

He stood, produced a green emerald brooch, and said, “Back home, on Paddy’s day, we have the wearing of the green.” He pinned it on her breast, hurting her a little, but she didn’t even flinch. She figured, like all his countrymen, he was truly fucked up and wouldn’t give a shit anyway.

He put on a pair of very snazzy shades and said, “One time I was in Lizzie Bordello’s in Dublin. U2 were holding court and I nicked Bono’s glasses, you think I look like him?”

He looked like a horse’s ass but being a woman, she said, “You kidding? You make Bono look like Shrek.”

Dillon smiled, said, “Hold that thought, allanna.”

I had to give the guy credit. He didn’t back down easy. I’d have to watch him closely. His type could sneak right up and bite you in the ass.

R
EED
F
ARREL
C
OLEMAN
,
The James Deans

Sixteen years ago, when he got back from Desert Storm, Bobby took an acting class at some place downtown on Broadway. He didn’t want to be an actor — no, that pussy
Hamlet
,
Streetcar
, Death of a Whatever shit wasn’t for him. He just wanted to learn how to play a role, make people know right away he was the type of guy who didn’t take shit from nobody.

He knew he needed some acting lessons big time when he pulled his first bank job, out at a Chase in Astoria. He went up to the teller, slid the note under the window, and stood there, trying to look like a guy who didn’t fuck around, like Ray Liotta in
Something Wild
. But the girl looked at him, just for a second, like, Are you for real? Bobby thought he even saw her start to smile for a second there, like she didn’t believe a guy looked like him could pull a bank job. His crew got away with the cash, no problem, but the girl’s reaction still annoyed the hell out of Bobby. He wanted instant respect.

Before the next job, Bobby watched
Scarface
like a dozen times, trying to get the whole Pacino badass shit down cold. He thought he had it, but when he went up to the window at the bank the same thing happened. He thought it must be nerves or something. When he pulled smaller jobs, at grocery stores and supermarkets, it was
even worse. He’d whip out his piece, say, “This is a stick up,” and his mouth would be dry and the words would come out sounding all wimpy.

So he figured enough was enough and he signed up for the acting class. He felt out of place around all of the artsy-fartsy types, like he was crashing a party or something. He would’ve bailed but the teacher was this hot-looking little thing named Isabella. She’d been in something on Broadway and was in some soap opera for a couple of years. She knew her shit about acting and she gave great head too. Bobby stopped going to the class and got private lessons from Isabella. When she wasn’t going down on him, she was teaching him how to emote, use stuff from his past, shit like that. Sometimes they’d read lines from plays to each other. It took him a while, but he finally got good at it. Isabella said he should start auditioning and that’s when he knew it was time to dump her. From then on, whenever he pulled a job all he had to do was look at the fuckers and they knew what was going down. He probably could’ve robbed anyplace he wanted without ever showing a weapon.

Since Bobby got paralyzed he hadn’t tried to act at all. But he knew that for what he had planned with Victor at the hotel, he was gonna have to have his acting skills sharp as a fucking tack or the plan would have zero chance of working.

Bobby opened his old
Riverside Shakespeare
book to a random scene in
Macbeth
. He took a couple of minutes to memorize the line, then he looked in the mirror, trying to look tough, like DeNiro in
Taxi Driver,
and said, “Come to my woman’s breast and take my milk for gall you murthering ministers, wherever in your sightless substance you seek peace...”

He tossed the book away, realizing this was a waste of his fucking time. He still had the magic.

The townhouse was a lot bigger than Dillon had expected. He knew it would be big, but he didn’t know it would be like
big
big, like a feckin’ palace. There were three floors and the whole place was filled with all kinds of rich, ugly shite — couches, tables, chairs, mirrors, God-ugly paintings on the wall. Dillon couldn’t wait till he was livin’ in this gaff — then he’d make some
serious
changes. First he was going throw out all this ugly shite. Then he was going to put in a Shebeen bar downstairs with one of them giant screen TVs — like the kind they had in the sports bars — and then he was going to have his own feckin’ club — call it A Touch of the Green. Every night he’d be blasting the Pogues with his own private DJ, and he’d invite all his boyos to come down, and they’d rock the place with jigs and reels. He might even teach some bollix how to play the spoons. He already knew how to play the odds.

