Stick (5 page)

DeJohn Holmes said he could have anything he wanted. A sateen jacket? Blue and gold with his name on the back?
Stick.
Look nice, be a man of fashion.

Here was the strange part. It wasn't any of the colored guys in the wool-knit caps he had to watch.

No, out of five thousand eight hundred and something losers shuffling around, hanging out in the yard, getting high, chasing sissies, it was a white guy named Luther doing two to five who stared at him a few weeks, circled in and finally told Stick he was going to kill him. Why?

(Just like, why would he have thought he had to watch Moke? He wasn't mixed up in that business.)

It didn't make sense: sitting there in the Big Top, the dining hall, one morning with his cold scrambled eggs and having this stone-eyed asshole biker chewing with his mouth open telling him he was going to put a shank in him when he least expected. The colored guys—Christ, he got along fine with the colored guys and they knew all about him, from DeJohn Holmes.

DeJohn was one of the “mayors” at Jackson and ran a section of the yard, taking cuts on the card games and numbers and renting out weight-lifting equipment by the quarter hour when he wasn't using it. “Stay by me when you need to,” DeJohn told Stick. “I'll show you how to jail, not lose any good time mixing up with crazies.”

But why did Luther want to kill him?

“ 'cause he see you talking to me when you should be hanging out with the white boys. Start with that,” DeJohn said. “Man like him, he don't even know how to brush his teeth. You watch him 'cause you don't know when the bug is going to go out on him and he turn hisself loose. Maybe he thinks in his stone mind you somebody else or you remind him of somebody stepped on him one time. Or he like to be like you and he can't. He say he going to shank you and you say watching the motherfucker eat is enough to turn you sick to death anyway. But see, he so slow in the head he has to think, man, to blink. So I get him assigned the meat shop and let him see he fuck with my frien' Stickley what can befall him.”

Pure luck. Getting next to DeJohn, being discovered by him. DeJohn's story:

“A man point at me in Recorder's Court, City of Detroit, say yeah, that's him, that's him. Say I'm the one come in his place with a gun and cleaned out both his cash registers. Yeah, that's him. I draw thirty to life for the third and final time around. Now that man that pointed—not because I took his cash receipts but took his woman,
one
time,
one
night only and she love it—that man was Sportree, who died of gunshot at the hand of my frien' Ernest Stickley, Jr.,” DeJohn said. “They some details missing, but it was some funny business following when
you and Frank robbed the J. L. Hudson Company in downtown Detroit and got ate up.”

Stick was careful. He said he was doing his time for a grocery store in Oakland County, not any homicide or robbery in downtown Detroit.

DeJohn said, “I know that. It's cool.” He said, “Believe me, my man. You my man and it's cool. But it don't change you did Sportree and the dude was with him.”

Stick said, to DeJohn only, okay, but it was unavoidable.

DeJohn said, “They all unavoidable when you have to do it. Like the two brothers in the shopping mall, in the parking lot, I believe was Northland.”

Stick said yeah, that had been unavoidable too, the two brothers wanting to
mug
him, for Christ sake, take his groceries.

DeJohn showed his gold and his pink tongue. “Groceries, yeah, shit”—enjoying it—”and the cash underneath the Wheaties from the store where you and Frank did your shopping.” DeJohn said, “What they say, you could have got a hundred years just for the cars you used on those jobs. You take the fall on the grocery store, but they got Frank on the big one, didn't they? The Hudson's store.”

Stick wondered how he knew all that.

DeJohn said, “You famous, baby.”

When Luther made the move it was at a time when Stick was playing basketball in the yard. He
left the game wheezing, out of shape, put on his work jacket and sat bent over on a bench trying to get his breath. He felt the wet on his back and thought at first it was sweat. He began to smell something . . .  Christ, gasoline, and heard it when Luther dropped the match on him and
wouf
the back of his jacket went up in flames and he dove head-first over to land on his back on the cement and roll from side to side grinding in that hot sting . . .  seeing the guy standing there with the Windex squirt bottle of clear liquid watching him.

