The First Cut Read online

  I tried to stay distant, particularly from the boy, because I knew the odds of my staying out of prison were slim; the odds of my staying alive maybe slimmer. I had no real skills and couldn’t even get an interview at the McDonald’s where I’d picked up dinner thanks to my record.

  Meanwhile, my real work was to track down the guys I’d done my last job with to see if I could squeeze my share of the take out of them. Either way, I knew my stay in Tracy’s life would probably be short. A few laughs were all I could reasonably expect.

  The laughs weren’t coming tonight, so I lied about getting up early the next day to look for work and stood to leave.

  “Well, you seemed to think this thing was so funny, so why don’t you take it with you?” Tracy said, handing me the arrow. “I don’t want it in my house.”

  I clipped it to my head, bugged out my eyes and let my tongue hang out of my mouth, stumbling toward the door.

  “You’re terrible!” she said, pushing me out.

  ***

  “What the fuck?”

  I furrowed my brow at the kid behind the counter at the gas station as I handed over two twenties.

  “What’s your problem?” I asked.

  He pointed at my head. “Why do you have an arrow through your head?”

  “For God’s sake, it’s a prop. You know, ‘I’m a wild and ca-razy guy!’?” I said, pulling it off my head. I had forgotten I still had it on.

  The kid just shrugged while he rang me up; I began to wonder if anyone still remembered Steve Martin, and felt really old. I grabbed my 40 of Old Style from the counter and walked out. My cell phone started ringing as I headed over to my car.

  “Yeah,” I said after I had flipped it open.

  “So, the rumors are true,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “Lenny has paid his debt to society.”

  “Who is this? What do you want?”

  “I’m just someone who represents someone who appreciates the fact that you did your time quietly, that’s all. I understand you’ve been making inquiries.”

  “I just want to reconnect and see if I can get my share,” I said, leaning now against my car. “I need a stake, and I know there was plenty from that last job to go around.”

  “Of course. Why don’t we get together? We can discuss your situation. Why don’t you hop back in your car and drive out to the old packing plant on Cedar. Do you remember where that is?”

  “Sure,” I said. “We’re doing this now?”

  “Why not? Let’s get it taken care of,” said the voice. “I know that’s a little out of the way, but you’re not the only one looking for this money, and we don’t want to draw too much attention.”

  I got back in the car and started driving. The packing plant had been closed since before I went away, and numerous attempts by various elected officials to turn it into a park or a casino or whatever the flavor of the moment was had failed. It was mostly a place for kids to go throw rocks or shoot pellet guns. Or, for cons to meet.

  As I pulled through the broken gate and into the darkened complex of buildings, I thought about what the man had said: “Why don’t you hop back in your car?” How could he tell that I wasn’t in the car unless they were watching me? And if they were watching me, then this has been no idle attempt to reach me. I was being set up.

  I thought about going back to Tracy’s, or just driving away somewhere, but I was already here and so were they, I was sure. I might as well see where this went. I dimmed the lights and pulled around to the front of one of the buildings so my car would be cloaked in shadows, popped out the bulb in the overhead light and quietly opened the door. I slipped out, left the door open and made my way around behind the building.

  Walking around the outside of the buildings, I was careful to stay in the shadows. I was coming around the corner of the main part of the complex at the back of the property when I saw them. Two young goons, each with a pistol held to the side of his leg, watching around the corner back toward the street. They always sent new guys to do the dirty work, convincing them they had to make their bones before they could really start earning. I heard the crackle of what sounded like a walkie talkie.

  “You see him yet?” I couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like the guy from the phone.

  “Nope. But we’ll whack him when we do.”

  Great. A couple of kids brought up on “The Sopranos” and “Goodfellas.” Maybe I had a chance.

  “So, what’d this mook do?” said the one whose voice I didn’t recognize.

  “He stood up tall is what he did. But now he’s asking questions, and questions mean trouble. Coulda been a hero, now he’s a loose end. Let that be a lesson.”

