SUPERMAX: The Max and Angela Trilogy E-Book

Ken Bruen

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 856

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Three books in one, Supermax is a pitch-black crime comedy from two of the hottest thriller writers on either side of the Atlantic. These newly collected cult novels are a bloody, bawdy odyssey of drug dealing, adultery, and murder for fans of Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen, and Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho. THE MOST OUTRAGEOUS CRIME STORY EVER TOLD – FOR THE FIRST TIME IN ONE VOLUME! When a small-time businessman who's a legend in his own mind (that would be Max) hatches a plan with his sexpot secretary (that's Angela) to murder his wife and live happily ever after, you might think everything would go smoothly – but Max and Angela are in for the ride of their lives, as an escalating series of bad decisions and worse luck plunges them into a tsunami of crime and depravity featuring IRA hitmen, an aspiring serial killer, a wheelchair-bound blackmailer, trigger-happy drug dealers, and the warring factions in one of the world's deadliest prisons.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Introduction

Bust

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty One

Twenty Two

Twenty Three

Twenty Four

Twenty Five

Twenty Six

Twenty Seven

Twenty Eight

Slide

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty One

Twenty Two

Twenty Three

Twenty Four

Twenty Five

Twenty Six

The Max

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty One

Twenty Two

Twenty Three

Acclaim For the Work of KEN BRUEN

and JASON STARR!

“Two of the crime fiction world’s brightest talents, Ken Bruen and Jason Starr, join forces for one of the year’s most darkly satisfying and electric noir novels…This is one of the top guilty pleasures of the year.”

— Chicago Sun-Times

“This tense, witty, cold-blooded noir…reads seamlessly—and mercilessly…Funny [and] vividly fresh.”

— Entertainment Weekly

“Adventurous crime-fiction fans who like their literary escapism totally unrestrained will find this brazenly violent and downright vulgar novel…as filthy as it is fun.”

— Chicago Tribune

“A full-tilt, rocking homage to noir novels of the 1950s… Hard Case’s latest release is smart, trashy fun.”

— Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Fasten your seat belts, and enjoy the bumpy ride of double- and triple-crosses, blackmail, and murder. If Quentin Tarantino is looking for another movie project, this novel with its mix of shocking violence and black comedy would be the perfect candidate. Highly recommended as a terrific summer read.”

— Library Journal, starred review

“Really good…very violent and very funny.”

— Jenny Davidson, Light Reading

“Two of the century’s best thriller writers have joined forces to bring a postmodern twist to the black heart of noir fiction. Grade: A.”

— Rocky Mountain News

“A really black comedy…I pretty much laughed my ass off.”

— Sarah Weinman

“Some of the funniest dialogue this side of Elmore Leonard.”

— Otto Penzler, New York Sun

“Crosses and double-crosses, miscalculations and blunders, and plenty of dead bodies…For those who like the bungling-criminal genre, this is good fun.”

— Booklist

“A fearsome and wondrous mix of vile characters [in] a caper novel worthy of Westlake or Leonard…exquisitely conceived and flawlessly written.”

— Book Reporter

“Downright hilarious and bloodthirsty in the best possible way. With all the dirt and more you could ask about Hollywood and the world of crime publishing.”

— Maxim Jakubowski

“This hilarious series and its hapless, deluded main characters is like no other in the entire contemporary crime fiction world.”

— Bookgasm

“The prose reads like a dream. Fast paced and bursting with energy…Hard Case Crime have released some of the best new novels of the past few years. They’ve given us some amazing reprints of classic crime. But this book…has just upped the ante once more.”

— Crime Scene

Room 1812 was long and narrow, with the bed against the wall at the far end. The light on the night table was on so Bobby had a clear view of the action, which was good because the light from the hallway didn’t make it too far into the room. Bobby went about halfway over the threshold and gently let the door rest against his chair. Then he raised his camera with a towel over it, the lens peeking out underneath.

Mr. Brown must’ve heard the snapping camera or seen Bobby out of the corner of his eye because he looked up and said, “Hey, what the hell?”

Bobby let the corner of the towel drop over the camera’s lens, scooted out the door and let it shut behind him.

Riding the elevator down, camera tucked in his bag, Bobby was smiling, proud of his performance. Maybe he should’ve listened to Isabella, gone on some auditions. Maybe it wasn’t too late. There had to be roles for guys in wheelchairs, right?

Nah, he decided, acting was too fucking boring. He needed the buzz, the action.

Crime was where it was at…

SOME OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKSYOU WILL ENJOY:

PIMP by Ken Bruen & Jason Starr

THE NEXT TIME I DIE by Jason Starr

JOYLAND by Stephen King

THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS by James M. Cain

THIEVES FALL OUT by Gore Vidal

SO NUDE, SO DEAD by Ed McBain

QUARRY’S BLOOD by Max Allan Collins

THE KNIFE SLIPPED by Erle Stanley Gardner

SNATCH by Gregory Mcdonald

THE LAST STAND by Mickey Spillane

UNDERSTUDY FOR DEATH by Charles Willeford

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SPIDER MONKEY by Joyce Carol Oates

BLOOD SUGAR by Daniel Kraus

LEMONS NEVER LIE by Donald E. Westlake writing as Richard Stark

ARE SNAKES NECESSARY? by Brian De Palma and Susan Lehman

KILLER, COME BACK TO ME by Ray Bradbury

FIVE DECEMBERS by James Kestrel

LOWDOWN ROAD by Scott Von Doviak

SEED ON THE WIND by Rex Stout

FAST CHARLIE by Victor Gischler

NOBODY’S ANGEL by Jack Clark

DEATH COMES TOO LATE by Charles Ardai

INTO THE NIGHT by Cornell Woolrich and Lawrence Block

THE GET OFF by Christa Faust

SUPERMAX

THE MAX & ANGELA TRILOGY

byKen BruenandJason Starr

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A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK

(HCC-S10)

First Hard Case Crime edition: November 2025

Published by

Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street

London SE1 0UP

in collaboration with Winterfall LLC

Introduction copyright © 2025 by Jason Starr

Bust copyright © 2006 by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

Slide copyright © 2007 by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

The Max copyright © 2008 by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

Cover painting copyright © 2008 by Glen Orbik

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, except where permitted by law, or used to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, without the written permission of the publisher and the author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Print edition ISBN 978-1-83541-225-1

E-book ISBN 978-1-83541-226-8

Design direction by Max Phillips

www.signalfoundry.com

Typeset by Swordsmith Productions

The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.

