The First Cut (6 page)

He was lying in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen of his little flop house. He’d kept it all these years even though he had pretty much lived at our place as a sort of fix-it guy/guardian until a couple of days ago when he revealed to everyone that he was in love with Marla. I had rushed around the dinner table to grab him by the collar and drag him out of the apartment. I gave him a kick in the ass as I shoved him out the door, hearing Marla and mom begin to scream at each other as I did. Marla ran off that night. I know she made it home because her neighbors said she had been there.

I was just inside Frank’s front door, sitting with my back against the wall. I’d kicked in the door, hoping to get the drop on him. He’d come out of the kitchen with the gun drawn and I’d fired, catching him in the stomach. He’d dropped to the floor, but tough bastard that he was, he never lowered his piece. We’d been at a stalemate for about 10 minutes, a pool of his blood seeping slowly across the floor.

“She loves me, you know,” Frank said. “Your sister, Ricky, she always did.”

I couldn’t contain myself. “What do you mean, ‘always’? She was 15 when you moved in! And what about now? Her place was a mess when I stopped by today. It looked like a crime scene. Her neighbors said they heard a bunch of banging around and then the two of you running to your car. How do you explain that?”

“Everything isn’t what it seems, Ricky,” he said, his gaze glazing over as he seemed to stare off into the distance again, distracted by the pain or something else. I saw it as my only opening and lunged across the room. He reacted too late, his shot sailing wide of me to hit the living room wall. I kicked at his hand, sending the gun clattering across the floor, and pushed him onto his back. I dropped one knee onto the wound in his stomach, causing him to cry out in pain, and pointed my gun at his forehead.

“Where is she you son of a bitch? Where is my sister?”

From behind me I heard the front door shut and a metallic scrape as Frank’s gun was picked up from off the hardwood.

“I’m right here, Ricky. Get off my man or I’ll blow your head off.”

Be On My Side

I placed my hand against the busted taillight on our ’94 Lumina and leaned over to scrape the mix of mud and ice from my work boot. The diner’s parking lot was a pitted mess thanks to the unseasonably warm December afternoon, and I didn’t want to track anything in. Trudy was holding the door in front of me, her brow furrowed in what had become a default look of disgust leavened with boredom. I stepped through the door and saw my old college roommate, the person most responsible for that piece of crap car, Trudy’s attitude and my rut of a life, sitting across the room.

He was facing me, a white T-shirt hanging loose on his frame, his hair bleached blond and spiked more from fitful sleep than product. Taking my coat off seemed to catch his gaze, and we locked eyes for a split second before he put a hand to his face and looked down at his plate.

That’s OK, I thought. I don’t want to talk with you either.

“Two?” said the matronly hostess behind the counter. Trudy stepped around me and said “yes,” asking for a booth. “Be a few minutes,” the woman told her. “Two just put in their orders and the third just got their food.” Trudy nodded and took a step back to lean against the wall. I moved to join her, holding my coat under my arm.

I was waiting for her to notice Randy. He was the reason for what seemed to be our ongoing argument, the latest round of which had led us into this greasy spoon instead of a nicer place in Iowa City. We were driving back from her uncle’s funeral in Chicago, trying to get to Council Bluffs before her magic temp-job hall pass for “bereavement” expired. I had a headache from peering through thick fog for the past hour, and wanted to treat us with a decent meal while giving my eyes a break. But her stance, as ever, was that we couldn’t afford it. “Let’s just stop and get a quick sandwich at that diner outside of town,” she had said. “Save a couple of bucks.”

We were always trying to “save a couple of bucks.” I was marginally employed, catching on with construction crews or other manual labor jobs when I could, and her clerking position barely earned enough to cover rent on the hole we called home.

I looked again at Randy, but he continued to look down. He was sitting with another guy; he, too, wore a baggy white T-shirt, but without being able to see his face, I couldn’t place him. Randy didn’t look good. The drugs had obviously taken their toll over the years, his evolution from dealer to dealer-user obviously still in motion.

“Hey,” Trudy hissed, elbowing me in the ribs. “Is that Randy?”

“Yeah. I saw him,” I said, knowing I’d be unable to pull off the lie if I said no. “I was hoping to avoid a confrontation.”

