The Art of Disposal (10 page)

It's not like Eddie was thrilled about doing the job at his house. We had to take our shoes off and leave them by the front door. He even made us use coasters for our drinks, and when Dan the Man put his fat thumbs on one of Irene's knick-knacks, Eddie told him to knock it off and put it back just the way he found it.

“Check this out,” Dan the Man said, holding up a gem-crusted Fabergé Egg. “I'd hate to meet the hen squeezed this thing out. Talk about high-maintenance.”

“Goddamn it, Dan. Put it down,” Eddie said. “If Irene finds out what happened here tonight, you'll be plucking the harp with Ricky, so help me God.”

We took the garbage bags and tape and went to work on the bathroom walls.

The Sesto's downstairs bathroom feels as small as a kitchen pantry. The house was built in the 1930s, and the rooms all feel like they have ghosts in them. They say that the walls retain the traces of terrible crimes. I hoped it wasn't true—for Ricky's sake. If you're gonna be a doomed ghost, stuck in an endless loop in one cursed room, there are a million better places to haunt than Eddie and Irene Sesto's daisy wall-papered bathroom.

“Where's Irene?” Dan the Man asked, smoothing out a garbage bag.

“Houston. International quilt festival,” Eddie said.

“That's right… right. She won something one time,” Dan said, like he was telling Eddie something he didn't already know.

Eddie spooled off a long piece of masking tape and ripped it off with his teeth.

“Two years ago. Grand prize,” he said with pride. “One of her quilts is even featured in a book on the subject.”

“What kinda machine do you use for something like that?” Dan the Man said.

Eddie stopped working and stared at Dan. He put his upper lip far down over his lower one, and squinted hard.

“She don't use no machine. I told you a hundred times. She makes 'em by hand. It's in a whole different league.”

“Oh yeah. Yeah. I remember,” Dan the Man said. Then he rubbed at the side of his neck and swallowed a few times.

One time Eddie showed me the book with the picture of her prize-winning quilt. He really loved Irene. Maybe you try harder when it's your second wife. But part of me wondered how he could live like that, with strawberry artwork all over your kitchen, snow globes on shelves, and antique spoons on the walls. Everything in its proper place.

We finished up the bathroom and went over the plan a few times. Then we went outside for a smoke break. Irene doesn't let Eddie smoke in the house. He bitches about it, but I get where she's coming from. Once a few dozen cigars have been smoked in a house, you might as well sell the place half-price and move on.

Barney went outside with us and ran around in the yard. Dan the Man lit a cigarette. I sat on a lawn chair and watched a blue-jay hopping along the fence, twisting his head over and over, like he thought he kept hearing something but could never quite be sure. Eddie opened up his sport coat and pulled out his hard-shell leather cigar case. He offered me one.

“No thanks,” I said. “They taste like a wet sock.”

“Try a good one sometime.”

“Big cigarettes,” I said.

“A cigarette is a nasty habit,” Eddie said. He looked at Dan the Man and added, “no offense.” Then his hazy eyes came back to me. “A good cigar is an experience.”

“Yeah? Tonight's a real
experience
,” I said and ground my teeth together.

“Hey,” Eddie said. “We're doing the right thing.”

It was getting dark. Up beyond the other rooftops in the neighborhood, the sky was the color of old brass. Dan the Man coughed and hacked, and gripped his knee.

“You okay?” Eddie said. “You don't look so good.”

“Never been better,” Dan said.

“We can't do this to him,” I said. “This is Ricky. Remember when his kid caught the garter snake, and Ricky drove it over to Moe's and put it through the mail slot?”

“That was a good one,” Eddie said.

“He shrieked like a schoolgirl,” Dan said.

“We can't do this to him,” I said.

Dan the Man leaned over and rubbed his forehead, like he was kneading out the bad thoughts. Then he looked up at me and said:

“He's already dead.”

Eddie puffed at his cigar. No matter what we had to do with it, Ricky was a goner. The mainspring had been wound, and the clock was in motion.

You could hear the rusty creaking of the whirligig birds out in Eddie's garden. Their wood and aluminum wings turned like they were getting paid by the hour. By the time Eddie was halfway through his cigar, the brass-colored sky had turned a heavy purple, and the moon was waking up.

Barney walked along the edging where the patio meets the grass. He grunted and groaned. He snapped at the ground. Eddie got excited.

“See that. Look at him go!”

“What's he doing?” I said.

“Crickets. He eats 'em.”