Visit us on the web at www.HardCaseCrime.com

Introduction by Jason Starr

“How did you and Ken write together?”

Whenever I’m asked this question, my first thought is always: I have no fuckin’ clue.

It really shouldn’t have worked at all. We lived on different continents, had no way to meet consistently—this was many years pre-Zoom—and our styles are completely different. While we’re both “noir crime writers,” Ken’s novels are minimalistic, poetic, Samuel Beckett-esque, with a distinctive cadence, and—as I used to always joke with him—“I write in English.”

Most partnerships, at some point, have conflict, but Ken and I never had a single creative disagreement. It seems like we wrote these first three novels—Bust, Slide, and The Max—in a surge of insane emotional energy.

Ken and I met at a pre-Edgar Awards party at the Partners & Crime bookshop in 2004 where Anthony Bourdain was serving hors d’oeuvres. We became instant friends. It was partly because we have a very similar sense of humor, but Ken also has an uncanny ability to endear people quickly. Once, we went outside for a smoke at a midtown restaurant and ten minutes later he returned arm-in-arm with the owner of the restaurant who was boasting, “This is a great man.”

A few months later, Ken was back in New York, and we met for drinks at the Mansfield Hotel in midtown where Ken always stayed—and which we later referenced in our books. I ordered a light beer and a glass of water and Ken—simultaneously commenting on my wimpy Americanness and his steadfast Irishness—quipped, “It’s not light enough? You need water too?” I can’t remember who suggested the idea of cowriting, but at one point one of us blurted out: “We should write a book together.”

As with most late-night, alcohol-fueled plans, the next day this seemed like a horrible idea. I was under contract for a new novel at Vintage Books and Ken was just starting to break out big with his Jack Taylor series. Collaborating made no sense at all for either of our careers, but Ken and I have one major thing in common—if something sounds like a bad idea, it just makes it that much more appealing.

We ran the idea by Charles Ardai who had recently founded Hard Case Crime. If Charles had said no the idea to cowrite would have almost certainly fizzled, but Charles—who may be as nutty as Ken and me—thought that cowriting was a brilliant idea. So, suddenly under a contract for a book with a due date, Ken and I leapt head-first into the madness.

There were obstacles—mainly we needed to figure out what the hell we were going to write about. We kicked around some ideas, then I emailed him that I have a book “in my drawer” that wasn’t quite working—maybe we can add an Irish twist and turn it into something good? So we used the plot of this book and reworked it together. We pumped up Max, making him as outrageous as we could, made Angela part-Irish, added Irish gangsters, and created other characters and plot lines.

At first—no big surprise—it seemed like two very different writers were writing a disjointed book. So I suggested, “What if I try to write like you and you try to write like me?” I relaxed my style to write like Ken writes, and Ken leaned into clean, straight-ahead prose, more like me. Some readers may assume that I wrote the American characters and Ken wrote the Irish ones, but that’s not true—we had an equal hand in both. The merging seemed to work, but mainly it worked because we had the same attitude and vision. Neither of us wanted to redeem any characters or write serious novels—we just wanted the books to be as dark, funny, and wild as possible. We had a no holds barred approach; we didn’t censor ourselves or each other. If one of us had an insane idea, we went with it. Initially, we thought Bust would be a one-off, but like a heavyweight fighter who refuses to quit, we kept coming back for “just one more.” The series grew to become a trilogy, and then a quartet when Pimp was published in 2015.

But how did we actually do it?

I’ve told people that I was the quarterback and Ken was the big playmaker, which I think is a great way of describing our process. I managed the plots and Ken took the books in usually insane new directions, then we riffed off each other’s writing until it sounded like a unified voice. The time difference between Ireland and New York worked in our favor. I’d write a section, send it to Ken, and in the morning his pages were in my inbox. A typical Ken email: “Love it, couldn’t stop laughing, here’s mine.” Then I’d laugh for a while at what he wrote—what a great way to start a day!—and then move stuff around, add to it, sometimes change it, and send it back to him with my additions. This was all usually before nine A.M., which was great for me because a day had just started and I already felt productive. If one of us slacked off or needed nudging the partnership never would have worked, but in writing four books together, neither of us missed a single day.

We wrote like we were painting a picture together—working on different sections simultaneously, a splatter here and a splatter there. Sometimes Ken would take things in unplanned directions, and I would rework the outline and keep things moving forward. We wrote without egos, understanding that it wasn’t about Jason’s line vs. Ken’s line, it was about trying to create a new voice together. Somehow, we wrote each of these books in under two months, and one in just six weeks. I really don’t know how we kept everything organized and on track, but we pulled it off—four times—without any interruption of our solo writing.

Collaborating with Ken, improbably, became one of the most enjoyable writing experiences of my career, and Max and Angela are, without a doubt, two of my favorite characters I’ve ever had a hand in creating. Occasionally, I open one of our books to a random page and immediately start smiling—not necessarily at a funny line, but because the writing reminds me of how it felt to be at a bar late at night with Ken, laughing non-stop.

You know—the kind of nights you hope will never end.

Jason StarrNew York CityApril 2024

BUST

For Reed Farrel Coleman, La Weinman (Sarah), andJon, Ruth, and Jennifer Jordan, ro-bust friends

One

People with opinions just go around bothering one another.THE BUDDHA

In the back of Famiglia Pizza on Fiftieth and Broadway, Max Fisher was dabbing his plain slice with a napkin, trying to soak up as much grease as he could, when a man sat down diagonally across from him with a large cupful of ice. The guy looked nothing like the big, strong-looking hit man Max was expecting—he looked more like a starving greyhound. He couldn’t have weighed more than 130 pounds, had a medium build, startling blue eyes, a thin scar down his right cheek, and a blur of long gray hair. And something was very weird about his mouth. It looked like someone had put broken glass in there and mangled his lips.

The guy smiled, said, “You’re wondering what happened to me mouth.”

