Ho sighed and opened the door. He kept his hands in plain sight and nodded to the guy in the truck, who inclined his head toward the open door of the house, his own hands still under the blanket.
Ho disappeared into the house for a minute, then came back to the front door and waved to Ray. He slowly pulled himself out of the car and stretched, Pickup Truck Man watching him intently. Ray wished he had a toothpick to push around in his mouth; it would keep his mind off wanting to scratch himself and causing an accidental bloodbath.
It took a long time to reach the door, but eventually Ray closed the distance and made his way in past Ho and let his eyes adjust to the darkened interior for a minute. It was hot inside, airless, as if the house had stood empty a long time. Ray took in yellowed wallpaper, a dusty coffee table, a crumbling piano, keys going brown with age.
There was a tall, thin guy folded into a chair at the table and wearing a leather jacket. He had wiry gray hair pulled back in a ponytail, and his eyes looked cloudy to Ray, like the eyes of something that lived underground. His face was long and thin, and he had his hands flat on the table. The left hand was scarred, mottled with pink lines, and his left ear looked slightly melted. A woman stood behind him cradling a Remington pump gun. She was tall, too, and probably had been beautiful once. She had tattoos on her hands, yellow sun and bright clouds on one hand, stars and a smiling blue moon on the other. There were deeply etched lines running back from her hooded eyes, which were a brilliant green. The guy outside might be paid help, Ray thought, but this one was here for love. She was the one to watch if things got weird.
Ho moved a hand between Ray and the table. “This is Cyrus.” The man nodded at Ray, who nodded back. There was one chair, and Ray stepped forward and sat in it.
Cyrus tilted his head at the wall. “My grandfather built this place in the thirties. He built it himself from plans he saw in a Sears, Roebuck catalog. In them days you could order a house from Sears and they’d build it for you.” Cyrus had a deep, cracked voice to go with the lined face. Years of breathing chemicals.
“It’s real nice.”
“It’s all beat to shit now, but it was a good house to grow up in. My pop got killed in some rice paddy in 1963.” He nodded at Ho. “Probably by your uncle.” He put his eyes back on Ray, tilted his head. “Where’d you do your time?”
Ray thought for a minute about how much to say to someone he didn’t know. “Rockwood. Some other places.”
“I figured you for a yardbird. That where you met Luke the Gook here?” Ho chuckled and shook his head. Cyrus was quiet and intense, and Ray was on edge. He couldn’t figure whether the guy was going to blow up or if this was just how he was.
Ray shook his head. “You been inside?”
“Nope. I figure that’s what separates me from you retards. I’m ready to die to stay free.”
“That’s one way to go.”
“You should die proud when you can’t live proud.”
“Nietz sche. You’re into Nietzsche, you’d love the joint. It’s all psychos who figure they got permission from a dead German to skip on their child support and shoot their girlfriend’s dog. I don’t get it myself. I figure you want to rob a fucking gas station, go nuts. Why do you need quotes from Twilight of the Idols to make it cool?” Ray looked at Ho.
“Cyrus, my friend has a story to tell we thought you’d want to know.”
“I’m all ears.”
Well, Ray thought, an ear and a half, but he let it go. “There’s a guy cooking dope in farm houses in Bucks County and Montgomery County.” Suddenly, Ray wasn’t sure what he wanted from this guy.
“There’s a lot of guys cooking dope around there. What, you want a cookie?” Cyrus stood up, his left eye twitching, and Ray put his hands on the arms of the chair, closer to the pistol. “This is costing me money, parlaying with some yardbird thinks he knows shit.”
Ho said, “This guy’s got people from New En gland clubs with him.”
Cyrus was still and his face went slack. “And?”
Ray held up a hand, but Ho went on. “He’s got guys down here from Massachusetts and New Hampshire.”
“Who’s moving his shit?”
“That we don’t know.”
Cyrus sighed and looked up like they were exhausting his infinite patience.
Ho pushed his glasses up on his sweat- slick forehead. “Tell him the last bit, Ray.”
“I don’t know. I want to think about this.” Things were moving fast, and he couldn’t think. What did it mean to tell this guy everything?
Ho looked at him but kept going. “We can draw you a map.”
“You can fucking take me there.”
“Yeah, screw that.” Ray made a wiping gesture with his left hand. He was having trouble keeping it together, the guy’s hard stare working on his head. “I already seen enough of these fuckers to last me a lifetime.”
“So you want me to take care of some shit for you. You owe these guys money?”
Ray sat up straight. “That’s none of your business, Merlin.”
Cyrus slapped the table with his hand. The woman behind him pulled the shotgun down from port arms, ready to go to work.
Ho put his hands up. “Okay, let’s all take a breath.” After a long moment, Ray and Cyrus sank back into their chairs. Ho looked at Ray, who nodded. “We’ll take you there. You can look things over, see what you think.”
Cyrus breathed through his mouth. Was thinking, maybe, or just short of breath. “I’ll call you in a day or two.” Ray stood up slowly. Cyrus raised a finger. “You’re fucking with me, or you get me hung up or waste my time, you’re going to find your way to a deep hole in the dirt.”
ON THE WAY back Ho looked at him. “Man, what the fuck was that?”
“Ah. I just can’t stand that shit. Guys like that who think they’re in charge of shit and like to lay down the law.” Like his old man, he almost said.
“Shit, Ray.”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry.” He had almost lost control of things, pushed the crazy fucker too hard and made something bad happen. Something was happening to him, he could feel it. Old feelings and resentments were just beneath the surface of his skin, like barbs he couldn’t get out.
Ho looked over at him. “Ray, this guy might be our ticket out of this thing.”
Ray thought about that, about the fact that Ho’s name was on the paper he had taken off the dead biker and what that might mean. He thought about Tina and the kids and got a sick feeling. He knew there was no ticket out, but a chance, maybe, and he’d have to take it or other people would pay for his stupidity.
He decided that what ever happened, he’d try to keep Ho and Manny at a distance. As they drove, he and Ho talked about what Cyrus might do and about other characters they had known in their business, most of them locked up or dead. Ho told Ray about his cousins who lived in Thailand and worked protection for Thai warlords moving meth from Burma.
Ray frowned. “Meth? Really? I think of opium or heroin coming out of there.”
“Who knew? Turns out they can make it and move it here and it’s still cheaper than the stuff made by those hillbillies you take off.”
“The invisible hand, huh? I guess if it works for sneakers and T-shirts it works for dope.”
Ho said, “Still, it’s kind of depressing, isn’t it? Another line of work for high school dropouts closed off by foreign competition.” They laughed.
“It’s the same everywhere, isn’t it? You’ve been overseas.”
“Yeah, I guess in most places it’s only worse. It’s a crappy deal for people with nothing no matter where you are.”
Ray looked up as they got back into the city, and he saw a row of tired- looking people waiting for a SEPTA bus on Roosevelt Boulevard. He thought about how the fact that he was outside of the law and straight life didn’t control his reaction to the way the world worked. His father had started off a working man, and Ray still thought of himself as working class, distrusted the rich, still thought there was something worse about Enron and country club crime than what he did.