The Boss

The old Packard convertible chugs through the gate into the lot. This yard, rusty autos and machine parts stacked against the walls, tough guys and grease monkeys lurking in the gaslight shadows, is the boss’ territory. It’s his fortress, and you don’t come here unless he summons you, or you have big business to discuss. Or you’re very stupid.

Sy drives. He’s the mouth and the negotiator; he’ll talk to the boss and ask for our due. I might chime in to correct a number or defuse a comment that might spark somebody too hot, but I’m mostly moral support. Sy talks. Tommy sits in back. He’s got a rusty old nine iron on the seat next to him, from the time when they used to let guys like us play the course before the members teed off. Don’t bring that, Tommy, I said. Just in case, he said. Just in case.

We park the Packard and cut the engine. The boss, standing with a few of his heaviest heavies, motions us over. We’re partners of his, employees, is how he might look at it, and though we ain’t been invited we got the right to talk to him.

Tommy waits in the car. Sy brings out the big book. It’s filled with little posters of the pictures we did for the boss. My nephew out on the coast makes ‘em, and we copyright ‘em and ship ‘em out and funnel the ticket money in to the boss’ businesses. Sy flips through the pages, pointing out each one – lurid, colored illustrations of beefy men and submissive, scantily clad women. The titles are all chosen by the boss, and they’re like a picture of his heart, a window into him. Brute. Force. Hammer. Crusher. Brute Force.

We’re owed, Sy says. We been doing a lot of work for you, and we ain’t got our due. We ain’t got what we agreed on.

The boss, swarthiest of an army of swarthy types, that big mole on his face and the scar that just misses it, always with a look on him like he’s tasted a lemon, nods as Sy flips through the book and points at the posters. Sy presses him, and the boss, after a long silent stare, which Sy returns steadily, though I know he’s quaking inside, takes a pen and begins signing the book. Page by page, signing grudgingly on the amount due for each picture.

He signs, and he hands the pen back to Sy. Get them eight hundred, he says, and one of his guys scurries off to wherever the safe or the cash box might be, not that I need to know, or want to. Sy makes a face, and opens his mouth to pop off about how eight hundred is like zilch, and the boss just signed on thirty grand, but I cut him short with a shake of my head and a look in my eye. Sy knows my looks, and this one says, it’s enough for now, and we keep our skins.

We trudge back to the Packard, the bills folded in my overcoat pocket, and Tommy says, how much? Sy waits til he starts the engine and is rolling toward the gates before he says, eight hundred, but it’s still too soon. Tommy turns red, throws his hat on he floor of the car. I try to shoot him the look, but it misses him by a mile. He stands up in his seat and starts yelling at the boss and his guys. Calling them things you can’t forget, things guys like these won’t be able to forget, and things about their mothers that no mother should hear.

I tell Tommy to sit down and shut the hell up, and tell Sy to move it, but it’s too late. Some of the boss’ guys are already surrounding the car and closing the gates. This may be it for us, I tell Sy. Yeah, he says. The guys are all around the car, but they ignore us and go at Tommy. Grab him by the coat, standing on the side rails of the car, ripping the nine iron from his hands. I stand up and reach over the seat. Trying to keep their hands from hitting him too much. I take a few punches, but I’ve had worse. One of the guys has a baseball bat. A big oak Louisville, stained with grease and dirt and God knows what. Watch out, Tommy, I yell, but he never sees it coming. There’s a whack like a bomb went off, and Tommy’s eyes roll up and I see his skull move in a way it ain’t supposed to move. He falls down in the back seat. The boss’s guys back off, slipping away from the car back into their pools of shadow. I jump over my seat and grab Tommy’s head in my hands. It feels all wrong, and he’s moaning and trying to look at me but he can’t even do that. I hold his head and cry, No Tommy, Tommy, no, Tommy no, but it’s over. He’s slipping away right in front of me.

Gun it, I tell Sy. Hit the gates.

…

We don’t have to say a thing after that. Like we always knew this time might come, and never wanted it to, but we would be ready to do our duty if it came. The last time the world needed good men to fight, we were already too old. But this is our fight and we can’t refuse it.

The accountant’s office is dark, like the flower shop it stands on top of. This little office of wood and paper, and smoke lingering under lampshades. Sy and I started it right out of school, and Tommy joined us not too long after. It may be the last time we see it. But it’s no time for sentiment. We have eleven hundred in the shop (I see it like a sign in the window, just like I’ve always seen numbers), and the eight hundred from the boss. It should be enough to get the guns we’ll need.

We go the back way, and we walk. Along the narrow numbered streets, the bushes give us cover, and the trees stretch above us. We march down the street in bright sunlight, like furious angels coming down from heaven through a long hallway of green. The Latins, no friends of the boss, nod as they see us pass. They sense it, what’s coming. They see us from their gardens and their alleyways, and they see the hardware under our coats. They let us go by with the faintest of smiles. The bushes rustle like a standing choir, and the falling flowers sing a soft, fragrant hymn of battle.