The Bobby Gold stories - Anthony Bourdain [14]
"He came recommended. What? I don't care for the guy's politics. I don't give a fuck he's got Yasser Arafat, John Tesh, Willie Nelson tattooed on his fucking face — he was cheap. And this other guy said he was good. It's a fuckin' chop shop he runs out there. Tommy V's crew brings him some cars now and again. You know . . ."
"Great. I gotta go all the way out to Queens. Get into it with some fucking hero from AB — "
"AB?"
"Aryan Brotherhood, Eddie. It's a jail thing. Guy's flashing swastikas all over his body, he's probably AB."
"Oh . . . Then you probably know the fucking guy. It'll be like old home week. Go break his kneecaps and reminisce about the good old days. I can't have this asshole getting over on me, Bobby. It's bad for business. People talk, you know? Tommy's people hear this fucking animal talking about how he pulled one over on me — where does it end? Next thing you know, I'm taking it up the ass from every deadbeat fuck in town."
"Peachy. And it's gotta be tonight?"
"Tonight, Bobby. It's gotta be tonight."
Their entrees arrived, but Bobby's appetite was long gone. He picked at his hanger steak, transfixed by the way Eddie chewed with his mouth open.
"Remember in school?" said Eddie, apropos of nothing, spraying food as he talked. "You weighed, what? One-fifty? One-sixty? I could have taken you! . . . Remember we were going to take off Kenny — the guy with the Merck coke? You wouldn't do it. You said he was too big. Remember?"
"Yeah," said Bobby. "I remember."
"That worked out. Jesus, we make money on that or what? I musta put like a six-to-one cut on that shit . . . That worked out okay."
"Okay?" said Bobby, snarling. "Okay? I got pinched with that shit! I did eight fucking years for that shit! I did your fucking time! Maybe you remember that part?"
"Oh, yeah," said Eddie, wiping his mouth with the end of a napkin. "I forgot."
Lenny's Auto Parts was located in Long Island City, on a deserted street lined with warehouses and fish wholesalers. Lenny's was at the very end, by the Long Island rail tracks; a big, unruly yard heaped with compacted and uncompacted cars, mountains of rusting fenders, windshields, chassis and tire rims, just barely contained by a corrugated steel fence. Next to the house, a garage with graffit-covered steel shutters. A dog barked somewhere when Bobby got out of his taxi. The light on the second floor was the only sign of life on the block, a single window situated over a dark office space, approached by a rickety outside staircase which wound around what looked like it was once a two-family house.
A Harley was parked out front, on a small square of untended lawn, the grass littered with candy wrappers and beer bottles. Bobby clumped up the stairs, not bothering to be quiet, and banged twice on the door.
The man who answered was enormous, a scowling, fat bastard with redwood-sized arms, a tangled beard with what looked like bits of potato chips caught in it, and a dense mural of tattoos, both professionally and self-applied, which said, "prison prison and more prison."
The knocking had clearly awakened the big man. As soon as he opened the inner screen door, his eyes still focusing, the words, "What is it?" coming out of his mouth, Bobby hit him with a short, chopping right straight into his windpipe. As he staggered back, Bobby crouched down, feet planted, and as the big, hairy beast struggled for his first gasp of air, gave him a roundhouse wallop to the temple. He fell flat on his back with a tremendous crash and didn't move.
"What choo do to my brother?" came a voice from the back of the room. Bobby looked to his right, across a shabby, communal living space littered with beer cans and take-out containers. Sitting in a clapped-out reclining chair, sipping beer from a tall-boy, was an even larger man — also bearded, also heavily tattooed. Worse, Bobby recognized him.
"Bad Bobby!" said the man. "Dude! You really fucked my little brother up. What brings you to mi casa, bro'?"
"Lenny?" said Bobby, flustered.
"Yeah," said the man in the chair, scratching an iron