Stick Read online

  Because it was exactly the same as the time at Dau Tieng with the 25th Infantry—Easy Company—no place for a boy inducted drunk and living in-country stoned but not stoned enough—when they were overrun and he was in the ditch trying to press himself into muddy invisibility and the VC came down on top of him, blown apart by their own mortars: black pajamas and mud slamming down on him, lying on his back and he couldn’t move. Pinned, wedged beneath all those bodies. The stump of a leg pushed against his cheek, his head lower than his body. Looking up at green tracers and the weedy edge of the ditch, the creviced sides coming apart, sliding down with the pounding noise, straining his neck to raise his head against the mud rising higher around his face and he couldn’t move! This was when he began screaming to kill himself, to burst his lungs, rupture his heart, screaming so hard he saw lights exploding and didn’t know if they were in the wash of sky or inside his head, screaming himself out of his body . . . to come back to life in Memphis, Tennessee, the VA hospital.

  Avilanosa speared the pitchfork into the bale close to Chucky’s face, inches from it, stooped down and said, “Hey!” So that when Chucky stopped screaming and opened his eyes he was looking through the tines of the pitchfork, imprisoned.

  Nestor stood over him now, frowning as Chucky’s eyes focused and he came back to them. “What’s the matter with you? You can’t be quiet for a moment? You always like to move when I tell you something. I want you listen, okay? I want this guy was with Rene. You tell Moke it’s no problem for you, but I don’t hear nothing that you find him.”

  Chucky seemed to strain to speak, out of breath. “We just heard it, few days ago.”

  “Yes, it’s what I mean. A few days, you haven’t done nothing,” Nestor said. “But you busy, you doing business.”

  “With you!” Chucky began to cough with the weight and the odor of the marijuana.

  “Try to be tranquil,” Nestor said. “Breathe slowly. The man with connections, you can sell this in a day, but you can’t find the guy was with Rene.”

  “Nobody even heard of him,” Chucky said, coughing again. “None of Rainy’s friends. Nobody.” He breathed in and out, trying to calm himself. “All I know, Rainy asked me could the guy go with him. Some guy he did time with, but I never saw him before in my life.”

  “You don’t know him,” Nestor said, “but you want him dead.”

  Chucky said, “It was him or Rainy, so I picked him, that’s all. I know Rainy. I told you, I send somebody with the money and it’s out of my hands, you do what you want. So that’s all I did. He got away from you, not me.”

  “Listen to you,” Nestor said. He pinched the crease in each leg of his brown silk trousers to squat close to Chucky, resting his arms on his knees, balanced, his body erect. “You give me a lot of shit, you know it? You send a federal man to do business with me. You send somebody you don’t know who he is for me to kill. You say you gonna find this guy, you don’t do it. You say you gonna tell me places to put my money, make it clean, you don’t do it. Tell me what good you do.”

  “I’ve been busy,” Chucky said. “I just got into that myself, finding investments. Let me up, Nestor, come on, we’ll talk about it.”

  “I don’t want to talk about investment,” Nestor said. “I want to tell you find this guy was with Rene. It’s the first thing, it’s the only thing you have to do.”

  “I gotta sell this weed, Nestor, or I can’t pay you,” Chucky said. “You know that.”

  “You sell it, I don’t think about that. I think about this guy was with Rene, who he is, where he is. I think you better find him . . .”

  “I’m trying—I’m doing everything I can!”

  “Shhh. Listen to me,” Nestor said. “You don’t find him we gonna have to do the ceremony, make an offering to Changó and Elegua. I can do it, you see, because I’m babalawos, a high priest before I came here. I don’t do it they get angry and I have some more bad luck. You understand?”

  Chucky said, “Come on, Nestor, Jesus Christ,” panic edging into his voice again, seeing El Chaco the medicine man looking at him from another century and another side of the world. “What you believe, man, that’s fine. But I’m not into that, I’m an outsider, man, I don’t know anything about it—nothing.”

  “We return a gift to the earth in sacrifice,” Nestor said to the face beneath the steel bars of the pitchfork. “You understand? You find this guy was with Rene or we gonna bury you alive.”

