Tumult at the Coney Island. The regulars in the past week have missed no opportunity to regale Ret concerning Glasseye's erratic behavior, and are silent now only in the wake of a new incident. Ret has already been in and out twice tonight and they expect him to return—this time, designs are to calm him down.
The information was stood in solemnity; Glasseye had beaten his (and Ret's) grandmother, and some money went missing. The eighty-year-old's arm was broken at the shoulder.
Ret's anger, though predictable, was a never observed phenomenon until now. Each visit he stood breathless, asking if anyone had seen his cousin, then exited quickly.
Activity earlier had been high also. Paletello's son-in-law Vito hosted an impromptu sales conference from the trunk of a Toronado on the curb outside for an audience dressed in ball caps, cowboy boots and plate-sized belt buckles. Various firearms were heard clinking, to Paletello's raised eyebrow while he monitored the radio. A disquisition was given on the various modifications toward making an AR-15 an automatic weapon, "if I had one here," wink-wink.
"Hellbuds," Martin says sotto voce to Mac, "all of them." Mac: a puzzled look. "You know—the standard greeting whenever two of them meet up; "Well hell, bud!" Guffaws from Mac. True; this is what they do.
While Martin, thinking out loud, fathoms Hell-buddhism as a discipline, Mac asks "Is Cooper one?"
"Cooper," Martin paused for effect, "is the very definition of one."
Mac finds that disproportionately amusing; Paletello stands them fresh coffee. Mac spins the saucer repeatedly, a visible annoyance to the other customers."They're getting out of Oklahoma and Arkansas because of the heat," Martin explains to Mac.
"It's hotter there than here? This is like, further south. And the humidity," Mac says.
Martin's look is patient. He describes with authority but labored interest the white paramilitary Christian groups obtaining land in the less than populated hills to establish a domain of Aryans awaiting the ultimate destruction of all other groups. No governing authorities are recognized and casualties often occur in surprise confrontations.
"Hey, uh, Martin."
"Yeah."
"This might, uh sound a little, I don't know, weird or something."
"Shoot. Cough it up."
"Do you know, anybody who sells that dope?"
"Drugs?"
"I guess so. I mean, it's not what you might think. I don't want any, or anything."
Martin peers.
"It's just I met this girl and she was asking some questions I didn't know."
Martin waits a polite time, seeming to give the ludicrosity some weight. "I thought beer and Annie were the extent of your vices."
"Aw, no! I mean she's a kid, seventeen, about. Her mama's got cancer and they can't afford a doctor. She's in a lot of pain."
"Oh."
Mac presses until Martin names a prospect; "I don't know, either really, first hand I mean. But kind of. Donovan 8. You know him, don't you? Supposed to be a student at the college. Hangs at Habeeb's. They say he deals. Constantly with that weenie, Lance. Always talking about the movies he's going to make."
Mac is surprised. "He's that guy that's Ricky's friend? Ricky plays the guitar?" Mac feels mildly as if there has been a conspiracy to keep him from knowing this, an old recurrent sensation.
A dispatcher announces an abandoned wheelbarrow in Forsythe Avenue on the scanner.
Mac says "I saw Kelly talking to some guy."Martin dumps his cigarette butt into an almost empty cup. "Where?"
"Out in that parking lot in front of the Holiday Inn. Louisville."
"How'd she look? Intense? Flirty? Was she being held up with a gun?"
"Naw!" Mac grins. "She was just asking this guy stuff."
"An interview."
"Yeah. The camera was on, like it was going to be on TV."
"Probably a visiting speaker on crime the mayor's asked to come in, give a pep talk to the Chamber of Commerce. She's trying to get something going about the murder rate."
"Oh."
"Well? You trying to tell me anything about my sister Mac?"
"Huh? Oh, no. Just I saw her, that's all. Just telling you. Honest." Martin begins to speak, stops. A total lack of irony: that's Mac.
They resume an earlier discussion about the territory dispute between authorities over a new body found near Swartz School road. "That's out the city for sure," Mac says. Martin's bottom lip pushes in and out, and he stares at the rim of his coffee cup as if it were about to mutate into something else. "Well, which is it."
"Huh?"
"The man who elects to kill. Who concedes to take the existence of another, whose life he had no part in creating. Does he believe there is a world after death?"
"Hmm." Mac in deep reflection, unintentionally comic.
"Is he sending the victim to another place for better or worse? Or is the crime simply a supreme punishment, total extinction in the black, silent grave. The ultimate deprivation. Stealing life? Well?"
Mac smiles, managing a meager shrug. Martin on a tear again. Outside, someone lingers at the corner of the building; they pause to watch—Ret returning? The figure moves away.
Martin whispers, for emphasis: "Or is it something else altogether? It's possible we make all this into something else entirely from what it really is. We search, probe; pray for our own destiny among all of it. But is the truth of the killer less than that? Less than zero? Could it be that none of this ever even crosses his mind? That there is simply nothing behind it. No reason." Sips the coffee. "Like a bumper sticker: Death happens."
They look up; the figure's back. Not Ret, but Jimmy Lee, the transient's transient with his skewered nostril, rattles the door frame entering. Nodding slightly, they become quiet and pursue the train of conversation no further. Jimmy Lee walks past to occupy a back stool, his usual.
