Cape Cod Noir - By David L Ulin Page 0,8

us to sit on. We sat and stared at each other and he reached out and slapped my shoulder. I told him in Spanish what I needed and he nodded.

After some huevos rancheros, I left the taqueria and made the call at the pay phone. Then I drove down Acushnet toward Whitman, past old houses split into two apartments. Past their chain-link fences, dying grass, and silent doors. All of it looking back at me.

Two hours later, my wallet empty, I headed back to the Cape, listening to the wind the whole way.

I kept the .45 Smith & Wesson in an oiled rag in my truck. Just couldn’t bring myself to give it to Gleason right away. He was still breathing hard because of the ribs, but the green color had left his face. The scab was close to a scar. I worked and watched and tried to laugh with them, but the gun weighed on me. Everything left me but that.

Gleason kept his head down. Instead of working hard to save some time before service at night, he began going out to the storage garage during prep time to make phone calls. He knew DePuzzo didn’t come around during the day, and he wanted to stay busy right through the afternoon into the night. He didn’t speak much to Marcello or Rener. Nothing was broken, it was just that those fists had taken something out of the air between them. That, or forged it solid.

Payday came and DePuzzo showed with my p.o. DePuzzo was in his finest jeans and a black Harley Davidson T-shirt. My p.o. looked like his khakis and Oxford shirt would swallow him. His thin arms constantly moved, like bisected worms fighting for life. They laughed while DePuzzo gave me shit. My p.o. gave the Brazilians shit, poking them in the back and telling them to work harder. He went up to Gleason and leaned in close to the side of his face and whistled approval at the scab. DePuzzo laughed. Then my p.o. watched the paycheck routine. I waited, then went out back and watched the two of them get blowjobs from the busgirls with their hands behind their backs, each holding a paycheck.

Dusk fell. The service began and time slid into speed, into work, into the heat and oil stink of a kitchen running at full bore. I stopped thinking, stopped feeling that weight, and kept my mind on salads, desserts, and calls for more lobsters from the line. The orders began to slow. Marcello and I stopped plating salads and desserts, and started repacking food into smaller containers.

A waitress came into the kitchen, a tall woman with graybrown hair who’d been with DePuzzo from the get-go.

“There’s an eclipse outside,” she said.

We froze at the news. It was something natural, unlike our aprons and secrets. We followed her outside.

The moon was three-quarters hidden by a perfect shadow. Its light played out from the edges, leaving a crescent of ice blue along the rim of black. Its silence came at us clearly and quickly and we took it in. The waitress stood by the kitchen door. Rener sat on a flowerpot, and Marcello and I sat against the hood of a parked car. Gleason stood next to us. We craned our necks and tilted our faces toward the growing shadow, staring into the black. I could hear Gleason’s slight wheeze. The shadow moved, not slow or fast, but it moved, you could sense it more than see it. Just as the shadow was about to take the moon, Gleason’s cell phone rang. He answered without looking at who was calling. I was standing close enough to hear the voice come through the phone’s speaker, thin and electric.

“Daddy, can you see the moon?”

The eclipse passed. I grabbed Gleason’s wrist and whispered to him to wait. Everyone returned to work. I went to my truck and pulled the .45 from beneath the front seat. I closed the door and tucked the gun behind my back into my waistband. Gleason watched. He walked over to his car, a beat-up Pontiac Grand Prix with a green hood and silver body handed down through the Brazilian pipeline. He got in. I climbed into the passenger seat. The locks clicked, and I pulled out the gun.

“It’s loaded,” I said. “It’s clean, meaning no one can trace it. When you’re done with it, dump it in a salt pond at night.”

I handed him the weapon and showed him how to work the