Max knew the guy would be Irish, but he didn’t think he’d be so Irish, that talking to him would be like talking to one of those Irish bartenders at that place uptown who could never understand a fucking word he was saying. He’d ask for a Bud Light and they’d stare back at him with a dumb look, like something was wrong with the way he was talking, and he’d think, Who’s the potato eater just off the boat, pal? Me or you?

Max was about to answer then thought, Fuck that, I’m the boss, and asked, “Are you…?”

The man put a finger to his messed-up lips, made the sound “Sh…sh,” then added, “No names.” He sucked on the ice, made a big production out of it, pushing his lips out with the cube so Max had to see them. Then, finally, he stuck the cube in his cheek like a chipmunk and asked, “You’ll be Max?”

Max wondered what had happened to no names. He was going to say something about it, but then figured this guy was just trying to play head games with him so he just nodded.

The guy leaned over, whispered, “You can call me Popeye.”

Before Max could say, You mean like the cartoon character? the guy laughed, startling Max, and then said, “Fook, call me anything except early in the morning.” Popeye smiled again, then said, “I need the money up front.”

Max felt better—negotiating was his thing—and asked, “It’s eight, right? I mean, isn’t that what Angela…?”

The guy’s eyes widened and Max thought, Fuck, the no-name rule, and was about to say sorry when Popeye shot out his hand and grabbed Max’s wrist. For such a bone-thin guy he had a grip like steel.

“Ten, it’s ten,” he hissed.

Max was still scared shitless but he was angry about the money too. He tried to free his wrist, couldn’t, but managed to say, “Hey, a deal’s a deal, you can’t just change the terms.”

He liked that, putting the skinny little mick in his place.

Finally Popeye let go, sat back and stared at Max, sucking on the ice some more, then in a very low voice he said, “You want me to kill your wife, I can do whatever the fook I want, I own your arse you suited prick.”

Max felt a jolt in his chest, thought, Shit, the heart attack his fucking cardiologist told him could “happen at any time.” He took a sip of his Diet Pepsi, wiped his forehead, then said, “Yeah, okay, whatever, I guess we can renegotiate. Five before and five after. How’s that?”

Bottom line, he wanted Deirdre gone. It wasn’t like he could hold interviews for hit men, tell each candidate, Thank you for coming in, we’ll get back to you.

Then Popeye reached into his leather jacket—it had a hole in the shoulder and Max wondered, Bullet hole?—and took out a funny-looking green packet of cigarettes, with “Major” on the front, and placed a brass Zippo on top. Max thought that the guy had to know he couldn’t actually light up in a restaurant, even if it was just a shitty pizzeria. Popeye took out a cigarette; it was small and stumpy, and he ran it along his bottom lip, like he was putting on lipstick.

Man, this guy was weird.

“Listen closely yah bollix,” he said, “I’m the best there is and that means I don’t come cheap, it also means I get the whole shebang up front and that’s, lemme see, tomorrow.”

Max didn’t like that idea, but he wanted to get the deal done so he just nodded. Popeye put the cigarette behind his ear, sighed, then said, “Righty ho, I want small bills and noon Thursday, you bring them to Modell’s on Forty-second Street. I’ll be the one trying on tennis sneakers.”

“I have a question,” Max said. “How will you do it? I mean, I don’t want her to suffer. I mean, will it be quick?”

Popeye stood up, used both hands to massage his right leg, as if he was ironing a kink out of it, then said, “Tomorrow…I’ll need the code for the alarm and all the instructions and the keys to the flat. You make sure you’re with somebody at six, don’t go home till eight. If you come home early I’m gonna pop you too.” He paused then said, “You think you can follow that, fellah?”

Suddenly Popeye sounded familiar. Max racked his brain then it came to him—Robert Shaw in The Sting.

Then Popeye said, “And me mouth, a gobshite tried to ram a broken bottle in me face, his aim was a little off, happened on the Falls Road, not a place you’d like to visit.”

Max never could remember if the Falls were the Protestants or the Catholics, but he didn’t feel it was the time to ask. He looked again at the hole in Popeye’s leather jacket.

Popeye touched the jacket with his finger, said, “Caught it on a hook on me wardrobe. You think I should get it fixed?”

Two

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best to make you like everybody else, means to fight the hardest human battle ever and to never stop fighting.E. E. CUMMINGS

Bobby Rosa sat in his Quickie wheelchair in the middle of Central Park’s Sheep Meadow, checking out all the beautiful young babes. He had his headphones on, Motley Crue’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” leaking out, thinking that his own crew would love all these great shots he was taking. Man, these chicks must’ve been starving themselves, probably doing all those Pilates, to look this good. Finally, he saw what he was looking for—three thin babes in bikinis lying on their stomachs in a nice even line. They were about thirty yards away—perfect shooting distance—so Bobby took out his Nikon with the wide-angle lens and zoomed in.

He snapped about ten pictures—some whole-body shots and some good rear shots. Then he wheeled toward the other end of Sheep Meadow and spotted two blondes, lying on their backs. From about twenty yards away, he snapped a dozen boob shots, saying things to himself like, “Oh, yeah, I like that,” “Yeah, that’s right,” “Yeah, right there baby.” Then, right next to the blondes, he spotted a beautiful curvy black chick, lying alone on a blanket. She was on her stomach and the string on her bikini bottom was so thin it looked like she was naked. Bobby went in for a close-up, stopping about five yards behind her. He snapped the rest of the roll. He had another roll in the jacket of his windbreaker, but he was happy with the shots he’d gotten, so he pushed himself out of Sheep Meadow, on to the park’s west drive.

*   *   *

A panhandler came up to Bobby, with that annoying sad-eyed yet pissed-off look that all homeless fucks had. The guy looked strung out and the smell of piss, sweat and booze made Bobby want to puke.

“Got a few bucks, buddy?”

With the headphones on, Bobby couldn’t hear him, but he could read the guy’s lips. He gave him a long stare, thinking there was no way in hell some scumbag like this would have had the balls to come up to him back in the day. Just then, the Crue went dead, right in the middle of “Bad Boy Boogie,” as the cassette got mangled—cheap rip-off piece of shit he bought on the street in Chinatown, what, ten years ago? He tore the crap out of his Walkman, thinking he had to go current, get one of those iPods. Then he flung the messed-up tape at the guy, spat, and said, “Here’s some Crue. Broaden your fuckin’ horizons, jackass…and take a fuckin’ shower while you’re at it.”

