The Good Neighbor (31 page)

For Colt, things were different—precisely because it was all the same. Money and women, that is. They meant the same thing to

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him, but money was more easily handled, more easily controlled. And really more exciting, too. Something he never admitted to anyone, not even Francie, was that sometimes, sitting at his desk, surrounded by all the chaos and excitement and fear, he got a hard-on. The whole mess was so turbulent that he would grow wood right there in front of everyone, hidden only by the three- quarters of an inch of whatever the hell fake stuff his desk was made of. When he scored hard on a stock, it got harder. And then he would go into the bathroom and whack off. Sometimes it hap pened twice a day, so that by the time he got home he had noth ing left to give, anyway.

And Francie—it seemed like the longer she was on the meds, the less she came on to him. She was content to sit in her chair in the corner of the apartment and read her goddam Emily Dickin son. He would stagger in around six or seven or eight o’clock, eyes bleary, groin drained, eat dinner and go to bed. And that was their marriage: a whacker and a poet; a wealthy man, his lonely woman.

In some Arab cultures, Colt knew, all the man had to do was walk around his wife in a circle three times and say, “I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee.” Something like that around here would be an innovation, he thought. Now I have to deal with lawyers.

And I hate the fucking lawyers.

❚ ❚ ❚

Colt bought a bag of peanuts from an intrepid vendor who hadn’t yet packed it in for the season. He ate a few and amused himself for another twenty minutes by throwing the rest of them at the pigeons. Then he went back to the office. When lunchtime came, he didn’t go with the other guys. Even after four o’clock, he stayed on, trying once again to penetrate the murkiness of the

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Eastern market. No after-work drink invite from Forszak this time. He was the only one left.

What gods control you? he asked the silent screen, as it scrolled its endless litany of numbers before him. What’s the key to un locking your secrets? What mountain do I have to climb to find it?

But the screen, as always, told him little beyond the facts.

And I need the facts behind the facts, Colt thought. I have the answers, all of them. Problem is, I don’t know what the questions are.

But some questions were beyond the range of mortals, even the great Coltrane Hart. At nine o’clock he went back to his favorite bar, where he had some more Scotches and another cigar. A few women talked to him, but he was merely polite, and did not en courage them to come home with him, though he knew he could have without much effort. And it occurred to him for the first time in years, looking around at these strange and hungry females who were attracted by his clothes, his scent of money, his expres sion of power and control, that none of them was nearly as beau tiful as Francie, and certainly not half as smart.

And he thought: I think it’s a pretty safe to say that I have roy ally screwed up.

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Disinterment

T
he snow wasn’t going to stay after all. They had been re prieved by the sun and warming wind, though Francie knew these

had only delayed their sentence rather than commuted it. It was good enough for the living, though it meant nothing for those who had been yanked from their beds and been spirited away. Like the poor Musgroves.

To Francie, it felt like the secret police had come—as if, some how, it was against the law in Colt’s world to be dead. She stood in the yard and looked at the mess that the backhoe had made of the earth. And my husband is their secret chief, she thought—he’s the invisible man in the invisible office, handing out the orders that make people disappear.

Even the giant old stump that had protected Marly’s stone was a casualty, lying slanted half in and half out of the hole, its roots exposed—like a molar torn from an old man’s mouth. The excava tors had opened the graves into one large, common pit, and the bottom of the hole, which for so many years had been the resting place of the sleeping six, was now a mess of chewed-up yellow

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and-brown mud. Meltwater trickled down the sides of the pit, pooling there into an unhealthy quagmire.

❚ ❚ ❚

The disinterment of the Musgrove family remains had been one of the worst things Francie had ever had to watch. She almost
couldn’t
watch it; she would have preferred to stay in the house, hiding her head under a pillow, like an ostrich. But when Flebber man arrived, beside himself with rage and grief, she knew she couldn’t just pretend it wasn’t happening.

Steinbach’s trio of men first plucked the stones out of the earth, putting them in the back of a dump truck. They tossed them ca sually, as if they were nothing more than rocks, and they clattered and broke in the truck bed.

“Goddamn it!” Flebberman had howled at them. “Wayne, you tell them yahoos to watch what they’re doin’!”

Steinbach, who could barely meet Flebberman’s eyes, had a word with his men. For a moment, Francie thought everything was going to be all right—suddenly all was understood, and so they could just go home, couldn’t they? But then the backhoe ripped into the soil, chewing a large swathe above where Francie imagined the Musgroves’ middles would be.

Flebberman lost what little self-control he still possessed. “Steinbach!” he screamed, over the backhoe’s roar. “I thought

you and me was friends!”

Steinbach pretended he couldn’t hear him.

“How can you do this?” Flebberman screeched. “Stop it! Please, Steinbach! Stop it right now!”

Francie felt her heart was breaking. Steinbach looked up at him finally, hangdog, and shook his head.

“Can’t!” he said.

“Why not?!”

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“Contract. He offered me twice the usual rate, Randy. I had to take it.”

“Yeah, right,” said Flebberman. “And all them little Steinbachs gotta have new shoes. Izzenat right?”

