Cape Cod Noir - By David L Ulin Page 0,5
and violate me right back. When you’re leaving prison, some guys will yell at you from the tiers, “Stay free.” I intended to do just that.
Second paycheck, I figured he was gonna skim me again. Instead, he put an envelope in my hand and walked out to the front of the house. I heard him calling for the two busgirls. Eastern Europeans. They didn’t speak to me too much. Sometimes that’s how it goes, front of the house keeps to their own unless they need something special or there’s a complaint. Anyway, I opened the envelope and it was all there. I still heard him calling for those two girls. I stuffed the envelope into my pocket and got back to work. I made a ricotta spread, then I remembered I had to go across the lot to a small garage where we have extra refrigerators for storage. I needed lemons. I headed out the back door and across the lot. When I opened the side door to the garage, there was DePuzzo, his back to me, ass to the wind, arms behind his back holding another envelope while one of the Eastern Europeans sucked him off. When he heard me open the door, he held her head with one hand, looked over his shoulder at me, and winked. Then he flicked his wrist so I could see the girl’s paycheck in his hand. It was pretty clear, the whole thing.
Back in the kitchen, side by side with Marcello cutting mushrooms, I told him about it.
“Every time,” he said, “or he doesn’t pay.”
The next day, he came in to pay the kitchen guys. He waited the extra day because he gives them cash and doesn’t want to take too much out of the bank at once.
He came in wearing jeans and a white Oxford open to his solar plexus. A thin gold chain snaked through his black chest hair. He had four stacks of bills rubber-banded in his hands. That next-day smell of booze came out of his skin in the kitchen heat. Ray-Bans on, he stood at the edge of the line next to the standing oven, slapping the stacks of bills against his palm.
The Brazilians knew exactly what to do. They all got in line in front of him, the dishwasher first. I watched from the corner, mashing potatoes. The dishwasher stepped forward and DePuzzo dropped her stack of bills on the floor. Without looking him in the eye, she bent and picked them up, and walked back to her stack of dishes. Rener stepped forward in her place and looked DePuzzo right in the eye. Guess being twenty-eight still meant something. DePuzzo twisted a sick smile and slapped the last three stacks against his open palm.
“Buceta,” he said, and dropped the stack on the floor. Rener flinched, looked down, then bent and picked it up.
Marcello bent and got his.
Gleason was last in line, and I could see the base of his neck getting red. His jaw muscles corded as he ground his teeth. His head was tilted, his eyes shaded by his greasy kitchen-use Red Sox cap. He opened his cell phone, peered at the screen, closed it, and stepped up. He didn’t look DePuzzo in the eye, but didn’t look at the floor either. He just stared at DePuzzo’s throat, head raised enough so the boss could see his face, his grit, but not his eyes beneath that cap.
“Stick your hand out,” DePuzzo said.
Gleason looked up.
“I said stick your hand out.”
Gleason raised his right hand slowly, and opened his palm. DePuzzo held the stack above the palm like he was going to drop it right there. He waited a second. Then he tossed the stack on the rubber mats and said, “Who the fuck you kidding?” as he walked out.
Every day, the Brazilians and I listened to bootleg favela hiphop at top volume, or Jota Quest, or even Brazilian sertaneja music. I dug it. I was learning new tunes. Every day trying to crack a joke, trying to keep the dishwasher from yelling at us. She didn’t like us cursing and trying to make it light before DePuzzo showed up. They stopped saying buceta to the staff’s faces after they saw he knew what it meant. And every two weeks the Eastern Europeans went out back and the Brazilians picked their stacks off the floor. DePuzzo always handed me my money in front of the Brazilians. He figured it would turn them on me, or at