We watched Barney assault an entire village of crickets, eating the ones he could catch, pawing and mauling the rest. Some of the lucky ones hopped away and buried themselves deep in the roots of the grass. Right then Barney seemed more terrifying than King Kong. Wheezing and groaning, crushing and pillaging. Sure, he's a cute little pug: but not if you're a cricket.

“Best leave him out here. Till it's done,” Eddie said. He crushed the end of the stogie into an old Folgers coffee can that was half-full of sand.

We went back inside. Eddie got on the phone and called up Ricky.

“I need some help with Jones,” Eddie said.

Jones is one of our clients, in the same boat as Gideon Cash. Actually, he's in a much leakier boat. I don't know how much Jones owes, but I know he'll never pay it all back. Not unless he wins the mega-millions. And I can guarantee you he plays it, too. But Eddie likes Jones, and Jones likes Eddie. It's not all bad, the relationship between the loanshark and the client. They need each other.

“I talked to Wilkinson,” Eddie said.

I could hear Ricky's muffled wrung-out voice, so tinny and dry it sounded like it was being broadcast from one of the moons of Jupiter.

“That's right,” Eddie said.

More cosmic transmissions.

“Come on over and we'll straighten it out,” Eddie said. “My house. No, I don't want to drive anywhere.”

It was chilling to hear Ricky's frantic voice. Soon he would join the forever silent.

And Eddie should be an actor making twenty million a picture. It was a real display of his power, to sit right there and listen to him lure a guy to his grisly end, and to realize he could put on as good of a show if you were the unlucky bastard at the other end of the line. My neck got cold when Eddie was on the phone that night.

What had he told him?

That Jones had gone to Wilkinson to get a loan to pay off the loan he owed to us. That's not allowed. Causes all kinds of problems. You might be surprised, but loansharks have a network. They talk. They keep tabs on people who try to juggle their debts. That's what gets them in so deep that they end up getting killed. And a dead debtor is useless. Ricky runs a big chunk of our shy operation, and Jones is a valued customer.

Me and Dan took our spots in the bathroom. Dan stood up in the tub and closed the curtain. I was tucked in the space behind the the door, holding the Low-E garotte that had turned Wade Shaw to dust. Dan the Man showed me how to use it. “No matter what, don't ever let up,” he said. “When you want to stop pulling, pull harder.”

I squeezed the handles of the garotte and stretched the string tight. Then I plucked it with my front teeth and listened to the soft drone. We weren't in there for more than twenty minutes before the doorbell rang. But it was a long twenty minutes.

I heard Ricky's voice. Eddie's laugh. A clink of a glass. Ice cubes rattling. The hum of the kitchen faucet. More laughter. I painted the scene in my mind… Ricky and Eddie near the kitchen table, Ricky shuffling around, looking at the strawberries along the walls, sipping on Scotch from Irene's side of the cabinet. Eddie sipping on an Arnold Palmer.

I wondered if it was this way with God. Was He right in the next room, listening to your final few words, giving you a few minutes more if the mood struck? This time I wasn't shaking. It was different than that first time at Crazy Al's. I wanted to make sure I got it done fast. I didn't want Ricky to suffer.

The low mumble of conversation died off, and I readied myself. We knew Ricky would hit the head, because the guy had prostate problems and he drank coffee all day long. I felt like a leopard. I could actually feel the vibration of footsteps nearing the door. I cocked my head and focused on the antique glass doorknob. It rattled and turned.

Then it stopped. Ricky was right on the other side of the door, and when he spoke it was loud and clear.

“I ain't gonna see her no more,” he said.

“I know,” Eddie said. It was harder to hear his voice. He was probably standing in the entryway between the kitchen and living room, looking at Ricky, waiting for him to go in. Ricky must've had his hand on the door knob, head turned, looking back at Eddie. I could see it all, even though the only thing I could really see was a white door and a glass knob.

“We're through,” Ricky said. “I'm done with her. Maybe you could help me out with Jim Steeves. Set up a meeting with Frank. I'll tell 'em both how sorry I am. I ain't too proud to get down on one knee and tell Frank how sorry I am.”

“I'd stay quiet about it,” Eddie said. “The less you say, the better.”

“These last few weeks have been a killer,” Ricky said. “I just wanted some strange, that's all. Now I feel like everyone's out to get me. Known you for a long time, Eddie. A real long time. Right?”

“Right,” Eddie said.

“And you wouldn't? I mean, if Frank was to say something.”

