Sweeney on the Rocks Read online

  Zeke falls asleep on the seat beside him, nose by his knee, twitching paws, blowing at his cheeks.

  Through his window, and even above his cigarette, Sweeney can smell burning trash. The last remnants of somebody’s backyard fire.

  From behind the seat, he pulls out the dead wop’s pistol. Stainless steel Colt .357. Six shooter. Odd choice for a gangster. By and large, they preferred the stage props, semi-auto dis and dat. Sweeney, however, having been known to spend time on a firing range—that basement range in Alphabet City, what was it called? Bull’s Eye, Inc.?—always favored cylinders. The good heft and weight in your hand. The balance.

  It’s been so long since he was in the same room with real money. Dig that energy, man. What would it take to move it? Handicapped as he is by his past, by his geography, it would be a trick. Not only move it, but wash it. There’s the real problem. Say you’ve got two briefcases full of bills. You can go buy groceries. Get some chewing gum. Everything else draws attention. If you buy a house, buy a car, open a checking account, the feds are knocking on your door twelve hours later.

  Used to be, they had dodges set up. The launder came readymade. The Nose had his car washes, for instance. Three different coin-operated bay washes, always shut down, always with orange cones in front of the bays. But they allowed Nose to siphon cash through his accountant, call it carwash income. These days? Sweeney’s got Zeke, he’s got the old folks at home, he’s got Aggie. Basically, he’s got buptkus.

  Still, Cosmo would have jumped at the chance, the challenge. Would have bluffed his way into it. Sure, I’m your man. Trust me. Made it up as he went along. Would have found a solution. It had been one of his strengths: improvising. You project confidence, people believe in you.

  His other strength? Eddie. Who had his back.

  Eddie. Who’s known that Sweeney’s alive, and hasn’t been in touch. The thought hurts.

  Unless Eddie’s been protecting him. Unless he’s been so hot that…but no. The shit they’d been through? That time in Philadelphia?

  Okay, number one, take it for granted that Eddie, wherever he is, he’s got your back. If you can’t trust Eddie, you can’t trust nobody.

  Okay, two, Eddie’s wife is here asking for help. Forget about your history (the small sprinkle of moles under her breasts; her black lace nighties, her candles; that one time with the cuffs.). It’s Eddie’s wife, man.

  Three, somebody’s knocking off gangsters in Montana. At the juncture of Sweeney and, what, ten million dollars? A body shows up in his lazy boy.

  Whoever it is, they know Sweeney well enough to want to fuck with him. And that list of names, brother, it would take time and a half to put them in alphabetical order.

  Marilyn has a rooster-shaped weather vane on a banister. It turns slightly in a breeze; and a wind chime under the eaves starts up with the tinkling.

  Sweeney flicks his cigarette onto gravel, slides down into the seat, tilts his cap over his eyes. Tina’s the key to it. Tina.

  Twenty-five-year-old Cosmo would have had ideas, been able to see solutions. Thirty-seven-year-old Sweeney feels stranded, confused. Tired. Alone. Most of all, he’s alone.

  ~

  “First thing,” Eddie said, “we get your bike back.”

  Thirteen-year-old Sweeney, flush from his audience with the Nose, could care less about a bike. “It used to be all right. This old Greg Hill signature? But I’ve beat the crap out of it. All the stickers are off.”

  “Hey Cosmo? Looka here.”

  They were killing time on playground swings. Smoking Camels to keep it ironic.

  “Drag your feet, man. Look at me.”

  Sweeney slowed until he hung loose. “What.”

  Eddie smacked him a quick one upside the head. Sweeney’s cigarette span away, blooming sparks.

  “What the fuck?”

  “The Nose tells you not to let people fuck with you, which means, next thing, you get your bike back, demonstrating, ergo, that you don’t let people fuck with you.”

  “I’m not even sure…”

  “Don’t gimme that. You know who took it. Who was it?”

  Sweeney did know, in fact. It was a small world him and Eddie inhabited. A cohort of Bobby Badasses and Tommy Tough Guys. The lucky ones, like Sweeney, had a home. Their bones were hung with the firm flesh of three solids a day. The unlucky ones were fuzzy about the notion of dinner, and didn’t see the rationale behind showers, toothbrushes. The unluckiest kept their sleeping bags in abandoned warehouses, wore always the same jeans, used the public school system like a pawn shop.

