“This thing we do,” the Boss says, the words almost musical, like a Sinatra croon lurks somewhere behind the words, a sing-song ghost. “Christ, I’m hungry. But the cancer’s a jealous mistress. It eats me; I don’t get to eat anything else. Food here’s good, though. Kielbasa’s solid.” He pronounces it kill-baasy. “They know a good kilbo. Still ain’t like in my Philly days, though. They, they knew kilbos. Before we came here they called us the Kielbasa Gang. You know that? Maybe you did. I repeat myself in my old age – forgive me that sin, yeah? Where you come from, Mookie?”
“Jersey originally.”
“Good. Well. You go eat.” Then the Boss waves them off. Sits back down. And that’s that. You’re dismissed.
On the way back to the food line, Werth says, “Fuckin’ cancer, am I right?”
“Fuckin’ cancer,” Mookie says.
The plate is heavy. Pierogies – fat dough pockets filled with cheese, slathered with butter and onions. Kielbasa red like a Russian rocket. Beet salad. He’s tempted to toss the plastic fork away and just use his hands, but people would stare.
Fuck it. They stare anyway. He starts using his hands.
Mookie sits by himself in the corner. Rips apart a pierogie. Cheesy filling spills; steam rises. Just as he’s about to cram it in his salivating mouth, a hand falls on his forearm.
It’s the kid. The grandson. Casimir.
“You’re Mookie Pearl,” he says.
Mookie looks left, looks right. Like this is some kind of joke.
“That’s me.” He almost adds, Whaddya want, kid? but then remembers that this “kid” is going to be the Big Boss with the Red Hot Sauce before too long.
“Can I sit?”
“You can do anything you want.”
And yet the kid doesn’t sit. He stands there. Hands in his pockets.
Casimir lowers his voice. “I’m not ready for this.”
“To sit down?”
“To take over.”
“Oh.” Mookie looks down at the drippy blob of butter-ooze dough at the end of the pierogie and sighs. Be rude to eat in front of the next Boss. He sets the food down, an act that is almost painful to perform. “You got some time yet.”
Now, Casimir sits. “Not much. Not enough.”
“You’ll be OK.”
“Up until now, he kept me out of it. The business. Now it’s like–” He knocks two fists together. “Boom. Crash course. And I’m not ready.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I need you to do something.”
Can he do that? Does the kid have the power yet? He’s more important than Mookie by a hundred miles. A thousand. So, yeah, probably. “OK, sure.”
“I need you to cure my dziadzia.”
“Your who?”
“My Pop-Pop. The Boss.”
“Cure. Like, the cancer.”
“That’s right. I need you to cure his cancer.”
Mookie almost laughs. This kid isn’t too bright. “I know I don’t look like a doctor.”
“But you know things. You’ve been…” The kid points toward the floor. “Downstairs.” He means the Great Below. The Underworld. Hell itself. Mookie’s surprised the kid knows about that, but if they’ve been giving him a real crash course and he’s going to take the wheel…
“Hell’s not a hospital. It’s the… opposite of one. No help there for your grandfather.”
“I’ve been reading.”
“Good for you. I hear it’s fundamental.”
“No, I mean– I have these pages. From this journal? This guy named Oakes…”
Shit. This. “John Atticus, yeah. He went down fifteen, twenty years ago. Went nuts. Never came back. End of story.”
“He says that the…” And here Casimir lowers his voice even further as if he’s summoning the Devil. “Blue stuff isn’t the only pigment. That there are five in addition to the Blue and that one of them can cure anything, can end death itself–”
All anybody has of Oakes’ journal are a dozen or so pages that have been found scattered around the Underworld over the years. Mookie knew him. Well, met him, anyway. Was a reformed thief-turned-explorer. A self-proclaimed “cartographer”. Like the dead of Daisypusher, he wanted to chart the whole Underworld. Thousands of miles of subterranean labyrinth. He got a lot of things right but some stuff…
“You’re talking about Death’s Head. Caput Mortuum. It’s not real. Nobody’s ever seen the stuff. Nobody’s seen anything but the Blue.”
“They say that they found the Red–”
“Fuck the Red.” The kid flinches. It’s only then Mookie hears the anger in his own voice. He’s tired. Hungry. Seeing Nora didn’t do him any favors. “I just mean, until I see it, I don’t buy it.”
“But if Death’s Head were real, it could cure him.”
Mookie shrugs. “If it does what Oakes said it could do, yeah.”