Another Broken Wizard Page 9

  “If you listened when I talked about them, you’d know it wasn’t bloody likely.”

  I passed the Fountainhead and decided I was dressed well enough for the night to come. I started to get excited about the whiskey and whatever would ensue.

  “Well, it better not be,” Serena said, after a pause, not just hers, but also in the high-pitched background chatter.

  “Sounds like we have a deal,” I said.

  “Absolutely, Senator.”

  She called me that sometimes. I liked it.

  “Well, I’m going to get off the phone before I wreck my dad’s car and add to his woes.”

  “Okay, call tomorrow.”

  “I will.”

  In Shrewsbury, I turned off Route 9. We had moved there when I started high school. Dad had gotten a big sales job, and Shrewsbury was the Beverly Hills of Worcester County, if you can imagine such a thing. It had changed since then, with the woods made into subdivisions that bespoke post-Reagan affluence rather than old New England charm. But the old Shrewsbury was a small and provincial place. On the street we moved to, there were a handful of families who were not just third-generation Shrewsbury, but third-generation that street. They seemed to be in some of competition to see who could be the least friendly to us. And after a few scuffles, I resigned myself to the friends I had in Worcester.

  But the place still gave me the shivers. Wherever you grow up is sacred ground, consecrated by hatred or by nostalgia. The shiver was enough to rebuke the appearance that I was nowhere of any consequence.

  I called Joe as I drove past my old street, cursing it quietly as I did. Joe picked up and said to come over whenever, said he’d be able to pay me back by the end of the night, and said that the password was Total Recall.

  The road drifted down the hill we had to run for football practice at St. Johns, past a Colonial schoolhouse. The SUV rode smoothly over the dry streets along Lake Quinsigamond. I tried to stretch out my shoulders. But it just moved the pain around.

  23.

  “What’s the password?” asked the tall skinny guy who shoved his weight against the door, rattling it in its frame. Wire-rim glasses and a flop of brown hair framed the part of his face visible through the little window by the door.

  “Total Recall, now open the fucking door, it’s two degrees out here,” I replied.

  The skinny guy opened the door and stepped back a few feet. He had a revolver in his hand. It was too big and too shiny and made him seem even skinnier. I froze in the doorway just the same.

  “Are you a friend of Joe’s?” he asked, stepping back a few feet.

  “Yeah. If you want, you can tell him Jim Monaghan is here.”

  The skinny guy blinked. He seemed embarrassed. He didn’t seem like the guy who would be holding the gun in any situation.

  “Oh, you’re Jim. I’m sorry. I’m Russ. Man, it’s nice to meet you. You’re the guy who lives in New York. Joe’s told me about you.”

  “Hey. It’s nice to meet you. Let’s get inside. It’s miserable out there.”

  In the apartment, Marissa was doing bong hits with a guy in hospital scrubs and a guy I played football with in high school, Tom—Mullaney or Maloney or Muraney or Maroney—a big Irish guy. I told him what I’d been up to for the last twelve years since we last spoke. I hurried through it, as his attention wandered far and wide from moment to moment. His own recap was just a stoned outburst.

  “I’m just, you know, chillin’,” Tom said, laughing.

  I nodded, saying the beer needed the fridge, and wandered into the kitchen.

  “I’m saying it would have failed in Germany, too. I mean, look what sprang up there instead of Communism,” I overheard someone say, as I walked into the kitchen.

  Joe was sitting at the kitchen table, arguing with Russ and a girl who looked like Russ with a wig. A Spanish girl with a deep furrow of exposed cleavage sat next to Joe at the table, drinking, smoking and watching him with eyes that seemed too awake, until she smiled them half-shut. The silver revolver sat by the cereal bowl she used as an ashtray.

  “I’m just saying that if they had tried it in an educated, industrialized …” Russ started.

  “Jim!” Joe yelled, popping out of his chair.

  Joe was ready for New Year’s Eve. He was wearing one of his favorite shirts, a black silk button down with a tiger that started on the stomach and reached around to the back. His hair was tied back into a tight ponytail. He got up and crushed my sore back with an enthusiastic hug and introduced the Spanish girl as his girlfriend, Escalita.