  Moke, in the front seat of the Fleetwood Cadillac, looked back through the rear window at Chucky’s guys standing by the barn opening, turning away from the dust blowing at them. They weren’t going to try anything. He adjusted his Crested Beaut, loosening the sweatband sticking to his forehead and looked at Nestor sitting with his legs crossed, hands folded in his lap. Neat little guy, smart as hell.

  “Old Chucky,” Moke said, “isn’t anything he’s scareder of’n not being able to move. I don’t know why, but it’s true.”

  “There something wrong with him, in his head,” Nestor said. “He’s a man to pity. But I tell you something, he know how to move the product.”

  “He thought he was gonna get offered up right there,” Moke said and looked at Avilanosa driving, his huge fists gripping the steering wheel. “Didn’t he?”

  “He believe it,” Avilanosa said, almost smiling.

  “Sure, he did,” Moke said, being part of this Cuban business, looking at Nestor in the backseat again. “You pull that santería on ’em they start pooping apple butter, I swear.”

  “Yes, it’s good to use,” Nestor said. “Save you a lot of work. I find out a long time ago, gods can scare the shit out of anyone.”

  11

  HE WAITED THREE AND A HALF HOURS counting lunch at the snack bar, a hot dog, listening to golfers in their Easter bunny outfits describing their lies and how they chipped out of trouble pin-high and blew a five-foot putt, becoming macho and obscenely emotional about it. All these people seemed to have their troubles.

  Barry came out in his white shorts and a clean tennis shirt trimmed in blue and yellow. Jumping in back, slamming the door, he said, “Let’s get outta here.” As they drove through Coral Gables toward South Dixie he said, “They bug you for tips on the market?”

  Stick looked at the rearview mirror. “Yeah, as a matter of fact. The other drivers there, they say you’ve got the touch. You only pick winners.”

  Voice from the rear of the air-conditioned Cadillac enclosed in tinted glass:

  “Is that right? The touch, uh? The people those guys work for, the families, all their dough was handed down, they never had to lift a finger. It’s a goddamn good thing, too. If their IQs were any lower they’d be plants, shrubbery . . . The touch, huh? . . . You know how you acquire the touch, Stickley?”

  He’d see what it was like to say, “No, sir.”

  “You work your ass off, that’s how.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They wouldn’t know anything about that, getting up and going to work, man. They tell their drivers to hang out, try and learn something. It doesn’t bother me, though. They ask you for anything in particular? Certain areas, like oil, high-tech?”

  “They wanted to know about, I think one of ’em said over-the-counter stock.”

  “Yeah, new issues mostly, that’s what they like. Tell ’em—I got one for you. Tell ’em to buy Ranco Manufacturing. Which I’m getting ready to unload. But don’t tell ’em that. Tell ’em, buy Ranco. Whisper it . . . Shit, tell ’em anything you want, make a few bucks. Gen-uh-rul Mo-tors. You might have to spell it for ’em.”

  Stick said to the mirror, “How’d you know about the other drivers?”

  “I happen to know things, Stickley. Stickley, old boy. My wife thinks you’re English. What’d you tell her, you’re from Jacksonshire? Oh yes, that’s right next to Yorkshire . . . Stay on Ninety-five, we’re going to Lauderdale . . . I know things that’d surprise the shit out of you, Stickley. I know, for instance, that fall you took up in Michi
gan wasn’t half of it. I understand you and your partner were in something much bigger. You and your partner. What was his name? . . .”

  “Who, Frank Ryan?” Stick said to the mirror.

  “That was it, Ryan. You and Ryan had a deal going with some jigaboos that blew up in your face. But before you took your fall—I think while you were out on bond, according to my source, which is A-one reliable—you took out the jigs. True or false?”

  Stick did not feel he could tell the story through a small rectangle of glass to a guy sitting behind him, even if he wanted to. He said, “Where’d you hear that?”

  “I understand before the big one went down, you and Frank Ryan, there were a couple other spades you blew away. You got something against colored people, Stickley? I better tell Cornell to watch his ass.”

