“Thank you,” I said.
“Not you.”
“Me?” said Kimberly. “Don’t you think my eyes are too close together?”
Without raising his head or looking at her he said, “No.”
“And my mouth’s a little too small?”
“Too small for what?”
“I don’t know. Just too small.”
“No, it’s not too small. You’re goddamn perfect.”
“I didn’t think you noticed me at all.”
“I’ve got a pulse, don’t I? If there was any traffic in the place you’d stop it.”
“That’s so sweet,” said Kimberly, beaming. “You are so sweet. Didn’t I tell you he was sweet, Victor?”
“Sweet,” I said.
“What is it you guys really want?”
“We just want to hear about you and Tommy,” I said. “Why don’t we start with the accident that gave you your limp.”
He lifted his head. “What do you know about that?”
“Just what we read in the BrocktonEnterprise. Prep star arrested at hospital. The only question I have is whose idea was it in the first place, yours or Tommy’s?”
He sat for a moment, took a drink from his beer. “His,” he said finally. “I can truthfully say every bad idea I ever had in my entire life was his.”
Chapter 55
“TOMMY TOLD ME it was easy money. We cased it one night, the next we got high and went out to do it. Drove the van up, snapped the chain, opened the gate, went right in. Stealing those motorcycles was the simplest thing.”
“Why would you put yourselves at such risk?” Kimberly asked. “Tommy was headed to an Ivy League school, you were bound for glory on the basketball court. You guys had everything going for you.”
“That was the point. It wasn’t the first job we ever did, the bike thing, believe me. But everyone wanted something from us. He was his mother’s prince, I was, like, the coach’s dream on the basketball court. But we also smoked pot, screwed all the loose girls we could find, stole stuff. It was a way of keeping a part of ourselves for ourselves. And then we stole the bikes.
“We used a board as a ramp, loaded the van. One bike fell off the ramp, dented the gas tank, made all kinds of racket. Scared me shitless, but Tommy just shrugged and took another one. Three bikes. All loaded up, we replaced the chain and were gone. Done. Except Tommy wanted to test the merchandise.
“We filled up a gas can at a station and drove out to D.W. Field Park, by Cocksucker Cove – named for obvious reasons – and took out two of the bikes. When we kicked them up, God, they were screaming. I showed him how they worked, this is the gearshift, the clutch, the gas, the break. He was still trying to figure it all out when I stomped into first and blasted out. It wasn’t long before Tommy caught up. No helmets, no nothing, we just rode. The wind blasting our teeth. On a lark, we turned off road and started riding on the golf course, across the fairways, tearing up the greens. Nothing felt better then tearing up them greens. Too bad it wasn’t Thorny Lea.
“Next thing I know I see Tommy atop the big hill by the stone observation tower. I rode up after him and right away I knew what he had in mind. This was the sledding hill. He wanted to go down. Hell if I was going to let him go first. I shot past him and then I was flying. The path dived down and I did too. But when I landed I landed wrong. Put down my foot to catch my balance, my knee locked and that – and that was the end of the leg.”
He lifted up his beer, looked into it as if looking for something he had misplaced long ago, took a long drink from the bottle. It was hard to watch, the way he drank, with his eyes closed, as if trying to pull something from the bottle.
“By the time Tommy came up to me I was screaming, the leg was flopping and bleeding. He did what he could, but what could he do? He tried to lift me up so I could walk, but I couldn’t move. Bones were shattered, I was bleeding and in shock. So he took off his jacket and wrapped it around the leg and sped off with his bike.
“It took me about a minute before I realized, with this demented certainty, that he wasn’t coming back. I was still high, and that’s the way you think when you’re high, but it was also Tommy, and I knew Tommy. He’d just leave, I figured, and hope the situation would go away. I screamed for help – nothing. The bugs started coming, crawling on my face and hands, lapping the blood. I tried to drag myself to help, but the bones were moving around in there. I was sure I was going to die, to bleed to death. And then something big and black flew down and settled beside me, its head bobbing like it was ready to tear me to pieces, like I was already dead. I laid back, gave the hell up.
“That’s when Tommy showed up again, that son of a bitch. I was never so happy to see anyone in my life, ever. He showed. With his father, who Tommy hated. They made a stretcher out of something and carried me back along the path to a clearing where a car was parked. They put me in the backseat, still lying down. They drove me to the hospital. And as we’re driving, they’re talking to me about what I ought to do, Tommy and Tommy’s dad. I’m passing out from the pain and they’re talking like two lawyers. I should just say I fell at my house, they told me. I was a big basketball hero, they wouldn’t do anything much to me. There was no reason to get everyone in trouble.”
“So what did you do?” said Kimberly.
“What they said to do. He was my friend, squealing wasn’t going to help my leg. And they were right. Cops found the crashed-up bike, the busted lock at the bike shop, figured out what had happened, and even so I only got six months’ probation. Everyone figured it was a prank and that I had paid enough with the injury, which I suppose I had. My leg was so broken up I never played again. That was college for me. I just didn’t have any interest after that.”
“What about Tommy?”
“Nothing. He came to visit me in the hospital and slipped me a couple hundred, my share of the money for the two bikes he sold. I didn’t see him much after that. He said it was safer if we didn’t hang out together. Safer for him, he meant. He went off to his college in Philadelphia and that was it, the end of Tommy Greeley in my life.”
“But it wasn’t the end, was it?” I said.
“Sure it was.”
“No,” I said. “Not by a long shot.”
“How do you know?”
“By the fear in your eyes.”
He shrugged, finished off his beer.
“Go ahead, Jimmy,” said Kimberly.
“All right. What the hell. This is now five, six years after. It took me a while to come to grips with everything, it took years. I was a mess, but then I got hold of myself. I got off the drugs, stopped smoking, I lost weight. I found a job working this giant copier at some big company, making nothing, ten grand a year, but it was something. I even got a girl, a nice girl that I knew from high school. I was making a life, not what it would have been before the accident, but a life. And then, out of the blue, Tommy calls.
“I been hearing about Tommy, his mother had been bragging, how he’s now in law school, how he’s doing so well, how he got involved in some business and was already making real money. Tommy was Mr. Success.”
“How did that make you feel, hearing that?” said Kimberly.
“How the hell do you think? But I was dealing with it. And then Tommy calls. Says he’s going to send something up. Something that will be worth my while. Along with some instructions. And he does. UPS. I sign for it. A big brown box.”
“What was inside?” says Kimberly.
“You have to understand, I was getting things together. I was making a new life for myself. I was getting close to happy. There is something very soothing in diminished expectations.”
“What was inside?”
“A small boom box, with a selection of tapes. I thought it was a strange gift. Why was he sending me this? But there wasn’t tapes in the tapes. Instead there was newspaper balled up, and nestled in the newspaper were glass vials. I knew what was in them right away, and I could tell the weight too. He had sent me ounces. Eight of them. Half a pound. You know how much half a pound of coke was worth in those days? I did, I had bought enough grams in the bad times. I was never much for math but drugs sharpen your arithmetic, no doubt about it. Grams were 75 bucks a pop. Twenty-eight grams to an ounce, so an ounce was worth $2,100. Eight ounces was worth $16,800. And you know what I paid up front for it all? Nothing. Nothing.