
By Tom Piccirilli
Smashwords Edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press
Copyright 2011 by Tom Piccirilli
Copy-Edited by Neal Hock -- Cover Design by David Dodd
Cover Image by Andrew J. McKiernan -- http://www,kephra.com.au
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Nightjack -- Narrated by Chet Williamson
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My father had always been shitstorm crazy violent, but they finally put him away for it thirteen years ago, after he'd swallowed my mother's tongue, when I was eleven.
You could ask anyone in the neighborhood the kind of man he was. They all hated him and wished him dead, but no one ever lifted a finger, a fist, or a 12-gauge against him. He was a dirty cop who skimmed on the mob's protection racket and kept the local shop owners hard under thumb. If anyone new to the area came to him for help he turned their name over to the wise guys. The next day we'd all gather in front of some store on fire and listen to the owner wail in the middle of the street as the flames ate his merchandise. Or his wife. Or his kids.
My father moonlighted as extra muscle for Johnny Iacobuzio, who we all knew as Johnny Booze. It was an open secret even in his Brooklyn precinct, the most corrupt one in the city. It was the station that perfected the "Brooklyn Bounce," a term applied because of the money and drugs that would disappear out of the evidence locker.
Lots of cops were on the take, but only my old man would strip off his blues and later go out with Booze's boys and heist a truckload of flat screen TV's or pack his throw-down weapon for some back alley drug deal. Even dirty cops put the blue before the long green and made sure the badge came first, but my old man never looked at it that way. Even the other cops hated him.
On Thanksgiving or Christmas or even Easter, Johnny Booze would load up his Mercedes SUV with top-shelf liquor, and hand it out all over town. To the church, the firehouse, the police station, even the old folks home. Johnny Booze knew if you wanted to win over the people all you had to do was keep them loaded.
My father used to abuse my mother and me regularly. It was so commonplace that I don't think any of us put much into it anymore. My mother and I suffered in silence, and my old man would fume and glare and lash out at us the same way, silently. We lived in a house of private quiet pain. I would hear my mother grunt in their bedroom and never know if he was slapping her or fucking her. In the morning she always looked equally bruised.
She never tried to lighten my load. She never made promises that we would one day escape the brutality of my father. She never told me that I would one day make it out of the neighborhood and do something with my life. It wasn't her fault. The possibilities of life had been torn out of her kick by kick. While I sat at the kitchen table and did homework she would sew the buttons back onto his shirts that had been ripped loose by his whores. I would catch her jabbing the needle into her thumb and the two of us would watch her blood well. She never cried and neither did I.
Once, Johnny Booze's bagman stopped by the house to drop off my father's weekly cut and took her by the hand to the bedroom. I don't know if what he did to her could be considered rape since she never fought or cried or showed any resistance. I listened to him grunting and calling her a fucking bitch with every thrust. I wondered who he hated so much. If it was his wife or his mother or some puppy love who'd broken his heart when he was a youth. "You fucking bitch! You fucking bitch!" I suspected my mother found some kind of solace in his emotion-laden malice. I stood in the hall and glimpsed his face in the bedroom mirror. It was red with fury and he was sweating wildly. His throat was covered with twisting black, bulging veins. She held his face in her hands and stared into his eyes.
I thought I understood why such obvious viciousness would appeal to her. It was open. It was honest. It was human. Unlike my father's hate.
When the bagman left the house he handed me a hundred dollar bill and said, "Buy your mother something nice with this."
I tried. I walked in and out of the neighborhood stores wondering what she would like. Nothing made any impression on me because my mother hardly made one. Clothing, makeup, shoes, jewelry, food---none of it mattered to her. I walked into a toy store and looked around at the games and gadgets and didn't care enough about any of it to even spend the money on myself. I remember standing outside on the curb in the breeze and letting my hand drift open as I watched the C-note dive toward the asphalt and suddenly swoop upwards and out into traffic. It fell onto the other side of the street and kicked around in the gutter. I didn't bother to watch where it went.
Every week for the next couple of months the bagman showed up early with my father's money and took my mother in the bedroom and screwed her. I listened to him call her a fucking bitch.
Eventually my old man finally crossed the last line. It was Christmas morning and my mother had gotten up at dawn and spent the hours fixing a ham, baking cookies, and making last-minute arrangements to the decorations and the wrapping of presents. Despite her lack of will and brooding eyes there was always something about the holidays that managed to stir her from her cocoon of intensely black depression. The bagman came over and tried to fuck her but apparently couldn't get it up. I heard him cursing louder than usual.
"It's your fault," he said. "You did something to me."
"I'm sorry," she whimpered.
"Sorry? You're sorry? You bitch. You rotten bitch."
The bagman must've worked muscle for Johnny Booze as well because he knew how to inflict pain without leaving marks. Not that it would've mattered much. My mother was already scarred and bruised and battered. But the bagman spent some time on her and I listened at the doorway as she coughed and groaned and squealed, but never very loudly.
I waited for her to call my name. I held on to a knife she'd left out to cut the ham. It wasn't a particularly big blade and didn't have to be. I thought, All she has to do is show some resistance. All she has to do is speak my name. All she has to do is plead with him, beg him to stop, scratch his face, and I'd drive the knife in under his ear. People were always talking about the best way to incapacitate and kill a man. My father expounded with his drunken friends at length. He acted out scenes in the living room showing the correct way to press a pistol barrel against someone's temple to avoid blowback. How to stab someone so they'd die immediately, or take hours crawling through their own filth.
But my mother said nothing, didn't defend herself at all, accepted his fists and fingers, his slaps and pinches.
When he was finished I put the knife back and stood by the Christmas tree. I stared at the angels and thought of blood. When the bagman left he handed me two C-notes and said, "Merry Christmas, kid. Make sure you buy your mother something nice. And get yourself a little something too, right?"
"Right," I said.
This time I unscrewed the plate to an electrical outlet in my bedroom and stuffed the bills inside the little niche. One of these days, I knew, I would have to get the hell out of here.
Late afternoon my old man walked in from a night of whoring, smelling of sweat, sex, blood, and perfume. He wasn't drunk like usual. He seemed edgy as hell. I got the feeling that someone had told him the bagman had been in the house a long time. I thought maybe Johnny Booze had done it just to get rid of my father. He'd been growing more and more violent and unstable in recent months. The other cops had started turning their backs on him. I overheard his phone calls and knew my old man had been slipping.
He walked to my mother. He said, "Have you been fucking some other man?"
My mother said, "Yes."
She folded the knife and fork and held her chin up as she stared into his eyes. She had absolutely no fear. A charge burned through the air. We could all feel it. We all knew what was about to happen. My father shut his eyes and screwed up his face and hung his head. He raised his massive fists up as if to damn God. It was a Biblical moment in its own way. The house seemed dry as a desert, with the dust of a thousand generations settling on our neglected, cheap furniture.
Even then I wondered why he acted the way he did at that moment. Why he may have cared so much or pretended to care so much. It all seemed like such a sham.
He glowered at me. "Did you know?"
I said, "Yes."
My mother glanced in my direction and smiled. It was such an unfamiliar sight that it was the first time in years that I felt genuine terror.
My old man looked into my eyes and understood that I knew what had been happening all along. He took one step in my direction and my mother took him into her arms. She hugged him tightly and tried to quiet his fury by shushing him and patting his back. She twined herself about him and he took her in his arms and pressed his mouth over hers and gave her the most passionate and loving kiss that I've ever seen.
Then he gripped her by her ears and pulled her even closer, his mouth starting to chew, her eyes going wide as the scream erupted in her chest but had no way out. He continued to seal his lips over hers even as he bit off her tongue and forced her to choke on it. Her blood had nowhere to go so she gagged on it and snorted it out her nostrils.
Finally my father let her go, his mouth still working as he swallowed. My mother fell to her knees with the black pulsing blood flowing down her chest. She smiled with red teeth and said a word that might've been my name.
She flopped over onto her back and rolled almost under the Christmas tree as she started to go into shock. I'd been rooted to the floor by the weight of foreknowledge. Everything that had just happened seemed to have been fated to happen as it did, with me a nearly active part in my mother's butchering.
Then the spell was broken and I ran to her and did my best to help her however I could. There wasn't anything to do. A strange noise fluttered from her throat. It could have been laughter. I tried to stick my hand in her mouth to put pressure on the wound but she kept turning her head away from me as her body trembled and her eyelids quivered. It didn't take long for her to die.
I think I was sobbing. My face felt wet and my vision was unfocused as if I was looking at it through a wet lens. I stared at my old man as all the strength went out of him at once. He got himself a bottle of beer from the fridge and washed his mouth out of the taste of my mother's tongue and spit the beer on the floor. He fell heavily into the kitchen chair in front of the ham and he took up the utensils my mother had left there. He slowly cut himself a hunk of meat off and ate it hungrily, greedily, and noisily. But not so loudly as to drown out the pathetic noises of my mother's death.
I used the phone in the bedroom to call 911.
I drew the back of my hand against my eyes and the tears were gone. I was very calm. I explained exactly what had happened and gave our address. My voice wasn't a voice I recognized. A strange and eerie cold descended on me.
I knew with a deranged kind of clarity that he hadn't wanted to kill my mother. I knew that he'd actually wanted to kill me instead. I couldn't completely put together his reasons, but his rage was an insane thing and I'd never really comprehend it. My mother had saved my life by moving into my old man's path.
I sat on the bed while my father ate our Christmas day ham in the kitchen. When he'd finished I heard him light a cigarette as whirling red light and sirens filled the windows and the rest of the world.
\*
The fucker almost skated on an insanity plea.
He had a lot juice with the system. Despite all the forensic evidence he never cracked and confessed. The DA couldn't make much of it stick. There was only one eyewitness. Me. I took the stand against my father and swore on the Bible that he'd murdered my mother. My old man stared at me from the defense table and tried to drive a psychic knife of hate into my heart. When I'd finished my testimony I got off the stand and walked back to my seat. As I passed his table my old man hissed, "I'll be out in ten. I'll see you then."
I was eleven. My voice hadn't dropped yet. I didn't have a whisker on my chin. I hadn't kissed a girl. I hadn't learned to tug my pricklet. I'd watched my mother die crawling in her own filth, trying to say my name with the nub of her torn-off tongue. Black blood had pulsed from her mouth and she kept spitting.
But I was my old man's son. I had the same hate inside me. I contained a similar rage. I was already growing jaded and could feel myself caring less about everyone and everything around me. I already had the talk down.
I grinned. It was his grin. I said, "Don't be in a rush. The day you come home is the day you die."
