Cape Cod Noir - By David L Ulin Page 0,6
least make things tough. He should have known better, he used to work the line.
One rainy Saturday, I was opening with Gleason, trying to rip through the prep work before the lunch rush. Rain means people don’t go to the beach. They go to restaurants for lunch to bitch about wasting their vacation time. I was cleaning a halibut. Gleason was staring at the screen on his phone again. He hadn’t put any music on yet. He was just standing and not paying much attention.
“That the ten-year plan?”
He glanced at me, the spell broken, all of him coming back from somewhere. He shut the phone and placed it on top of the industrial shelving above the buffet-style water heaters where the soups were kept warm.
“Ten-year plan,” he said. “Saving every day.”
“Going back to Brazil,” I said.
“Going back to Brazil, buddy.”
But there was something in him that reminded me of when we reach for something just beyond the fingertips. Like the first night in a cell, trying to shake the names out of your head because they’re over the wall and just thinking about them makes the time grow.
“What about you? What you saving for?” he asked.
“Same as you. Except it’s not in Brazil.”
“You want out of here?”
I looked at the floor and felt jail.
“Yeah, G, I do. But I’ve got three years before they’re off my back. Anyway, who’s gonna hire an ex-con?”
Gleason nodded. “What you do to go to jail? You never say to me, man.”
I looked away. “I was trying to save every day a little more quickly.”
He nodded.
We worked through the morning and beat the lunch rush. Marcello and Rener came in later and the four of us got through the prep hard and fast and then took a break out back. We sat in chairs beneath the awning over the back door listening to the rain. The waitresses and busgirls were busy up front folding napkins and talking. Gleason and I weren’t any closer since the morning, but we weren’t any farther away.
That was when I heard the car tires squeal. I—we—knew. And I think all our guts dropped.
DePuzzo came tearing into the lot in his BMW X5. His windows were closed for the rain, but Van Halen was blasting so loud I could hear David Lee Roth’s voice nice and clear. He gunned it across the lot, jammed on the brakes, and slid into a little turn to pull the car up in front of us. We weren’t quick enough to get inside.
He shoved his door open and lurched toward us. A blond girl with bug-eye sunglasses leaned back against the passenger seat. She turned the music down so she could hear.
“What are you lazy motherfuckers doing?” he screamed. He got right up on us and stared. We got to our feet.
“Just taking a break before service,” I spoke up.
“Shut up,” DePuzzo said. He was drunk. Shit-stone drunk. His nostrils were red. A little of that Great Equalizer to straighten out the head.
“But …” I said, not knowing where it came from.
“I said shut it, or I bounce you back up to that butt-fucking prison in Norfolk.”
Prison did it. I looked down when I should have looked up. I could look up in prison to stay alive, but on the outside?
“Motherfucker,” DePuzzo said to Gleason, “I leave you the kitchen to run and this is how you do it? The fuck.”
Gleason started to say something, then put his hand in his pocket around his cell phone. His jaw was set, his neck red.
“I said, the fuck you think is going on here?”
The girl sat up in the passenger seat, smiling at the cokehead show.
DePuzzo was so angry we couldn’t move.
“I pay you motherfuckers for what? I should can your asses now for this shit. Lazy spic motherfuckers.”
Rener and Marcello stared around him, but Gleason looked right at him. He started to raise his hand, as if to pause the moment, but DePuzzo stepped closer, stopping it.
He was too fast. I didn’t even see his hands move. I just heard the hard thump of bone on flesh and saw Gleason go down, blood and saliva bubbling out of his mouth. He spit and I heard the rattle of a tooth hitting the pavement.
DePuzzo moved quickly. He crouched and slugged two rights to the side of Gleason’s head. The bone sound made me sick. His ring cut a gash above the temple. Gleason went sea green and puked. DePuzzo drove the tip of his loafer into Gleason’s