  “You know those brothers? D’shawn and what’s his name. Darious? Something. The older one. He’s into bikes.”

  “Where they hang out?”

  “This construction site around Seth Low? Off Thirteenth.”

  Eddie glanced at his watch. “Com’on. We got some daylight.”

  There are certain memories, it’s better you don’t poke them too often. They’re fragile in their scabbing. And this one, the first truly epic ass kicking of Sweeney’s young life, is more tender than most.

  Eddie, at least, left him to his own failure. Eddie had a pistol in his pocket. But beyond flashing it at the start to insure that Sweeney didn’t get mobbed, showing it to the small gang of kids they’d found lighting firecrackers among the rebar and broken concrete of the construction site—he did nothing to help.

  Sweeney, even then, was smart enough to see that it’s in such moments that we find the trajectory of our lives. Quail and quiver at the wrong moment? Maybe you never stop with the quailing and quivering. Nothing in life is worse than shame. Nothing.

  So Sweeney was reduced to blind and stumbling roundhouses, crying out his frustration. Darious shoved Sweeney down one last time. Muttered. “Shit, white boy. Take the bike.”

  Afterwards, left eye swelling to a cracked plum, both lips split, Sweeney walked his bike away slow, breathing in small sips out of consideration for his bruised ribs. But he felt good. Yes, this was better. This was why you didn’t let people fuck with you.

  Eddie had snatched a handful of firecrackers, and he lit them as they walked. “The Nose is going to dig the scars, Cosmo.” Pop. “I tell that story about how you never quit?” Pop. “Nose’ll eat that shit up. Trust me.” Eddie stuck his cigarette to the fuse of the entire string. “He’s a sucker for a good story.”

  A machine gun rattle of firecrackers at his feet, under his heels, but Sweeney resolutely refused to flinch. Flinching was for suckers.

  ~

  Coming awake in Montana, in the cold gray light of near-dawn, the sound of firecrackers fades to Marilyn tapping her nails against his window. “Ted. Hey, Ted.” She’s clutching her bathrobe tight at the neck.

  Zeke and Sweeney both startle awake. The dog growls low. Sweeney rolls down his window. “Heya.”

  “You stalking me now?”

  “Fell asleep.” He rubs at the crick in his neck. Smacks his mouth at the taste of ashtrays.

  “Question is, why are you even here?”

  “We need to talk.”

  She glances at the neighbors’ houses. All the dark windows. “I’ll put coffee on.”

  He doesn’t keep track (he’s definitely not keeping track), but Marilyn has had a few lovers here and there, a few that he knows about. A physician’s assistant, a high school biology teacher, an ambulance driver. She’s still a good-looking woman, although increasingly padded. She’s a farmer’s wife, a potato grower. She’s a portrait by Daumier.

  Sweeney slumps low on her couch, brushing at pet hair. The longhaired Persian stares murderously at him from a throw rug. The shih-tzu comes up wagging. The cat’s name, if Sweeney remembers, is Max. The dog’s name is Catherine. Two names, not incidentally, that they had discussed in the dusty long ago as potential names for their children.

  The living room is open to the kitchen. He watches her putter, moving from sink to coffee maker. The robe falls partially open. “Is that one of my old Yanks t-shirts?”
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  She clutches the robe tight, then visibly concedes. Fuck it. “Yeah. It’s comfortable.” She brings him his coffee mug and sits across from him. Putting up her fuzzy-slippered feet. Her legs need a shave. “Don’t be thinking I’m sentimental.”

  “You and Aggie both. It’s a wonder I got any t-shirts left at all.”

  “How’s she doing? I like her. She’s good for you.”

  “We kind of had a fight.”

  “Let me take a stab. You told her to get out of town, right? For her own good. But wouldn’t tell her why.”

  “Jesus, woman.”

  “You’re no big mystery.”

  “You get any prints off that shotgun?”

  “Yeah, a good thumbprint and half a forefinger. I sent them in to the Feds, that IAFIS system. End of the day yesterday, they should be waiting for me this morning. I’m just praying those prints ain’t yours.”

  “They’re not. Were you sticking your neck out at all?”

  She studies him over the top of her coffee mug, sipping at it with both hands. “Two ways to answer that. I said I found the gun in an alley. Sawed off and illegal, right, so I could justify it. So, no, not really.”

