Another Broken Wizard Page 5

  “And hate the Patriots.”

  “Something’s wrong with him. Even if he doesn’t have tickets, he’d have to pay for parking. And those jerseys aren’t cheap,” Dad said.

  I could hear the guy scream that the Cardinals would sexually humiliate the Pats, and the fans in the row of cars behind us cursed and mocked him. Anger was part of our excitement for the violent game ahead. But anger is hard to focus, hard to limit. And it’s hard not to be changed by it. The begrudged man kept on screaming against the Pats, until he was out of range.

  We finished off the burgers and the beer. I packed up the car and we walked up the hill, toward the stadium. Though early, the sun was low. With thousands of edgy, half-drunk fans, we crossed the bridge over Route 1, past thousands more drinking beers, roasting meat, throwing footballs, shouting over each other and laughing.

  The new stadium was state of the art. The seats were intact and clean, the concessions varied and pricey, the field synthetic and vivid green. I bought a pair of beers, left one with Dad, and walked down to the field to watch the big men warm up. Millions of dollars rode on the shifting of their shoulders, the strength of their thighs, the durability of their ankles and the sureness of their hands.

  Dad and I stood and sang the national anthem along with the local celebrity. The clock by the scoreboard clicked down as she sang about rockets and bombs. It was zero by the time they got the microphone off the field.

  The Patriots were favored by more than a touchdown. But as the big, fast men from all over the country ran toward the kickoff, fear took hold. The fear said me and my kind weren’t worth a damn, that we were trash, whom history had passed by and would soon regret. But there was still a chance, and the game would decide the matter. It held me rapt until the Cardinals kickoff returner was tackled at his own eighteen-yard line. No billionaire owner, Nevada bookie, professional athlete, or scout, my interest was the irrational interest of a fan. And the game below was only more of that vast and mysterious exercise called entertainment. I yelled until my voice was hoarse from phlegm and blood and beer.

  Anyway, the Pats killed them, 38–10, holding our worst suspicions at bay for another week. The stadium lights were on and the sun was setting by the time the clock struck quadruple zeroes. And we the faithful thousands streamed back to our cars, warmed by victory and beer. There were still fights in the parking lot, though.

  Dad drove back to Westborough with the same careful drunk-drive he taught me. We passed the maximum security prison and the historic Massachusetts towns along Route 27, down the silent Sunday night streets, listening to the sporting opinions of the drunk, the mad, the lonely and the dull on the car radio.

  Back at the apartment, I cooked up a pair of sausage sandwiches and we watched what was left of the four o’clock game. Dad went to bed as the 8:15 game started. Torn between a lackluster late game and the amorphous promise of the other three hundred channels, I flipped around and tried to convince myself that I was tired. Then Joe called.

  10.

  Joe sounded distracted when he invited me over. But I was glad to be free of my obligation to watch TV and go to sleep. I wrote Dad a note, pulled on my shoes and cut through the night in my rental car.

  At Joe’s, it didn’t take long to realize that something was wrong. The apartment he shared with his roommate Marissa was in disarray when I arrived. The furniture sat at odd angles from the walls. There was a fresh hole punched in the sheetrock a few feet in from the door, with a big smear of blood by it. Joe offered me some rum and then excused himself to take a shower. Then Marissa came out of the other bedroom. She and Joe had been friends since high school, when they used to play hooky and get stoned together.

  “I thought I heard something, what’s up, Jimbo?” she said. I never liked being called Jimbo. I think she knew that. Being a pain in the ass was part of Marissa’s charm. “How’s New York?”

  “It’s alright, could be better. I’m just hunting for a job right now.”

  She pulled up a creaky wooden chair across from the couch I shared with a small pile of dress shirts and textbooks. She crossed her legs and leaned forward. She somehow managed to have a tan in December. Always pretty, she never pressed that point. Not with me, anyway.

  “Looking for work sucks. The place I’m at is looking for waiters.”

  “Thanks, but I think I’m just going to stay in town until my dad gets past his surgery.”

  “Okaay,” Marissa said.

