The Love You Crave

23.

“Reason I wanted to talk to you,” Carmine says, “this thing with little Gwennie has my stomach all tied up in knots.”

“I know how you feel.”

“You been fuckin’ her,” he says. He puts his hand up. “You don’t have to answer. It’s between the two of you. I also know she had something to do with killing Lucky. Figure your girl’s the one who did it. What’s her name? Callie something?”

I say nothing.

He waves his hand. “Whatever. None of my business. I’m an old man.”

“You’ve still got teeth,” I say, referring to his power.

He chuckles. “A few.” Then he says, “That was nice of you, crushing Roy’s hand like that.” He chuckles again. “Bad for Roy, though.”

“You gave him a good slap.”

“I should’a killed him.” He sighs. “In the old days…” his voice trails off.

“What about little Gwennie?” I say.

“That,” he says. “I gotta wonder. How did things get so bad between you?”

I shrug. “Tell you the truth, I thought we were getting along really well.”

He nods. “Women, right?”

“The smart move is to kill her.”

He nods. “I know.” He pauses, looks at me.

“What?”

“I’m an old man,” he says.

“You said that.”

“See? Old people repeat themselves.” He laughs. “Anyway, what I was gonna say, this thing that’s got her angry, whatever it is, maybe you can work it out between you. What I’m sayin’, you got a little time here. Maybe you can figure it out. I don’t know. Buy her flowers, a mink coat, you know?”

“Women don’t wear mink these days.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Does it matter?”

He slaps his hand against his forehead. “No wonder I can’t get any pussy!”

We laugh. Then I say, “You really think if I bring her flowers she won’t try to have me killed?”

“How the fuck do I know? What I do know is, you give a woman a gift, it forces her to speak to you.”

“She spoke to me today. Many times.”

“Was she mad?”

“Quite the opposite.”

“She catch you cheating?”

“Nope.”

He shrugs. “Women, right?”

“Women,” I say.

We’re quiet a while, two guys in the office of a strip club, wondering how we could possibly know so little about women.

“Don’t tell her I said anything,” Carmine says.

“I wouldn’t do that.”

He nods. We both know it’s important for Gwen to believe she has his confidence.

I say, “She offer you money?”

“For the hit? Nah. We didn’t get that far.”

“Because?”

He looks at me. “I told you.”

“Yeah. We’re friends. I know. But why didn’t you take the hit? You know she’ll inherit money from the estate. Eventually.”

“Don’t dismiss the friendship part so easily.”

I wait.

He says, “The other part is, I got no one good enough. I can’t afford to lose any more shooters.”

Finally. An honest answer.

Carmine says, “Did you know Tony was gonna be here tonight?”

“He’s the one that called when I was on the phone with you. He wants to talk.”

“Do me a favor?”

“Name it.”

“You decide to tear off his other ear, do it outside, okay? Customers see that sort of thing, it’s bad for business.”

“Got it. No tearing off ears inside the club.”

He stares at me a moment. Then says, “How do you do it?”

“What, tear a guy’s ear off?”

“Yeah. What I’m askin’, does it come off clean?”

“With practice.”

He looks at me like a proud father looks at his son after watching him hit a game-winning home run. Then chuckles. “You kids these days. Jeez.”

I smile. Truth is, it only requires seven pounds of pressure to rip a guy’s ear off his head. Take a dozen sheets of typing paper, hold them together with one hand, tear them with the other. That’s an equivalent effort. The trick is to hook your fingers as far behind the ear as possible, grabbing as much tissue as you can. Don’t try to pull the ear off. There’s too much connective tissue. You want to tear from the top of the ear downward. At first you might have problems shearing the entire ear off in one motion. Like I say, it takes practice.