“Wouldn't what? Cut you up into neat little pieces?” Eddie said.

He laughed. Ricky laughed. They laughed for quite a bit, or so it seemed to me. I was getting sweaty. The handles of the garotte felt as heavy as metal flagpoles.

“
Eddie Sesto
,” Ricky said, striking the first and last names like he was considering the tyranny of some ancient ruler. “I won't lie. I was a little bit scared coming over here tonight.”

The door knob turned again, the door opened, and Ricky Cervetti walked in. His hair was always oily, but for some reason I could really smell it. Sweet like the lotion for a woman's hands. He stared at the garbage bags all over the walls, frozen, looking up like an alien ship was shining a beam of light to take him away. I slipped the E string over his neck, and I pulled like I might win a million dollars if I could slice his head clean off. My face smashed into the back of his greasy hair. My nose came to rest on his braided gold-chain necklace.

Ricky's hands slapped my ears. Then they went to his neck, and tried to stop the deep progress of the wire. He leaned forward, lifted me off the ground, spun around, and we fell straight back and landed between the toilet and the tub. He must've thought that I would let up for a brief second, that the weight of him would stop me. But I closed my eyes, remembered Dan's words, and pulled even harder. I dreamed of the sweet finality of death; of the respite it would bring. I didn't want Ricky to somehow turn around and see me. I was just a phantom pulling a string. If Ricky looked into my eyes, it would make me real.

Dan the Man got spooked from the sound of us falling down. I heard the ruffle of the shower curtain as he flung it open, and I saw the barrel of his gun swimming toward us like the mouth of a cold steel fish. When Ricky saw Dan, the whole story sunk right in. He groaned and kicked his legs around, and made a sound like a fox with its leg in a trap. Dan the Man cocked the hammer on his Smith and Wesson Model 10. Our eyes met, and I shook my head—no. I couldn't do that to Eddie. Barring an absolute emergency, those garbage bags were supposed to stay dry.

Dan the Man climbed out of the tub, holstered his piece, and knelt down on the ground. He pinched Ricky's nostrils and cupped a hand over his mouth.

“Keep pulling,” he said to me. Then he whispered to Ricky:

“It was Mudcap or us. Sorry, man. It'll be over soon.”

I doubt it was Dan the Man's thoughtful words, but Ricky stopped struggling. I felt that cold sinuous soul drift out of him and hopefully fly somewhere far away, to a starry place of thoughtless rest and coal black emptiness. Soon we were catching our breath, washing our hands in the sink, and staring down at a corpse that had once housed a good friend of ours.

Eddie yelled out, “it's done?” and we told him it was.

A real hit is never like it is in the movies. In a gangster flick, Ricky would've worn his nicest suit and shown up like a real man. He would've sat down on Eddie's couch and told us to go ahead. Pull the trigger already. We would've told him how nice it had been to work with him. Eddie would've given him a ten dollar cigar. Then
POW!

That's what kills me about the movies. Guys are always staring right at certain death and never flinching. But from what I've seen, your toughest tough-guy would rather push his own mother down a flight of stairs than face death like a man. It's an animal reaction. When the squirrel sees the car tires coming, he turns and runs back to the side of the road.

Eddie never came in to look at Ricky. Me and Dan the Man wrapped him up in a new shower curtain that we'd bought at Target. We duct-taped around it a few times. A neat package. I stared at Ricky's face for a second or two before I wrapped around his head.

There was a scientist a long time ago, Duncan MacSomething, who tried to weigh the human soul. He did his research on guys who were dying from tuberculosis. According to his measurements, a slight bit of weight really does flutter off somewhere, right at the moment of death. But the results were hotly debated. Theologians—and even scientists—claimed that the soul, being strictly a spiritual entity, should be weightless.

I felt Crazy Al's ghost leave his body, didn't I? Maybe it was just the shivering of my own soul, knowing what road it had taken; knowing it could never turn back from that icy expanse.

And Moe's face was an awful mask that looked as though life's spark had never burned there at all. Nothing would change his dumb expression; not the taking of limbs, nor the removal of the head itself. Our bodies really are on loan: destroyed when the contract is up. I don't believe that Al and Moe and Ricky are playing the harp on some billowy cloud, but I hope for some kind of afterlife. I hope I grow wings. I hope God's soft hands wring all of this filth right out of me until I'm as pure as a honeybee, a grasshopper, a milksnake in the hay of a hot summer barn.