The Autobiography of Benjamin Abbott - Chapter 17: The Plan
Just kidding. Fingers didn’t shoot me and I didn’t die.
“So now can you tell me your plan?” he asked.
I turned around happily. I never had any doubts. Fingers was now part of the family. “No.”
“You don’t have one, do you?”
“One is starting to take shape.” I went back to my thinking position on the couch and put my fingers (pun intended) together in a perfect little triangle. “The first thing we need to do is to get Angel out of indentured servitude.”
“I can take care of that.” Fingers surprisingly offered. This thing might actually work after all.
Then he turned to Angel. “Can I have my bullets back now?”
*
Fingers and I went to see Angel’s pimp. We drove there in Fingers’ Cadillac. I had a stupid grin on my face the entire ride.
Angel’s pimp’s base of operations was a bar near Normandie called “Bar.” I don’t think that was the actual name, the lights to the first half of the name might have burnt out on the display out front, but “Bar” was the only word that was lit up during the afternoon we visited.
Fingers knew the place. He said he used to hang out there when he was a kid. I was tempted to make an old man joke about how long ago that must have been, but I was still in the feeling out stages of my relationship with Fingers, I wasn’t sure if it was wise to tease a man who killed people for a living. However, despite his line of work, I found Fingers to be pleasant company during the ride over, whatever it was I had noticed about him on that day I followed him around was true. He was ready for a change in his life path and my offer was the best opportunity he was going to get. But before he could completely turn over a new leaf, he still had some hitman (or at least some small-time intimidation) duties to perform.
“I’ll take care of this,” he said to me when we exited his Cadillac that we had parked on the other side of Normandie in a way that left no doubt he indeed would take care of it.
“Stay at the front door when we get inside. I don’t want you getting shot accidentally.”
This warning wasn’t exactly comforting. Even though I had absolutely no doubt Fingers was going to ‘take care of this,’ I was now aware there was the possibility of me being accidentally shot in the process.
“Just try to look tough, okay,” he continued his instructions as we crossed the street. I started to look tough. Fingers stopped at the front door before we entered and turned to me again, “on second thought, don’t try to look tough.” (My tough face wasn’t up to his standards.) “Just keep your normal stupid grin, okay.”
I tried to return my face to its normal stupid grin look but this is more difficult to do right after someone tells you to do it.
“It doesn’t matter. Just stay by the front door, okay.” Apparently, I had even failed at putting on my normal face.
The bar was emptyish inside, a few Bukowski types along the bar, a bartender who looked like he had just been released from a state facility that provides free housing for those who have committed medium to serious crimes (with a white towel draped over his right shoulder, I half-expected him to spit into a shot glass and then use the towel to clean it), and way back in the back of the bar there was a table with a small man surrounded by 4 or 5 women of the working girl variety.
I would describe Ronnie Toledo as looking a bit like Squiggy from Laverne & Shirley but that’s an extremely outdated reference, so let’s just say he looked like an annoying pimp who had enough menace in him to do his job and take advantage of girls that have run away from home or were addicted to drugs (or most likely both), but not enough menace to rise above his criminal station as a lowly pimp. He also looked happy because he was surrounded by those girls he could dominate this afternoon (probably every afternoon), telling them stories about himself while buying rounds for the table to show off his false generosity, since of course he was using the money the girls made each night to buy those rounds.
I made all of these observations, accurate or not, in about 30 seconds because Fingers didn’t need time to take in any of this, he was focused on the back table, moving like a shark with a purpose, never breaking stride, moving fast while somehow not looking like he was moving fast with none of the usual exertions a body makes when it tries to run or walk quickly. His body was calm efficiency.
When he was about 10 feet from the back table, around the time the members of that table noticed a purposeful boulder rolling towards them, he announced, “who’s Toledo.” I think it was a rhetorical question because unless Angel’s pimp was a woman (which we knew he wasn’t) there was only one option sitting at that table. And that tiny option stood up in response to Fingers’ (rhetorical) question, kicking the chair out from underneath him back towards the wall and shouted back to the rolling boulder, “who the fuck wants to know,” (again, I’m assuming a rhetorical question) while reaching into his waistband to pull out some kind of gun.
But he was too late. Fingers was on top of him before he could take the gun out without seeming to have rushed at all. Toledo’s handgun was quickly transferred from Toledo’s hand to Fingers’ hand as if Toledo had just handed it to him voluntarily, which of course he hadn’t. Fingers had Toledo’s gun in his left hand as he broke Toledo’s nose with his right hand, knocking him back several feet before the second blow from Fingers’ right hand knocked Toledo to the ground. Toledo looked up at a standing, upset Fingers who began pointing down at the little man, “you fucking little maggot. A certain girl of yours is going to quit and if you lift a hand to her or to any of your other girls ever again, I’m going to come back here and rip off your testicles with a pliers and shove them done your throat and make you choke on them.”
I guess he wasn’t kidding about the pliers stuff in my apartment. Fingers meant business. Toledo made several sounds that sounded like a cat coughing up a particularly vicious hairball which Fingers took as a sign of agreement to his offer, he then turned to the 4 women at the table who were all now standing up watching the proceedings like one might watch a sporting event that had moved from the field of play and into the stands, he gestured as if to tip a cap he wasn’t wearing, “ladies,” and started walking back to me as purposeful and as quickly as before, placing Toledo’s gun on the bar without looking at the bartender, without looking back at Toledo who was still lying on the ground in an impaired bloody state, and we walked out of the bar together, across the street to his Cadillac, got in and turned on the radio to the oldies station (K-Earth 101), and drove off. The entire incident took less time than it took you to read the above paragraphs.
As we stopped at a stoplight, a few blocks away, Fingers and I exchanged a look for the first time. “I think that went well,” I said stupidly grinning.
“What’s next?”
“I think you should tell your employer you quit.”
Next Chapter: The Bowling Alley