In the Hand of Dante

LITTLE, BROWN

LOUIE PULLED OFF HIS BRA AND THREW IT down upon the casket.

There was residue on his hands. He hated that. He held forth his hand to the one bitch who ws still on her knees. She closed her eyes and licked the scum from his hand. As he stood over her, he could smell her hair, which had the same dirty cloying stench of that coconut-oil shit those fucking Haile Selassie cabbies used inside their taxis. And he could feel the sticky grease of whatever cheap shit she wore on her lips. He withdrew his hand from her.

Downstairs, on West Twenty-sixth Street, he stood awhile in the night. It was the dead of August, that time in New York when the daylight sky was an oppressive lowlying glare of white, and the dark of night was a haze of starless ashen pallor. Louie felt at one with it. He lighted a cigarette and drew smoke. It was late. But not for him.

Humidity and his own sweat began to gather on his skin. He looked at the moist glistening amid the hair of his bare forearm. He looked longer at the hand that held the cigarette. He didn't know which was worse, the traces of his own detested bodily fluid or the slime of that bitch's tongue. This would clean him, he told himself, feeling the gathering of humidity and sweat increase. All he needed now was a good breeze from the river. That would be nice. He began to walk. He had not tucked his shirt into his trousers, and he had not buttoned his shirt, and he did not do these things now. He carried his jacket of fine, fine cotton and fine, fine silk, the one that he had paid two grand for in Milano. It had been made for him, by whatever the fuck his name was. It was the color of the deep blue-green sea, and was almost weightless; but as he carried it, he could feel the sag of weight in one pocket.

It was his favorite jacket. It was like wearing nothing, and you could wear it with anything, and only a guy with class would see it for what it was. And it was the color of his eyes. Broads loved his eyes. Even now, even now that he was an old fuck, the broads still loved his eyes. Some were scared of them, but some loved them.

Louie paused a moment when he reached the corner of Sixth Avenue. He lighted another cigarette. He turned downtown. He kept on walking.

Yeah, sixty-three fucking years old last May. And here he was, walking down the avenue like a kid. He liked to walk, at night, alone, even in this heat. It was nice. These nigger punks passing him by in the street: they got nothing on me, he told himself. It was true. It really was. It was like the man said. You're only as old as you feel.

He thought of that broad in St. Louis: that broad with no arms. He thought of that job in St. Louis: that son of a bitch would not go down.

May. April. March. February. January. December. November. October. September. August. Well, ain't that a fucking pisser. He was conceived in this fucking weather. Who the fuck would fuck in this weather? Without even no fucking air-conditioning? Jesus Christ.

But what the fuck was he talking about? He used to fuck in this fucking weather. Without no fucking air-conditioning. Yeah. He remembered those smacking sounds, that puddle of sweat in what's-her-name's belly, him coming down on her hard and fast, endless fucking hours, his own sweat-drenched gut coming up from that pool in her belly with a loud fucking smack, again and again, faster and faster, harder and harder, louder and louder, like the suction blast of a goddamn force-cup plunger unclogging a fucking toilet bowl.

Yeah, maybe he was getting old, after all. Conceived in August. Maybe that's why he didn't mind this heat, this stillness of dead, heavy air that others could not take. Yeah. Conceived in August. Sixty-three years ago. No. Sixty-four years ago.

What the fuck had he ever conceived? It had all ended up on his right hand or in some cunt's yap. Dead-baby juice. And now it was too late. Born alone, die alone. He was better off that way. Shit, knowing him, he'd pay some broad to hold his hand when he died. Money bought anything.

He made it to Fourteenth Street before he knew it. More niggers, more spics. Shit, in the old days you wouldn't see a nigger below Fourteenth Street. Then the basketball courts, the Jew cunts who go for the dark meat; next thing you know, it ain't a fucking neighborhood, it's a fucking nigger dumping ground. But he didn't blame the fucking niggers. Who wouldn't rather fuck some kike bitch, no matter how fucking ugly she was, than a goddamn nigger broad? Who wouldn't rather be here than there? The trouble was, these days, here was there. But, no, he didn't blame the niggers. He blamed these white motherfuckers who had come in from the sticks with their nigger-loving ways. They deserved what they got. And he blamed it on the cops. He remembered when the neighborhood kids had taken pipe-cutters to those basketball poles. He remembered when the neighborhood kids had taken baseball bats to those nigger skulls. In the old days, the cops would have covered for them. But these cops now, they were different. They weren't from here. They were from those fucking cop suburbs, and they didn't know shit about nothing. They didn't even know where the fuck they were. They were worse than the niggers.

fuck them. Now that there were no more neighborhoods, no more neighborhood ways, no more neighborhood people, fuck these white assholes. He was with the niggers. He was. Every time they killed a cop, he felt good.