  “Second way?”

  “I’m trying to be a good cop here, Ted. This is my life, what I want to do with the rest of it. And lying about evidence? Nobody would ever call that, you know, merit badge behavior. When that body shows up down in Big Timber, when somebody’s bright enough to make the connection, they’re going to be treating that alley like a crime scene. Which means a lot of wasted effort on somebody’s part, probably mine.”

  “Sorry.” And he means it.

  “Apology accepted.”

  “It’s not really my fault.”

  “Yeah, stop while you’re ahead.”

  Past Marilyn, an east-facing window catches the rising sun, illuminating her deputy’s uniform hanging off the pantry door, cleaned and pressed. On the counter, her coiled utility belt and pistol. He’d always wondered how cops lived when they were home, and this is it. “How much do you want to know about what else is going on? What I mean is, would you rather go about your day? Merit badges versus jail time?”

  She carefully places her coffee mug on the table and rubs her face hard. Goes to the window and picks up her cat. Brings it back to her chair, sits rubbing it. Brings its tail to her nose. “I’m going to leave that, uh, moral conundrum, all up to you. You tell me what I need to know, help us get through this, but not enough to make me an accessory. How’s that?”

  Marilyn in a nutshell. Marilyn in her frustrating, powerplay, calculating, disingenuous glory. Sweeney and strong women. Sometimes he wonders if it’s worth it.

  Two things occur to him. First, and despite himself, he’s a little turned on right now, fuzzy slippers and all. Maybe it’s his lingering fantasies about Tina, but he can’t keep his eyes of her knee outside its robe. That scar under the kneecap, he’s the only man in Montana who knows its story. Moving into their first apartment, carrying a box of books, she’d slipped on concrete stairs. He’d wiped the blood away with a damp cloth, then kissed the wound. The iron-rich taste of her blood on his lips. Second, she’s right. It’s like chewing on foil, but yeah, she’s got a point. He should be able to do this without asking her to compromise herself.

  “Okay,” he says, leaning forward. “Can you do some digging about my cousin Eddie?”

  “Eddie?” He’s succeeded in surprising her. “What’s Eddie got to do with this?”

  “Um.”

  “No wait, right,” she holds up a hand. “I don’t want to know. Okay, I can make an arrest record search, that sort of thing. Same ol’, same ol’. Just old Ted Sweeney curious about his homicidal family. Anything else?”

  “Nope.” He puts his hands on his knees and makes to rise.

  “You know who you should talk to about Eddie though. Al Broch.”

  “I thought about that.” In fact, it hadn’t occurred to him. The Federal Marshall assigned to his case. His supervisor, in a way.

  “You should drop in anyway. Say hello. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “You haven’t heard?” Marilyn’s housecat, annoyed by the increasing, nervous pace of her petting, squirms off her lap, walks imperiously over to its food bowl, glancing back. Marilyn watches it go. “He’s sick, Ted. Really, really sick.”

  ~

  Sweeney spent three years in the Nose’s tire shop. Three years in the cacophony of wrenches and ratchets, air compressors and the hollow clang of rims on cement. What he seemed to understand from the first, but what so few of his fellows natched, is that the real engine of the world, the currency of it, isn’t money but connection. Who you know, how well you’re received. People need to smile when you walk in the room.

  Having recovered his dirt bike, Sweeney soon gave it up again, passed it down to a younger cousin. Used Nose’s thirty bucks to buy a good pair of bolt cutters. Found his next bike in midtown. A ten speed racer that weighed less than a pack of cigarettes, tires thin as smoke rings, shifters smooth as butter.

  Five nights a week found him popping beads and patching leaks. Once, twice a week, Nose had him come by in the morning. Handed him a backpack heavy with three bundles of bills. “You got time before school, kid?” Sure he did.

  This was Sweeney’s own little tour de New York: Brooklyn, Greenwich Village, the Bronx. A kid on a bike. A ruse, a feint, a dodge. The Nose’s nod to his own pragmatic paranoia. Who in his right mind would entrust thousands of dollars a week to some greasy-haired punk? It was the age of big hair bands and rap, lift kits and glasspacks. But Sweeney pedaled to a private soundtrack of trumpets and trombones, snare drums and jazz piano. He was on his way up, hitting the big time.

