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  “I got hassled by a cop, the way down,” Earl said.

  “Son of a bitch,” Battles said. “ ‘Hassled by a cop.’ What was he, a basketball fan? Hadda a yard or two on Saint Stephen’s, some night you went inna tank?”

  Earl shifted in the chair. “You know,” he said, “this’s my afternoon off. Wednesday and Thursday nights, I’m gonna have to work late to make up. My brother maybe calls me up, tells me to get down here. But that don’t make up for the commissions that I might’ve got today, and if I don’t get commissions, boy, my draw goes down the sewer. Plus which, I drive about a hundred sixty miles, you know, see this guy that I don’t know, and my brother doesn’t know, because my brother called me? Because his friend asked him to? And for this I’m taking shit? Because you’re a friend in need, a guy I don’t even know? Who is it needs the favor here? Isn’t me, I know.”

  “Yes it is,” the blocky man said. He grinned. “You got in the shit once. And you needed a favor. And you got it from the guy that knows your brother, all right? Now, the guy that called your brother, he owes me a favor. Because I did him a favor when a friend of his got dirty. So that is why you’re down here, pal—because you need a favor. You got to pay things back.”

  “I don’t have any trouble with that,” Earl said. “Paying things back, I mean. I just don’t like gettin’ a lot of shit for my trouble, all right? You wanna piss on someone, fine. Go ahead and do it. But don’t bring me down here, all this way from Boston, so you can do it on me.”

  “Well,” Battles said, “I see they didn’t break your spirit, any fuckin’ thing like that. You got a fresh mouth on you, pal. Anybody tell you that?”

  Earl shrugged. “I did my time,” he said. “I owe nobody nothing.”

  “Yeah,” Battles said, “but you didn’t do as much time, as everybody thought.”

  “Hey,” Earl said, “prisons’re overcrowded. Everybody knows that. I didn’t make any trouble. Kept my mouth shut, did my chores. So they let me out early. I’m supposed to complain? It wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be, but I wasn’t about to complain. ‘Get outta here,’ they say, and I got.”

  “Kept your mouth shut, huh?” Battles said. “That’s interesting to hear. There was some talk around, you weren’t doing that. And that’s how you got out so fast.”

  “There’s always talk around,” Earl said. “Look at the papers they sell in the markets. ‘I Got Knocked Up by an Alien.’ ‘Rabbit-faced Baby with Ten-Inch Ears Born to Buck-toothed Mother, Loves Carrots.’ ’Fifty-seven T-Birds, for sale for fifty dollars, ’cause the owners died in them and rotted in the seats.”

  “Then there was,” Battles said, “you got out, but for a while you’re not around. Nobody ever saw you. Guys inna can behind you saw you walk the fuckin’ door, but nobody on the outside sees you, must’ve been a year.”

  “I was finding myself,” Earl said. “That’s what my daughter’s doing—she’s finding herself this year. You know where she’s looking? Greek islands. I get a couple under my belt, I’m out after work one night. I always get sentimental, I drink—just a regular slob. So I call up the former bride, just to see how things’re going. How’s her new guy treating her? Has he got a ten-inch dick? All that happy horseshit. And she tells me Sarah’s scrubbed the college, which I already paid about three hundred for the goddamned applications and the fuckin’ goddamned tests, and the down payment, deposit, all of which I hadda earn. And I say: ‘What the fuck is going on? She had her room already. I give her the TV set and I sent in the money. She’s not going out to U. Mass. Amherst, Boston isn’t good enough?’ And I get told, well, it’s my fault. ‘She never had a father.’ ‘Fuck you, she didn’t have a father,’ ’cause by now I’m getting mad. ‘She didn’t have a father, then how come I got all those goddamned canceled checks?’ ‘It’s not the same thing. Not like you were around.’ Well, that’s what I was doing, all right? Except I was older, and nobody sent me money. I got out the can and I dropped out, a while. And then I run out of the money, and I didn’t see nobody standing by to buy me meals and keep me warm, so I went and got a job.”

  “Or our uncle got one for you,” Battles said.

