Shoedog (11 page)

These meetings exhilarated him but tired him as well. Gorman and Valdez always asked the wrong questions. And Jackson, his own stupidity magnified by his groundless self-confidence, asked no questions at all. But Jackson did as he was told, absolutely, and the value of that was great.

The cleanest of them was Randolph, and with him Grimes never worried; Randolph had always done his job, and done it precisely and without incident. He knew Randolph’s worth, and the importance of keeping him in the fold.

Polk, too, had always been a professional. There was no reason to believe he would not acquit himself well on this one. Still, this would be Polk’s last job. Polk was becoming irrational, careless, dangerously close to spoiling it. He would have to go. Friendship meant little now, its worth receding with time, fading behind the primary concern of self-preservation. Grimes believed in nothing if not protecting the things he valued most.

And there was Constantine. The young man with the long black hair asked the right questions, and kept his mouth shut when there was nothing pertinent to say. Grimes believed he would deliver when things heated up. Constantine’s strengths, though—his lack of emotion, the absence of a moral center—also made him a dangerous man. If Constantine had a weakness, it was the weakness that plagued most men. He had seen it in Constantine’s eyes when Delia had entered the room. But Grimes wouldn’t use it. He would find something else in Constantine, some kind of opening. And then Grimes would break him, like he had broken the others.

Grimes looked at the brown spots on the back of his hand as his fingers moved through the magnetic chips. He had noticed the spots only recently, and then he had noticed the cracks and deep wrinkles around his knuckles, and the thinness of his fingers at their joints. He pictured the brightness in Delia’s eyes when Constantine had touched her hand. He tried to remember the time when Delia had looked at him in that same way.

Grimes heard footsteps approach his door, heard a knock on the door, saw the brass knob begin to turn. He straightened in his chair, softened the tightness that had crept into his face.

C
ONSTANTINE
knocked on Grimes’s door, entered.

Grimes sat behind his desk, wearing a canary yellow polo shirt under a blue blazer, his gray hair swept back. He motioned for Constantine to sit in the chair in front of the desk. Constantine walked across the room, had a seat in the chair, and crossed one leg over the other. He waited as Grimes relighted his cigar.

Grimes let some smoke pass from his mouth. “Would you like one, Constantine?”

“I don’t smoke them.”

Grimes looked lovingly at his cigar. “This one’s got a Dominican filler, with a Connecticut Valley wrapper. Assembled in Jamaica. I go for the pyramid tip, myself, though that’s a matter of preference over taste, the way it feels on your lips.” He drew on it, looked back at Constantine. “It’s a shame. You really should be interested in good things. As you get older, your more basic passions decrease. Naturally, your desire for material pleasure gets greater.”

“Possessions only complicate things,” Constantine said. “I can’t fit a sixty-thousand-dollar car into my backpack.”

“Or a woman,” Grimes said.

“No.”

“But you could fit a nice cigar into your pack, couldn’t you?”

“What’s your point?”

“Only this. Within the scope of his ambition—even his limited ambition—a man should always strive to have me best. And by extension, to do his best.” Grimes parted his thin lips into something resembling a smile. “I think you’ve got that quality in you, Constantine. I think you just don’t know it.”

“My ambition is to keep moving,” Constantine said.

“You might think so,” Grimes said. “But I saw something in you yesterday, when I first mentioned the job. You were interested in the money—any man would be—but it was more than that. You were hopped on the job itself.”

“Maybe.”

“It’s why I put you on the downtown hit. You’re into the challenge of it. I think you’re going to do fine.”

“Valdez and Gorman don’t think so.”

“They’re plumbers. I don’t worry about what they think. Neither should you.”

Constantine rubbed his thumb on the green leather arm of the chair. “So what’s in this for you? You obviously don’t need the money.”

“That’s right.” Grimes tapped ash into a crystal tray on the corner of his desk. “I don’t have to be doing this at all, Constantine. I think, in your own way, you could get along without it too. So I think you can understand it when I say that, from time to time, I
need
this sort of thing.”

“Need what, exactly?” Constantine said. “Not the rush. You’re not in the middle of it. You watch it go down, from behind that desk.”

“I’ve seen all the action I’ll ever want to see. And I killed plenty of men in the war, if you think that means something. No, this is something else.”

