Watch Me Go

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

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Copyright © 2015 by Mark Wisniewski

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Portions of this novel have appeared, in slightly different form, in
The Antioch Review
,
The Best American Short Stories 2008
,
The Virginia Quarterly Review
, and
The Idaho Review
.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wisniewski, Mark S., date.

Watch me go / Mark Wisniewski.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-698-17799-4

1. False imprisonment—Fiction. 2. Jockeys—Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction.
4. Organized crime—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3573.I8773W38 2015 2014026895

813'.54—dc23

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental.

F
OR
E
LIZABETH

AMONG DOUGLAS “DEESH” SHARP’S
well-guarded thoughts was the idea that his public defender, Lawrence Gerelli, might
win more often if he’d now and then iron a shirt. Worse, Gerelli had a tendency to
show his hand by letting himself go sour-faced, and here Gerelli was, doing that again
as he sat across the table in the small white room and said, “Mostly, Mr. Sharp? You
have a belief problem.”

“As in you don’t believe me?” Deesh asked.

“As in we need twelve jurors to believe you, and they’re going to be hard to find.”

“So you’re saying plea bargain.”

“The plea bargaining’s already begun, Mr. Sharp. The prosecution here in the Bronx
is talking about sending you back to
Pennsylvania—where, unlike here, people are still relatively comfortable with the
death penalty.”

And there was that sour face again, and Deesh found himself leaning back in his folding
chair to say, “Man,
nobody
gets to twelve without first having two in this room.”

Gerelli began gathering his notes and electronics. “I’m late for an arraignment,”
he said. He snapped closed and yanked up his briefcase. “You want life here in New
York, Mr. Sharp, just say the word and I’ll bust my ass to get that for you.” He glared
at Deesh, who glared back. “You still want to go for broke, we’ll talk about building
cases next time.” He walked out, and the door swung closed.

And right away, Deesh felt less alone. He flattened his hands beside the bolted steel
ring his wrists were cuffed to. He appreciated this small white room, its cleanliness
and brightness, the safety implied by its particular silence.

Then, from behind the room’s white door, there was a cough. And a knock. The door
opened, and just behind the guard stood someone short, so this wasn’t who Deesh had
hoped—it wasn’t his son—and the guard stepped aside and Deesh saw the face, a woman’s
face, a way-too-fine, almost dollish face on a very short, white, deeply suntanned
young woman whose curves struck Deesh as impossibly sweet, too.

“Who the hell is this?” he asked the guard.

“She signed in,” the guard said.

The cop’s wife? Deesh thought, but the woman eyed the handcuffs so intently there
was no way she hung with cops. Deesh felt himself holding his breath while she stood
behind the chair Gerelli had left, braced as if she were set to run off if need be.

“So you’re the infamous Deesh,” she said, in her own kind of sadness.

“All day.”

“I’m Jan Price.”

“Means nothing to me.”

“I knew Tom Corcoran personally,” she said, as if this explained everything. “The
jockey,” she added. “And there are things about his gambling I can testify about.”

Bullshit, Deesh wanted to say, but she looked away quickly, at one of the bright white
walls, brow knitted, maybe about to cry, maybe not.

She said, “But I need to know you didn’t kill those other two guys.”

She kept on looking at that wall.

“I didn’t kill anyone,” Deesh said, and he knew, given his experience with whites
this beautiful, that right about now was when the ugliness in her would show.

“Then why are you in here?” she asked.

Her eyes met his, but he was already shaking his head, as if to suggest that, no,
he would not have this conversation, though now here he was, also asking, “Isn’t that
obvious?”

And she said, “No.”

He raised a cuffed forearm, pointed at it best he could.

“But Deesh,” she said, “you’re not the only black guy out there. I mean, for some
reason, they arrested
you.
And what’s eating me up is that I happen to know that, when it comes to Tom Corcoran,
you’re as innocent as a colt learning to walk. But if you’re a killer anyway, why
should I help you?”

And it was only now that Deesh realized he could actually care
about this woman—in that same solid way he’d once cared about his state champion teammates—because
here he was, saying to her, “Ms. Price, you’re asking me to tell you a very long story.”

And she said, “Not necessarily, Deesh. I’m asking you to tell me the truth.”

DEESH

NINE TIMES OUT OF TEN
it’s a woman who calls Bark to answer his classified ad in the Westchester
Pennysaver
, and sometimes when we pull up to her yard in his pickup, she’s outside waiting for
us. Sometimes she even has something inside for us to eat, which, besides needing
money, is why James and I never ask Bark if he wants our help. We just get in his
truck and hope he lets us go.

But the truth, Jan, is that on the morning he drives us north of Poughkeepsie, no
woman, or anyone, is waiting outside. Maybe this has to do with the five hundred dollars
this woman offered—she doesn’t feel the need to be friendly beyond that. Or maybe
she’s with the junk that needs to be hauled. Anyway Bark pulls off the country road
into her driveway, which drops through her uncut lawn toward her shabby yellow house,
and we all get out, Bark headed to knock on her front door.

“Hey,” I hear from the left-hand side of the house, and I turn but see no one. “Down
here,” the voice calls, and there, crouched near an open crawl space hole, is a woman
about as dark as me, maybe five years older.

“Over here, Bark,” I shout, and Bark makes his way down the porch, then over to her,
James and I lagging behind to let her know he’s boss.

“I took care of the rest myself,” she says, and Bark kneels beside her, then pokes
his head and a good half of him into the crawl space. He stays in there for a while,
making sure, I figure, that we can do what needs doing. Then he’s back out, and he
stands, slapping dirt off his knees.

“Just that oil drum?” he says.

