Chance

CHAPTER 41

Julius lived in a three-story stucco house with a five-car garage and grates on the windows. He and I sat on high, hard, hand carved mahogany chairs in his big ornate formal living room and looked out through the grated windows at the guest cottage, in the backyard, the big house in miniature. There was no grass in the backyard. It was covered with beige pea stone, ornamented with statuary.

"How's your wife?" I said.

"No good."

"Takes a while," I said.

Julius shook his head.

"She ain't going to get better," he said.

"I know a shrink."

"Shrinks are a bunch of fucking perverts," Julius said.

"Oh yeah," I said.

"I forgot that."

"You know anything about where that fucking Anthony is?"

"No," I said.

"But I'm still looking."

"You look all you want, long as you don't think I'm paying you."

"My own interest," I said.

"There's a hundred thousand out on him," Julius said.

"You find him, you kill him, you get the hundred grand. Just like anybody else."

"Very fair," I said.

"Did you know he and Marty Anaheim were running some kind of scam?"

"What kind of scam?"

"I don't know. Did you know your daughter and Marty were friends?"

Julius stared at me.

"Shirley?"

"Yeah."

He shook his head.

"Not with Marty Anaheim."

"You any idea what that might be about?"

"You know this?"

"I got it on good authority."

"Who?"

I shook my head.

"Any thoughts?" I said.

Julius slumped back in his chair and stared at me.

"You want some fruit?" he said.

He made a listless gesture at a big pink and blue and white bowl on the coffee table. There was a large Technicolor picture of Shirley on the table near the fruit.

"No thanks."

"Her mother couldn't have no more kids," Julius said, "after her. Her womb was tipped or something."

He was staring out the window at the guest house. His voice rumbled up out of him, as if his mind were elsewhere and his voice was on its own.

"I had a business to run. Her mother was supposed to raise her."

He paused. There must have been other people in the big ugly house but there was no sound. Nothing moved. The house felt as if it had been closed up for a long time.

"She never let her out. Not even for school. One of the fucking nuns come in every day and teach her, and my wife would sit there the whole time. When she finally had to go to high school, my wife takes her in the morning, picks her up in the afternoon. She never learned to drive a car. Hell, she can't… couldn't… even ride a bicycle. She might fall off, get hurt."

We were quiet. I could smell the ripening scent of the apples and pears in the bowl on the coffee table.

"How'd she meet Anthony," I said.

"She knew him from high school. He used to come around, bring some videocassettes and him and Shirley and my wife would watch movies in here."

"The three of them."

"Yeah. My wife had to make sure he wasn't showing her no bad movies. Make sure there was no sex going on. So they'd sit there and watch the movies and the thing is… it's a real funny thing, you feel like laughing… my wife gets to like this creep. The fucking head chicken gets to like the fucking fox. He's polite, you know, and he talks to my wife. Why not, what the fuck you going to talk to Shirley about. She's hardly ever been out of the fucking house. But my wife tells me he ain't a fucking hoodlum, except she don't say 'fucking," like the hoodlums work for me. And he's going to many Shirley and I'm going to give him a nice responsible job.

And I say, then he'll be a hoodlum. But my wife don't pay no fucking attention. She's good at not paying no fucking attention. So I put him to work. He's collecting money for me on all of the out of-turf accounts and paying off the people I gotta pay off to do business quiet in those places. I need somebody I can trust to do it."

"Why not pay off the people yourself?"

"Bookkeeping. I let Anthony collect, say, from bookies on Gino's turf and he pays Gino direct out of collections, and there's no money trail. Federal guys especially like to follow the money.

The less tracks back to me, the easier everything works."

"And the easier it is to skim," I said.

"Why you want a trustworthy guy doing it," Julius said.

"Like Anthony."

Julius nodded slowly.

"Just like him," he said.

"You had any interest in moving in on Tony Marcus's business while he's in jail?"

Julius shrugged.

"You think about it," he said.

"Tony's got some stiff named Tarone running his errands while he's in the place. Could knock him over easy."

"I met Tarone."

"I unnerstand Tony's problem," Julius said.

"You don't want no hotshot running things while you're away, 'cause when you come back it might be his."

"Tony's in no danger there," I said.

"Other hand, you don't want some candy ass running things, anyone can walk in and take it away from him."

"Not easy being a crime lord," I said.

Julius ignored me. He liked talking about business.

"Used to be when Broz was younger, you go see him, you talk, he sorta decides what's gonna happen, everybody gets along, everybody makes money. Now, it's like, you know, an open city. So, yeah, we been looking over his operation. Gino probably has too.

Fast Eddie Lee, I don't know. He ain't said. Fuckers never say much."

"Gotten to push and shove yet?"

"No, right now we're just appraising."

"Anthony have anything to do with the appraising?"

"Forget Anthony, I told you, there's a C-grand out on him. He don't matter anymore. He's already dead, he just don't know it yet."

"You think Shirley and Marty Anaheim might be connected to the appraising?"

"There ain't no Shirley and Marty Anaheim."

"I'm told there was."

"He's fucking lying," Julius said, his voice rumbling in his chest.

"Give me his name."

I shook my head again.

"I find out who's saying that," Julius rumbled, "I'll kill him.

Myself. Personally."

There didn't seem anywhere to go from there. I stood up.

"I'll go now," I said.

"I'm sorry about your daughter."

"Yeah," Julius said.

"And I hope your wife can find some consolation."

Julius nodded. His head was forward a little. He seemed to have sunk deeper into his chair.

"She ain't going to," he said.