DeJohn said it was the man's style and they should've known. “But the man lied to you, didn't he? Say he was going to shank you.”

Three days later there was an accident in the butcher shop. Three witnesses in wool caps and white aprons swore Luther was splitting pork ribs with a cleaver, missed and cut off his left hand.

DeJohn said, “Man was lucky, wasn't he? He could have been seriously hurt and bled to death.” He said, “I told him that, too.”

There was all kinds of luck.

Stick sat on the cement porch of the Hotel Bon-Aire, listening to elderly people with New York Jewish accents complain about high prices, about Medicare and how Reagan had betrayed them. The hotel was light-green stucco, four stories, and seemed more
like a retirement home than a hotel. Stick could feel the old people staring at him; one asked if he was with the government, looking things over.

August, no tourists, but still a lot of people on South Beach.

He crossed the street always lined with cars and went out on the sand past the clumps of sea grape and the Cuban families cooking over charcoal, eating at the picnic tables, and lay in the sun listening to bits of voice sounds coming to him in Spanish. They sounded like they were arguing but looked like they were having fun. Try and figure out Cubans. He would lie in the sun not moving and think about going up to Stuart or Daytona, or maybe over on the west coast around Naples, work construction. He could always drive a transit-mix, he'd done enough of that before.

With the hot glare pressing on his glasses and his eyes closed tight he would try to look into the future to a place where a man forty-two, starting over, could find something interesting and make up for lost time. If he was going to work he'd have to stay in Florida and get back in construction. Not around Miami, though. Or Detroit. People up there with seniority were drawing unemployment. He didn't look so far ahead that he pictured himself an old man on the street, he pictured himself
now
; but he couldn't, no matter how hard he thought, see himself
doing
anything.

He still hadn't spoken to his ex-wife or his daughter. Now, the way things were, he wasn't ready.

He was going to buy some clothes and get lucky there. The manager of the hotel, an old bent-over guy, showed him laundry packages of stuff a guy had left in his room Stick could have for thirty bucks. Different-colored shirts with little polo players on them, nice pants just a little tight, a couple light jackets, everything clean and neatly folded, fairly new stuff but without that brand-new look, which Stick liked even better. The manager said this young fella that left the clothes was here in May, went off to Key West for the weekend and never came back. The manager settled for twenty. Stick went out and bought a pair of sneakers with blue stripes on the sides.

They were the most comfortable shoes he'd ever owned. In the early evening he'd walk up Collins Avenue from Seventh Street as far as Forty-first sometimes, up around the big hotels, and on the way back find a nice quiet bar, have a few bourbons over crushed ice, suck on that good stuff and feel himself, after a few evenings of it, beginning to settle down and get his confidence back. He burned the first day in the sun. But by the fourth day he looked like he was working construction again, getting tan faster than he ever had before. His hair even looked different, lighter; he let it fall in its natural bent instead of
combing it back behind his ears. Four days and he looked like a regular Florida native. Next he would be going to discos, doing those slinky numbers with the ladies. There were enough of them around, he had a waitress or two hitting on him every night; but he wasn't anxious to move in that direction yet. He had to make up his mind about something, take one thing at a time.

He bought a postcard to send to DeJohn that showed a bunch of alligators, one with its mouth wide open, next to a kidney-shaped cement pool. He would sit with his bourbon and stare at the empty white message side of the card, thinking:

 

Dear DeJohn, My luck almost ran out on me the other night . . .

 

Dear DeJohn, man, could I use you right now . . .

 

Dear DeJohn, Rainy asked me to go with him on a deal that was supposed to be a Sunday drive . . .

 

But if he was going to go into all that, he'd have to put it in a letter. Tell what happened. Tell what he was going to do about it.

Well, the way it looked when he first started thinking about it, nothing.

Because there was nothing he
could
do. And because it was none of his business, it was Rainy's. Rainy knew there was always a risk, that kind of business, but it was how he made his living. It didn't matter what the deal was and it didn't do any good to think about it, because he didn't know all the facts.

