Sacred

“God,” he said, “I like you, Miss Gennaro.”

“God,” she said, “the feeling definitely ain’t mutual, Manny.”

He turned his head, looked toward the bronze plaques and the great stone wall across from him. “So, okay, nobody gets killed today. But, Mr. Kenzie, I’m afraid you bought yourself seven years of bad luck. Your credit is gone. Your money is gone. And it isn’t coming back. Myself and some associates decided you needed to be taught a lesson in power.”

“Obviously I have, or you wouldn’t have those discs.”

“Ah, but, while the lesson is over, I need to be sure it sinks in. So, no, Mr. Kenzie, you’re back to square one. You have my promise we’ll leave you alone from this point, but the damage that’s been done will remain that way.”

On Unity Street, the garbagemen were tossing the metal cans back to the sidewalk from a height of over four feet and a van that had come up behind them was blaring its horn and some old lady was screaming from her window at everyone in Italian. All in all, it wasn’t helping my hangover.

“So that’s it?” I thought of the ten years of saving, the four credit cards in my wallet I’d never be able to use again, the hundreds upon hundreds of shitty cases—big and small—which I’d labored through. All for nothing. I was poor again.

“That’s it.” Manny stood up. “Be careful who you fuck with, Kenzie. You know nothing about us, and we know everything about you. That makes us dangerous and you predictable.”

“Thanks for the lesson,” I said.

He stood over Angie until she looked up at him. Her gun was still in her hands, but pointing at the ground.

“Maybe until Mr. Kenzie can afford to take you to dinner again, I can pick up some of his slack. What do you say?”

“I’d say pick up a copy of Penthouse on your way home, Manny, and say hello to your right hand.”

“I’m a lefty.” He smiled.

“I don’t care,” she said and John laughed.

Manny shrugged, and for a moment looked like he was considering a retort, but instead he spun on his heel without another word and walked toward Unity Street. John and the other two men followed. At the entrance, Manny stopped and turned back to us, his massive physique framed by the blue and gray of the idling garbage truck.

“See you around, kids.” He waved.

And we waved back.

And Bubba, Nelson, and the Twoomey brothers came out from behind the garbage truck, each brandishing a weapon.

John started to open his mouth, and Nelson hit him dead in the face with a sawed-off hockey stick. Blood spurted from John’s broken nose, and he pitched forward and Nelson caught him and hoisted him over his shoulder. The Twoomey brothers came through the entrance-way with metal trash cans in their hands. They swung the cans in pinwheels over their shoulders and brought them down on the heads of Manny’s steroid cases, pile-drove the men into the cobblestone. I heard a loud crack as one of them shattered his kneecap on the stone, and then both crumpled and curled into the ground like dogs sleeping in the sun.

Manny had frozen. His arms out by his sides, he watched bewildered as the three men around him were knocked out cold in under four seconds.

Bubba stood behind him, a metal trash can lid raised like a gladiator’s shield. He tapped Manny on the shoulder and Manny got a sick look on his face.

When he turned around, Bubba’s free hand found the back of his head, grabbed it tight, and then the metal lid snapped down four times, each hit sounding like the wet splat of a watermelon dropped from the roof of a row house.

“Manny,” Bubba said as Manny sagged toward the ground. Bubba yanked at his hair and Manny’s body twisted in his grip, loose and elastic. “Manny,” Bubba repeated, “how’s it going, pal?”

They tossed Manny and John in the back of the van, then lifted the other two guys and threw them into the back of the garbage truck with the stewed tomotoes and black bananas and empty frozen-food trays.

For one scary moment, Nelson put his hand on the hydraulic line lever at the back of the truck and said, “Can I, Bubba? Can I?”

“Better not,” Bubba said. “Might make too much noise.”

Nelson nodded, but he looked sad.

They’d stolen the garbage truck from the BFI yard in Brighton this morning. They left it where it was and walked back to the van. Bubba looked up at the windows fronting the street. Nobody was looking out. But, even if they were, this was the North End, home of the Mafia, and one thing people knew around here from birth was no matter what they saw, they didn’t see it, Officer.

“Nice getup,” I said to Bubba as he climbed into the van.

“Yeah,” Angie said, “you look good dressed up as a garbageman.”

Bubba said, “That’s sanitation engineer to you.”

Bubba paced around the third floor of the warehouse he owned, sucking from a vodka bottle, smiling and occasionally looking over at John and Manny, who were tied tight to metal chairs, still unconscious.

The first floor of Bubba’s warehouse was gutted; the third was empty now that he’d liquidated his stock-in-trade. The second was his apartment, and it would have been more comfortable, I suppose, but he’d covered everything in quilts in anticipation of his yearlong departure, and besides, the place was mined with explosives. That’s right. Mined. Don’t ask.

“The little guy’s coming to,” Iggy Twoomey said. Iggy sat with his brother and Nelson on adjoining piles of old pallets, passing a bottle back and forth. Every now and then, one of them giggled for no apparent reason.

John opened his eyes as Bubba leaped across the floor and landed in front of him, hands on his knees like a sumo wrestler.

For a moment, I thought John would faint.

“Hi,” Bubba said.

“Hi,” John croaked.

Bubba leaned in close. “Here’s the deal, John. Is it John?”

“Yes,” John said.

“Okay. Well, John, my friends, Patrick and Angie, they’re going to ask you some questions. You understand?”

“I do. But I don’t know—”

Bubba put a finger to John’s lips. “Sssh. I’m not finished. If you don’t answer their questions, John, then my other friends? You see them over there?”

Bubba stepped aside and John got a look at the three head cases sitting back on the pallets in the shadows, swilling booze, waiting for him.

“If you don’t answer, Patrick and Angie will leave. And me and my other friends will play this game we like involving you, Manny, and a Phillips-head screwdriver.”