Can Ya Dig It? | 10 August 2021

“It takes time.  You knew it’d take time, but, shovel in hand, you were digging til dawn.  You’re hurting right now from the wrists on up.  The sun comes up and all you have to show for it is the blisters on your hands and a pile of dirt right by that fucker you knew would try that shit again.”

BNR Response

I pause, sweaty and breathless, to reflect on the last 5 years that landed me here.

Giuseppe and I met while each serving short sentences in County, me for petty larceny and G for armed robbery.  Having grown up on a particular side of town to parents of lesser means, we had developed reasonably long wrap-sheets but nothing aggravated.  Until now, I bemoaned.

As cellies, we bonded over a shared love of Louis Prima and the movie Raising Arizona.  Not the expected movie of choice for two wannabe wise guys, but arguably some of Nicolas Coppola’s best work.  Our wives became friends while we were on the inside, after seeing each other on visitors’ days several times in a row.  They initially eyed each other with that special kind of suspicion that women reserve for other women, but eventually their walls came down as they realized, week after week, that they were the only two women on the list who wore J Crew instead of faux Gucci and Keds instead of Candies.

That’s another thing we had in common: we both loved our wives and were (mostly) monogamous.  I did slip up once, and while I wasn’t proud that one night sleeping with Giuseppe’s girl, I was fairly certain she was the only reason I was still alive.

I’d always been a small-time grifter and, as much as I loosely fantasized about getting made, it wasn’t the life for me.  I held day jobs all my life and passed as a working stiff.  I augmented my income with side jobs here and there and was a purist: I kept my money under my own roof.

When you come from a background like mine, you never know when the bottom’s gonna drop out and I never wanted Valerie to have to worry.  I thought Giuseppe and I saw things eye-to-eye, I thought we were on the level.  If I didn’t I never would have told him where my stash was.  Val knew she would be safe, but I never told her where the money was.  I wanted her to have plausible deniability while I was under investigation, and it was also just a good insurance policy that she wouldn’t run out on me while I was in the joint.  Now, this loot fluctuated based on depending on what I had cooking.  At it’s “lowest” it was enough for Val and I to restart with and live for about 10 years.  Other times it was inflated while I held certain parties’ money in escrow.  In May I was holding a large amount to ensure a multi-month off-shore deal went through without unnecessary wet work.

I knew things were lean for Giuseppe and Donna when he called me one night, drunk, his voice betraying that he was feeling lower than a whale’s belly.  “Sil,” his gravelly voice was soft, “I was wondering if you were still interested in my Stingray.  I just had it detailed and you know I’d do you right-“ I cut him off and showed up on his doorstep 30 minutes later with enough money to cover his mortgage for June and July.

I was out of town for the Commercial Dishwasher Convention in early August when I received three missed calls from Giuseppe’s home phone.  Irritated, I broke away from the two customers lingering by my display and called him back, and as soon as I heard the line engage I reminded G that I was manning the booth and couldn’t talk.  Donna interrupted me.  She sounded worried and wasn’t finishing her sentences.  She reported they’d been arguing about money for the last six months and things were tense, when all of a sudden he came home flush with cash and super keyed up.  Aside from concern that he’d bought and done a bunch of coke, she was skeptical of his lack of explanation and the way he was side-stepping all of her questions.

As you can imagine, I tried to get Giuseppe on the phone but there was no answer.  It sounded like he’d boosted my cash the day I left for Fort Lauderdale, nearly two weeks ago.  This wasn’t the first time this Summer that he had tried to get his hands on my nest egg, and I had given him a stern warning last time without going into all the details about why.  Upon returning home, the worst was confirmed: he’d taken everything, including several hundred K I was holding in escrow for the cartel deal.  I didn’t know the intricacies of how he found my relocated stash, when he got into my dojo to get it, and I was beyond needing to think about that.

I’ll never know where the money went, or why he couldn’t return it.  It’s beyond me how someone I had trusted like a brother could have done us both so dirty.  Now here I was, the shittiest day of my life, with the sun rising in front of me over the Hackensack River, and a row of cartel dudes lined up behind me while I dug my best friend’s grave.  Just then, I heard Giuseppe moan (was he alive after the way I’d worked him over!?) and I turned to face the barrel of a gun pointed at me at close range.  Goddamn it.  Could this day get any worse?