Nacho Unleashed

by Laurence Shames

  Anyway, Albin would usually be writing in a big fat book when we arrived, but he never seemed to mind putting it aside. There were always cool drinks all around, a bowl of mixed nuts for Master and some liver treats for me. All in all, a perfect excursion.

  So the two of them are sitting in the living room chatting about nothing in particular, and I’m lying on a pleasantly scratchy woven mat on the floor, when we hear a voice from the doorway. “Albin, you around?”

  I bark. It’s not like I kid myself I’m a great watchdog or anything, but dogs are expected to bark when a new person shows up at the door, and if I’ve learned anything at all in my brief life so far, it’s that things generally go better if you just go along and do what’s expected of you, neither more nor less. Don’t disappoint. But don’t waste extra effort on every little thing either. Save the virtuoso stuff for special occasions. So I bark a couple times till Master shushes me.

  When I’ve stopped barking, Albin says, “Sure, Rita, come in.”

  This young woman takes a half step through the doorway, so she’s framed by the bright sunlight behind her, and all I see at first is a silhouette. She says, “Oh, sorry, I’ll come back another time. I didn’t realize you had company.”

  Albin tells her it’s not a problem, come in anyway, and introduces her to Master. They say a typical human hello, showing their teeth in a non-threatening way but not sniffing each other’s private parts, and then her gaze immediately slides down to floor level and she says, “Oh, what a cute little dog.”

  So now I’m already on her side. Thing is, unlike some dogs, shih-tsus, say, or Westies, I don’t take it for granted that everybody just automatically thinks I’m cute. I’ve got big ears, short legs, and dull coloring. It’s not a look for everyone. I get it. So I really appreciate the compliment.

  “Can I pet him?” She asks this of Master, of course, which irks me just a little. Why do people always ask his permission? What about my consent? Counts for squat, apparently. I don’t even get a vote. Not that I’d ever vote no. I mean, I love being petted. Who doesn’t? It’s just the principle of the thing.

  In a masterpiece of understatement, Master says, “Sure. He don’t mind.”

  So she reaches down to pet me. She does this the way only a young person does, bending from the knees, easing low without a hitch or a creak or any sign of effort or anxiety about the chore of getting up again. She gets so low that her eyes are almost straight across from mine. We could almost touch noses. Her hair smells like sunshine on leaves. Her dress has that fluffy, toasty aroma of clothes fresh from the dryer. I can tell she uses soap with lavender and eucalyptus in it. Perfectly on balance, she stretches out her fingers and starts massaging my ears. Not one ear. Both.

  Now, you can tell a lot about a person by how they pet you. For some people, petting someone’s dog isn’t even about the dog, it’s really about sucking up to its owner, just a social gesture to establish what a nice guy you are. People like that don’t even rub your forehead, they just pat it, and you can tell their heart isn’t really in it, that, deep down, they don’t like getting dog on their hands; germs or fleas or something. Sometimes you catch people like that secretly wiping the dog off on their pants leg or a piece of furniture. Other people use dog-petting mainly as an excuse for ignoring the other humans in the room, taking a time-out. No harm in that, I guess, and a scratch on the belly is always nice, but there’s a basic dishonesty in the transaction that makes me feel a little cheap.

  Anyway, Rita’s petting was nothing like that. She meant it. It was pure. She did the ears, the scalp, the itchy place underneath my collar. She cupped my whole ribcage in her palms and, unless this is just male vanity, I really think she was enjoying it as much as I was. I rolled over and offered my belly. She tickled it just right and I licked her fingers as a thank you, catching a whiff of nail polish. I squirmed around from the tickling and suddenly was standing up again. I put a paw on the back of her hand, urging it back toward my chest. She gave me one more bonus scratch.

  But all good things must end, and finally she stood up as smoothly as she’d lowered down. I watched her rising, getting farther away, kept staring up at her, and I don’t mind saying I did so adoringly. Dogs are much better than people at gauging when they have truly made a friend for life, and I knew in my bones I had just met one. Don’t get me wrong. My first loyalty was still to Master, and always would be. But by the end of that first petting session, I knew there was pretty much nothing I wouldn’t do for Rita.