  I showed him the bottle and Joe rinsed out two mugs. He put some ice and a healthy dose of whiskey in them and raised his glass to toast.

  “To good friends and guns on the kitchen table,” I said.

  Joe started laughing. But I kept a straight face to discourage him, being impatient for the drink. He stopped laughing and the whole table toasted. I took a healthy sip, but Joe downed his like a shot.

  “I have to watch it. I’m trying not to get too fucked up tonight,” he said, blinking.

  “Yeah, sure. What’s going on with the gun?” I asked, dropping my eyes to the gun on the table.

  “Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce you to Russ.”

  “We met in the hallway.”

  “Russ has a license to carry the gun. He’s actually a marksman. He’s been in competitions. His dad was a deputy …?”

  “A major in the staties,” Russ said, sitting up a little straighter.

  “Anyway, I wanted to have some people over tonight. But Marissa was worried about word getting out and the wrong people showing up.”

  “Yeah. You were the worried one,” Russ said. “Joe calls me up and says he’ll get me dinner, drinks, drugs, anything I want if I’ll come to his party with a gun. And I’m like ‘that’s a great idea. Let’s invite a guy with a gun, then fill him with liquor and drugs. That would really add something to the party,’” Russ said.

  “Like a reverse piñata,” Joe said.

  The table laughed and I poured myself another drink.

  “Thanks again, man,” Joe said through his laughter.

  “For you, Joe, it’s no problem,” Russ said, sipping from his bottle of root beer.

  “Man, this is good—tonight’s going to be great. I have some of my favorite people here. And we have drinks, everything we need, for an all-night rager. And there are some real hotties coming over too, probably after midnight.”

  At this last bit, Escalita stomped on Joe’s foot with her overflowing high-heeled shoe.

  “I mean for Jim. Those girls are nice enough, but nowhere near as hot as Escalita here. I mean, Jim, is my girlfriend hot or what?” Joe announced, making Escalita blush and smile all at once. Then Joe’s cell phone rang. He puzzled at the number, then rose and walked away to take the call.

  “… I might know what you’re talking about, but I might not … Who told you that? ... Well, you should have them call me ... No, then they can pick it up … I’m just saying they shouldn’t have told you anything … It doesn’t work that way … Okay, okay, if you’re a friend of Jeffy, I guess you can come by … But have Jeffy call me first … It’s just that I have a bunch of people here … call him and have him let me know …” Joe said into the phone, annoyed.

  It was the first of several such calls throughout the night. He turned his attention back to the table.

  “I’m just saying that there will be more ladies here soon. So sit tight, relax. Ladies and drinks and friends, and I’ll be able to pay you back before the night is out no problem,” Joe said to me.

  “There’s no hurry on that. Really,” I said.

  Joe drank his Budweisers, Russ his root beers, and me my whiskey. The radio was the loudest thing coming from the living room. The party wasn’t exactly a rager. But I liked it better that way.

  “Then the other night, Sully called again. And he actually said he was going to take my eyes out and show them to me, so I’m like ‘okay you fucking moron,
how are you going to show me my own eyes?’ Then the line goes quiet for a full minute. Literally, an entire minute. And I can hear him breathing. Finally, after an eternity of thinking, Sully says ‘I’m gonna do them one at a time,’” Joe said, and laughed his hyena-like laugh.

  There was a knock on the door. Russ put a businesslike look on his face and picked up the gun. I followed him down the hall, partly for the sordid spectacle of it, partly because Joe and Escalita had started to make out. The big black guy at the door didn’t even have to give the password. He gave Russ a big hug.

  “Careful Corey, I have a gun.”

  An even bigger white guy with small eyes and an all-green Boston Red Sox hat followed him. After Corey introduced himself, the bigger guy introduced himself as Gino. Then there were three pale, small girls overwhelmed by their winter coats. They waved pale hellos to me, a stranger. In the living room, I noticed that the TV and cable box were gone. Joe and Marissa had made the apartment party-proof, putting everything in one of the bedrooms.

