Bang Bang by Theo Gangi

Author:Theo Gangi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2012-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Izzy remembered the last time he left Tess’s home, when back pain had him dragging a laundry basket full of his belongings by a canvas belt. Tess had thrown him out because of his distant, foggy emotional reactions. Tess had had a miscarriage. In the following weeks, Izzy was unable to keep pace with her wild moods. Pain had attacked Izzy’s back. After he slept it off on the brown shag rug, and had a horrible dream of shooting Mariano Rivera in the shoulder, blood soaking his white pinstripes, Izzy woke up to stifled sobs. Tess was locked in grief, convinced that Izzy was glad she had lost the baby. She went into the sort of righteous tirade that made Izzy miss white women. She referred to the day she told Izzy of the miscarriage, while he was cooking sausages in the kitchen.

“They should have burned!” she insisted.

Eventually, she forced Izzy to do the one thing he couldn’t—get up. Dragging the laundry basket down the sidewalk by his khaki belt, a kid on a stoop with a skateboard saw Izzy and cracked up. “Where’s your wheels, man?”

Izzy gestured to his skateboard. “Give me yours,” he said, deadpan.

The kid giggled, and then paused, Izzy giving a long, serious look.

Then Izzy smiled.

Ignoring that same back pain, Izzy descended the narrow, dark staircase leading down from street level. It smelled humid and stale, like the block’s concrete armpit. Just off Pleasant Avenue, a notorious “thing of ours” territory, Huna had greased enough hands and made enough friends for an Albanian business. Izzy stopped at the bottom of the steps, before the door, released a long exhale, and took his pulse.

Taking his pulse wasn’t the monitoring necessity he had told Mal. It was his mantra. Izzy didn’t want to know his pulse as much as control it. Remind his body what it was time to do. Focus. One beat, one bullet.

The action from before still raced in him. He could feel the vibration from the gun down his forearm as he pressed his finger to his throat. It was all over so quick. Then the thoughts came back like a crash. He wanted more of that wild immediacy, like a smoker wanting a cigarette.

Izzy knocked, the cracked paint flaking against his knuckle. The eyehole clicked from the other side.

“Huna sent me,” he announced.

A few locks slammed back and the door opened. A hunched, fat Albanian with one eye squinted and his belly showing shook Izzy’s hand. Sneering, he turned and walked inside without looking at Izzy, who followed.

Izzy was tired of being on the run without money. He never took bank cards, or anything that could ID him on a job, and his petty cash was down to $32.16 after the pancakes. Poverty was the reason they had gone to Jacob’s place instead of a hotel. Seeing Tess, beaten, holding her baby, was a reminder. Izzy did not want anything to happen to Jacob. It was time to get proactive.

Incense burned; cheap red stuff draped everywhere—red scarves on the walls, and hanging beads for doors.

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