Chucky owes a Cuban money. Chucky makes the payment. The Cuban takes the money—you assume that—and has Chucky's bagman killed. Why? Because as Rainy said, the Cuban was crazy, that's all. You were dealing with people, they weren't just weird, they had machine guns.

What he tried to do during the day, lying on the beach, taking walks along the surf, was think only about his future. Look at it in bright sunlight. Here it was, the world. What did it have to offer? All he had ever seen was one shady part of it. He found his thinking would come to: pick up a car and take off—And then his thinking would start jumping all over the place.

But in the evening, settled down, feeling himself again, he was able to narrow his view, look at pieces of what had happened and come to a conclusion that had a hole in it but still made enough sense. He believed, first:

They didn't kill Rainy because he was Rainy. They didn't seem to care who they killed. Either one, he or Rainy would do. Moke said, “Shit, I don't
care.” Or both of them. Moke said, “Make it a two-for-one special.”

But Rainy wasn't the first choice.

Stick could see Moke looking at him and saying, “
This boy here's suppose to take it.
”

He had to squint hard trying to understand this part.

Maybe he'd heard it wrong. Or Moke had decided on his own to send him out there with the suitcase; so in Moke's mind he was
suppose to take it
and it was that simple.

Because if he'd heard it
right,
the way it sounded, then somebody had given Moke instructions. Send out the guy with Rainy. And who even knew there was going to be a guy with Rainy? Except Chucky.

So the second thing Stick came to believe:

Chucky was giving the Cuban somebody to kill. Part of doing business. Rainy said Chucky owned the Cuban money. Rainy didn't know he owed the Cuban a lot more than that, he owed the Cuban a life, too. Maybe Rainy didn't serve enough time to learn how those things worked. Stick knew.

He could sip his bourbon and know exactly why Chucky had picked him. Because he had crossed the line, walked where he shouldn't have walked. Because he had given Chucky a look. Because he had inspected Chucky's home, a room in it, and said he wasn't impressed.

“You see anything you like?”

Asking for it. What was he supposed to say, yeah, I love it? Ask him who his decorator was?

Once Stick reached this conclusion he could look back at what had happened, including Rainy's murder, and accept it. He wished he could have helped Rainy. But Rainy and all these people were in the same life. It was how they dealt with one another. To them, inside or outside eighteen-foot walls with gun towers, the life was the same. So if in time Stick could put Jackson out of his mind he'd be able to forget about this business too. Begin by walking away from it.

Except that he began thinking about Chucky now and the one hole—a question mark, really—in his conclusion.

Chucky might have set them up, but a fact still remained. The suitcase tested by the four-hundred-pound gorilla had been delivered. Didn't Chucky owe somebody five thousand dollars?

On the postcard with the alligators on it he sent to DeJohn, the message read:

 

Dear DeJ:

 

So far you aren't missing a thing not being here—as you can tell from that bunch of girls hanging around the swimming pool (over).
Listen, I'd even take your old lady, Antoine, before I'd pick one of them. UGGGG!!! Tell the brothers disco is out and Soul is in. God bless you and take care of yourself. I'm going now to seek my fortune. Wish me luck.

 

Stick

 

He put on the lime green polo shirt, a pair of khakis faded almost white that didn't need a belt and matched the poplin jacket; he put on his new sneakers with the blue stripes and stuffed the rest of his new wardrobe into a white canvas bag with blue handles. Well, look at sporty, he said to the dresser mirror, liking his color especially, his tan face smiling at him.

For seven years he had worn state clothes. He told DeJohn, turning down offers of sateen athletic jackets and sportshirts, he was reminding himself he was a con and would not pretend to be something else until he was out of there.

Now what was he?

He'd find out pretty soon.

HE WONDERED WHY YOU COULD
walk into a bar and smell it when it was empty or there were only a few people but you couldn't smell it when the place was crowded.

He wondered why there were more cars in the parking lot than people inside the place.