The guy stared at the tape, stammered, “The fuck am I gonna do with this?”

Bobby smiled, not giving a shit, and said, “Stick it up your ass, loser.”

And then he continued up the block, cursing to himself and at the people he passed. Nine ways to Sunday, Bobby Rosa had attitude, or in the current buzz jargon, he had issues.

*   *   *

When he got back to his apartment on Eighty-ninth and Columbus, Bobby went right to the second bedroom, which he had turned into a darkroom, and started developing the film. The three chicks in a row came out great, but the pictures of the black babe were Bobby’s favorites. Somehow the woman reminded him of his old girlfriend, Tanya.

Bobby added the tit shots to the collection in his bedroom. He had three walls covered with Central Park boobs, taken during the past two springs and summers. He had all shapes and sizes—implants, flat chests, sagging old ladies, training-bra teenagers—it didn’t matter to him. Then he had an idea, and said out loud, “The Hot Chicks of Manhattan.” It had a nice ring to it; he could see it as a coffee-table book. He could make a few bucks on the side and it was kind of classy too. Rich assholes would have it out right next to their champagne and caviar. Then, laughing to himself, he took the ass shots and added them to his collection in the bathroom. Next, he went to his shelf, grabbed another tape, The Best of Poison. Letting “Talk Dirty To Me” rip, he leaned back in his wheelchair, admiring his work. He bet, if he wanted to, he could sell his pictures to some classy art magazine, one of those big, thick mothers you have to hold with two hands.

After a few more minutes of staring at the walls, Bobby looked at his watch. It was 2:15. He realized it was past his usual time for his bowel routine. So he went into the bathroom and transferred himself onto the bowl. As he dug his index finger into the jar of Vaseline he laughed out loud, asked, “This suck or what?”

*   *   *

About twenty minutes later, Bobby called the lobby and asked the doorman to send a maintenance guy up to his apartment. When the little Jamaican guy arrived, Bobby asked him to take out a big box from the back of his hallway closet.

“I thought you had a problem with your shower?”

“Yeah, well I don’t,” Bobby said.

He was a strong little guy, but the box was so heavy it took all his strength to carry it a few feet. He was out of breath.

“What the fuck do you have in there?”

“Oh, just some old clothes,” Bobby said, handing him a crisp twenty-dollar bill.

When the guy was gone, Bobby opened the box, tearing off the layers of masking tape. Finally, he got it open and removed the bubble wrap, getting a head rush when he saw his weapons. He had three sawed-off shotguns, a couple of rifles, a MAC-11 submachine pistol, two Uzis, some smaller guns, and a gym bag filled with boxes of ammo. No two ways about it—you got hardware, you got juice. Suddenly the world took on a whole other perspective: Now you called the fucking shots. Poison were into “Look What the Cat Dragged In” and he thought, Man, this is it, guns and rock ’n’ roll.

He took one of his favorite handguns out of the box, a .40 millimeter Glock Model 27 compact pistol. The “pocket rocket” didn’t pack the power of a shotgun or a Mag, but he loved the black finish. Holding a gun again gave Bobby the same buzz that it always did. The only thing better was firing one, feeling that explosion of power coming out of his body. He’d had a lot of women in his time, but given the choice between a woman and a gun he’d take the gun. It didn’t talk back and it got the job done, plus, it made you feel like a player and you didn’t have to reassure the motherfucker.

Aiming out the window, Bobby zeroed in on a pigeon that was sitting on the ledge of a building across the street. He felt the muscles in his index finger starting to twitch. He’d always been a great shot, practicing on the range down on Murray Street in between hold-ups. “Bang,” he said out loud, imagining the bullet exploding through the bird’s brain.

Bobby was sweating. He wheeled into the bathroom and splashed cold water against his face, then he stared at himself in the mirror. This was happening a lot lately—looking in the mirror, expecting to see a young guy, but seeing an old man instead.

He muttered, “How’d that happen?”

He used to have thick black hair, but lately his forehead seemed to be getting bigger and bigger, and he had more gray in his hair now than black. He’d grown a beard over the winter, hoping it would make him look younger, but no luck there—it had come in mostly gray too. He used to only get wrinkles around his mouth when he smiled, but now he had them all the time, and the circles under his eyes were getting so dark it looked like he was going around with two permanent shiners. Although his arms and shoulders had gotten big from pushing himself around, his legs had shriveled up to almost nothing and he had put on a gut. Fucking brews, man—they kept you trucking but blew you out.

“What’re you gonna do?” he said.

Maybe forty-seven wasn’t old for some people, but it was old for a guy who’d spent fourteen years in prison, one year in Iraq, and three years in a fucking wheelchair.

It was time to get back to work.

Three

Bust: A sculptured representation of the upper part of the body / to break or burst / to raid or arrest.

Angela Petrakos was raised in Ireland till she was seven and then her father packed them up, took her and her mother to America, saying, “Enough of this scraping and scrimping, we’re going to live the American dream.”

Yeah, right.

They wound up in Weehawken, New Jersey, living in what they call genteel poverty. “They” must be rich because Angela had never heard a poor person use words like that. Angela’s mother was a pure Irish woman—mean, bitter and stubborn as all hell. She called herself a displaced Irishwoman. When she said this, Angela’s father would whisper, “She means she hates dis place.” Her father was born in Dublin, but his family was Greek, from Xios. Angela’s Mom was from Belfast and constantly bitched about the huge mistake of marrying a Southerner with Greek longings. When Angela was a teenager, her mother went on and on about the glories of Ireland. All types of Irish music—jigs and reels, hornpipes and bodhrans—were shoved down Angela’s throat, and a huge green harp hung on the kitchen wall. Angela’s father, meanwhile, wasn’t allowed to play Theodrakis or any of the music he loved, and Angela never even heard Zorba’s Dance until she was twenty. When the micks lay down the rules, they’re laid in granite—it was no wonder they’d coined the phrase No surrender.

