The Old Turk's Load (18 page)

Finally the other man came around, his lips cracked and white, black stubble on his sunken cheeks. “Christ. You scared me.”
The Mailman did his pantomime thing. Langer tumbled to it quickly, gathered up what was needed, and walked with him down Wall, over Eastern Avenue, up Webster, to his house. Papa Menezes was getting ready for his janitor’s job at Gloucester Engineering, with Ilda there on the front porch waiting to see him off. She smiled and waved. Langer and the Mailman waved back.
All clear now. It was perfect. He’d take his cut in advance, just a little off the top of one of the bags out in the car. Have himself one last party before Lloyd arrived to sell the shit. Take his share of that and go to San Francisco. They had clinics there. Get clean, start his new life on the post office pension.
The old Turk’s load tingled.
Langer tingled, too, waiting demurely while the Mailman disappeared, like it was some kind of goofy high school play. Of course he had the shit stashed in that wreck of a jalopy of his. Under a seat or in the glove compartment. He’d get high with the Mailman till it was gone, or drift off by himself if no more was forthcoming at the moment, then return late that night to check out the car, see if there was more. The Mailman would be pissed, but fuck him. He sure wasn’t going to call the cops.
Presently the Mailman returned with a dentist’s office Dixie cup half full of smack. Langer’s eyes goggled. The guy had gotten into some bulk. Wow.
He took out his works, cooked up a spoonful, and fired a questioning look at his junko partner, the Mailman, who now seemed to have All the Time in the World. The voiceless one smiled and waved him on.
So Langer tied up, did himself, and jolted back when he let the rubber tubing loose. The rush came on as good as ever, but this time it did not stop. It crashed him through this sorry world and out—to where, he was amazed to realize, he truly wanted to be. This was the deal. This had been it all along. Just like going home. His eyes rolled to the top of his head, mouth went wide as the load climaxed. Then he stopped breathing and slumped off the chair, turned blue on the floor.
The Mailman realized pretty quickly what had happened.The shit was uncut. Langer had cooked it up like cheap street stuff and OD’d.The Mailman prodded him, slapped him, pushed on his chest to try to get the breathing started. Nothing doing. He dialed 911 and tried to explain the situation, but of course the dispatcher couldn’t understand him.That didn’t matter.The system would automatically give them his address.
He looked down at Langer. Hard. To fix the image in his mind for when he’d need it later. Then he went to the bank, cashed out the last of his savings, took a cab to Logan and a plane to San Francisco. They had clinics there.
Walking out on a fortune in heroin was easy. The Load was death to him now.
Of course it was too late by the time the cops responded to the Mailman’s call. But Langer, off with Smoot and Richard Mundi, didn’t mind. He looked compassionately down at his poor used-up body, fifteen feet below him now, with cops crawling over it like lobsters on a carcass at the bottom of the harbor. He was at peace, and peace was hard to come by, no matter what reality you inhabited.
True to the profile of the Mailman’s life, no one realized he’d gone away until quite a while later.That was how he’d always wanted it, and in that respect he had greater success achieving his goals than most people do.

elen returned from her Zen retreat in Vermont to find the apartment tossed and her husband passed out naked under a filthy towel, in the bathtub. He’d wet and shat himself, but the cleanup was pretty easy in the tub, and she was mellowed out from the retreat. By the time she’d straightened up the place Lloyd started to come around. She gave him two Miltowns and a glass of water. He looked at her for a long while, then thanked her.

That surprised her. He was very quiet, as he sat watching her clean, which surprised her more. Lloyd almost never shut up. She continued putting objects back in drawers and sweeping up broken glass and crockery, waiting for him to explain. He asked her if she wanted a cup of tea—things were getting
really
wiggy now.

“Helen . . . I know this is a bummer.” He hesitated, again uncharacteristically.“But I’ve . . . I’ve b-been getting my mind around some heavy shit lately . . . I want to go back to Massachusetts . . . I want to get c-c-clean.”