  Back in the kitchen, Joe, Corey, Russ and one of the pale girls had found something to argue about. One of the girls, Tara, took off her winter coat. Her shirt half-revealed a graceful pair of breasts. Joe took Corey into his room and both returned ready to argue against and for pacifism, respectively, with renewed vigor.

  “Christianity is probably the single biggest transformation in recorded history. And Jesus was totally a pacifist. The early church was mostly pacifist. And they sure won,” Corey said. He slugged down a Miller Lite with a bend of his massive arm and cleared his sinuses with vigor. I was glad to see him staunchly on the side of pacifism.

  “Yeah, it really worked. Tell that to the fucking martyrs,” Joe said.

  “In the long run, it was the martyrs’ side that won,” Corey offered.

  “True. True,” Joe said, nodding his head and leaning his kitchen chair back.

  Joe aimed a huge, devilish grin at me.

  “Jim, do you want to get truly fucked up tonight?” he asked, his look defying the gravity of responsibility, legality and even the most obvious safety concerns.

  “Yeah. I have to go to the hospital tomorrow. But whatever.”

  Then Joe’s phone rang, and I watched him have more or less the same obstinate negotiation as before. I guess he was being cautious, like he said.

  “Oh shit, get in here, it’s almost New Years!” Marissa yelled out from the previously dormant living room. We all piled in from the kitchen.

  My cell phone said the year had ten minutes left. Joe started making out with Escalita. Tara, with her graceful neck and low-cut shirt distracting all of creation from the faint acne scars that poked through the grainy Technicolor of her makeup, looked around, but not at me, to see where to go.

  “We should get out the TV,” Marissa said. But she had settled back onto the couch.

  “I’ll just find it on the radio,” Joe said.

  “Find the New Year on the radio? That’s fucked up,” Gino offered from the folding chair he dominated. He wore a Celtics basketball jersey over a t-shirt. The bong sat at his feet.

  “I know, right, like it’s a time machine or something,” big Irish Tom said.

  Joe started turning the knob through the FM stations until he found the shouting, the crowd noise, the local accents, the higher octave to which the Massachusetts cold will raise the voice, all of the right signs. It was a classic rock station, broadcasting live from Copley Square. The radio blared the forced excitement of the pre-countdown. Joe and Escalita made out next to the bloody hole in the sheetrock.

  “Get a room, you two,” Tara said with a peevishness in her voice, and slid into the seat on the other side of the couch from me.

  Joe held out his middle finger and kept kissing until Escalita finally became embarrassed. I leaned back and then forward to see what or who Tara was looking at. Finally, the radio started counting down at sixty. Marissa started counting down with them, then lost interest. We all counted down from ten. At zero, we all yelled. Corey and one of the small, pale girls kissed. Russ and Joe made out with their girlfriends. Tara looked around, but not at me. Marissa gave me a big, comical kiss on the cheek. Tom and the guy in hospital scrubs stood around dazed.

  After the hullaballoo, I went into the kitchen get another drink. Joe followed, with his phone on one ear and his finger in the other. I looked at him quizzically and he swiveled away from me.

  “… Is he okay? ... I mean, what does ‘stable’ mean? ... What hospital … And you’re sure it was Sully and them? ... They’re not still hanging out on Green Street, are they? ...You don’t know anyone who knows where he lives, do you?” I heard Joe say into the phone, before he walked into his room and shut the door.

  After a few minutes, Joe threw open his door, walked past me into the living room and told Tom, Corey, Russ and Gino to come into the kitchen.

  “You guys know about the thing that happened with Sully a few weeks back? Now Sully and some of his friends just put Smitty in the hospital. They tried to curb him, but I guess he crawled off and they broke both his collar bones. He’s so fucked up that he’s in intensive care,” Joe said.

  Marissa came in, then Tara, and the story re-circulated, with Smitty doing this and Sully doing that, and Smitty going here and Sully calling these guys and Smitty talking to these other guys. My head spun from the murky complexity of the story, the parking lots, nicknames, street names, suspects and so on.

  “Fuck. We should call the cops,” Corey said.

  “And tell them what? That me and Smitty and some other guys brutally fucked up Sully without much good reason and this was his revenge? That’s a case they’ll really want to make. Anyway, I can’t call the cops right now,” Joe said, nodding to Corey, who nodded back.