  First stop, Tricky Ricky’s Tavern in Dumbo. A basement level dive with a scarred plywood bar and exposed pipes dripping condensate. A green velvet card table under lights. “Heya, it’s the kid!” He was welcomed with the bonhomie of the guy with tickets to the game, the schnook who buys every round. Ricky’s sheaf of bills was thinnest of the three, and it disappeared always like a magic trick. “Have a beer, kid.”

  Second stop, Sciarra’s place in the Village. A walk up off Cordelia Street. A front door of mahogany and brass and a doorman bored with the Times. The back door, though, past a wrought-iron garden gate and up the fire escape, was sheet metal, and opened to a combination. He’d find Sciarra in his kitchen, reading his paper, smoking. He glanced at the delivery—thickest of the three—then let it sit on the table, ignored. “Coffee, kid?”

  “Sure, Mr. Sciarra. Thanks.”

  Third stop, a mail slot in the Bronx. A weedy front yard, a wire fence missing half its panels. A bird feeder hanging upside down on a loose nail. Heavy curtains and the occasional fat orange tabby blinking sleepily on the sill. Opening the mail slot, a whiff of cat urine, coffee, an undercurrent of departed fathers and sad childhoods. The Nose’s mother, Sweeney assumed.

  This went on until his promotion.

  ~

  Sweeney has his ideas about cops. For a period of his life, they were his study. State-sponsored thugs and ball breakers, power junkies and over-compensators, you ask his opinion. What kind of personality wants to spend his life like a school marm packing heat? And the Feds? The Feds are the worst of the bunch. Arrogance meets entitlement. Small town cops pulling down thirty grand a year are, by definition, not the sharpest tools in the shed. They don’t have the cojones for more than a little traffic-stop intimidation. But the Feds, in the absence of evidence, will manufacture their way to any conviction they want, rationalizing it away as being in the service of a larger good. Put a practiced Fed on a witness stand, show him a Bible and an oath, watch him dance like Martha Graham.

  Sweeney had it all figured out. Then he met Albert Broch. A Baltimore Jew displaced, for unnamed but surely profound sins, to a field office in Bozeman, Montana, Broch was the Federal marshal assigned to Sweeney’s rehabilitation.
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br />   His first few years, Sweeney was obliged to check in a couple times a month, give updates. Ten minute sessions with what he’d thought would be a distracted Fed, maybe a therapist. Instead, what he got was this six-foot-two linebacker with a skullcap and a third-degree black belt in karate, a couple marine tattoos smeared on his shoulders, and a cynicism as profound as his empathy. An office with tilted photos of fish caught on trips to Belize, Alaska, Maine. First day in Broch’s office, Broch said, “You need me to take you fishing.”

  “Not really my bag.”

  “Bag, no bag, I’m not asking.” They were both smoking, an ashtray between them. “Say it’s like golf. You’ve just been sentenced to spend the rest of your life slumming it in Hawaii, working a retreat for dentists and dermatologists. You either pick up golf or go nuts. It’s Montana? You go fishing.”

  So they’d floated the Madison River in Broch’s scratched and battered old Clacka, Sweeney up front in the knee locks, slinging a fly back and forth, wrapping every third cast around his neck. During that long, frustrating day, Broch gave him a running tutorial on fitting in. “Don’t lose yourself, Ted. You want my advice, that’s the main thing. I mean, button up your shirt, get rid of the gold chain, maybe go shopping at Corral West, but don’t forget who you are. I mean, who the fuck do they think they are.”

  A cop who gave a shit what was going on inside Sweeney’s head. It made no kind of sense at all. But it gave Sweeney the deepest sense of gratitude.

  Sweeney parks in the ten acres of asphalt surrounding the Bozeman hospital. Ties Zeke up in the bed of his truck and pours him a dish of water from a jug. “Don’t bite nobody.” Zeke curls up on his rug, resigned.

  Inside, after a visit to the nurse’s station for directions, Sweeney finds Broch half-upright on a mechanical bed, lost in a forest of flowers, enough Mylar balloons to float a lawn chair.

  Broch himself looks something like a collapsed umbrella held together with dried leather, swollen at the stomach. A needle hangs from the back of his hand. Nostrils plugged into an oxygen tube and the TV remote trembling in clawed fingers. “Ted Sweeney,” he says, his dark eyes brightening, “as I nearly live and breathe.”