Bust Read online

  Bust

  Ken Bruen

  Jason Starr

  Bust

  Ken Bruen

  Jason Starr

  One

  People with opinions just go around bothering one another.

  THE BUDDHA

  In the back of Famiglia Pizza on Fiftieth and Broadway, Max Fisher was dabbing his plain slice with a napkin, trying to soak up as much grease as he could, when a man sat down diagonally across from him with a large cupful of ice. The guy looked nothing like the big, strong-looking hit man Max was expecting – he looked more like a starving greyhound. He couldn’t have weighed more than 130 pounds, had a medium build, startling blue eyes, a thin scar down his right cheek, and a blur of long gray hair. And something was very weird about his mouth. It looked like someone had put broken glass in there and mangled his lips.

  The guy smiled, said, “You’re wondering what happened to me mouth.”

  Max knew the guy would be Irish, but he didn’t think he’d be so Irish, that talking to him would be like talking to one of those Irish bartenders at that place uptown who could never understand a fucking word he was saying. He’d ask for a Bud Light and they’d stare back at him with a dumb look, like something was wrong with the way he was talking, and he’d think, Who’s the potato eater just off the boat, pal? Me or you?

  Max was about to answer then thought, Fuck that, I’m the boss, and asked, “Are you…?”

  The man put a finger to his messed-up lips, made the sound “Sh… sh,” then added, “No names.” He sucked on the ice, made a big production out of it, pushing his lips out with the cube so Max had to see them. Then, finally, he stuck the cube in his cheek like a chipmunk and asked, “You’ll be Max?”

  Max wondered what had happened to no names. He was going to say something about it, but then figured this guy was just trying to play head games with him so he just nodded.

  The guy leaned over, whispered, “You can call me Popeye.”

  Before Max could say, You mean like the cartoon character? the guy laughed, startling Max, and then said, “Fook, call me anything except early in the morning.” Popeye smiled again, then said, “I need the money up front.”

  Max felt better – negotiating was his thing – and asked, “It’s eight, right? I mean, isn’t that what Angela…?”

  The guy’s eyes widened and Max thought, Fuck, the no-name rule, and was about to say sorry when Popeye shot out his hand and grabbed Max’s wrist. For such a bone-thin guy he had a grip like steel.

  “Ten, it’s ten,” he hissed.

  Max was still scared shitless but he was angry about the money too. He tried to free his wrist, couldn’t, but managed to say, “Hey, a deal’s a deal, you can’t just change the terms.”

  He liked that, putting the skinny little mick in his place.

  Finally Popeye let go, sat back and stared at Max, sucking on the ice some more, then in a very low voice he said, “You want me to kill your wife, I can do whatever the fook I want, I own your arse you suited prick.”

  Max felt a jolt in his chest, thought, Shit, the heart attack his fucking cardiologist told him could “happen at any time.” He took a sip of his Diet Pepsi, wiped his forehead, then said, “Yeah, okay, whatever, I guess we can renegotiate. Five before and five after. How’s that?”

  Bottom line, he wanted Deirdre gone. It wasn’t like he could hold interviews for hit men, tell each candidate, Thank you for coming in, we’ll get back to you.

  Then Popeye reached into his leather jacket – it had a hole in the shoulder and Max wondered, Bullet hole? – and took out a funny-looking green packet of cigarettes, with “Major” on the front, and placed a brass Zippo on top. Max thought that the guy had to know he couldn’t actually light up in a restaurant, even if it was just a shitty pizzeria. Popeye took out a cigarette; it was small and stumpy, and he ran it along his bottom lip, like he was putting on lipstick.

  Man, this guy was weird.

  “Listen closely yah bollix,” he said, “I’m the best there is and that means I don’t come cheap, it also means I get the whole shebang up front and that’s, lemme see, tomorrow.”

  Max didn’t like that idea, but he wanted to get the deal done so he just nodded. Popeye put the cigarette behind his ear, sighed, then said, “Righty ho, I want small bills and noon Thursday, you bring them to Modell’s on Forty-second Street. I’ll be the one trying on tennis sneakers.”

