That's How I Roll: A Novel Page 13

  hat cop drove off, satisfied that we had an understanding between us. We had an understanding, all right. But that’s not the same as a partnership.

  Which he’d learn only if he did something a lot stupider than Lonnie Manes ever dreamed of. That’s when he’d find out that searching me for a tape recorder had been a waste of time.

  Around these parts, the one thing nobody is surprised to see on your house is a satellite dish. All the time we were in the yard, talking, that dish was zeroed in on us. When I played back the recording, it was as clear as high-def TV can be. And the sound quality was as good as in an opera house.

  I saved it to my hard drive, then I sent it to my coded box, just in case.

  If that cop ever turned on me, he’d end up putting his own gun in his mouth. Even if he needed some help to do it.

  ike I said, I was already out of the drug business the second that cop had opened his mouth. But I had my plans, and having a tape of him not only taking a bribe, but outright admitting he had to cut a whole lot of higher-ranking cops in on such a take, that could be well worth the money.

  The insurance money, I’m saying.

  wo different mobs pretty much had things around here all divided up between them: gambling joints, strip clubs, loan-sharking, protection coverage, and, of course, the tax collections.

  The white-lightning guys were even smaller potatoes than the dogfighters, but that’s not why they never paid taxes. There’s folks around here who’ll tell you there’s nothing like shine—hits you harder than anything you could buy in a bar. But there was no real money to be made from it, and the only men still in the business, they were old men.

  And those old men, they kept to the old ways, too. They were very seriously opposed to paying tax. Didn’t matter who came collecting. Racketeer or lawman, he might well be buried on the same ground he was dumb enough to cross without permission. If you wanted to visit, the only way to make sure you’d be leaving would be to leave their business alone.

  For the two mobs, the dividing line was where County Road 22 crossed Route 76. It was as clear as a border crossing with armed guards: 22 ran north and south, and each mob had its own side, east or west. If you wanted to set up an operation, what you paid was the same on either side, but who you paid was determined by where you wanted to set up shop.

  There was some poaching, of course. Not enough to start a full-scale war, but more than enough to get more than a few men killed over the years.

  Whoever crossed the line, the mob they came from would always say they were freelancing. That’s what stopped things from ever getting out of hand. Even if one mob knew the other one was behind the poaching, they didn’t have to take all-out vengeance to hold their pride.

  Around here, vengeance and pride are mated so close they can’t be separated. If someone does something to you and you don’t get back at them, nobody thinks too much of you. It’s even worse if someone does something to your family and you let it go. Then you couldn’t hold your head up ever again, not even in church.

  oachers, that’s one thing. But outsiders, there’s a whole different story. Actually, it was outsiders who showed me the way I could make enough money to keep me and Tory-boy safe.

  Maybe that’s an excuse, I don’t know. It’s what I felt at the time, but maybe there was something else driving me. That frozen conscience, it could have been. Or all that studying I did early on, about how to kill the Beast. But I never speculate on what I can’t change.

  The real truth is that the Disability alone would have kept us safe. Add the money from selling my painkillers, that would have done it, easy. But our drug business was doomed even before that lawman showed up and sold me that insurance policy.

  What I always told myself was that all I needed was to have money put away. But, inside me, I knew there never could be enough, not without me around to make it work.

  That lawman’s visit kind of changed my perspective. He started me thinking about getting my hands on so much money that it could push buttons on its own—like setting an alarm clock, or programming a computer.

  I thought about that a lot.

  he outsiders who opened the door for me were a motorcycle gang. They set up shop on the East Side, in an old airplane hangar. At one time, that hangar was used to house small aircraft, and have work done on them, too. There was a landing strip and everything. But when more and more people got used to being out of work, that business had starved to death.

  Later, some company had tried to set up their own airline. Just four-seaters, going over the mountains once a morning, returning that same night. But it didn’t take, so they took off themselves, leaving the building there, just rusting out.

  I guess this motorcycle gang—MM-13, they called themselves—had just moved into the empty space.

  At first, you hardly noticed them. They never bothered anybody when they rode through town, and they didn’t often do that. They didn’t tear up any of the bars, they didn’t try and muscle in on any of the strip joints.

  Not only did they behave themselves, they always spent some money, too.

  But then they started a meth lab.

  t first, the meth had a hard time making a real impact. It seemed like it just wasn’t going to take hold. But as time went by, more and more junkies switched over to it. Maybe because it was new, but more likely because it was so cheap compared with any other stuff.

  The bikers were about as mobile as you could get, so they sold on both sides of the line. They were too smart to refuse whenever they would run into a tax collector from one of the mobs, but that would only happen by accident—they didn’t have regular routes, and they didn’t sell out of any one place.

  Even if a deal could have been struck, it was impossible to figure out how much the bikers should be paying—they made the meth themselves, so there was no import risk. And they could make it cheap—the street price was so low even the longtime dope fiends were moving over to it.

