Blue Smoke

fingers fish one out, fight to light a match.
    “When did you see him last?”
    “Couple months maybe. Bought me a new TV. That’s a thirty-six-inch, flat screen. Fucking Sony. He don’t buy cheap.”
    “Nice.”
    “Got me this chair last Christmas. Son of a bitch vibrates, you want it to.” Those dead eyes latched onto John’s face. “He’s supposed to send money.”
    “I haven’t seen him, Joe. Fact is, I’m looking for him. Talk to him lately?”

    “What’s this about? You a cop?” He shook his head slowly. “You ain’t no cop.”
    “No, I’m not a cop. It’s about fire, Joe. Joey’s got himself in a real fix down in Baltimore. That keeps up, he won’t be sending you any money.”
    “You looking to get my boy in trouble?”
    “Your boy’s in trouble. He’s been lighting fires back home, back in the neighborhood. He killed somebody tonight, Joe. He killed the widow of one of the arson investigators who helped put you away for the Sirico fire.”
    “Bastards dragged me out of my own house.” He blew out smoke, hacked until his sunken eyes watered. “Out of my own house.” He picked up the beer, sipped and hacked some more.
    “How long did they give you, Joe? How long do you have left?”
    When he grinned, he looked like a nightmare. “Asshole doctors said I’d be dead already. Here I am, so what the fuck do they know? I beat ’em.”
    “Joey know you’re sick?”
    “Took me to the doctor a couple times. They wanted to put poison in me. Screw that. Cancer, pancreas. Said the cancer’s eating up my liver and shit now, too, and how I can’t drink, can’t smoke.” Still grinning with that death’s head, he sucked on the cigarette. “Fuck them, fuck them all.”
    “Joey went back to clean things up, finish things off for you.”
    “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Take care of the people who screwed with you. Especially Catarina Hale.”
    “Little slut. Sashaying around the neighborhood like she’s better than anybody else. Teasing my boy. So he tried to get a piece, so what? That asshole Hale thinks he can mess with me and mine? Showed him.”
    “You paid for it.”
    “Ruined my life.” The grin melted away. “That asshole Hale ruined my life. Couldn’t get a decent job after. Mopping up other people’s puke, for chrissake. Took my dignity’s what he did. Took my life away. I got sick ’cause of being in prison, no matter what the fuckhead doctors say. Probably pass this on to Joey, good chance of it. All because of that little whore.”

    John decided not to point out you couldn’t catch pancreatic cancer in prison. And if you could, you couldn’t pass it on to your son.
    “Pisser, all right. I guess Joey felt that way, too.”
    “He’s my son, isn’t he? He respects his father. Knows it’s not my fault he maybe got the cancer genes offa me. He’s got brains. Joey’s always had brains. He didn’t get them from his stupid bitch of a mother. He’s going to send me some money, maybe take me on a trip so I can get out of this godforsaken heat.”
    He closed his eyes a moment as he turned his face toward one of the fans. His wispy hair stirred in the stale breeze. “Going to Italy, up north, in the mountains where it’s cool. He’s got something going, the cops’ll never take him for it. He’s too smart.”
    “He burned a woman to death in her own bed tonight.”
    “Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.” But the sudden light in those eyes showed a father’s horrible pride. “If he did, she must’ve had it coming.”
    “If he gets in touch with you, Joe, do yourself a favor.” John took out a notebook, wrote down his name and number. “Give me a call. You help me find him, it’ll be better for him. Cops do, I can’t promise what’ll happen. He killed a cop’s wife. You call me, Joe, and maybe I can fix it so you get a little money.”
    “How much money?”
    “Couple hundred,” John said as his gut roiled with disgust. “Maybe more.”
    He rose, put the number on the tray table. “He’s pushing his luck, I promise you.”
    “You got brains, you don’t need luck.”
    W hile John was driving out of the Bronx, Joey picked the lock on the rear door of his row house. A couple of stops along the way, and he was right on schedule.
    He imagined the cop’s wife roasting like a suckling pig, and the image made him smile as he finessed the locks.

    Places to go, he’d told her. Yeah, he had places to go. And people to burn.