The papers loved it. So did the defense team. I didn't react the way a normal eleven year old kid would. They said I was lying. You could tell just by looking in my face. Where were the tears? Where was my little boy charm? The ladies in the jury didn't want to wrap me up in a bundle and take me home. They were scared of me. My father earned points off me, but it wasn't enough. They led him out in chains and a clock started ticking down in my head.
I was packed into the system but Johnny Booze worked it out that my foster family would be Tony and Theresa Mara. Tony made small book for Johnny Booze out the back of his candy store. Theresa was a holy roller in the Catholic church who went to Mass three times a week. They had a teenage boy of their own, Jojo, and a daughter a year younger than me, Angelina.
Jojo was a psycho in training. He was known around the neighborhood for bullying school kids and teachers and extorting cash and favors. He'd started off killing cats with his pocketknife and had worked his way up to slashing anyone who stood up to him. He liked the forehead. It was a good move, I knew. You bleed a hell of a lot and the blood runs into your eyes. Minimal damage for maximum effect.
I knew psychos. I knew manipulation. And I knew when I was being tested. Johnny Booze had put me in this house to show him what I could do. I wondered how long it would take.
Jojo acted friendly, almost brotherly, for the first couple of months. It was long enough for me to get a sense of his moods, when he might jump and when he might sit back and enjoy himself. He did a lot of pills, weed, and occasionally meth. When he was cranked he was at his best behavior. The meth mellowed him. The weed made him paranoid and pale. His parents never tried to rein him in. They were weak people, without bitterness or kindness. They were shadows who moved through their own home hardly speaking, just waiting for the day to die.
By then I was already in love with Angelina.
But every boy was. She was lovely in the way that everyone could instantly recognize. Intensely long black hair, Mediterranean dark skin, eyes that were warm with kindness and innocence but blazed with a sharp intellect. She spoke little but had a strong presence that immediately made me understand she was always aware of me, always there for me. We held hands when no one was looking. I averaged a stolen kiss a month, at first.
It wasn't a crush for me and it wasn't budding adolescent hormones. I knew then that I'd one day marry her.
She had little say about her family. She dealt with them only as much as she had to and kept apart the rest of the time. She was a loner by nature, the same as me, and that drew us to one another. We spent most of our time together, sharing space quietly. Reading, doing homework, watching movies, walking to and from school. I liked to watch the side of her face as we strolled through the neighborhood. The curve of her jaw, the soft blonde hair beneath her ear, the way her dimples came and went depending on her expression.
Older boys were already hitting on her. I wasn't a threat so they ignored me. If anyone got grabby she'd give them hell. She was tough and had a mouth on her when she needed it.
Jojo made his move on me on a biting cold March afternoon. I was surprised it had taken him so long. I'd been watching him closely and knew he'd started breaking into pharmacies to steal prescription pills. He popped anything he could find without checking the labels. He'd moved up to stealing cars and sexually assaulting pubescent girls. He'd taken to giggling almost nonstop.
I was with Angelina at the corner ice cream shop. We were sitting together in a booth at the back. She'd bought an egg cream and here were two straws in it but I wasn't drinking. I was staring out the plate-glass window watching Jojo drive up and down the block in a stolen '72 Mustang that was more rust than anything else. The engine coughed on only four valves. He chirped the tires every time he came around the corner. I wondered if Angelina had any idea of what her own brother planned to do to her.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"Nothing," I said.
"Is that Jojo showing off?"
"Yes."
"Don't let it bother you. Drink some of this with me."
"I'm not bothered."
"I won't let him hurt you."
I stole a kiss from her, a peck on the lips that made Mr. Grisiola, the store owner, raise his eyebrows at me. He was a good man, someone who used to pay my father but never showed any anger towards me for it. He smiled as Angelina took hold of my hand but his gaze hardened and focused on the street as Jojo pulled up and parked out front.
Jojo stepped in and cackled when he saw me with Angelina. He slid in beside his sister and sipped from her straw. He couldn't sit still. His face was thin and ashen, and he looked like he hadn't slept in three days. Angelina said, "You need to stop whatever you're doing."
"What I'm doing is making money."
"You don't look well and you smell like shit."
"You shouldn't talk like that. Especially to me." He said it with that giggle playing in the back of his throat but his eyes were black and practically swirling.
He glanced my way and said, "I want you to take a ride with me."
I said, "Sure."
Angelina reached out and gripped my wrist. "He's not going anywhere. We're having a nice afternoon together and I don't want you to ruin it, Jojo."
"I'm only here to help," he said. "Help him pick up a little extra cash so he can pay for more dates like this, Angie. Wouldn't that be nice for the two of you?"
I had just turned twelve. I was beginning to notice changes within me. I had grown a few inches and put on some weight. There was a little peach fuzz coming in on my chin and upper lip.
"It would," I said. "Let's go."
Jojo let out another wild laugh. I got to my feet and he clapped me on the back and ushered me from the shop. Mr. Grisiola stared after me like he would never see me again.
I got into the passenger side of the Mustang and Jojo jumped behind the wheel and peeled out. I knew that it would take him a little while to get around to whatever he had in mind. He was too high. He was still in a good mood. He drove around Brooklyn for a while and then skirted into Queens. He wagged the wheel and bounced the Mustang off a couple of parked cars. I reached for the seat belt but there wasn't one. I held on tightly to the door handle and propped my feet against the sides of the wheel well. Jojo was starting to come down a little. He lit a joint and I knew we were almost there.
He drove out east, talking anxiously the whole time. We took the Cross Island and headed to the north shore, where Jojo said he had a job for us. Some kind of a burglary. He drummed it up pretty good, saying it was a million-dollar mansion. He claimed I was the only one small enough to climb in through a window. He hadn't even bothered to come up with a reliable, logical story. I was nearly as big as he was. That's what the real trouble was. He'd noticed I was finally becoming a real rival.
He drove up to 25A and continued east, where we watched the beautiful areas of Nassau County draping back towards the Long Island Sound. He lit another joint and the sweet smell of marijuana filled the car. He kept offering me a toke and I kept waving him off.
As he maneuvered into the richer neighborhoods where the houses grew more separated against the steep hills, he began to twitch. Part of it was with the eagerness to stick his blade into me. Part of it was because he was thinking of Angelina and all the things he'd be able to do with me out of the way. He trembled like a cello string. His eyes practically rolled with hatred.
He'd grown quiet. Every now and again he'd open his mouth and there'd be a distinct pop as his wet lips separated, but he still wouldn't say anything.
It was dark enough now that he could practically pick out any empty house and claim that was the one we were boosting. He couldn't seem to settle on anything because he was enjoying being on the edge so much. We were starting to go around in circles. I wondered what Johnny Booze would think of this setup if only he was here to witness it.
He had his knife in his jacket pocket and kept floating his hand over it like he was hoping the blade would leap into his fist.
I eventually knew I would have to prompt him. I pointed to a dark home and said, "Is that the one?"
"Right. Good eyes. That's it," Jojo said.
He pulled over and threw the car into park, which is what I'd been waiting for. I opened the door like I was going to climb out. The dome light came on. I had to move fast. The street was dead, but you never knew who might look out a window or drive by. His reflection moved in the windshield, leering. That giggle broke from deep in his chest, such a quiet reminder of his madness. Jojo went for the blade. His mouth churned and I knew the name that was on it. He started to say it. "Ang---"
I dove back in, reached over, yanked the car keys from the steering column, and drove them into his left eye.
Jojo sucked air to shriek and I pinned him down in the driver's seat, my hand over his mouth. What weight I had was muscle. I lay across him, pushing down and holding him in place. He continued screaming under my hand, his mouth inflating, the force of his muffled agony blown out against my palm. He'd gotten the knife out but the pain made him release it. He scratched at the door handle trying to get it open. With his other hand he was trying to pull the key out of his eye, which hadn't exploded or run like jelly the way I'd been expecting. It looked like a boiled egg with a car key sticking out of it.
I jammed my right forearm across his chin and turned his face away from me. The motion tore the key out of his eye and now there was blood and fluid and gelatin running down his face. He kept clutching for the door handle and finally got a grip on it. He looked at me in terror with his one good eye and I wondered exactly what it was that he saw. Did he understand that he'd never had a chance? Would he ever know that compared to the insanity of my father Jojo's small madness barely registered? Nothing so far had even made my pulse speed up.
I grabbed the knife, snapped it open, and plunged the switchblade in under his left ear.
Jojo died almost instantly. A thick wad of black blood shot against the driver's-side window and that was all. He convulsed for a moment, rocking against the leather seats, and then sighed into my face and went limp.
I climbed out the passenger side, slammed the door, went around to the driver's seat and shoved him over. I got behind the wheel, grabbed the keys and wiped them clean on his shirt. I stuck the key in and started the car. I'd never driven before. I was still five years away from getting a permit.
I threw the Mustang into drive and got a feel for the brakes and the gas. We jerked and stuttered up the block and I'd gone about a mile before I realized I didn't have the headlights on. I snapped them on and practiced more around the neighborhood. I wasn't completely sure I knew my way back home to Brooklyn.
I knew we were close to the Sound. The first step was getting rid of Jojo's body. It didn't need to be hidden forever. Jojo had sealed his own doom by being a complete prick. No one was going to care that he was dead.
I kept driving back roads heading in what I hoped was a northern direction. I was gaining a little more confidence but barely went above 30 mph. Some cars came up behind me and honked and passed. I was figuring things out.
Jojo had shit himself and the smell was getting bad. I rolled down the window and had to hang my head outside and take deep breaths. Beneath his awful stench I thought I could smell water. I turned the next corner and saw a little sandy road. I followed it and came to the shore of the Sound.
It was a small empty beach and I decided that was good enough. The tide would rise in the morning and either take Jojo's corpse out or not. I didn't care much. I found a chamois cloth and a couple of rags in the trunk and used them to clean out the car. When I was done I tossed them on the sand.
I stared across the water at the lights of Connecticut and the world seemed wide with possibility. I was full of a strange sort of grace. I felt exempt from my own worst actions. What I'd done was in the name of self-defense but that wasn't why I felt absolved.
After an hour I was driving comfortably at 60 mph along the Long Island Expressway to the Cross Island to the Belt. It was two in the morning when I pulled up and parked in Jojo's spot. No one had taken it. No one would have dared.
There, I thought, I've done it. I've crossed the line that will take me one step closer to murdering my father.
\*
Three days later Jojo's body washed back up. By then Mr. Grisiola had told the neighborhood that I'd been the last one seen with him alive. Everyone knew what I'd done even if they had trouble believing it. Most of them were probably grateful. A few gave me the evil eye. Angelina seemed conflicted but never said anything to me. Her parents seemed a little relieved and there was actually some lively conversation around the dinner table for once. The cops came around and asked questions but everyone knew better than to talk out of turn.
