Rocco

 

“I’m sorry, sir, but we can’t let you in.”

 

I stand outside Shotgun’s hospital room, the nurse blocking me even if she’s half my size. The blinds are drawn but I can hear somebody snapping at somebody else, the humming of machinery, a beep-beep-beep which is getting quieter and quieter. Shotgun is dying and I have no choice but to back away and slink to the waiting room, drop into a plastic chair and stare at the floor. Shotgun is dying, and there’s nothing I can do.

 

I think about getting a coffee, but I stand at the machine for a minute or two and then go back to the chair. There are a couple of other people in the waiting room, an elderly woman who knits like she doesn’t know how to stop, and a middle-aged man looking just as lost as me. We sit and wait to the click-click of the elderly woman’s knitting. I think about the time Shotgun and I went riding together when I was seventeen and he was in his twenties, how he’d dart between the cars like a man with all the power in the world. It can’t be the same man, I tell myself. It just can’t. Not in there, not dying. That man can’t die.

 

And yet after half an hour of waiting, a nurse comes and stands over me. She’s a short, redheaded woman with a cross dangling outside her scrubs. “The doctor will see you now,” she says quietly.

 

I feel like I’m in a dream as I walk through the hospital. I don’t even have the certainty of being able to find comfort in Simone, I reflect. When I find out this news, I don’t even have that. I walk slower, hoping to delay the moment. Shotgun’s too strong to die. A bullet can’t kill a man like that.

 

But then the doctor is standing in front of me, a tall man wearing horn-rimmed glasses with a professional look on his face. “How do you know the patient, sir?” he asks.

 

“I’m his son,” I say, the first thing that comes to my mind. In many ways it’s true even if Shotgun would have been ten or eleven when he had me.

 

The doctor clearly doesn’t believe it, but he ignores the lie. “I’m really sorry to have to tell you . . .”

 

I barely hear the rest of his words, the normal shit they tell you when a loved one dies, condolences and offered support and blah-blah-fucking-blah. They ask if I want to see him and I say yes, of course I do. I won’t believe it if I don’t. I expect to find him all twisted and ghostly, something out of a horror movie, but all I see instead is Shotgun with a pale face and his eyes closed. He doesn’t look like he’s sleeping. He doesn’t look dead, either. But maybe that’s because all the dead men I’ve seen have been like something out of a horror movie.

 

I sit next to him and take his hand. I never took his hand in life, but now that he’s dead it seems appropriate. “One hell of a night, boss,” I say.

 

Shotgun’s never looked so young or vulnerable as he does now, just lying there. I keep expecting him to sit up and say something funny, or tough, or anything at all which will make him lying there dead bullshit. He can’t be dead, I repeat to myself again and again. There’s no damn way Shotgun’s dead. I want to laugh about it, but I can’t get a laugh out. My mind keeps returning to Simone, to how she looked at me just before I left. I’ve lost two parts of my life tonight. That’s a selfish thought. But I can’t stop thinking it. Maybe I’m wrong about Simone. I know one thing for sure, though. I’m not wrong about Shotgun.

 

“Do you remember when you caught me snorting coke?” I say. “I was seventeen and you went ape shit, really goddamn ape shit. I remember being scared of you back then, boss. I can’t say I was scared of you much after that, but back then I was scared. You told me I always had to stay focused. I could never let my mind wander to this sorta shit. That’s what you told me. You were a good father, boss. I just wish we’d met when I was six, not sixteen.”

 

I pat him on the hand and stand up. I’m not crying. I reckon I should be crying. You don’t know a man for over a decade and then not cry when he dies. But I can’t cry. I can’t even remember the last time I cried. Maybe when I was a little kid in the foster home. Now I just feel numb, and beneath the numbness, rage works its way through my body.

 

I turn away and walk into the hallway. When the nurse mutters something about funeral preparations, I snap, “Send the body to the Seven Sinners’ clubhouse.” I give her the address.

 

Outside, I ditch the car and walk through the streets, hands in my pockets, feeling like a stranger in the city. I’ve lived here a long time and yet I’ll never get used to all these lights, flashing nonstop like this is a landing strip but the plane ain’t ever going to land. I smoke a few cigarettes, but all they do is make my mouth feel stale, my throat scratchy. I can’t stop thinking about Simone, which makes me damn guilty. I should be thinking about Shotgun, and only Shotgun. But Simone keeps appearing in my mind, the way she just stared at me . . .

 

After a few hours of walking, I end up at the clubhouse. My legs are sore and my feet ache in my boots, but I hardly feel the pain. It’s nothing compared to the pain of a bullet in the gut. I picture Shotgun’s pale, dead face and wonder if the boys are going to care as much as me. I can only hope they do. Shotgun deserves to have people give a damn that he’s dead.

 

It’s early morning and the sun hasn’t risen yet, but the clubhouse is still bright and loud. I walk into the bar to the sounds of at least a dozen men talking loudly, people stomping their feet and raising their voices. They sound like soldiers arguing with each other about who to kill first. They sound just as angry as me. That’s something, at least.

 

I stand at the door and listen for a minute.

 

“This is fuckin’ war now,” Poker Face says, letting anger into his voice for the first time since I’ve known him. “They’re not getting away with this, no damn way. No damn way. They think they can just . . . this is fuckin’ war!”

 

“Goddamn right!” Beast growls. “You didn’t see him—His belly was pissing blood. These Demons really are Demons, fellas. Their name is true.”

 

“This Gerald man,” Jerry says, quieter than the rest. “Do you think he was there tonight?”

 

“I don’t care who was there!” Adams croaks, voice cracking when he raises it. “All I know is we messed up, all of us! Including me!”

 

I push through into the bar. At once, the men fall quiet. A few club girls huddle around their men. The room smells of cigarettes, but not of whisky or beer. The men haven’t been getting drunker. That’s good. I go to the front of the room and look into near-sober eyes. I don’t want to give them the news, but I have to. They need to know.

 

“Our president is dead.”

 

For five minutes, people shout, curse. One man punches the wall and another throws a chair at the floor so hard it snaps in two.

 

Once that has passed, I say, “I’m the de facto leader until we vote in a new president—”

 

“Fuck the vote!” Adams snaps. “We pick you! All in favor, say aye!”

 

Before I can reply the room erupts in a chorus of, “Aye!”

 

I nod shortly. I expected this, or something like this. But it stings me. Shotgun isn’t the boss anymore, just like that.

 

“If I’m the president, I’ve gotta tell you that this is war now, bloody war, a war that ain’t gonna be over until the Crooked Demons are nothing but a fucking memory. Shotgun is dead, and I’m never letting that go.”

 

The men stamp their feet, clap their hands, shaking the walls with their anger.

 

I go to one of the club girls and say, “I want a vigil for Shotgun in the main bar area.”

 

“Okay, Rocco.”

 

I go to a table with Adams, clicking my neck from side to side, wishing the man who shot Shotgun was here now so I could take out my rage on him. But when you get down to it, it wasn’t a man who shot Shotgun. It was a club, an entire club, and the leader of the club is the club. Shotgun taught me that.

 

“We’ll get them, lad,” Adams says, lighting a cigarette. “We’ll get every damn one of them.”