  “I have a question,” Max said. “How will you do it? I mean, I don’t want her to suffer. I mean, will it be quick?”

  Popeye stood up, used both hands to massage his right leg, as if he was ironing a kink out of it, then said, “Tomorrow… I’ll need the code for the alarm and all the instructions and the keys to the flat. You make sure you’re with somebody at six, don’t go home till eight. If you come home early I’m gonna pop you too.” He paused then said, “You think you can follow that, fellah?”

  Suddenly Popeye sounded familiar. Max racked his brain then it came to him – Robert Shaw in The Sting.

  Then Popeye said, “And me mouth, a gobshite tried to ram a broken bottle in me face, his aim was a little off, happened on the Falls Road, not a place you’d like to visit.”

  Max never could remember if the Falls were the Protestants or the Catholics, but he didn’t feel it was the time to ask. He looked again at the hole in Popeye’s leather jacket.

  Popeye touched the jacket with his finger, said, “Caught it on a hook on me wardrobe. You think I should get it fixed?”

  Two

  To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best to make you like everybody else, means to fight the hardest human battle ever and to never stop fighting.

  E. E. CUMMINGS

  Bobby Rosa sat in his Quickie wheelchair in the middle of Central Park’s Sheep Meadow, checking out all the beautiful young babes. He had his headphones on, Motley Crue’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” leaking out, thinking that his own crew would love all these great shots he was taking. Man, these chicks must’ve been starving themselves, probably doing all those Pilates, to look this good. Finally, he saw what he was looking for – three thin babes in bikinis lying on their stomachs in a nice even line. They were about thirty yards away – perfect shooting distance – so Bobby took out his Nikon with the wide-angle lens and zoomed in.

  He snapped about ten pictures – some whole-body shots and some good rear shots. Then he wheeled toward the other end of the Sheep Meadow and spotted two blondes, lying on their backs. From about twenty yards away, he snapped a dozen boob shots, saying things to himself like, “Oh, yeah, I like that,” “Yeah, that’s right,” “Yeah, right there baby.” Then, right next to the blondes, he spotted a beautiful curvy black chick, lying alone on a blanket. She was on her stomach and the string on her bikini bottom was so thin it looked like she was naked. Bobby went in for a close-up, stopping about five yards behind her. He snapped the rest of the roll. He had another roll in the jacket of his windbreaker, but he was happy with the shots he’d gotten, so he pushed himself out of the Sheep Meadow, on to the park’s west drive.

  A panhandler came up to Bobby, with that annoying sadeyed yet pissed-off look that all homeless fucks had. The guy looked strung out and the smell of piss, sweat and booze made Bobby want to puke.

  “Got a few bucks, buddy?”

  With the headphones on, Bobby couldn’t hear him, but he could read the guy’s lips. He gave him a long stare, thinking there was no way in hell some scumbag like this would have had the balls to come up to him back in the day. Just then, the Crue went dead, right in the middle of “Bad Boy Boogie,” as the cassette got mangled – cheap rip-off piece of shit he bought on the street in Chinatown, what, ten years ago? He tore the crap out of his Walkman, thinking he had to go current, get
one of those iPods. Then he flung the messed-up tape at the guy, spat, and said, “Here’s some Crue. Broaden your fuckin’ horizons, jackass… and take a fuckin’ shower while you’re at it.”

  The guy stared at the tape, stammered, “The fuck am I gonna do with this?”

  Bobby smiled, not giving a shit, and said, “Stick it up your ass, loser.”

  And then he continued up the block, cursing to himself and at the people he passed. Nine ways to Sunday, Bobby Rosa had attitude, or in the current buzz jargon, he had issues.

  When he got back to his apartment on Eighty-ninth and Columbus, Bobby went right to the second bedroom, which he had turned into a darkroom, and started developing the film. The three chicks in a row came out great, but the pictures of the black babe were Bobby’s favorites. Somehow the woman reminded him of his old girlfriend, Tanya.