  She said it like she might humor a recovering alcoholic who said he just wanted one little drink.

  “I have some interviews lined up back in New York,” I lied. “I think I’ll stay around there a while longer. What’s up with you?”

  “Just working, spending time with little Angelica, and partying.”

  “How is Angelica?”

  “She’s good. Her dad has her most nights, until I put some money away and get my own place. That should be soon. I’m going to get better shifts at the place I work. I’m banging the night manager.”

  “Well, there you go. You can’t keep a good woman down.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” she said, lighting a cigarette.

  “What happened here?” I asked, nodding toward the hole in the wall, the blood and the general disarray.

  “What? The bloody hole in the wall? This is Worcester. Most apartments have that,” Marissa said, a devilish smile spreading, like a child who’d put something on your chair.

  “It’s a nice touch, really. But what happened?”

  “The apartment is just the beginning of the mess Joe made. I had to spend most of today cleaning the place up just so it would look like this. That’s what happened,” she said, rage suddenly animating her features.

  “That’s bullshit, Cravesi!” Joe yelled at Marissa, leaning out of the bathroom in a towel, his wet hair hanging down by his shoulders.

  “Fuck you, Rousseau! I was cleaning all fucking day.”

  “You did maybe half the cleaning, and it only took a few hours. And I bought lunch.”

  “One grinder for two hours of work? Yeah, you’re the fucking dictionary definition of generosity.”

  “So what the fuck happened?” I interrupted.

  Joe walked out of the bathroom, wearing jeans. An unfinished tattoo of a samurai warrior covered his chubby midriff. The tattoo artist had illustrated every fold of the samurai’s robe, but hadn’t gotten around to filling in the colors, so the picture looked more like a map of the Balkans than anything. Joe paused next to the couch and picked up a pack of cigarettes.

  “Marissa, can I have a cigarette?”

  “Fine. But admit that I did most of the cleaning for your dumb bullshit.”

  “Okay. Even though you didn’t do most of the cleaning and I paid for lunch, I admit it,” Joe said, lighting the cigarette with a level of focus that seemed like overkill. Then he shoved his pile of shirts and books onto the floor and sat down next to me.

  “Enough already. What the hell happened?” I asked.

  “Fucking last night got out of hand in a big way,” Joe finally said, laughing.

  “Out of hand doesn’t really express it. I might have to move back in with my parents,” Marissa added.

  “You know Sully?” he asked.

  “From up on Burncoat?”

  “No this is a different guy, from Main South, by The Pickle Barrel. Well, me and some of my friends almost killed him last night.”

  “What the fuck, Joe?” I said, looking at the hole in the wall.

  “I know, right?” he said, laughing his convulsive machine-gun laugh. It took a minute for Joe to gather himself back to a storytelling condition.

  “So I had some people over. There was Smitty, Burger and Rich Papadopolis and a bunch of guys. And we’re just hanging out and drinking. We do the coke that’s left over from the night before, then someone gets the totally original idea to score some more coke. So Smitty starts calling around, and I remember this guy Sully, who I used to buy from
. But Sully is a real prick. I think he stole some CDs at a party I had here in the summer, and he just generally acted disrespectfully when he was here. Nobody likes him. But he always has coke, because he hangs out with these thugs from around Main South.”

  “Okay, let’s just stop there: Main South, plus the fact that he sells cocaine, should tell you that he has friends who can fuck you up,” Marissa said to me, angry at Joe and amused by the danger all at once.

  “So I tell Smitty, Burger and Vietnam and them about Sully.”