  Anyone could see a showdown was brewing. When the bikers rode into town, there was never more than a dozen or so of them. But if you looked close, you could see it wasn’t the same dozen. And more and more bikers were moving into that same hangar.

  he reason the bar was called the DMZ was because it was the one place where both mobs felt safe. Just west of 22, but the West Side mob never claimed it. There had to be some neutral ground, some place the bosses could get together—especially if there was an election coming up. And the only way to make a spot truly neutral was to split the take from it.

  So the DMZ paid both sides, but no more than if they were paying just one. The gangs split that money, and put it around that if you started any trouble in there, you were on your own.

  Even if somebody got themselves killed in the DMZ, any vengeance was strictly left up to their own people, not their mob.

  Getting the bosses to both come there and meet with me—now, that was tricky. But there was no choice about it. I had to put my proposition to the bosses themselves, not go through any message takers.

  So I left the exact same word with each mob. I knew they’d check me out first, and that was fine. They’d learn two things: Esau Till might be a crippled man, but he was a man of his word. And he was not only a for-real outlaw—he was smart. Real smart.

  he boss of the East Side was Everett Lansdale. He looked like a man in his fifties who took care of his body—one look at his face and you’d see why he thought that necessary.

  Jackhammer Judakowski ran the West Side. He was an older guy, pretty well larded—but only a fool would judge his character by his body instead of those ice chips he had for eyes.

  I didn’t know Judakowski’s real name. Around here, folks would say “his Christian name,” no matter if he’d never been baptized, or even set foot in a church.

  There were a dozen different accounts as to where the “Jackhammer” had come from. One thing I learned, if you want the true history of something, you can’t pay attention to what people say today
; you have to talk to people that were around at the time.

  Another thing I know: old folks don’t get a lot of company.

  Every time I’d have Tory-boy drive me over to where Mr. Barnes lived, he was always glad for the visit. It was from listening to other old folks that I knew what he’d been called back in the day: Big John Barnes.

  The church people came by his place every day with a hot meal. Otherwise, he couldn’t have taken care of himself. The church kind of kept up his house, too.

  His back was bent pretty bad; he had to stay stooped over all the time. His legs were gone, too. His wheelchair was a lot fancier than mine. More like a little electric scooter, actually. The Medicare people paid for it.

  I tried to get by there no less than once a month. I’d sit and talk with him, while Tory-boy took care of anything around his house that needed fixing. The first time Mr. Barnes saw Tory-boy go after some high weeds with a machete, his mouth just dropped open in amazement. “Damn me,” he said, “that young man works like the Grim Reaper when he’s taking heads.”

  “Tory-boy is some kind of strong,” I agreed.

  “I’m not talking about strong, son. You could see that much just looking at the size of him. What I meant was how he’s so … relentless, the way he goes about it. That’s the only word I can think of. That brother of yours, you give him a job to do, he is not going to stop until he’s done.”

  “No matter what the task,” I agreed, again.

  “Am I boring you, son?” he asked. He never failed to ask me that. And I’d tell him the pure truth: that I loved learning above all else, and I was learning from him. He searched my eyes for truth, every time. Always got the same answer, too.

  It took a while, but I finally got the story of how Judakowski came to be called “Jackhammer.” I thought it would be some kind of mining story, but Mr. Barnes put the lie to that one. “That boy did it himself. Just started calling himself by that name. When he would be introduced, he’d say his name was Judakowski—Jackhammer Judakowski.

  “After a while, it just stuck. You know how, when a man looks the part, he gets the chance to play that part? He does that good enough, a name he gives himself can end up sticking to him like it was on his birth record.

  “Of course, the best kind of name to carry is one you didn’t make up for yourself. It’d be one people decided to call you, all on their own.”

  “Like ‘Big John’?”

  The old man wiped at his eyes. “That was true,” he said, real soft. “That was true once.”

  “I know that, sir. Everybody says it.”

  He looked at me for a long minute. Then he asked, “And what do they call you, son?”

  “You know how people around here are.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, sure, I know. Nasty and mean in their hearts, some of them. But not all, son. Not all. Never forget that.”

  “No, sir.”

  “You still haven’t told me what names they—”

  “ ‘Crip,’ that’s one. And ‘Half-Man.’ And—”

  He held up a big callused hand like a traffic cop telling me to stop. “They called me ‘Big John’ because that’s what I was. A big man, name of John. It fit, so it held. For a long time, anyway. What would you want folks to call you, son? ‘Brains’—now, that would fit.

  “Kind of funny, when you think on it. Anyone who wouldn’t call you by a name that truly fit, it’d be the same as naming themselves. You know, something like ‘Retard,’ or”—I was looking down, but I could feel his eyes burning at me—“ ‘Half-Wit.’ ”

  I looked up. “It doesn’t matter,” I said.

  “What do you want folks to call you?” he insisted. “Not just to your face, either.”

  “Esau,” I told him. “Esau Till.”