Forensics went through the Mustang and found trace evidence but nothing to tie me or anyone else directly to Jojo's murder. They impounded the car. I waited for Johnny Booze to put the touch to me but he didn't. That was fine. I knew he would eventually.
It took four years.
When I was sixteen Johnny's SUV Benz pulled up alongside of me one afternoon while I was walking home from school. I turned and waited and stared at my reflection in the tinted windows until the back one slid down a few inches and Johnny told me to go around the other side and get in.
I climbed in back and sat across from Johnny Booze while he swirled a glass full of Glenlivet on ice. He was a flash dresser and kept his cuffs shot like he was bringing the Rat Pack look back. He was a handsome man who wasn't aging very gracefully. I could smell the exfoliants, vegetable facial creams, and fruity shampoo beneath his cologne. He gave me a smile that showed a lot of teeth and no humor. The Benz took off down the street.
Johnny sipped his drink, looked me up and down, and said, "You've got your old man's eyes."
I nodded.
"You ever visit him?"
"No."
"How about your mother's grave?"
"No."
"She was a good woman."
I said nothing.
He kept his gaze focused on my face like he was expecting to be able to read something in my expression. I wondered what he was after and how I could give it to him so we could move along.
"That thing with Jojo, you handled it well."
I said nothing.
"And you were only a kid. And you never got a taste for it. Some guys, they do something like that, they can't ever stop."
I said nothing.
A little gleam bled out of the corner of his eye. He cocked his head, hit me with the knowing grin. "You don't have a taste for it, do you?"
"No."
"You making it with that little Angelina Mara?"
"None of your business, Johnny."
It got him chuckling. Then he quit and gave me a hard look, drank some whiskey, shook his head, and let out another chuckle. "That's good. You don't answer questions like that, not even if I'm the one asking. Talking about private affairs like that is disrespectful to your girl."
I said nothing and did nothing. I thought back to Johnny Booze putting me in that house with Jojo on purpose, just to see what I'd do. He'd been waiting for this moment as much as I'd been.
"You work after school at the soda shop? Grisiola's place?"
"You know I do."
"Well you're not any more. It's time to make some real money. Come by the Fifth Amendment tomorrow, four o'clock, right?"
"Okay."
That's how it went down. He didn't ask if I wanted a job, just told me to show up the next day at his bar.
I ran errands, mopped the floors, served a little beer, and helped with the after-hours poker games. Wise guys from other mob crews would come down and join in. There was always an air of heavy tension. Nobody completely trusted anybody else, not even the capos and their own men. Bad blood between the syndicates of different cities went back ten, twenty, fifty years. Johnny kept things happy with good food, liquor, and hookers. He thought he was getting me laid for the first time by telling me to go upstairs with a chubby whore with an overbite and fake DD's.
Angelina and I had been making love pretty steadily for about a year at that point. Her parents must've known but, as with everything else, they stayed the course of active non-interest. They were planning to retire to Florida as soon as they hit senior citizen status. I was glad that they had an exit strategy and hoped they'd eventually learn to enjoy life. I didn't see it happening, but I thought anything was possible.
A couple of months later Johnny formally introduced me to the bagman who had raped my mother. His name, I knew, was Vincent Ventimiglia. Vinny Venti had moved up in Johnny Booze's organization after my father went away. He became a soldier, hard muscle, a low-level hitter. He was one of those wise guys who'd been in the life for so long that he felt inured, safe, protected. I remembered him in bed with my mother.
He recognized my name but not my face. It had been five years since I'd seen him on the Christmas day when he'd beaten my mother shortly before my old man had murdered her. I was six foot and went two hundred of thickening muscle. I had taken on some of his gestures and personality traits as well. I didn't smile. I tended to squint. My hands were usually fists held down at my sides or in my pockets. My gaze constantly shifted. I kept an eye on everyone. I didn't say much.
Johnny said to me, "We want you to make some runs with us. Think you can do that?"I'd been waiting for Johnny to move me up into a key position. He hadn't stuck me in that house with Jojo just to watch me serve beer. He had an eye for talent and recognized that I could be a benefit to him.
"Sure," I said.
"You ride with Vinny. He'll teach you the ropes. You do what he says. He's the boss. He tells you to break someone's thumb, you break it. He tells you to fuck a nun, that nun gets fucked. Understood?"
Like my father I also tended to pause for a moment before answering a question. "Yes."
"Be ready. You'll get a call this week."
The call came the next day. Vinny said he would pick me up later that night. He told me to "be ready for anything." I still had the two C-notes he'd given me the Christmas morning he'd fucked my mother. I kept them folded up in my wallet. It wasn't just emergency money. I liked to run my thumb and forefinger over the cash and remind myself just how cheap life and dignity actually were.
I was out on the front step when Vinny drove up. Angelina was just inside the screen door. I'd told her exactly what was happening and she said, "Be careful." I told her I would be and walked down to Vinny's car. He eyed me for a while, grinning. I didn't grin back. He threw it into drive and we rushed through the streets heading out of Brooklyn towards Long Island.
He didn't explain much, not that I expected it. He said we were going to pay someone a visit. He didn't mention a name. He tried to imply that we were only going to rough the guy up, but Vinny's voice had taken on an edge that I knew could only mean murder. I knew the sound of it well.
"You didn't bring a gun, did you?" he asked.
"No."
"Good. Don't ever bring your own gun along. If we need one, I'll give you one."
"I don't have a gun," I told him.
So our first run was a hit. It was chancy of Johnny to send me out to ice someone so soon but he'd gotten where he was by winning people over. I thought he was trying to win me over right now by offering up Vinny as a kind of sacrifice.
As Vinny Venti drove I casually glanced over at him, staring at the side of his face. His throat was still covered with thick veins. I remembered him grunting as he fucked my mother and calling her a fucking bitch with every thrust. I still wondered who he had hated so much. He caught me looking at him and said, "What?"
"Who's the mark?" I asked.
"You don't ask questions. I tell you what you need to know when you need to know it, right?"
"Right."
Since he'd made his point, and I'd acquiesced, Vinny went on to explain to me what we were doing.
The mark's name was Stan Tripp. He was one of Johnny's cohorts who'd done good business for years. Stan ran real estate scams, fraudulent claims of beautiful lots in Florida, cheap condos on the Keys. He bilked a lot of senior citizens out of their golden years fund, and when the feds finally came down on him he turned rat in about five minutes. He'd been wearing a wire for about a month. Everyone apparently knew it. They'd been feeding him some false information to divert a RICO case and let things settle down.
No one talked to Stan Tripp anymore so the feds were bound to haul him in again and send him up. Johnny knew that Stan hadn't told the feds everything, holding back certain facts so he could have some leverage down the line. Johnny didn't want that to happen, so it was time to send Stan to that great spacious residential property in the sky.
Stan lived out in Suffolk County. When we drove past the exit where I'd dumped Jojo's body on the north shore I had a strange sense of déjà vu. I wondered what Vinny had done to get on Johnny's bad side. I wondered why Johnny decided to offer him up to me in this way, on the night when we first had to do a real ice job. It didn't make much sense. I looked at things from different angles, imagining one scenario after another. It really wasn't all that hard to think like Johnny Booze. You imagined that you were completely bored with the world and the only pleasure you had left was toying with people's lives and turning those games to your own greatest benefit.
So what was Johnny going to get out of me icing Vinny?
We took Sunrise Highway out to the Hamptons. Stan Tripp had a gorgeous mansion in Bridgehampton right on the beach. I could understand why he'd rat out his friends to keep what he owned. It was always the mooks and the low-level wise guys who would do ten years in the joint without saying a word. They didn't have much to lose. But the bosses and the captains, the guys who ran the syndicates and owned three-million-dollar mansions, they were the ones who'd cut each other's throats to protect the sweet life they'd built up.
Vinny wasn't much smarter than Jojo. He hadn't cased the place, didn't know anything about Stan's schedule. We drove by the beautiful home twice, once heading down to the beach and once heading back. There were lights in the windows. Vinny figured that was all he needed to know.
"Come on, let's go grab a burger someplace."
There weren't any burger joints in the Hamptons. We had to drive for twenty minutes before we found a cheap-looking seafood diner. We ordered crab cakes and Vinny got some oysters on the half shell that he drowned in Tabasco sauce and sucked down one after the other without taking a deep breath between them. When he finished he took a long pull on his beer, wiped his mouth with his napkin, and said, "I knew your old man."
I said nothing.
"He was a good guy."
"No, he wasn't."
"Yeah, you're right, but what else am I gonna say? That he was a piece of shit?"
"Sure."
Vinny put a smile on but his eyes went hard as shale. I thought about who he hated. His mother or wife or girlfriend. His father or brother or maybe Johnny Booze. Maybe everyone, maybe he didn't even know who he was so furious with, and that's why he turned to the life he had.
"You nervous?"
"No."
"It's all right to be a nervous prick. The first one is always different, no matter what they say. The first one sticks with you. The next one, the one after that, those faces all tend to fade."
It wasn't my first one and Vinny Venti was the nervous prick. He'd been a bagman for years. I had the feeling he'd been kicked up to hitter to become a fall guy. He wasn't in charge of anything major.
Back in the car Vinny handed me a snub .38 with the serial numbers filed off. I checked it and made sure it was loaded.
"He's supposed to be alone tonight. We're in and out in two minutes. Nothing fancy. We don't make it look like a robbery, we don't torture the fuck, we don't burn his house down after. In and out."
Vinny drove with his left hand on the steering wheel and kept his right hand in his pocket for the rest of the ride. Looked like he was fingering a 9mm. I had made him a little fidgety and he kept glancing sidelong at me waiting for me to talk or invoke my mother's name or explode. Maybe that's why he'd mentioned my father, to see if he could push my buttons. Maybe Johnny had suggested he make small talk with me.
Then I realized it was a different type of test than I'd originally thought. I checked the .38 again, cocked the hammer, and found that the firing pin had been filed down.
Johnny Booze wanted to see just how strong I was. How tightly I could hold onto my rage. How well I could perform under this kind of duress. It was a setup and a cheap trick. It was a bush league bitch move.
He'd warned Venti that I might take a poke at him. He'd told Venti that if I tried he should spatter my brains all over the place.
I settled back. I almost allowed myself a smile.
I'd been waiting patiently for years to kill my own father. Did he really think I couldn't smile into the face of my mother's rapist and not take it?
We pulled up in front of Stan Tripp's house. The lights were on.
"Aren't you going to ask how we get into his house?"
"I already know how. We're going to ring the doorbell."
"Smart kid. We don't leave any witnesses."
