Odd Jobs (26 page)

“You sure?” Rocky asks.

“No, I’m not sure about anything, but I’m doing the best I can. We’ve got to get a move on here. If I take care of Ray at the hospital, we need to keep business moving. We have a lot riding today. Loot, can you handle the bookie room?”

“Yeah, not a problem,” Loot says.

“Okay, but listen to me, lay everything off to Petro. Don’t fuck around. Not today. I have my reasons.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Loot shrugs in contempt for the money he believes I’m leaving on the table by dealing with Petro.

“Carey,” I say, “we’re scheduled to move eight pounds today. Can you leverage it with the spray bottles and move it if I walk you through today’s customers?”

“Hell yeah, I’ll be the rainman on those precious little buds.”

“Take it easy, Carey. Don’t be too obvious and don’t get us caught. Leveraging dope is an art. If you get us more pot but leave water all over the bags, we’re gonna get black-balled by everyone.”

“Okay, Kev, I got it, it’s an art. I’ll take care of this. You take care of Ray.”

I look at Rocky and say, “Do you want to take a ride with me to the emergency room?”

Rocky says, “How about I handle Luke’s Action Sports?”

“Yeah, that might work.” I look over to Loot and Carey and they give me a subtle nod of approval. “Okay, that’s great. The mere fact that you’re there would stop anything crazy from happening. Just hang in my office and peek out now and then.”

I look over at Loot. “You’ll be at the bookie operation. I don’t care how busy you get today, pop down every now and then and check in on Rocky.”

“I
know, man,” he says in disgust.
“I
was gonna do that anyway.”

We get Ray propped in the front of the Saab and put his seatbelt on because we would hate to see him get hurt. Next stop, Albany General emergency room.

CHAPTER 20

I text Cindy and leave seven messages on her voice
m
ail before I even reach the hospital. “Cindy, I’m not fucking around, call me back.” It’s been hours and I’m still dealing with Ray. I should have just dropped him here and bolted. Then again, who am I kidding? As fucked up as Ray is, he was always good to me. Hell, good to Carey and Loot, too.

I can’t just abandon him. Still, I wasn’t equipped to handle questions about insurance and healthcare. I’m like, “Shit, the guy is sick and you help sick guys. Let’s get going.” It’s just not that easy. So I’m here all these hours and I can’t get cell service to get Cindy’s ass up here. Maybe all the X-ray beams being blasted from the hospital’s equipment are challenging my cell service. When did I ever give a fuck about the effect of X-rays on cell service? Waiting room bureaucracy can turn you into a philosopher. I don’t know why I can hardly use the phone, but I can’t use it and that sucks. Sundays of all days, this is happening. I have Luke’s Action Sports and the last few hours before game time to offer the miracle tip to the promised land. Not to mention the Sunday drug crowd. Yeah, those hard partiers were burnin’ it up in the fast lane on Friday and Saturday. As much as they try, there’s never enough to last the entire weekend. It’s Sunday morning and God forbid they go a day without something to get them through. Their miscalculations are an important transition for our weekly services.

I have the gambling lines moving and degenerate gamblers looking to arbitrage. January of all times is huge. Pro football is in playoff mode, pro basketball is in full swing and college basketball has finally started playing intra-league; those rivalries attract the most emotional gamblers. Bookmakers love emotional gamblers. Luke’s, bookies and dope, we do business all week, but there’s nothing like Sunday mornings.

I can’t get a straight answer from any doctors or nurses. Shit, they told me how serious this is, so why aren’t they acting that way? When I first brought Ray in here, he was foaming and twitching and doing everything one would do to be taken seriously in an emergency room, but no answers. A guy came in here wailing like every bone in his body was just crushed. It turns out he fell off a ladder. Ladder Guy left an hour and a half later with a cast on his arm. Maybe Ray needs to be a squeaky wheel, but Ray can’t bitch and moan very well with all that foam he’s coughing up. I’m not looking for all the answers, but shit, they’re not even dealing with this. Meanwhile, I want my friend back and I want to go run my business. It’s not a ton to ask. Still, no matter how many different ways I word the questions, Nurse Katims is giving me the same standard answers.

“Sir, you have stated you are not an immediate relative of the patient, correct?”

“Yes, that’s right but.... ”

“Sir, I appreciate your concern. Please sit down and we’ll contact you when there is some information to share.”

I can’t take this. I’m going outside to call and check in with Loot, Carey and Rocky. With my luck, just when I leave, the doctor will come out to speak with me.

The moment I’m outside the door, my cell rings. “Kevin, where the fuck you been?” Loot sounds dramatic even by Loot standards.

“I know, doesn’t it suck? I can’t get any reception in the hospital and they’re slow as balls here. How’s everything over there?” I ask.

“Shit, you better get your ass over here, now! We got some problems, dude!”

“What’s up?” I ask.

“No way, man, we can’t talk on the phone. You need to get here, and I’m not fucking around.”

“I’ll call you right back,” I say. As I disconnect the phone I notice a bunch of missed calls and voicemails registered to my cell phone. They hit up in one fell swoop, but they must have been kept at bay all morning with all the X-ray beams and thick hospital walls.

