Of course, the Ramsey PD has no idea it is Lewis Pagano they are looking for.
Lewis tucks the golf pencil back into his breast pocket and lays the journal down on the Formica countertop, which is splattered with bits of congealed grease and black coffee, and goes back to eating his bacon and avocado eggs benedict.
“Louie,” the waitress behind the counter says as she brings over his second glass of orange juice. “Sammy has a math test on Friday. He could use an hour or two of tutorin’ if you’re free this afternoon.”
“No problem, Ms. Saldarini,” Louie replies. “I have to take my Ma to her appointment, but I’ll stop by after.”
“You’re a good boy, Louie,” Ms. Saldarini says. “I wish Sammy was a good boy like you. This morning he told me he hated my guts. Can you believe that? I bet you would never say something like that to your Ma.”
Before Louie can answer, Ms. Saldarini shuffles over to two old timers at the far end of the counter and tops off their coffees. Louie wonders if she sensed that he was about to tell her that in fact he had said worse.
That he had done worse.
Louie thinks back one-hundred-and-thirty-six days. He had walked into the bank where his mother worked, shot and killed the security guard and three tellers’ right in front of her, then held a gun to her head and demanded she open the safe. Each time she fidgeted, he called her a worthless cunt and a dried up whore. When she finally got him in, Louie filled a gunnysack with as many bundles of cash as he could fit, then ran out.
His mother had no idea the man in the Nixon mask was her son. Her son was at his 9 a.m. creative writing class at Brown.
Louie got a call from his Ma that afternoon. He took it on his cellphone in the bathroom of the casino where he had gone to exchange the cash for chips. He pretended to get online to book a flight home. “I won’t be in until late, Ma,” he said. “Try to get some rest.”
He had three jack and cokes at the bar, then exchanged the chips for cash.
He had dinner at a McDonalds nearby and reread the worn copy of The Catcher in the Rye that he never took out of his backpack.
When he arrived home late, just as he said he would, his mother was at the kitchen table, her face pale and her eyes rimmed in red.
“The cameras were still down,” she said. “That lazy bastard Manny never got them fixed. The police have nothin’ to go on.”
Louie already knew this. His mother always complained about that lazy bastard Manny, which was how he’d known the cameras were down in the first place. He had taken it as a sign from God.
God wanted Louie to rob the bank to get the money they needed to pay for his Ma’s chemotherapy.
“You should have been out of there weeks ago, but you don’t listen,” Louie had told her. “You’re too sick to still be working.”
“Can’t pay for treatment with shells and beans, kiddo,” was always her reply. “Manny moved me to the window closet to the bathroom. He lets me take as many breaks as I need.”
The ongoing fight over whether Louie could take a semester off at Brown until his Ma got better ended that night at the kitchen table. Ma was too shaken up over watching three of her friends die in front of her to argue with him.
The question over how they would continue to pay for the chemotherapy hung thick in the air, but neither mentioned it.
The next morning, a letter arrived in the mail from a book publisher in New York.
“They liked the first chapter of my book, Ma!” Louie said. “They are wiring me an advance so I can finish it.”
“My son, a bestselling author!” his Ma beamed.
Only Louie knew there was no book. He had typed the letter himself and sent it to the house three days before.
Louie mops up the last bit of hollandaise sauce with his last bite of English muffin. When he is through, he pushes the plate aside and reaches into his backpack for the worn copy of The Catcher in the Rye. He reads a few chapters as he sips from his second glass of orange juice. He takes solace in knowing that Holden would have done any and everything if it meant his sister, Phoebe, could live.
No comments:
Post a Comment