“But that old life was killing us.”
“It was.”
“I miss it so much,” she said. “That old life that was killing us.”
“Me, too. One thing I learned today, though, is that I’ve turned into a bit of a pussy.”
She smiled. “You have, uh?”
I nodded.
She cocked her head at me. “You were never
that
tough to begin with.”
“I know,” I said, “so imagine what a lightweight I am now.”
“Shit,” she said, “I just love the hell out of you sometimes.”
“Love you, too.”
She slid her legs back and forth across my thighs. “But you really want your laptop back, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“You’re going to go get it back, aren’t you?”
“The thought had occurred to me.”
She nodded. “On one condition.”
I hadn’t expected her to agree with me. And the small part of me that had sure hadn’t expected it this quickly. I sat up, as attentive and obsequious as an Irish setter. “Name it.”
“Take Bubba.”
Bubba wasn’t only the ideal wingman on this because he was built like a bank-vault door and had not even a passing acquaintance with fear. (Truly. He once asked me what the emotion felt like. He was also baffled by the whole empathy concept.) No, what made him particularly ideal for this evening’s festivities was that he’d spent the last several years diversifying his business to include black-market health care. It started as a simple investment—he’d bankrolled a doctor who’d recently lost his license and wanted to set up a practice servicing the kind of people who couldn’t report their bullet wounds, knife wounds, head wounds, and broken bones to hospitals. One, of course, needs drugs for such patients, and Bubba was forced to find a supply for illegal “legal” drugs. This supply came from Canada, and even with all the post-9/11 noise about increased border control, Bubba got dozens of thirty-gallon bags of pills delivered every month. Thus far, he hadn’t lost a load. If an insurance company refused to cover a drug or if the pharmaceutical companies priced the drug out of wallet-range of working- and lower-class folk in the neighborhoods, street whispers usually led the patient to one of Bubba’s network of bartenders, florists, lunch-cart drivers, or corner-store cashiers. Pretty soon anyone living off the health-care grid or near the edge of it owed a debt to Bubba. He was no Robin Hood—he cleared a profit. But he was no Pfizer, either—his profit was in the fair range of 15 to 20 percent, not in the anal-rape range of 1,000 percent.
Using Bubba’s people in the homeless community, it took us about twenty minutes to identify a guy who matched the description of the guy who stole my laptop.
“You mean Webster?” the dishwasher at a soup kitchen in Fields Corner said.
“The little black kid from ’90s TV?” Bubba said. “Why would we be looking for him?”
“Nah, man, I most definitely do not mean the little black kid from ’90s TV. We in the oh-tens now, or ain’t you heard?” The dishwasher scowled. “Webster’s a white boy, on the small side, got a beard.”
I said, “That’s the Webster we’re looking for.”
“Don’t know if it’s his first name or last, but he cribbed up at a place on Sydney round—”
“No, he blew out of there today.”
Another scowl. For a dishwasher, he was kind of prickly. “Place on Sydney up by Savin Hill Ave.?”
“No, I was thinking of the other end, the place by Crescent.”
“You ain’t thinking then. You ain’t know shit. Clear? So just shush it, boy.”
“Yeah,” Bubba said, “just shush it, boy.”
I wasn’t close enough to kick him, so I shut up.
“Yeah, the place he staying is at the end of Sydney. Where it meet Bay Street? There. Second floor, yellow house, got one of them AC units in the window stopped working during Reagan, look like it gonna fall out on someone’s head.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Little black kid from ’90s TV,” he said to Bubba. “Man, if I wasn’t fifty-nine and a half years old? I’d profoundly whoop your ass over that shit.”
W
here Sydney Street crosses Savin Hill Avenue, it becomes Bay Street and sits on top of a subway tunnel. About every five minutes, the whole block shudders as a train rumbles beneath it. Bubba and I had sat through five of these shudders so far, which meant we’d been sitting in Bubba’s Escalade for nearly half an hour.
Bubba does not do sitting still very well. It reminds him too much of group homes and orphanages and prisons, places he’s called home for roughly half his time on earth. He’d already fiddled with the GPS—punching in random addresses in random cities to see if Amarillo, Texas, had a Groin Street or Toronto sent tourists traipsing along Rogowski Avenue. When he exhausted the entertainment value of searching for nonexistent streets in cities he never intended to visit, he played with the satellite radio, rarely landing on a station for more than thirty seconds before he’d let loose a half-sigh, half-snort and change the channel. After a while, he dug a bottle of Polish potato vodka out from under the seat and took a swig.
He offered me the bottle. I declined. He shrugged and took another pull. “Let’s just kick the door in.”
“We don’t even know if he’s in there.”
“Let’s just do it anyway.”
“And if he comes home while we’re in there, sees his door kicked down and takes off running, what do we do then?”
“Shoot him from the window.”
I looked over at him. He peered up at the second story of the condemned three-decker where Webster allegedly lived. His deranged cherub’s face was serene, a look it usually got when it contemplated violence.
