The Weight (24 page)

I knew I couldn’t live on the money from the jewelry job forever. But I could be real careful about what jobs to take. That’s the best any man who does what I do can hope for.

It’s happened before. A guy looks like me, he can always find work. Not
score
work, regular work. Like collecting debts. But even that kind of work, there’s risks.

I worked construction once in a while, but I didn’t have an in, so I could never get on with the union. Mostly, I’d end up with lousy jobs, like being a bouncer in a club.

I never kept one of those jobs long. Usually, I’d get fired. Not for going too far; for not going far enough. If I couldn’t scare a guy, or just wrap him up and carry him outside, I’d step off. Guys don’t walk around with warning labels telling you if they had real thin skulls or a bad heart, stuff like that.

So I’d get fired for not doing my job. I’d listen to some greasy little puke in a suit tell me I was a punk—all show, no go. I was probably taking it up the ass, they’d say. Tell me to go work in a gay bar. That always got a laugh from the others in his office.

There’s always other guys in the office. I just look at them, one at a time. They never say anything themselves.

That’s why I only took cash jobs, the kind where you get paid after every shift.

Just let it go
. That’s what I kept telling myself.

“Go” was the word, not “no.”

Go on down to Florida and see about this Jessop, like Solly wanted me to do. Don’t say no to him.

“Buying time,” those words go either way. Could mean you’re playing it smart; could mean you’re playing it stupid. I couldn’t find this Jessop, but maybe the PI the lawyer used could.

I knew I didn’t actually have to find the guy. But I had to be able to tell Solly I tried. And it had to be the truth.

Talking to that cop, that had been insane. Way too close to the edge. I should only talk to my own kind.

But I just couldn’t get that girl out of my mind. Not her, the guy who raped her. The guy whose time I did.

Something else was off about the whole thing. But I could never get my mind to open up and show me, no matter how hard I tried.

So I just let it go.

“I’ll take the bus,” I told Solly.

He kind of smiled. “That’s smart, Sugar. You don’t need a credit card for the Greyhound. I’ll set it up for Albie’s niece to pick you up at the depot.”

“Okay.”

“By his neighbors, Albie was just another old retired guy, moved to Florida to get away from the cold. Tallahassee, it’s not where you go if you like boats, stuff like that. The whole town’s built around the college. Big-time sports school, that’s about it.

“But it was perfect for Albie. Prices—for land, I mean—prices were real cheap, especially to a guy used to paying Miami scale. So Albie got himself, like, twenty acres. Had a house built. Then he could do what he’s always wanted. Albie, he was a stamp collector. Talk your damn ear off about them, you gave him a chance.

“Albie made me executor of his will. That means I got to make sure everybody gets what’s coming to them. The house, his cars, everything. Especially those damn stamps. Meant so much to him, ten-to-one whoever gets them sells them in a week.

“Ah, so what?” He looked sad for a second, then said, “You
know who wants to see that will? Rena, that’s her name. She’s down there now, living in the house. Driving the car, too, maybe—that I don’t know. She’ll do old Uncle Solly a favor, guaranteed. Just get yourself to the bus depot, and she’ll meet you.

“That’s the way we worked it out, Albie and me. If I went first, Grace—you see how she calls me Uncle Solly, too?—would get all my stuff.

“You understand, we’re talking about
legit
stuff. House, car, bank-account stuff. For that, you need paper. Cash, that’s something else. Grace knows where I keep my will; it would be up to Albie to what they call ‘probate’ it. In court, with a lawyer. But Albie’s girl, she don’t know where Albie kept
his
will except with me, understand?”

I could tell more was coming, so I just kept quiet.

“And there’s one more thing,” Solly said, “and, for that, this girl
won’t
know where it is.”

“The cash?”

“Forget cash. Albie’s book, that’s what she won’t know about.”

“Book?”

Solly took a little book out of his jacket. It was real old. You could tell because the leather covers were a faded-pale shade of blue, and it was all cracked, like a windshield gets if you hit it with a rock. Small, too. And thin. “Exactly like this one,” he said. “There were two of these, a long time ago. Twins. The writing inside, it wouldn’t make sense to anyone. It’s in code. Albie and me, we’re the only ones who could understand it, because we made it up between ourselves.”

“Exactly
like that one?”