No. fuck them all. He wasn't with nobody. He kept walking. There was a pang of pain in the groin muscle that he had pulled more than a year ago. It was like it had never really healed right. It hit him every once in a while, like a knife, on the inside of his right thigh, just below his crotch. You get older, things don't heal fast.

He crossed Bleecker Street to Carmine Street. The humidity and his sweat were heavy on him now. He made the sign of the cross on his forehead with his thumb as he passed Our Lady of Pompeii, and the humidity and sweat on his forehead felt like holy water to his thumb. He ambled to the other side of the street, to a shit restaurant with an ugly paint job. It was closed, and the kid was inside by himself, sitting at a table with some paperwork and a drink. Louie rapped on the door. The kid saw who it was, and he stood and came fast to unlock the door.

"Makin' the rounds, my friend?" the kid said. His voice and manner lay between deference and fake casual cheer. He was about thirty-five, with beady eyes and a moustache. "Don't call me that."

At these words, the fake casual cheer faltered for a moment, and Louie let it falter in silence. He turned away from the kid and strode to the table where the kid had been sitting. He draped his fine, fine jacket over a chair, then he sat, pushed aside some of the paperwork, and lighted a cigarette.

"Give me a drink and an ashtray." The kid went behind the bar. The fake casual cheer had returned to his manner, but it was more subdued.

"We got this new grappa. It's great." He raised some stupid-looking fancy-ass tall tapered bottle for Louie to see.

"fuck you. Save that shit for the suckers. Just give me a Dewar's and water on the rocks. And fuck the ashtray. I'll use the floor."

The kid came to him with the drink and an ashtray. He set them before Louie, and he sat with him. "How's life?" the kid said.

Louie stared at the kid's moustache. The kid must have grown it in the year or so since he had seen him last. "Back in the old days, when I was a kid, the old-timers used to say the bigger the moustache, the bigger the man." The fake casual cheer again grew unsettled.

"Now, these days, I see a guy with a moustache, I figure he's either a cop or a faggot. Or both." "I guess I better shave it off then, huh, Lou?" he said with what remained of his unsettled fake casual cheer. "Nah." Louie waved his hand and shrugged with a grimace. "Leave it. Your father's a cop, right? Maybe you got that half-a-fag cop streak in you. It suits you. The moustache."

The kid said nothing, for there was nothing that he could say. Being Louie had its privileges, and Louie indulged them often. He crushed out his cigarette, drank, and spoke again. "You know, your uncle's a real fuck-up. I mean, don't get me wrong. You're a fuck-up too. But you're small change. Your uncle, he's a real fuck-up. He had this joint, did good for a while, pissed everything away gamblin'. He comes cryin' to my friends. They help him out. He keeps fuckin' up. He's runnin' cryin' to the bank over here to cover his checks to Con Ed every third time he gets a shut-off notice. My friends don't like that. Your uncle is one sick stupid fuck. And that is all that he is." Louie looked at the kid's paperwork, which was mostly racing charts and scribblings. "You know the story."

Louie drank, lighted another cigarette, smiled faintly. "Now that I think of it, he's got a moustache too.Maybe God didn't give him that walk of his for nothin'." He drank. "Anyway." He pulled the weight from his pocket and laid it on the table: a Walther PPK nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol in a sealed plastic sandwich bag.

The kid saw a black gun about six inches long in what appeared to be a crumpled evidence bag. "Don't you think you ought to put that away?" he said. "What if some cop walks by and looks in?"

Louie sneered. "When's the last time you seen a cop walk? They don't walk no more. They go to the gym like the rest of these fruits, but they don't walk. Shit, the last cop I seen walkin' a beat, it was a broad. About five foot two, this butch haircut that came up to my belly-button; looked like one of them ugly little Halloween gourds with all the little bumps on her face and everything. New York's finest. Like your old man: a worthless ugly little c-t."