  I slipped back around the corner of the building and weighed my options. I’d somehow driven into the plant without them seeing me, but knew I wouldn’t be so lucky if I tried to leave. There was a 10-foot chainlink fence around the perimeter of the property, and I’d make enough noise to draw their fire long before I dragged my 45-year-old ass over the top. I could wait them out, but they’d eventually see the car and bring enough guys to flush me out.

  Sticking a hand in each of my pockets, I took inventory: I had my cell phone – which I took a moment to set to vibrate – a handful of ketchup packets from the burger joint and Owen’s plastic arrow. Back in the car was the 40 of beer and nothing else. Not exactly the tools you’d pick to help get out of a jam. I hadn’t been out long enough to pick up a piece, and I’d bought the car used the week before and knew there wasn’t even a tire iron in the trunk.

  I slipped back to the car, made sure no one was watching and leaned in to pull the beer bottle from the passenger seat. I crawled back into the shadows and tried to think of a plan. I remembered something the guy on the phone had said: Other people were after the money, too. That was hard to believe eight years after the fact, but as long as they believed it, I could use it to my advantage.

  I poured out half of the beer from the bottle a few feet from the open driver’s side door of my car, then pulled out my phone and dialed 911. I told the operator there had been a shooting at the plant, then hung up and headed back toward the men.

  Four buildings made up the plant, with steel catwalks between them. There were no lights, but a three-quarter moon cast a little light and even more shadows, which I knew would help. The buildings were set up in a quad, with the goons standing behind the two buildings at the back, watching the road that came down in between them. I stepped lightly over to the point in the middle of all four buildings, just 30 yards or so away from them. I knew I had only one chance to make this work.

  Still out of their line of sight, I grabbed the half-full bottle by the neck and tossed it high and hard toward the catwalk above the men. Not waiting for it to make contact, I ran back toward my car. The bottle hit the steel beams, making a tremendous racket of shattering glass and clanging metal.

  “Shit!” yelled one of the men a second later. “I been hit!”

  “Somebody else is here,” yelled the other one. “Get down!”

  When I got to the car, I slammed the door shut, then opened and closed it twice more, hoping the goons would think there were several people on the grounds. Then, I prepped myself and lay down with my head in the pool of spilled beer.

  A few seconds later I heard footsteps approach.

  “Holy fuck! Somebody took that guy out with a crossbow!”

  “Where are they?” said the other guy. “Get down behind the car!”

  I laid still, the arrow affixed to my head and ketchup oozing from around each side and onto the ground. I had hoped the whole thing would look real enough in the moonlight to buy me some time.

  It did. I heard sirens in the distance, and for the first time in my life the cops were coming to help me rather than arrest me. I hoped.

  “Let’s bolt,” said one of the young cons. “We’ll just tell ’em somebody took care of him for us.”

  I heard their shoes kick up gravel as they ran out of the gate
and down the street. A car started and pulled away as the sirens got closer. I got up, pulled off the arrow, started to wipe the ketchup away from my head and prayed that the cop who responded would be an old guy with a sense of humor.

  Dog Days of Summer

  Janice and I were just getting into bed when I remembered I still had Lenny’s body in my trunk. You’d think you wouldn’t forget something like that, but it had been a long day.

  It was like one of those hourglass things where the sand falls from the top to the bottom. When Mr. Sharp put a bullet in Lenny’s head, the top was at least half full, maybe more. After that came a bunch of payment pickups, roughing up that Pakistani convenience store owner, getting groceries so Janice didn’t kick my ass and then a late dinner.

  The last grains of sand were falling as I drained my third beer, hit the can and then climbed the stairs to the bedroom. I sat on the edge of the bed, about to pull my shoes off. That last grain of sand teetered on the brink, ready to slip through to the bottom as my head hit my pillow. That's when I remembered Lenny.

  I laced my shoes up again and pushed myself up off the bed.

  “Where you goin’?” Janice said.

