When he finishes laughing Freckles explains my motivation; he forgets to switch off the speaker so I hear the whole thing.
“Y’see this is typical death’s door behavior. This guy is desperate now. He’s even offering to work for the guys he humiliated yesterday. Anything to get him off that hook.”
“This happens all the time?”
“Oh sure. I had an Italian guy once offered me his daughter if I’d cut him loose.”
“Did you take the deal?”
“Nah. Cut his throat like a pig. Then I visited the daughter anyway.”
“Those Italians are badasses, right?”
Freckles shrugs. “Once upon a time, maybe, but they spent too long at the top. Gone a little doughy, you know what I mean?”
“Sure. Doughy. Dad never told me none of this stuff. So which guys are the toughest?”
Listen to this kid. Like anyone’s tougher than a bullet. Still, Freckles considers the question, doing this weird sucky squeaky thing between his lips that would be enough to get him punched in the face under different circumstances.
“As an individual, one person per sé,” says Freckles when he’s completed his squeaky thought process. “I am the toughest individual in this city. You cross Benny T and I will hunt you down like a fucking dog. But as a group. Collectively per sé. I’d have to say the Russians are the toughest bastards around. Those guys come outta some real hardship. Fuckin’ Siberia. I seen pictures. They ain’t scared of nuthin’. Micks and Spics. They shit ’em. And I say that as a fifty-fifty Mick ’n’ Spic. I got Latin blood though it don’t show.”
That’s a lotta per sé’s for one statement.
“You a Latin scholar, Benny?” I can’t help asking.
“I told you already: I got Latin blood. Here’s another phrase for you regarding me humping your momma. Vidi vici veni. I saw, I conquered, I came. You can take that to the grave. Fuckin’ fluffer, you sad sack of shit. Hey, maybe your mom was a fluffer.”
While they are cracking themselves up, I get it. It comes back to me.
Fluffer. Holy shit.
It’s pretty quiet on Twelfth Avenue this early in the morning. It’s that moral twilight between the hours of thievery and joggery. Freckles has got maybe thirty minutes to do his business before the ferries start chugging in, dumping their cargo of white-collar office civilians onto the island. There ain’t a ray of sunlight yet, but the night is holding its breath, waiting for daytime to paint the high-rises red. While Freckles is entertaining young Edward Shea with gruesome war stories, I have an exchange with my subconscious.
Where did you see a fluffer recently?
The porn house.
And what did she give you besides advice on penis-enlargement pills?
A key for cop cuffs.
And what are you wearing now?
Cop cuffs.
What happened to that key?
I tucked it into the thong, because you never know, right?
So go fish in your thong for the key already, moron.
When are you going to stop being such a tool?
One second after you stop being such an idiot.
Gombeen.
Shitehawk.
I got a key in my thong, and as soon as I remember that I feel the metal digging into my stomach. It’s a step in the right direction having a key and so forth, but there’s still a long way to go. Even if I slip these cuffs I gotta get out of the cab and deal with Spatter and Pussy up front.
First things first. Get outta these shackles.
I knock on the glass with my forehead. “Hey, kid. Do me a favor. Scratch my balls.”
Ain’t a man alive who can ignore a request like this, rife as it is with such potential for hilarity.
The kid’s jaw literally drops. “Scratch your . . . Are you serious?”
“Come on, Shea. I’m trussed up here like the baby Jesus in his swaddling clothes.”
Freckles frowns, upset by my choice of words. “Aw, come on, McEvoy. Why you gotta bring Jesus into it?”
“I’m tryin’ to convey how itchy my balls are.”
“You should know better than to invoke Jesus, man. Our countrymen been killing each other for seven hundred years over shit like that.”
Now Freckles has developed some kind of political conscience. I guess it’s all right to plug your fellow man so long as baby Jesus ain’t invoked anywhere in the process.
“Also, maybe you got ball rot or something,” adds Shea. “You think anyone is gonna touch your sack?”
Freckles nods wisely. “I know what this is. When did your symptoms manifest, McEvoy?”
Never, I think, but I answer: “I dunno. Last thirty minutes, maybe.”
“I thought so,” says Freckles, smacking the wheel. “That itching is all in your head.”
I say the obvious: “Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s in my balls.”
“Nah, it’s psychosomatic. A death’s-door ailment. I seen this shit before. A guy realizes he’s about to get his ticket punched and his body reacts by throwing up weird symptoms, takes his mind off it, see?”
Shea is nodding along, intrigued. If he had some paper, he’d be taking notes.
“Hey, Benny T. These are my balls and they feel like some malicious fecking goblin scuffed them lightly so they’d scab over, then dipped them in pepper. So, until we’re talking about your balls, keep your shrinkifying to yourself.”
“Shrinkifying?” says Shea. “Is that a word?”
“No. But it should be.”
“Bottom line,” says Freckles. “We ain’t scratching your balls. Maybe, if you ask real nice, the Shea-ster can shoot you in the crotch, which might alleviate it some.”
Shea slaps his knee, enjoying the hell out of his day. “Consider it done,” he says.
“Please, guys,” I beg, tugging on my cuffs. “I can’t reach and don’t wanna go out with jock itch.”
Freckles laughs. “That is indeed a pathetic way to go.”
And he shuts off the speaker.
Now I got license to root around in my own underwear.
I played those fools. Played myself right into the back of a death cab on the way to my own hole
in the ground. Ain’t I the genius?
Actually, with KFC and that other guy in the trunk I might not even merit my own hole.
And that is depressing.
I think my balls actually are itching.
I grind myself right up on the glass partition, trying to get a hand down my pants. Through the crook of my arm I notice we are off Twelfth and down by the river. I see that weird-looking melted pier, an altar to scores of busted planks and rotting tires heaped at its base. I always used to wonder about that pier when I drove past, what its story was and so forth. Now I probably won’t ever know.
Tragic, right? A man goes to his grave without comprehensive pier knowledge.
So anyways, I’m basically humping the partition trying to get at the key and Freckles turns the speaker back on so’s I can hear them laughing. It’s not like they need to worry, right? Freckles frisked me pretty good, even gave my privates a decent squeeze. So, they’re cocksure I ain’t armed. But I got a key and my hand is only a coupla inches away.
Ha. Wait. That pier collapsed from pier pressure.
Zing.
In your face, Zebulon. That is a genuine joke. I could send it in to Ferguson.
Always the cautious optimist, I bank that joke for later if there is a later.
My index finger brushes the key. So close.
“Oh,” I say, which sets Freckles off laughing again.
“Listen to this asshole,” he says in between chortles. “We should take a drive to Connecticut for laughs. This guy is better than Howard Stern.”
So then they’re off on a DJ debate. Apparently this Harvard girl that Shea once banged in a bathroom stall voiced the opinion that Howard Stern was a misogynist asshole, and Shea happened to agree with that position. Freckles, on the other hand, was loudly opposed to this argument despite the fact that it quickly became obvious that he didn’t understand the term misogynist.
I have to stop myself joining in, because I got stuff to do, staying alive and so forth.
I reach the key, pull it out between two fingers and slump gratefully on the seat. Usually when I sit down, I don’t attach an emotion to it, but this time gratefully works okay.
Stage One complete.
I look down at my hands, the palms worn shiny like the hands of a fisherman, the fingers curved like a gorilla’s, and they are shaking like I got a charge running through me, but I manage to hold on to the key and after a minute of trying to thread that toy-sized key into a hole the size of a match head I manage to free myself.