Sweeney on the Rocks Read online

  “Jesus, Broch. You look like shit.”

  Broch wheezes out a feeble, squeezebox laugh. “First honest thing I’ve heard in weeks.”

  “How’s that now?”

  “Doctors, nurses, cousins, uncles, my own mother, they’re all giving me that whole, another six months, another year spiel…” Broch turns off Dr. Phil and waves the remote. “My own mother. Ninety-two years old. You’re getting better, she says. Trying to convince herself, poor thing.”

  “How bad is it?” Sweeney finds a chair in the midst of the flora.

  “The cancer? It’s doing fine. Ate up the lungs, had a taste of liver. Now they tell me it’s in my head. They say, Can we cut you open again? But I say, tell me, what good will come of it? Apart from giving you the practice. And practice you don’t need.”

  “Anything I can do for you?”

  “Shoot me?” But then he considers Sweeney’s face. Unlike most cops, Broch never lost sight of the serendipity of circumstance, the roll of the dice. Given a bit of bad luck, he might have been the one running for cover, ducking down into WITSEC.

  Sweeney swallows against a bolus of pity. Here’s the price, right here in front of him. The cover charge for the good days. For the top shelf booze and first lovely cigarette every morning. It’s like one of Eddie’s theories. We’re finally allowed only equal measures of happiness and pain. Broch has enjoyed his life. Four kids. Because, he said, there’s nothing like watching someone else come awake to the world. He fished because there’s nothing like the hard metallic zing of your reel as a Florida permit finally, finally takes your fly. And he smoked because it makes everything better. But this is where it goes, this is what it comes down to. A stomach swollen with fluids and a patronizing purgatory of Dr. Phil.

  “Jesus,” Sweeney says, “Al…”

  “Nah, sure, you know. I’m just kidding. I mean, hey, right? Look at this setup.” He waves an arm. “I got twenty-four hour morphine. I just punch this little button, right? I never seen what the big deal was, but man, this junk is dyn-o-mite. They’re telling me, another few weeks? I start getting the Dilaudid. That’s how I know I’m terminal. They don’t feed you the quality junk unless you’re ready to go. So how you been?”

  “Oh, you know.” Sweeney turns his baseball cap in his hands.

  “Got something on your mind, though, yeah?” Reduced to a skeleton, Broch’s eyes remain sharp, interested. He’s always had the ability to flatter by interest.

  “Nah, nothing.” Sweeney’s problems fade under the cold, faint smell of formaldehyde, of feces.

  “Keeping your nose clean?”

  “Yeah. Clean nose.”

  “Listen, hey, Ted. Come over here a little closer. Give me your hand.”

  Sweeney cradles Broch’s fingers between his own. The arrangement of unnaturally heated bones.

  “You’re my poster child. You know that, right?”

  “For what, Al?”

  “WITSEC. I mean, look at you, man. When you got here, you were a wreck. I’d have laid even odds on your backsliding or, forgive me, worst case, a suicide. Now you got your own business. Got that level-headed girlfriend of yours. And Marilyn? Who’d have ever guessed, right? You’re getting on with your life. I’m proud of you, my man.”

  Sweeney holds that skeletal hand. “I appreciate it. Means a lot. It does.”

  Broch eases back into his pillow, wincing. “You wouldn’t believe the derelicts we’re getting through the program now. Who’d have thought that wiseguys would be the good old days? Gangbangers? Don’t know how to keep their mouths shut. San Diego put this Hispanic chica up in a hotel room… next thing you know she’s got all her old MS-13 amigos up there in the Jacuzzi…week later, she’s washed up off…Imperial Beach pier.” Broch’s fading, closing his eyes.

  Sweeney sits for a long minute, watching him breathe. Then he stands, touches the clothes-hanger shoulder.

  On the cold concrete stoop of the hospital, Sweeney sits smoking, turning the cigarette in his fingers.

  Life’s what kills you, not cigarettes. Smokes may trim off a few years, sure, but what are those years worth? Those last five years, from seventy-five to eighty? Take ‘em. Take ‘em.

  If he’s on top of his game, Sweeney can rationalize his way through a pack’s worth of cynical philosophy a day.

  A pair of cheerful nurses walk toward Sweeney, chattering. Coming up the stairs, they part for him, giving him a good eighteen inches on either side. Despair might not be contagious but why risk it.