You didn't have to be smart to realize that Stan Tripp was going to open his own front door when a wise guy knocked. You had to be an idiot to think he wasn't going to be armed. It's apparently how things worked. You knew you'd been fingered, you knew the feds couldn't protect you, you knew the mob wanted you dead, but if they came knocking, what were you going to do? Hide in the closet?
"Who else might be inside?"
"A wife."
"Any servants?"
He pulled a face like I was an idiot. "It's a big place but not that big."
It seemed that big to me. We parked and walked quickly up the drive. There was a little stone path that went around through a large lawn that opened up onto a private beach. A motion detector light went on. Vinny Venti rang the doorbell.
Stan Tripp's wife answered the door. She was much younger than I'd been expecting. Maybe twenty-five. A trophy wife with wet, long blonde hair, bee-stung lips, and dressed in an open cotton robe with a one-piece bathing suit beneath. She'd just come in from a night swim and I could see by the front light that there was a dusting of salt across one cheek. I thought Stan was a sack of shit for sending his wife off to answer a door when he knew there might be shooters after him.
She peered out at me and a gust of wind blew her hair dancing over one shoulder. The smell of the ocean made me a little heady. Compared to Coney Island it was fresh and lush and very clean.
She said, "Yes?"
I eased in front of Venti as he drew his popgun and punched her in the face. She was out on her feet but didn't go down. She was a strong lady and I'd pulled my punch at the last second. I tightened up, tapped her on the chin, and caught her before she fell over. There was a fancy chair in the foyer and I put her in it. The robe opened provocatively and Venti couldn't control himself. He was a cheap, flash-grab kind of guy and he reached out and twisted her left breast. His face was hard and full of hate again, but this time it wasn't just for the woman living in the back of his head, but for me. His expression twisted into a leer.
"She didn't witness anything," I whispered.
Venti led as we entered the house. Stan was sitting in the living room on a large leather couch with a .44 in his lap. He aimed it at us but he was shaking badly and a .44 is a heavy gun. The first shot went wild and took out a huge oil painting on the wall behind me. The recoil broke his wrist. I heard the bones snap like a pair of dice hitting the table in a craps game.
I left the snub .38 in my pocket. I walked up to Stan and saw that all the fight had gone out of him. I picked up the .44. It was a stupid gun to defend yourself with if you weren't used to shooting, but I got the feeling that one of his macho pals had talked him into it just because it was such a powerful piece.
"I'm looking for an apartment," I told him.
He was practically catatonic with fear. I had to slap him to jar him awake a little. "What?"
"I'm looking for an apartment in Manhattan. I want to put a down payment on one now, maybe in an area that hasn't started turning around yet but will be prime real estate in four or five years. What neighborhoods should I check?"
His eyes focused on me. "Are you going to shoot me?"
"You want me to lie, Stan?" I asked.
"But you're just a kid."
"Would it hurt less if Vinny does it?"
He closed his eyes and raised his head a little as if he was trapped in a moment of martyrdom. "My wife?"
"She's fine."
"Thank God."
I nudged his chest with the barrel of the .44. "Stan. About the apartment?"
He roused and stared at me curiously. "That's a serious question?"
"Why else would I ask?"
He thought about it for a minute, and I could see that while he was running real estate properties, trends, housing developments, and urban renewal, he wasn't afraid at all. His mind was moving along the usual track, checking angles, working schemes. His mouth moved silently. He seemed to have forgotten that we were there, and that he was about to die.
"They're revitalizing Alphabet City," Stan said. "It's been the dregs for a while now, but the East Village continues moving farther east toward the river. In five years it'll be trendy and upscale. Whatever you buy now will be worth ten times that by then."
"Thanks."
Then the full impact of his impending death hit him again and he rocked on the couch. His eyes drifted to Venti and he didn't like what he saw. He stared at me again.
"Do me a favor?" he asked, his eyes full of tears although he was doing a hell of a job of holding them back. "Make it fast, would...?"
I made it so quick that he didn't get a chance to finish his sentence. The .44 bucked in my fist and Stan's head more or less vanished in a surge of blood, bone, and brain matter. The pressure of the blast had popped his eyes loose and they flew off perfectly intact. A Magnum was way too much gun for this kind of a job.
"Why didn't you shoot him with your own pistol?" Venti asked.
"You filed down the firing pin, Vinny. You left me with my ass hanging. If Stan had been a little more steady he could've taken me out."
"No, he couldn't have. You were a rock. You didn't even flinch when he got off his one shot."
I wiped my prints off the .44 and tossed it back into Stan's lap. Venti had to know I wasn't going to pop him. He had to report to Johnny that I wasn't holding a grudge. That I stayed cool and didn't go mad dog when it came to civilians. I wondered if it would reflect badly on me that I'd allowed the wife a glance at our faces. Or that I'd taken a little time out to converse with Stan about real estate first. I figured Johnny would get a kick out of it all, one way or another.
I stuck my hands in my pockets and waited. Venti looked at me with a puzzled expression. Maybe he wanted to apologize for being a part of the chain reaction that had led my father to swallowing my mother's tongue that Christmas. Maybe he was thinking of taking me out just to be sure that I wouldn't come back at him later on. Maybe he was imagining that we would partner up as hitters in the future and that I'd take point and do all the dirty work. Or maybe when he looked at me he saw my father and he felt a hot terror working through him.
In any case, he held the popgun at his side, fingering the trigger guard. I was fingering the switchblade in my pocket. If he lifted his arm even the slightest bit I would ram the knife into his throat.
"Come on, let's get out of here before the bitch wakes up," he said.
We left and climbed back into his car and said little on the ride back to Brooklyn. As soon as we got back to our neighborhood he asked, "You really going to move into Manhattan?"
"When I get up enough of a stake."
"It's good that you're thinking ahead. Thinking about your future."
"I always do," I said.
"Even when you walked towards the muzzle of a .44?"
"Even then."
He cocked his head as if thinking about it, then grinned and let out a laugh. The laughter grew. He reached under the dashboard and pulled out an envelope stuffed with ten G's and handed it to me. He turned the corner and pulled over the curb in front of the house, where Angelina was seated on the porch waiting for me. Venti was still chuckling but when he saw Angelina he stopped and gave her a slow look.
"You're a smart kid," Vinny Venti said.
"Thanks," I told him. We shook hands. He was strong with ugly calloused fingers. I thought about them on my mother's flesh. I thought of how much she enjoyed the humiliation and pain he put her through because it was all like the sweetest of caresses compared to the degradation my father doled out. Venti packed a lot of power behind him. I fondled the switchblade I'd taken off Jojo those years ago. I was good with it, much better than Jojo had ever been. I knew how to hold it the correct way. Loosely in your palm. I could pull Vinny to me and drive the knife into his eye and up through his brain pan anytime I wanted. It would happen one day. I wasn't in any rush.
Maybe I was one of the boys and maybe I wasn't. One thing I knew for sure is that I was capable of murdering a man who hadn't done me any wrong. Jojo had been self-defense and personal. This had been stand-up and icy.
I'd picked up another of my father's habits.
I was a stone cold killer.
\*
My old man had been wrong when he said he'd be out in ten years. He went away for thirteen. It was his own fault. If he'd shown some remorse or had given up any of his cronies he would've walked after ten. But it had been an election year and the DA was running on a platform of cleaning up the city and coming down on corruption. Considering the brutality of the crime, as well as my father's other offenses, he got off easy.
Even inside he had some major juice. I heard about it from time to time. How he was living large, making big money, held most of C-Block wrapped around his finger. The guards floated him women, liquor, primo drugs, good food, just about everything he might want on the outside.
He even paid ex-con friends to piss on my mother's grave. It was crass, hateful, and stupid, just about everything I had come to expect from my old man. I hadn't visited her grave even once, but when I heard what was happening, I started going. I didn't quite know why. Not to pray or make any kind of amends with her, not to stand over her and protect her from my father's whims, and yet every few days I found myself buying flowers and walking through the tight stone paths of the cemetery to stand before her tombstone.
A winter's afternoon three days before Christmas, I had my collar up, carrying flowers, moving across the icy grounds when I saw some fat bastard with his crank in his hand whizzing on my mother's headstone. The steam rose from the earth like thick trails of smoke, as if the grass was on fire.
He zipped up and took a photo of his urine dripping across my mother's name. Then he turned around and saw me standing there. He must've known who I was. He whimpered, "Oh Christ..."
I was strapped with a 9mm in a holster beneath my peacoat, and we were alone in this part of the cemetery, two hundred yards from the road. I saw he'd left his car running, a pickup truck burning a lot of oil and spewing white clouds from the tailpipe. He had a Christmas tree in back and garland strung around the antenna.
The guy waited for me to pull my piece. I didn't. He waited some more. I stared at him. He didn't know whether to run or draw his own gun or drop to his knees and beg forgiveness or just take a shit and go blind.
I laid the flowers on her grave. I turned and asked him, "You sent my father a photo?"
He could barely get the word out. "Yes."
"Does he have his own phone all the time or does he have to borrow one of the bulls' or what?"
"It's his own." He held his hands up even though I hadn't pulled my piece. "Look...look...kid...I got nothing to do with any of this."
"Your dick does."
"No no, listen...I mean, this isn't something I wanted to do. It's not like I go around doing this kind of thing. I don't. I'm not a pervert, right? I didn't do time for anything like that. This...this...he made me do this..."
"How?" I asked.
The guy had nothing to say.
"You mean he paid you and you said what the hell."
"He didn't pay in money. My last two nights in the joint he threw a going away party for me. Girls, booze, you understand?"
"You were two days away from all of that anyway, you asshole," I said. "Give me the phone."
He handed it to me with a resigned air and turned back to his truck, wondering if he could make it back to his pickup before I either tackled him or shot him in the back. He looked at my eyes and started to cry.
"Listen, kid...please..."
I checked the last call made and hit redial. My old man answered with an emotionless, "Thanks. Nice picture. What, did you drink a six-pack before you let fly?"
It was the first time I'd heard his voice in over six years. A strange heaviness settled in my chest. The smell of piss was thick enough to make me turn my head away. When I turned back the guy was getting ready to run. I pulled my piece and shot him twice in the chest. He went over backwards across my mother's grave and I put two in his eyes.
I took a photo of his dead face, sent it to my father, and disconnected.
\*
I became Johnny Booze's torpedo. It's what he'd been after since the beginning. He set me in motion and I did my job. Mostly against other families, occasionally against someone in his own crew who was in danger of being flipped by the feds. If Johnny had even a notion that you might turn rat, you were dead. He'd give me a name and I'd go make the hit. I didn't watch the mark for weeks to learn his every move. I didn't infiltrate his life. I didn't play act like I needed help with finding a lost dog or that my car had broken down and I wanted a lift.
I stuck to a few basic rules: Never kill a man in front of his family. Never torture him. Never hurt a civilian. Be quiet, clean, and efficient.