“
You
were hoping?” she said, still trying to keep her voice down, but with less success. “Jesus. You’re the only guy I know who actually went soft in prison.”

“You know a lot of ex-cons, do you?” I asked, letting an edge creep into my voice. Trudy, a petite and pretty brunette from a nice section of Omaha, hadn’t known much about the dark side of anything before she met me.

She turned it down a couple of notches. “Sorry. I just can’t believe you don’t want to go over there and beat the shit out of him right now.”

“I did the crime, I did the time,” I said, repeating what had become a mantra of sorts.

“What about his crime? His time?” Trudy countered. “It was his deal. He pulled you in and --”

“Look, we’ve been over this again and again. I asked to come in on it,” I said, looking around to see if anyone was paying attention. “No one forced me.”

A couple brushed by us after paying their bill. Trudy pushed herself away from the wall as they passed and went to talk with the hostess. A moment later, the woman came from behind the counter with two menus in her hand. “Follow me,” she said. I looked at the far wall and saw all three booths still occupied. The woman led us to the lone open table, right next to Randy.

“Your waitress will be with you in a moment,” she said, leaving the menus on the table.

Now it was my turn to hiss. “What are you doing?” I asked Trudy, sliding down in my seat to hide behind my menu.

She ignored me and turned to Randy. “Well, if it isn’t Randy Parton! God, what a small world!” He looked over with alarm, then looked at me. “Hey, Jack. Thought I saw you over there.”

“Well, isn’t this just a sweet little homecoming,” Trudy said. I looked at the guy across from Randy and realized it was Mark Salter, a friend of Randy’s from Moline who hadn’t been accepted at Iowa. He would come up on weekends to go out to the bars, taking advantage of the social scene without the hassle of classes. It took a moment to recognize him. Both of them had been avid weightlifters back then, but Mark was even more gaunt than Randy now.

“Hey, Mark,” I said, nodding to him. He nodded back, but sat silent, nervously twisting a plastic straw around his finger again and again.

“I been meaning to get in touch now that you’re, you know,” Randy said.

“Out of prison?” Trudy said, a bit too loudly, her shrill voice piercing the low murmur of conversation. People from nearby tables turned to see if something more interesting would develop.

“Settle down,” I said to her. “Let’s just eat, OK?”

Trudy looked at me with disgust in her eyes, flipped the menu open and slapped it loudly on the table. The waitress came around with glasses of ice water, and we each ordered a sandwich and fries. We sat in silence for a few minutes, while Randy and Mark, both leaning forward over the table, whispered animatedly.

I wanted to look anywhere but at Trudy. She had a right to be mad. I lost two years of my life because of Randy. She lost two years waiting for me, and another shackled to me after a pregnancy scare led her to drop out of school a semester early. I had only been out of prison a couple of months at the time, so we moved west to be close to a family that we realized too late didn’t want anything to do with an out-of-wedlock baby sired by an ex-con. A miscarriage did nothing but drive a wedge between us; her family wasn’t going to lift a finger -- or pry open a wallet -- as long as I was still around.

It had started with what we called “trucker speed,” little white pills that Randy bought from someone on campus to help him stay up at night to study. That evolved into meth, and the inevitable shift from user to creator. He couldn’t afford his habit, so he decided to make his own. I knew but chose to ignore the shift. I was 20 years old, barely keeping my own head above water with classes that were exponentially harder than high school, and figured his business was his business. It wasn’t until I came home from class one day and saw him standing at our kitchen table, stuffing sealed plastic bags of meth into a gym bag that I got involved.

As I gazed around the diner trying to avoid Trudy’s gaze, I noticed the ratty black bag at Randy’s feet, and a similar one at the feet of the guy sitting behind him. Didn’t take a genius to see what was going on. I knew one of the bags was stuffed with ziplock bags packed with tan powder, the other with bundles of grubby bills. At some point, Randy would grab the other guy’s bag and go to the bathroom to check the contents, then return. The other guy would do the same with Randy’s bag. When they left, each would take the other’s bag and the deal was done.