She looked at him, sighed. Same old bullshit. “I’m not sure I want to leave New York.”
“No hassle.”
She studied his face, trying to sort the crap from the reality. The bathtub scene had been kind of impressive. Maybe he really had hit bottom. But
a few details to work out
—how often had she heard that?
Helen looked and looked, but she just couldn’t see to that bottom. She couldn’t see what he truly wanted to do. Even worse, she couldn’t see what she truly wanted to do. She’d been putting up with his antics for so long that she’d lost her bearings. She’d started out by falling in love with him, she knew that. But neither of them had ever wanted to take the hard way when it came to anything, so their relationship had just drifted along, with them having less and less in common. Leaving, though, seemed too much trouble. She’d been waiting for the inevitable end but was never resolved about it. Did she want the money or did she want Lloyd? Did she want him sick and gone, or healthy and here? She was as messed up as he, only not on drugs.The one immediate result of whatever Lloyd now wanted her to understand was that she was sick of his shit.
She rose from the table, grabbed the backpack she’d just carried down from Vermont, and said, “Fuck you, Lloyd,” but quietly, under her breath.

ust as Harry Jarkey was Kelly’s man, Neil Genzlinger was Jarkey’s man. He worked at the
Times
morgue and helped Jarkey do research for Kelly. But he also aspired to a writing career, and Jarkey was coaching him on getting his foot in the door. It was Genzlinger on the phone when Harry returned to his apartment on East Ninety-Fourth, hardly a thought in his head after two days with Irene. The ringing started when Harry was in the shower, and it kept up as he toweled off.

“Hey! I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon.” “You reached me, pal.”
“I went to see Kelly yesterday,” Genzlinger told him. “He

wasn’t there, but his office was destroyed.”
“Right. Well, there’s been some stuff going on. Kind of dif
ficult to explain.”
“It doesn’t look so good to me, Harry. About the office, I mean.” “I’ll check it out and let you know.”He put down the receiver. Jarkey had to admit to some residual curiosity about Kelly’s
next move. Did he have the drugs? What was he going to do about
the Mob? He dressed and walked down to Sammy’s.
Norbert, nervously toweling glasses, gave him a queer look
when he walked in.
“You seen Kelly?”
The bartender’s color, Jarkey realized, wasn’t so good. Not that
tending bar had enhanced it. Finally Norbert leaned toward him
and said miserably, “It was me. I gave him up.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Three gorillas were waiting when I came into work the other
day—right before the blackout. They were looking for Kelly. I told
them to go down to Lloyd’s. Couldn’t think of any other way to get
rid of them. I knew Kelly had a thing for Lloyd’s wife, but I didn’t
figure he’d actually be there.” He shook his head in self-disgust. “And . . . ?”
“Helen called yesterday, asking if I’d seen him. Her place had
been trashed, and Kelly’s hat and gun were on the floor. I can imagine him forgetting his gun, but he’d never go anywhere without
the hat.”
“You don’t know for sure they found him there.” “She’s talked to a neighbor who saw a guy nab him in front
of the apartment and throw him in a car.”
“Jesus.”
Norbert, who hadn’t touched a drop in thirty-three years, now
squirted a few inches of ginger ale into a glass and tossed it back
in a gulp. Jarkey had intended to share a consolatory drink, but the
other man had aroused the memory of Kelly’s last words—about
how he had a surprise planned for the bad guys. He gave Norbert
a reassuring pat on the shoulder and caught a cab down to the
Lower East Side.
* * *

He found Lloyd sitting on the edge of the bed in his apartment— serene, contemplative, above it all—gazing back at earth across light-years of drug-induced brain damage.There was a pair of folded jeans in his lap and a small suitcase on the bed beside him. He’d probably been trying to get packed all day.

“Harry . . .”
“Lloyd, what happened to Kelly?”
“Oh.”Flat,emotionless,like he’d just heard his dry cleaning was

ready. Long pause.“They got him.When I was out.They got him and wrecked my place.They’ll get you, too. But it doesn’t matter. Because that stuff is going to get you all. It’s evil . . .”His tone suddenly turned oracular. “I saw it last night.” He paused. “I understand now.”

What Jarkey understood was that Lloyd was in a state of shock—chemical or otherwise. “When did they toss your place, Lloyd? Were you here?”

“No. I was . . . out. Kelly was sleeping on the couch. But he was gone when I got back. Must’ve been when they nabbed him. Helen came but I sent her away. I didn’t want her to get hurt. I’m waiting for them to come back.”