I frantically dial Rocky’s cell phone and before the second ring she picks up and blasts, “Hey, we’ve been trying to get hold of you!”

“I know. I just hung up with Loot. He says he can’t talk on the phone and that I should get back. Do you agree?”

“Without a doubt, you need to be here,” she says firmly.

“Yeah, but I haven’t heard anything about Ray. I can’t just leave him here.”

“Kevin,” Rocky says sternly, “I’m sensitive to your friend Ray, but my advice is that unless you have some medical experience that can help the doctors, you better get back over here. It’s bad.”

“Okay, I’ll tell the hardcore nurse where to reach me and I’ll be there in 10 minutes.”

In the reception area of the emergency room, I recognize Ray’s parents. I never met them but I recognize them from the pictures that Cindy would always push in front of us. That is, until she came to the realization that her straight-as-an-arrow, church-going, cutthroat, soon-to-be father in-law would never let a waste product like Ray anywhere near the family business. That realization got Cindy cutting her losses and moving on to the next empire.

Ray’s mother is a basket case. She’s weeping into her hands. Ray’s father is on the cell phone but is frustrated by the service. He’s doing better than I was with his cell reception, but only marginally. He is speaking too loud and has already called the person back three times due to an abrupt disruption in service. At least his conversations are giving me a chance to piece together some information I haven’t been able to obtain yet. His voice is loud and deliberate with no thoughts of privacy; his mission is to convey his information.

Ray’s dad says, “No, it’s not the substances, although that couldn’t help matters, I’m sure.” There is a pause as Ray Senior listens to the other party, but then Senior says, “No, Stan, it’s alcohol poisoning.” Okay, so from listening to Ray Senior, I know he’s got alcohol poisoning, whatever that is. The fucking moron practically drowned himself in vodka. At least now I know what he’s got and I can go back and clean up the mess that Loot and Carey created. That is until I hear Ray Senior bark into the phone, “No, I can’t move him, not yet. He’s in a coma.”

Holy shit, Ray is in a coma. How can you get yourself into a coma from drinking? “Damn,” I hear myself say out loud.

Rays Senior continues. “I don’t know what to do. I want our doctors to look at him, but they are telling me not to move him out of here yet.” There is another pause as Ray Senior listens to the other end. Then he says, “They’re not being optimistic or pessimistic, but they told me this coma is as serious as if he got himself into a car accident. Hell, he might never be the same. Stan, I’m scared. What do you know about alcohol poisoning? Stan? Stan? Are you there, Stan? Shit!”

I decide it’s time to leave. The l0-minute ride back to work gets more frustrating with each mile. What is going on here? You drink, you throw up and you feel like shit the next day, but you don’t die from it. Right?

I get to Loot’s Action Sports, grab Rocky and pull her upstairs to Hempstead Equipment. The bookie room will be the best place to talk.

Loot sees me, but he doesn’t look relieved. Loot, who is black, looks as white as chalk. As a matter of fact, Carey doesn’t look much better. “Spit it out,” I say.

Loot, Carey and Rocky all exchange meaningful glances but no words. For the first time ever, Loot is speechless.

In an effort to bail him out, Rocky says, “It started at Luke’s Action Sports.”
I
tell her to go on. “Two salesmen got into an argument. Apparently one guy was calling the other’s leads.”

“This happens all the time,” I say, figuring it can’t be too bad. “It’s usually about a woman, though. There’s too much damn testosterone in that room when it’s cranking.” Everyone here thinks they had such a bad morning, but fuckin’ Ray is in a coma. That’s a bad morning.

Rocky cocks her head and looks at me, “Fights break out all the time? So you let me volunteer knowing that could happen?”

“Yeah,” I say, “that might have been bad judgment.”

Rocky takes a deep breath and says, “I didn’t see how the argument started, but when I got there, one guy was stabbing the other with pencils. By the time I got there, one pencil was stuck in his neck and another was sticking out of his shoulder. There was blood, there was fighting, there were pencils flying…it was awful!”

“What were the other salesmen doing while this was going on?”

Rocky looks at me deadpan and says, “They were cheering and betting on the outcome.”

Loot, Carey and I simultaneously catch each other’s eye and wryly nod to each other, noting, that kind of makes sense.

Loot chimes in with, “Compared to fights in the past, this was pretty bad.”

“Thank you,” Rocky says. “Knowing I was in over my head, I called Loot.”

I look at Loot and say, “So, you couldn’t take care of this fight?”

The three of them are visibly frustrated, and Rocky says, “Kevin, the problem isn’t over this fight. That’s just where it all started.”

They do seem pretty rattled. “All right then, please continue.” I am trying to sound all poised and everything, but they’re taking so damn long to get to the point.

Carey breaks in and says,
“I
had a problem with the law today. A cop came to the door and said he was going to bust us.”

“Please define ‘problem’.”

Carey hesitates and looks at Rocky and Loot, but then looks back at me and says, “They were going to bust us. They said so.”

“Who said so?” I ask.

“The cop said so,” he answered. “The one that kept coming to the door.”

“Go ahead,” I encourage him.

“The cop bangs on the door at 10 in the morning, again at 10:30, and by 11 he was pounding and screaming to open up or he’ll kick the door in.”

I ask, “Does the cop have a tattoo on his neck?”