  Donnie Moretti’s getting too old for this shit.

  Capo in the dissolute Luchesse borgatta (a good family in long, long decline), these days he’s more or less sanitized. Twelve, fifteen years ago, if any of his old amicis had ever read a paper, they’d have seen how their days was numbered. RICO comes along, it’s only a matter of time. Moretti’s many things, but he ain’t no fool. He’d read the tidal charts of bad news, started putting his money in chain stores. All these retail skid marks up and down Brooklyn? Payless Shoes, White Castle, Subway? Half of them are his. He’s a civic leader. And that may sound good but it’s no free lunch, believe me. Air conditioner’s breaking down here, exhaust fan’s taking a dump over there. It’s like having a job.

  But now and then, just a few times a year, along comes a score that’s too good to pass up. An excuse to dip a toe back in the life. He’s careful about it—there’s more to lose these days—but he looks forward to it, too. He likes getting that feeling back. Turning up the temperature in his veins.

  This diamond thing, for instance.

  He hasn’t called a Saturday afternoon sauna meet, for what? Six months at least. But here he is slouched in an Astoria steam room, wrapped in white towels, sipping his day’s first and only Scotch. He swirls the melting ice. In the warm, amniotic steam, the humid air, he’s a creature from the Paleolithic. The heavy flesh rolling on his bones, a Sicilian pelt going gray across his back. Too old for the feint and jab, the juking and jiving, but also too old for anything else.

  Whacking that little pissant Georgie…it had helped put him back on track somehow. Gave him the taste again. Some people wait their whole lives to find the one thing they’re good at. Donnie’s known it since he was a kid.

  Things have changed, though. When he was first coming up into the life, pulling down his first scores, getting together a crew, you still had something to aspire toward. The goals came to you on a platter. Get made, work up to Capo, higher. But these days, all the old legends are in stir or dead, all the old schemes kaput. It’s gotten to where just keeping your head above water is the best you can do. Staying out of prison has become a matter less of discretion and more of blind luck.

  From the wall of steam in front of him, three pale, towel-wrapped forms emerge. They say his name, find seats on either side, slouching, closing their eyes. “You and your steam rooms, Donnie. Swear to Christ, I lose ten pounds every time we pull a score.”

  “No wires, no cameras.”

  “You always been smart that way.”

  “Get your nose outta my ass, Lukey.”

  A pause while the men settle into the heat.

  “We got one more guy coming.” Donnie dabs his bald head with a towel.

  The three, trading glances. “Thought Tony was in Montana.”

  “He’s someplace. Someplace that ain’t here.”

  The fourth man arrives a few minutes later, unfamiliar. Younger. Mid-twenties. Fit. The tattoos: Christian crosses, Maltese crosses, a Madonna across his back, a string of inked rosary beads around his neck. He’s got a thick, drooping mustache from a previous decade and Moretti’s unfortunate recession of a chin. He sits across from Moretti. Says formally, “Buon giorno, il mio zio.”

  “Buon giorno, il mio nipote.”

  Moretti’s face, its blunt nose and pinched eyes, is meant for sour expressions, for biting into rotten things. But now, goddamn, he grins fondly. “Boys, meet my nephew, Domenico.”

  “Nephew, boss?”
/>   “Baby sister’s baby son, fresh off the boat. Come to America to make his fortune. Ain’t that right, Domenico?”

  “America, you betcha.”

  “He don’t speak much English. Tell ‘em all your English that you know there, Domenico?”

  “Non capisco…”

  “Recite il vostro inglese.”

  “Motherfucker bastuhd cock-uh-sucker. Where’s my money gimme my money. I put cock in your ass. What are you, sick mane-ee-ack? Where’s my money, gimme my money.”

  “Domenico wants to see the world, don’t you boy. Vedi l’america.”

  “Si! Si, si. Vedi l’america.” The enthusiasm, however, is belied by his expression, or lack of it. The leaden eyes.

  “Okay, here’s what we got.” Donnie sighs heavily, leans back, breathing through his thick lips. “Tony’s gone off the reservation. His kid brother, too. Normally, you know, no big deal. He’s off on a drunk or something. But the kind of coin we’re talking here, these rocks, he knows the consequences he don’t call in.”

  “You ain’t heard from him?”

