weren’t any surveillance cars in the area.
A perfect yellow moon was hanging over the water. The jagged casino buildings on the skyline reminded me of the teeth in an animal’s jaw.
I parked across the street and walked up those crooked wooden steps, trying to think of what I’d say to Carla. But when the door opened, it was Richie Amato standing there. Blinking and squinting as if he’d just woke up. I was so surprised I couldn’t speak for a couple of seconds.
“Don’t be here,” he said.
“What?”
“I said don’t be here. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get outa here.”
“Fuck you, Richie. I wanna see my wife and kids.”
“They’re all in bed,” he said.
On the couch inside, Teddy was beginning to stir. He’d been having a dream about Vin. The two of them were trying to chase some mangy old dog out of the house, but it kept showing up under the sink and in the broom closets. Teddy was about to tell Vin to get a gun and kill it, but then he decided to take matters into his own hands. He pulled out his own Ruger and shot through the bathroom door, trying to get rid of the dog once and for all. But when he opened the door, it was Vin lying there dead. A sob choked Teddy’s chest. But before he had a chance to grieve over what he’d done, Anthony’s voice woke him up.
“What the hell’s going on here?!”
I couldn’t understand what Richie was doing on my porch. But then I remembered he used to go out with Carla and I felt a surge of jealousy. I still had the gun in my waistband.
“Keep it down.” Richie held up his hand. “Teddy’s in there.”
“Yeah? What’s he doing?”
“He’s been looking for you. He’d like for me to put a couple of holes in you.”
“Oh yeah?” A shot of adrenaline ran through me.
“He thinks you ratted him out for killing Nicky D. and his father. He’s about to get indicted for it.”
“Not me,” I said, still smelling the stench from back at the stash house. “Someone else must be the stool.”
Richie just shrugged.
Now that he knew Anthony was out on the porch, Teddy sat up and looked for his gun. But Carla had taken it away with his wet trousers, leaving him stranded on the couch in his boxers. He tried to remember where Vin had hid the gun in the house all those months back. He’d put it somewhere in the kitchen during a late-night talk they’d had with Carla. Gripping the arm of the couch, he slowly got to his feet. His lap and legs were cold because he’d pissed himself hours before. The canisters, he remembered. Vin had left the gun in one of the canisters on the kitchen counter.
“Enough of this,” I said to Richie. “I’ve got something to tell Teddy myself.”
I pushed past him, went through the front door, and found myself face-to-face with Teddy in the living room. He looked even worse than the last time I’d seen him. His pants were off and his knees were trembling. His skin was gray and scaly. He reminded me of some frail old elephant on his way to the burial ground. But I knew he was still dangerous. My hand went down to the gun in my waistband.
“The prodigal son,” he said. “You got some fuckin’ nerve showing your face around here.”
“I was about to say the same about you.”
I could see he was afraid of me.
“What’d you come back here for anyway?”
“I came back here to give you what you gave my father and what you gave Vin.”
Teddy’s eyes roamed over my shoulder to Richie in the doorway behind me, as if asking how I could have known a thing like that. But Richie just looked dumbfounded.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Teddy started to back up into the kitchen. “Where’s my fucking cut, you punk?”
“You want your cut?” I dug the casino chips out of my pocket and started throwing them at him. “There’s your cut, you pig. Go get it.”
The green, red, and white discs bounced off his stomach and clattered across the kitchen floor, rolling under the refrigerator and the stove. They were for Carla and the kids anyway.
Teddy looked at me with so much hate I could almost smell it.
“Well, you might get the chance to talk to him soon.” I took out the gun and pointed it at his heart.
With a heavy cough, he fell against the kitchen counter and began rummaging through the red canisters, like he was looking for a cookie. I looked over my shoulder once and saw Richie was gone from the porch. I wondered how long it would be until Tommy Sick or the cops showed up.
“Come on, let’s do this outside. I don’t want to wake the kids.”
Teddy was still looking through drawers along the counter, like he was expecting to find something useful. “I always told Vin you were no good,” he muttered. “I said you can’t teach someone to love you. It’s either in the blood or it isn’t.”
“You’re a stupid old man,” I said.
He looked at me blankly, still not understanding he was about to die. Then his face seized up like he was suddenly in great pain.
“Go ahead. You don’t have the nerve.” His eyes weren’t as brave as his voice.
For a split second, he might have been right. I didn’t have the nerve to kill him in the house where my children were sleeping. There may have even been some spasm of conscience telling me I couldn’t just shoot an old man in cold blood. But then he suddenly stumbled toward the folded-up trousers on the breakfast table and pulled out a Ruger that had been tucked in there.
I shot him before he could aim it. The sound echoed off the dishes in the cabinet and he fell to one knee. A dark worm of blood started to seep out of his belly. He cupped his hand over the wound and looked up at me in shock, like he couldn’t believe my manners. I shot him again, this time for Mike. The bullet caught him in the windpipe and a purplish red arterial spray gushed out. He fell sideways, gasping for air, trying to dig the bullet out of his throat with his fingers.
Somehow I’d thought killing him wouldn’t be this hard—I was going to take away from him what he took away from me by killing Mike. But it was monstrous, unbearable. The lack of oxygen was turning his face blue. A horrible sucking sound escaped from his chest. I felt myself suffocating, thinking about the paramedics who’d come and stick useless tubes down his throat. Each second watching him was agony. So I shot him once more, hitting him mercifully between the eyes.
He fell backwards and died locking up at our unpainted ceiling.
I just stood there for a few seconds, feeling like I’d landed on some dark uninhabited planet, cut off from everything I’d known and loved before. I backed into the living room. The couch, the television, and the Ninja Turtle toys were all where they were supposed to be. But I wasn’t. I didn’t belong here anymore. I turned and saw Carla standing in the doorway, her face a map of every betrayal I’d put her through. By some miracle, the children didn’t wake up. That was one thing to be thankful for.
I tried to say something to her, but the words wouldn’t come. How do you apologize for ruining someone’s life?
71
FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, I was still in shock as they put me in the back of the squad car.
“You probably did him a favor,” said Detective Farley, sliding in next to me as another beefy detective got in the front.”He was dying of cancer, you know.”
Great, I thought, as the car started and pulled away. I’d thrown away the rest of my life to kill a dead