Most of the marks never saw me coming. If they did, they sometimes dropped to their knees, sometimes began to sob, but most of them stood tall. I gave them a lot of credit.
Johnny's crew started looking for a nickname for me. They went through all the regulars trying to get one to stick. The Kid. Iceman. Killshot. They were stupid. None of them took.
No one ever pissed on my mother's grave again.
I was paid well and took Stan Tripp's advice and got a four bedroom place off Avenue A in an area that was already starting to turn around. I didn't stay there on my own, just kept making payments and waiting for the day when Angelina and I could move in together. When we turned nineteen we got married. Johnny Booze was expected to be my best man and he was. I didn't care. I had no friends.
Angelina and I moved into Manhattan. Her mother started to rouse a little and became more active in our lives, shopping with Angelina and talking a lot about grandchildren. They filled the place with classy furniture and fretted down to the inch where to hang paintings and photos. I came home one day and there was a grand piano in the living room. Neither of us could play the piano. I looked at her and she seemed immensely pleased with herself. I shrugged and hoped our kids wouldn't mind taking lessons because their parents needed to have a grand piano in the corner as set dressing.
Angelina had city friends and we made the most of our time there. We went to parties, took in Broadway shows, visited museums. She kept busy whenever I had to go back into Brooklyn.
She knew what I did for a living. On the tax forms it said I was an employee of one of Johnny Booze's fronts. I didn't even know which one. His accountant took care of all the paperwork. The checks were large and the bags of cash even larger. I had caches all around the apartment and three safety-deposit boxes. Angelina accepted the fact that I was a hitter so long as I never hurt a civilian. So long as it was all kept within the syndicate world. She knew these made guys deserved to die fifty times over. She was glad whenever I pulled a job and took another one of these pricks off the street.
Word had leaked back to my father, of course. Even before I'd iced his man in the cemetery. He started sending me cards a couple of weeks before Christmas. Hope you are well. See you soon. He had packages of tongue delivered to Angelina's mother's house. It was crude and obvious. My old man certainly hadn't learned subtlety in the joint. I suspected that my reputation had gotten so large that he was using me as a way to intensify his own standing and build a greater power base in the can. The cards weren't so much a threat against me as a tactic to retain and build upon his position.
I donated the packages to homeless shelters. I didn't know who the hell would be hungry enough to eat tongue but I figured it wouldn't go to waste.
"Does it bother you?" Angelina asked while we were decorating the tree.
"No," I said.
"You could pay someone to take him out in prison. You know the right people."
It made me grin whenever she talked goomba vernacular. She always came down on it too hard. You could hear the air quotes around the words.
I added some tinsel. I stared at the "Our First Christmas Together" ornament that stood out front and center in the branches. "You know that's not how it's going to happen."
"I thought you might want to spare yourself the trouble."
"It won't be any trouble."
"I just can't stand the idea of him having a laugh at your expense."
"He's not laughing."
We finished the tree, went to bed early, made love, watched half of Miracle on 34th Street, and she fell asleep just as fresh snowfall started brushing past the window. I'd almost nodded off myself when my cell rang. I answered and walked into the living room and sat naked at the piano in the dark.
"I need you here," Johnny said.
I took a quick shower, dressed, and drove across the Brooklyn Bridge back to the Fifth Amendment. It was after two by the time I pulled up in front of the bar. I walked in and the captains and higher ups of the crew were already there looking tired and nervous and pissed off. A lot of whiskey had gone around the table. Johnny didn't have a hair out of place and looked like he'd just awoken from a full eight hours. His clothes were impeccable as always. He held a glass of Glenlivet, sipping in between puffs on his cigarette. His cuffs were shot. It was a talent.
"Vinny Venti has become a liability."
"All right."
I never asked why. I didn't need for Johnny to explain himself. One reason was as good, or bad, as another. If Johnny felt the need to give me more information, then he would give it on his own accord.
"I know you've been waiting for this," he said.
I said nothing.
"You've held your grudge against him in check for a lot of years. I want to thank you for that. I know you did it for me."
I said nothing.
"He got picked up tonight after a Christmas pageant at the middle school, wagging his dick at some little girls backstage. They're dressed like Christmas angels with paper wings and tinfoil halos and here the pervert comes whacking his meat in front of them. I knew he had issues with women but I had no idea he was that kind of a sick son of a bitch. It's a morals charge, nothing too serious. He didn't touch the kids or anything like that. But so far as I'm concerned, it's bad enough. I don't need to be associated with that kind of scumbag. I'm already going to catch heat for having had a short-eyes in my crew. I need him aced. But not in your usual manner."
I said nothing. I knew what he was about to ask me to do.
"I have to send a message. You understand that. I need for everybody...and I mean everybody---the cops, the wise guys, the people in our neighborhood---to know I'm not going to put up with that, not from one of my own boys or anybody else. This message, it has to be loud and clear."
"I don't send messages," I said.
"You're going to this time."
The crew all glared at me. They were angry with me for not showing any reaction. They wanted me to foam at the mouth and talk about how we couldn't let child molesters prowl our streets. Vinny didn't have many friends to begin with, and now he had none. I let them glower.
"Where is he?" I asked.
"He was booked at your father's old precinct. They'll arraign him Monday morning, probably send him to a psych ward for observation. He'll tell them how he didn't get to suck on his mother's tit enough as a kid and they'll send him to group therapy twice a week for two months. That's not good enough for me." He ground out his cigarette butt and took another sip from his glass.
I walked behind the bar and dug around in the fridge until I found a can of beer. I poured it out in the sink and crushed the can underfoot. The crew watched me. They muttered and giggled anxiously. A couple of them kept giving me the death stare. I pocketed the flattened can and left.
\*
I drove directly to the precinct. I knew it well. It was the most corrupt precinct in the city regardless of the ticket that the DA ran under when my father was sent up. I knew a lot of the old cops by name. It was third shift, but a busy time. Christmas, a Friday night, and a little after two in the morning, when a lot of the bars closed. The drunk and disorderlies were being brought in. The hookers who were sneaking too much out of the pockets of their johns. The johns who'd fought with their wives and taken it out on their whores. The out-of-towners who'd been ripped off.
The junkies and bums were picking up extra cash thanks to the spirit of giving in the air. That meant more overdoses, more rummy fights over the bottle.
I walked in the front door and entered a noisy throng of bodies. There was a bigger crowd than I'd been expecting. I recognized the desk sergeant trying to process everyone and keep the peace. His name was Mooney. He'd been one of my father's pals. He was so distracted I slipped right by him.
Vinny Venti might be a short-eyes but as of the moment he was still one of Johnny Booze's crew. They would afford him some respect. He'd have a private cell on the second floor, not the communal cage on the first.
The worst security in the world can be found in any police precinct. There's so many cops around that they expect everyone else to be guarding the place, watching prisoners, checking to make sure the evidence and firearm lockers were secured. The dirty cops have free rein of the place, and, by extension, so do the criminals.
I walked fast and comfortably with my chin high, took the stairs up looking like a lawyer who deserved to be there. I even passed a yawning cop on the stairs. I nodded to him and he nodded back.
There were twelve single cells on the second floor in the south wing. They were all filled. I recognized a few faces. The ones I didn't recognize recognized me. The floor was quiet but it grew even quieter.
Vinny Venti was in the last cell down the corridor. Since all the cells were full, no cops should show up in the wing until morning. I knew I should move fast, do what I had to do and get out quick, but I felt a little sluggish, my thoughts constantly drawn back to that Christmas day.
Vinny Venti was sleeping on his cot. He'd made himself at home. He'd kicked off his shoes and had his coat over him like a blanket. He was snoring loudly. I could smell the sambuca on his breath. He'd started early in the day. He'd been drunk at the Christmas pageant otherwise he never would have flashed himself to little girls in so public a spot. It made me wonder how long Vinny had been doing things like this, and how far he'd gone with the girls, and why he should snap during the holidays.
"Vinny," I called. He kept snoring so I raised my voice. "Vinny."
He snorted and nearly rolled off the cot. He woke up angry, his features contorted in a bitter rage I suspected wasn't only because he'd been locked up. The holidays; if you had a chink in your armor they'd stick the knife in.
He glanced tiredly around the cell. Then his eyes focused and his gaze settled on me.
"Heya, kid," he said.
"Hello, Vinny."
We stared at each other for a while. Maybe he was hoping I would go away. Maybe he thought I was just another piece of his ongoing nightmare. The guilt and shame hung heavily in his face.
"I never did anything like this before," he said. His voice was resonant with honest soulfulness. "I'm not a short-eyes."
"I believe you."
"I don't know what I am, but I'm not that."
"Okay."
I turned and checked back down the corridor. A few of the other prisoners had pressed themselves against the bars, listening to us. It didn't matter. By the morning the news would be all over the circuit. My name wouldn't be mentioned.
Vinny stood up, ran a hand through his hair, tried to straighten his tie a little. "Don't suppose you'd consider letting me slide for old time's sake?"
"Not even if you hadn't humiliated my mother and gotten the ball going the day my old man murdered her."
"That ball was rolling way before me kid."
I nodded.
"You supposed to send a message?"
"Yes."
He finally cracked. A wild sob broke in his chest and his knees trembled. Panic filled his eyes and he glanced from side to side like he was looking for an escape route. "Oh Jesus. Not like that, kid, not like that. Please, I'm begging you. I was good to you, wasn't I?"
I wondered if he was talking about the two hundred dollar bills he'd handed me after curing and fucking my mother. I thought again about how she must have found some solace in his rancor. I remembered standing in the hall and glimpsing his sweaty, furious face in the bedroom mirror. The way my mother had stared into his eyes.
I said, "Relax. That's just for show. It'll be post-mortem."
"You're gonna stuff my prick down my throat, aren't you."
"No. It's got to look like a suicide."
"So you'll just hack it off."
"You won't feel a thing by then, Vinny."
He looked heavenward. "My Christ, it's a good thing I don't have children. How embarrassing."
"Come over to the bars, Vinny."
"Ah my God, I even have to walk to you, don't I? I've got to give you my throat."
"You don't have to."
"You'll just catch up with me later and make it worse then."
"Yes," I admitted.
He squared his shoulders and tried to man up. It wasn't an easy thing to do. A few of them managed it, most of them didn't. A shudder went through him so violently that it nearly knocked him off his feet. Then he steeled himself and his expression shifted to rage. I recognized his fury. Twisting black, bulging veins covered his throat.
"Johnny should've at least let me tell my side of things," he said. "He should've been willing to listen to me. I've worked for him for twenty years and now, a couple hours after I get in trouble, he wants to see me dead."
"It's the life Vinny. You know that."
