EYEHEARTZOMBIES

Ray personally took me to the meeting place — this was a few days later — and a lot had happened between the council meeting and this meeting. For one thing, I had gotten to talk to Max. Seeing him at the office that day had been a bit of a shock. The following events had knocked that shock from my head, but in the hours and days following I had thought of it again. I caught up to him again and asked what he was doing back in town; he was supposed to be away at school.

“It’s a break. Next week is Thanksgiving, you know.”

“Oh…right.” I had completely forgotten about the holiday. Not having much of a family kind of does that to you; makes you forget all the things other people take for such concrete events. “So, maybe we can get together sometime. I mean, I’m going to be pretty busy for the next few days, but maybe after that. Like for Thanksgiving or something. Have a coffee and some pie or…” Max was shaking his head at me.

“You just don’t get it, do you? You don’t even care about the world that’s out there. You’d be perfectly happy to stay right here in this dump intimidating old ladies and kissing a different girl every night, wouldn’t you?”

“What? Max, what are you talking about?”

“Nothing, nothing. Never mind. Look, just…don’t ever get in my way, OK? I like you well enough, I guess. I don’t want to hurt anyone or anything. I just don’t want to be here — be like this — for the rest of my life.”

He walked away after that. I guess I was too young and naive to see anything in it. God, I wish I hadn’t been. I don’t know that it would have changed anything, though. Max was just that way.

The council meeting had been on a Sunday morning. On Tuesday, Ray called the office of the co-op I lived in and left a message for me. I was to meet him that night a few blocks away; we were going to the meeting. Help had been found.

That was a very nervous day for me. I don’t know why; I should have been excited to know that the people who had taken me didn’t want to throw me out when I fucked up. I should have been satisfied that Joey was going to be revenged. I should have been so many things, but all I remember being was nervous and scared. I think I was a lot smarter then than I thought.

Twilight came, and I left the apartment. I didn’t own a gun or I would have stuck it in a pocket. Instead I just carried a little medallion of some saint. I picked it up at a street carnival in Little Italy; I’m not even sure who it was or what they were supposed to protect me from or help me with. Hell, it could have been a curse on a chain for all I knew. I just felt I should take something with me. So I did.

I probably stood on that corner for two hours. It seemed like forever, with winter coming the temperature was dropping. I had worn a denim jacket which quickly became thin. I danced and stomped in place to keep warm. The action reminded me of the night Joey got iced. That thought warmed me pretty quickly and I didn’t noticed the cold again until my breath started to fog the air in front of me. I’ve always loved that about cold weather.

Just as frostbite began to eat away at my mind, Ray’s car pulled up. It wasn’t the same car as a few nights before. That had a been an older blue sedan, much like the one Joey and I had taken to the job. This was a sleek, new, midnight black coupe. Ray sat in the driver’s seat and he tossed the door open as he pulled up to the corner. I hopped in and closed the door behind me. We both said hello to each other, then rode in silence to the meeting place.

The meeting place turned out to be a dingy jazz club in the Lower East Side. I don’t think it even had a name above the door, but the two bouncers certainly seemed to know who should go in and who shouldn’t. Ray flashed them a smile and they moved aside. We went in and where immediately surrounded by cigarette smoke (not all from tobacco) and the smell of cheap booze. Ray must have spotted the trio we were meeting from the door, ’cause he led me straight to their table.

The three of them couldn’t have been more different. The one on the left end of the table was the largest man I had ever seen. He wasn’t amazingly tall or fat or anything, but his presence was like no other. His name was Lucca and he barely spoke any English. Turns out his Italian was flawless, but I didn’t speak any. He hunkered on the end of the booth, keeping prying ears from endangering their smaller owners.

Next to him, dressed in as spotless cream-colored suit was Simon. Simon was obviously the brains of the trio. He spoke quietly and quickly, almost too softly to hear and if you missed a word, it was gone forever. Simon didn’t relish having to repeat himself, and rarely would. I would come to find that he was a dead-on shot, too. A “Robin Hood of the Rifle” from what I saw.

The final member of the trio was one that I would come to be fast friends with. When I met him this first time, he was a scrawny, dirty Puerto Rican. I think he was all of fifteen years old. Manuel had a thumb in every pie — two if he could manage it — in the underworld. Said his old man was the same way and that he’d learned from the best. He was the one who had found the bastards that had killed Joey and part of his payment was that he got to tag along.

Ray and I sat down, he on the outside, and pleasantries were exchanged. Small talk for a few minutes, then the real business came out.

“So, you want us to help you get revenge. A vendetta, no?” Simon’s eyebrow arched at the question.

“Yeah,” I blurted, an anxious kid ready to be on the way.

Ray put a hand on my shoulder. “As he says, yes, we’d like your help. You’ve worked for us before. We remember those who do well, those who do what they say. We come back. Repeat customers are the best kind, you know.”

Simon looked closely at Ray. “I know,” he said, “more than I care to know about customers and this business. This racket is nothing more than a fight between siblings. An imagined insult here, a deliberate hit there.” Ray started to make signs of getting up and leaving. “But,” Simon put in quickly, “that doesn’t mean I don’t want to help. You guys have always lived up to your end of the bargain, too. There are a lot worse people to work for. Like these bastards you had us track down. Tell ‘em, Manny.”

Manuel — Manny, as Simon called him — began to tell us about the people that we had surprised. Sicilians, in their own “Mafia,” who had decided to interrupt and take over local crime activities. They had deliberately baited us into the sting, wanting to give us a taste of what was to come. That is, if we didn’t go along with them.

“You can’t be serious?” Ray asked.

“Oh, sir, very serious. These guys are…crazy. Loco. Very dangerous, I’ve heard. Very.” Manny looked scared and excited at the same time.

This whole time, Lucca had just sat on the side and watched us in silence. When the talk had finally brought up the fact that they were Sicilian, a pained look had crossed his face, but he seemed composed now. A few more details about the thugs were passed back and forth and Lucca slammed his fist into the table. A few of the glasses tipped and spilled or tumbled to the floor. “How and why are pointless. Let’s go. Kill.” His dense bass voice rumbled across the table. His eyes burned with a fire I feared. I found myself in complete agreement with him; I would have been brain dead to think otherwise.

“Soon, Lucca, soon,” Simon soothed him. He signalled to the bartender to send another round of gins to the table. Manuel and I had ginger ales. When the waitress brought the drinks and left with a slap on the ass from Lucca that sent her skidding across the alcohol-wet floor, barely keeping her feet, talk returned to the job at hand.

“I know where they are,” Manuel told us. The he pulled a map of the city out of his coat and pointed to a little red dot in the of the many warehouse districts. “They’re here most of the time.”

“Well, I think this has been most informative. You’ll each receive five thousand dollars when this is all through. I’ll expect to hear from you then,” Ray finished this sentence and got up, motioning for me to stay with the group. “Good night, gentlemen.”

Ray walked out of the club, leaving me with strangers, hired guns, killers.