  “Vietnam?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  “Yeah, you don’t know him. Vietnam is just his nickname. You want to know why? Because he’s Vietnamese! Are we clever or what?”Joe said, taking a break from his story to laugh at the snowballing absurdity. “Anyway, we’re drunk and coked up and pissed off. So I call Sully and invite him over. I’m all nice on the phone, just calling to invite him over and I say we have a lot of beers and weed and that we’re just hanging out, no big deal. So he says he’ll come by. And I guess I’m talking shit about Sully and we’re all getting amped up, right until he shows up. When he gets here, he barely says hi. He grabs a beer from the fridge without even asking, downs it like he’s in a hurry and asks where the weed is. So Papadopolis says ‘It’s right over here!’ and pops him in the eye. Then Vietnam and me smack him. It would’ve been awkward if we didn’t. So Sully goes down. And we’re all kicking at him and he’s fighting to get out. He gets up and he’s running toward the door and I’m chasing him and I go in for a haymaker. But I slip on some blood and I just fucking nail the wall.”

  At this, Joe held out his hand, the top two knuckles of which were swollen to the point of deformity.

  “What about the cop who lives next door?” I asked.

  “He’s in Rhode Island for the night. I’m walking his dog. So Sully makes it out the door and down the steps and we’re all on the porch, all except for Burger. And I’m like, ‘that’s for disrespecting my house, you little bitch!’ And he’s like ‘You just got yourselves fucking murdered,’ and stuff like that. And he’s bleeding and weaving and yelling at us and we’re yelling back. That’s when Burger comes running out of the house with a chair from the kitchen and chucks it off the porch and nails Sully in the face so the chair breaks apart and Sully falls down. Blood everywhere.”

  “That was my chair, too, by the way,” Marissa offered, lighting a cigarette.

  “For a minute, he’s just laying there, and I’m afraid we killed him. But he finally gets up, bleeding and kind of wobbly, and runs off to his car. He revs the engine and runs it into my neighbor’s van and peels out.”

  “Real fucking smart, Joe,” Marissa said.

  “Yeah, I hate to rain on your parade here, but what the hell were you thinking?”

  “I don’t think we were exactly thinking, in the sense that you mean it,” Joe said, laughing the same laugh that had gotten us through our childhood.

  “Okay. So what’s the upshot? Sully and his friends—are they just fuckups, or are they honestly dangerous people?” I asked.

  “Remember when Tim Duggan was blind for a week last summer?” Joe asked, with his ridiculous grin growing.

  “Yeah.”

  “That was Sully’s friends.”

  “Seriously. And this isn’t just a drunk brawl at a party. You practically set up an ambush,” Marissa added.

  “It probably wouldn’t have even been anything if he’d just acted decently when he showed up. But we were coked up and I guess it did get away from us.”

  “Got away from you?” Marissa repeated, growing visibly less amused. Joe shrugged, grinning.

  The whole thing was senseless. And none of it surprised me. I’d seen dumber, crazier and even more violent from Joe and his friends over the years. This wasn’t new. But, laughter aside, Joe was afraid now. And that was.

  “So what are you going to do?” I asked.

  “I’m trying to figure it out. I think I’m pretty safe here for now, what with my neighbor being a cop. It’s just outside that I have to be careful. I’ll stay away from the places Sully and his friends go, and not go out unless I have friends with me.”

  “What? Are you going to do that for, like, ever?” Marissa asked.

  “I have two thoughts on that. The first is that this should blow over in time. Something else will happen to Sully. Also, he can’t be that well liked by his friends. They’ll get tired of looking for me.”

  “That’s a pretty lame long-term plan,” Marissa said.

  “Maybe. But that’s where Plan B comes in. Jim, do you think I could stay with you in New York?”

  “Of course. God knows I’m paying enough to have the apartment sit empty.”

  “How much?” Marissa asked.

  “I don’t even want to think about how much.”

  “Really, I could stay there?”

  “Yeah. I can give you the keys right now, if you think you’re in real danger.”

  I said it without pause, despite my apartment’s small size, despite Joe’s habits and despite the close quarters when I got back. I said it without pause because Joe was the nearest I’d ever had to a brother. I said it without pause because I felt pretty sure he wouldn’t take me up on it.

  “I’m not sure yet. I want to get the temperature—ask around first. And New York is an expensive town. I want to get together a decent pile of money before I go. I think I can do that in a few weeks. I have an idea.”

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “Let’s go get a drink and I’ll tell you about it,” Joe said.

  11.

