Killing Them Softly (Cogan's Trade Movie Tie-in Edition) Read Free

cook. I mean, a really good cook. That’s why she’s so fuckin’ fat all the time, she likes to eat and she likes to cook and she cooks great and she eats it. ‘Bacon,’ I said, ‘ham, I don’t care if it does come off a pig. But no kind of pork. You make baked beans, all right? Don’t gimme none with the pork on it. The beans I’ll eat. Not the pork.’ And, well, I went down the clamstand and I ate in my fuckin’ car, and I haven’t, until a month ago I didn’t eat with my family for almost seven years. I still ate down the clamstand. Something got fucked up once, you remember that? I picked a wrong guy for something, everybody’s in a hurry, we got to move, we need the dough, this and that, he’ll be all right, and I, it, I was worse’n the rest of you. So we take him, and I knew, he’s a guy I’m really not sure about. I couldn’t tell you what it was, I just knew it, this was a wrong guy. But I take him anyway. And he was a wrong guy, and I eat greasy, shitty pork, seems like every day, almost seven years, and my kids’re growing up and my business, it’s all right, it’s not doing as good as it should be, and I’m in the can, and now, I can’t get that back, you know? So now, I can’t eat my favorite things any more, because they remind me, I’m, fromnow on I’m taking my time, and that’s all there is to it. No, I don’t care about you, what’s bothering you. We can do something, great, we’ll do something. If we can do it safe and without fucking up something that’s really good and getting ourselves in the shit again. But I ate the last fuckin’ pork I’m ever gonna eat. I had my last fuck-up. Call me Thursday. Thursday I’ll know. I’ll let you know.”

R USSELL STOPPED about four feet from Frankie on the second underground platform of the Park Street MBTA station. “All right,” he said, “I’m here. We going out there or what?”
    Frankie leaned against one of the red and white pillars. “Depends,” he said.
    â€œDon’t depend on me,” Russell said. “I been up since quarter five. I’m
all
beat to shit. And I also, I got a chance to get laid if I don’t go out there.”
    â€œDon’t people get laid at night any more?” Frankie said. “My sister, we’re kids, you couldn’t keep Sandy inna house at night if she was tied up. Now she’s out Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. I been there five weeks, she’s never home them days.”
    â€œMust be a fireman,” Russell said, “night guy inna fire station. Young guy, too, she’s not going out, weekends.”
    â€œOr a fuckin’ cop,” Frankie said. “It’d be the same thing with a cop. I said to her: ‘None of my business, Sandy, I just hope you’re not rolling around with some fuckin’ cop, is all.’ She looks at me. ‘Why?’ she says. ‘What’ve you guys got that cops haven’t?’ I pity that kid.”
    â€œYou oughta pity yourself,” Russell said.
    â€œI do,” Frankie said. “She never had a clean shot, though. She always got around pretty good, I don’t mean that. She just never hadda clean shot.”
    â€œNobody ever had a clean shot,” Russell said. “What the fuck else is new? I was talking to this girl, she wants me to come over there this after. I said to her, look, Ihadda be some place. What’s the matter, tonight? She’s gotta work. She gets off late. I don’t care. I been up late myself before. She’s a nurse. She says: ‘Look, I’m gonna wash old men’s asses and everything all day. Then I’m gonna be out on my feet. You think I wanna get laid, after that? That what you think? I don’t.’ ”
    â€œThat oughta be something,” Frankie said. “I can just see what kind of broad