  Stick looked at the mirror, at the young millionaire trying to sound street. “You checking up on me?”

  “You mind? Since I’m providing your bed and board?”

  “I thought I was working for it.”

  “Now you seem bothered by semantics. You want me to rephrase it?”

  The street tone didn’t go with the words. Guy didn’t know how to stay in character. “Who’s your source? You don’t mind my asking.”

  “Yeah, I mind. I don’t think it’s any of your business.”

  Trying to sound on the muscle now, a hard-nose. The guy should try out for the movies. See if in about a hundred years he could take Warren Oates’s place. Christ. Why wouldn’t he just relax and enjoy being rich? On the phone again, talking to his Rorie. The little asshole big-dealer sitting in the backseat of his limo in his tennis whites trying to sound like a hardass and coming off like Eddie Fisher doing Marlon Brando. The first thing he should do is get rid of all his phones except one. Maybe two. And drive his own fucking car.

  Stick said, “You mind my asking where we’re going?”

  “I’m on the phone!” Then, sounding tired: “I’ll tell you when we get there. Okay?” Indicating to Rorie the kind of shit he had to put up with from the help. Stick was silent, listening now to Barry telling Rorie babe he was sorry about the interruption. Telling her to take a cab and meet him. To be there in fifteen minutes. Voice rising now:

  “Because I’m running late and I don’t have time to pick you up. You now have exactly fourteen and a half minutes—got it? Be there or that’s all she wrote, babe.” He hung up.

  For a minute or so Stick thought over the situation. He said, “Mr. Stam? When we get to where we’re going—”

  “Wolfgang’s.” Barry was dialing again.

  “You going to want me to wait?”

  Stick looked at the mirror for an answer that, at this moment, could be crucial.

  “No, drop me off.” He had his hand over the phone.

  Stick said, not sure, “I don’t have to wait around?”

  He heard Barry say, “Go home. Do whatever you want.” Heard him say, “Babe?” his tone mellowing. “I’m sorry. I had a bad day . . . Yeah, I know. Listen, you want to come home with me? . . . What?”

  Giggling now. Stick watched him in the mirror. The guy was grinning with his shoulders hunched, giggling like a little kid.

  “No, I mean on the boat. What’d you think? I’m serious, babe. Don’t you know when I’m serious? . . . Fourteen minutes.” He hung up.

  “I’m not saying she’s tough . . .” Barry said.

  Stick looked at the mirror.

  “ . . . but she’s the only broad I know who kick-starts her vibrator.”

  Stick kept staring at the mirror until a horn blared next to him and he got back in his lane.

  * * *

  He was lucky to find an empty seat down at Bobbi’s end of the bar. When she came over with the cocktail napkin she blinked her eyes at his suit and said, “Are you trying to confuse me or something?”

  “I wouldn’t mind talking to you,” Stick said, “over a nice dinner somewhere. You ever leave this place?”

  She made a face, disappointed. “I come on at five and work straight through. I’d love to some other time . . . You working?”

  “No, I’m not a funeral director,” Stick said. “You know a guy named Barry Stam? Has a boat here?” She was nodding eagerly as he said it. “I work for him.”

  “You work for Barry? Oh, my God—”

  “What do you think of him? You like him?”

  “Yeah . . .” though not sounding too sure. “He’s cute. He’s flaky but he’s cute. He always zings me with a—not a joke really—a one-liner, every time he comes in. I see him coming and get ready. Yeah, he’s a nice guy, basically, when he doesn’t try so hard.” She paused, raising her hand. “Ah, now I know what happened to Cecil.” She glanced at a customer waving at her. “Be right back. Wait. What do you want?”

  She brought him a bourbon, smiling. “And how’s your daughter? You have fun with her?”

  “Yeah, she’s fine,” Stick said, tried to think of something to add and was saved. Bobbi left him again. He watched her making drinks—unhurried but very efficient, no wasted motion, pleasant with the customers. He still had to call his ex-wife. He wondered if he was forgetting on purpose, putting it off . . .

