“It’s not about the money,” Ronnie said. “It’s about family. This is our shit right here, Billy.”
“Doesn’t feel that way,” Billy said.
“You’re running because you’re not busy enough? Because you’re dissatisfied with your job? Because you put Germaio in the dirt?”
“Look,” Billy said, carefully, “one day, it was gonna be you or me looking at a gun. I’m saving us both. One of us is gonna be dead, one of us is gonna be in prison, that’s if we’re lucky. I don’t want either. I’ve got my own family now. I’m just trying to walk away.”
“Looks to me like you’re running away.”
“Yeah, well,” Billy said, “consider this my two weeks’ notice.”
“I needed you, Billy.” Ronnie spit on the ground. “We’re getting pushed out of Vegas,” he said. “Fucking government is all over us. Moles in our unions, fucking snitches up and down the line. This building is finished, you think they’re gonna just throw up another skyscraper tomorrow? It’ll be ten, fifteen years before we get a contract like this one. But the shit I’m doing is going to set this family up for the next twenty-five years. You were gonna be a part of that, cousin. I can’t trust these fucking guys like I can trust you.”
“I’m not in the car business,” Billy said. “And I sure as fuck ain’t in the newspaper business.”
“You’re a small thinker,” Ronnie said. “It’s not about the cars. It’s not about the drugs. It’s about the customer. Meet their needs before they even know they want something. The Outfit, the Five Families, all those fucks? They’re gonna be out of business in five years. We’re mechanized; they’re horses and buggies.”
“Don’t tell me more of this McDonald’s shit, Ronnie,” Billy said. He reached into his pocket, felt the brass knuckles there, slid them on. “I had to bury a guy this morning. Ronald McDonald isn’t capping the Burger King.” Billy heard the dinging of the elevator. He looked over his shoulder and saw that Big Kirk was now only five feet away. Three Black guys appeared at the end of the floor. Billy didn’t recognize any of them, which meant they were probably Gangster Disciples. The Family had been selling them guns for years. Shit.
“Thought you said you needed me?”
“I do,” Ronnie said. “And you want to go. So you’re gonna go.”
“Four guys, Ronnie?”
“Out of respect,” he said.
“There one you want me to keep alive? For the story in the Sun-Times?”
Ronnie smiled, but he didn’t look happy. “What’s in your pocket? Knife?”
“Knuckles,” he said.
“Big Kirk could use some scars,” Ronnie said.
Billy nodded, looked back out the window. “I wasn’t snitching,” he said. “Wasn’t planning on it, either. You should know. I was just going to retire.”
“Government would find you,” Ronnie said. “I’d be surprised if you made it out of town. If I knew, they knew. Next time we saw each other would have been in court.”
Billy nodded again. “You gonna let me say goodbye to my kid?” he asked, thinking if he got down there, Arlene would know what was up; she’d get that gun out, give him a chance.
“Sorry,” Ronnie said. “I’ll take good care of him while you’re gone.”
“Oh, I’m coming back?”
“He won’t know,” Ronnie said, “until he does. And that will be that.”
“This isn’t the life I want for him,” Billy said. “Let him just be a kid. He doesn’t need to be like us. Promise me you’ll give him that choice.”
“I can’t make that promise,” Ronnie said. “I don’t got a son. Maybe it would be different if I did.”
“If you had a son,” Billy said, “I’d already be dead.”
“It’ll be fast,” Ronnie said.
The three Gangster Disciples were beside Big Kirk now. He guessed all three were carrying. Judging from their bugged-out eyes, they were also coked-up. He could maybe take out one of them, pop him in the temple just right, get a lick or two at least on Big Kirk, who looked like he was carrying a load of shit in his pants, but not a gun. Still, four on one without a gun only worked in Charles Bronson movies. Billy flexed his fist closed.
He had one shot at this.
One shot to save Arlene and Sal from a life of wondering. How many people from his childhood had Billy disappeared under similar circumstances, Family members who strayed and ended up in tiny bits, buried under a Jewel’s being built in Springfield or dumped in the Poyter landfill or tossed in any convenient and deep pond? How many families did he lie to and say they’d been sent to Sicily for a job, or that they flipped and were now in the Witness Protection Program, or that they’d fled to Canada, even when he still had their skin under his nails? No. There would be no questioning of what happened to Billy Cupertine because the end was gonna be the same. He was already dead. Ronnie had already killed him. If Billy wanted to keep his son out of this shit, the boy would need an object lesson. Sal would need to know exactly what Ronnie Cupertine did to his old man.
Billy spun toward the tarp-covered window and smashed his brass-knuckled fist through the thick plastic, slid his arm all the way down, and then did the only thing that made sense.
He jumped.
Fifty-two floors.
Took him almost six seconds to hit bottom.
Six seconds and thirty-five years.
Two years old, there were pictures of him dressed in a baby jumper that made him look like a prisoner, five years old with one of his father’s unlit cigars in the corner of his mouth, ten years old he was already running errands, standing outside when the boys came over, listening to the conversations. People started calling him Dark Billy by the time he was fifteen, not because of his skin tone, but because he was a thinker and he’d get a serious look on his face, so there was Light Billy when he was running around doing kid stuff and Dark Billy when he was working through shit in his mind, brow furrowed. Seventeen years old he’d already killed five guys. Twenty-five he was married and brokering multimillion-dollar heroin deals, ten bodies on his sheet. Thirty and he was second in line to an empire that he’d never get and didn’t want. Thirty-five he was gonna disappear and leave his kid to wonder why his father left him. Sal would look at the IBM building every day for the rest of his life trying to figure out how his father wasn’t able to walk back out, how he went in and disappeared and no one knew anything. Arlene would know. Which meant maybe Arlene would be put out too, car accident or an OD or a staged robbery, shit turns around, Arlene takes a bullet. She wouldn’t go quietly, no matter the situation. But he couldn’t let her think he just walked out on her.
So Billy Cupertine screamed the entire way down, made sure she paid attention.
Not because he was afraid.
No, because as he fell, Dark Billy Cupertine realized he was wrong about one thing in his life. Fear hadn’t kept him sharp. It had inoculated him. And so as he tumbled through the air and his past, his wife and child staring up at him, their faces coming into view now, Sal’s opened mouth about to make his own scream, his last thought was that he’d fucked this all up, from beginning to end. Except for that boy. That boy who’d grow up and would never make the same mistakes. He’d know who not to trust.
