HP Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror - Weird Tales

34 H .P . L O V E C R A F T ’S M A G A Z IN E O F H O R R O R
So I’m like nine years old, making breakfast and packing
lunches for me and Timmy, in charge of getting us to and from
school, which could get very old. I bullied him sometimes the
way big brothers do, but Timmy wasn’t one to nurse a grudge.
His anger exploded, then it was gone. It didn’t wait cold inside
like mine. There was an iron bond between us—Danny and
Timmy against the world—because there wasn’t really anyone
else to care. Sometimes he got mad and threw things at me, but
if someone else picked on him, I was there to give the perp a
knuckle sandwich. Worked both ways; once when a big kid was
whaling hell out of me, Timmy put his lights out with a brick.
No, I couldn’t stay mad at Timmy more than five minutes. We
were so close, after a while it was like the same thought in two
heads; we could just look at each other and understand or break
up laughing. Hard not to love him, a big-hearted kid with a
sunny, trusting smile, he was always tagging along after me,
short and pudgy but determined to keep up, or getting into
trouble with other kids and always the one who wound up with
egg on his face, like the last betrayed night of his life. Me, I
always had to be watching out for both of us, so I kept people
at a distance. You get careful living in a mean ’hood like
Clinton, which used to be Hell’s Kitchen before Kennedy
Center and gentrification. You get so you can see trouble coming
two blocks away. When Mom sent me to fetch Dad out of
Feeney’s bar, I could usually spot the skuzzballs who’d start
trouble before the night was out; something in the eyes I recognized
because it was in mine too. But everyone loved
Timmy. I mean loved. With any friend he was always good for
five or ten because he was the only twelve-year-old monte dealer
on the West Side and raking in school yard lunch money. He
ran a straight game: no shill, card bending or Mexican flip. With
two to one house odds, he didn’t have to. Even then Timmy
had the casino philosophy: Win enough for a profit, lose
enough to keep them coming back.
“They all want something for nothing, Danny,” he told
me. “Why not? That’s the easiest way.”
He grew up good looking with our mother’s even features,
not a mutt like me, and a real charm to warm your soul by. At
his funeral three old girl friends showed up without their husbands.
Afterwards when we all went out to get blitzed and tell
Timmy stories at Feeney’s bar, they cried like a Florida rainstorm
and swore they still loved him. Kind of embarrassing; I
mean they were all dogs. For all his smarts at figuring angles,
Timmy had a junkyard taste in women. His talent was for getting
around things “Always an easier way, Danny,” he figured.
“And I always find it.”
In high school he was cranking out fake IDs, gorgeous
jobs. We drank under age at Feeney’s for a year on those, not
to mention what Timmy made selling them. You’d think the
way people just took him to their hearts, he’d be a natural con
man, except he liked too many people too much, usually the
wrong kind. After graduation he went into flat-busting with me
and Charley Lenihan who didn’t come to his funeral but had
the balls to send a mass card from St. Malachi’s.
It was Charley who proved my talent for spotting losers.
Something like wrong notes in music, and always a hard luck
story, nothing ever their fault. Charley saw a good thing in
Timmy and talked him into flat-busting, ripping off apartments.
Okay, I went along because we always needed money. We
stayed out of the neighborhood because Timmy and I would
not take from homeys. That burned Charley who didn’t give a
shit about anyone. And vicious? At a party one night, there was
this deadbeat creep who owed him big time, maybe a hundred.
Charley gave him a lot of friendly attention, filling his drink as
soon as the guy finished it, arm around his shoulder, the whole
bit.
“What’s with Lenihan?” I asked Timmy. “You’d think he
was gonna marry that bum.”
“That’s Charley’s way. He’s out for payback.” Then
Timmy gives me that million-dollar grin that could mean anything
from Have a nice day to Screw you, and adds, “ Stay out
of the way when it goes down.”
Sure enough the dumb bastard got so loaded he couldn’t
get off the floor, and that’s when Charley kicked his teeth in.
And while the guy is lying there spitting blood, Charley outs a
razor and makes a road map out of his face. I’ll never forget his
expression then, crouched over the deadbeat, mouth twisted in
an ugly leer, eyes pure hate like a hungry rat about to finish the
job, but Timmy pulled him away and somebody hustled the
casualty out the door. That’s when I knew sure as hell
Someone’s gonna do you, Lenihan. No way you’re long for this
life, and that’s a blessing for the world.
After that the ‘hood called him Crazy Lenihan. Charley
wasn’t psycho, just a greedy dirtbag. Partly we went into flatbusting
with him because Mom was terminal with emphysema
then. There had to be money for the hospital and after that the
funeral. It was a no-brainer. Timmy and I were good at busting.
Now and then it went sour with an alarm system we didn’t
count on or a small dog with large attitude, but our system was
down cold. Get in, two minutes to inventory, go to work. We
stuck to electronics for quick resale: VHS, CDs, DVD players
and laptops. Snip the wires off close, stuff it into a duffel bag,
never more than we could carry easily, and out of there.
Except for Charley—not wacko but not a rocket scientist
either. He got off scavenging somebody’s pad and knowing he
could take whatever he liked; it made him feel exalted like a kid
turned loose in a candy shop with twenty bucks in his hot little
fist. Timmy and I are snipping and stowing, and there’s
Lenihan rooting through drawers and closets and coming away
with mostly junk. Timmy ragged him with that what the hell
laugh of his that started up in the tenor and slid all the way
down to baritone.
“Ah, you’ve ruined him, Charley! Got his Nike runners.”
Looking at his watch while Charley tossed a drawer full of
underwear. “Any old freakin’ time, Lenihan.”
“Wait a minute; this guy’s just my size!”
“Christ, Danny, can you believe this? Let’s split.”
We busted for a couple of years paying off our mother’s
funeral, may she rest in peace, but more alarm systems and
neighborhood watches came in until we were running more risk
than profit. By then I’m into my 20’s with a straight job for a
change, and there was a nice girl with an apartment on West
End Avenue up in the Nineties. We hit it off okay and she
invited me to move in with her. Mistake. I mean Monique was