  “Forget it,” Earl said. “I must’ve heard that from a couple dozen guys. That I was in the program. If I was in the program, if they’re protecting me, then how come you and those guys never heard a word about me? Did I ever testify? Did someone see me in court? Is there one single person who can say I ever did? Not a soul on this whole earth. Did they offer me? Of course. They offer everybody, if they think he’s got something. Give you a week, try out the food, see if you’re scared to death. And then they come around and see you and say: ‘Wanna work for us?’ Which some guys do, and some guys don’t, and I was in the last group. Didn’t do no work for them.”

  Battles stared at him. He drank more beer. He put the beer can down and nodded. “Okay,” he said, “all right. I can’t picture my friend, dealing me a ringer. He knows I would kill him, and that don’t appeal to him.”

  “I think,” Earl said, “I think maybe your friend don’t give a shit what you think. He’s the kind of guy that does what he wants to do. He called my brother because he trusts him, and my brother sent me down. So you trust him, he trusts my brother, my brother must trust me. That is what I think.”

  “You know something?” Battles said. “You are an asshole, all right? I don’t understand it. You guys, all you guys the same age, doesn’t matter what you see, doesn’t matter what any fool’d know it meant: ‘You do this and you’ll get hurt.’ My own kid’s the same way, and you’re the same way too. Only difference is, he went in the fuckin’ army—‘I won’t get my ass blown off,’ and he won’t listen when I tell him: ‘Yes you will, it’s Vietnam, and you’re not goin’ there’—and you went inna tank when you were playn’ ball, after someone had’ve told you: ‘You will go to jail.’ I don’t trust one son of a bitch under thirty, and that includes you, pal, and that includes him, too. And I don’t trust no bastard over thirty, neither. Your type’s problem is that you all think you’re too lucky, so you won’t get hammered. Their type’s problem is that they all think they’re too smart, so they won’t get hammered.”

  “Well, they all do, of course, because lemme tell you something: Smart or lucky doesn’t matter. Matters is not fucking up. I would think you’d know that after you been in the can. And if you sounded like you did, then I might listen to you. But you don’t. So, I don’t give a fuck what you think. You fucked up before, all right? You fucked fucking up, that’s what you did, you fuck. I asked about you. I asked the guy I know. I said: ‘Kind of bird is this? Name, it sounds familiar.’ And he tells me, why it is. And so, and then I know. And I say: ‘Fine. But is he gonna fuck me up? Because this not a thing, you know, that’s very complicated. If I knew a donkey good, I would get the donkey.’ And he says: ‘No, he’s all right. Lemme make a call.’ And that is why you’re here. So you better not fuck up.”

  “Jeez,” Earl said, “you must be, you know, very powerful. Just be able, call a guy up, get a guy you need. What’d you do for this guy, huh? And who is this guy?”

  “I never met the guy,” Battles said. “I know him because he called me, asked me to do something that was up high on his list. Didn’t know me from Shinola, but he called and asked me. And I did it, like he wanted, without fucking up. So now I get to call him up, when there’s something that I want. And he does it for me, all right? Without fucking up. And that is why you’re here. Maybe you learn something.”

  Earl sighed. “You should’ve been on the parole board,” he said. “Either that or a priest. Whyncha just can all this baloney, tell me what you want?”

  “That’s better,” Battles said. “I got a small problem. It’s a car, is what it is. Mercedes fucking Benz. It’s got to disappear. Can you make it do that?”

  Earl grinned. “What’s the matter?” he said. “You been missing payments?”

  “It’s not my fucking car,” he said. “Belongs a frequen
t guest. He’s the one that wants it gone. I want to help him out.”

  “What’s the guy’s name?” Earl said. “Not the guy that owns it—the guy that’s in the trunk.”

  “There’s no guy inna trunk,” Battles said. “Don’t be a wise guy, all right? It’s just a simple matter. The car belongs his wife, all right? It’s just a matter, going out, steal the fucking car. And then: lose it.”

  “The water?” Beale said.

  “Not the goddamned ocean, no,” Battles said. “Someone’d bring it up. This one goes the crusher.”

  “And there’s nothing in the trunk,” Earl said.

  “Look,” Battles said, “there is nothing in the car except the lug wrench and the jack. And prolly some cigar butts and some used-up matchbooks, that stuff. But otherwise there’s nothing in it. No Luigi, nothing. It is absolutely clean.”

  “And when do you want all this done?” Earl said.

