The Opening Chapter of Allen Morris Jones’ Sweeney on the Rocks

In the dripping, vermin-rustling basement of a Bay Ridge trattoria, amid cardboard pillars of boxed Chianti and swelling cans of ten-year-old tomato sauce, past a narrow hallway of
folded buffet tables and five-gallon jugs of olive oil, a man sits duct taped to an armchair, squinting under the greasy light of a bare bulb, regretting certain, ill-considered life choices.

Skinny in a sallow, cigarette-stained sort of way, up until a couple hours ago he’d been the cat’s meow, the bee’s knees, the cream in your coffee. An anachronism all the way
down to his graying, well-trimmed little Valentino mustache. Which, by the way, and thanks to a swatch of duct tape being repeatedly torn off and reapplied, has been mostly reduced to
a row of bloody freckles, a slow-welling pattern of red dots. His tongue comes out for a taste, then retreats.

You wonder, in this business, what you would do—what you will do—when somebody sticks a gun in your ear, says, “Get in the car.” Will you play the hero? Throw some wild punches, offer a few kicks to the crotch? Or maybe make a break for it, screaming like a cheerleader? Pull your own gun and go mano a mano right there in the street? Turns out, no. None of these. Here’s what you do instead: You get in the car.

He sits in his sweat and blood and stale urine, the rich stew of fluids that flee our bodies at the first sign of trouble, then adds a few drops of tears to the mix, sobbing with a little half-hitch hiccup. Each hand has been taped to the arms of the chair so as to the leave the fingers free. Swollen by the tightness of the tape, pink and trembling, there’s something obscene about their wormlike, naked vulnerability.

A voice from the dim periphery. “You still with us there, Georgie?”

From the chair, sobs, pants.

“What do you think, he still with us? I can’t hardly see nothing.” Under layers of dust and cobwebs, the bare bulbs emit only a dim light.

Three men sit splayed in various postures of boredom. Three cashmere coats folded over the cleanest of the wine boxes. Three sets of white shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. Per union specs, they all wear identical sneers. The smallest man, an aging and obese toad of a guy, a sixty-five-year-old mouth breather named Donnie Moretti, separates himself from the shadows. Limps over to stand under the bulb. The other two, gents not uncommon to the genre, are dull blades indeed, heavy-lidded and slow. Somebody’s cousin married somebody’s cousin. This older guy, though. This guy has a gleam. Cynicism, intelligence. If he was mocked in high school (which he was), then surely a trail of Molotov cocktails and slashed tires followed in his wake (which they did).

Ominously, horribly, a set of bolt cutters swing heavily at his side: Tick tock, tick tock.

At this point, you wouldn’t think the man in the chair would be capable of copping to the details. But yeah, swollen eyes and all, he fixates immediately on the tool. Groans low
and doomed, a rusty car door wrenched open.

Twenty feet over their heads, the last few late night diners are polishing off the dregs of their wine, sopping up watery marinara with crusts of sourdough, settling back, inspecting the bills, waving credit cards. Down here, though, a man has come to the reluctant awareness that even if he lives through this night, his days of wiping his own ass are almost certainly behind him.

The duct tape on his mouth is loose enough now it’s mostly just a gesture. He sobs through gummy adhesive. “I don’t…god, Jesus, I don’t know where she is, Donnie. Swear to god, swear to god, swear to god. We don’t talk no more. She don’t like me. Swear to god.”

Donnie shifts the bolt cutters, reaches out to toss the tape aside. “How long I known you, Georgie? Grade school, right? Kindygarten? You went to school with my kids. They had you in that gifted program. You rubbed me wrong even then. You was five years old, you thought your shit didn’t stink. I gotta tell you, though…” he lifts his pug nose, sniffs conspicuously, “it’s stinking now, buddy.”

Appreciative chortles from the apes in the wings.

“Here’s how this is gonna work.” With effort, a popping of joints, he squats in front of Georgie, bolt cutters across his knees. He caresses the handles like the ears of something cute. “Eddie’s dead, he don’t know the answer. That Russian everybody talks about, Breetvah, whoever the fuck he is, he’s off the map. But you, you’re right here. Complete with all ten fingers. Plus, plus…” he hefts the bolt cutters, lets them drop heavily on the man’s crotch. “Plus a tiiiny little excuse for a dick.” Holds up two fingers half an inch apart. “Each time I have to repeat myself? I’m cuttin something off. You answer sooner rather than later, we send you to your maker with yourself mostly intact. Maybe they’ll give you an open coffin. If not, they’ll be finding you scattered from Utica to Utah, Boise to Joisee. Now…” He rises, groaning slightly, holding a knee, and places the polished jaws of the cutters carefully around a jerking, quivering pinky. “Now. Where…” and he shuts the cutters hard. A crunch of bone, a spurt of bright blood, the small plip of a finger hitting concrete. “…is that sister of yours?”