  Anyway, she stands up and says to Albin, “Well, I just stopped by to tell you I passed the audition. I got the job.” To Master, she explains, “At the rum tasting room, Wreckers. Over at the Bight.” To Albin again, she goes on, “And I met the boss. The one who supposedly I might not ever even meet? I met him in, like, the first ten minutes. I think it must be the same guy you don’t like, and I think I don’t like him much either. He played a really scuzzy trick on me.”

  “What kinda trick?” asks Master. This is typical of stuff he does, inserting himself into conversations, asking questions, ferreting things out about other people’s business even when he hardly knows them. He’s been accused of being nosey and, honestly, it’s tough to disagree. But that’s who he is, take it or leave it.

  “Him and two other guys,” says Rita. “Pretending to be just regular customers. Then trying to push all my buttons. Making wiseass comments on my pitch. Trying to bribe me. Trying to scare me. All just a test. I was so ticked off I almost quit the second I was hired. Would’ve been a short job even by my standards.”

  “So why didn’t ya?” asks Master.

  Rita mulls that with her head tilted at an adorable angle. “Not sure. Didn’t want to give in to feeling intimidated, probably. Plus, let’s face it, I need a paycheck pretty soon. But also, well, there was this strange moment, right when I was deciding if I should just walk out, when the boss guy smiled at me.”

  “Smiled?” says Master.

  “Yeah, took me by surprise. Ambushed me, really. Here I’d been thinking that he was just some tough, pushy, nasty guy, then he shoots me this smile that was really very gentle, almost apologetic, like he wanted me to know he didn’t like to act that way, it was just what he had to do. So all this is going through my mind in the half-second when I’m deciding whether to walk out, and the moment passes, and I stayed.”

  Everyone’s looking at Rita while she’s saying this, so there’s the tiniest time-lag in realizing that Albin is about to speak up. Suddenly he says, “Ah, that ambush of a smile that gets him what he wants. I know it well. Vintage Carlo. The boss man—his name was Carlo, yes?”

  Rita nods. “Yeah, that’s him. Carlo. Carlo Costanza.”

  At that, Master presses down on the arms of his chair, spends a couple seconds and a lot of effort half-rising up in it, and blurts out, “The Carlo Costanza?”

  Very softly, Albin says, “The same.”

  Master says, “Jeez, small fuckin’ world, pardon my French. How the hell you know Costanza?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Albin says, and he makes a little gesture like he’s brushing lint off a jacket.

  But of course Master won’t just let it slide. No way he would on something like that. “Come on,” he says, “we’re among friends here. I just think it’s kinda a funny coincidence. I mean, Costanza’s much more the kinda guy that I woulda come across. How the hell you know him?”

  Albin starts to say something, stops, presses his lips together, tugs on an earlobe that has a diamond stud pegged through it, and finally says in a voice not much more than a whisper, “All right, no secrets in this town, I suppose. I know Carlo Costanza because Carlo Costanza is my brother.”

  “No shit?” says Master.

  Rita says, “Wait. Now I’m confused. He’s Costanza. You’re Chastain, right?”

  “Legally changed my name many years ago,” says Albin. “Best for everyone that way. Carlo didn’t seem to really like having a card-carrying homo for a kid brother.
And I wasn’t too damn proud of having a sibling who was already getting to be a slightly famous criminal.”

  “The Codfather,” Master puts in.

  “The Codfather,” Albin confirms with obvious distaste. “Catchy name, and it stuck. Anyway, at some point we just cut each other off. No big fights or confrontations. Just mutual agreement, though after all this time I can’t even quite remember who had the idea first. Doesn’t matter. I guess we both just felt that sometimes it’s so much easier to pretend that you’re not even a family anymore.”