Steinbach didn’t answer.

“Well, I just hope no one ever digs up
yer
family’s bones!” he spat, screaming over the engine’s noise. “Or yer gonna know just how I feel right now!”

Flebberman turned to Francie, who had been dreading this mo ment. She was the wife of the man who had ordered this desecrtion, after all. She was Elena Ceau¸sescu, Imelda Marcos. She cringed, and waited for what he was going to say to her.

But he didn’t scream. Instead he came and put his face close to her ear, so that she could feel his breath. Involuntarily she closed her eyes, waiting to see what he would do. She would not have been at all surprised had he sunk his snuff-yellowed teeth into the firm flesh of her neck.

But he didn’t. Instead he spoke.

“Where is he?” he asked, so quietly she barely heard him.

She hadn’t expected that. It all seemed so obvious then—the reasons people sought revenge. They didn’t just do it for no rea son, for petty slights. They were driven by something greater than themselves; they were made mad with outrage. She understood now. And, though she knew that whatever was going to happen was probably not a good idea, she also knew it was one thing she could turn her back on—for reasons of her own. As long as it didn’t go too far.

It never occurred to her not to tell him. Whatever he did to him, Colt had it coming.

“New York,” Francie said. “Where?”

Francie shook her head. He was even closer to her now—she could smell tobacco on his breath, and sweat and engine oil on his

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body. His arm brushed ever so lightly against her right breast, and she felt it all the way to her toes.

“I shouldn’t tell you,” she said, knowing she was only seconds away from doing so.

Flebberman nodded, understanding.

“I still have yer check,” he said. “Is that address still good?”

Of course—the check she’d written for the truck. Francie said nothing. She nodded, the movements of her head barely percepti ble. Then she closed her eyes again.

When she opened them several moments later, Flebberman was handing one of Steinbach’s men something. Then he got into his truck. Francie saw that the something was a roll of money. The workman turned to his fellows and grinned; they gathered around him, and he divvied it up, a small handful to each. Steinbach him self hadn’t noticed this, because Flebberman had chosen a mo ment when he was occupied with the roots of the tree, which had become tangled around the bucket of the digger. The workman saw that Francie had noticed, however, and he looked at her, then significantly at Steinbach, then held a finger to his lips. Francie stared dumbly. She had no idea what he meant. She nodded, be cause she knew that was what she was expected to do. The man smiled again and put his money away.

She stayed for another few minutes. When the bones began to come up, she went into the house. She could no longer force her self to bear witness. She went into the house and put her hand on the phone in the kitchen, where she could still see the wicked arm of the backhoe as it swung up and down, ripping into the sacred earth.

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The Necrophobe

C
olt awoke with the worst hangover in recent memory. Be fore even opening his eyes, he knew that this was going to be an

other very bad day. A thick coating of sour slime lay over his tongue, and his eyes were crusted shut. Groaning, he tried to pry them open, but light pouring into his retinas made him cringe, and he hid his head under the blankets. He had fallen asleep on the couch, he realized. In the apartment. Where had he been? What had he been doing?

Oh yes—he remembered now. How many Scotches had he had? Endless. Wait now. Here came a memory, as fuzzy as an old movie. There had been a lengthy, if somewhat incoherent, conver sation with someone in the bar. That’s right. An old, heavily tat tooed man. A war hero, though from which war he couldn’t remember. Possibly the Revolution. He was that old. They’d bought each other beers and slapped each other on the back, com miserating on the faithlessness of women. The veteran had been divorced three times, he’d said. Colt vaguely recalled pouring out the whole story of Francie in a great, big soppy mess, a recollec

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tion that caused him to wince now with embarrassment. He’d grown emotional and weepy. Good Lord. How many Scotches? He began to remember—they’d killed most of a bottle between them. Enough to poison a horse.

“Jesus Christ,” Colt said, into the stale air of the apartment. “Jesus Christ is right,” said a voice, from the other side of the

room.

Colt sat up as quickly as he could—which was not quickly at all—and tried to look around. Squinting and blinking, he could make out someone seated in the far corner of the room. At the same time, he became aware of a tremendous need to urinate. It was so bad he knew that he was only a step away from wetting himself.

“Who the fuck are you?” Colt said.

Before the answer could come, he struggled to his feet and went into the bathroom, where he released a thunderous cataract of urine into the bowl. From that position, he was just able to turn his head far enough to see the person’s foot as they sat in the chair, waiting for him to come out.

“Hello?” he called. “Who is that?” There was no answer.

Colt pissed for nearly a full minute. Finally, he came out of the bathroom, clad only in his underwear, greatly relieved now; and there, as cool as a cucumber, was the neighbor from Pennsylvania, that short, hairy little guy with the tow truck. What was his name again? Colt blinked at him uncomprehendingly.

“Flebberman?” said Colt. “What the fuck are you doing in my apartment? How did you get in here?”

“You left the door unlocked,” Flebberman said. “Here I was ready to wait all morning for you ta come out, and you made it so easy for me.” He wrinkled his nose. “You musta really been tanked last night. You smell like a bum.”