  Bobby added the tit shots to the collection in his bedroom. He had three walls covered with Central Park boobs, taken during the past two springs and summers. He had all shapes and sizes – implants, flat chests, sagging old ladies, training-bra teenagers – it didn’t matter to him. Then he had an idea, and said out loud, “ The Hot Chicks of Manhattan. ” It had a nice ring to it; he could see it as a coffee table book. He could make a few bucks on the side and it was kind of classy too. Rich assholes would have it out right next to their champagne and caviar. Then, laughing to himself, he took the ass shots and added them to his collection in the bathroom. Next, he went to his shelf, grabbed another tape, The Best of Poison. Letting “Talk Dirty To Me” rip, he leaned back in his wheelchair, admiring his work. He bet, if he wanted to, he could sell his pictures to some classy art magazine, one of those big, thick mothers you have to hold with two hands.

  After a few more minutes of staring at the walls, Bobby looked at his watch. It was 2:15. He realized it was past his usual time for his bowel routine. So he went into the bathroom and transferred himself onto the bowl. As he dug his index finger into the jar of Vaseline he laughed out loud, asked, “This suck or what?”

  About twenty minutes later, Bobby called the lobby and asked the doorman to send a maintenance guy up to his apartment. When the little Jamaican guy arrived, Bobby asked him to take out a big box from the back of his hallway closet.

  “I thought you had a problem with your shower?”

  “Yeah, well I don’t,” Bobby said.

  He was a strong little guy, but the box was so heavy it took all his strength to carry it a few feet. He was out of breath.

  “What the fuck do you have in there?”

  “Oh, just some old clothes,” Bobby said, handing him a crisp twenty-dollar bill.

  When the guy was gone, Bobby opened the box, tearing off the layers of masking tape. Finally, he got it open and removed the bubble wrap, getting a head rush when he saw his weapons. He had three sawed-off shotguns, a couple of rifles, a MAC-11 submachine pistol, two Uzis, some smaller guns, and a gym bag filled with boxes of ammo. No two ways about it – you got hardware, you got juice. Suddenly the world took on a whole other perspective: Now you called the fucking shots. Poison were into “Look What the Cat Dragged In” and he thought, Man, this is it, guns and rock ‘n’ roll.

  He took one of his favorite handguns out of the box, a. 40 millimeter Glock Model 27 compact pistol. The “pocket rocket” didn’t pack the power of a shotgun or a Mag, but he loved the black finish. Holding a gun again gave Bobby the same buzz that it always did. The only thing better was firing one, feeling that explosion of power coming out of his body. He’d had a lot of women in his time, but given the choice between a woman and a gun he’d take the gun. It didn’t talk back and it got the job done, plus, it made you feel like a player and you didn’t have to reassure the motherfucker.

  Aiming out the window, Bobby zeroed in on a pigeon that was sitting on the ledge of a building across the street. He felt the muscles in his index finger starting to twitch. He’d always been a great shot, practicing on the range down on Murray Street in between hold-ups. “Bang,” he said out loud, imagining the bullet exploding through the bird’s brain.

  Bobby was sweating. He wheeled into the bathroom and splashed cold water against his face, then he stared at himself in the mirror. This was happening a lot lately – looking in the mirror, expecting to see a young guy, but seeing an old man instead.

  He muttered, “How’d that happen?”

  He used to have thick black hair, but lately his forehead seemed to be getting bigger and bigger, and he had more gray in his hair now than black. He’d grown a beard over the winter, hoping it would make him look younger, but no luck there – it had come in mostly gray too. He used to only get wrinkles around his mouth when he smiled, but now he had them all the time, and the circles under his eyes were getting so dark it looked like he was going around with two permanent shiners. Although his arms and shoulders had gotten big from pushing himself around, his legs had shriveled up to almost nothing and he had put on a gut. Fucking brews, man – they kept you trucking but blew you out.

  “What’re you gonna do?” he said.

  Maybe forty-seven wasn’t old for some people, but it was old for a guy who’d spent fourteen years in prison, one year in Iraq, and three years in a fucking wheelchair.

  It was time to get back to work.

  Three

  Angela Petrakos was raised in Ireland till she was seven and then her father packed them up, took her and her mother to America, saying, “Enough of this scraping and scrimping, we’re going to live the American dream.”