I was relieved when our sandwiches came, because it gave us an excuse to not talk. I looked over at Randy and Mark from time to time, watching them eat. Randy picked at his sandwich, while Mark attacked his like a rabid dog. I could see the muscles of his arm flex through his thin, pallid skin as he moved the sandwich from plate to mouth repeatedly.

After a couple of bites, Trudy turned toward Randy. “So, Randy, how have the last three years been for you? Pretty good? Nice to be able to come and go as you please?”

"Trudy,” I said, but she shot me her “shut up” look and turned back to Randy. “I asked you a question, Randy.”

He set his sandwich on his plate and picked up his napkin to wipe his mouth. He had always moved slowly despite the meth, determined. Unlike his customers, who favored speed metal and punk, Randy was closer to the hippie end of the spectrum, always playing one of the endless series of Neil Young albums he had stacked against a battered turntable in his room. Now, he was more shaky than smooth; I watched the napkin tremble as he brought it to his mouth. He seemed to be stalling for time.

“I’ve been fine, I guess,” he said, not looking up. He set the napkin down, then looked straight at me. It was a cold gaze that was hard to read. He then looked down at the bag at his feet, and then back at me. He picked up his sandwich and started to take another bite.

“Fine?” Trudy said. “You’re fine? Well, let me tell you something, you creep, there is nothing --”

“Trudy, “I said again, reaching out to grab her wrist. I pulled her close. “Let it go,” I whispered. “They’re about to do a deal. Knowing how the last one turned out, I don’t think you want to get involved.”

I’d been pinched in a similar situation nearly three years ago. Randy and I were meeting a guy from Kansas City. We were at the Iowa City Recreation Center in the locker room. We had a bag that contained about three pounds of packaged meth from Randy’s increasingly sophisticated operation, and the buyer would have a similar bag with $20,000 in cash. We were early, sitting on the bench waiting for him to arrive. Randy hadn’t wanted me to come, but I’d forced the issue, telling him I could use some easy money as much as him. I had been using a little bit by then, and he grudgingly decided to let me come. We were early, and after a few minutes, he said he was feeling twitchy, so he went out to walk around the block. The buyer was early, too, slipping through the door to drop his bag next to ours on the bench. I unzipped it and saw the money inside. As I reached in to do a quick count of the bundles, he opened our bag to check on the drugs. Each satisfied, we exited. I went first, and made it as far as the sidewalk in front of the center when a cop came around the corner and shoved me up against the wall.

They hadn’t witnessed the deal, so even though everyone involved knew what had happened, they could only bust me for the packet I had foolishly stuffed in the front pocket of my jeans on the way out the door, just in case I needed a boost before the deal. They caught the buyer walking out the back with a bag full of drugs. He was hit with a 25-year sentence, while I was socked with an aggravated misdemeanor that meant two years in prison and a hefty fine. Randy never did surface, and because I wouldn’t roll over on him or the buyer, I got the maximum sentence.

That was the last time I had seen Randy until now. He seemed to disappear. He never came to visit me, never contacted me. I always chalked it up to fear of getting caught. It was clear he hadn’t changed; in fact, he was worse.

Trudy had set her sandwich down and was looking now at the two bags on the floor. She couldn’t see the men sitting behind Randy without turning, and she was clearly trying to do so without drawing attention to herself. The man directly behind Randy was wearing a green work coat and a trucker cap pulled low. The guy across from him seemed smaller, wiry. He was dark complected, but he, too, had a grimy yellow hat pulled down low and was difficult to see.

Trudy scooted her chair back a few inches. “Do you have the keys? I need to get something out of the car.”

I pulled the keys out of my pocket and handed them over. As I laid them in Trudy’s palm, she grabbed my wrist with her other hand. “Get ready to run,” she whispered. She stood up and put on her coat, then reached down and grabbed the handles of the bag at the feet of the guy behind Randy, yanked it up and pushed her chair over as she backed quickly away from the table.

“He’s got a gun!” she screamed, pointing at Randy as she skittered away from him and then turned and ran. I sat stunned for a moment as the diner erupted in commotion all around me. People screamed as two burly truck drivers grabbed at Randy. I jumped up and ran after Trudy, grabbing my coat from the back of my chair as I did.