"Yeah, I know that." He sniffed heavily and sighed. "That day at Stan Tripp's house, when you were holding the .38 with the firing pin filed down...I would've put one in your head if you'd even thought about turning the barrel on me. Johnny said you might. He said you held a grudge in check, but with a gun in your hand you might not be able to control yourself. He doesn't have any idea who you really are. You don't ever lose control."
He started to laugh. He wheezed and gasped and held his belly. He wasn't laughing at me. He wasn't laughing at anything. He was scared of dying and his body and mind were in a riot of confusion. I let him go on.
When he finally stopped he sat there sucking air deeply into his chest, his eyes clear and his face ruddy. I asked, "Who is she, Vinny? The woman you hate so much. She's the one who sent you here. She's the one who sent you to my mother's bed."
"I always knew it would be you who iced me. I knew it the day your old man killed your mother. I knew it."
"I always knew it too," I said. "Who was she?"
"Does it matter?"
I said nothing.
"My sister. Gloria. She's a year older than me. She had double D's when she was thirteen. It screwed with my head. Messed up every relationship I ever had. I always wanted to fuck her. She lives in Phoenix but she came back and visited the neighborhood today. My niece, she's sixteen and looks just like her. It got to me. It made me crazy." He started sobbing but collected himself almost at once. He thumbed the tears off his face. "I'd never hurt a little girl. It was the fucking sambuca. Gloria brought it. I should've known it would be my poison."
"Do me a favor and drop your pants."
"Oh Christ."
He did as I asked and unbuckled his trousers. They slid to the floor and he stepped out of them. I motioned that he should continue. He got out of his briefs as well.
"Sit on the floor."
"Don't let me feel anything."
"You won't."
"Okay then." A look of something like peace filled his face, a kind of martyr's grace. "Kid, you believe in God?"
I didn't answer. I took out the switchblade, reached between the bars, took gentle hold of his hair, and slashed open his throat. He didn't die instantly and he didn't die well. I turned his head away and the blood spurted across his cell. He struggled and tried to plead with me some more but I'd nicked his vocal cords. The plaintive, terrified noises he made sounded like a trapped, dying animal, which he was. The blood kept arching and painting the far wall of the cell. As he died the spurts weakened until his blood just bubbled and stopped.
Vinny Venti slumped back against the bars and immediately began to vent. I got to work with the beer can. I tore it in half so that there was a nice sharp metal edge. The cops would think it was just Christmas trash that got kicked around on the floor.
It didn't take much time sawing to cut off his cock and balls. I put the beer can in his left hand and his dick in the other. It would look like he was so distraught he cut his own throat and in a fit of rage slashed off the thing that had led to his downfall. Even if they suspected anything else, they wouldn't be able to prove it.
My hands were covered in blood. I walked to the next cell and told the man there, "Give me a rag." He did. I wiped my hands off and threw it back to him.
Then I walked down the hall, back down the stairs, and out the precinct front door.
\*
The message was sent. It was completely unnecessary. Everyone already knew not to mess with little kids. Anyone who did wasn't going to think twice because of what happened to Vinny Venti on the second floor. They already knew what happened to a short-eyes in prison. It didn't stop them. Vinny had been right. Johnny should have at least listened to his side of the story first. And as bad as wagging his willy at some girls might be, it wasn't rape. He hadn't been a short-eyes.
I spent the two hundred dollars that Vinny had given me all those years ago on groceries for a big Christmas Eve dinner I was preparing. The money had been folded for so long that it had almost split through at the seams, but the store clerk took the bills. I cooked antipasto, baked ziti, ham, and made a couple of devil's food cakes from scratch. My mother had taught me how.
Angelina's parents came over, and so did a dozen of her friends. We ate, drank sambuca and wine---except for Angelina---and they told stories and jokes with references to people and events that I didn't understand or care about. I laughed anyway. When her father got good and roaring drunk he shocked everyone by sitting at the piano and playing Christmas songs. Neither Angelina nor I knew he could play. I had never heard him actually laugh before.
At midnight the party started to wind down and that's when Angelina told everyone the good news. She was pregnant. With twins.
Her mother called it a miracle; I'm not sure why. Her girlfriends swarmed forward and started making plans for baby showers and painting the babies' room. The guys clapped me on the shoulder and called me daddy while I handed out some Gurkha cigars that no one could smoke inside because of Angelina's condition. We smoked on the terrace. It looked like it might snow but it never came down. Her father hugged me. He'd been eyeing a little place in Tampa Bay but now, he said, he was thinking twice about moving out of New York. He wanted to see his grandchildren and have some impact on their lives. He told me he was proud of me. He hugged me again and called me son.
After everyone had left Angelina and I made love and lay there in the darkness going through baby names. We couldn't settle on any. She didn't want to know what the sexes of the babies were going to be, which I thought would make the whole process a lot more difficult, but I didn't mind. I had no real preference in names but felt like I should contribute to the discussion. I called names out one after the other. Some she laughed at, some just made her moan.
On Christmas Day, shortly after Angelina and I finished opening our gifts to each other, Johnny Booze called.
Angelina said, "Oh, not today."
"I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault. It's his."
"It's the job."
She'd never try to talk me out of it, never insist that I leave the bent life. Angelina never told me I was better than this or that I should try to be. We kissed under the mistletoe and she pulled the collar of my coat up high over the back of my neck. It was snowing out.
As I stepped off the elevator I found a delivery guy at the front desk dropping off a package with the doorman.
I knew exactly what it was.
The doorman asked him, "Delivery on Christmas?"
"I don't mind. I get triple time and I don't have to see the in-laws until later tonight. Enjoy the holiday."
The delivery guy walked out into the swirling snow and foot traffic. The doorman spotted me and said, "Glad I caught you before you left."
I nodded to him, wished him a merry Christmas, and picked up the package.
It was more tongue. I brought it with me to the Fifth Amendment and let the boys share it and bring it home to their wives.
\*
The morning the twins were born I was trying not to get iced by Vinny Venti's brother and another torpedo who had come in from Arkansas specifically to do the job. Johnny had been branching out a little too deeply into the Dixie mafia rackets and the bosses down south had decided to clip him. Except they all knew about me so they'd sent their best gunner after me first. Once he'd aced me he'd go after Johnny.
His name was Arlo Hoyt. I'd met him a year ago on a job that had taken me to Chicago. A capo had started skimming too much from his skipper's drug and prostitution racket and Johnny had lent me out to the boss gratis in order to earn a favor. The boss had to make sure that the hit looked like it was coming from a rival outfit. The capo was a wise guy from way back with a lot of friends.
The Dixie mafia, also seeking to earn favor, sent Arlo along to do the same job. We bumped into each other outside of the capo's house at one in the morning and recognized that we were the same kind of man.
Arlo Hoyt was in his early 60's but he was still cut from stone. His ruddy face showed the signs of a lot of beatings. His lips didn't line up right, his nose had been broken at least a couple of times, and there was a jagged knife scar that curved from the center of his left cheek down and around his jaw. Despite the mileage, his icy blue eyes held a kind of charm and delight, and I suspected he was still lucky with the ladies.
Even though it was almost sixty degrees out he was having trouble acclimating to Chi's cold weather and kept his car running and the heat blowing. I slipped up to the driver's window and tapped on it with the butt of my .38. He wasn't surprised. He'd seen me coming. He knew what I was. He popped the lock on the passenger side and I climbed in. He gave me a grin, his expression growing more and more amused.
"So how do we handle this, friend?" he asked.
"No reason we can't do it together and each go home and tell our bosses we earned that favor. The Chicago skipper can't deny either of them or else he admits he was reaching out in two directions at once."
"He's got his girlfriend in there with him. I don't like the idea of killing women."
"Neither do I," I said.
"But if there's no other way, I'll do her."
"No, you won't. She's married to a bartender and she'll split before closing time so she can be home when he gets there."
Arlo was a lot more chatty than I expected. He told me a lot about his life and asked a lot of questions. I didn't say much but I opened up more than I usually would. I wasn't used to having personal conversations with other torpedoes.
At two the girlfriend stepped out onto the brick stoop and the capo followed, naked, holding her in his arms for a final kiss of the night. Then she got in her car and pulled away while the captain waved after her. Arlo and I looked at each other. It didn't much matter if we made a mess. We got out of the car and each put a bullet in his face. Then we shook hands and parted company. I heard about some of his exploits now and again and wondered if we'd ever have to go up against each other.
Now I had my answer.
Angelina had gone into labor at five a.m. while I was out on a job. Vinny Venti's brother Chuck had been in the stir when Vinny had his ticket punched. Chuck understood the message and knew who had sent it and why, but he'd gotten out of the joint two days ago and he'd been talking all over town about how he planned to put two in the back of my head.
Most of the time this kind of talk was nothing more than mooks mouthing off, but Chuck had gone so far as to say he planned on killing my pregnant wife. Whether he was just letting off steam or not immediately became moot. Anyone crazy enough to say they'd kill a torpedo's family was too big a risk to let live. So Chuck Venti would have to go down.
It wasn't sanctioned by Johnny and it didn't have to be. I wouldn't get paid my usual wedge of cash. A lot of hitters went off the grid all the time because they were loose at the seams. If the barber took a little too much off the top, they'd ice him. If their espresso was delivered cold, they'd whack the waiter. Someone stole their parking spot, they'd put six in the guy's chest. They were maniacs, and in the end they all got taken out of the game in a bloody fashion, usually by their own nervous crew.
But this was my first time since Jojo that I was going to kill someone for personal reasons.
Chuck was fresh to the streets again and holed up in a house in Howard Beach, across the street from a high school. Chuck had gone away for five years for raping a school teacher, but now I wondered if there was something else to it. I imagined Chuck standing around the schoolyard, watching the girls on the track team run by, peeking into the gym to see them girls on the balance beam, swinging on the high bar, in their tight outfits. Maybe he'd hit the teacher first because she'd been easier to get to. Maybe he'd been working his way up to the kids.
I reached for the door handle to get out of my car when my cell vibrated in my pocket. I'd gotten a text from Angelina. Water broke ten minutes ago. On my way to St. Vincent's. When you're done with what you have to do meet us there.
I picked the lock on his back door. Wise guys didn't trust alarms tied in to the police department. They didn't want to accidentally trigger a call and then wind up with a squad of cops in their living room.
I heard the heavy breathing, moaning, and background music of a porno flick. I eased through the dark house and made my way to Chuck's bedroom. The door was open and light seeped into the hallway. I glanced in.
Chuck was in his skivvies watching a DVD. He was a little younger than Vinny, his stomach perfectly flat and thick arms muscled the way you only get after a jolt in prison, working out all day long every day for years.