  “Not since last night. He was talking about Russians. Whatever. Fact is, he ain’t called in. That means either, number one, he’s dead, or B, he’s found the rocks and he’s taking them down to the nearest pawn shop, right? Have to be a gonzo fucking pawn shop, but still. Number C…okay, three possibilities. Number C, he’s off with the Russians or maybe they’ve punched his ticket. Whatever. Anyway, I want all four of you on a plane to Montana. Lukey, you’re watching Jake here. Jake, you’re watching Mike. Delmonico here is watching all of you. First thing tomorrow or tonight, I want you a find that little fag Tony. You find his little pissant brother. Call me every six hours. You don’t find those rocks by, what’s today. Wednesday? You don’t got good news by Friday, what time is it? You don’t call me Friday two o’clock with good news, I’m coming out there myself. You’ll be around long enough to see me deep fry your own nuts in garlic.” Moretti eases back, scowling, flush.

  Jesus, this is fun.

  Donnie’s nephew, having followed at least some part of this exchange, tries on a grin. Here’s America. Che divertisi! The real thing. What he came to see. Wiseguys. From here, all he wants, the next big thing (maybe after the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty), he wants to see somebody get whacked.

  At sixteen, Sweeney had his height but not his weight. He was all Adam’s apple and chin, elbows and knees. His ears flapped like awnings in a breeze. After the Nose had spotted his gym bag and boxing gloves in the corner—“Boxing gloves? You a fighter kid?”—he started feeding him some strong-arm work. “You look kind of, what’s that word you like, innocuous, yeah. You can take folks by surprise, right?”

  By the age of seventeen, Sweeney was the backup, the third of a trio, Eddie being the mouth, a thug named Jerry “Miracle Whip” Mayo the principal muscle, then Sweeney watching for shifty-eyed heroes, furtive 911 dialers. Slow work, for the most part, but he knew how to grab a fistful of shirt, knew how to draw blood from a nose.

  Sweeney’s father had been a boxer in the Navy, a speedy little welterweight with a glass chin. But when his father was feeling good at the start of a morning, he would stand before a steamy bathroom mirror in towel and shaving cream, shadow boxing in the loose-fisted, easy-limbed fashion of a man accustomed to five pound gloves.

  A small man who compensated for his size by overdressing (fedora, tie, cufflinks), Davey Aniello was a second generation émigré who put a portion of every paycheck into a college fund for his kids. They were going to have all those American opportunities. The night after Sweeney’s first arrest (a tag for scalping forged tickets outside Yankees stadium), Davey drove his son home in that particular kind of gelled silence reserved for fathers disappointed in their sons.

  The cuffs had bruised Sweeney’s wrists. He sat rubbing at the marks.

  Pulling up to the house, wipers working against a light rain, Sweeney’s father said, “Never thought I’d raise a criminal.”

  Sweeney took a sullen fifth.

  “I won’t raise a criminal.”

  Sweeney watched the wipers.

  “You got three strikes, son. This is number one. Number three? You’re out on your ear. Believe me that I’ll do it. It’ll break my heart, but I’ll do it.”

  It would take another year to rack up strikes two and three. Four more years before Sweeney’s father was found dead in his own backyard, barbeque spatula in hand and two bullet holes in his back. Some part of Sweeney had always felt that it was just a matter of time, that they would eventually look back on their years of not speaking as a lost opportunity. He’d catch himself thinking, “After Dad and me patch things up…” But now that opportunity was forever gone. Death seals every envelope. They never caught the fuckers who did it, and the cops wrote it off as a break-in robbery gone bad. A Mason jar full of loose change and small bills went missing. But Sweeney had more poisonous suspicions, believed somehow that it had something to do with him. One more straw to add to his camel’s back of guilt.

  Anyway, long story short, that year following his first tag, and in part to mitigate his father’s disappointment, Sweeney began spending more time at Sparky’s gym down by the docks. Three nights a week. The rich odors of saltwater and diesel exhaust and rotting fish, the sounds of seagulls and garbage scows. All of this mixed with gym-sweat and damp towels, liniment. Sparky’s scornful Bronx rising up from behind the heavy bag. “Hit it, hit it, don’t kiss it.” Afterwards, the showers had a hard, painful spray that cut through his befuddlement. The sting of a solid right against a padded helmet, the water-bottle taste of a mouthpiece, blood in your mouth and the blinding, purging, satisfying loss of yourself in second or third round anger. This was manhood: Gulls and barges and blood.