All the songs of rebellion, the history of the IRA, were drilled into Angela’s psyche. She was programmed to love the Irish and her plan was to go to the country and have an affair with Gerry Adams. Yeah, he was happily married, but that didn’t ruin her fantasy; actually, it fueled it. Despite her years in America, she had a slight Irish accent. She liked the way she spoke, was told she sounded “hot” by the older guys who tried to pick her up—they often succeeded—when she was in junior high and high school. She went to technical college and learned Excel and PowerPoint, but she knew her real talent was seduction. By the time she was twenty, she’d learned all about the power of sex.

She worked her way through the crappy jobs and a string of asshole boyfriends. Angela wasn’t pretty in the conventional sense but she knew how to use what she had and, by Jesus, she used it. She was medium height with brown eyes and brown hair, but she changed all that—went blond, went blue eyed, went wild. She got a boob job, contacts for her eyes and already had the attitude. Then her mother died and they cremated her—her father said he wanted her burned, “lest she return.” Angela got the ashes, kept them in an urn on her bookcase. When Angela’s Ashes came out she rushed out and bought the book, thinking it had to be some kind of sign or something. She didn’t bother reading it, but liked having it on her shelf. Other books she bought but never read included ’Tis and A Monk Swimming. She also had some DVDs like Angela’s Ashes, Far and Away, and The Commitments. When it came to music, only the Irish stuff really did it for her—Enya, Moya Brennan and, of course, U2. She would’ve stepped on Gerry Adams to get to Bono.

Most of her money went on clothes. The most basic lesson she learned was that if you wore a short skirt, killer heels and a tight top, guys went ape. Her legs were good and she knew how to hike a skirt to really get the heads turning. She saved her money and went online to book a week in Belfast, brought the urn with her—which caused some commotion with Homeland Security, but in the end she was allowed to bring her Mom if she stashed her in freight, which she did. She stayed at the Europa, the most bombed hotel in Europe—that’s what Frommer said anyway—and the customers were pretty bombed themselves. The city was a shithole—drab, grey, depressing—and the Sterling, what was the deal with that? And people kept getting on her about Iraq, like she had any freakin’ say about it. She did all the sightseeing crap—maybe seeing blown-up buildings did it for some people, but it bored the hell out of her. When she threw her Mom’s ashes into the Foyle there was a wind, of course, and most of her mother flew back into her hair. When she told the old guy at the hotel desk what had happened he said, “Tis proof, darling, that the dead are always with us.”

Evenings, she ate at the hotel and had drinks at the bar. She didn’t want to go out, not because she was afraid but because she couldn’t understand a goddamn word anyone was saying. The bartender hit on her and if his teeth hadn’t been so yellow she might have been into it. For the first time in her life, she felt American and that Ireland was the foreign country. The blended accent that got her so far in New York seemed useless here.

Her second-to-last night, she was sitting at the bar and a drunk began to hassle her. The bartender, of course, didn’t help. The drunk had a combat jacket, sewage breath, and was going, “Ah come on, you want to suck me dick, you know yah do.”

It took her a while to actually figure out what he was saying because of the accent; it sounded like, “Orr…kom on…yer want to truck meh duck.”

Finally, she put it all together. Before she could react, a man appeared out of nowhere, grabbed the guy by the front of the neck and had him out of there in no time. Shaking, she tried to put a Virginia Slim into her mouth, and the bartender raced over, flicked a bic, and said, “There you go.”

She accepted the light as she wanted that hit of nicotine then blew a cloud of smoke in Yellow Teeth’s face, said, “And there you go you spineless prick.”

Unfazed, the bartender said, “I love it when you talk dirty.”

The other man had returned and now stared at the bartender, and said, “Leg it shithead.” Then he turned to her, asked, “You okay missus?”

She could understand him, because he was from the Irish Republic and had soft vowels, sounding kind of like her Dad. He had a scar on his face, long grey hair and was as thin as the guys on Christopher Street. His lips were mangled but, hey, he was the first guy in the whole damn province she saw with good teeth. And the lips were kind of sexy anyway. They’d be strange to kiss, but they’d be great for other things. Maybe it was the near violence but she felt a raw sexuality oozing off of him that was so freaking irresistible. One thing that got Angela hot was danger and this guy reeked of it.

She felt a burning rise up her neck, spread to her face, and said, “Wow, I’m so, like, grateful. Can I buy you a drink?”

He smiled then said, “Jameson.” He said it like a Hollywood tough guy, no bullshit with please or ice. No, just the one word, with a slight hard edge, the implication being, bring me the drink now and don’t even think about fucking with me.

She asked, “Are you, like, for real?”

He parked his ass on the stool next to her, said, “The heart wants what it cannot hold.”

Jesus, she thought, poetry and violence, how could a girl resist? The Irish might know shit about cool but they sure as hell knew how to talk.

And she loved his voice, deep, devilish, and, yeah, sexy.

With a little of the same flirty tone, she said, “You want that on the rocks?”

He gave her the look she would get to know and not always love, and said, “I take everything…neat.”

He put his hand in his jacket, took out a slim book and she saw the title, The Wisdom of Zen. She was impressed that a guy like him was carrying around a deep book like that.

He asked her, “You like The Pogues?”

She thought, Screw them, I like you.

Four

Never do evil, always do good, keep your mind pure—thus all the Buddhas taught.THE DHAMMAPADA

Max screamed, “To hell with you, you crackpot!” and slammed the phone as hard as he could and banged the desk with his fist. A moment later, he felt a jolt in his chest. Thinking, Fuck, I’m dying, he searched his jacket pockets for his Mevacor. Then he remembered he’d already taken his pills today but now feared that the Mevacor was interacting with his Viagra, causing some kind of reaction.

He was about to call Dr. Cohen, that jerk-off, back but he decided, What’s the point? So far nothing that schmuck suggested had worked. Max took all the goddamn drugs he was supposed to, had even hired an Indian named Kamal to come over to his house a few days a week to cook macrobiotic meals. But his HDL-to-LDL ratio was eight-to-one, up from seven-to-one at his last check-up, putting him in the super-high-risk group for heart disease. Right now, he could feel his heart working on overtime, the pump already on its last legs.