In the movie, a couple of girls barely out of high school were on their knees giving hummers to gray-haired old men with wrinkled ashen skin and man-tits. The DVD case was open on top of the TV. Daddy's Little Cum Dumpster.
I thought of my wife giving birth right now, possibly to two daughters. I stepped into the room and Chuck started, sat up straighter and turned my way.
"So did your sister Gloria with the Double D's fuck you up too?" I asked.
"She had Double D's at thirteen. I don't know what the hell they are now, but they're a lot bigger."
He grinned and I knew that Chuck had gotten to do what Vinny never had. Chuck had fucked their sister. I extended my arm to shoot him in the head when Arlo Hoyt stepped out from the dark master bathroom on my right. He looked tired and a little disgusted as he held a .45 on me.
"You here for me?" I asked.
"Yep," he said and gestured for me to toss my piece aside. I did. He patted me down and found my .32 and the switchblade.
"Been in town long?"
"Got in a couple hours ago."
Things fell into place. Chuck wanted revenge for his brother. That's why he'd mouthed off, to lure me to him. "Should have known the Dixie mob was the only place left for Chuck to go. You boys fuck your sisters down there all the time."
"First cousin was the closest blood I ever managed," Arlo said. "But we don't keep score much while sittin' out on the porch drinkin' our corn liquor."
"If you did, Chuck would have beat you. He swung his sister."
"I was twelve and she was fifteen," Chuck said by way of explanation. He slid off the bed, got dressed, and approached me. "So who do you think was really fucking who? I mean, how's anybody going to hold that against a guy?"
"You wag your willy at the girls in the Christmas pageant too?"
He grinned again. "I don't need to flash little girls in my trench coat. If I want to fuck them I can find crack whores selling their kids two for a C-note under the 59th Street Bridge."
He drew his arm back and I tightened up a second before he unleashed two mean hooks into my gut. I didn't even double over and that set him off. He threw another two hooks, working my ribs. He came in close and I started to twist aside, but Arlo knew exactly what I was doing. Trying to get Chuck between us. He jammed the .45 under my ear and I stopped moving. Chuck threw a pile-driver into my gut and I stumbled back hard across his bureau, sucking air between my teeth.
"You didn't have to cut his prick off with a tin can," Chuck said. "You piece of shit, that was unnecessary."
It took me a minute to catch my breath. "It was necessary. But he was dead when I started. I don't torture people, ask around."
"You're the one who should've asked around," he said. With a quick right cross he broke my nose. "Because I do torture people."
\*
Chuck Venti cracked me across the back of the head with my own gun. He worked me over for about ten minutes. He was a pro. He knew how to inflict pain. My blood splashed high and low against his walls. The TV screen was dappled. His face showed the same rage that his brother's did when Vinny had fucked my mother. He looked a lot like his brother. He looked a lot like my father. As the blood ran into my eyes I kept seeing my old man standing there, smiling, coming at me again and again. I took it the way I had taken it as a kid. Without a sound.
Chuck backed off then and started to leave the room.
"Where are you going?" Arlo asked.
"To the shed."
"What for?"
"What the fuck do you think what for? You thought I was kidding when I said I torture people? I look like someone who would kid about that?"
"No, I suppose you don't."
"That's right. Stay here and watch him."
Arlo's scarred features hardened. "I'm not paid to watch."
"You're paid to follow orders. Your boss made an arrangement to watch over me. So now you can watch me cut this guy apart. You want, you can put one in his head right at the end. Then we'll go to the airport and I'll say goodbye to this fucking town forever."
I heard the back door open and shut.
My tongue and lips were twice their normal size, but I still managed to eke out, "You really want a guy like this on your crew?"
There was no expression on Arlo's face, but I could see something black swirling in his eyes. "Not for me to say."
"Make sure you don't set him up anywhere near your grandkids. He's a short-eyes."
"That kind of thing really bother a guy like you?"
"It's been on my mind. I'm about to be a dad for the first time."
"When's she due?"
"She's at the hospital right now."
Another man might've said bullshit. Someone else would have thought I was lying to save my life. But Arlo was a man like me, and so he knew me, and so he knew the truth. He found my phone. He read through my text messages.
His eyes found mine. He said, "This doesn't mean anything to me."
"I know."
"The job is the job."
"And what have you learned doing this job?"
He paused. "Not a damn thing I didn't know before it."
I nodded.
"You having kids going to change anything?" he asked.
"I doubt it."
"What would?"
"I don't know. Maybe killing my old man."
"I heard about that. You've been waiting how long now?"
"Almost thirteen years."
"Sad to think you won't make it after all this time."
I said nothing.
"My pap, I took him into the hills like the mad dog he was when I was fourteen. Used a double-barrel. Reloaded six times until there was nothing big enough to bury. Left the bits there to the wild animals. That's what he was."
"Didn't change anything for you then."
"No."
I nodded.
Arlo looked at the television screen again. It wasn't kiddie porn playing but it was damn close. He used the remote to shut it off. "No one could say I didn't do my job if he was already dead when I got here."
"And nobody on the crew would have to worry about his kids. Or grandkids."
I got up off the floor. He handed me back my gun. When Chuck Venti walked back into the house carrying a chainsaw and a blowtorch he saw the two of us standing together and managed to say, "What the fuck?"
Arlo and I looked at each other. It didn't much matter if we made a mess. We each put a bullet in his face. Then we shook hands and parted company.
\*
At St. Vincent's I paid off an intern to stitch me up and bandage my ribs before I went in to see Angelina. Her parents were in the waiting room and they told me she'd been in labor for three hours. I washed up and put on the scrubs they gave me, then I stepped into the delivery room. It was just about over by then. Angelina still had her feet in the stirrups and the second baby was about halfway out of her. The other was in the arms of a nurse, crying loudly. Angelina glanced at me and said, "Jesus, you took your sweet time." I kissed her through my mask. The second kid started to howl. We had twin daughters.
Lathered in sweat and tears, Angelina clutched me and cooed at the babies until the nurses took them away. Angelina's eyes glazed and I was told she needed to go relax in recovery. I gave her another kiss and she said sleepily, "How about Carmella and Maria? We'll call them Connie and Mary?"
Carmella was her mother's name.
Maria had been my mother's.
\*
The jobs kept coming, more and more of them. Johnny Booze was reaching out in all directions and muscling his way deeper and deeper into other syndicate territories. There were no official declarations of war, but a lot of battle lines were being drawn. The Dixie mob was still a little riled over Chuck Venti's death, but they didn't do anything about it. They probably decided Chuck was best forgotten after Arlo Hoyt explained what kind of hobbies Chuck was into.
For over a year the good will between the Chi outfits went stale. I flew into O'Hare a lot and took care of a lot of static. There were some murmurs of dissension among Johnny's crew but nothing loud enough for Johnny to give me a call about.
Angelina's parents came around more and more. They continued to transform before my eyes. The girls became the light of their lives. They goo-gooed as natural as could be. They were patient and loving and changed diapers. They fed the babies and glowed with happiness. They hadn't been worth shit as parents when we were kids, but they'd come full circle. Angelina's father cooed and laughed whenever the girls burped or gripped his index finger.
In the deep night, when Angelina was asleep, I found myself sitting on the floor of the girls' room, crouched between their cribs, humming a song that had no words and no real tune. I listened to their whispered breathing. I'd wait until they woke for their five a.m. feeding. They'd never manage more than one loud gasping cry before I picked them up, holding Maria in the crook of my left arm and Carmella in my right. I'd shush them and the tremble of love in my own voice would surprise me. I would think of the sins that I had committed in the world and those that had been committed against me. I would eventually pay for my own, but the others would be paid in full to me.
\*
I got word that my father was going to be released on Christmas Eve. I mentioned it to Angelina and she said, "Is that poetic or just ridiculous?" I didn't answer. I didn't know the answer.
The day before Christmas Eve, while we were out with the babies in their strollers, shopping in midtown, Johnny gave me a call and said he wanted to see me. His voice sounded a little off. I didn't know what to make of it but I had my suspicions. I didn't rush. We finished our shopping.
I drove over to the Fifth Amendment. The second I stepped in I could feel how thick the air was around me, everyone's focus aimed at me.
The place had been decorated with an air of artistry. Wreathes and tinsel across the back of the bar, with giant Christmas stockings tacked in place, including one with my name across it. An eight-foot tree in the corner with blinking green, red, and white lights already lit, candy canes dangling, a trumpeting angel up top.
Johnny was sitting at his usual table, cuffs shot, the glass of Glenlivet hanging in his hand, the way it always was. His boys sat with him until they spotted me, and then they all got up and drifted to the next table over. I sat down across from Johnny.
"I can't let you kill your old man."
"Why?"
"He's worth too much to me. He's got a lot of contacts on the inside, people I can use to keep the pipelines open in prison. He's still got his street rats and connections on the department. There's a lot of money to be made."
"Okay."
It made him smile. "So if I tell you to let him live, you will?"
His boys started to brace me a bit, stepping in closer, their bodies tense. They were waiting for Johnny to give them the word, and then they'd pull their hardware.
As setups go, this was about the stupidest one I'd ever seen. No one had even tried to take my piece away. I already had my gun in my hand under the table, trained on Johnny's nuts. The boys were behind me and to my left, ensuring that if anyone started anything the crossfire would cut them all to pieces and kill Johnny in the process. They didn't know how to go about taking down one of their own. That's why they had me. They'd been dealing with mooks for so long that they figured when I was told to get to my feet and go out in the back alley with them, I'd do it.
Johnny took a sip and continued. "Sorry, kid, but I just don't believe that. You've been waiting too long to pull the trigger on him."
"It doesn't matter. You'll be asking me to kill him soon."
"What?"
"You said it yourself, he's got all the contacts. He's the connection between the cops and the can. He's in control of the pipeline. What'd you ask for as your cut? Fifteen percent? He'll pay it for a couple of weeks until he gets comfortable out in free air again. It won't take him long. Then he'll bribe or pressure your captains to turn on you."
His boys all murmured saying they'd never do such a thing. Johnny silenced them with a glare.
I kept the gun trained on him. "I say that a month after he hits the street again you'll be buried behind JFK, Johnny, and my old man will be sitting in your chair."
"He's not that powerful."
"He swallowed his wife's tongue. In these rough days, who do you think is going to look better to the crews? You with your gold cufflinks or him with his psycho cred?"
Johnny eyed me hard. He wanted to see if it was just a ploy. He wanted to judge how full of shit I was or how long a lie I'd spin to save my own life. He shouldn't have bothered. He knew what I was. He'd had a hand in making me.
Common sense prevailed. Johnny wagged his chin and the boys backed off. He smiled at me like we had to let bygones be bygones. "You really think he'll try a takeover?"
"Yes."
"You think it'll succeed?"