“Yeah,” she says.

“I thought you said there was a bunch of stuff,” he says.

“No,” she says. “Just that.”

“What’s in it?” he asks.

“I have no idea,” she says, but she’s scratching her arm and keeps scratching it;
if she’s not flat-out lying, she’s more than a little nervous.

“Because the thing is,” Bark says, “I can’t just take a drum like that to a dump without
them asking what’s inside.”

“Then don’t take it to a dump,” she says. “Just, you know, get rid of it.”

Bark grabs his unshaven jaw, considering. Probably he’s stumped by why a sister is
living more than an hour north of the city; plus it doesn’t make much sense that
any
woman living in a house this shabby could have
five hundred dollars, let alone give it to us to haul off a drum with nothing bad
in it. It crosses my mind this woman loves some guy who’s given her five hundred to
get rid of
the drum, some dude, maybe a white one, that she has it bad for and cheated with—and
that inside the drum is this man’s wife. But all kinds of things are crossing my mind,
including how I could use five hundred dollars divided by three.

“How ’bout a thousand?” the woman says.

Here’s where all of us, including her, gaze off at her uncut lawn, the dandelions
and weeds in it, some of them pretty enough to call flowers. We gaze our separate
ways for a long time, letting whatever truth of what’s going on sink into us while
we play as if it isn’t, and I feel my guts work their way higher toward my lungs,
threatening to stay there if Bark agrees. But there’s a lot I could do with my share
of a thousand, especially since I’m used to walking away from these jobs with fifty
at most. I could eat more than apples and white bread and ham. I could start saving
for a truck of my own—to haul things for pay myself.

Then, to the woman, Bark says, “In cash?”

“As soon as that drum’s in your truck,” she says.

Bark glances at James, who nods.

“Deesh?” Bark asks me, and I know he’s working me over with his eyes, using them to
try to convince me in their I-don’t-care-either-way manner, but what I’m watching
is the woman’s feet, which are the tiniest bit pigeon-toed. They are also perfectly
still, which could mean she’s no longer nervous, but my eyes, I know, are avoiding
her fingers and arms. Still, the sight of those pigeon-toed feet has me giving her
the benefit of the doubt, maybe because I once had it bad—really bad—for someone who
stood like that.

“Why not?” I answer. I haven’t, I tell myself, actually said yes, but when I look
up, James is following Bark into the crawl space, the woman checking me out.

“Sure appreciate it,” she says, in the flat way of someone who’s
been with enough men to deal with us no problem. But now she’s scratching her collarbone—over
and over she’s scratching it, without one bug bite on her. There’s death in that drum,
I think, but with her pigeon-toed feet aimed at me, I fall even more in love.

Then she walks off, toward a creek behind her house, and it hits me that if I want
my share of the thousand, I should get my ass in that crawl space, since the actual
removal of the drum might take but five minutes—and the last thing I need is Bark
and James saying I don’t deserve a cent. Then I realize that if I don’t take a cent
I might not be guilty of any crime that’s going on here. But wisdom like that helps
only if you’re not desperate for cash, plus I need to be in Bark’s truck to get home,
and even before I’m done thinking all this I’m on my hands and knees, my head brushing
morning glory vines, then on its way through the square opening in the foundation
of the woman’s house.

It’s quiet in there, and it stinks. James and Bark are on their bellies, snaking their
way over damp dirt and rocks toward the drum, which lies on its side in the far corner.
With the thousand in mind, I work myself toward them, trying to get a hand on the
drum when they do—but Bark yells, “We got it, Deesh.”

“What are you saying?” I ask.

“I’m saying this is a two-man job, so back off.”

“You trying to cut me out of my share.”

“No. It’s just there ain’t enough room for all three of us if we want to get this
thing past us.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

Bark humps up his backside, reaches into a front pocket, pulls out his keys, tosses
them toward me. “Pull the truck down the driveway,” he says. His hands dig dirt away
from the drum. “As close to the house as you can,” he says.

“Bark,” I say. “I haven’t driven in fifteen years.”

“You’ll remember,” he says. “Just start it, put it in gear, and steer so you don’t
hit nothing.”

“Okay,” I say, though Bark’s confidence in me has taken away the little I have in
myself. I used to have confidence—gold confidence—but the older I get, I have less.
Still, I back myself out of the crawl space, pretend the woman isn’t watching as I
jog up the driveway to Bark’s truck, hop inside it, start it, put it in drive and
let it roll down there. Steering is easy, but when I put on the brake, I about fly
through the windshield. The woman, still near the creek, has her arms folded now,
and again she’s checking me out. There’s that kind of thing between us, that curiosity
about each other we’d ruin with conversation, and I want to make love to her bad.

Now Bark and James are yanking the drum top first through the hole in her foundation;
the drum is too wide to roll out. They struggle like hungry playground kids—whatever’s
in that thing is dumb heavy. Wind blows past my face, the woman now picking a weed’s
blue flower from between pebbles beside the creek. It’s her husband in the drum, I
think. She got carried away in an argument over nothing and the thousand is all they
ever saved.

“Deesh,” Bark calls to me. “Gonna help us or not?”

I nod, toss him his keys, which he catches like it’s the old days. I walk toward him
and James, and all three of us roll the drum to the driveway, flattening a strip of
knee-high grass, acting like we haul mystery drums every day. This one is the rusted
old orange you’d expect, but its new yellow lid has barely a scratch or a smudge on
it, and as we team up near Bark’s tailgate and lift on the count of three, we take
extra care to keep the lid on. Dead weight, I think as we lower the works onto the
bed. If this isn’t a corpse, she would have said so.