“Expressway,” Sovereign says. “I thought you wanted to see what this muther can do opened up. You sure you don’t want to drive?”
“I’m too wiped.”
“You look wiped. Rough night?” Sovereign smirks. “Come on, you drive. A ride like this’ll get the blood pumping.”
“Yo, it ain’t like I’m driving a fucken Rambler.”
“No, no, your T-bird’s cool, but this is a fucking bomb.”
“I’ll ride shotgun. But I want to see what it does from jump. I heard zero to sixty in eight-point-one. Go where the dragsters go.”
“By three V’s?”
“Yeah, three V’s is good,” Joe says. “Private. We can talk a little business there, too.”
The 3 V’s Birdseed Company, a five-story dark brick factory with grated windows, stands at the end of an otherwise deserted block. The east side of the street is a stretch of abandoned factories; the west side is rubble, mounds of bricks like collapsed pyramids where factories stood before they were condemned. Both sides of the street are lined with dumped cars too junky to be repoed or sold, some stripped, some burned. Summer nights kids drag race here.
“Park a sec. We’ll oil up,” Joe says. They’ve driven blocks, but he can still hear the wet treads of the tires as Sovereign pulls into a space among the junkers along the curb. Joe unzips the gym bag he’s lugged with him into Sovereign’s Bonneville and hoists out the scotch bottle. There’s not more than a couple swallows left. “Haig pinch. Better than Chivas.”
Sovereign takes a swig. “Chivas is smoother,” he says. He offers Joe a Marlboro. Joe nips off the filter, Sovereign lights them up and flicks on the radio to the Cubs’ station. “I just want to make sure it’s Drabowsky pitching. I took bets.”
“Who’d bet on the fucken Cubs?”
“Die-hard fans, some loser who woke up from a dream with a hunch, the DP’s around here bet on Drabowsky. Who else but the Cubs would have a pitcher from Poland? Suckers always find a way to figure the odds are in their favor.”
It’s Moe Drabowsky against the Giants’ Johnny Antonelli. Sovereign flashes an in-the-know smile, flicks the radio off, then takes a victorious belt of scotch and passes it to Joe. “Kill it,” Joe says, and when Sovereign does, Joe lobs the empty pinch bottle out the window and it cracks on a sidewalk already glittering with shards of muscatel pints and shattered fifths of rotgut whiskey. Sun cascades over the yellow Bonneville. “Man, those mynahs scream,” Sovereign says. “Sounds like goddamn Brookfield Zoo. Hear that one saying a name?”
In summer, the windows behind the grates on the fifth floor of 3 V’s are open. The lower floors of the factory are offices and stockrooms. The top floor houses exotic birds — parakeets, Java birds, finches, canaries, mynahs. Sometimes there’s an escape, and tropical birds, pecked by territorial sparrows, flit through the neighborhood trees while people chase beneath with fishing nets, hoping to snag a free canary.
“It’s the sparrows,” Joe says. “They come and torment the fancy-ass birds. ‘Cheep-cheep, asshole, you’re jackin off on the mirror in a fucken cage while I’m out here singing and flying around.’ Drives the 3 V’s birds crazy and they start screeching and plucking out their feathers. You ever felt that way?”
“What? In a cage?” Sovereign asks. “No fucken way, and I don’t intend to. So, what’s the deal?” He actually checks his jeweled Bulova as if suddenly realizing it’s time in his big-shot day for him to stop gabbing about birds and get down to business. “Whitey say something about me getting a little more of the local action? Setting craps up on weekends?”
“Yeah, local action,” Joe says. “That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
“I’m in,” Johnny says. “I’m up for whatever moves you guys have in mind, Joe.”
“There’s just one minor problem to work out,” Joe says. “Whitey thinks you’re skimming.”
“Huh?” Sovereign says.
“You heard me,” Joe says. “Look, I know your mind is going from fucken zero to sixty, but the best thing is to forget trying to come up with bullshit no one’s going to believe anyway and to work this situation out.”
“Joe, what you talking about? I keep books. I always give an honest count. No way I would pull that.”
“See, that’s pussy-ass bullshit. A waste of our precious time. Whitey checked your books. He had Vince, the guy who set the numbers up in the first place, check them. They double-checked. You fucked up, Johnny, so don’t bullshit me.”
“I never took a nickel beyond my percentage. There gotta be a mistake.”
“You saying you may have made a miscalculation? That your arithmetic is bad?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Where’d you get the scratch for this car?”
“Hey, I’m doing all right. I mean, and I owe on it. The bank fucking owns it.”
“More bullshit, you paid cash. Whitey checked. You been making book here, gambling it Uptown and losing, drinking hard, cheating on Vi …”
“Vi? What you talking about? She’s got nothing to do with nothing.”
“Why wouldn’t you stay home with a primo lady like that? You’re out of control, man. Your fucken Pancho’s leaking oil. With your fear of cages, next you’ll be talking to the wrong people. You’re a punk-ass bullshitter and a bad risk.”
“Joe, I swear to you—”
“You swear?”
“On my mother’s grave. Swear it on my children.”
“You cross your heart and hope to die, too?”
“Huh?”
“Like little kids say.”
“I know how kids talk, Joe. I got a baby girl and a little boy, Johnny Junior.”
“So, swear it like you mean it,” Joe says, exhaling smoke and flicking his cigarette out the window. “I cross my heart …” Sovereign looks at Joe as if he can’t be serious, and Joe stares him down.
“Cross my heart …,” Sovereign says.
“No, you got to actually cross your heart,” Joe says, crossing his own heart, and when, to illustrate further, Joe reaches with his left hand to open Sovereign’s sport coat, Sovereign flinches, then smiles, chagrined at being so jumpy. Instead of making a move to resist Joe touching him, Sovereign drags on his cigarette. “Nice pricey sport coat, nice monogrammed shirt,” Joe says, holding Sovereign by the lapel. “Sure there’s a heart in here to cross, Johnny?” Joe brings his right hand up to check for a heartbeat. “Relax, I’m just fucking with you.” Joe smiles, then touches the trigger on the stiletto he’s palmed from his argyle sock, the blade darting out as he thrusts, slamming Sovereign back against the car door, the cigarette shooting from his mouth as he groans uuuhhh.
Sovereign’s hands are pressed to where the blade is buried. He looks down at the bloodied pearl handle of the stiletto sticking from his chest, his eyes bulging, teeth gritted so that the muscles knot out from his jaw.
“Don’t move, it’s in clean,” Joe says. “Just let it go.”
“Oh, my God, oh, oh,” Sovereign exhales, and an atomized spray of blood hangs in the sunlit air between them. The 3 V’s birds raise a junglish chatter against the everyday chirp of sparrows. The hot car fills with Sovereign’s gasping for breath and with the smell of garlic, of the mortadella sausage on the blade, and then an acrid smell, calling to Joe’s mind a line of kindergartners. Sovereign has peed his pants. His right hand, smeared with the blood soaking through his monogrammed shirt, slips down his body, weakly feeling as if to brush away a burning cigarette. There’s no cigarette, his cigarette has slipped between the seats. Joe guides Sovereign’s hand back to his chest and Sovereign grits his teeth again and groans from the soul, then closes his eyes. Tears well out from under his red lashes. His skin has gone translucent white, making his liverish freckles stand out like beads of blood forced through his pores.