Down the Shore (18 page)

“Get up,” he said.

He was holding a short pump-action shotgun, which he pressed into my hands as I sat up and swung my legs off the bed.

“What's happening?”

“Take this and stay in here.” More pounding. “You don't know what this is?”

I shook my head as hard as I could, even though I understood exactly what this was. The cops were here for Casey. They had been watching him in the months since my arrest, and now they had their warrant.

“Stay put,” Casey said.

I saw his revolver in the waistband of his jeans as he turned his back to me. Casey drew the gun, cocked the hammer, and crossed the living room. Someone mashed down the mechanical bell above the peephole. I racked the slide on the shotgun, which Casey had already done, and the action belched a live red shell from the chamber. It hit the carpet, bounced once, and was still. More pounding. I wanted to tell Casey that this was all my fault, but my lungs felt like they were filled with the water that had been about to drown me in my dream. I put my finger on the trigger and moved into the doorway. It seemed better to get shot than to have to live with what I was about to see, my momentary bravery stemming from the kind of cowardice that makes death seem like the better option.

“Who is it?” Casey called.

“Casey, open up. It's Rob.”

Casey uncocked the gun and unlocked the deadbolt on the door. I realized that I still needed to breathe.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Casey said, as Rob strode into the room, looking around as if he had come to buy the place. “What are you breaking down my door for? It's four in the goddamn morning.”

I laid the shotgun gingerly in the depression my body had left in the sheets. I could have cried at the relief. I didn't know why Rob was here; I didn't care.

“Give it to me,” Rob said, for the second time, sticking out his hand.

Casey stared at him.

“Your iron. Give it to me now.”

Casey drew the gun again and handed it over by the barrel. Rob emptied the cylinder into his hand and jammed the gun and the six rounds into the two front pockets of his parka. He was wearing sweatpants and black alligator loafers. It looked like he had thrown on whatever had been closest to his bed.

“What the fuck is he doing here?” Rob asked Casey as I walked into the room.

“He's visiting,” Casey said. “What do you think he's doing here? Why are you here?”

“Pack,” Rob said.

“What?”

“Pack a bag. You leave tonight.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You want him to hear this?” Rob asked, jamming his thumb at me.

“I can leave,” I said.

“Fuck that, nobody leaves. Rob, what the fuck?”

“You got about three hours before the cops show up here with a warrant. I just heard from a guy down at the precinct who was supposed to be sitting on your house all night before a raid at 6:00 a.m. They've been on you for months. The only reason you're not locked up already is you're not as stupid as you look. They don't want you around here anymore, and I can't have you bringing heat on me like this. You're gone right after they come in here and toss your place. You understand?”

“Why now?” Casey asked, after a silence. “Who talked?”

“Start packing.”

“Rob, why is this happening? I pay those motherfuckers every month, just like you showed me. Whose idea was this? Who set me up?”

“Don't ask me that again.”

“Then fucking tell me.”

Rob took a blur of a step to close the distance between them, caught Casey by the wrist, and wrenched his arm behind his back. Casey doubled over and tried to throw him, but Rob had already snaked his right arm around Casey's neck from behind, forming a triangle-shaped vice to stop the blood flow. He straightened my friend's spine with a vicious pull that looked like it was meant to take his head off at the neck. They were the same height, and Rob was up on his toes as he gripped his left bicep with his right hand, which Casey was trying in vain to pull away from his throat. I had seen bouncers use this choke when they lost control of a room. Rob began to squeeze. Casey had five seconds of consciousness, maybe less.

“Some spic down in Wildwood set you up,” Rob hissed through his teeth. “Your mother set you up. I set you up. It doesn't make a fucking bit of difference who it was. You're gonna do exactly like I tell you. I come over here in the middle of the goddamn night, and this is what I get from you? You should be down on your fucking knees.”

The room and everything in it seemed to have hit that shimmering state just before combustion. Casey was slipping away.

