Andy laughs, still amazed, at twenty-five, at his dad’s talent for mimicry. It’s an uncomfortable question, however, and C.T. is serious. Andy shakes his head again. “I wanted to get this one done on my own. I can’t keep coming to you all of the time.”
“I understand,” C.T. says. It takes an effort for him to keep his voice level. “But the last guy you want to have anything to do with is Kozee. You know how when you step in dogshit when you’re wearing cross-trainers, and it stays in the cracks forever, and you need a knife to dig it out but there’s always some left? That’s what dealing with Kozee is like.” He takes another sip of coffee. “But I don’t get why this was your problem. It was Jeff’s problem. And Jeff is now your problem. He borrowed the money from you. But he’s got money now, and you don’t. He still has money for dope, he hasn’t been evicted or anything, he’s not an orphan, and I saw him last night in the Surly Girl, trying to pick up what I think was a woman, who, regardless, was out of his league. So he’s got money. Your money.”
C.T. watches Andy sip on his soft drink—how can anyone drink that shit at 7:00 a.m., it’s beyond him—and waits for what’s next. Andy hasn’t changed since he was ten years old. When he gets caught in the juices of his own lies, he’ll slough deeper into the stew until he’s neck-high in his own bullshit.
Andy surprises him, though, coming at it from another direction. “How do you know?” he asks. Andy should know better, having heard enough stories about his dad—hell, he saw enough of them happening while he was growing up—that he’s aware that little happens on the north and east sides of town that his dad doesn’t know about. But he has to ask.
“How do you know?” he asks again.
C.T. ignores the question long enough to take a last sip of coffee, wondering how anyone—even an old hippie—outside of a police precinct house can fuck up a cup of Folgers. He motions for the check.
“How about,” he says, as he pulls a twenty out of his pocket to pay the bill, “I’ll show you.”
Jeff opens his eyes and he is looking up a big tube. The tube is hard metal, because when he starts to jump up he hits his forehead on it, and, considering all of the alcohol he drank the night before at the Surly Girl, his head doesn’t need any more aggravation. Aggravation is what he has, though. He’s got two guys in his bedroom, locked door notwithstanding, both of them wearing ski masks. Jeff starts to jump out of bed but his forward progress is impeded by the barrel of the gun that is now pressed up against his left eye. “Good morning, Starshine,” says the guy holding a gun, the guy nearest his bed, the guy wearing a gray ski mask and a blue peacoat. Jeff opens his mouth to scream but only a strangled little rasp comes out before the gun barrel is jammed between his teeth and down his throat. The guy with the gun says, “Wudda wudda” in a singsong voice and wags his finger from side to side, which for some reason scares Jeff more than the gun. “The only thing I want to hear out of you is information, my friend. Where are your Benjamins? No screams, no bullshit, no excuses, just where they are and we’ll be down the road.” Jeff feels the gun barrel ease out of his mouth so he can talk, but it’s still pointed at him, pressed directly against his forehead, hard. His eyes are crossing trying to look at it. He feels his bladder let loose under the covers, first it’s warm and then almost immediately cold, and he’s embarrassed, though the two guys don’t seem to notice. Jeff tries to scream, but his throat constricts and he can’t manage much more than a hysterical whisper. “The back of the closet! On the floor! There’s a suitcase full of dirty underwear! It’s in there!”
Gray keeps his eyes on Jeff but jerks his head at the other guy, the one wearing a black ski mask, and nods toward the closet. Black steps over to the walk-in and begins digging through the mess on the floor and finds the suitcase. He opens it up and hesitates for a second. He doesn’t want to stick his hand into the underwear, which is so filthy that it’s almost twitching, but he does anyway and after rooting through it for a couple of seconds he pulls out a thick wad of bills, folded over with a rubber band around it. He doesn’t say anything, just takes it over and holds it in front of Gray’s line of vision. Gray sticks his chin out and nods, and Black peels off ten bills, making sure that they’re not going to walk out of there with a Michigan roll.
Jeff is terrified. He looks like Linda Blair in The Exorcist, sweating and his eyes all wild. His head is pinned to the bed by the gun but his body is twitching uncontrollably. That money is promised to some nasty folks, and if it turns up missing Jeff will be better off being shot. The situation puts him next door to stupid, and that’s why, almost before he knows that he’s doing it, he grabs for the gun, trying to shove it away as he sits up, thinking that somehow the two guys will be distracted enough that he can get away. He hears a shout and then for just an instant the pain in his head gets a thousand times worse and then it all goes black.
“Fuck me,” C.T. says, leaning back in the driver’s seat of his car, Andy next to him. They’re parked out toward the street in a medical building parking lot off of Cleveland Avenue in Westerville, just a couple of guys who look like they’re waiting for a wife or a girlfriend getting an MRI or Pap smear or some fucking thing. Two ski masks—one gray, one black—are sitting on the console between them. “Fuck me. Who would have figured Jeff for Captain America?”
“Yeah, well Captain America died last year, and Jeff is still alive,” Andy says. “You think he’s awake yet?”
“I dunno. When he does wake up, he needs to go down to University Hospital and treat himself to a neurological.” C.T. shakes his head. “I smacked him pretty hard. Stupid asshole. Good thing the gun wasn’t loaded. They’d be finding little pieces of Jeff all over Washington Beach for the next year.” C.T. takes his pistol out of its pocket holster and begins reloading the 9-mm hollow points back into the clip, keeping an eye on the parking lot so as not to give anyone walking by a heart attack.
“Aren’t you glad it wasn’t loaded, though?” Andy asks.
“Not really.” C.T. slips the clip home and ratchets a round into the chamber. “If he had come out from under the covers with a derringer or something we’d both be laid out on a cooling board down at Schoedinger’s right now, instead of taking in the local ambience.” C.T. wipes his hand across his face, inhaling deeply, watching a middle-aged and grossly overweight couple walking in their general direction, looking like a pair of twin dirigibles that have come untethered at a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. “Now,” C.T. said, gesturing, “let’s see what our involuntary benefactor has bestowed upon us.”
Andy hands the wad of bills to his dad. It is, indeed, not a Michigan roll at all, it’s just the opposite, in fact, a roll of fifties on the outside and the rest Benjamins. “How much did you loan Jeff?” C.T. asks.
“Three hundred.”
“You dumb-shit.” C.T. starts pulling bills off the roll. “Would you like that in fifties or hundreds, sirrah?”
“Fifties.” C.T. looks at him. “Please,” Andy says. C.T. counts off six bills. “Next time remember the First National Bank of Dad. You’ll deal with a higher class of lender.” He begins counting the rest of the roll while doing an eerily on-target impression of a stoned-out Jeff. “Gee, Andy, I don’t have any money—five hundred—ya see, dude, Rakkim really fucked me over, man, I don’t have any money—seven hundred—I’m sorry, Andy, but it’s Rakkim’s fault, and my rent is due, and I don’t have any money—nine hundred fifty—maybe you can stall Kozee for a few days, but I’m tapped out, I don’t have any money—one thousand, three hundred, fifty.” C.T. exaggerates shuffling the wad into a neat pile and tapping it, imitating Oliver Hardy. “I should drive back there and shoot that little cunt myself for being a lying sack of shit and causing my heartbeat to race.”