  “I just remembered some stuff I gotta do for Mr. Sharp,” I said. “Don’t bother waiting up.”

  "Right," she said. "Mr. Sharp. Why don't you just call him Uncle Florian?"

  "I don't want to get into that now. I gotta keep work and homelife separate, you know that."

  She knew the drill, even though we had never talked about what exactly it is I do. I was her second husband, and was well into this before we even met. She chooses to look the other way and accepts that she doesn’t have to work.

  I went out to the garage and keyed the trunk release. The lid popped up a couple inches. I’ll admit that I jumped back, thinking for a split second that Lenny was gonna come up out of there and tackle me. ’Course, if the guy could survive a slug in the brain, I guess he deserved to take a swing at me. Nothing moved, so I lifted the lid the rest of the way.

  Lenny was wrapped in a canvas tarp that had been in my trunk; he looked like the big bag of softball bats I carried around when I was coaching Janice’s kid, back before he went to live with his dad. If those kids only knew what I did with those bats between practices.

  I probably had enough gas to get to the station down the block, but I had coasted into the garage on fumes and didn’t want to risk getting stranded and having a cop show up to help me. Or worse, standing at a gas pump to fill up and have Mr. Sharp or one of the other guys drive by. That would lead to an inspection of my trunk and the very physical expression of the resulting disappointment.

  You might think it was overkill, but Mr. Sharp was specific about some things. He’d had his attorney come into the copy shop that was our front to give what he called a “tactical seminar.” Basically, he told us what we could and couldn’t do if we ever got pinched.

  This one had been Lenny’s fault, actually. He was with Phil, driving someplace to get rid of another body – we don’t make a habit of whackin’ guys, but sometimes people get out of line. Phil was speeding and he got pulled over. The cop asked if Phil knew why he had been stopped and Lenny leaned over and said, “It probably has something to do with that body in the trunk.” He was trying to be funny, figuring he’d have a good story to tell when they got back from the dump. As we learned later, he had instead given the cop probable cause, and because the cop had a hard-on for Phil – something about an old high school grudge over a girl, if I remember – that meant a search of the car, discovery of the body and 10 to 20 for Phil. Lenny somehow avoided doing time, and in hindsight, assuming you can reconsider from beyond the grave, he probably wished he’d been in prison instead of on the wrong side of Mr. Sharp’s Glock.

  So, Mr. Sharp would not be happy if he found out I’d driven around all day and come home with Lenny’s body in my trunk. That left one option: I had to bury Lenny in the backyard.

  It had started to rain, which I took as a good sign. Wet ground is easier to dig than rock-hard dry stuff, right? Wrong. I was in the darkest part of our yard, behind the detached garage in a little space bordered by thick bushes on two other sides. No one was likely to see me. My neighbor to the north, Bill, was a sheriff’s deputy in the next county over. He didn’t have jurisdiction over much of what we did, or even his own neighborhood, but I didn’t need him seeing me bury a body. I actually liked having him next door. Mr. Sharp never came to visit, and neither did any of the other guys. My home was my sanctuary.

  Two spadefuls in, I realized the wet dirt was going to stick to the blade, essentially doubling the time it would take to dig a decent-sized hole. I rationalized that a half-decent hole was good enough, got about two feet down and threw Lenny in. The canvas came loose, leaving him sprawled there face up. I covered him with dirt, stomped it down good and then spread some leaves and wood chips over the space. The shadow of the garage keeps grass from growing back there, so I wasn't tearing up pristine lawn to bury the idiot.

  It was after three in the morning when I got back in and later still by the time I’d showered, put on fresh boxers and a T-shirt and crawled into bed. Other than change the pitch of her snoring as she shifted to accommodate me, Janice didn’t acknowledge my return. So much the better. I felt halfway through the next day’s ration of hourglass sand, and needed to catch some sleep without answering questions.

  When I came down later that morning, Janice was already gone. I had a bowl of cereal and stale coffee from the pot she’d left on the burner, and then called in. Carl told me Mr. Sharp needed a ride and that I should come in.