  “Mark me,” the old man said. “The day will come when folks will all be calling you by that name, son. And by no other.”

  ou’d think a man named Judakowski wouldn’t hold much sway around here. It was a foreigner’s name, and folks put great stock into how far back your name went. Far back local, I mean—not far back like European royalty or anything like that.

  Lansdale, now, that was a name that carried weight. His father had been a prizefighter before the War. That was his last fight—one he never came back from. And that counted heavy around here, too.

  What opened doors for Jackhammer Judakowski had nothing to do with his own family trail—a Polish name can trace back only so far around here. But nobody would ever be looked down on for having a Polish name, either—not in a part of the world where the name Yablonski is held sacred.

  A man who died for his people.

  Tony Boyle had been head of the UMW. And the United Mine Workers may have done some violent stuff, but that was only to force mine owners to allow the union in.

  People knew that, and they stayed with it. Even when a whole mob had backhoed out a pit, thrown the owner in, and filled it up again—this was down in Tennessee—the jury had acquitted them all.

  It might have gone on like that, but when a mine blew up in West Virginia, the truth came out. Boyle had personally told everyone that mine was union-certified, with a perfect safety record. But when the inspectors—federal inspectors—dug through the wreckage and found a slew of major safety violations, there was only one possible explanation: Boyle had been getting paid under the table to sell out the miners.

  And it couldn’t have been for just that one mine.

  That’s when Yablonski challenged Boyle for leadership of the union. He called Boyle’s men nothing but a gang of thugs, and he promised to return the union to the miners.

  When he lost that election, Yablonski said it had been rigged. I don’t mean some whispering in a tavern; he said it right out loud, for all to hear.

  He was getting ready to go to court to challenge the election results when Boyle had him murdered. And not just Yablonski, but his wife and daughter, too. When the murder team came calling, everyone in the house had to go. No witnesses.

  That made it worse. Much worse. Folks who normally wouldn’t spit on the Law let them past the wall of silence just long enough to say a few things.

  The people Boyle had hired to do that job, one of them had been by Yablonski’s house before, scouting. But Yablonski knew he was living under the gun, so he’d written down the license number of that stranger’s car.

  One by one, they all got caught. The more they talked, the higher the trail climbed. Nobody wanted to chance the Death House.

  Their testimony was overpowering. One of them, a girl, I believe, she even had a photograph of the man who had done the hiring shaking hands with Boyle.

  After all that, Boyle still only pulled a life sentence. Didn’t matter, really—he died in prison.

  He would have died even if the jury had acquitted him, and he knew it. Probably why he tried to kill himself. With pills, like the miserable coward he was.

  Ask anyone around here and they’ll tell you: if Joe Yablonski had lived to be President of the United Mine Workers, things would be different today. They believe that the same way others believe in Jesus. Held that faith just as strong.

  Maybe even stronger, now that I think on it. The only way folks could know Christ had died for them would be to read something written down maybe thousands of years ago … and believe nobody had tampered with it since.

  But to know Joe Yablonski had died for them, all they had to do was read the newspapers. Or listen to someone who was around at the time.

  You can’t find a living person who claims to have met Jesus in person. Not outside an asylum, anyway. But there’s plenty still around who’d met Joe Yablonski. Some who knew him personally. Even some who had been close to him.

  And they all tell it the same way.

  nce I worked out what I needed—once I decided that there was no other way to get it—the die was cast.

  I chose those last words with care, as you’ll see.

  On the day that started it all, Tory-boy wheeled me th
rough the door of the DMZ, then went back to the van and waited. Just like I told him.

  It was broad daylight, and the parking lot was almost empty, but Tory-boy didn’t question why I wanted him to park so far away from the front. It did take quite a bit of work to get him to accept the other part, which was: if I didn’t wheel myself out of that building, he was to get himself home first, and then call a number I’d made him memorize.

  It wasn’t a number I could program into his phone, and that puzzled him some, but he proved to me he had it in his head.

  And he didn’t question why I asked him to recite me that number, over and over again. Or why I asked him to recite it one more time before I rolled myself off.

  I made sure not to look back. If I didn’t return, I wanted Tory-boy to have the image of how much I loved him showing on my face forever.

  nce inside, I used my hands to get myself over to a big table where both bosses were sitting, each one in between two of his own men. The empty space across from them was for me; they knew I wouldn’t need a chair.

  “You each got a note from me,” I said, polite but not nervous; it was too late for that. “And by now, you know you each got the same note. I’m not playing one side against the other, and I never would. But I know you’ve got at least one problem you share. A new problem. And I’m the man who could make that problem go away.”

  “Why would you want to do that?” Lansdale asked. There was nothing hiding underneath his voice; he sounded like a man asking a reasonable question. Which, considering the circumstances, it was.

  “For money,” I told him. Told them both, actually.

  “How much money?” Judakowski asked, showing me the difference between the two bosses as clear as if he wrote it on a blackboard.

  “That’s not important right now,” I told them both. “That’s because I don’t want to just solve this one problem for you. What I want is steady work, the kind of work either of you might need doing. Never for one against the other, though.”