“We’re not shooting anyone. We’re not going to lay a glove on this guy.”
“He stole from you.”
“He’s harmless.”
“He stole from you.”
“He’s homeless.”
“Yeah, but he stole from you. You should set an example.”
“For who—all the other homeless guys lining up to steal my bag so I’ll chase them into a house where I’ll get the shit kicked out of me?”
“Them, yeah.” He took another swig of vodka. “And don’t give me this ‘He’s homeless’ shit.” He pointed the bottle at the condemned building across the street. “He’s living there, ain’t he?”
“He’s squatting.”
“Still a home,” Bubba said. “Can’t call someone homeless if they have, ya know, a fucking home.”
On some purely Bubba level, he had me there.
On the other side of Savin Hill Avenue, the door to Donovan’s bar opened. I nudged Bubba, pointed across the avenue as Webster crossed toward us.
“He’s homeless, but he’s in a bar. This guy has a better life than me. Probably has a fucking plasma and a Brazilian chick comes Tuesdays to clean and vacuum.”
Bubba threw open his door as Webster was about to pass the SUV. Webster paused and, in that second, forfeited any chance to escape. Bubba towered over him and I came around from the other side and Bubba said, “Remember him?”
Webster had adopted a position of half-cringe. When he recognized me, he closed his eyes to slits.
“I’m not going to hit you, man.”
“I will, though.” Bubba slapped Webster on the side of his head.
“Hey!” Webster said.
“I’ll do it again.”
“Webster,” I said, “where’s my bag?”
“What bag?”
I said, “Really?”
Webster looked at Bubba.
“My bag,” I said.
“I gave it back.”
“To who?”
“Max.”
“Who’s Max?”
“He’s Max. He’s the guy paid me to take your bag.”
“Red-haired dude?” I said.
“No. Dude’s got, like, black hair.”
Bubba slapped the side of Webster’s head again.
“What the hell you do that for?”
Bubba shrugged.
“He bores easily,” I said.
“I didn’t
do
nothing.”
“You didn’t what?” I pointed at my face.
“I didn’t know they were going to do that. They just told me to steal your bag.”
“Where’s the redheaded guy?” I said.
“I don’t know any redheaded guy.”
“Fine, where’s Max?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where’d you take the bag? You wouldn’t take it back to the same house where I chased you.”
“No, man, I took it to a garage.”
“What kind of garage?”
“Huh? Like a place that fixes cars and shit. Has a few for sale out front.”
“Where?”
“On Dot Ave., just before Freeport, on the right.”
“I know that place,” Bubba said. “It’s, like, Castle Automotive or something.”
“Kestle. With a K,” Webster said.
Bubba slapped him upside the head again.
“Ow. Shit.”
“You take anything out of the bag?” I said. “Anything?”
“Nah, man. Max told me not to, so I didn’t.”
“But you looked in there.”
“Yeah. No.” He rolled his eyes. “Yeah.”
“There was a picture of a little girl in there.”
“Yeah, I saw it.”
“You put it back?”
“Yeah, man, I promise.”
“If it ain’t there when I find the bag, we’ll come back, Webster. And we won’t be all sweet and shit.”
“You call this sweet?” Webster said.
Bubba slapped the side of his head a fourth time.
“Sweet as it’ll ever get,” I said.
• • •
Kestle Cars & Repair sat across from a Burger King in the part of my neighborhood the locals call Ho Chi Minh Trail, a seven-block section of Dorchester Avenue, where waves of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian immigrants settled. There were six cars on the lot, all in dubious condition, all with
MAKE AN OFFER
painted in yellow on their windshields. The garage bay doors were closed and the lights were off, but we could hear loud chatter from the back. There was a dark green door to the left of the bay doors. I stepped aside and looked at Bubba.
“What?”
“It’s locked.”
“You can’t pick a lock no more?”
“Sure, but I don’t carry a kit on me. Cops frown on that shit.”
He grimaced and pulled a small leather case from his pocket. He unrolled it and selected a pick. “Is there anything you
can do
anymore?”
“I cook a mean swordfish Provençal,” I said.
He gave that a mild shake of his head. “Last two times it was pretty dry.”
“I don’t make dry fish.”
He popped the lock. “Then a guy who looks like you does, and he served it last two times I was at your house.”
“Shit’s cold,” I said.
The back office smelled of trapped heat, burned motor oil, stale gusts of ganja and menthol cigarettes. We found four guys back there. Two I’d met before—the fat guy with the audible breathing and Tadeo, sporting a ridiculous bandage over his nose and forehead that made my own bandage look just a little less ridiculous. The fat guy stood to the far left side of the room. Tadeo stood directly in front of us, half his body behind a metal desk the color of eggshell. A third guy, in a mechanic’s overalls, was passing a joint when we walked in. He wasn’t yet drinking age and fear seized his face when Bubba entered behind me; unless the fear made him stupid ballsy (it happens), he’d be the least of our problems.
