Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [125]
“Your little bullshit game is over as of today,” the man in the jogging suit said. “You walk away from it now and we’ll forget all about the crap you pulled.”
“You go back to your friends and tell them that,” the one in the turtleneck said, a touch of a lisp to his words. “Tell ’em this is their last fuckin’ chance to leave the table alive.”
“Give me a nod so I know you understand what we’re tellin’ you,” the jogging suit said.
Dead-Eye stared at the two of them and slowly nodded his head, beads of sweat falling onto the dark dirt by his feet.
The man in the turtleneck reached a hand into the side pocket of his leather jacket and brought out a color Polaroid. He held the photo close to Dead-Eye’s face.
“This is your boy, am I right, cop?” the man asked.
Dead-Eye didn’t move. But his eyes flashed anger. They had gone beyond touching a cop. They were touching family. He knew now there could never be any turning back. Lucia and the Apaches were alike in only one respect. They were both in this fight to win. And, Dead-Eye realized, looking at Eddie’s picture, that the only winners were going to be those who were left alive when the fight was over.
The man in the sweat suit snapped open a black switchblade and watched as his partner slid Eddie’s photo over its sharp point. He smiled at Dead-Eye, flashing the photo and the knife. There was a large X drawn in felt tip crossing over his son’s face.
“This might hurt a little,” he said.
He stuck the knife and the photo into Dead-Eye’s right arm.
Dead-Eye’s knees buckled and his arms shook. The knife wound awoke every sharp pierce his body had ever felt, from bullet to blade. His lungs screamed for mercy and he swallowed back a mouthful of bile. He gave in to the pain, wanting nothing so much as to fall to the ground and rest his head on the dirt track. Wanting so much for it to stop.
But Dead-Eye didn’t fall. He looked out through a blurred vision knowing he now had the one thing he needed to get even. He had the faces of the two men etched across his eyes.
“You go back to your friends,” the man in the jacket said. “Tell ’em about our little meeting. Find out how serious they are about dying.”
“And it ain’t just them that goes down,” the other man said. “It’s everybody attached. Sons, daughters, wives, husbands, even your fuckin’ pets.”
The man in the sweat suit pulled the knife blade out of Dead-Eye’s arm and held it out for him to look at. “Take the picture,” he said, smiling. “Keep it for his scrapbook or his coffin. I’ll leave it to you to decide.”
He watched the men cross over a steep ridge, walking in slow strides, their backs to the sun, guns holstered at their sides. Dead-Eye waited until they disappeared from sight, then he bent down and picked up his son’s photo. He held it in both hands, blood from the stab wound running down his arm, across his fingers, and dripping onto the picture. He leaned the weight of his back against the fence, his face up, his eyes closed, reveling now in the sharp pain he felt. He stayed there for close to an hour, listening as clusters of other runners came charging past, puffing their way through a morning drill. He was sweating, willing the pain to come on stronger, knowing he would need the strength of that pain to fuel his anger further and carry him through to the end of his task.
With his arm still leaking blood, Dead-Eye wiped the flow of sweat from his face and checked the timer on his stopwatch. He then shifted his feet and picked up where he had left off. Dead-Eye continued down the reservoir path and finished his run, holding his son’s photo crumpled in his right hand.
The pain his only comfort.
• • •
GERONIMO AND REV. Jim stood against the railing and watched the field of eight horses canter by. The sixth race at Belmont Park was about to start. With racing programs folded open in their hands and small pencils hooked over their ears, they were trying to decide which horse to wager on.
“Number three just took a shit,” Rev. Jim said, scanning the program for the horse’s name.