"I already answered that."
"Yes, I suppose you did." He allowed a hint of sadness to enter his eyes and pushed out his lower lip like he was overwhelmed with sorrow. He reached a hand across the table to try to take my wrist but both my hands were out of sight. I was still thinking it might be a good idea to open up on him and try my luck with the rest of the crew. "I shouldn't have stepped in your way. I shouldn't have dared come between you and your revenge. I know it's what you live for."
He waved a hand in the air as if to dispel an argument I hadn't made. "Sure, sure, you've got a wonderful wife and two beautiful kids, but I know there's death in your heart."
I said nothing.
"You've been waiting thirteen years. I got greedy for a second there, kid. I fell back to type. I apologize."
I said nothing.
"When your old man hits the street, you do what you have to do. I support that. I'm behind you one hundred percent."
I said nothing.
"So, we're square, kid?"
"Sure."
It didn't matter what I said. Johnny knew he couldn't keep me around anymore. He'd shown his hand. I'd seen how easy he'd turned against me. He would never believe I could forgive that, and he was right. One of us would have to die now.
\*
Johnny would plot and plan. He would try to figure a way to bump me off as soon as I'd finished killing my father. Maybe he'd give my father some firepower in the hopes that we'd murder each other. Johnny's mind was fertile and he'd spin schemes while he drank and smoked and listened to the jokes his boys told. He would be worried about me but not that worried. It wasn't in his nature. He'd lived a protected life. Immune, inoculated, bestowed, and shielded.
I'd driven down the block, parked out of sight, and walked back to the Fifth Amendment. I stood in back of the bar and watched the wise guys come and go. I waited. I wasn't so proud not to hide behind a dumpster when the bartender brought out some trash. A couple of hookers dropped by. I waited. His capos left for the night, shitfaced and wobbling. Johnny didn't like his hookers shooting up in front of him so one came out back while the other went to the ladies room. I waited. I thought of what I'd told Arlo Hoyt. That I hadn't learned anything in this life that I didn't know before. It wasn't completely true. I had learned.
Finally Johnny walked out the door. He was bookended by two of his soldiers. I stepped up from the shadows and popped one bodyguard and then the other. Johnny pulled a face when a splash of blood hit his cuff.
"What is this, kid?"
"You shouldn't have bet on my old man."
"You know you can't get away. You really this stupid?"
I shot him in the forehead.
Johnny went out with a lot of the same cool and style he always exhibited. He whirled once and took a step like he was dancing with the most beautiful woman on the floor of the Ritz. Even as he sagged it looked like he was. By then, the other boys had made it to the front door. They were holding their pieces aimed at me. They looked at Johnny's corpse on the ground and didn't know what to do or say.
That's what I'd been counting on. These mooks knew how to take orders but not how to move on their own. I put my gun away, stuck my hands in my pockets, and said, "One of you capos is in charge now. I'm still the torpedo. Be thankful. Consider it a gift. Everybody's just been promoted. Don't make a run against me or I'll kill every last one of you." Then I turned my back on them and went home to my wife and kids.
\*
Five hours later I pulled up outside of the prison gate of Sing Sing and saw my father hunkered down against a stone wall, fuming. I was twenty minutes late. I'd done it on purpose. I wanted to see if my father had learned any cool in the joint. Twin red veins stood out on his forehead as he seethed. He stood and walked toward me. Word wouldn't have gotten to him this fast about Johnny being iced. Johnny's captains would still be arguing among themselves as to who would take the outfit over. Word wouldn't leak until a new king had been crowned.
If my father had known about the hit on me then he'd think I was dead. The clock that had been ticking in my head for thirteen years finally went off. For a moment my skull filled with a sharp pain and a deafening swell of noise, and then it was gone.
Like most cons, my old man had kept healthy in prison. He'd gained a little weight and all of it was muscle. His face wore the token abuse of hard time well. He was forty-nine years old and looked ten years younger. I had more gray in my hair than he did.
I said, "Hello."
He glowered at me. There was absolutely no recognition in his eyes.
"You one of Johnny Booze's boys?" he asked.
"Yes."
"You're late. I've been freezing my ass off."
"Sorry."
"You're sorry." He still couldn't control his hands. He wanted to take a poke at me but wasn't sure how it would go down, what kind of leverage he really had, so he just sort of brushed my upper arm with his fist, a real love tap. "I've been in the can thirteen years, doing nothing but waiting. I finally get the fuck out and you still leave me waiting."
"Couldn't be helped," I said. "There was a shake-up in the crew."
"Yeah?" His eyes grew hot and amused. There was an old knife scar at the base of his chin. He'd barely been touched. Whoever had done it would be long dead, I knew. "Someone get aced?"
"Yes."
"Good."
I pulled away and started back toward the city. His overwhelming presence in the car was like a boulder slowly rolling closer and closer, the weight and implacability first easing against me and then pressing beyond my boundaries, and then trapping me beneath it, crushing me.I cracked the window. The icy draft washed against the side of my face.
"You found a place for me?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Three bedrooms?"
"It'll be big enough for you," I said.
He noticed the two baby seats in back. "Jesus, you had to use your wife's car?"
"It's mine."
"So you're a wise guy at night and a fucking soccer mom during the day?"
"I'm a family man."
"That shit's overrated, trust me."
Most other jackasses busting balls would do so with a grin and a chuckle. My father said it all with a hiss and a sneer. He was chattier than I was expecting, probably because he was excited about being back out on the street. He was already trying to assert his dominance. It would only grow worse. I could feel the air in the car shifting, growing heavier, the way the mood in our house when I was a kid was always grave and laced with tension.
He lit a cigarette and turned on the radio. After a couple of minutes he snapped the radio off, rolled his window down and tossed the cigarette. He was nervous. The surface of his dark eyes seemed to roil like a black storming ocean. "I don't want to see Johnny yet."
"Okay."
"Take me to my new digs. Furnished?"
"You'll want for nothing."
"Where are they?"
I gave him an address not far from Johnny's place. He'd know it as a fine part of the neighborhood. I drove through Brooklyn and noted how busy the streets were with last-minute shoppers. It wasn't a white Christmas.
His hands were clenching and unclenching, shoulders tightening and loosening so that his head kept tilting to the side, something like a tic. I'd seen him this way many times before. He wanted something to fight, to break apart, to kill. The blood lust was on him. He'd unleash himself against me soon, which was fine, but not yet.
"Wait, I don't want to go to an empty house. Take me for a drink."
I pulled up in front of the Fifth Amendment. My old man said, "This is Johnny's place. I told you I didn't want to see him yet."
"He won't be here."
"How do you know?"
"I know."
We walked in and the crew kept their distance. They looked like they'd been arguing and conniving since I'd iced Johnny Booze this morning. I knew exactly how it would play out. There would be a power play, a call to arms, and the capos would battle each other in stupid and heinous ways, and the entire crew would break into pieces before New Year's.
The bartender tried slipping away from behind the bar but I glared at him and he returned to his station. I turned my back on the crew. They needed a constant in their lives at this point, and I was it. Their trusted friends were about to change but I wasn't a friend. They'd all be coming to me to side up with them soon.
I spoke my father's name. I told the bartender to give him anything he wanted on the house. My father ordered a triple Jameson beer back. He tossed the shot back in one throw and sucked the beer down nearly as quick. I kept staring at the scar on his chin. I wondered if I would've been angry at the guy with the knife if he'd managed to kill my old man.
"They all look worried," my father said.
"I told you we had a hit last night. It's got them on edge."
"Torpedoes are a dime a dozen."
"This one cost a little more."
"He was my son. Johnny's hitter. But you probably already knew that."
"I knew it," I said.
My father kept drinking. He told stories about prison life and what kind of deals he'd been on before he'd been sent away. He didn't mention my mother. He approached the crew and chatted with them and drank with them, and they did their best to pretend they didn't know what was coming. I kept my hands in my coat pockets.
I turned and looked at the tree and remembered how my mother would decorate ours, the burden of her existence lightened just a little by the season. I saw that before Johnny had decided to betray me, he'd bought some presents for Angelina and the kids. Several wrapped boxes were under the tree with my family's names on them. It was probably in poor taste to take them now.
My father's voice grew louder as he finished a particularly cruel story. The boys laughed along with him until I turned around. They knew the time was here. They said their goodbyes and patted him on the back, told him how much they were looking forward to working with him, and then drifted off.
My old man wandered over and stood shoulder to shoulder with me, sucking at another bottle of beer. "Okay, take me to my place. But get me a woman first. Make it two. High class. With good manners."
I wondered what constituted good manners for a hooker but let it slide.
I said, "I told you what was going to happen the day you got out." I didn't quite know my own voice. I sounded like him.
He drained the beer and wiped his mouth. "What's that?"
I said nothing.
"You say something to me?"
I said nothing.
It took him a few more seconds before recognition bled into his eyes. He wasn't afraid. He set his back teeth. Maybe he'd known all along that this was how things were bound to play out. He wasn't a stupid man. He knew he couldn't hide forever.
"Oh," he said. "It's you."
"It's me."
I had wanted to fight my father. I wasn't sure why. I had nothing to prove. I wasn't someone who needed to feel bone breaking or have blood smeared across my knuckles. Not even my old man's. And yet I had wanted to do it with my bare hands.
I had imagined beating his head in with my fists until it rolled around on his neck like jelly. I had seen myself tearing and cutting his tongue out a thousand different ways. With pliers, shears, a rusted knife, an X-acto blade, my own teeth. I imagined whispering "Merry Christmas" in his dead ear and then washing my red hands in the snow. Except there was no snow tonight.
An oily grin eased over his face and he said, "Okay, let's---"
I pulled my piece and shot him in the center of his forehead. He fell backwards and toppled into the Christmas tree. His corpse got hung up in the lights and his death throes tore loose a few branches. Ornaments went flying. Each of his hands clenched on to a candy cane. He went down on his face with a rattling last breath. He died easier than he had lived, and I left him there in his own growing puddle of shit and blood and brain fluid.
It wasn't closure but I hadn't expected any. It was simply something that needed to be done. I'd waited thirteen years for it to happen and now I could quit waiting and move on to the next thing.
Maybe it would be a job for whichever capo came out on top of Johnny Booze's crew. Maybe some other syndicate family would rush in and take over the trade and traffic. Maybe there'd be a vicious blitzkrieg. I might hook up with them or perhaps I'd get out once and for all. I couldn't see myself quitting the life but you never knew. No matter what happened, I'd look out for my wife and children. There would be white Christmases in the future.
Before I left the neighborhood I walked a couple of blocks up to the Jewish deli and bought some tongue. All these years the old man had been sending it to me and I'd never tried it. Now my mouth was watering to give it a go.

