Nobody's Fool

I’ll abort this child before I’ll let him be christened Rodrigo Roebuck.”
    â€œDon’t listen, Rodrigo,” Carl begged. “Mommy’s a meany, but your daddy loves you.”
    â€œDaddy’s about to get a knee in the windpipe.”
    â€œGoodnight, my little one,” said Carl, apparently taking this threat seriously and coming out from under his wife’s sweater. “Who the hell’s going to lay this floor with you in jail?” he wanted to know.
    â€œSpeak to my assistant,” Sully said, indicating Peter. “He was going to do it anyhow.”
    â€œWhat about your dwarf?” Carl said. “Will he help?”
    â€œSure,” Sully said, though he was not confident Rub would work with Peter if Sully wasn’t there. “You could always lend a hand yourself if you got really desperate,” he suggested.
    â€œI’ve got a business to run,” Carl said. “I was counting on you, and you fucked up.”
    â€œDon’t start again,” Sully warned him. “You aren’t even going to use the camp again until June, right? This job doesn’t have to be done tomorrow.”
    â€œWrong,” Carl said. “Wrong again. Wrong, still and forever fucking wrong. You’re a compass that points due south, do you know that? Do you want to know why you’re wrong this time, schmucko?”
    â€œNot really.”
    â€œThen I’ll tell you. I’ve got a buyer coming up to look at it during the holidays.”
    â€œThis is the first I’ve heard about any buyer,” Sully said.
    Carl shook his head. “You are
so
shameless. Now you’re telling me if you’d known we were selling the camp you wouldn’t have gone and coldcocked a cop, is that it? Is that what you’re telling me?”
    â€œSon,” Sully said, “be a good boy and take this asshole down to the lake and drown him. Put stones in his pockets.”
    â€œMaybe he won’t have to go to jail,” Toby suggested.
    â€œHe assaulted a police officer, for Christ sake,” Carl said, exasperated. “Of course he’s going to jail. It’s two days before Christmas. We’ll be lucky to get him arraigned before the first of the year.”
    â€œYou’re getting all upset, Carl,” Sully said, since pointing this out was about the only pleasure to be derived from the situation. In fact, he’d been going over the whole situation in his mind and had come to pretty much the same conclusion about how things would go. He had indeed fucked up, and the earlier illusion of freedom, the euphoria of the moment, had dissipated in the cruel December wind.
    â€œI’m going to visit you every day,” Carl promised. “I want to see you suffer.”
    â€œA visit from you every day would do the trick,” Sully conceded.
    â€œLet’s go home,” Toby Roebuck suggested. “It’s cold, and we aren’t going to find out what’s going to happen standing out here.”
    â€œThe voice of reason at last,” said Peter, who’d been observing these proceedings with his customary distant amusement.
    â€œWhat use is reason when you’re dealing with Don Sullivan?” Carl, still combative, wanted to know. “Jesus.”
    â€œHe’s all upset.” Sully winked at Peter.
    â€œYou want some advice?” Carl said. “Turn yourself in. Don’t wait for them to find you. Just drive over to City Hall, go in and ask which cell.”
    â€œThat’s your advice?”
    â€œThat’s my advice.”
    â€œOkay,” Sully said. “Then I won’t do it.”
    Carl threw up his hands and turned to Peter. “Due fucking south,” he said. “Every time.”

    Midnight. The Horse. Roll call.
    Regulars present, all in a row, drunk: Wirf (completely), Peter (sleepily), Sully (aspiring).
    Regulars present, sober: Birdie, seated at the end of the bar (benevolent, watchful), Tiny, behind the bar (malevolent, watchful).
    Regulars absent, among others: Rub Squeers.
    â€œDon’t forget to get Rub to help you,” Sully said for about the fifth time that hour.
    â€œOkay,” Peter agreed. It was pointless to argue, he knew. His father’s giving all this advice, he understood, was in lieu of an apology. Do as I tell you and this will still work out fine, was another meaning. A warrant, they learned from Wirf, had indeed been issued for