  “Tonight,” Battles said.

  “Tonight?” Earl said. “I got to go to New York tonight. Got to pick up my girl in the morning. Besides, no crusher’s working weekends. Scrapyards’re all closed. What’m I gonna do with it? Go out and get arrested?”

  Battles sighed. “Jesus Christ, it never fails. I ask a guy for something, get a fucking argument. It’s in a barn, all right? I’ll show you where it is today. When you coming back?”

  “Tomorrow night,” Earl said. “I’ll be back tomorrow night.”

  4

  Earl in the twilight entered the short-term parking lot at the international terminal at JFK Airport in Queens and found a suitable space six rows back from the Pan American terminal entrance: it faced a shiny, new red Buick hardtop. He released the inside hood latch of the Dodge, got out and removed his jacket, went to the front of the car and released the safety catch. He opened the hood and rested the palms of his hands on the top of the grille. He peered into the engine compartment for a moment. He went around to the back of the car and opened the rear deck. He removed an army blanket, a small tool kit wrapped in a plastic pouch, and a heavy-duty rubber-cased flashlight. He left the trunk open and returned to the front of the car. He draped the blanket on the window ledge of the driver’s side door. He opened the tool kit and spread it on the left front fender. He used the flashlight with his left hand and illuminated the area at the front of the engine. Then he returned to the driver’s side door and got in.

  After about twelve minutes, a tow truck with a flashing yellow light on its roof pulled up behind him. Earl got out of the Dodge as the driver climbed down from the cab. He was a young black man in a blue coverall, and he had two steel claws fitted to plastic cuffs at the ends of his forearms. “Problem, sir?” he said.

  “Ahh, minor, I think,” Earl said. He went to the back of the Dodge and stood in front of the registration plate. He yawned and stretched, trying not to stare at the claws. “She was running a little hot coming down here. Probably a loose hose clamp or something. I’m just waiting, it gets cool enough, I can reach in there.” He hooked his left heel on the rear bumper and lounged back against the trunk ledge.

  “Yeah,” the man said, raising his prostheses and grinning, “don’t want to get yourself a pair of these. Right?”

  Earl smiled. “You want the truth,” he said, “I was sort of thinking …”

  “… if you did have these,” the man said, “then maybe you could do it. Now, I mean, ’stead of waiting. ’Cept for one thing, which you only got to learn once and then remember it forever: there’s very few cars, aren’t brand-new, don’t have at least one live wire floating around in there where it’s not s’posed to be. And if you don’t feel it when you brush it on the way to something else, and don’t know it—these things aren’t great for touch—you get yourself a mighty big surprise when you ground it in the dark.”

  “What happened to you, anyway?” Beale said.

  The man leaned his buttocks on the left front fender of the tow truck, the yellow light turning lazily in the gathering darkness, the roar of jet turbines faraway but never out of hearing, and used his right claw to fish a pack of Luckies from his left breast pocket. “I could use a break,” he said. He shook a cigarette out and captured it with his left claw, replacing the pack in his pocket and tapping the cigarette three times on his right cuff. He put it in his mouth. He reached into his right breast pocket and extracted one long wooden match, striking it on the inner edge of the wheel well. It flared and he lighted the cigarette, dropping the match on the pavement. “Oh,” he said, “teenage accident. You know how kids are.”

  “Used to be one myself,” Earl said.

  “Right,” the man said. “Full of the courage, you know? Scared of nothing, man. I was on a trip with my uncle. Always been very good to me, my uncle has. Asking me to go on trips. Taking me places, showing me things, I never would’ve thought of going. Real interesting places, I never would’ve seen. Lots of things to do. Night hikes? Plenty going on. And they had these woods, see? This forest? And, I forgot all the stuff, all the good advice they gave me, they told me about always being careful, watch where I was going, take it slow and easy, and all of a sudden one night, I got like, scared, you know? Spooked. Thought I heard something. It was dark. So I started running, and I tripped on this big root, this tree root there I didn’t see, and I dropped all the stuff I was carrying, and I started to fall down, and I had my hands out in front of me, see?” He extended his arms before him like a swimmer preparing to dive. “And I fell. And that’s how.”

  “You tripped in the woods and it cost you your hands,” Earl said. “What hell’d you fall on? An alligator?”