Coming in from sunlight with his canvas bag Stick opened and closed his eyes in the dimness, saw only a few tables occupied, a couple of guys in hardhats sitting at the bar. It was so quiet he thought at first it was the wrong place. As he stood there the bell rang outside for the bridge to go up but nobody blew the foghorn. Maybe this was the time to come. He wasn't feeling old, he was still feeling pretty good; a little tired maybe. It had taken three and a half hours and seven rides to thumb his way up US 1 from Miami to Lauderdale and to walk to the beach from federal highway.

No, it was the right place. The girl-bartender, Bobbi, was serving the two hardhats.

Stick went down to the other end of the bar where it was still afternoon, sunlight filling the wide opening to the terrace. A good spot. He could swivel a quarter turn on the stool, look across the Intracoastal and see the front of Chucky's building, the blacktop drive curving up to the entrance.

When Bobbi came down the bar in her loose pink-knit shirt and said, “Well, hi, how're you doing?” giving him a cocktail napkin, Stick was sure she recognized him. He said just fine and ordered a Michelob draft. But when she brought the beer and he placed a ten and a five on the bar she said, “What's that for?”

“The other day, remember, I was in here with Rainy?”

She said, “You were?”

“You held the tab 'cause we were coming back later.”

It took her a moment. “That was last
week.
” She seemed to study him, cocking her head. “You were with Rainy?”

“Remember the hairy guy? Made a pass at you?”

“That was you?”

“No—guy in a beach outfit, long hair. He grabbed your hand.”

Her mouth opened. She said after a moment, “The one, you called him . . .  short eyes?”

“Yeah, I might've.”

She was nodding, thoughtful. “Yeah, I remember.” Then frowned. “What's it mean? Short eyes.”

“Well, usually, I guess it refers to a child molester.”

She didn't speak right away, putting something together in her mind. Then seemed to have the answer, sure of it.

“You were with Rainy, weren't you? Up in Michigan.”

“Jackson,” Stick said. The beer tasted good; it was one of the things he had missed the most.

“I used to write to him,” Bobbi said. “Well, I wrote a couple times. Yeah, I remember now when you said that I thought, it sounds like something you'd hear, you know, where you and Rainy were.”

“In prison,” Stick said. “It's all right to say it. We were in prison together.”

“But why'd you call him that?”

“That's what he looked like to me. At that time. I know—it wasn't any of my business.”

“I'm used to it. You should see some of the old farts come in here, try and make out. Bunch a dirty old men.”

“I can believe it,” Stick said. He didn't feel old at all this time. He felt in shape, the way she was looking at him, confiding. He saw her with him in brief flashes, a balcony on the ocean, her eyes smiling in amber candlelight, wine glasses, soft bossa nova, a
dreamy look as she stretched, reached behind her and slowly pulled off the pink shirt. She said:

“Where's Rainy? I haven't seen him.”

Stick shook his head. “I haven't either.”

“I don't think he's been in since the last time, when you were here.” She smiled then. “Yeah, I remember you now. Boy, have you changed.” She seemed at ease with him, like they were old friends.

“It's nice to be remembered,” Stick said. “Sometimes, anyway.” He pushed the glass toward her. “Why don't you give me another one of those.”

She drew several more for him while he watched the boats go by and saw, finally, the dark-haired Cuban-looking guys in their tight suits and sportshirts across the way . . .  and began to think of another time in another bar, in Detroit, sitting with Frank Ryan while Frank told him his rules for success and happiness in armed robbery. And Stick, fresh out of the Wayne County jail, feeling as lucky and confident as he did right now, had listened. He could have walked away from Frank and saved himself seven years.

He could walk away from this place . . .

A heavyset dark-haired guy in a pale blue suit and blue print shirt came in from the terrace, passed behind Stick and stood at the empty bar a few stools away. He rapped on the rounded edge of the bar with a car key and said, “Hey, Bobbi!”

Stick turned to look at his profile. It was Lionel Oliva. Lionel ordered a rum and tonic. As he waited, lightly tapping his key on the bar, he called out to Bobbi, “Turn a music on. This place is dead.”

