Killing Them Softly (Cogan's Trade Movie Tie-in Edition)

go to work. But then some times, nothing on the shape-up. Lots of times. And most of them times, he’d come home and read or something. Never talked much. But some times, there wasn’t anything, see, you wouldn’t know that, he didn’t come home, not all the times but some times. And he always, he knew, he knew when he was gonna do it. Because when he didn’t come home, when he was late, my mother’d start to get worriedand walk around a lot, and when he wasn’t there, she’s saying Hail Marys and everything, when he wasn’t there by seven-thirty she’d go to the cupboard. That’s where they kept the money they didn’t use onna shopping. In a peanut-butter jar. And if he wasn’t there, the jar was always empty. Always. And he’d be gone for at least three days, and when he came home, that’s always the way he looked. He always fell down.
    â€œI remember,” Frankie said, “the last time he’s up at the farm. I had to take him up there, and he was, well, it was mostly my mother. She told me: ‘You’re twenty now. You take care of him. I’d do it but I’ve had enough. You take him up.’ So I took him up to Dropkick’s. Doctor P. K. Murphy’s farm. And I checked him in and he was as bombed as you can get. So, he just had new teeth. And he says to me, well, I knew what he was trying to say to me, he wanted me to take his teeth. Paid two hundred and sixty dollars for his teeth. Now what the fuck was I gonna do with the old man’s teeth? I’m probably gonna lose them myself. So I said to the guy, I said, look, he was probably gonna come out of it, one way or the other, they better keep his teeth. And they put them in a box. I saw them do it.
    â€œI go back about a week later,” Frankie said. “I mean, I liked the old bastard. He never hit anybody. Used to drive him nuts, Sandy’s running around the way she did, he couldn’t do nothing about it. But he wasn’t a bad guy. So I went up there, go up there and see him.
    â€œThey used to sit around in the back room,” Frankie said. “It looked, they had these tables and a television and it looked just like a fuckin’ bar. I dunno, probably they wanted it that way. They got a drink at nine o’clock and one at lunch and one at six, and some of them, Christ, the whole place, the woods’re full of botties.A guy’d decide, he was gonna check himself in, and he would, and before he did it he’d get a couple friends of his and they’d come down every day and put ten nips in the woods where he said. The guy told me, he said there was one guy, he was stoned all the time and he never went near the woods, and they could tell. they could tell when one of them was stiff, and they started watching him, really careful. And when they, he didn’t think they were watching them, see, he come up in his car, and he’d go out in the yard and get under the car with a cup or something, he filled up the radiator with vodka before he checked in. They thought he was drinking antifreeze. They always had guys bringing in enema bags full of the stuff. At night they’d go around and look in the tanks of all the hoppers. Guys always used to stash pints in there.
    â€œSo I go up there,” Frankie said, “and the old man’s got a buddy. One of the guys he used to work with. They’re both on paraldehyde. A little glass of water and the guy comes by every so often and he’s got an eyedropper, and a pitcher, and he puts some of the paracki in the glass and some water and they sit there and they sip it, and they, the television’s going, they’re watching quiz shows or something, they dunno what they’re watching, they got cigarettes in their hands and those butts’d burn right down between their knuckles and you could smell their skin burning and you’d tell them and honest to God, that was the first they’d know about it. You’d tell them and they’d look and they’d say: ‘Oh, yeah.’ And take the cigarette out and look at their fingers and then put the fuckin’ thing
back
. They couldn’t feel nothing.
    â€œThe guy’s name was Burke,” Frankie said. “My old man’s friend was Burke. They were both on parackiand they both smelled like skunks. Just like skunks. That stuff makes booze smell like perfume. And the old man’s complaining. He’s