"Think about her mouth and where it's been," said Jem.
"Don't," said Gloansy, his own mouth full.
"That girl could give a plastic soup spoon gonorrhea."
Gloansy said, garbled, "Let me swallow first, for fuck's sake."
"You know she had to take a Breathalyzer once, came back blue-line pregnant?" Jem took a mouthful of beer and gargled it. "Think of Gloansy's shower drain trap, all gooey and hairy-- that's Cheryl's tonsils."
"For Christ!" protested Gloansy, choking down his food.
Desmond Elden entered the rink, muscled though not to the extent of Jem or Doug, but with an added bookishness, thanks to his thick-rimmed Buddy Holly eyeglasses. He wore lineman's boots, fading jeans, and a denim work shirt with the Nynex logo over the pocket, his fair hair matted down from wearing a phone company helmet all morning.
Dez gave Cheryl and her posse the courtesy of a
Howzitgoin'
before mounting the bleachers, his insulated lunch sack in hand.
Jem said, "I should dock you just for being polite."
Dez sat down one riser below them. "What, you didn't even say hello?"
"Fuckin' softie," said Jem. "Anything with chicks."
Doug said, "Where'd you put the truck?"
"Foodmaster parking lot. Cruiser there, so I walked the long way around, just in case." Dez unzipped the nylon bag between his knees and pulled out a thick sandwich wrapped in wax paper, smiling. "Ma made meat loaf last night," he said, then bit in big. "Gotta snap to. I'm due in Belmont in like forty minutes, install a ISDN line."
Jem took a long pull on his beer and pointed at Dez. "That's why I hadda swear off work. Too many commitments."
Gloansy toasted that. "Amen, brother."
Doug cracked open his Mountain Dew. "So let's do this."
Jem ripped a burp and none of the kids on the ice even turned their heads. Doug liked the rink for its awful acoustics. He was worried more and more about surveillance around Town, but no bug could outwit those rumbling refrigerators.
"Not much to say," said Jem. "Looks like we're out clean. Newspapers got everything wrong, as usual. Nothing went sour until the end, when everything did."
Gloansy said, "Duggy, man, you said banks train their people not to hit any alarms until after."
"They do. It's a safety issue. Plus banks carry kidnap and extortion insurance, and shit like that voids it."
Jem shrugged. "So the homo pissed himself. Thing is, it shouldn't of happened. Could of been real fucking bad. Time to settle up now, and these things get counted. Gloansy, my friend, it's time to pay the piper. You're docked."
Gloansy's face fell, his open mouth full, looking at Jem. "What the fuck?"
"It was your watch. You knew Monsignor Dez had to leave the vault and teller bells hardwired."
"
I'm
getting fucking docked?
Me?
"
"All you had to do. Keep the citizens down on the floor and away from the bells."
"Fuck you." Gloansy was teary, he was so shocked. "Fuck you, all I had to do? Who boosted the work van? You think you fuckin'... think you
walked
to and from this job? And who torched the rides after the delayed switch?"
"Who was watching that kid at the ATM instead of the bankers at his feet?"
"Fuckin'... so who delayed the switch? You're the one that brought the manager along. Why'n't you dock yourself?"
"Plan to. Same as you. A hundred-dollar whack to the each of us."
"A hundred-- " Gloansy's face relaxed, pulling back into a fuck-you frown. He punched Jem's left triceps hard, saying, "Fuckin' ass munch."
Jem smiled tongue-out and slapped Gloansy's cheek. "Fuckin'
this
close to bawling, Shirley Temple."
"Fuck you," said Gloansy, shaking it off, all better now, taco-ing another sloppy slice into his freckled mouth.
Doug took a bite out of his sandwich, so fucking tired of the whole fucking thing.
"So, the magic number," said Jem, tearing open packets of salt over the closed pizza box. "This is per, now, and net expenses." With his finger he traced out a five-digit sum: 76750.
Gloansy worked on the upside-down figure until his eyes grew big.
Dez nodded, a smile flickering before he checked on Doug.
Doug finished chewing, then leaned down and blew the salt figure away.
Jem went on, "That's minus a chunk I dropped into the kitty for the next one, replace the tools I dumped. And some short bundles of new consecutives, I incinerated, not worth worrying over. And then ten percent off the top for the Florist. Overall, a fucking dynamite haul. Oh-- yeah." He reached into his back pocket. "From the ATM. Stamps for all."
Doug said, "What's this with the Florist?"
Jem passed out the stamp sheets. "His tribute."
"And why you involving him?"
"It's not like he doesn't already know about it. It's the right thing to do."
"How'd he know?" Doug let his sandwich drop back onto the wrapper on the bench. "I didn't tell him. I didn't tell anybody. Unless someone here told someone, he didn't know."
"Duggy. People know. People in the Town."
"Tell me how they know."
"They just know."
"What do they know? What? Yeah, maybe they
think
they know something. But
thinking
you know something, and actually
knowing
something-- that's two different things. The cops and the G, maybe they
think
they know something. But not
knowing
it is exactly what keeps us on the street, keeps us in the game."
"Fergie knows a lot of secrets, Duggy."
"And now he's got one more on us. I don't see the point of putting it out there."
"We don't duke him, there could be trouble down the road."
"How?" Doug felt himself getting carried away and not caring. "Trouble how? What trouble, explain that to me. This 'Code of Silence' trial now, everybody in town is an opera star. Clutching their hankies and belting it out for the cops and the papers. The fat lady, she's singing. Just tell me you didn't visit him in his shop."
"I saw him out on the pier. He's my mother's cousin, Duggy."
"We're not Italian, Jem. Third or fourth cousin means maybe a nice Christmas card, not 'Here's my kidney, you should need one.' The G is all over his shop, that is guaran-fucking-teed."
