The Strangler

46

“The fuck is this, Rick?”

“Edith Piaf.”

“Edith Piaf. Fuckin’ Cambridge.”

“She’s French.”

“Well, I know she’s French. That’s not my point.”

“You know Edith Piaf?”

“No, dummy, I can hear. She’s singing French. I’ve been to France, remember? She’d be singin’ German if it wasn’t for me.”

“Good thing you went, then.”

“What kind of place puts Edith Piaf on the fuckin’ jukebox?”

“The customers must like it.”

“Exactly. That’s my point. What kind of people come to a place like this?”

“Me.”

“See, there you go.”

“You said pick a place you wouldn’t see anyone you know. Trust me, no one you know comes here.”

“Why would they?” Joe looked around the place, a scruffy basement bar called the Casablanca-the Casa B, everyone called it-on Brattle Street in Harvard Square. He snorted. What a scene. Couple of boho hippy poets needing a bath and a haircut. Skinny Harvard rich kids needing a wising-up before they went off and became stockbrokers. Dumpy Cambridge broads looking like washerwomen. “Jesus, Rick, I could see Michael hanging around a place like this. I figured you knew better.”

“Sorry to let you down.”

“What are you doing out here anyway? Who would want to live in Cambridge?”

“It’s better not to live where you work.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

“I cross that river, I’m in Middlesex County. Different cops, different D.A.’s. Nobody knows me here, no hassles.”

Joe nodded. He scraped his beer bottle with a thumbnail, distracted.

“Relax, Joe. I just told you, you’re out of your jurisdiction.”

“I don’t give a shit. Do whatever you want. What, you think I’m gonna arrest you?” But Joe’s disdain seemed to have exhausted itself on Edith Piaf and the Cambridge hippy scene, and he fell quiet.

Ricky did not know exactly what to make of it. What was Joe up to? What was going on in that massive head of his? Ricky always went a little crazy with Joe. All that firstborn’s confidence and facile conservatism, the dense, bullying, confrontational manner, the reflexive, arrogant, empty-headed, aggressive xenophobia…Joe was Ricky’s negative image. If they had not been brothers, Ricky was sure, they would never have been friends. As it was, they needed Michael as a middleman. Alone, there was a relentless fractious undercurrent to their conversations, as if their thirty-year relationship had been a single ongoing argument. But, in the way of brothers, Ricky could not completely escape admiring Joe, who had, after all, willingly accepted the weight of their patrimony. Fatherhood, husbandhood, cophood-all the things Ricky did not want and doubted he could sustain, Joe took on his shoulders and dead-lifted every day. You had to see Joe the way Kat saw him, Ricky figured: firm, not stubborn; doggishly loyal, not just a company man. Still, Ricky was never sure how to reach Joe.

Chuck Berry came on the jukebox, “Sweet Little Rock ’n’ Roller.”

Joe dipped his head in a stiff, rheumatic way to the beat. Not exactly his style, but getting there.

“Well, come on, Joe,” Ricky said, “you sat through Edith Piaf. Whatever it was you had to say, you might as well get it off your chest.”

“I’m supposed to give you a message.”

“From who?”

“Gargano.”

Ricky felt a freeze. It began between his shoulder blades and washed up the back of his neck. He smothered it as best he could, permitting himself just the slightest rustle of his shoulders, as if he were resettling a jacket that had begun to slip off.

“It’s about that Copley thing. They think you’ve got the stones. They want the stones, is all. He says they just want the stones back and that’s all it is. That’ll be the end of it.”

“You believe that, Joe?”

“I don’t know, Rick. These guys…”

“Yeah.”

“If you’ve got the stones, just give them up. Don’t fool around with this. I don’t care how much they’re worth.”

“It’s not about that. If those guys think I did that job, I’m dead. Whether they get the stones or not.”

“Did you do it?”

“Joe, I can’t-You really want to know? You can’t tell them anything you don’t know. And they’re gonna ask you.”

“They won’t believe me anyways, whatever I say.”

“Still.”

Joe nodded.

“Gargano told me you got yourself in a hole, Joe.”

“When was that?”

“Few months ago. He came looking for me about this. He mentioned you.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a bigger hole now.”

“How big?”

“Big.”

“I can get you the cash.”

“It’s a lot of cash, Rick.”

“I can get anything you need.”

Joe shook his head.

“Anything.”

“Doesn’t matter. They’re not gonna let me out. I’m a witness now. If I go to the feds, I could have Gargano locked up by supper-time. They aren’t gonna let me just walk away from this.”

“Fuck, Joe, why didn’t you come to me? I’ve got money.”

“We never-I don’t know, Rick. It was like, I had it under control. That was the thing. I did. It’s not like I never got in a little hole before. That’s how the thing works: you go up, you go down, it’s all part of it. You can’t let it bother you. I kept figuring it’d turn around. Only this time I just kept going down and down and down. But I had it under control. It was like, it happened real slow and then real fast. Real fast.”

Ricky massaged his eyes with the fingertips of one hand.

“Ricky, I’d just as soon Kat doesn’t know about this. We got enough trouble already, alright?”

“She’s gonna find out eventually, one way or the other.”

“Let’s make it ‘the other,’ okay?”

“Okay. How about Michael?”

“Let’s just keep it you and me for now.”

Ricky made a disapproving face but said nothing.

“What do you want me to tell them about the stones, Rick?”

“Tell them I don’t know anything about it.”

“It’s not gonna be the end of it.”

“I know.”

“So what are you gonna do?”

“Don’t know yet. What are you gonna do?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“Is this all they’ve got you doing, squeezing poor guys like me?”

“No. I do some other stuff, too.”

“Kind of stuff?”

“I’d rather not talk about it. ‘If you don’t know anything,’ like you said.”

“Maybe we should go away somewhere for a while.”

“We could go to Ireland. Always wanted to go to Ireland.”

“That’s an idea. We’d fit right in.”

“You could go to France. Fag.”

“You know, what if I walk out of here and these guys shoot me? That’s gonna be the last thing you ever said to me, calling me a fag. You’re gonna feel like shit.”

“I’ll get over it. I’ll listen to a little Edith Pee-aff. That’ll make me feel better.”

“I’m serious, Joe. If I go somewhere, to France or whatever, you want to come? They won’t find you.”

“France?”

“It’s better since the Germans left. Trust me.”

“What happened to Ireland?”

“Alright, Ireland.”

“I can’t. I got a family.”

“Bring ’em.”

“What’ll we do there?”

“I told you, I’ve got cash. We won’t have to do anything. We’ll sit under a shamrock tree all day.”

“What about Little Joe?”

“They’ve got kids over there. He’ll make friends.”

“For how long?”

“Till it blows over.”

Joe frowned.

Ricky’s eyes fell.

It was never going to blow over. These guys were not going to forget, much less forgive. If the brothers left, it would be forever.

“Can’t do it, Ricky. This is where I live. Imagine me in Paris.”

“Think about it.”

“Yeah, okay, right. I’ll think about it.”

“Maybe one day you’ll wake up and I’ll be gone, y’know?”

“’Kay.” Joe studied the tabletop. He refused to lift his eyes.

“Not tomorrow, Joe. I’m not going anywhere tomorrow.”

“Good.”