The 3:40 A.M. train from New York to Providence said AMTRAK on it, but actually it was something Dante had designed for collection agents to spend eternity in-which is about how long the train took to get to Providence.
The seats were as comfortable as a tax audit, featured torn upholstery, and could have served as the focus for a rousing game of Name That Stain. Old newspapers, paper coffee cups, and beer cans festooned the aisles and the seats. The smell of stale everything perfumed what passed for air.
Neal returned from the snack car with a cup of coffee that was already semi-solid, and a Danish older than Hamlet. Graham had brought his own food, sealed in little Tupperware containers. Graham had ridden the train before.
“Why couldn’t we fly?” Neal asked.
“Because I didn’t want to.”
“You’re afraid.”
“I don’t like to fly,” Graham said, munching on a carrot stick.
“Why don’t you like to fly?”
“Because I’m afraid.”
Graham twisted open a thermos and poured hot coffee into his cup. He smiled at Neal and said, “‘Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.’”
Neal huddled up in his sport coat and tried to look out the gunged-up window. They were somewhere in Connecticut, stopped dead in their tracks, as it were, for no discernible reason. Nor did this seem to cause undue concern to the conductor, who was sleeping the sleep of the innocent in the backseat of the car. Neal thought the guy must have the metabolism of a polar bear to sleep in this cold. There was no heat on the train and it was cold for a May morning.
“You want to get drunk?” he asked Graham.
Graham opened the thermos again and held it up to Neal’s nose. “Yes.”
Neal smelled it and gave Graham his best lost-puppy look. Graham sighed and shook his head and pulled an extra plastic cup out of his bag. He removed it from its plastic wrapping and poured Neal a heavy tot.
“Love you, Dad.”
“How could you help it, son?”
The nice thing about Irish coffee, Neal thought, was that it kept your body awake but put your mind to sleep. He sat back and let the warmth spread through him. Eight or ten more of these might make the trip almost bearable. The train lurched forward.
“Wakey, wakey.”
“We there already?”
“Not quite. You have to get cleaned up.”
Graham was leaning over him. Clean-shaven, straight tie, eyes clear, and breath fresh. Neal hated Graham.
“I brought you an extra razor.”
Sure enough, Graham had brought two cordless electric shavers with him; also a lint brush, Visine, and Cepacol. Neal hauled himself and his kit into the rest room and got himself into shape. He felt like shit and was surprised to feel butterflies in his stomach. In almost twelve years of working for Friends, this would be the first time he would meet The Man. And The Man had more or less run his life so far.
“Why,” he asked Graham when he returned to his seat, “is this the first time I meet The Man?”
“No need.”
“And there’s a need now?”
“You look good, son. Straighten your tie.”
Levine waited for them at the platform. Levine was six-three and at thirty-one beginning to thicken around the middle. He had curly black hair, blue eyes, and a face that was just a couple of six-packs this side of fat. His heavily muscled body didn’t begin to hint at his speed. Levine was cat-quick, and that, with his size, made a very ugly package for anybody on the wrong side of his fists. He was a black belt who thought that breaking boards was a waste of time and good wood.
He had come into Friends strictly as muscle, someone to help out a short, one-armed guy when things got out of hand. But Levine had a brain and was very, very hip. Brainy enough and hip enough to know he didn’t want to stay on the street all his life. So he’d put himself through night classes at City and came out with a management degree, and now he headed up the New York office of Friends, passing by his old friend and partner Joe Graham.
“Levine hates you,” Graham told Neal.
“I know.”
This wasn’t exactly news to Neal. He knew Levine hated him and he was tired of it. Really tired of it.
“He figures you got a free ride. Fancy private school. Ivy League. Now graduass school. All paid for. Doesn’t think you’re worth it.”
“He’s probably right.”
“Probably.”
“I don’t want his job, Dad.”
