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Written by Timothy Jay
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Sunday, 21 January 2007 |
 “Drink your drink, son,” the boss said. “Don’t look so glum. It ain’t the end of the world.” Then he leaned in closer, his barrel chest scraping the table top between them. “You know how many times I’ve had to clip one of my friends? That’s the hardest part of this thing, son. That’s the hardest part about being important. Because if there’s one thing you’ve learned these last few years, it’s either him or you. That never changes. And you sure as hell don’t want it to be you.”
Kelly Hall picked up his bottle of beer and drained it. He looked across the table at his boss, then out the dirty windows of the bar, searching for the right words and knowing that he would never find them, that they were gone and forever lost in the jagged shards of broken reason. Outside the wind destroyed things. The waitress came by and placed two more frosted brown bottles on the table without saying anything.
“I know what I gotta do,” Kelly said. “There’s nothing wrong with that. What gets me, and I mean it, boss, it keeps me up nights, is that it’s like you said: if it ain’t him it’s me. That’s what bothers me about this whole thing, I guess.”
“Look,” the boss said quietly, leaning back and folding his arms. His eyes held stone and ice and enormous burdens and they were sharp as razors. “You get an order from somewhere higher than you, saying you got to do something, that means you gotta do it, or else you get done. That’s all I meant. I ain’t tryin’ to say we got to stone you.”
“I know that,” Kelly said. He lifted his beer and drained half of it. “I guess I…I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I know what’s expected of me and now…now I just feel…weak.”
“You are weak,” the boss said. He stared bullet holes into Kelly’s sullen face. Kelly looked away, embarrassed. “Just do what it is you gotta do, son,” he finished, and sipped the cold beer. “And everything is roses.”
“Yeah,” Kelly said, and finished his bottle. He stood up and put on his tattered denim jacket, popping the creased and dirty collar. He walked over to the boss and put a hand on his giant shoulder. “Thanks,” he said, his voice a tremor. “Sorry.” The boss patted Kelly’s hand, the skin young and smooth and not yet beaten by so many dirty chores and poisoned memories.
Once Kelly had walked out into the cold wind of the shining Chicago afternoon, the boss picked his cellular phone from the table. He dialed Frank Valley’s home.
“Frankie,” he said, his voice coarse and severe. “Do me a favor. Come down to the bar. I need to talk to you ‘bout somethin’ sensitive.” He disconnected the line. Ten minutes later, Frank sat across the table from the boss in the wooden chair Kelly had abandoned.
“I need you to clip Tony tonight,” the boss said.
“I thought you had Kid Kelly on that.”
The boss leaned over the table, his voice an icy whisper.
“Kelly's become sort of a problem child. He's gonana try something irrational. I need you to clip him too, plug him full of reason.” the boss said, smiling. Frank nodded, his face stern.
***
When Kelly left the bar and crossed the lot to his old beaten blue Dodge pickup, he inhaled deeply and let it out like a slow poisonous leak. He was afraid. He fished the cellular from out of his pocket and dialed his friend Tony.
“Tone, it’s Kelly…Look, man, it’s either now at the bar, in the next fifteen minutes, or it’s tonight at about midnight at his house…I gotta tell you, right now's the perfect time...No, he’s alone right now…Well, goddammit, Tony, I told you to be ready…Yeah, I’m fine…Just hurry your ass down here…Don’t forget the passports…”
Kelly hung up and waited in his pickup, his brow sweating, the Beretta cleaned and clicking in his shaking hands. |
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