  Joe had hidden his car, so I drove. We ended up at a place called Vincent’s. It sat among weed-tangled lots and half-abandoned warehouses behind the highway, behind the train station, behind downtown, behind the showcase the city was trying to make of Shrewsbury Street. Vincent’s felt hidden.

  No one shouted out Joe’s name when he opened the door. Animal heads and stuffed birds peered from the darkness above the bar. A five-item menu was drawn on a blackboard by the bar. It all bespoke a pleasant surreptitiousness. We ordered drinks and found a table at the back, by the bathroom and the cigarette machine. Joe took the seat facing the door. It was Sunday night and the crowd was sparse and sedate.

  After a few sips of whiskey, Joe described his plan to me. He would quit his job, cash out his pension, buy a lot of cocaine wholesale, cut it and sell it carefully, only to friends, then do the same one or two more times. That way, he would move into my apartment in style.

  “Now I wouldn’t say anything. But you actually seem serious about this. So here goes. There are some holes in your plan,” I said. “In fact, it sounds like a terrible idea from start to finish.”

  “Really? I think I’ve covered my bases here pretty well.”

  “Well, for starters, you will be selling drugs. There are still laws against that.”

  “But I’ll only be doing it for a little while, and only to friends. That limits the chances of me getting caught to almost nothing. I’ve known a lot of people who have done it. Some have gotten caught and some haven’t. It’s all about keeping a low profile.”

  “But Joe, you’re one of the least low-profile people I’ve ever met. And assuming that Sully and his friends are coming for you—wouldn’t things be at their most dangerous now, when you’re still at the top of their priorities? Wouldn’t you be better off taking a vacation from work and getting out of town for a few weeks, and then coming back?”

  “I can be careful for a little while. I can be low profile for a while, but not forever. I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder all the time. This thing with Sully could take a long time to sort out.”

  Joe’s phone rang. He puzzled over the number, then opened it. His eyes and mouth opened into a defiant smile as the phone call progressed.

  “Hey dickbird, go ahead and try it. I have a state trooper living next door and a shotgun under my bed. You will not come out of it looking too pretty, I promise you! So bring it on!�
�� Joe yelled into his phone and clacked it shut. “That was Sully. He said he and his friends were going by my house now with a can of gasoline.”

  “Jesus. Do you just want to skip town now? I could drive you down to New York if you need.”

  “Nah. They’re just trying to scare me.”

  “You sure you want to risk it? You’re not the only asshole in town who knows how to perpetrate an irrational act.”

  I wanted to argue with him for as long as it took. Failing that, I wanted to leave before I went down with him. I had done a great deal of both in our long friendship.

  “Don’t worry. These guys are tough in their own neighborhood, they’re tough in a group at a party. But they don’t travel much. And my apartment is in a totally different part of town,” Joe said and took a gulp of more whiskey than could have been pleasant.

  It was a heinous plan. But in a weird way, I trusted Joe to pull it off. His lunacy never put him in jail or the hospital for longer than a long weekend. And his lunacy certainly stood out against the grim monotony of the coming weeks.

  “Well, it’s one hell of a pickle you’ve gotten yourself into.”

  “A pickle indeed. I mean, I have a gang actively hunting me. How about them apples?” Joe said.

  “You’ve come a long way from Venerini Academy. I forget, weren’t you voted ‘Most Likely To Be Actively Hunted By A Gang’?”

  “I forget. It was either me or Anthony DiStephano,” Joe said, cracking up.

  We laughed and got more drinks, Sunday be damned. The middle-aged band started warming up at the front of the room. My driving instructor, a bald, acne-scarred man with a sad, hound-dog face, was playing bass.

  “But seriously, you don’t have a gun, do you?” I asked.

  “No. That was a lie. But I’m getting one. I think Marissa’s boyfriend knows somebody.”

  “Again, it seems like you’re trying to put out a fire with gasoline. Say you get a gun, and say you do defend yourself with it, then what? You go to jail, at least until they can prove it was self-defense. And even then, they’ll probably charge you for having the gun. Two stupids don’t make a smart.”