The fourth guy sat slightly to our right, behind the desk. He had dark hair. His skin was covered in a sheen of sweat, fresh droplets popping through the pores as we watched. He was about thirty-going-on-a-coronary, and you could smell the crank singeing his veins from Newfoundland. His left knee jackhammered under the desk, his right hand patted a steady bongo beat on the top. My laptop sat in front of him. He stared at us with bright eyes pinned to the rear wall of his skull. “This one of the guys?”
The fat guy pointed at me. “That’s the one fucked up Tadeo’s face.”
Tadeo said to me, “The re-up’s coming on that shit, homes. Believe it,” but there was a hollow catch in his voice that came from trying not to look at Bubba.
“I’m Max.” The tweeker behind my laptop gave me a broad smile. He sucked oxygen into his nostrils and gave me a wink. “I’m the IT guy up in this shit. Nice laptop.”
I nodded at the table. “My laptop.”
“Huh?” He look wildly confused. “This is my laptop.”
“Funny. Looks a lot like mine.”
“That’s called a model.” His eyes popped against their sockets. “If they all looked different, they’d be kind of hard to manufacture, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” Tadeo said, “you fucking retarded and shit?”
I said, “I’m just a girl standing before a boy looking for his laptop.”
“I heard you’d got your head in the right place about this,” Max said. “We were never supposed to see you again. No harm, no foul. You want to bring us into your life, you don’t
fucking
understand how bad that will be.” He closed my laptop and placed it in the drawer to his right.
“Look,” I said, “I can’t afford a replacement.”
He rocked forward into the desk, his whole endoskeleton surging against his skin. “Call a fucking insurance company.”
“It’s not insured.”
“This fucking guy, bro,” he said to Bubba, then checked the position of his men. He looked back at me. “You’re out of this. Just let it go and you’ll stay out of it. Run back to your little life.”
“I’m going. I just want to take my laptop back with me. And the picture of my daughter that was in my bag. Bag’s yours.”
Tadeo moved all the way out from behind the desk. The fat guy stayed against the wall, breathing heavy. The kid mechanic was breathing heavy, too, and blinking like crazy.
“I know the bag’s mine.” Max got to his feet. “I know this office is mine, that ceiling, the O-ring in your ass, if I feel like it.”
“Uh, okay,” I said. “Hey, who hired you, by the way?”
“Man, you with the
questions
.” He flung his hands at me like he was auditioning for a Lil Weezy video and then scratched the back of his head furiously. “You don’t make demands. You go the fuck home.” He shooed me with his fingers. “Bro, I say one word and you’re fucking—”
Bubba’s shot spun him in place. Max let out a sharp shout and fell back into his chair. The chair slammed off the wall and dumped Max to the floor. He lay there for a bit with blood pouring from the vicinity of his waistline.
“What’s with all this ‘bro’ shit lately?” Bubba lowered his gun. It was his new favorite, a Steyr 9mm. Austrian. Hideous-looking.
“Ho, shit!” Tadeo said. “Holy fucking shit.”
Bubba pointed the Steyr at Tadeo and then the fat guy. Tadeo put his hands on his head. The fat guy did too. They both stood there shaking and awaiting further instruction.
Bubba didn’t even bother with the kid. He’d dropped to his knees and lowered his head to the floor and kept whispering, “Please, please.”
“You fucking shoot the guy?” I said. “A bit harsh, no?”
“Don’t bring me out on this shit if you’re going to leave your pair at home.” Bubba frowned. “Goddamn embarrassing what a civilian you’ve become, man.”
I got a closer look at Max as a burst of air left his mouth. He ground his forehead into the cement floor and pounded a fist on it.
“He’s fucked up,” I said.
“I barely hit him.”
“You blew one of his hips off.”
Bubba said, “He’s got two.”
Max began to shake. The shakes quickly turned to convulsions. Tadeo took a step toward him and Bubba took two steps toward Tadeo, the Steyr aimed at his chest.
“I’ll kill you just for being short,” Bubba said.
“I’m sorry.” Tadeo raised his hands as high as they could go.
Max flopped onto his back. Kettle hisses preceded his gulps of air.
“I’ll kill you for wearing that deodorant,” Bubba told Tadeo. “I’ll kill your friend for being your friend.”
Tadeo lowered his hands until they shook in front of his face. He closed his eyes.
His friend said, “We’re not friends. He gives me shit about my weight.”
Bubba raised an eyebrow. “You could lose a few but you’re not an orca or anything. Shit, man, just lay off the white bread and the cheese.”
“I’m thinking Atkins,” the guy said.
“I tried that.”
“Yeah?”
“You gotta give up alcohol for two weeks.” Bubba grimaced. “Two
weeks
.”
The guy nodded. “That’s what I told the wife.”
Max kicked the desk. The back of his head rattled off the floor. Then he was still.
“He dead?” Bubba asked.
“No,” I said. “But he’s heading there, he don’t get a doctor.”
Bubba produced a business card. He asked the big guy, “What’s your name?”
“Augustan.”