Stick said to him, “How's it going?”

Lionel looked at him, stared a moment with no expression of interest and shrugged. He turned back to wait for Bobbi.

Stick felt himself relax more as he sipped his beer.

He could walk away clean. Go out to the parking lot. He'd noticed when he came in a Mercedes, a couple of Cadillacs, a brand-new Corvette he could get five grand for easy, even without a delivery order . . .  and not have to go up to the top floor of that condominium, try and talk Chucky out of it and worry about getting thrown off a fifteen-story balcony.

The prize out in the parking lot was a Rolls Silver Shadow, light gray, that was about fifteen years old and in show condition. Though the ‘Vette would be easier to move. Get some plates off another car, drive up to Atlanta and unload it. Fly back tomorrow night, see his little girl . . .  Except a ‘Vette, the new ones, they say you had to punch a hole through the steering column and it was easy to butcher. The old-model Rolls would be a lot easier to get into and take off.

Lionel walked past him with his drink, going out to the terrace. He didn't look back. And they had stared at each other in Chucky's place.

Bobbi came over. He thought she was going to mention Lionel, but she said, “That tab you were asking about? I remember, it's taken care of.”

“Who paid it?”

“You were suppose to meet Chucky that time?” Stick nodded. “Well, when you didn't come back I put it on his charge. Is that all right?”

“That's fine. You can put these on it too, you want.”

“Chucky always forgets to sign, so we have a pen that writes just like his.”

“I'll have to thank him,” Stick said.

“That was his bodyguard was just here. So Chucky'll probably be in.”

“Yeah? What's he need a bodyguard for?”

Bobbi said, “I make drinks, but I'm not dumb. You know as well as I do if you're a friend of Rainy's, and that's all I'm gonna say.”

“I don't blame you,” Stick said.

He watched her walk away and began thinking of his partner again, Frank Ryan: sitting in the bar telling Frank he was going to Florida to see his little girl—Christ, almost seven and a half years later he still hadn't seen her . . .  No, he'd listened to Frank tell him that in the area of taking money that didn't belong to you—as opposed to lifting goods you had to fence—the method that paid the most for “percentagewise” the least amount of risk was armed robbery.
He'd said, big deal. After all that buildup. And Frank had said, “Say it backwards, robbery comma armed. It can be a
very
big deal,” and had even quoted actual statistics, saying they could follow his rules for success and happiness in armed robbery and make three to five grand a week, easy. That was when he should have walked out, right at that moment, when he didn't have a dime, but was calm inside. Confident, reasonably happy. And most of all, free.

He caught Bobbi's eye. Coming over she said, “Same way?”

Stick shook his head. He said, “No, I think it's time to check out.” He hesitated and said, “I'm going to see my little girl.”

Bobbi said, “Oh?” and sounded surprised. “How old is she?”

“She's fourteen now,” Stick said. “You remind me of her. You sort of look alike.”

He walked out feeling absolved, almost proud of himself. Though he couldn't help catching another glimpse of her taking off that pink shirt in amber candlelight, the waves breaking outside in the dark . . .

Barry came off the
Seaweed
with its port side still three feet from the dock, engines rumbling low, inching the fifty-eight-foot Hatteras gently into berth.

Chucky and a girl named Pam and Barry's friend Aurora stood by the deck chairs in the stern watching
Barry, wanting to stop him. Not wringing their hands exactly, but caught in a tableau of surprise: Chucky in a striped red-white-and-blue T-shirt down over his hips, the two girls in skimpy little nothing bikinis.

Chucky said, “You coming back, what?”

Aurora, dark hair shining, voice whining, said, “Bar-
ry
! Will you wait,
please
!”

Barry was pointing to the stern line his deckhand had thrown onto the dock, Barry gesturing, saying something to Lionel, who stood there in his light blue suit and didn't seem to know what to do. Barry's captain sat up on the flying bridge of the
Seaweed
observing, unconcerned behind his sunglasses, as the deckhand ran forward and jumped dockside with the bowline.

