Derek Manley.

I had seized from him already a car, a stack of stolen electronics, and I had my man out searching for more. He wasn’t going to like that, no he was not. And I had the feeling, yes I did, that it would not be long before Derek Manley got hold of me.

Unfortunately I was right.

Chapter 29

“WHAT THE HELL you want from me, Vic?”

“How about,” I struggled to gasp out, “you letting go of my crotch.”

“Not until we get this straight,” said Derek Manley, his angry face an inch from mine, his foul breath warm on my cheek, one huge hand grabbing hold of my lapels, forcing my chest up against a brick wall, the other, well, you ever see the back of a garbage truck close down on a sack of trash? “Tell it to me, Vic. What the hell you want?”

“To sing bass again?”

“You a singer?”

“No.”

“Then that makes you a smart-ass. You a smart-ass, Vic?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t like smart-asses.”

“Please.”

“You ain’t so funny now.”

“No.”

“Shut up.”

“Okay.”

“You got a red face, you know that. You must got some Irish blood in you. You got some Irish blood in you, Vic?”

“My grandmother.”

“She was Irish?”

“Ukrainian.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Let go and I’ll explain.”

“I don’t want no explanation. I want you to stop your squeezing.”

“Me?”

“You’re killing me, you son of a bitch.”

“Me?”

“You.”

“Let go.”

“You let go.”

“You.”

“You.”

“Please.”

“Fuck.” Manley’s face twisted in some sort of fearful rage and he let out a bellow that deafened me with its frustration.

In response, I let out a scream of my own, filled with pain and fear.

And so there we were, in that dank and stinking alley, face-to-face, screaming and bellowing like a couple of wild apes.

Then he let go.

I fell onto the wet cracked cement like a limp bag of mush, pulled my knees to my chest. My hands covered my crotch as I tried to catch my breath amid the sickeningly thick snakes of pain twisting through me. I felt like throwing up, I felt like crapping, I felt like checking to see if my soldiers had survived the battle.

Manley himself, seemingly exhausted by his rage, slid down against the wall until he was sitting beside me.

I manfully tried to stop my sobbing.

He shook his head, ran his fingers through his crew cut, let out a whoosh of breath.

If someone had looked in at that very moment, they might have misconstrued.

“Yo, Vic,” he said softly, “you want a cigarette?”

“I’m having a hard enough time right now breathing without one, thank you.”

“Funny how that works, ain’t it?” he said as he shook out a cig.

“Yeah. Funny.”

“They wouldn’t seem to be connected to the lungs.”

“They’re connected to everything.”

He flicked open a lighter, spun the wheel, leaned over to light his cigarette. “I guess I got a little carried away.”

“A little.”

“But you have no idea how I’m getting squeezed here.”

“I think I have an inkling,” I said.

“No hard feelings?”

“Screw yourself.”

“Fuck it, then. So sue me.”

“Don’t worry. I will.”

“Yeah, well, stand in line. Twenty years busting my gut and I got nothing to show but debts I’ll never pay, a company that’s owned by the bank, a pint-sized mobster chewing on my butt, and a girlfriend what won’t even let me pinch her tits no more because I can’t no longer take her out in the style to which she’s grown accustomed, even though it was me what accustomed her to it in the first place. And it ain’t like they’re the greatest tits in the world neither. But a man likes to get in a pinch or two, you know? Oh, Jesus, ain’t life a poke in the gut? This ain’t the way I planned it all when I was starting out, I’ll tell you. I had different ideas than this. But the thing is, Vic, the thing is, and I know’d this from the start, I ain’t all that smart. That’s the problem right there. I just was never smart enough.”

The snakes slowed their twisting and the pain eased just a bit. I carefully pushed myself up until I too was sitting, right beside Manley. His legs were stretched straight ahead of him, his basketball-sized belly was flopped on his lap, and he was sweating. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, coughed, inhaled.

“I’m too old for this,” he said.

“We got the Eldorado.”

“Rothstein told me. And my piece of the club, whatever that’s worth.”

“Not much, I figure.”

“Tell me about it. Most expensive hand job in the history of the world. What else you looking for?”

“Whatever you got.”

“Why?

“We’ll stop if you give us a name.”

“Whose?”

“The guy who hired you to rough up that guy with the suitcase twenty years ago.”

He laughed lightly, blew out a thin stream of smoke. “You’re a stupid son of a bitch. You don’t understand what the hell you’re messing with.”

“Why don’t you tell me, then?”

“Take everything I got. It don’t make no difference. I can’t give you what you want. Take my balls. Go ahead. What with my new situation, they’re not doing me no good no more. Take them.”

“No, thank you.”

“It don’t matter. I can’t give you what you want.”

“Why?”

“ ’Cause I give you that, I’m dead.” Manley shook his head, stubbed out his cigarette. “It’s complicated. You know I got a son. Stashed away some place in Jersey. Hidden from everyone. Whatever I’m into, it don’t affect him. Except that I’m his sole support. I fall behind in my payments, the little bugger’s begging in the street. And he’s got this problem with his eyes. And he don’t breathe so good. That’s the only thing I keep up, even before the girlfriend who ain’t letting me near her tits no more. The support and the insurance, in case something happens to me. And I’m good as gone, already. No place left to go. I knew it, soon as you asked them questions in that deposition. I been hiding out ever since, but it’s closing in on me, I can feel it. Why are you being such a prick, anyway?”

“I’m a lawyer. I get paid to be a prick.”

“It’s nice for you that you found your calling. But what are you really in this for? I mean really. And it’s not the money, ’cause I ain’t got none.”

“Joey,” I said.

“Cheaps?”

“Yeah.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“What a putz.”

“Me?”

“No, Joey.”

I didn’t say anything.

“We was kids together, Joey and me. You think he was a putz as an adult, you should a seen him when he was seventeen. You want to know the only reason I ran with Joey when we was kids? His mom. You went over to that house, you ate like a god.”

“Her veal.”

“Forget about it. The best. And it’s not like she skimps on the servings either. She the one gave you that picture?”

“Yeah.”

“Joey Cheaps.”

“Why’d you take him along on the waterfront thing?”

“I started out by doing some small things for the boys, when Bruno was still in charge and things they made sense. Small things, you understand, nothing major. And Joey was always begging me for a chance to do something, anything, like he always did. Then when Bruno was whacked and the Scarfo craziness started, I wanted nothing more to do with them, none of them. So I got the job, the trucking job. And then this thing came along, right out of the blue, and I needed help with it, but the guy what set it up didn’t want to get the boys involved, and I understood that. Once they’re involved, Jesus, you know. So I thought Joey, he could be my help.”

“This wasn’t mob work?”

“No. Something else. Something for a friend.”

“And it turned bad.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his hand again through his hair.

“If you can’t tell me who hired you, can you tell me what happened to the suitcase?”

“The suitcase. Now that’s a story. Wouldn’t mind having that back, it would solve a lot.”