Dillon still couldn’t believe that all this was going be his just for killing some rich old lady. Jesus, he’d offed fookers for the price of a pint.

It was funny — before all this started he was getting tired of Angela and was thinking about dumping her when she came to him with this great idea. At first he thought it must be some kind of joke — it all seemed too easy. She said all she’d have to do was “fool around” with the guy and get him to want to marry her. The funny thing was, he didn’t care if she took him on and ten of his friends, just as long as he got the dosh.

Dillon didn’t know why Angela thought that they were going to get married someday. Yeah, he had considered asking her to marry him, but what the hell did that mean? He’d asked lots of colleens to marry him — it was just something fellahs said to women to make them shut up. He’d a supply of silver Claddagh rings. Angela also
wanted to have kids, buy a house in the country or some shite. Dillon had three kids already, that he knew about, and he had four separate wallets with snaps of them. And if he really wanted to have a wife and kids, he would’ve stayed with Siobhan, the girl he got pregnant in Ballymun. There was woman, fiery and able to sink the jar like a good un and cook, she made black pudding to die for.

The only reason he was with Angela at all was because of the way she was in that pub that night. Usually, he liked dumb women, but Angela looked good there, giving mouth to the ugly bartender. He’d been planning to take off after a couple of weeks, but he couldn’t afford rent yet, so he figured he’d live with her till he found a decent score.

He told Angela a lot of lies, afraid if she knew the truth she’d throw him out. He told her he was a scout for the RA, thinking sussing out schemes for the boyos was a patriotic ideal she’d understand. The truth was he was what is known in Ireland as a Prov-een. When the Irish want to diminish something, somebody, they add
een
, making it diminutive. You call a man a man-een, you’re calling him a schmuck, a wanna-be. The Ra had many guys who hung on the fringes, did off jobs for The Boyos but were never seriously considered part of The Movement. They were mainly cannon fodder, used and discarded and if they managed a big score, no problem. Dillon had actually made some hits for the Boyos, but it didn’t get him inside, not in the inner circles where it mattered. He knew where they hung out in New York but he didn’t know what the level of operations was. They kept him on a strictly need-to-know basis and a loose demented cannon like Dillon, he needed to know precious little.

There were two other other things he lied to Angela about — one was big, the other small. The small thing was
herpes. He said he’d caught it off her, but the truth was he’d caught that shite a long time ago, back in the eighties. The big lie was that he’d only killed a few people before. Actually, he’d killed at least seventeen people — some memorable, some not. Like all his race, Dillon was deeply superstitious. All that rain, it warped the mind, added a mountain of church guilt. What you got was seriously fucked up head cases or as they called them in Dublin, “head-a-balls,” which doesn’t translate in any language yet discovered.

The one that gave Dillon pause was a tinker he’d killed, not that the guy didn’t need killing; he did, but you didn’t want to mess with a clan who knew a thing or two about curses. It was in Galway, a city of serious rain, it poured down with intent and it was personal. That town had swans and tinkers, and culling both seemed like a civic duty. There’d been a case in the place, swans and tinkers being killed, and the citizens were outraged about, yep,
the swans
. Dillon had been drenched, lashed with wet, the week of the Galway Races. Fookit, he’d lost a packet on a sure-fire favorite and then in Garavans the tinker had snuck up on him, doing the con, going, “How are ye, are ye winning, isn’t it fierce weather?” Like that. The whole blarneyed nine and then lifted Dillon’s wallet, headed out of the pub. Dillon caught him at the canal, rummaging through the wallet, so intent on his fecking larceny, he never heard Dillon coming. A quick look around, no one about, then Dillon gave him the bar treatment, a Galway specialty. You zing the guy’s head off the metal bars lining the canal for as long as it takes to say a decade of the rosary, keeping the deal religious. Thing is, you murder a tinker, you’re cursed — they have a way of finding out who did the deed and then damn you and all that belongs to you. Still gave Dillon a tremor when he thought about it.