“Rob,” I said. “Jesus Christ.”

Rob held on long enough to let me know he was wasn't taking orders. Casey dropped to one hand and both knees, gasping, holding his throat.

“I'm sorry,” Rob said. “I lost my temper. Listen, we don't have a ton of time here, so I gotta ask some questions. Casey, sit. Sit down on the couch. Tom, get him some water. Casey, are you listening?”

Casey nodded.

“You got another piece here? Besides that duck gun?”

Casey shook his head.

“I know that's a lie.”

“Then what'd you ask me for?”

“Don't fuck with me, kid. Not now. Where is it?”

“In the safe.”

“Which is where?”

“Spare room. Under the bed, under the rug. The floor comes up along the wall.”

“How much weight are we talking?”

“Half a key.”

“What else is here that I should know about?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Think hard. What about the sandwich shop?”

“It's clean.”

“I know you don't have anything at my restaurant. Because if you and that piece of shit Miguel are keeping one baggie there, I'll turn you in myself.”

Casey looked up at him, and there was pain all over his face.

“OK,” Rob said. “How much cash is here?”

“Are you kidding me?”

“You either give it to me or you give it to them. Up to you. What's here?”

“There's $20,000 in the coffee cans in the freezer.”

“The safe?”

“There's $290,000 in the safe.”

I stopped in the doorway with a full glass in my hand and stared—$290,000, twenty feet away, underneath a bed I had been sleeping on.

“The rest is in the Caymans?”

Casey nodded.

I thought: The rest?

“Listen,” Rob said. “Maurice is downstairs. We're gonna look the place over, get it spic and span. I need you to pop the safe, and you need to be here, in bed, in your jammies, when they show up. I promised there was no way it would look like you saw this coming down the pike.”

“What happens to my money?”

“You mean how can you ever repay me for saving your life? That's nice of you to ask, so here's what you're gonna do for me: find another way to make a living. That money goes into my safe, in my home, and this”—Rob took a business card from his wallet, not his own, some chiropractor down in Margate, and wrote on it in pencil—“is the code to the safe in my home, where that money will be. If you don't fuck up again, this whole thing looks like their mistake. But listen to me, Casey, because I swear to Christ I mean this: If you ever sell anything to anybody after tonight, and I hear about it—and I will hear about it—I'll burn that money. Every dime. That's my insurance policy, because I gave my word on this. Do you understand me? You don't hand someone a roach, you don't give an aspirin to your friend here. Look at me and tell me that you understand.”

“I understand.”

“Because I run a business in this community, and I can never, never be associated with this.”

“I know.”

“Stick that money in the islands, or I can make it look like back pay at the restaurant, consulting fees, whatever. You'll pay some taxes, but that might be a good thing for you to start doing at this point. But you'll never make another cent the way you made that.”

Casey nodded.

“I want you gone for a while after this gets sorted out. Take a trip, take a vacation someplace. Cool your heels.”

Casey turned to me.

“Can I stay with you at school?”

“Where's school?” Rob asked.

“Scotland,” I said. “St. Andrews University.”

“Scotland. Perfect. Play golf, fuck sheep, do whatever they do over there. Let this blow over.”

“Wait,” I said, “how long are you thinking? I go to school there and they gave me shit about entering the country. You can't just up and move to the UK.”

“What,” Casey said, “you don't want me hanging around you over there?”

They were both looking at me now. Casey was half right—I didn't want him to see how I was living and what I was doing to myself.

“That has nothing to do with it,” I said. “Fuck, why would you say that?”

“So what's the problem?” Rob asked.

“Nothing. I'll figure it out.”

“Good,” Rob said, looking at his watch, a gold Rolex Daytona. “Get out of here for an hour, get something to eat. You don't need to watch us digging through your shit. Tomorrow we can talk about the long term.”

Casey stood up and sat back down.