"It's so. But you think
he
don't know that?"
Dez piped up, "That thirty-five grand or so you gave him-- he gonna wash that clean before sending it out to the IRA?"
Jem scoffed and said, "All that's rumor. That's just for street cred."
Doug said, "Dez
thinks
he knows that Fergie fronts for the IRA. He doesn't
know
it-- not like he
knows
that Fergie puts dust out on the street, not to mention has a taste for it himself. This is a sixty-year-old man on angel dust you're meeting out there on the pier, Jem kid. Chatting with, handing bank money to."
"Look, Fergie's always putting things into motion. You're working on our next, sure, but he said, and in not so many words, that he's got some big things that would suit us nice. That we could buy from him."
Doug thought he was going to levitate out of his seat. "Why the fuck would we want to work for someone else?
One
good reason."
"These are marquee scores."
"Marquee scores!"
Doug waved at the vanished salt. "You got kids in braces or something, that's not enough? We got more than we can conveniently wash as it is. Marquee scores mean marquee busts, Jem boy. Fergie's got room on his roster exactly because Boozo's crew got lazy up in New Hampshire and Boozo's tweak-freak son, Jackie the Jackal, shot up that armored guard. And the heat from that is
still
out all over the Town. Jackie's what, he's our age? Younger? And he's gonna die in prison. He'd fucking die there anyway, for being stupid and running his mouth, but eighty years is not something he's gonna survive. And that's without a murder charge ever being brought-- that's the racketeering thing, interstate, plus the firearms mandatories. This isn't kid stuff anymore. We all of us, except the Monsignor, got strikes against us. We take a fall now, with twenty-year gun mandies, we're never gonna land. Got it? I gotta spell this out in salt for you?"
Gloansy said, "I ain't taking no more falls."
Doug said, "And I ain't taking any falls before you. The only thing the law likes less than pro outlaws are reckless outlaws. The G-- they don't like it when you rob banks, that's fine, fair. Honest heat is honest heat. Toss in kidnapping and assault, their fucking palms start getting sweaty. They take that personal. Suddenly they got jobs on the line-- reassignment, whatever. They need results. And we can't win going up against them nose-to-nose. This crazy Cagney shit you pull, it draws them out. Things go wrong on every job. Trick is, keep moving, don't fix one fucking mistake with another."
In the silence that followed, Doug realized he had gone on what was for him a tirade. He was the only one who could talk to Jem like this, and even he was pushing it. Gloansy, or especially Dez, they would have been on the floor with Jem's knee in their throat.
Jem was making a show of fishing food out of his teeth with his tongue. Doug had been sitting on this stuff too long. He didn't even know specifically why he was so pissy himself. It was the jokes, it was the beer on their breath and the hour of the day. It was all of their youth going round and round in circles on the ice down there.
"Fuck it," Doug said with a wave. "You want to duke the Florist, fine, duke the Florist. Keep him happy? Fine. But I won't work for him. We are pros here, not cowboys in a Wild West show. We're different. That's what keeps us ahead in this cat-and-rat game. Free agents, we gotta stay smart, full-time, else we'll get beat. I will walk away before I became some gangster's personal fucking ATM machine. If I even
thought
that was coming, I'd walk away right now."
Jem put on a grin. "Bullshit. You could never walk away."
Doug said, "Have to, someday."
"You'd make a real good old woman, you didn't have such a fucking nose for crime. Only you could be raggy about this score."
Doug chewed and watched the kids make their way off the ice, skate-walking to the doors.
"Duggy's share is back at my place," said Jem, proceeding as if nothing had happened. To Gloansy and Dez, he handed over orange-headed locker keys. "Your pieces are out front. Remember, it's all dirty linen and's got to be washed. Now, last thing-- bank manager."
Looking at Doug. Doug shrugged and said, "Yeah?"
"You grabbed her license from me. What's the scoop?"
"Nothing."
"Thought you said she lives in the Town."
"Hasn't been back home yet. I think we can forget about her. So long as you ditched the masks, she's got nothing."
"Course I ditched the masks."
"Well, you seemed pretty fond of your artwork, I want to be sure."
"Masks, tools, everything ditched."
Doug shrugged. "Then whatever."
Gloansy said, "I saw her on the news, being walked away, her father. She's too shaken up to tell them shit anyway."
"Yeah," said Doug, swiping his nose like the manufactured cold was getting to him.
"Done, then," said Jem. "We're clear. With that, this investment club meeting is officially adjourned."
Dez packed up his trash. "Gotta rock."
"I'm behind you," said Doug, bagging his.
"Whoa, where you running off to?" said Jem. "What clock you on?"
"I got some stuff," said Doug.
"Blow it off. Free ice now. Me and Gloansy gonna skate."
"Can't," said Doug, rising, Dez already smacking fists and starting out.
Jem frowned and said to Gloansy, "Guy lives in my house, I never see him."
Doug said, "I gotta breeze. You know how I get, between things."
"So stay. Have a few tall boys with us, relax. Gloansy brought his goalie pads, he's gonna let us take shots at him."
"Fuck you," sang Gloansy, lifting out the last skinny slice.
"I'm walking," said Doug, starting down the scarred planks. "Besides, you're wrong. I do got a job. Keeping you homos in line."
"Ho, shit," said Jem, their little tiff passing like a storm cloud. "That's some full-time work right there."
* * *
DOUG CAME OUT THROUGH the doors as Dez was pulling his cut from the rink lobby lockers, the size of two thick phone books wrapped in butcher paper. Jem had left a Filene's shopping bag folded in there and Dez dumped the package inside, rolling the bag into a bundle and tucking it up under his arm, football-style. They walked together through the doors out into the hard, white daylight.
