Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto

Author:Nic Pizzolatto
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-09-19T02:19:56+00:00

In his aluminum-shuttered room, a garbage bag spilled some clothes and a drawstring laundry bag looked filled with sharp, heavy objects. Bungee cord laced the sack for strapping to his bike. Not much else in the room but two books and some sketchings on the table. Modern Electronic Alarms, read the cover of one. The other was white and titled 777 and other Kabbalistic Writings. Pages of yellow legal paper bore drawings, ink scribbles and diagrams, odd doodles.

“Man, I knew you was down. I could just tell. I got that eye for it.”

I’d taken another of his beers and lit a cigarette, watched as he shuffled together his papers and stacked them on the books. He had a kind of fastidious, finicky way with his hands, making the papers stack even on all sides, having to square off the angles of the books to the surface of the table. He almost seemed bashful about that, like he couldn’t help himself. His round, wire-frame glasses added to this schoolboy air, the kind of intellectual particular to a junk habit.

“All right. Here it is, man. Mr. Robicheaux. The thing. What do you think I do, man? I mean, how you think I make do?”

I just hit the cigarette and let smoke unroll over my face while I stared at him. “I can’t imagine.”

“All right. This right here, man. This is what I do. I am a thief, and a real, real fucking good one.”

I didn’t offer a response except to squint into the smoke drifting between us.

“Okay, okay. You’re saying, ‘So what?’ I know. You’re saying, ‘Good for you.’ Well, my trip is that I’m not going to spend any part of my life in a cage again. My thing is that I don’t make a run at something unless it’s bona fide, unless there’s no risk and large reward.” He pulled out some yellow legal sheets with drawings of room layouts, crude maps. A lot of good thieves were junkies. When they were on top of their habits, they could be effective professionals, but it never lasted. They’d stay functionally clean, pull a few jobs, and at some point get too successful, overdo the junk and get busted, start the cycle over when they got out. I noticed the webs between Tray’s fingers had a few little welts on them, like chigger bites. “I had this partner, man. Good guy. Solid. He was kind of like, well, he would have been what you’d call the muscle of the operation, more or less. He brought me up. Did transpo, bankrolled scores sometimes. A jobber. Real good guy.”

Behind him the foil on the windows held dull, pleated reflections of us, and I almost asked him why he kept it there.

“He’s gone now, but we were a good team. He’s over. Some ole boys dumped him in a swamp in Alabama.” I’d taken him for a half-ass grifter, but at the mention of his buddy gloom wafted over his eyes and I thought the kid was lonely, and that reminded me of my old self, too.

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