“Talk to me,” Rob said. “This is not the worst thing that can happen, Casey. Not by a long shot. Are you listening? This could have been a situation where my hands were tied. This could have been a situation where there was nothing I could do to help you. You know how many times I got fucked up by these guys? Be thankful that it's only this.”

“Be thankful? What am I supposed to do?”

“You let me worry about that. But call Melissa. That call needs to be from you.”

Casey pinched the bridge of his nose, and closed his eyes.

“I'll call her,” he said. “I'll call her when we leave.”

“Leave now. Tom, take your friend to breakfast. Get him fed.”

Rob grabbed Casey by the shoulders as he stood up from the couch.

“You're a man, Casey,” Rob said. “Take this like a man. I'm proud of you. You've got friends. Don't forget that. Be back here in an hour.”

I spotted Rob's Mercedes as we took the stairs down to the frozen street. He had parked on a side street behind a pair of trash cans, invisible to the cruisers patrolling the boulevard. Maurice, a manager at the Sailfish, was sitting shotgun with the engine running and the headlights off. A cell phone lit up on the dashboard, and Maurice climbed out and started toward the house with the phone still ringing in his hand. Casey, wearing nothing but a thin gray sweatshirt, went left to avoid him. I hugged myself against the wind.

The only place open at that hour was The Chegg—shorthand for the Chicken and the Egg—an all-night turn-and-burn that specializes in atomic hot wings. It was four blocks from Casey's and lit up like a barn fire while everything around it was dark, locked up, closed for the season. At the hostess stand, a server with “Stacy” tattooed on his skinny neck was peering over the shoulder of a spray-tanned woman with bangs that looked deep-fried. They were laughing at something on her phone, both of them high as kites. The only other people inside were a man wearing headphones at a back table and another server running a vacuum around him.

“You want a table, hon?” the hostess asked as Casey walked past her. “Is he OK?” she mouthed to me.

I nodded, and she scanned the street outside, looking for whatever had shaken him, making sure it wasn't coming in behind us. I followed Casey to a booth made of unfinished wood, where he sat facing the door. The hostess reappeared with menus and ice water. Casey drained his glass without coming up for air.

“You should eat something,” I said.

“I'm not gonna eat.”

“Fine,” I said. “I'll order something.”

I flipped through the menu, absorbing nothing, imagining the next few hours of Casey's life. He would have to get undressed, kill the lights and lie in bed, waiting to hear boots on the stairs. Across the table, he looked old, drawn, exhausted. All the precautions he had taken, and for what?

“Juice?” I said. “Coffee?”

“Go,” he said.

“Go where?”

“Wherever. Just don't be here in thirty seconds. I have to call Melissa.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Leave.”

“You can come stay in Princeton if you don't want to be down here by yourself.”

Casey knocked back a mouthful of ice and started chewing through the weak flat cubes. I stood up and wondered what would it take to launch into a confession right there in the dining room, in front of the hostess and the servers and the man in headphones. Casey looked up at me and I saw that he was barely in control, that it would kill him to have me there if he broke. I was terrified that something would go wrong when the cops showed up, that he would fight, that this would be last time I laid eyes on my only friend. The hostess thanked me for coming in as I walked out the door.

I had just started my car when I felt something stick in my throat. I choked twice before I realized I was crying. I let it come then, dropped my chin to my chest with both hands on the wheel, gulping down the cold stale air. Up close, the pattern pressed into the steering wheel looked like the surface of another planet, full of dry rivulets and valleys and flat planes where my hands had worn the rubber smooth. I thought back to something I had seen in the AA literature my mother's sous chef left lying around when he was in recovery—a bolded line that encouraged the reader to admit that their life had become unmanageable. I had wondered what that might feel like. When my breathing had returned to normal, I sang a few verses of Neil Young's “Out on the Weekend” to get the kinks out of my voice. Once I was certain that I wouldn't choke up again, I called my mother.

“What's wrong?” she said, hushing her voice. “What's the matter? Where are you?”