Time to Die

“Listen, Frank, this is gonna be the start of somethin’ great. Trust me, buddy.”

Of course, it hadn’t been the start of something great. And now, Frank has only a few minutes left to live.

Pauli’s whole gangster act, his thick Brooklynese that came from deep within his chest, that should’ve scared Frank off. “This ain’t like The Godfather, Frank,” Pauli said. His club, Pussy Palace, was dark and filled with smoke and low music. Women with fake tits the size of watermelons danced on the tables, swinging their cellulite in front of leering drunks, drunks who threw their hard-earned cash onto the tables, demanding to see more, demanding blowjobs, demanding fucks. Prostitution was illegal in Jersey, but they didn’t give a shit. “This is more like Goodfellas,” Pauli continued. “You fuck us, we fuck you. You fuck up, you get fucked.”

“Oh, fuck you, you goddamned cliché,” Frank said, “stop talking bullshit and let’s deal straight.” Only, he’d replied inside his head. He hadn’t had the balls to say it out loud. If he had, things might’ve turned out differently. True, he hadn’t fucked them. True, he hadn’t fucked up. But now, he’s being fucked. They think he has no balls.

“Maybe this isn’t my fault,” Frank thinks. “Maybe it’s the book’s fault.” 100-plus pages of pure bullshit—agendas, reminders, memorandums—and five pages of pure gold. Five pages. Five addresses. Five stashes. Five weeks of searching. Five Ziploc gallon freezer bags, all filled with pure white. The one in Harlem had been the hardest to find. It had been in the fucking walls. He’d had to come back the next day with a crowbar and a sledgehammer to get it out. So, yes, the book’s fault. But can you blame a book?

A door creaks open and bangs shut. Frank jerks in the chair to which he’s attached; anxiety wraps its skinny arms around Frank, squeezes him in a lover’s embrace, compresses his chest, and whispers death in his ear. Frank’s eyes are spread wide, but there’s no seeing through the black canvas sack. There’s no knowing to whom those footsteps belong. A minute is all Frank has left on this earth.

Well, if you can’t blame a book, then maybe it was his fault, the fault of the asshole who croaked in Little Joey’s Pizzeria in the city. Frank was the first to arrive at the scene—a cop, yes, but they thought someone had been knocked off. Dispatch misunderstood, and Frank went screaming with his partner to Little Joey’s, guns ready, anticipating violence, only to find a Mustache Pete who’d died of natural causes. If you can call a heart attack natural.

It was when the paramedics were loading the old-timer into the back of the ambulance, the old-timer whose corpse was already growing cold, that Frank spotted the little black book underneath the table. He didn’t give it back, didn’t file it away as evidence. He kept it. Why? Call it curiosity. Call it a hunch. Call it whatever the fuck you want, but at the end of the day, it was bad fucking luck. And now a hand is gripping Frank’s shoulder.

A voice speaks: “Sorry Frank.” It’s Pauli. A gun cocks. Just a few seconds left now. Frank opens his mouth to beg for his life. “You know what they say,” Pauli continues. “It ain’t personal. Just business.” Laughter, unexpected as a daisy in the middle of Grand Central, bursts from Frank. Loud, hysterical laughter that echoes through the room and bounces off the walls. A sharp hiss from the gunman. “What the fuck!?” he shouts. “What the fuck is so funny, you goddamn pig?!”

Frank pulls himself together. Chuckles. “Fuck you,” he says. “Fuck you, you goddamned cliché.” He feels the gun’s barrel on his forehead and knows it's time to die.