“When they come I’m going to tell them where the heroin is, and they’ll get it and it’ll destroy them.”
“That’s a terrible idea, Lloyd. They’ll kill you.”
“You don’t understand, Harry. It’s more evil than they are. They’ll think I’m doing them a favor.”
“Evil, right.”Jarkey was patient.“Where is it, Lloyd? You need to tell me, too.”
“Yes.” He unfolded the jeans, shook them out, folded them again, and put them back on his lap.“Kelly and I put the stuff in the door panel of the Mailman’s car and he drove it to Gloucester. I used to live in Gloucester. I used to know the Mailman, too, except now he has a hole in his throat. We were going to go up there and help him fence it, like it came off the boats.Then I . . . changed my mind.”
“I’m cool with that, Lloyd. But where is it? Where is it now?”
“Thirty-one Webster Street. Bottom of Portugee Hill. The Mailman lives in the basement apartment. I used to live on the top floor. The penthouse.” He chuckled softly at some private recollection. “Get it if you want. It’ll destroy you, too.”
Lloyd was creeping him out. At that point Harry didn’t care if the Newark heavies
did
come back and find him sitting there folding and refolding his pants. They’d storm in, Lloyd would tell them where the stuff was, and they’d kill him, just like Kelly. He could feel the menace gathering out there, like a very nasty storm. He needed shelter.
He called Irene, who told him to come back to her.

addy never said a word about the power failure the next morning—nobody in Wallis Sands cared much about what went on in New York—and Gloria didn’t find out about it until that evening when she went down to Philbrick’s to make her call. The headline on the pile of
Manchester Union Leaders
beside the brass cash register said, “Blackout Hits Northeast.”

She asked Irene about it first thing.
“It was a weird night. But, Glo, I’ve got some bad news for you.” All Gloria could think of was the drugs. “Go ahead . . .” “Your father had a heart attack at the airport. He’s dead. Murchison and Kraft are taking care of things.”

It shocked Gloria that all she felt at first was a kind of lightness. Then came the slam of something very complicated beneath the relief. “Give me a while, okay? I’ll call you at your office later.”

She wandered across the street to the tumble of boulders that marked the north end of the little sand beach. She sat looking over the water at the huge old hotels on the Isles of Shoals, illuminated like a floating metropolis by the westering sun. As if her mother and father were there now, in that mysterious Golden City, and she could no more get to them than she could swim to Appledore Island.

The pain began to come on in waves, each stronger than the last. She wasn’t going to be able to think her way through this, nor would her self-assurance help. Much as Kelly might’ve done, she worked through it, in her extremity, image by image. Oldest memories first—Daddy young and strong. She and Daddy playing. Daddy and Julie. Daddy coming home once when she was very young—she could absolutely hear his voice—and calling Mommy “Honey Bunch.”

That one brought the tears; then wrenching sobs gutted up from a place she’d never been before. The images slid into patterns. She gasped for breath, and slowly the racking waves diminished. She remembered her mother’s hugs, and the way Daddy’s pride in her—his and Mommy’s both—had felt warm like the sun in summer.

As that part of their lives expanded for her, all the troubled present shrank down to its rightful trifling size.Then she understood it was going to be very difficult for a while, but that it had been essentially right with Daddy and her, as it had been with Mommy, and for exactly this reason she would be okay. Missing him would hurt, but she’d be able to function. She thanked the both of them, her parents, for everything they’d given her, wished them peace, and stared over the ocean as the island beyond turned red, then gray. Eventually she made her shaky way down the road to Maddy’s.

It was an impressive job of self-persuasion, and whenever she thought of it afterward she knew she’d only been able to pull it off because of Maddy and that womb of a place on the marsh by the edge of the sea. She’d been damned lucky to land there.

loyd sat on the edge of his bed for a few hours after Harry left, a second at a time. While he was sitting, he thought about his situation. The Mafia guys kept not showing up, but his encounter with Jarkey had given him an idea. If they didn’t come, the thing to do was call them. Eventually, even in his hinky state, the thought gained purchase and Lloyd shuffled from his bed into the big front room, found the phone, lifted the receiver from its cradle, got a dial tone, called a guy he knew who knew a guy in the Newark gang, and got word to them that way. It was an impressive sequence for a man with his synaptic challenges.