To help relax, Max did a yoga breathing exercise that Kamal had taught him, inhaling and exhaling through alternate nostrils, but it didn’t do crap. He made a mental note—fire Kamal, that Indian bastard, as soon as he comes back from his vacation. Taj Mahal that, you little prick.

There was a knock on Max’s door.

Max yelled, “What?”

The door opened slowly and Harold Lipman, Max’s new Networking Salesman, came into the office.

Lipman said, “Esc—” and Max said, “Not now.”

“I just wanted to ask—”

“I said not now!”

Lipman left and Max went right to his office bar and made a vodka tonic. Ah, Max loved his office, the only part of NetWorld that he’d remodeled. Besides the mahogany bar, he’d paneled the walls, installed brand-new carpeting, and bought the most expensive desk and swivel chair available in the Office Depot catalogue. He figured it made a statement, that here was a hip guy, not showy, but with refined taste and a serious edge. You saw the office, you saw a guy who probably had drinks with the Donald, though not often because Max was “too busy.” The office had no view, but elegant beige curtains concealed the windows. Behind his desk hung a custom-made picture of a blonde with Pam Anderson-size breasts sitting on a red Porsche. Inscribed on the car was the company motto, NETWORLD OR BUST.

The booze soothed Max enough so that he was able to concentrate on the important stuff again, like money. Over the past two days, Max had put away ten grand in his private safe. He had made small withdrawals from all of his bank accounts—corporate and private—and from his brokerage accounts where he had cash balances. But the bulk of the money, about seven grand, had come from the office’s petty cash. Max thought this was a great idea because if the police investigated there would be no withdrawal slips or any other way to prove he’d hired a hit man. And fuck that crazy mick’s demand for small bills—the money was mostly fifties and hundreds. What was he going to do, turn it down? Yeah, like that was going to happen.

As Max poured his second vodka tonic, there was a soft knock on the door, a pause, followed by a louder knock.

Max recognized the signal and said in his sexiest voice, “Come in, baby.”

As usual, Angela looked dynamite. She was wearing shiny black boots, a short red skirt tight enough to see her butt-cheeks, and a lacy camisole. She had big blow-dried hair and was wearing the diamond stud earrings that Max had bought her at Tiffany’s last Christmas.

“You had two messages while you were on the phone,” Angela said, the soft Irish vowels driving him crazy.

“Fuck the messages. How about you put those magic little hands of yours to work?”

Angela locked the door and came up behind Max at his desk. Max breathed deeply, moaning, “Oh, yeah, that feels so good,” as Angela worked the muscles in his neck and shoulders.

“You have a lot of knots today,” Angela said.

“I bet my blood pressure’s shooting through the roof too.”

“Was that Dr. Cohen you were screaming at?”

“Who else? I swear, I don’t know how that jerk-off got a license. You know what that asshole told me? That I should start eating brown rice. Like the bacon, the fried chicken, the shrimp, the pizza—that’s not killing me. It’s the fuckin’ white rice.”

“Calm down,” Angela said. “You have to learn how to relax, not let the stress get to you. In Ireland we say, Na bac leat.”

The fuck was she talking about? He asked, “The fuck’re you talking about?”

She said calmly, “In American…No biggie.”

Max exhaled, then took a long, steady breath. Angela was wearing some of that perfume called Joy he had bought her last month at Bloomingdale’s. Max couldn’t tell whether it smelled nice or not, but it had cost five hundred bucks an ounce so he figured it must be pretty good.

“You should be careful,” Angela said, “screaming in the office like that. Everyone could hear you.”

“So? If they don’t like it they don’t have to work here.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to, like, yell like that. I mean people could remember. They’ll tell the police ‘Come to think of it, Max was kind of acting crazy lately.’”

“But I act crazy all the time, I’m a crazy kind of guy, it’s part of my appeal.”

“I’m just saying—it’s probably not a good idea.”

“Eh, you’re probably right,” Max said. “You know what else Cohen told me? He said I’m fat.”

“I love your belly.”

“Yeah, well, Cohen says it’s unhealthy. He showed me some chart that said I’m obese for a man my height and age. Meanwhile, you should see the size of that asshole’s gut.”

“How does that feel?”

“Nice. Real nice.”

Angela spun Max around in his chair, kissed him on the lips, then Max whispered, “I just want all this shit to be over with already. Last night I had a dream she was dead. The ambulances were there and they were carrying her out of our house, covered by a white sheet, and you know what? It was the best dream I’ve ever had.”

“You shouldn’t talk about her that way,” Angela said. She had her hands behind Max’s head, gently rubbing her fingers through his thinning hair. He was glad she was touching the back of his head, where he still had some hair left. “You know what they say—if you say things about your first wife you’ll say them about your second wife too.”

“You and Deirdre have nothing in common, sweetheart.”

“That’s what you say now, but in twenty years you might be paying to have me killed.”

“I’d be lucky if I lived another twenty years.”

“You’re not denying it.”

Holding her head steady and looking right into those fucking beautiful light blue eyes, Max said, “I love you. You think I ever went around telling Deirdre that I loved her?”

“You still didn’t deny it.”

“I deny it, I deny it,” Max said. “Jesus Christ.”

Angela smiled. Max kissed her then said, “You know, the only thing I’m worried about is this Popeye character.”

“Why?” Angela asked.

“First of all, I don’t like his name.”

“What’s wrong with his name?”

“Come on, it’s a fucking cartoon character. It’s like I’m hiring Donald Duck to kill my wife.”

“You can’t expect him to use his real name. I mean, he has to protect himself, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah, but couldn’t he come up with something better, more hitman-like. I don’t know, like, Skull, or Bones, or something like that.”

“You can’t judge somebody by their name.”

“Eh, I guess you’re right. And I guess we’ve gotta assume he’s good at what he does or your cousin wouldn’t have recommended him, right? God knows the guy’s crazy enough to kill somebody. You should’ve seen the way he grabbed my arm.”

“So what’re you worried about?”

“I don’t know, it’s just a vibe. I just got a feeling the guy’s fucking around with me somehow. And I don’t like the way he changed the terms. It was supposed to be eight, then he made it ten. That’s no way to do business with somebody.”

