"Use it to what purpose?"
Mark Sutton, girded with the armor of blithe and youthful certainty, was sure he had an answer for that, but when he opened his mouth no words came out. He blamed it on Ben Hawkins's cigar smoke, which, he suddenly realized, was choking him. He longed for fresh air and for the unquestioning simplicities of his jockstraps and his ankle weights. "Ben," he said, "I don't see what you're on the rag about. I'm going for a run."
———
On the Verrazano Bridge, yesterday's snow was mixed with sand and coated with car exhaust. It had been plowed off toward the edges of the roadway, and it stood there in its gray crags and yellow valleys like a tiny range of sulfur hills.
At two-thirty the traffic on the outbound side was thickening up but still moving briskly, and Bo, taking his turn at the wheel of the dark blue Lincoln, was very pleased with himself.
"We're gonna be there nice and early," he said.
Pretty Boy yawned, put his feet up on the glove box. "Who gives a shit? I coulda slept another half an hour."
"Half an hour," said Bo, "the trucks woulda started, d'early part a rush hour; we woulda stood here gettin' aggravated."
"An' I don't see why we're flyin' outa fuckin' Newark."
"Ya look at a map," said Bo, as they drove under the second stanchion, "you'd be amazed: different state and all, 'sno farther thanna New York airports."
Pretty Boy didn't care to look at maps; he yawned again. He'd popped a few Halcion to defeat the benedrine so he could fall asleep. The small blue pills hadn't quite worn off, and he didn't want them to.
The geography-minded Bo went back to a previous line of reasoning. "An' dis half-hour thing? Makes a huge difference. Say we're drivin' straight tru. Dis half hour gets us tru Jersey before it's really da worst a rush hour. Rush hour, we're in Delaware, and Delaware, I don't think they got rush hour in Delaware. By da time we hit D.C., rush hour's—"
"Bo," pleaded Pretty Boy. "We ain't drivin' straight tru. So will ya shut up and drive?"
The scarfaced thug frowned at his partner, shrugged, and looked off at the coastline of Staten Island.
But now the handsome thug gave a bent, carnivorous smile. Something had occurred to him that cheered him up. "Dis time we're flyin', Bo. Ya know what that means, Bo? It means we ain't cartin' anybody back wit' us this time."
———
"What about I buy the dog a separate seat?" said Bert the Shirt. He was sitting in his cluttered living room at the Paradiso condo, reclining in his oxblood Barcalounger with the phone perched precariously on the arm.
"He'd still have to stay in the carrier," said the travel agent. "FAA regulations."
"The whole trip?"
"Mr. Ambrosia, Key West-Miami is forty-five minutes. Miami-New York is only two and a half hours."
"That's a long time to a dog," said Bert.
"A sleeping pill might be a good idea," the travel agent suggested.
Bert watched Don Giovanni lying white and rigid on his discolored dog bed in the middle of the discolored carpet. Abandoned squeak toys—a plastic hamburger, a hotdog with rubber mustard— were strewn under the glass-topped coffee table and against the skirt of the old brocaded couch. "This dog," he said, "ya give this dog a sleeping pill, he ain't ever wakin' up."
There was a grudging pause. It was a busy time of year for travel agents. "So shall I book the one ticket, the dog to go as cabin baggage?"
Bert just nodded. In his preoccupation he'd forgotten for the moment that he was on the phone, he had to talk. He squeezed out a yes, and the travel agent fired off a salvo of flight numbers, seat numbers, the terminal to transfer to, which airport bus to take. Bert took in none of it beyond the stark fact that he had to be at Key West airport at seven-thirty next morning.
He hung up the phone. His hand was unsteady and he wasn't really watching; the receiver bumped the base and the whole thing clattered to the carpet. Don Giovanni gave a convulsive quiver at the noise, glanced up at his master, and instantly absorbed Bert's debilitating dread. Standing up on its cushion, the dog did a couple of slow yet frantic pirouettes. It managed to lift a leg just slightly; the effort was like an old man's memory of when he had a jump shot. A single drop of urine dribbled out of the distracted creature.
The chihuahua stepped away and sniffed at the damp place as though the drop had fallen from the sky. Bert got up very slowly and walked stiffly to the bedroom to ferret out some winter clothes.
33
"Killing," said the Godfather. "Y'ask me what I wanna talk about tonight, I wanna talk about killing."