“Yeah. And this is how you make sure,” Solly told me. He opened the little blue book. On the first page, there was a thumbprint. Looked like it was once done in blood, now it looked more like a brownish color. “You don’t see the same thing in Albie’s book, it’s not the one you want.”

“What’s that under the print? I can see—”

“Forget the
print
, Sugar. Just that there’ll
be
one, you with me?”

I nodded, so he’d know I was. “This girl, the one in Florida, is she like … is she like Grace?”

“You mean …? No, she’s not. But Grace, don’t underestimate her, kid. In her own way, that is one
sharp
young lady. And loyal? Forget it! She already knows what to do when I go. There’s enough legit stuff, keep her safe the rest of her life. Only thing is, Albie went first. Now I’ve got to shlep down to the lawyer’s and change my will, probably cost me an arm and a leg.”

The old man looked at me for a long minute. Probably trying to figure out if I knew it wasn’t this Jessop he was worried about; what he really needed was to get his hands on Albie’s book. Wondering if he was making the same mistake about me he warned me against making about Grace.

“Solly, can I ask you a question?”

“Of course. Anything you—”

“You got a book. Albie’s got a book. If you went first, Grace would give your book to Albie, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“So she knows where your book is. But Albie’s girl, she
doesn’t
?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding his head like he was agreeing with himself. “Try it this way. Grace, she’s like my niece for real. Just like I told you. But Rena, okay, she calls me ‘Uncle Solly’ same as Grace does, only she wouldn’t ever be saying ‘Uncle Albie.’ She was … like his girlfriend, all right? Been with him a long, long time.”

“So you’re saying Albie, it was okay with him if his girlfriend gets all his stuff, like a house or whatever, right? But not the book?”

“I guess that’s right. Albie must have … look, I don’t know, okay? Grace, you could bet your life. Whatever she says she’ll do, it’s as good as done. Just like her father. But Rena, I don’t know her like that.

“I don’t know why Albie decided he couldn’t trust her with that book, but that’s what he must have decided. That book, it’s
way
more important than any money, Sugar. And it could be bad—real, real bad—if Rena managed to get her hands on it.”

“If you know where it is, why don’t you just—?”

“Are you fucking
listening
to me? I
don’t
know where it is. It was
supposed
to be like I said: Grace for me; Rena for Albie. But when Rena called me, not one single word about that book. Never said,
‘Come down and get it.’ Or even just FedEx’ed it. So either she doesn’t know where it is, or she’s got it and she wants to turn it into cash. That’s why I never sent her Albie’s will.”

“So Albie never trusted her with that book—which means you can’t trust her, either?”

“That’s it,” Solly said. He looked real old then. Like he could see the end of things. “Jessop, he’s not a big deal, okay? But I’ve got to have that book. Me and Albie …”

I waited a long time, but Solly didn’t say anything more. He just looked at me.

“I said I’d do it,” I told him. I hoped I said it just like Ken would have.

“This is a lot of money,” the woman who wanted me to call her Margo said.

“It’s just three months’ rent. I’ll be away for a while. It could be just a couple of weeks, but it could just as easy be a couple of months. You know how those things are.”

I said that last thing because people never want to admit they
don’t
know how things are.

“So I guess, if I wanted to start … training, like we talked about, I’d have to wait until you come back, huh?”

“I’m sorry. This came up real sudden. If I had even a week or two, I could show you enough to keep you going until I got back. But, the way things are—”

“Oh, I
know
. Especially today. Nobody seems to have any money. You can’t pass up a chance like this.”

“Thanks for understanding,” I told her.

I spent the night getting ready. I didn’t like some parts of this bus thing. They don’t let you take much luggage on board; they just check it for you. And
this
bus ride, it was like a day and a half long. The girl I spoke to at Greyhound looked it up for me, and said I’d have to change buses a couple of times.

The train would have been better, but the lady at Amtrak said it didn’t stop in Tallahassee. Not even close.

Everything in the refrigerator I either finished off or poured out. A lot of my dry stuff, I could take with me.

It was pretty easy, stripping the place. All I left behind was some stuff in the closet. Way before my rent advance ran out, Margo would find some excuse to stick her nose in.

The weather report said tomorrow was going to be in the nineties. Swell time to be going to Florida.