  The man grinned again. He exhaled a large cloud of smoke. “No, man,” he said, “a Claymore mine. Those woods’re in Vietnam. That’s where my uncle took me. Hadn’t been for that big tree, I would’ve lost my head.”

  “Oh,” Earl said.

  “Uncle didn’t ask you to go?” the man said. “Look about my age. Thought he asked all the kids. ’Course you are a different color. Maybe that was it. Uncle’s prejudice.”

  Earl chuckled. “Well,” he said, “no. Actually. He did want me to go, but I told him, you know, ‘least let me finish school.’ But I really wanted to. Sounded real exciting.”

  “I bet,” the man said, smiling. “I met lots of guys like that, tell me how disappointed it made them, had to miss the trip ’cause they were still in school. But, you could’ve gone after, right? When you finished? And you still didn’t get to go?”

  “Nope,” Earl said. “See, I didn’t really finish. Didn’t graduate. I was playing basketball all the time, see? And I didn’t study enough. So I was short a few credits at the end of my last year, and then when I could’ve gone back in the fall, finished up, well, I was doing something else that he said I hadda do first. Which I didn’t really want to, you know? But I didn’t have a choice. And by the time I finish that, my uncle says I’m too old. Doesn’t want me anymore. And besides, he doesn’t like what I just finish doing, that he said I hadda do.”

  “Shee-it,” the black man said. “First you play some ball, and he lets you finish that? I used to play some ball. Didn’t cut no ice with him. What he must’ve had you doing sounds real interesting. Wish I’d had that option.”

  “I don’t think so,” Earl said. “It was five-to-seven, Leavenworth.”

  “Ohhh,” the man said, dropping the butt on the ground. “No, I think you’re right. I think you’re right on that.” He nodded toward the Dodge. “You gonna be all right on that? Won’t need any help?”

  Earl nodded. “I’ll be all right,” he said.

  The man opened the door of the cab and climbed back into the truck. “Well,” he said, “you’re not, don’t do what I did, start running around inna dark. Just stay put, stay with the car. Leave the hood and trunk up. I come around about every forty minutes or so. You’re still here, I’ll take a look.”

  “Thanks,” Earl said. “Nice talking to you.”

  The tow truck moved slowly forward down the
row. Earl stood at the rear of the Dodge until he saw the yellow light had stopped about twelve hundred yards away. He went around to the front of the Dodge and moved the blanket from the top of the door to the top of the radiator. He took a blade screwdriver and a Phillips screwdriver from the tool pouch. He went to the center of the grille with the flashlight in his right hand and the two screwdrivers in his left. He bent over the engine and slowly dropped into a crouch facing the grille. Then he pivoted on the balls of his feet so that he faced the front of the Buick. He aimed the flashlight on the registration plate of the Buick: 7J7–N54, New Jersey. He used the Phillips screwdriver to unscrew the four bolts attaching the plate and chrome frame from the bumper of the Buick. He pivoted back to face the Dodge again, standing up slowly and folding the plate and the frame in the blanket. He replaced the tools in the pouch and picked it up. He held it and the folded blanket away from the car with his left hand and slammed the hood shut with his right. He went to the back of the car and put the tools and the blanket in the trunk. He got into the car, started it, and backed out of the space, turning in the direction opposite to the tow truck’s route and leaving the parking lot.

  On the third Sunday in July, Earl got out of bed carefully in the room he had rented at the Howard Johnson Motel at JFK, leaving the blond-haired woman sleeping, and padded nude into the bathroom, closing the door silently. When he emerged about twenty minutes later, his hair was wet and he was cleanly shaven. He wore the same shirt and pants he had worn the day before. He carried a Dopp Kit of toilet gear, which he put on the small, white, circular table in front of the window. He went to the low dresser-desk combination and picked up the white plastic ice bucket. He returned to the bathroom and poured the water down the flush. He took the room key from the desk and left the room almost silently, returning with fresh ice. The woman stirred. He put the bucket on the desk and picked up the water glass that was not lipsticked. He poured about half of the four remaining ounces of vodka into the glass, added ice, and opened a fresh can of Coke, which he mixed with the vodka, using his right forefinger. The ice clinked and the woman stirred again, moaning once.