The Blue Blazes Read Online Free PDF Page A

is.”
    “You’re too dumb to speak froofy French.”
    Mookie shrugs. “Only French word I know. And it ain’t froofy. It’s meat. I kill pigs. I take their meat. I put it in sausages. I cure the fat. I eat it.”
    “Whatever. You know what I like? That two cheeseburger meal at McDonald’s. Same every time. Couple bucks. Greasy and sweet. The pickle? The ketchup and mustard? Right on the money. And those fucking French fries, Jesus Christ on a cupcake those are like, the perfect– Oh, here we go.”
    Ahead of them, Marla Koladky-Pinsky steps out of their way, gives them a pissy look like they’re the last pair of dingleberries hanging, and then–
    There he is. The Boss. Looking small and crumpled. Like an origami tiger on the seat that somebody sat on without realizing.
    The Boss stands. Steps around his oxygen tank, thrusts out a hand. That’s his thing. He shakes your hand no matter who you are.
    Mookie takes the hand.
    “Don’t break my arm,” the Boss says with a wink. He stifles a hard cough.
    “I won’t.”
    “You got a good grip. Confident. But not too confident.” The Boss doesn’t let go. He casts a squinty look down at the two hands – his own hand dwarfed by the human oven mitt that is Mookie’s. “I can tell everything with a handshake. Everything. It all comes together in that moment. I can tell if I like a guy. Or if I want to stick him in the gills with a switchblade. I can tell if he’s gonna betray me or if he’ll stand by me as Hell pisses on my head.” He licks his teeth. “You’re rock fucking solid, you are. Not just physically. You’re loyal. A good soldier. And you–”
    He turns to Werth. Werth says, “Boss, I’m sorry as hell to hear about this.”
    Zoladski waves a hand.
    “God comes for all of us in the end. You know how he got me? Asbestos. This is a fuckin’ asbestos cancer .”
    Haversham, in a clipped tone, adds: “Mesothiolioma.”
    “Right. Asbestos cancer. Some time in my life, way back when, a little shitty speck of asbestos embedded in my lung-meat and now here we are. Death sentence.” He sniffs. “We had that shit in our house down in Kensington. In the roof shingles. In the siding. Wrapped around the pipes. Inevitable, I guess.”
    “They got surgery they can do,” Werth says. “Right? Lung transplants. And then there’s chemo and radiation and, and– what?”
    “Hell with all that,” the Boss says, flecks of saliva dotting his lip and gathering at the corners of his mouth like sea foam. “I go that way they maybe give me another three, four months, and my quality of life goes down the crapper. I’ll look like a baby bird what lost his feathers. No. We have to project strength. Continuance. We got a good thing going here in the Organization, but soon as those fuckin’ gangland piranhas smell blood in the water, it’s over. They’ll churn the river good trying to get to me. What we got here, boys, is a real fragile situation. Like an egg balanced on the tip of the finger, could get messy. Could all go tits up in a blink.” His voice goes low and his eyes lose focus. “All because of a little piece of asbestos.”
    The Boss’s gaze returns to Mookie.
    “You used to work with asbestos.”
    “Uh. Yeah.” How’d he know that?
    “You were a Sandhog.”
    Mookie grunts in assent.
    “Family thing?”
    “My Pop. My Grampop, too.”
    “But not for you, not anymore. Why you’d quit?”
    Mookie shrugs. “This is my thing.”
    “This thing we do,” the Boss says, the words almost musical, like a Sinatra croon lurks somewhere behind the words, a sing-song ghost. “Christ, I’m hungry. But the cancer’s a jealous mistress. It eats me; I don’t get to eat anything else. Food here’s good, though. Kielbasa’s solid.” He pronounces it kill-baasy . “They know a good kilbo. Still ain’t like in my Philly days, though. They, they knew kilbos. Before we came here they called us the Kielbasa Gang. You know that? Maybe you did. I repeat