Angela held Max’s hand, said, “Don’t worry. I mean, it’s only another two thousand. It’s not like he asked for twenty thousand.”

“Yet,” Max said. “I got a feeling this guy thinks he’s got me by the balls or something. That’s how he comes off, like he thinks he’s in control. You know what he called me? He called me a ‘suited prick.’ Asshole. And I couldn’t stand looking at him, either. Those disgusting lips.”

While he spoke, Max was massaging Angela’s breasts. He loved her breasts—they were the main reason he’d hired her. He’d always been a breast man. Even Deirdre had big breasts, although they were starting to sag below her stomach.

“This is probably a bad idea,” Max said as Angela started to kiss his neck. “Tonight has to be our last time for a while.”

“I can’t wait till we can be together all the time,” Angela said.

“Ditto,” Max said. “But until then, let’s just try to keep things as quiet as possible around here.”

For the rest of the day, Max and Angela went about their business. Amazingly, they’d managed to keep their affair a secret from everyone in the office. Around other people, Max was always very formal, asking Angela to send faxes, take messages, bring him coffee, order in lunch and other crap that presidents of companies ask their executive assistants to do. They never went out to lunch together or left the office together at night. If they were planning to meet for dinner, Angela would always leave first and then Max would meet her at a specified location. As for the times they fooled around in Max’s office during business hours, it wasn’t unusual for an executive assistant and her boss to be in the boss’s office together with the door locked.

At eleven o’clock, Max had his weekly meeting with Alan Henderson, his CFO, and Diane Faustino, the Payroll Director. They went over the company’s payroll and budget and talked about expanding the company website and the need to hire two more Senior Networking Technicians. Max also told Alan that he wanted to reward his employees with a ten-percent raise next year, and sent out a memo about this pronto, thinking at least no one could say he wasn’t in a good mood a couple of days before his wife was murdered. Besides, he loved giving raises, the surge of power it gave him, that he could make or break these assholes.

That evening, when the last person had left for the day, Angela locked the front door, and came into Max’s office. Max was already naked, lying on his back on his office couch, doing Kamal’s breathing exercise. She turned down the lights. It was almost dark, the only light coming through the window curtains. She took off her clothes slowly, moving the way Max liked, like she was a dancer at Legz Diamond’s, the strip club on Forty-seventh Street where he took his clients. Finally, she took off her bra, climbed on top of Max and gave him some nice warm kisses. Then she slid down and ran her tongue over his thick gray chest hair. As she dipped further, Max grinned, thinking, Who the fuck needs breathing exercises?

Afterwards, holding her tightly, feeling especially close, Max said, “Let’s get married.”

“We’re going to get married.”

“I mean right away.”

“But we’ll have to wait some time. I mean it would look suspicious if we did it too soon, wouldn’t it?”

“What difference does it make? Just because my wife is murdered I have to spend my whole life in mourning?”

Angela thought about this for a moment, then said, “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

“There’s another thing I want to talk about—kids. I’ve always wanted a little Max Jr., just not with Deirdre. What do you think about being a full-time mommy?”

“I’d love it.”

“Well, I want to do that right away too—while I still have some good seed inside me.”

Later, while they were getting dressed, Max interrupted whatever the hell Angela was saying, said, “Ange, there’s something I wanted to ask you. I don’t really know how to say this. I mean I don’t want you to get offended or anything. I don’t think you will but—”

“What is it?”

“It’s stupid, really, but…”

“What?”

“It’s just…have you ever thought about adding another cup size to your tits?”

Looking down at her implants, she said, “Why? You think they’re not big enough?”

Max said, “I didn’t say that. I just asked you if you ever thought about it before, that’s all.”

“They’re already thirty-eight D’s. Why, you’re serious? You really don’t like them?”

“I didn’t say that. I just didn’t want you to think there was something you couldn’t have if you wanted it.”

“That’s really nice of you…I guess.”

“I’m not saying that bigger tits are something that you necessarily need.” Max wound on his tie, trying to come up with perfect way to explain it. He came up with, “I mean, I want you to have everything you want in life, whether it’s a gold necklace, a beautiful dress, a trip around the world, or great tits.”

Strapping on her bra, Angela said, “You really think it would make me look better, huh?”

“Not necessarily better, but I don’t think it could hurt. Anyway, sleep on it. Although I don’t mean that literally.” He laughed to himself, then said, “By the way, did you make that dinner appointment for me tomorrow night?”

“Yes. With Jack Haywood.”

“Good. I’ll have to take him out to some busy restaurant, maybe some Italian place on the Upper East Side. They have all those little restaurants around Second Avenue.”

“There’re a lot of bars up there, too.”

“I don’t know, I’d look pretty stupid—an old guy like me in some singles bar.”

“You’re not old.”

“I’m only not old when I’m with you.”

When Max finished getting dressed, Angela came over to him and said, “So this is it. The last time we’ll be together—for a while anyway.”

Hugging Angela made Max think about breasts again. He said, “You know, I don’t think a restaurant is public enough. We should be someplace more visible. I know, I’ll take Jack to a strip club.”

Five

If my grandmother had balls she’d be my grandfather.YIDDISH SAYING

“So I’m riding on the bus, coming downtown, when this chick gets on,” Bobby Rosa said. “I got Cinderella going, feeling nice and pumped, so I figure, Why not? She’s like, I don’t know, thirty years old, blonde hair, nice little shape. So I start staring at her, you know, trying to get her to look at me. Make the bitch’s day, right? They always say how chicks are hot for guys in wheelchairs—I wanted to see if that was bullshit or not.”

Victor Gianetti, sitting across from Bobby at a table in the back of Lindy’s diner in the Hotel Pennsylvania, said, “So what happened next?” Trying to sound like he gave a fuck.

“The girl starts to smile,” Bobby said. “But it wasn’t just a smile, like ‘Have a nice day.’ This was the smile of a girl who wants to get laid. So I’m thinking, This is it, my lucky day, when, all of a sudden, my legs start to spasm. I mean it’s like somebody stuck an electric prong up my ass. My legs are shaking, the chair’s bouncing up and down, people’re coming over trying to help me. Finally, I stop shaking and I look up at the chick and her mouth’s hanging open, looking at me like I’m some kind of freak.”