Something else, maybe, but nothing mysterious. Grimes was frightened of his mortality, his fading virility, his diminishing worth. The affliction of time. Constantine thought of Randolph, how he’d been summoned, like his draft number had come up, and Polk, who couldn’t walk away. The only thing Grimes had left was the grip he kept on his men, the ability to bring them back every year, through blackmail, for one more job. Constantine didn’t like Grimes, and he didn’t trust him. But now he knew him, and knowing him diminished his power. Grimes, all polish and hunt-country gloss—just another pathetic old man.

“Anything else?” Constantine said. “Polk’s waiting for me downstairs.”

Grimes dragged on his cigar, rolled the lit end around in the ashtray. He glanced at his watch, men back at Constantine. “One more thing. Come over here to the window, will you? I’d like you to see something.”

Grimes got out of his chair and stepped behind it. Constantine rose, walked behind the desk, and stood next to Grimes in the square of sunlight that fell into the room. They looked out the window.

At the tree line, a hundred yards from the house, Delia stepped out of the woods. She walked with her head down, a stick in her hand, her hips moving languidly, her blond hair loose, the breeze keeping it off her face. Constantine felt his stomach drop; from the window, he thought that he could smell the freshness of her hair.

“Every day,” Grimes said smoothly, “I watch her walk out of those woods, same time. It’s a small thing, really. But to watch her, to know she’s mine—”

“I understand,” Constantine said.

“Of course you do.” Grimes kept his gaze on Delia. “You were taken with her yourself, earlier today. Everyone is. The others, when I’m around, they act like she’s invisible. Then, behind my back, they laugh, talk about her, talk about what they’d do to her. They’re cowards.” Grimes’s face, deeply wrinkled, turned grim in the light “I admired your courage today, when you stood out of your seat to touch her hand. I admired it, and at the same time I hated it. Do you know what I mean?”

“I think so.”

“Good.” Grimes turned to face Constantine. “Because if you ever act on it, I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you and I’ll bury you, out in those woods. Understand?”

“My friend’s waiting for me downstairs,” Constantine said.

Grimes said, “Then go.”

Constantine turned and walked for the door. Before he reached it, he heard the voice of Grimes. “You should be more clean, Constantine. There’s dirt all over the back of your shirt.”

Constantine thought of Delia lying on the shirt, quivering wet, naked in the mud of the stable. He felt a touch of the Beat as his hand turned the knob of the door.

Chapter
11

P
OLK
, Randolph, and Weiner waited in the driveway for Constantine to come from the house. Jackson had walked out behind them, gotten in his car. He pulled the car alongside the men and rolled down the window.

“Pick a good one tomorrow, hear?” he said to Randolph, and Randolph knew he meant the car. Jackson winked at Randolph, but Randolph did not acknowledge the wink. Randolph considered Jackson a loser, worse than a bum. There were those who could work, and those who couldn’t; those who could and who chose the hustle were worse than those on the bum.

As Jackson drove toward the gate, Delia walked from the woods, past the men. The men tracked her walk, admired it, Polk more deeply than the rest. She did not look at them as she passed them and entered the house.

Five minutes later Constantine opened the front door and stepped out. He crossed the driveway to where the men had grouped themselves around Randolph’s T-Bird.

“What’s going on?” Constantine said.

Randolph said, “Waitin’ on you.”

“Well,” Constantine said, “here I am. What now?”

“We usually go out after the meeting, have a few,” Polk said. “Like a tradition. You up for that, Connie?”

“I guess I am,” Constantine said. “I need to check back into my motel, take a shower, change my clothes.”

Randolph said, “We’ll pick up Polk’s heap, swing back out.”

“You guys can meet me in the motel lounge,” Constantine said.

Weiner said, “Where would that be?”

“On the west side of Georgia, just over the District line. Place doesn’t have a name, just says ‘Motel.’”

“I know the place,” Weiner said, then looked at his wristwatch. “I’ll see you gentlemen around eight.”

Randolph said, “Right”

Weiner marched to his car, a midsized, cookie-cutter GM product—from where he stood, Constantine could not make out if it was a Buick or an Olds—and drove off. Randolph, Polk, and Constantine climbed into the T-Bird, Polk squirreling himself into the backseat. Randolph turned the ignition key and headed down the driveway to the open gate.