  Bobbi came back, placed another bourbon in front of him and said, barely moving her mouth, “I’ll put it on Chucky’s, the dumb shit.”

  “He isn’t here, is he?” Stick glanced over his shoulder at the crowded room. It was packed, noisy, upbeat music and voices filling the place.

  Bobbi said, “No, but somebody else is. Don’t look around. He’s coming back from the men’s . . . Sitting down now, about the middle of the bar.”

  “Who?” Stick looked at the tinted bar mirror.

  “Eddie Moke, the creep. He’s a friend of Chucky’s.”

  “I don’t see him.”

  “About halfway down. The cowboy hat—God, you can’t miss him.”

  He saw the hat—pale straw with a high crown, scooped brim—and recognized it right away. Or knew of one just like it. Hanging on a hat-tree with about a dozen different kinds of caps and hats.

  “Every time he comes in he asks if I’ve seen you.”

  Moke stared straight ahead at his reflection in the rose-tinted glass. He raised his fist, holding the neck of a beer bottle, to his mouth. The hat didn’t move.

  “What do you tell him?”

  “Nothing. There’s nothing to tell,” Bobbi said. “I might’ve done something dumb though. You know the last time you were here? And I didn’t recognize you right away?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “I was explaining to Chucky about signing his check—you know, when you were here with Rainy—and I told them you’d been in, like just a little while before. They started asking me your name and if I knew where you lived, I told them to ask Rainy . . . But I shouldn’t’ve, huh?”

  “No, that’s all right.”

  “I don’t even know your name.”

  “But you might know where I live, now.”

  He saw her eyes change, her gaze become flat. “Thanks a lot. You think I’d tell those creeps anything?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. My name’s Ernest Stickley and I live at One Hundred Bali Way. In the garage.”

  Her eyes became warm again. “Ernest?”

  “Stick.”

  She did a little something with her eyebrows and her shoulders, putting on a dreamy look, and moved off to take care of a customer.

  Stick finished his drink, left a five and walked down the bar to where Moke, in a body shirt striped black and yellow, skintight, straddled his stool, hunched over his beer and a paper dish of peanuts: Moke throwing a few peanuts in his mouth, then taking a swig of beer before he’d begin to chew. Stick laid a hand on his shoulder, feeling bone. The hat came around and now he saw dull eyes staring at him from between the curved brim and the bony shoulder.

  “You mind my asking,” Stick said, standing there in his black suit and tie, “where a cowboy gets a hat like that?”

  “
Buy ’em at the store,” Moke said, sucking bits of peanut from his teeth.

  Stick narrowed his eyes at the hat, studying it, giving Moke time to look him over.

  “I like that high crown. It stands up there.”

  “It’s a Crested Beaut,” Moke said.

  “It sure is,” Stick said. “You mind taking it off, let me have a look at it?”

  Moke straightened, turned to the bar mirror as he lifted the hat carefully, passed it over his shoulder and began brushing at his hair with bony white fingers.

  Stick took the hat, held it at various angles, turned it over to look inside. “There’s something sticking out of the sweatband.”

  “Toilet paper,” Moke said. “I put some toilet paper in there so’d fit me good and snug.”

  “Feels like a fine grade of straw,” Stick said.

  “The best,” Moke said.

  “Doesn’t crease on you, get out of shape?”

  “Can’t hurt it none,” Moke said.

  “Let’s see,” Stick said. He dropped the hat on the floor and stepped on it, crushing the crown flat, grinding it against the polished vinyl tile. He picked the hat up then and placed it on the bar in front of Moke. “Thanks,” Stick said.

  He walked away. Along the bar, through the foyer and out the front door to the pavement. The parking attendant said, “Yes, sir,” coming over, and Stick pointed. “It’s right there.”

  Moke finally appeared. He stood at the top of the three steps, in the shade of the awning over the entrance, holding his crushed hat. He looked at Stick waiting for him. Stick took off his coat. The Cadillac came up next to him and the attendant jumped out. Stick threw the coat in on the seat. He gave the attendant a dollar, said something to him and the attendant walked away. He pulled off his tie and threw it in the car.