“You are a freak, buddy,” Victor said straight-faced. Then he said, “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Jesus, where’s your sense of humor?”

“I think you’re missing my whole point.” Bobby wondered why Victor never seemed to understand what the fuck he was talking about. “It wasn’t like I gave a shit what some chick thought of me—it’s just the way it is when you’re in a fucking wheelchair, you start buying into this whole being a cripple shit, know what I mean? I mean when it comes right down to it, what does anybody do with their lives? You eat, you shit, you go to sleep—I can still do all those things. I can even screw. They have medicine, all these devices. It probably would be a big pain in the ass, but I could do it. I ride the bus, I can go anywhere anybody else can go. There’s a word for what I’m talking about but I don’t know what it is.”

“You feel like people are putting you down.”

“I said a word, not a sentence.” Bobby thought, Is this guy a freaking moron or what? “It sounds like erection. Perception. It’s like everybody’s got this perception of me right off the bat. They see a big guy, late forties, wheelchair—they either feel sorry for me or they think I’m a fuckin’ freak. Kids, Jesus, they’re the fucking worst. Last winter, I go out to get a bottle of Coke when these three little kids start throwing snowballs at me. Not snow—ice. You know, like we used to throw at buses in the old days, now they throw them at people—what’s the fuckin’ world coming to? I swear to God, I was ready to go get my shotgun and blow the little fucks away. What happened to getting a little respect? The old days I’d walk down the street nobody’d come near me, but now the perception’s changed. I’m the same guy—I can still beat the shit out of somebody if I had to—but nobody else sees it that way. You see what I’m saying?”

“I guess so,” Victor said and took a sip of milk.

Man, Bobby couldn’t get over how shitty Victor looked in that bellhop uniform. Was this really the same guy who used to dress in style, wearing snazzy pinstriped suits and shiny shoes? Yeah, he’d always had thin hair, but now he was completely bald and he looked like he might’ve lost twenty or thirty pounds since the last time Bobby had seen him, what, six years ago? There was something wrong with his voice too—it sounded hoarse and scratchy, like an old man. Bobby might not’ve even recognized him at all if he didn’t still have his dark skin and his big bent-out-of-shape nose that he’d probably broken dozens of times as a kid. Bobby could understand how a guy could lose some pounds and pack on the years, but he couldn’t see how anybody could go from armed robbery to carrying people’s luggage. Bobby might have lost his legs, but this asswipe had lost his balls.

Bobby slurped his coffee, said, “Remember the Bowery jobs?”

Victor smiling, suddenly looking young again, going back in time, said, “Those were real beauts, huh?”

“You plan a job, just the way you want it all to work out, and then boom—it goes that way, without one fucking hitch.”

“Except when that little Chink pulled the alarm and started shooting at us.”

“That wasn’t a hitch. You gotta expect shit to happen when you’re stealing jewelry. I’m talking about everything else. Getting to the car, getting on the bridge, getting to Brooklyn, switching cars in Brooklyn, getting to Queens, switching cars in Queens, and then boom—we’re on the Island, counting the fuckin’ take. Like clockwork. We did it, what, three times? All that fucking gold. Man, that was it.”

He felt a rush, just seeing it replay in his head. It was like he was there again—ten years younger, looking sharp and in shape. When he saw himself standing in the jewelry store, holding his Uzi, and then running out to the street, he could feel his legs, like in those dreams when it all seemed so real, then he’d wake up and still be a fucking cripple.

“I should never’a gone out on my own,” Victor said.

“That’s exactly what I was talking about,” Bobby said, “you can’t second-guess your life. So you fucked up, you took a fall, you’re still what, fifty, fifty-five?”

“Forty-four,” Victor said.

Thinking, Jeez, the fucking sad sack looks sixty, Bobby said, “See? Forty-four is like what twenty-four used to be. With vitamins, all the new shit with doctors, everybody’s gonna be living to a hundred soon.”

Victor, looking at his watch, said, “Fuck, I gotta get back to work. So what brings you around here anyway? You just wanted to shoot the shit or what?”

“No, it’s a little more important than that.” Bobby leaned forward, making sure the young guy reading the Daily News at the next table wasn’t listening. “I got a job to discuss.”

“A job we did?”

“No, a job we’re gonna do.”

Victor stared at Bobby for a few seconds, like he was trying not to laugh, then said, “Come on, you’re joking, right?”

“Does this face look like it’s joking?”

“What’s this, April fools? Come on, Bobby, give me a fuckin’ break, all right?”

“I’m serious, man. I came to you first because I know you’re good and I know I can trust you. But if you don’t want to hear me out I’ll go talk to somebody else.”

Bobby wanted to reach across the table and slap him, get him focused.

“All right, so tell me,” Victor said, trying not to crack up. “What’s this job?”

“I wanna knock over a liquor store,” Bobby said.

Now Victor couldn’t hold back. He started laughing, but it quickly turned into a cigarette smoker’s hack. Finally, he recovered enough to say, “A liquor store? Jesus, you’re too much, Bobby.”

Bobby still wasn’t laughing, or even smiling.

“Come on, Bobby,” Victor said in that scratchy voice. “A liquor store?”

“What’s wrong with that?” Bobby said. “That time we were shooting pool downtown what, seven, eight years ago, you said you wanted to work together again someday, right? Well, this is fuckin’ someday.”

Victor was staring at Bobby like he felt sorry for him. Bobby had seen this look a lot from strangers on the street, usually old ladies. One time an old lady asked Bobby if she could help him carry his bags home from the supermarket. Bobby wanted to fuckin’ belt her.

“You can’t walk,” Victor said. “You know that, right?”

The waitress came over with Bobby’s cherry cheesecake. Bobby took four full bites of cake then said, “So? Are you with me or not?”

“Come on, man,” Victor said. “Weren’t you just listening to me?”

“The old days was a long fuckin’ time ago. You’re in a wheelchair and the doctor took some cancer out of my throat last year. They found a couple of spots on my liver they’re watching—they said if it spreads down there, that’s it—I’m a goner.”

Bobby stared right into Victor’s yellowish eyes. The cancer didn’t surprise him—he knew there was something