“What’d Grimes want with you?” Polk said.

“Pat on the back,” Constantine said.

Polk said, “Thought it might have something to do with the woman.”

Constantine said, “It didn’t.”

“She is fine, though,” Randolph said.

“Yes,” Constantine said.

“Too fine,” Randolph said, “for a poor motherfucker like you.”

“I guess you’re right,” Constantine said.

Polk tapped Constantine on the shoulder. “Hey, Connie, how about passing me back a smoke?”

Constantine took the pack from his shirt pocket and tossed it over his shoulder to Polk in the backseat. Polk took a cigarette, wedged it between his lips, passed the pack back up to Constantine.

“I thought for sure,” Polk said, “that Grimes was going to talk to you about the woman.”

“Come to think of it,” Constantine said, “he did mention something.”

C
ONSTANTINE
asked for and checked into his old room after Randolph dropped him at the motel. He napped in the room, falling asleep immediately, the venetian blinds sealing out most of the light. He awoke a short time later in the dark.

After his shower Constantine had the last of his vodka while he cleaned up his beard and dressed in fresh clothing. Before he left, he checked himself once in the mirror, then switched off the light.

Coming out of the elevator, Constantine could hear the Ohio Players’ “Sweet Sticky Thing” playing from the lounge. He entered, scoped the bar. In a far corner, he saw Polk and Randolph sitting with a woman at a roundtop. Constantine crossed the room, passed juicers huddled over their drinks at the bar, and stopped at the table.

“Connie!” Polk said, standing at once, shaking Constantine’s hand. Polk had put on a textured dress shirt, a Puerto Rican-looking number, over his white T-shirt. His windbreaker was spread over the back of the chair.

“Polk. Randolph.” Constantine smiled politely, extended his hand to the middle-aged woman in the chair. “My name’s Constantine.”

“Charlotte,” the woman said, closing and then opening her eyes slowly in drama-class fashion. She had deep purple eye shadow and penciled-in brows, sharply pointed at the tips. A shock of white-blond hair had been bleached into the front of her black bouffant. Straightaway, Constantine thought of Lily Munster.

“Good to meet you.”

“And you, honey.” Charlotte gave him a nicotinetinted smile. “Polk told me you were a looker. He was right.”

“Thanks.”

“Sit down, lover,” Randolph said, “and have a drink.”

Constantine sat, pushed the netted orange candle away from him, to the center of the table. A bandy-legged waitress came by, jutted her chin upward at Constantine. The motion revealed a scar beneath her chin.

“Vodka rocks,” Constantine said.

“What flavor?” the waitress said, impatiently jiggling change in her black apron.

“Just vodka.”

The waitress gave the rest of the table an eye-sweep. “Anybody else?”

“Two more of these, sweetheart,” Polk said, twiddling his fingers between his and Charlotte’s glasses.

“You?” the waitress said to Randolph.

“I’m good,” Randolph said, cupping his hand over his glass of soda water. The waitress gave Randolph an unclean look, wiped quickly at the area in front of Constantine. She brushed ashes off the table, half of them going into her hand, the other half drifting into Constantine’s lap. The waitress turned to walk away, and Randolph watched her feet.

Randolph said, “Eight and a half.”

“What’s that?” said Constantine.

“The lady wears an eight and a half. An A width, though. Tougher than a motherfucker to fit.” Randolph eyed Constantine’s denim shirt. “Speakin’ of threads, man, that outfit there—what the fuck is that your uniform?”

Constantine flashed on his high school military academy and service days, chuckled to himself. “I guess so,” he said. “Too many choices, too many complications. You know what I’m saying?”

“I know you’re a little off,” Randolph said. A softness came into his eyes. “But you’re down, I guess.”

Constantine glanced at Polk and Charlotte, huddled across the table, laughing. Eddie Kendricks’s “Keep on Trucking” had begun to blare through the bar speakers. Randolph sipped at his soda.

“You don’t drink,” Constantine said.

“I drink,” Randolph said. “But I keep it in check. Drinkin’s ruined most every man I know. When I get into the store every morning, I got to be on my game, one hundred percent. Can’t let those other boys get the jump on me, man.”