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

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 she’s gonna be, you can screw off an ad inna paper. Beautiful. Probably got a couple handfuls of broken glass in there.”
    â€œLook,” Russell said, “you ought to know. I was pounding sand up my ass almost four years. I would’ve fucked a snake, I could’ve got somebody, hold it for me. These broads, okay, you wouldn’t want to rape them if you saw them, you know? But they got the fuckin’ plumbing.”
    A badly coordinated heavyset man appeared on the southerly platform across the tracks. He wore white coveralls and carried a blue plastic pail. He turned his back and stared at the tile wall. He put the pail down. He put his hands on his hips. On the wall in red spray paint were irregular letters eighteen inches tall. They read: SOUTHIE EATS IT . He stooped and removed a steel brush and a can of solvent from the pail.
    â€œI wished I could look at things like that,” Frankie said. “I can’t seem to get my mind on anything. I thought, I used to think, boy, if I ever get out of this fuckin’ place, they just better get all the women out of town that day, you know? But you know what I do? I sleep all the time. You were to just leave me alone, I think that’s really what I’d do, the way I feel right now at least. Just sleep and sleep and sleep. That’s why, this thing, I dunno how it is, what he’s got in mind. I admit, he’s kind of a crazy bastard. But he’s at least gotsomething in mind, you know? I haven’t. He come out and the day he come out, he was looking around. And I keep thinking, it’s all I do, Jesus, if I could just get some money. I could go out and live like I was a regular human being. But I can’t, I haven’t come up with anything, no way to get no money. Dean, my brother-in-law, he’s not a bad guy, basically, he don’t say anything. You know what he does? He reads catalogues. All them catalogues, come inna mail? Son of a bitch, he works, he goes to work at noon, noon till eight-thirty, down the gas station. He comes out, he reads catalogues. Fuckin’ electronics catalogues. And she’s, he’s down there, busting his hump, up to his ass in oil and stuff, she’s out fuckin’ some guy. So I’m sleeping on his couch and I’m drinking his beer, he don’t know me. He’s from Maiden. Where’s he know me from? They got married, I was inna can. But he still, he tells me, ‘Look, don’t tell Sandy, all right?