The idea seemed absurd. The M.A.X. a cokehead? He was too strong, too focused to actually become dependent on something. He was using the coke, the coke wasn’t using him.
Or was it the other way around?
Now Max was losing his focus big-time-all he could think about was that bag of coke on the coffee table at home. Then he had a thought that terrified him: What if the cops got a warrant and searched his apartment? He’d left a lot of shit around-the coke, some crack here and there and, oh yeah, some pot-and there wouldn’t be a shortage of drug paraphernalia. If the cops wanted to bust him they didn’t need a confession or evidence he’d been involved in those shootings; all the evidence they needed was in a penthouse on Sixty-sixth and Second.
Max caught a vision of the immediate future-the booking, the circus with the media.
Then the jail time. He noticed the big buck in the next holding cell, one real big mean-looking dude who’d been eyeing The M.A.X. Oh yeah, wouldn’t he like to give Ol’ Max the railroad treatment. Fucking Miscali-if they’d wanted Max to fess up, all they’d have had to do was suggest, just hint they were gonna buddy Max up with that Afro-American boy, and he’d have confessed to the freaking Lindbergh kidnapping and thrown in the little beauty queen as well. What the hell was her name? Bon…Bon fuckin’ something. Jesus, the powerhouse intellect was winding down, even The M.A.X. got tired. What was it he read somewhere? Homer nods? Like in The Simpsons? No shit, he was zoning, going in and out of thoughts, didn’t realize he was muttering aloud till the homeboy next door growled, “Shudthefuckup.”
Christ, Max tried but the words just came spilling out. This is what happened when you were hyperaware, mega-bright, the flow couldn’t be stopped. You could cage it but, man, you could not contain it.
Max began to weep. What had he done? Really now, come on, hadn’t he just tried to get a slice of the American Dream? And tell the truth, was anyone hurt? Okay, yeah, the black guy he’d capped but, man, that was one fucking rush. He wished he had that Glock now-would blast the fucker in the next cell first, cap him right in the balls, then blast his damn way right out of this freaking hellhole.
Was the little girl’s name Bon Jovi?
About an hour later a guard approached the cell. Max looked at the guard, anticipating the barked command of, “Get your ass in gear, dickhead.”
What he didn’t expect the guard to say was, “You’re free to go, Mr. Fisher.”
Twenty
I like to beat up a guy every now and then. It keeps me hand in.
When Slide got back to the apartment, some Indian woman grabbed him and started screeching about an explosion in the basement and how she wouldn’t tolerate this type of behavior. Slide was tired, wanted to get inside, get a cold one, many cold ones, and here was this mad Indian cow yelling in his face. He was sorely tempted to off her right there, but he sighed, said, “Yeah yeah, I’ll take care of it.”
She was still hollering, pointing her finger in his face, saying, “I will not stand for this” and “This cannot happen under my restaurant” and a lot of other shite talk. Finally he got away from her, went down to see what the bejaysus was happening in the apartment.
First thing he smelled was cordite. He was confused-had Angela been in a shootout? Then he saw the empty pitchers of margaritas and, worse, his list, his whole game plan, was out on the table. The bitch had been going through his stuff.
She was in the bathroom, the door locked. Slide busted open the door-wait till the Indian cow saw that-and grabbed Angela, pulled her out into the kitchen area. He whacked her good and was about to lay on a whole lot more when she shouted, “Get your fucking hands off me,” and whipped out one of his handguns.
Stupid bitch couldn’t tell the safety was still on? He grabbed the gun by the barrel, wrenched it this way and that while she fought to pull the trigger. Eventually he tore it from her hand.
Angela shrank back against the wall, went, “Oh, Jaysus, please don’t kill me!”
Kill her? Slide wanted to ram her head into the wall a few hundred times, watch her bleed out. But he’d had a long, hard day-he’d killed a rollerblader in Riverside Park earlier-and he wasn’t in the mood to kill again, not right now, anyway.
“You didn’t call the police, did you?” he said, tossing the gun on the table.
“No,” Angela said. “I swear on me mother’s grave, no. Nor Homeland Security.”
“Homeland Security?” he said.
Angela, trembling, went, “You’re in…Al-Qaeda, aren’t you?”
“Al-Qaeda?” Slide said. “Are you fookin’ mad?”
“ ’Cause what I’ve been through, with IRA guys…I can’t take another terrorist boyfriend.”
“Is that why you blew the place up? Cause you think I’m in with fookin’ Osama? Jesus wept, are you stone mad?”
“Well, you’re growing the beard…and you’re always talking about airplanes and-”
Slide went to the fridge, opened a bottle of Bud, sucked it down in one sloppy gulp.
Then Angela, who’d regained some of her composure and her earlier anger with it, went, “In that case, Mister Not-Al-Qaeda, what’s this list, then? You planning to dump me?”
Actually, especially after this, Slide was planning to do more than just dump her. But, because he loved to fuck with people’s heads-it’s what he lived for-he said, “Never, baby. We’re a team for life.”
Angela said, “Then why did you write those things?”
“It’s for me screenplay,” he said. “I have to have some way to get money for us, right?”
“A screenplay, my arse. Try again.”
“All right,” Slide said, smiling because a brainstorm had come to him just in time. “What can I say. You got me. I been havin’ an affair-but I’d already decided to break it off.” He picked up the list from the table, neatly tore it in two, put the pieces in his pocket. “It’s her I’d decided to dump. Not you.”
“You asshole,” Angela said, but there was a hopeful glimmer in her eye.
“I love you, baby,” Slide said. “You and me.”
“You mean it?”
“Cross me heart.”
“Who was she, Slide? Was she someone I know?”
“Who?” For a moment, he seemed completely baffled.
“The other woman, Slide. The one you’re dumping.”
Oh. “Nah,” he said. “No one you know.”
“Was she…younger than me?”
“Ah, fook, see why I didn’t want to tell you? Enough with the questions already. T’would only hurt you to know.”
She went over to him, wrapped her arms around him tightly, and said, “I just want things to work out for us so badly, and I don’t want any more trouble. I was thinking-maybe we should leave New York.”
“What do you mean? We just got here.”
“Yeah, but I’m tired of living this way, in this fookin’ coffin, with curry dripping from the ceiling. And I’m tired of the whole city grind. I want to move to the suburbs. I want to be a soccer mom. I want to have a big kitchen that I can cook in. I want to live in a big house in New Jersey, like the one the Sopranos have.”
He had to admit, the idea appealed to him. Operate in the suburbs, be Mr. Low Key Guy, hold down a job during the day, kill at night-yep, that worked. And the Sopranos’ house with that swimming pool! Angela, she could be like Mrs. Soprano. He could go around killing his arse off and she’d be there at the door at night to kiss him and say, How was your day, hon?
“I’d like that too, babe,” he said. “But we need a stake to make that happen. I’ve been trying to get it, but it’s just not coming together.”
“Well, then,” Angela said. “Take a look at this.”
She showed him a photo in the newspaper, some business fuck looking smug.
“And that is of interest fookin how?”