Barry looked up, squinting. He said to the boat, “Rorie? Chucky's going to run you home, babe. Okay? I gotta run.”

Chucky said, “I am?”

Aurora, pouting, said, “You promised we're going to have dinner.”

“I got a call,” Barry said. “Didn't I get a call? I was on the goddamn phone—how long? You saw me.”

Aurora said, “You're always on the goddamn phone.”

Barry said, “Call you later, babe.”

Aurora tried once more to stop him. “Bar-
ry
!”

But he was gone.

Bobbi's face brightened, broke into a big smile as she saw him coming. Then tried to turn it off but couldn't and a small grin lingered as Barry came over to the bar, his expression blank. Not grim, not serious; blank.

He made a gun of his right hand, index finger extended, and cocked it at Bobbi's face.

“What's the last thing that goes through a bug's mind as it hits the windshield?”

Bobbi said, “I don't know, what?”

“Its asshole . . .  Where're the keys?”

“What keys?”

“The car keys. Cecil was here, right? Tell me he was here.”

“He was here.”

“And he gave you the keys to the Rolls.”

“Uh-unh. He tried to give me a hard time though.”

Barry put the palm of his hand to his forehead, said, “Oh, Christ,” and did a half turn before looking at Bobbi again. “He was drinking?”

“I don't know why you ever hired him in the first place,” Bobbi said, serious, with innocent eyes.

Barry said, “Hey.” He paused for emphasis. “I'll take care of Cecil. Okay? You say he was drinking?”

“He had a few.”

Barry shook his head, then leaned on the bar, weary. “He leave the Rolls? I don't know what good it'd do me, but tell me at least he left the car.”

“I wouldn't know,” Bobbi said. “He came in, sat down right there. Didn't have his uniform on . . .”

“It's his day off.”

“Had four Chivas with a couple of beers and left, pissed.”

“Pissed off.”

“That's what I said.”

“There's a difference,” Barry said. He slapped the bar and said,
“Shit.”
Then glanced toward the terrace at the sound of Chucky's voice—Chucky coming in with the two girls. They were wearing short beach covers to their hips, looking nude underneath. Barry said to Bobbi, “They sit around drinking, it's Chucky's party, not mine. Don't give Aurora any martinis; she'll lay every guy that comes in.” He looked toward the terrace again as he moved down the bar. “Rorie, I'll see you later, babe. Call you as soon as I can.”

He heard her say, “Bar-
ry
!” but kept moving down the length of the bar, out.

 

Stick watched the guy in cutoff jeans and plain white sneakers—he had very hairy legs—come tearing out of the place and run over to the Rolls-Royce.
He tried the door. Locked. He bent over to peer into the car, shielding his eyes with his hands. Then started yanking on the door, trying to tear the handle off. Then straightened up and banged his fist on the roof of the car, swearing, saying Jesus Christ and goddamn it. Really mad. Having a little tantrum. Stick wondered—assuming the guy had locked his key in the car—what there was to get so excited about.

Stick was sitting on Wolfgang's front steps under the awning, at a point where he'd decided this was not the place to pick up a car, not in daylight—he'd have to go to a shopping mall or a movie theater parking lot—when this little guy in the cutoffs came flying out. Dark hair down over his ears. At first Stick thought the guy was Cuban, all the Cubans around. But then decided no, no Cuban who could afford a Rolls was going to run around in cutoffs and a yellow alligator shirt hanging out. No, the guy was probably Jewish, a rich young Jewish guy in his early thirties. He reminded Stick of Frankie Avalon, the hair, or a young Tony Curtis.

Stick said to him, “You need a coat hanger?”

Barry looked over at Stick for the first time. With hope, or surprise. Then seemed to lose it and put his hands on his hips, shoulders rounding, though he seemed to be standing up straight.

“No keys. It wouldn't do me any good even if I got in.”

“You lose 'em?”

“My asshole driver's suppose to drop the car off, leave the keys at the bar. Sounds easy, right? Take the keys out, hand 'em to the girl? Totally wrong.”