‘I hear you’ve been out with Carol.’
‘So?’
‘Cunning son of a bitch.’
Jed stared at him.
‘The chairman’s daughter,’ Vasco said.
‘What?’
‘Carol. She’s the chairman’s daughter.’
‘The chairman of what?’
‘The chairman of what. The chairman of the whole fucking corporation. That’s what.’
‘I didn’t know.’
But Vasco wasn’t being taken in so easily. ‘Of course you didn’t.’
‘I didn’t.’
Vasco didn’t believe him. ‘You cunning son of a bitch.’
So he was a cunning son of a bitch. Well, all right. That was what he was then. ‘If you know so much,’ Jed said, ‘maybe you can tell me who else I saw.’
Vasco frowned.
‘Come on,’ Jed said, ‘who else did I see?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘They’re not that good then, are they?’
‘Who aren’t that good?’
‘Your spies. Your vultures. Are they?’
Vasco shrugged.
‘Mitch,’ Jed said. ‘You remember Mitch.’
‘Mitch?’ Vasco looked round. ‘Listen, Jed. How about you come for dinner tonight? You could see my house, meet the wife. We could drop in at Mitch’s on the way. I haven’t seen him for ages.’
‘What if Creed flies back early?’
‘I’ll take responsibility for that.’
It was like the old Vasco talking. Jed agreed, out of a strange sense of nostalgia.
They left the limousine in the parking-lot and took Jed’s car. After the Mercedes his Chrysler always felt so sloppy, it was like wearing shoes that were too big for you.
Vasco scanned the worn interior. ‘Some car.’
‘You don’t like it,’ Jed said, ‘you can always get out.’
‘I like it, I like it. I just said some car, that’s all. Jesus.’ Vasco looked across at Jed. ‘You’re too sensitive, you know that?’
And you’re not, I suppose, Jed thought.
He drove fast. In less than twenty minutes they were in Rialto.
‘This is unhealthy, this part of town,’ Vasco said. ‘This is very unhealthy.’
True enough. Rialto was a no-go area. Half black, half Hispanic. A pattern to the blocks: church club bar; church club bar; church club flophouse bar. A shooting every night. The signs on N.E. 139th Street told you everything: HOUSE OF JOY. Y-TEL MOTEL. LOU’S GUN HUT. EL FLAMBOYAN BAR. JESUS LOVE CHURCH. THE OASIS LIQUOR LOUNGE. BIG MAC’S SHOWGIRL REVIEW — TOTALLY NUDE — PROVOCATIVE. Mitch’s sign looked quaint among the stale neon. Jed reached the 11000 block and slowed. He couldn’t stop outside the tattoo parlour, so he took the next left, an alleyway, and parked in among a cluster of dustbins. This was where the Chrysler came into its own, in areas like this. Just another piece of scrap metal. Blend.
Vasco was thinking the same thing. ‘Good thing we didn’t come in the limo. You leave a limo round here, they’d strip it bare in five minutes.’
Jed followed Vasco into Mitch’s place. He heard the buzzing of the needle-gun. Mitch was working. A Latin kid sat on Mitch’s green chair, his arm braced on a steel table.
Without lifting his eyes, Mitch said, ‘Who’s dead?’
Vasco grinned. ‘Nobody’s dead, Mitch. This is just social.’
Mitch tipped his head to the left. ‘You want a beer, they’re over there, in the corner.’
Vasco opened the fridge and looked inside.
‘How’s the bike?’ Jed asked.
‘It’s fixed.’ Mitch glanced up at Jed. ‘It was nothing. Just a plug.’
Jed stopped his smile before it reached his face. Those few extra words, he knew they were the closest Mitch would ever get to thanking him.
Jed and Vasco cracked open a beer each. They sat on a vinyl bench against the wall while Mitch worked on the Latin kid’s shoulder. Slowly a skull appeared, slowly a blue snake slithered out through one of the empty eyes and coiled, like a turban, on the crown.
‘Haven’t lost your touch,’ Vasco said.
‘Do me a favour, Vasco,’ Mitch said. ‘Just shut up.’
Vasco glanced at Jed and shrugged. ‘Trouble with Mitch is, he works too hard.’
The sun dropped in the sky, gilding the dusty glass of the storefront. The horns of passing cars sounded pinched and distant. Jed opened another beer. He could almost have slept.
‘This place,’ he said, ‘it’s just like your other one.’
Mitch grunted. ‘Except I live here.’
‘Yeah?’ Jed looked round. ‘Where?’
‘Upstairs. Got a yard too. In the back.’
Vasco yawned.
More slow minutes passed.
After Mitch had locked the store for the night, he took Jed and Vasco out the back. They stood on the cracked, tilting concrete, cans of beer in their hands, and let the day go dark. A darkness threaded with the silver of sirens, a darkness heady with alcohol, exhaust fumes, river-silt. Once Jed turned sideways and saw Mitch in profile, the stubborn nose and chippy eyes, the pigtail, like a kind of Chinaman, his fat hand round the can and resting on his belly, he was so firm on his two feet, rooted and content, he had the peacefulness of a tree, the dusty fig tree that splayed above their heads, that rubbed against the windows on the second floor. Then a woman’s voice called out, ‘You down there?’
Mitch didn’t move or speak.
‘The guys’ll be here soon,’ the woman’s voice said.
‘Who’s that?’ Jed asked.
‘It’s his old lady,’ Vasco said. ‘He got married too, didn’t you, Mitch?’
Mitch didn’t say anything.
‘Well,’ Vasco said, ‘I guess we’d better be going.’
Driving through Euclid towards Highway 1 and the north-west suburbs, Vasco settled deeper in the seat, his head against the rest. ‘Sometimes I don’t understand that guy.’
‘What’s to not understand?’
‘All that dirt and grease all over, all that slow time.’
‘Maybe he doesn’t have any choice.’
Vasco rolled his head on the rest so he was facing Jed. ‘You’re doing something, it’s because you’ve chosen it.’
They didn’t speak again until they reached Vasco’s house in Westwood. It was a bungalow, if something that takes up half a block can ever be called a bungalow. Fake chimneys, walls clad in big square slabs of ochre stone. The place looked like it was made of Peanut Brittle. You could’ve snapped a piece off the porch and eaten it. But it was real estate. No question about that.
Jed peered through the windshield. ‘This all yours?’
Vasco sat back with a crooked grin.
‘Christ,’ Jed said. ‘What’s your wife like?’
She was like a woman with black hair that curved up and back from her forehead. She wore black high-heels and her tights hissed, but she walked stiffly, as if her hip joints needed oiling. She accepted a kiss from Vasco, and then she took his coat. She seemed too old to be his wife.
‘You’re Jed?’
‘Mrs Gorelli,’ he said, ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’
‘Oh no,’ and she waved her hand in the air, backwards and forwards, as if she was polishing it, ‘Vasco, he told me so much about you, when you were kids. You must call me Maria.’
They sat down to eat almost immediately. The dining-room was crowded with dark furniture. Sofas of velvet and leather, high-backed chairs of ornate, carved wood. The walls were hung with textiles, nudes in clumsy gilt frames, hand-painted plates. A colour TV stood on the sideboard. Every now and then Vasco reached out and changed channels with the tip of his knife.
‘There’s a remote,’ Maria said.
‘I don’t like remote.’ Vasco looked at Jed. ‘You like remote?’
‘I haven’t got a TV,’ Jed said.
‘Did you hear that?’ Vasco said to Maria. ‘He hasn’t got a TV.’ And changed channels again with his knife.