  6

  C arlo Costanza apparently shared that sentiment, because, beyond feeling the very faintest and stalest of pangs, he never even considered calling on his brother Albin while he was down in Key West. Instead, he headed directly from the tasting room to the distillery on Stock Island, accompanied by his associates; more precisely, by his bodyguards and enforcers. Rocco, the one with the squashed nose, drove the big Mercedes. Max with the unfortunate complexion sat beside him in the front. Carlo reclined diagonally on the broad back seat; he seldom sat up straight in a car because his stumpy neck never caught the headrests right.

  It was a short drive to Stock Island, but traffic was lousy and it moved at a crawl. There was construction, as usual, on Roosevelt Boulevard. Steamrollers were trying to squeeze in one more skinny lane between the pancake houses and the porn stores. Cranes were dropping big metal plates into slots along the water side, the fanciful idea being to hold back the Gulf of Mexico in case of a Category 5. Here and there, pelicans were standing on top of yellow traffic cones. Their webbed feet couldn’t get much purchase and they wobbled. Harleys revved while going nowhere. Old hippie vans rattled in place, flakes of rust and dribbles of oil occasionally dropping to the roadway. Rocco and Max passed the time by discussing Wreckers’ new hire.

  “She’s hot,” said Rocco.

  “Not bad,” said Max. “But short hair. Short nails. Tough. Probably a lez.”

  “Bullshit,” Rocco answered. “She had a dress on. Plus you just think that every chick who doesn’t look like the girls you went to ninth grade with and doesn’t act all flirty and giggly when she gets around guys is gay.”

  “They probably are.”

  “Which makes like ninety-nine point six percent lezzes out there according to you.”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  “A dollar says she’s straight.”

  Costanza finally spoke up from the back seat where he was sprawled. “And my foot up your ass says you cheesedicks will never find out. You keep away from her. Leave her alone.”

  The two big men up front shared a quick sideways glance that was both chastened and surprised. Since when was their boss such a gentleman, so protective?

  The short man seemed to sense that his motive had been mistaken for mere gallantry. This embarrassed him and he felt the need to clarify. “Listen, I don’t want you knuckleheads hangin’ out wit’ anyone on the legit side of the operation. Too dangerous. Too much gets said. You start trying to impress someone, you brag about things you shouldn’t brag about. You get as far as kissy-face, pillow-talk, which honestly I very much doubt you would even get near with this young lady anyway, suddenly there’s no secrets anymore. So you guys just keep your distance. Got it?”

  

  

  After Rita had left Albin’s place, Bert said to his host, “Jeez, hope I wasn’t whaddyacallit, indiscreet.”

  “Indiscreet?” said Albin. “You, Bert?”

  “I just got, ya know, curious.”

  “My, what a surprise.”

  “Okay, bust my balls. I guess I deserve it. Shouldn’t’a kept after the whole brother thing. Then again, ya can’t really blame me for bein’ whaddyacallit, flabbergasted. I mean, it came as a total shock. You and Carlo. I mean, how do two kids from the same family turn out to be so different?”

  In spite of himself, Albin felt a vague but nagging impulse to defend his felon of a brother. “Well, Carlo had a few tough breaks in life.”

  “So do a lotta people. They don’t grow up to be crime bosses.”

  Albin let that slide and followed his own line of thought. “The little Massachusetts town we grew up in, everything was really falling apart back when I was in high school and he had just got out. The town lived or died according to the fishing, and the fishing had gotten lousy. Fewer fish. Stricter regulations. People lost jobs, lost houses. Marriages broke up, men became drunks. Carlo was a tough kid but pretty sensitive in his way. He felt all that and he just gradually sort of took things over. Went from working on the docks to controlling them. Bought up bankrupt boats. Got people working again, but with the condition that he decided who could fish where. Probably punished people who wouldn’t play along. Ignored the regulations, of course. Laid some bribes, kept phony records of the catch. Practically everything he did was illegal, but I really don’t think he set out to be a criminal.”

  “Right,” said Bert, “just another Robin Hood. Due respect, Albin, I happen to believe that’s bullshit. I don’t know if it’s Cat’lic bullshit or liberal bullshit or some a both, but either way, it’s bullshit. Carlo became a criminal ‘cause he wanted to become a criminal.”