  Yeah, right.

  They wound up in Weehawken, New Jersey, living in what they call genteel poverty. “They” must be rich because Angela had never heard a poor person use words like that. Angela’s mother was a pure Irish woman – mean, bitter and stubborn as all hell. She called herself a displaced Irishwoman. When she said this, Angela’s father would whisper, “She means she hates dis place.” Her father was born in Dublin, but his family was Greek, from Xios. Angela’s Mom was from Belfast and constantly bitched about the huge mistake of marrying a Southerner with Greek longings. When Angela was a teenager, her mother went on and on about the glories of Ireland. All types of Irish music – jigs and reels, hornpipes and bodhrans – were shoved down Angela’s throat, and a huge green harp hung on the kitchen wall. Angela’s father, meanwhile, wasn’t allowed to play Theodrakis or any of the music he loved, and Angela never even heard Zorba’s Dance until she was twenty. When the micks lay down the rules, they’re laid in granite – it was no wonder they’d coined the phrase No surrender.

  All the songs of rebellion, the history of the IRA, were drilled into Angela’s psyche. She was programmed to love the Irish and her plan was to go to the country and have an affair with Gerry Adams. Yeah, he was happily married, but that didn’t ruin her fantasy; actually, it fueled it. Despite her years in America, she had a slight Irish accent. She liked the way she spoke, was told she sounded “hot” by the older guys who tried to pick her up – they often succeeded – when she was in junior high and high school. She went to technical college and learned Excel and PowerPoint, but she knew her real talent was seduction. By the time she was twenty, she’d learned all about the power of sex.

  She worked her way through the crappy jobs and a string of asshole boyfriends. Angela wasn’t pretty in the conventional sense but she knew how to use what she had and, by Jesus, she used it. She was medium height with brown eyes and brown hair, but she changed all that – went blond, went blue eyed, went wild. She got a boob job, contacts for her eyes and already had the attitude. Then her mother died and they cremated her – her father said he wanted her burned, “lest she return.” Angela got the ashes, kept them in an urn on her bookcase. When Angela’s Ashes came out she rushed out and bought the book, thinking it had to be some kind of sign or something. She didn’t bother reading it, but liked having it on her shelf. Other books she bought but never read included ‘Tis and A Monk Swimming. She also had some DVDs like Angela’s Ashes, Far and Away, and The
Commitments. When it came to music, only the Irish stuff really did it for her – Enya, Moya Brennan and, of course, U2. She would’ve stepped on Gerry Adams to get to Bono.

  Most of her money went on clothes. The most basic lesson she learned was that if you wore a short skirt, killer heels and a tight top, guys went ape. Her legs were good and she knew how to hike a skirt to really get the heads turning. She saved her money and went online to book a week in Belfast, brought the urn with her – which caused some commotion with Homeland Security, but in the end she was allowed to bring her Mom if she stashed her in freight, which she did. She stayed at the Europa, the most bombed hotel in Europe – that’s what Frommer said anyway – and the customers were pretty bombed themselves. The city was a shithole – drab, grey, depressing – and the Sterling, what was the deal with that? And people kept getting on her about Iraq, like she had any freakin’ say about it. She did all the sightseeing crap – maybe seeing blown up buildings did it for some people, but it bored the hell out of her. When she threw her Mom’s ashes into the Foyle there was a wind, of course, and most of her mother flew back into her hair. When she told the old guy at the hotel desk what had happened he said, “Tis proof, darling, that the dead are always with us.”

  Evenings, she ate at the hotel and had drinks at the bar. She didn’t want to go out, not because she was afraid but because she couldn’t understand a goddamn word anyone was saying. The bartender hit on her and if his teeth hadn’t been so yellow she might have been into it. For the first time in her life, she felt American and that Ireland was the foreign country. The blended accent that got her so far in New York seemed useless here.

  Her second-to-last night, she was sitting at the bar and a drunk began to hassle her. The bartender, of course, didn’t help. The drunk had a combat jacket, sewage breath, and was going, “Ah come on, you want to suck me dick, you know yah do.”