Little Village vs. NaNoWriMo: Day 10

…

Shit can meet fan in plenty of ways. Sometimes it involves a lot of screaming. In this case, it involved a sinking feeling between Stan and I that we were well and truly fucked.

I like things predictable, I like things slow. That’s not on account of my health, not on account of how I make my nut these days, not something I learned in prison, or on the force, not shot nerves or some come-to-Jesus business. It’s the way I’ve always been, I guess: eye of the storm when my parents fought, quiet kid among my loud elders, the go-to guy, the stand-up guy around my jackass friends.

And when I graduated high school, I could’ve had a quiet, normal life. But I needed some craziness around me to push against, wanted to want that quiet, normal life more than I wanted to live it. I moved furniture for a while, drove a delivery truck for a couple of years, made a few bucks on the side transporting things that fell off the backs of other trucks, might’ve had a few things fall out of mine.

I was a good kid, took that as a given. Clean, a good guy. But you can’t prance around like Mother Teresa all the time, you know? How would you know that you’re a good guy if you never tested the idea? How would you know that you’re a good guy if you’ve never met a bad guy? Shook his hand, had a drink with him? Maybe even got to know him, helped him out once in a while?

After a few years, I got ambitious, and don’t let them tell you different: an ambitious kid in my circumstances has a few choices lined up for him, and for good reason. Thought about becoming a firefighter, but it would’ve helped if I’d been Irish or Polish. I mean, realistically. Local stuff, folks looking out for their own, nothing wrong with that. Could’ve looked into the outfit, but somehow that wasn’t for me. I liked knowing those guys from the other side, and the handful of times I did business for them, it was always through my childhood buddy Frankie Priore, who kept the lines drawn.

So I became a police.

I thought about all this while waiting for Stan to come back with our coffees, sinking into an overstuffed old couch and watching people mill around. Mostly college kids, some professor types. I guess. Still getting used to the town, and wondering right now why kids somehow think it’s cool to dress like a tramp, lounge around on furniture the Goodwill would’ve sent to the curb, and pretend they’re not extending their childhoods for a while, pretend they’re not here so they can learn what they got to learn to get a nice little job in a nice little office and turn into the people they’d sneer at now.

Yeah, I’m feeling my age lately. But that’s all right, happens to all of us if we’re lucky. Worse, I could be like this fuck my age sitting ten feet away, blazer over a t-shirt, jeans and hiking boots, holding his book up so everyone can see what he’d be reading if he wasn’t looking over it whenever a girl walked past. Act your age, pops. It’s not a bad thing.

But we all got something to push against, I guess. This might be me talking myself up a bit, distracting myself from what’s to come.

I like things predictable. Even when it all fell apart and I got kicked off the force and cooled my heels in Pontiac for a while, even when Rosso got his hooks into me…I can’t say that the work disagreed with me. People make their decisions, and I helped remind them of the consequences. No heartburn over that, and no real grey areas. Not morally, and not time-wise. Gamblers are creatures of habit, and I’ve only had to chase a few down, only had to work hard to find one (and he wasn’t really a gambler, just some dumb fuck got a big head his first time in—you’re forgiven, Kevin Larson, for not knowing how the game’s played, and never let me see your crooked face again). Just a series of simple propositions, kinda like gambling. Get a job, talk to the deadbeat, job’s done.

This was different. Not just because we’re in alien territory.

“Shut her up” means one thing, can only mean one thing. People don’t shut up—people who blab like Kevin’s gal, especially—for love or money. Not on their lives. It’s a shame, and ever since leaving the Doc’s place, I’d been thinking about how we’re born squealing and never stop.
Which put some pressure on us. When someone owes enough long enough for us to get involved, time’s not really all that important. Some get lucky or creative, and pay up on our terms. Others need more incentive. It’s a long-term proposition, the longer the stretch, the more money we eventually collect. We usually collect. This, though, this was stopping teenagers from talking to teenagers. This had to be done quickly.

For all we were able to throw our weight around, Stan and I weren’t killers. The whole point was to make an impression on people who’d strayed just outside the law, and to stay with them, in sight of the line. Not to cut loose and give them a legitimate reason to beef to the police. Everything in balance: their debt, the vig we took. We were the muscle car you don’t want to race at the stoplight. A professional gun, a killer, he needs to fit in, in public if not in his mark’s private circle. He’s average. He usually looks a little dopey or a little pinched. He could be an accountant or a mail room clerk. You’ve seen him on the street.

So there we were, after driving around and muttering to ourselves, turning over the same thing in our minds and neither of us with anything to bring to the table, sitting down at a coffee shop to figure out exactly what to do next. Which is how you learn new things, I guess.

Real killers would’ve known to ask a few questions, would’ve known to expect more from the Doc than he told us. Which was nothing, really, beyond what we got from the email he showed us: Nicole Slotka was a student at a big university, now kill her.

I remembered Nicki a bit. Kevin’s a popular enough kid, good-enough looking, and what I call dopiness girls must find dreamy. I’d always thought he’d end up with Carrie, who he’d known since before I met his mother: short, content, half-there at times just like Kevin…something about Carrie always seemed to belong wherever she was. But they were too friendly, I guess, to make it as anything besides friends. And Kevin had a weakness for brash girls, loud girls, done-up girls.

This Nicki was one of those done-up girls, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember a single detail. Something told me she was the blonde he’d been strapped to after his graduation ceremony, but all I could remember was a girl who kept twisting and shrieking and leaning over to hug friends with her free arm, Kevin smiling and nodding in her wake. His mother was there to congratulate him and to remind him of curfew, and I was there to be with his mother.

So we were looking for a blonde—a blonde I might recognize and might not—in the blondest city I’d ever seen. Which was more than Stan had to go by. So we went looking.

We followed streams of students to the campus, looked for the ugliest building we could find, figured that’s where they kept the freshmen. No dice: somehow, someone figured that letting strangers walk into dormitories was a bad idea. Good for them; I couldn’t blame them.
We rummaged through Melissa and Amy’s for anything helpful. Tried calling the Registrar’s office posing as Nicki’s father, that didn’t fly. I even tried calling the Dean’s office pretending to be police—did a good job of it, too—and was transferred to University Security, who asked too many questions.

By the end of the day, we were down to sitting outside a bar, each nursing a beer, scanning passersby. We wanted to act, we needed to act, we were keeping it together but were both twitching with the need for something to go by.

“Well, this is great,” Stan finally said. “I got nothing to do here. Hey, there’s a blonde. How many nose rings Nicki got?”

“None. Well…shit. Who knows by now?”

We hadn’t accomplished anything, but we’d been moving since leaving the Doc’s place. We weren’t prepared for this. Shit, neither of us had been to college. But we’d run around like dogs for half a day, trying our ignorant best.

It struck Stan as soon as it struck me.

“Stan, why exactly are we on this job?”

“Was gonna ask you the same thing. Doc must know somebody local.”

“And he’s got to know more about this Nicki than he told us.”

“And he can’t be that worried about some kids talking to each other.”

“This isn’t about Nicki, Stan.”

“No, partner, it’s not.”

“So what’s our next move?”

“Find Nicki.”

“Without alerting the Doc.”

I’d been dreading this all day. It was time to reach out to Kevin.