29
I don’t normally take a taxi to work, being that my office is only a few blocks from my apartment and that I am so tight with a buck, my wallet squeaks when I walk. So on the morning after my disturbing visit to Beppo’s Tattoo Emporium, I didn’t take much notice of the battered old taxi passing down my street. When the taxi stopped and backed up toward me, I figured the cabbie needed some directions. I stepped off the curb, leaned into the window, and felt a shiver of fear when I saw Joey Pride, his right hand on the wheel, his blue captain’s hat pulled low over his brow.
“Get in,” he said.
“That’s sweet of you, Joey, really, and I appreciate the offer, but my office is only a few blocks-”
“Shut up and get in.”
I took a step back. “I don’t think so,” I said.
“You’re right to be scared, Victor,” he said as he turned his face in my direction, “but however scared you are, you not half as scared as me.”
His eyes, peering out from beneath the brim of his cap, were moist and red. Fear, like pain pure, rippled the flesh between his eyes. He was right, he was more scared than I, at least he was until he showed me the gun, held unsteadily in his left hand. A revolver, small and shiny, aimed through the open taxi window smack at my forehead.
“Get in the back. I got something to show you, something that will get you scared good and proper.”
“Is that the gun you killed Ralph with?”
“Don’t be a donkey. I didn’t kill Ralph. I loved the man. That’s what we need to talk about. Now, get the hell in the cab. I got something to show you. Something it’s worth your boy Charlie’s life to see.”
I thought about it a moment, considered running to get the hell out of there. In a split second, I imagined it all – my briefcase flying, the soles of my shoes hammering the pavement, my suit jacket fluttering behind me like a cape – the whole scene came clear. But something was missing. And I suddenly knew what it was and why. Joey Pride wasn’t shooting at me in my imagining because Joey Pride wasn’t out to kill me in real life. The gun, too small and of the wrong caliber to have killed Ralph Ciulla, was just another element of his fear, not of mine.
“All right,” I said. “Put the gun away and I’ll get in.”
The gun disappeared. I looked around before slipping into the rear of the taxi. The cab slowly drove off and turned left.
“I’m the other way,” I said.
“I know.”
“Then where are we going?”
“Around,” he said, as he snatched a small silver flask to his lips.
“Shouldn’t there be a Plexiglas barrier between the passenger and the driver?” I said. “I’d feel more comfortable with a Plexiglas barrier.”
“Shut up.”
“Okay.”
However beat the cab was on the outside, on the inside it was worse. The vinyl of my seat was mended with silver duct tape, the walls of the doors were stained with the sweat and grime of thousands of indifferent passengers. The cab smelled of gasoline and grease, of smoke and bleach and boredom. It had the pinched feel of a soul that had been waiting too long for not nearly enough.
“The cops called you out to Ralph’s house the night he got hit,” said Joey.
“That’s right.”
“What they want with you?”
“They found my card in Ralph’s wallet. They wanted to know what I knew.”
“What’d you tell them?”
“Just that the three of us had met that afternoon.”
“You gave them my name?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Thank you for that, you little snake. What they say about me?”
“They want to talk to you, to ask some questions. A detective named McDeiss. He’ll give you a square deal.”
“He’ll get me killed, is what he’ll do.”
“Who’s after you, Joey?”
“I told Ralph to be careful, that we were stepping back into it all. But he always thought he couldn’t be touched.” He snatched another drink from the flask. “You should have seen him play football for good old Northeast High. He played huge.”
“I’m sorry about your friend.”
“Yeah. We’re all sorry, but that’s not helping Ralph none, is it? Who’d them cops think done it?”
“They don’t know. But it looks like Ralph knew who killed him.”
“Of course he did. The ghosts have come back, boy. Avenging ghosts from Nightmare Alley.”
“And you think a bullet from that little gun will stop a ghost?”
“Don’t know, never shot one before.”
He took a drink from his flask, wiped his mouth with his sleeve. The car swerved before righting itself. The drinking didn’t seem to be helping his fear or his driving.
“You spend all of Ralph’s cash yet?” I said.
“How you know that was me?”
“Nothing else was stolen but the money clip. No ring, no watch. You were the only one who had seen the cash in the money clip.”
“I took the money ’cause I knew I’d be running and I’d need it. Ralph would have understood. But I didn’t shoot him.”
“Of course you didn’t. You were old, easy friends. You finished each other’s sentences. You couldn’t have hurt him.”
“He was more a brother than my own brothers.”
“You came to his house after the murder, saw him dead on the floor, panicked, took the money and ran. A few minutes later, you stopped at a pay phone and called it in to the police. But what I don’t understand, Joey, is why you ran. Why not call from the house, wait for the cops, tell them what you knew, save yourself from being on the run?”
“You just don’t get it. I ain’t running from the cops, fool. That’s what I wanted to tell you. There’s something after me.”
“The ghosts?”
“Laugh all you want, but they’re after me, they are. And it ain’t just me that needs to be running. When I took the money, I took this, too.”
He reached a hand back and handed me a piece of notebook paper, folded in half, badly creased and spotted with blood. Carefully, using only my fingertips, I unfolded it, read what was scrawled in a thick black marker.
“Where did you get this?” I said when I had started breathing again.
“It was right on top of Ralph when I found him.”
“Left by the guy who killed him,” I said.
“You catching on,” said Joey.
I looked again at the sheet and the rough printing on its face, among the creases and spatters of blood:
WHO’S NEXT?
“Can I take this to the police so they can get it processed for prints?” I said.
“Do what you want, boy. I done my duty to Charlie by giving you the warning. Rest is up to you. But the killing won’t stop with Ralph. We’re cursed, all of us.”
“All of who?”
“You know, the five of us. That’s who the message is for. Ralph and me, Charlie, too, and the others.”
“Hugo and Teddy?”
He didn’t answer, he just took another swig.
“What did you guys do that’s got you so spooked? What happened thirty years ago? Do you think the painting is cursed?”
“Not the painting, just us. Teddy was giving us a way to save our lives, that’s what we thought. That’s what he said.”
“In the bar, when he came back into town?”
“That’s right.”
“What happened in the bar that night, Joey?”
“He rubbed our faces in our own damn crap, that’s what happened,” said Joey. “He told us he was ashamed of us. That we had let life happen to us in the worst possible way. Right there, in that back booth, he told us we was a bunch of losers going nowhere but to the corner tap in hopes of drinking enough to forget all we hadn’t done with our lives.”
“That was pretty harsh,” I said.
“But it was the truth. We were failures, all of us. We told him we had our reasons for the way things had turned out, but he didn’t want to hear it. Told us that nothing consumed a man’s soul more than the easy excuse. And then he put the lie to them excuses, Teddy did, starting with Charlie.”