That was the problem, Neal thought. Levine knew that Neal was being groomed. Neal knew it; Graham knew it. The Man was paying for his master’s degree, for the upscale clothing, for the speech teacher who had taken away Neal’s street dialect. But groomed for what? Neal didn’t want to run Friends. He wanted to be an English professor. Honest to God.
“I know. You want to teach poetry to fags.”
Well, not exactly. Eighteenth-century English novels… Fielding, Richardson, Smollett.
“How many times do I have to say it?” Neal asked. He had told Ed. He had told everybody. He had written The Man. Don’t put me through any more college, because I’m not going to stay with you forever. It was all right, they said. “Work for us when you can, part-time, case by case. No strings attached.” Then they jerk you out of classes two weeks before finals. You don’t get to be an English professor by flunking your graduate English seminars. Even getting a B could be death.
“Maybe if you hadn’t pronged his wife,” Graham said.
The train was pulling into the grimy Providence suburbs.
“She wasn’t his wife then,” Neal said. He’d been over this ground so many times. “Christ, I introduced them.”
“Maybe Ed just figures you got everything he should have had. First.” Neal shrugged. Maybe that was true. But he hadn’t asked for any of it.
Providence is the kind of city where all the men still wear hats. The soul of the city was stuck back in the good old Forties, when you kept a lid on things and rooted against the Japs, the Germans, and the Yankees, not necessarily in that order. A hat was a symbol of respectability, a nod to the order of things, to a city run by Irish politicians, Sicilian gangs, and French priests, all of whom came together for Knights of Columbus breakfasts and Providence College basketball games and otherwise stayed in their respective realms.
Union Station was a perfect representative of the city. Sad, drab, dirty, and hopeless, it was the right place to enter Providence. You didn’t get your hopes up.
Levine greeted them as they got off the train. “Laurel and Hardy,” he said. “Hello, Ed,” said Graham.
Levine ignored Neal. He said to Graham, “Anybody follow you?” Graham and Neal exchanged an amused glance. “I think we’re clean, Ed.” “You better be.”
“Well, there was that guy with dark glasses, a fake mustache, and a trench coat. You don’t suppose…” Ed didn’t laugh. “C’mon.”
He led them downstairs into the old terminal, where a few old winos held some ragged newspapers down on the old wooden benches. A couple of them were watching the dust filtered through the dirty, yellow windows.
As they walked past a stand of metal lockers, Ed grabbed Neal by the neck and pushed him none too gently against a locker. He lifted Neal until only his toes touched the floor. Graham started to move in but was stopped by a straight-arm and an ice-cold look.
Neal tried to slide out of the hold, but Ed’s big arms held him tight. He managed to get his own arms inside Ed’s and grab him by the collar. It was merely a symbolic hold.
“Now listen to me, you little bastard,” Ed whispered. “This job is important. Got it? Important. You’re going to do just what you’re told, just the way you’re told to do it. None of your smart mouth or your smart ideas.
“You are the last person in the world I’d pick for this job, but The Man wants you, so it’s you. So you don’t fuck around and you don’t fuck up. Because if you do, I’m going to bust you up. I’m going to hurt you real bad. Got it?”
“Jesus, Ed,” said Graham.
“Got it?”
“You’re going to do this to me sometime, Ed, and I’m…”
Ed tightened his grip and laughed. “You’re going to do what, Neal? Huh? What are you going to do?”
Neal could barely breathe. He needed air-even Providence air. Levine could break him into little bits without breaking a sweat. The book said to hit Ed in the nose with the heel of his palm. The book wasn’t going to get killed.
So Neal did the best thing he could under the circumstances. He kept his mouth shut. After a few long seconds, Ed let him go and walked away. Graham rolled his eyes at Neal and hurried after Ed.
Neal slouched against the lockers and caught his breath. Then he shouted after Levine, “So, Ed! How’s the little woman?”
He watched as Graham nudged Levine through the door. Neal was getting tired of this shit-very tired.