Free Mad Dog Justice by Mark Rubinstein

didn’t have the decency to tell me about it beforehand—”
    “Because you’d have panicked if I had, Danny.”
    “
Bullshit
. You didn’t trust me—your best fucking friend, your goddamned blood brother from the very beginning, from before either one of us can even fucking remember. You didn’t trust me worth a damn. You just hinted at what you wanted to do while we sat in McLaughlin’s back office waiting for Kenny and Grange to show up. And I was a schmuck—a fucking panty-waist because I just went along with you, with committing murder. I should’ve told you to fuck off as soon as I realized what was going down.”
    Danny’s sweat-drenched face glistens in the morning light.
    “Bullshit,
yourself
, kemosabe,” Roddy hisses. “You knew what was going down as soon as we got on the West Side Highway. Even before then. As soon as Grange passed out from the Mickey Finn. Don’t bullshit me. You fucking knew, Danny. And you didn’t say
squat
.”
    “You’re right, Roddy. And you know what? You know the
fuck
what? I shoulda told you to stop the goddamned car and turn around. I shoulda told you to head right the fuck back to Manhattan. But I didn’t, because I’m a schmuck. Just a totalschmuck. And if that didn’t work, I shoulda told you to stop the car and let me the fuck out. I’da walked home … all the way back to Tuckahoe.”
    Danny sucks in a breath and then lets it out slowly.
    “But I
didn’t
. I just sat back like a goddamned wuss. I let you call all the shots, and now we’re here, up to our lips in shit,” Danny snarls and then coughs raucously. Mucous is building up in his chest. Roddy hears it rattling around; Danny could launch into a full-blown asthmatic attack. His neck veins bulge; his eyes close and his breath begins sounding like a punctured bellows. His face turns purple and looks congested. Looks like he’s about to burst a blood vessel.
    “So what’re we now? Just what the fuck’re we?” Danny gurgles through the phlegm. “Two assholes blaming each other for what happened. Let’s face it; we’re just a couple of murderers who left two corpses in the woods. And now whadda we have? A pack of goons’re after us. And the cops’re sniffin’ around like we stink as bad as that shithole in the woods where we dumped those bastards. Jesus Christ, I’m such a fucking asshole.” He shakes his head, moves his bulk in the chair, and winces again.
    “So what was the alternative, Danny? Just pay up? Let that fat extortionist take us for five hundred K?”
    “We wouldn’t be here right now if we had.”
    “Danny, lemme ask you something.”
    “What?”
    Roddy catches himself. If he asks Dan about a possible connection to Grange—if he even hints he’s had thoughts that maybe Dan was in on Kenny’s scheme—their friendship is down the drain. Gone. Forever. A momentary wave of guilt washes over him for even thinking it. Danny involved in the scheme with Grange and Kenny? It doesn’t make a particle of sense; Kenny would’ve ratted Danny out the second Roddy held the .45 to his head at Snapper Pond.
    I’m going back and forth and doubting everything. Am I going paranoid?
    “So what the fuck you wanna ask me, Roddy?” Dan’s eyes are wide. His face is flushed, still purple.
    “You think Grange would’ve stopped at five hundred? You
really
think he wouldn’t up the ante to a
million
or even more? He had a surgeon and an accountant on his fish line. Two Westchester candy-asses like us. You think he wouldn’t’ve hooked on to us like a leech and bled us drier than a communion wafer, two Irish schnooks from Brooklyn? What’s with you? What? Were you born yesterday? C’mon, Danny, you’re a money guy. You know the world. It’s a fuckin’ cesspool—especially greedy pricks like Grange. The guy never saw a penny he didn’t want in his own pocket. Not one fucking penny,” Roddy whispers. “We did what we
had
to do and
now
we’re in deep shit and we gotta do