47
“HOW’S THIS THING WORKING?” said Vin, sitting down in a chair beside Teddy and his hemodialysis machine.
Lying on his couch, Teddy stared up at the ceiling, with bored eyes and a grinding mouth. “It’s all right, unless it goes too slow or too fast. That’s when I start getting tired.”
The four-and-a-half-foot-tall machine hummed along quietly like a BMW. Since the prostate operation last month, Teddy had been having trouble with his kidneys and now he had a needle stuck in each of his lardy purplish yellow thighs. Long clear tubes siphoned the juices out of his body and into the machine for cleansing.
“It must be hard,” Vin said sympathetically.
Teddy grunted. “Fuck it, I ain’t worried. Every day of my life I’ve had some kinda cancer trying to eat me. You know what I’m saying? I don’t mean I had cancer cancer, but there was always something trying to nibble away. You know what I say? Fuck you, you cocksucker! You’ll never get me. You know why? I got too much life force.”
“That’s right.”
The effort of speaking left Teddy temporarily drained. His face went blank as he closed his eyes. After a moment, he clenched himself up inside, ready for another outburst.
“You try to put me down I’ll kick you over, fuck you right in the ass,” he said, struggling to clear his throat. It sounded like he was cooking a goulash in his chest. “That’s the way it is. You don’t like it, I’ll fuck you in the ass too. Because I’m a survivor.”
“Absolutely.”
“So that’s why I got so pissed when I realized you’d lied to me about your boy Anthony getting in the fight game.”
“What?!!” Vin reacted like his old friend had just put jumper cables on his eyelids.
“I heard it with my own ears.” Teddy said calmly. “Some fuckin’ cop has to tell me about it yesterday. Pigeater, whatever the fuck they call him. Paulie Raymond’s old partner. Says your Anthony’s managing a guy who’s gonna fight for ten million dollars. Then I turn on the TV to watch the weigh-in on SportsChannel, I think I see Anthony standing over in the corner.”
Vin’s eyes went back like the pictures of lemons on a slot machine. He stood up quickly and turned on the television in the corner, to drown out any wiretaps.
“You sure it was him?” he asked, returning to Teddy’s side.
“No respect.” Teddy sat up and sighed. “This fuckin’ kid don’t even give me the illusion of respect. It’s right on TV. Practically counting the money in my face. I thought I asked you to see about our end of it. And now I have to hear about this from a cop.”
“But Ted. . .”
“Not even the illusion. He puts it right in my face. Conquering the market under my fucking flag. The only reason Anthony’s getting in there with the casino people is ’cause he’s saying he’s with me. That’s the only reason. He’s in there talking like he’s an amica nostra. And not a penny of tribute to us. And you know what hurts me about this, Vin? You know what really hurts? The fact that you lied to me about it.”
Vin sputtered and pointed to his mouth, as if putting Teddy on notice that something worthwhile was about to come out. “I didn’t know nothin’ about this,” he finally managed to say. “What’s a, what’s a word you use? I was misinformed.”
“I wanna believe that,” Teddy said slowly, putting his head down on the pillow and trying to get back into the rhythm of the dialysis machine. “I wanna believe we mean more to each other than lies. But I already told you, Vin, I’m gonna have to get a piece of that. Didn’t I?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“So where’s my piece? All I’m hearing is lies. Anthony’s gotta be clearing a mil for this fight. What’re they gonna say about this in Philadelphia? In New York? On the Commission? The son of one of my own is giving me the finger.”
Vin put his hand over his heart. “Jeez, Ted, I, I don’t know. The kid must nota told me the truth.”
Teddy’s eyes stared straight up again. “That’s why he’s gotta go,” he said.
“But Ted...”
“He’s dying of ambition, your boy. See, I know he thinks I’m dying, because everyone’s talking about it, but he’s wrong. See, I still got the life force going inside me. But him, he’s the one that’s dying. You got no respect, it’s like a malignancy. It eats away inside you, a little bit at a time. You gotta cut it out or it’s gonna kill the whole body. You understand what I’m saying, Vin? Sometimes you gotta sacrifice a vital organ to save the rest.”
“Teddy, what’re you telling me? Now I gotta whack my own kid?”
Six more angry coughs racked Teddy and then a kind of serenity settled over him.
“Come on, Ted, you don’t mean that,” Vin beseeched him with clasped hands. “Lemme try and straighten him out. He’s a little confused, is all.”
A volcanic tremor came from somewhere deep inside Teddy. “What’re you, turning into a frail on me, Vin?”
Vin pushed himself up against the back of his chair. “Nah, I’m just saying, you give him an opportunity to stretch his wings and he’ll prove his loyalty,” he said with his voice cracking. “It’s like a little bird leaving his nest and coming back with twice as many twigs.”
“What’s the matter with you? Don’t you understand I want this fuckin’ kid clipped in the ass?”
“Let me talk to him one more time. I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm.”
Teddy just looked at him.
“Look at all the things I done in my life,” Vin went on. “Sometimes I look back and I think raising that boy was the only one that meant anything. After his mother died, it was just him and me. I brought him up like he was my own.”
Teddy kept glaring. There was a slightly jaundiced, yellowish tinge in his eyes.
Vin was almost off the couch and on his knees. “On my life, Ted. I’ll work this out. From now on, it’s my responsibility.”
“That’s what I’m telling you!” Teddy flared like old embers in a fireplace coming back to life. “It’s your responsibility to whack him.”
“But if I whack him, how are we ever gonna see any money out of this? See what I’m saying, Ted? Leave it to me. If I don’t turn Anthony around and make him work for you, you can give me all the blame. I’ll take whatever I got coming.”
Teddy touched his ear and the crease along his brow began to soften. With great effort, he leaned forward and slapped Vin’s knee with a pudgy, liver-spotted hand.
“All right,” he said with another cough. “You talk to him. Tell him I want sixty-five percent of whatever he’s making. And don’t take no for an answer. No more lies. That’s the end of it.”
“He’ll do the right thing.”
“Good, because otherwise he’s gonna get this.” Teddy made the sign of a gun with his hand.
The dialysis machine began to make a sputtering noise. Teddy slapped it a couple of times, but it didn’t help. Nothing was going through the tubes. Finally he turned a dial on the machine and some of the fluid began to flush through again.
“Life force, Vin, it’s a remarkable thing.” Teddy tried to roll onto his side without pulling one of the needles out of his thighs. “There’s days I think I’m gonna live forever.”
He coughed five times in a row. Vin leaned over and touched his hand. “You are, Ted. You are.”
“Yeah.” The machine seemed to shake. “But now I gotta go for my radiation three, four times a week and take this fuckin’ female hormone.”
“You’re still more a man than anyone I know,” Vin gripped his hand and kissed it.
Teddy looked up at the saline solution in the clear plastic bag over his head. “You know, Vin, the only part I’m sorry about is I don’t have a son of my own to pass things on to no more.”
“No one could blame you for that,” Vin assured him.
Teddy fell into another one of his long brooding silences, as his eyes followed the path of one single bubble in the clear tube, trying to make its way from his thigh to the humming machine.