The kid no longer looked Louie in the eyes. No one knew Louie, not really, except maybe Louie and except maybe his boss, but everyone knew not to fuck with Louie; and everyone, except maybe Louie and except maybe his boss, feared him without really knowing why.

"Anyway. My friends, they figure that if I throw a scare into this piece-of-shit uncle of yours, maybe he'll get the message." The kid nodded uneasily, and he offered to get Louie another drink.

"Take it easy," Louie told him. "It's like the great Buddha said: Moderation in all things. The Eightfold Path." He sneered at the kid's moustache. "You ever take it up the ass? You ought to try it sometime. Might make a man out of you." He looked at the kid's averted eyes. He liked seeing things in people's eyes that had never been there before. But he was getting tired, and enough was enough. He looked at the cigarette he was smoking. There were a few drags left, and he took them. He ground out the cigarette. "So," he said. It was more like a heavy, weary sigh than a sound of any meaning.

"Like I say, you and your uncle, you're two of a kind. Two little lyin' degenerate cocksuckers. And I know you been robbin' him, sellin' the stock to other joints, a few bottles here, a few bottles there. Chickenshit stuff. Nickels and dimes. But, then again, you're a chickenshit little cocksucker. You rob just like your father, who's another chickenshit little cocksucker." He paused, drank the last of his drink. The melting ice felt good on his lips. "Your mother, God rest her soul"-he wiped at his lips with the back of his hand-; "she was just a cocksucker. And not a very good one at that." He looked for anger in those beady eyes, but that anger was occluded by fear. Louie tilted his head slightly, studying the rest of the kid's face.

"You're funny-lookin', you know that? How'd you get a broad to marry you? She must be a worse fuckin' loser than you. I never seen her. Your kids neither. I never seen them. You got a picture?" The kid withdrew his wallet. Louie snatched it from his hand. He removed the money that it held-;it was not much-;and he stuck it in his own pocket.

"Is this her?" The kid nodded. "We love each other," he said, as if he meant it. Scared people say the stupidest shit.

Louie glanced at the picture. "Yeah. She's funny-lookin' too. Yeah. You look like one of them, what do you call them, one of them things that catch the rats, yeah, what do you call them, yeah, one of them ferrets. And she looks like a pig. Can she suck cock at least? I mean, any better than your mother could?" He looked at another picture, a picture of a young boy and a younger girl. He seemed to ponder it. "You cross a donkey and a horse, you get a mule. I guess this is what you get when you cross a ferret and a pig. How old's the little girl?"

"She'll be ten next month." "Like I said, I never met them, your wife, your kids. Maybe I should take a ride out to Jersey one of these days and pay my respects. I could find out if your wife sucks cock any better than your mother. And what did you say, the girl was ten? You know, it's funny, the older you get, the younger you like your meat." He drew phlegm from his lungs into his mouth, and he spat on the picture. Then he drew more phlegm from his lungs, and he spat into the face of the kid.

The kid began to cry as he wiped the phlegm from his face with a table napkin.

"What is it you want me to do?" he said. "Two things. First-and like the arresting officer says: think about this before you answer, because it may be the most important answer you ever give in your life-;how much money is in this shit-hole right now?"

"Just the take from tonight. About twelve hundred." "That's pathetic." "It's all credit cards these days." "How much of this twelve hundred did you already dip into?" "You took it." "Empty your other pockets too."

The kid put about a hundred and eighty dollars and some coins on the table. Louie took it and put it in his pocket. "Now, where's that twelve hundred?"

"In the kitchen." "Let's go."

Louie rose. The kid rose. The kid began walking, to the left of the bar, to the narrow passage that led to the kitchen. He could feel Louie close behind him: very close behind him.

On the kitchen wall, there was a cheap ugly picture in a cheap ugly frame: one of those Virgin Mary things that these kitchen spics went for.

"How come they call all these shit joints Italian restaurants?" Louie snorted. "I mean, you can't find a wop in any one of these fuckin' kitchens. They're all fuckin' Dominicans, Ecuadorians, this, that, the other fuckin' thing. These ain't fuckin' Italian restaurants, none of them. They're fuckin' spic joints. Who eats this shit, anyway? Jews?"

The kid raised his arm and reached behind the picture and removed an envelope and turned to give it to Louie, who held in his right hand the gun in its plastic bag, and who with his left hand took the envelope and shoved it in his back pocket. The kid did not ask about the second of the two things that Louie wanted him to do.