  “Joe, I know what you’re thinking, but really, what are you going to do tonight?” Corey asked.

  “I’m going to find them.”

  “You can’t go after these guys. I used to know some of the guys that Sully’s with now, and they don’t give a fuck,” Corey said.

  “I don’t give a fuck,” Joe interrupted.

  “I’ll drive you over to the hospital. You’re just drunk and pissed off right now,” Russ offered.

  The argument continued at some length, with Joe determined to drive around until he found Sully. Corey, Russ, Gino and I told him to let it go, at least for tonight. The bottom line was that Joe was a big guy, and a brawler, but not the one-man vengeance machine he imagined himself to be at that moment. Corey wouldn’t go with Joe to Main South, where Sully’s friends lived. Russ wouldn’t lend him his gun, even just to wave around and maybe hit someone with—and just for the night, as Joe put it. Gino said we should all just get high and chill out until tomorrow, and the rest of the living room agreed.

  24.

  Thursday, January 1

  “Fuck you all. I’m going out to find these motherfuckers,” Joe concluded and grabbed his coat.

  I followed. To try and calm him down, I said. Truth is, I didn’t have all that much to say to the other people at the party by that point. The cold, the action, the dim possibility of danger all sobered me. The stars showed through the bare branches of the trees clear and bright. Joe’s white Buick started on the third try. He revved the engine, then squealed out of his parking spot.

  “Go easy. The cops are out in force and you’re over the legal limit.”

  “Fuck that, man.”

  “Hey asshole, I’d rather not go to jail tonight, not for some bullshit DUI. Get your head together. Take a fucking breath. You want to do this thing you’re talking about? Then be smart,” I said. Smaht.

  Joe stared off. The car bumped its way down his potholed mess of a street. He applied the brake more judiciously and seemed collected by the time we reached Lincoln Street.

  “You’re right. I’m going to be rational. I am going to find these fucks, one by one and get them.”

  “Do you even know who they are?”

  “Not off the top
of my head. I think I could recognize one or two of them. But I have some idea of where they hang out,” Joe said.

  Another reason I agreed to join him was that I didn’t think we would find the people he was looking for. We skirted downtown and drove down Green Street, which was busy with people going from bar to bar, getting in and out of double-parked cars. Joe jammed his car into a tight spot by an abandoned auto-repair garage, like one more crooked tooth in an overcrowded mouth. I followed Joe into The Dive Bar, where a tall, fat guy with long blonde hair found Joe immediately.

  “You heard about Smitty?” he said.

  “Yeah, what happened?”

  “I guess one of Sully’s friends saw Smitty here and called Sully. Well, I guess he got a bunch of guys together and they got Smitty when he went out to his car.”

  “Do you know where Sully went? Where his friends went?” Joe asked.

  “No. I don’t really know those guys.”

  “I’m getting some people together to fuck these guys up big time. You in?”

  “Naw man. I’m pretty tanked. I’m just going to chill out tonight. But hang out a minute. Let me buy you a drink.”

  “No thanks. I’ve got to go.”

  When we got outside, I remembered that we were almost thirty years old. That was why no one wanted a part of his feud. Back when we were nineteen, twenty, I had seen some really violent things happen, and had even been marginally involved a few times. I wasn’t a badass, but I was there. But the real crazies from those days were gone. Luke was in jail now, gone away for carjacking, then after a month of freedom, for attempted murder. Mike Fahey was dead. Malachi, famous for having bitten off someone’s ear in a fight, had joined a carnival, I heard. Another old friend, Tony Howard, was in Worcester after a stint in jail, but was now too angry and violent to have around. They were the guys Joe was looking for that night. But the guys who were still around had mostly grown content with the bars, and their rage didn’t go too far past maintaining a goatee or keeping a fully loaded bong at home.

  Joe walked us past the cover charge at the Lucky Dog Music Hall, where the band had finished for the night. Tired of following him, I saddled up to the bar and ordered a drink. He went around the room, doing more telling than listening from the look of it. But his call to arms had no takers there either.