Dad’s not home.”
“Um, that’s right.”
“Everything okay with you two? You guys having any problems out here this afternoon?”
“Um, no, not really,” I said. The guy wasn’t brandishing the bat, or being threatening in any way, but still I couldn’t help being fairly aware that he had it.
“Because if you ever do?” said Mr. Silver. “Have problems of any nature? I can take care of them for you like that.”
What was he talking about? I looked past him, out to the street, to his car. Even though the windows were tinted, I could see the other men waiting there.
Mr. Silver sighed. “I’m glad to hear that you don’t have any problems, Theodore. I only wish that I could say the same.”
“Excuse me?”
“Because here’s the thing,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “I have a problem. A really big one. With your father.”
Not knowing what to say, I stared at his cowboy boots. They were black crocodile, with a stacked heel, very pointed at the toe and polished to such a high shine that they reminded me of the girly-girl cowboy boots that Lucie Lobo, a way-out stylist in my mother’s office, had always worn.
“You see, here’s the thing,” said Mr. Silver. “I’m holding fifty grand of your dad’s paper. And that is causing some very big problems for me.”
“He’s getting the money together,” I said, awkwardly. “Maybe, I don’t know, if you could just give him a little more time…”
Mr. Silver looked at me. He adjusted his glasses.
“Listen,” he said reasonably. “Your dad wants to risk his shirt on how some morons handle a fucking ball—I mean, pardon my language. But it’s hard for me to have sympathy for a guy like him. Doesn’t honor his obligations, three weeks late on the vig, doesn’t return my phone calls—” he was ticking off the offenses on his fingers—“makes plans to meet me at noon today and then doesn’t show. You know how long I sat and waited for that deadbeat? An hour and a half. Like I don’t got other, better things to do.” He put his head to the side. “It’s guys like your dad keep guys like me and Yurko here in business. Do you think I like coming to your house? Driving all the way out here?”
I had thought this was a rhetorical question—clearly no one in their right mind would like driving all the way out where we lived—but since an outrageous amount of time passed, and still he was staring at me like he actually expected an answer, I finally blinked in discomfort and said: “No.”
“No. That’s right, Theodore. I most certainly do not. We got better things to do, me and Yurko, believe me, than spend all afternoon chasing after a deadbeat like your dad. So do me a favor, please, and tell your father we can settle this like gentlemen the second he sits down and works things out with me.”
“Work things out?”
“He needs to bring me what he owes me.” He was smiling but the gray tint at the top of his aviators gave his eyes a disturbingly hooded look. “And I want you to tell him to do that for me, Theodore. Because next time I have to come out here, believe me, I’m not going to be so nice.”
xvii.
WHEN I CAME BACK into the living room Boris was sitting quietly and staring at cartoons with the sound off, stroking Popper—who, despite his earlier upset, was now fast asleep in his lap.
“Ridiculous,” he said shortly.
He pronounced the word in such a way that it took me a moment to realize what he’d said. “Right,” I said, “I told you he was a freak.”
Boris shook his head and leaned back against the couch. “I don’t mean the old Leonard Cohen-looking guy with the wig.”
“You think that’s a wig?”
He made a face like who cares. “Him too, but I mean the big Russian with the, metal, what do you call it?”
“Baseball bat.”
“That was just for show,” he said disdainfully. “He was just trying to scare you, the prick.”
“How do you know he was Russian?”
He shrugged. “Because I know. No one has tattoos like that in U.S. Russian national, no question. He knew I was Russian too, minute I opened my mouth.”
Some period of time passed before I realized I was sitting there staring into space. Boris lifted Popchyk and put him down on the sofa, so gently he didn’t wake. “You want to get out of here for a while?”
“God,” I said, shaking my