  Sweeney’s problem? Rage. When he remembered his training (“Dance, kid, dance. Balance, keep moving, jab, watch that left, up on your toes, keep those legs moving.”) he had potential. He was a workhorse. He had his father’s speed and a good reach, and could dance away from the slower bulldogs in favor of quick combinations. But all it took was for some nickel-and-dime wannabe to tag him a couple times and he’d forget it all, wade in with blind abandon, windmilling through a red sea of repeated “fuck yous.” From there, he’d either wake up flat on the canvas or standing over some other poor kid. Out on the streets, he was Shakespeare. In the gym, however, he was Jukebox. Plug in the right kind of quarter, you’d get a show.

  We all choose those aspects of our lives to make sacred, and Sweeney came to hold nothing holier than the unfettered dance of two men set toe to toe.

  ~

  Driving back from the hospital, down the east side of Bozeman pass, Sweeney turns on his cell phone, checks messages. With his own voice briefly in his ear, he punches buttons to hurry things along. He sounds wheedling, needy. Please, please,please leave a message, is the effect.

  He thinks, I don’t want to be this guy no more.

  Two messages. A widow that hires him a few times a month to unplug toilets, clean gutters, carry dog food up to the pantry. She pays him by the resentful minute, counting out dimes from a jar. The second caller, a dairy farmer in Paradise Valley. “Yeah, I seen your ad. My kid’s up to his mother’s, so I need somebody a muck out my milking barns for me. Gimme a call.”

  This is what he’s become. A peon, a serf, a nobody. A busker holding out his hat for pennies. A shit shoveler.

  Next call is to Cal Merchant. “I got a hypothetical.”

  “Lay it on me.” In the background, the splatter of skillets, the clank of cutlery. Cal making himself lunch.

  “Let’s say Great Aunt Sally died. Left you an uncut rock she smuggled out of, out of… Romania. During the war. Something like that. Who would you go to in town who’s sharp enough to make an appraisal, tell you what it’s worth, discrete enough to…”

  “Julietta Siegal.” Cal interrupts.

  “Sure, okay.” Of course. Kicking himself. “Thanks, man.

 
All I needed.”

  “Now me, I got a hypothetical.”

  Sweeney gets a feeling. “Okay…”

  “Guy from back east, heavy Brooklyn accent, shows up in downtown smalltown notown Montana for no very good reason. Ten years ago.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Works hard to fit in. Volunteers like he’s paying penance. Heavy bad Karma tonnage on this guy’s shoulders.”

  Sweeney gives Cal his own line: “Farfetched, but okay.”

  “One day, after ten years of calm surf, six feet and glassy, he starts in with bodies on porches, uncut diamonds, that sort of shit.” Cal’s voice is light, but carefully so. “My hypothetical, what’s a brother to think?”

  Sweeney drives one handed, the phone going sweaty upside his ear.

  Thirty seconds later, Cal says, “You there?”

  “Yeah, but maybe we could pick this up again in a few days?”

  “I’m just saying. Trust somebody. Maybe? I don’t know.”

  “Appreciate it.”

  “Pas de problem.”

  On top of everything else, Cal Merchant, best friend he’s got (cousin Eddie, Part II), is asking to be trusted. Asking for it. Implying, of course, that trust has previously been absent. Which isn’t friendship at all. And which, when you close one eye and squint at it, is exactly right.

  Shit.

  ~

  The thing about Rockjaw? The mix of people. Any given afternoon, a switch operator for Burlington Northern will be drinking his suds beside a gimpy rancher who personally owns fifty-thousand acres of good graze along the Yellowstone. A medicinal marijuana caretaker will be hitting practice balls beside one of the early artists for Mad Magazine. A wolf biologist will be shooting stick with the bass player from Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Sweeney’s worked for them all one time or another.

  His favorite clients? The disaffected rich. He’s in the minority in this, but yeah. San Diego real estate sharks looking for distance from their ex-wives. Privileged sons from Connecticut finding their identities as snowboarding potheads. B-list movie stars and Jesus freaks who built their nut wholesaling cocaine in Miami; gallery owners from SoHo and trucking magnates from Omaha. There are so many ways to make money in this world, and Sweeney’s curious about them all.