  As I poured the rest of the foul coffee into the sink, I looked out and saw that the spot where I’d dug the night before was easy to see. I’d have to deal with that when I got back. Janice was a go-along to get-along kind of gal, but even she would wonder about a fresh hole in the lawn.

  As I backed the car out, I heard a yelp and then a crunch. I got out and saw Toby, Janice’s old Labrador, wedged under my back tire. The old bag of bones must’ve been sleeping in the driveway, trying to grab some heat from the sun-baked driveway. He was deaf and half-blind, so he probably didn’t even notice that the car had started. I got in and pulled forward a couple of feet to get the wheel off of Toby's body.

  I thought about loading him in the trunk, taking him someplace and then telling Janice that he must have run away, but the last thing I needed was a dead dog in the trunk when I picked up Mr. Sharp. Then I got an idea. I’d bury him with Lenny. Janice would still be sad and/or pissed, but at least it would explain the hole in the ground.

  I called Carl and told him my car wouldn’t start. That would cause headaches, too, but I’d rather deal with that than the alternative. I steered a wheelbarrow out from the garage, loaded up Toby’s body and carted him around back. I dug up the hole, uncovering Lenny. I couldn’t stand to look at him in the daylight, so I quickly threw Toby in on top of him, and filled in the hole.

  I hosed off the shovel, leaned it against the house to dry and went back inside to shower and change again. I called Carl back, and he told me to head to the copy shop to pick up Mr. Sharp. It was a pretty uneventful day, and knowing that my trunk was devoid of dead bodies – human, canine or otherwise – I was able to relax.

  When I got home early that evening, Janice was standing at the sink, drinking a glass of lemonade and looking out the window into the backyard. Without turning, she asked, “What were you digging up last night?”

  “What make you think I was digging anything up?”

  “Do we have to play this game? You disappeared for two hours last night, and now there is a bare patch of dirt at the back of the yard.”

  “OK, Columbo, so I was digging. But it was this morning. Last night I was just doing some stuff for Mr. Sharp, like I said.”

  “What, you're suddenly a gardener?” she asked.

  I told her about hitting Toby and burying his body out back.

  “I knew you’d want
to be a part of that, but you can’t just leave a dead dog lying around,” I said. “I figured you’d want him close, so I put him in the back yard. I thought we could go out there tonight with candles and say something about him. You know, like a service.”

  I thought sure she’s slug me for killing her dog. Proving I know nothing about women, she instead grabbed me in a hug and said, “That’s sweet. You really did like him, didn’t you?”

  That night, candles in hand, we stood next to the final resting place of Toby and Lenny. Janice nudged me, and I realized she wanted me to say something.

  "Well, um, Toby, you were a great old dog," I said. I couldn't keep from thinking about Lenny. "And, ah, you made some dumb decisions, but I hope you're in a better place."

  Janice scrunched her face in confusion and looked at me. I shrugged and raised my candle as if giving a toast. She said a few words about having had fun with Toby over the years, and then blew out her candle. I did likewise and we went inside.

  The next couple of days were uneventful. Workwise, anyway. Janice and I actually got along better than we had in a while. If I’d known a dead dog could lead to some action in the sack, I would have run over him a long time ago.

  I came home one evening that week to find my neighbor, Bill, sitting on a lawn chair on my deck, drinking a beer. Another bottle sat at his feet, a puddle of condensation showing he had been there a while.

  “Hey, hope you don’t mind,” he said. “Thought I’d catch you.”

  “No problem,” I said, taking the beer from his outstretched hand. I wiped the sweat off on my pants, twisted the cap off and took a drink. “So, what’s up?”

  “I wanted to borrow your shovel,” he said, pointing to where it was still propped against the side of the house. “Sally's been wanting me to plant some hostas. She's at her mother's for a few days, so I thought I'd surprise her. I busted the handle on mine and haven't had the chance to get a new one."