  Albin shrugged with his eyebrows alone and said mildly “Probably you’re right. More your area of expertise than mine. And honestly I’m not even sure why I’m standing up for him. Except maybe because he sheltered me from a lot of things. Carlo hustled, brought home some money, found little jobs for our father to keep up his self-respect. It really wasn’t until years later that I understood how bad things were for a lot of people. At the time I didn’t want to understand, I guess. I didn’t want to know. I was pretty selfish.”

  “Course you were selfish,” said Bert. “You were a kid. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

  “I suppose I enjoy beating myself up just a little bit,” Albin countered. “The price of getting off easy. Anyway, by the time I got to college in New York, Carlo was becoming fairly well-known in New England. So I changed my name and tried my damnedest to forget where I was from. Cut to many years later. I’m a modestly successful architect and one day I read in the papers that this bigshot called The Codfather is finally being prosecuted.”

  Bert nodded. Then he absently reached over toward an end table where his host had considerately placed a little bowl of liver treats. He raised one to his lips and took a small bite before remembering it was dog food. He bent down and gave the rest to the chihuahua resting at his feet. Then he said, “He had a helluva good run, your brother. He was a success. And don’t kid yourself, succeeding as a criminal is not easy. People say he took the easy way, he turned to crime. Bullshit. You want the easy way? Get a nine-to-five wit’ a pension plan. Crime is hard. Most criminals fail, just like most…I don’t know, opera singers, baseball players. Most fail. That’s life. Your brother had to be pretty damn smart to build what he built. A big, disciplined fleet. Deals with the crooked wholesalers. And to keep it going that many years—”

  “If he was so smart,” Albin cut in, not without a tinge of bitterness, “why did he end up in the Pen?”

  “I said he was smart. I didn’t say he was a genius. A genius woulda kept all the figures in his head. Carlo kept little notebooks. Two different sets, of course. Showed the real set to some Russian mobsters who wanted to buy into the business. Unfortunately, the so-called Russian mobsters turned out to be IRS guys. Pretty good acting job on their part, let’s be fair. But let’s also face it, your brother fucked up big time on that one.”

  Albin sorrowfully shook his big square head and stared down at his slippered feet.

  In several stages, Bert leaned forward, picked up his dog, settled the creature in his lap, then thoughtfully rubbed its scalp like he was stroking his own chin. “But ya know the part I’m curious about?”

  “No, I don’t know and probably I don’t want to.”

  “I mean, here’s this guy, his whole life a New England guy, a fish guy, he goes off to the Pen for f
ive years, then after that he becomes a Miami guy who’s makin’ rum. How’d that happen? Let’s assume he was bright enough to squirrel away some dough that the Feds couldn’t find, to get somethin’ goin’ when he was outta the joint. But why Miami? Why booze? Kind of an interesting segue.”

  “Maybe the rum business is entirely kosher,” Carlo’s brother said hopefully. “Maybe he reformed in prison. Maybe he’s gone straight.”

  “Albin, could you see yourself goin’ straight? At this stage a the game? Come on, who people are, they are.”

  “What about you? You quit crime.”

  “True, there are exceptions. But the truth is that I was always kinda half-ass as a criminal. The hard-core guys, the guys who are really right for the job, they get a thrill, a hard-on, every time they break the law. Me, I got a bellyache. But anyway, I’m just wonderin’ now who Carlo mighta got chummy wit’ in the joint. The joint, ya know, it’s the original incuboiler.”

  “Incuboiler?”

  “Yeah, I been readin’ about those. Hip new thing where people rent cubicles to kick around ideas for new businesses.”

  “Ah. Incubators.”

  “Bators, boilers, you get the drift. I’m guessin’ maybe he hooked up with someone established in South Florida. Partner kinda deal. Maybe I’ll make a few casual inquiries.”

  Albin raised both hands, fending off the notion. “Not on my account, Bert, please. None of my business what Carlo’s doing.”