Johnny Porno

by Charlie Stella

  John had wanted to laugh in Santorra’s face. The guy didn’t make sense. He was barking for the sake of making noise. “Whatever,” he’d said.

  Then he’d left.

  By the time he had finished with business in Brooklyn it was way too late to see his son. He’d called from the bar and caught an earful from his ex-wife about being late with the payments and not seeing his son and who the hell did he think he was calling the house so late anyway?

  John had hung up on Nancy mid-rant. He’d catch hell for it again the next day when he dropped off the money he owed, but at least the rest of the night was his. He was looking forward to some soup, a cup of coffee and maybe liver and onions when he stopped at the diner on Queens Boulevard.

  “Tough night?”

  John had been holding his head in both hands and hadn’t seen the waitress standing there.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Something like that.”

  The waitress smiled. “What’ll you have, hon?”

  “Soup, anything but chicken soup. Liver and onions after that. And a cup of coffee?”

  “Skip the liver. I think it’s from the eighteenth century.”

  John appreciated the tip. “Thanks,” he said. “Hamburger deluxe?”

  The waitress winked. “Coming right up.”

  She turned to pour a cup of coffee and John glanced at her backside. He looked away when she turned to set the coffee on the counter. He looked again when she headed for the kitchen and watched her wiggle away until the swinging kitchen doors blocked his view.

  He had sat at her station before. Her name tag read Melinda. She looked about his age, give or take a few years; between thirty-three and thirty-six, John guessed. She was a pretty woman with short blonde hair and bright blue eyes. He liked the way she had looked into his eyes when she spoke. He hadn’t seen a ring and was wondering what her deal was when there was a commotion behind him at the cashier counter.

  John watched it in the mirror’s reflection behind the coffee urns. It looked to be an argument over a check. Two men were giving the cashier a hard time. John thought he recognized one of them before a busboy blocked his view.

  It got loud fast. John recognized one of the voices, Sonny Corleone himself, Nick Santorra, cursing a blue streak.

  “What are the odds?” John whispered.

  “Fuck your mother’s cunt!” Santorra yelled.

  John saw himself cringe in the mirror. He turned his head to watch the action over his left shoulder.

  “Please leave,” he heard the hostess say. “Forget the check. You’re disturbing our customers.”

  “Fuck your customers!” Santorra yelled.

  “Please, sir. Just leave.”

  And then they were gone.

  “Don’t you hate assholes like that?”

  John turned back around. It was the waitress, Melinda. She set a small dish of coleslaw and a cup of vegetable soup on the counter in front of him.

  “I hope his wife is packing her things and running off with the plumber,” she said.

  “The plumber?”

  “Or the kid who delivers their pizza. The gardener, if they have one. The insurance salesman’ll do, too. Anybody.”

  John put his hand out. “I’m John,” he said.

  She pointed to her name tag. “I’m assuming you can read,” she said.

  “It’s a pretty name,” he said. “And, yeah, I do hate assholes like that. More than you could know.”

  Chapter 3

  Eddie Vento had both feet up on his desk when Tommy Burns appeared in the office doorway. Vento set aside the Racing Form he had opened across his lap and removed his feet from the desk.

  “Tommy me boy,” he said. “The mick that does the trick.”

  “Mr. Vento,” said Burns, extending his right hand.

  Vento stepped around the desk, slapped Burns’s hand away and gave him a bear hug, lifting him a few inches off the ground. “You sure your old man isn’t Italian?” he said. “They changed the rules, you know. We could add a vowel your last name, get you made now.”

  Vento gave Burns one last squeeze before releasing him.

  “I wish,” Burns said, “but the old man was the real deal. Galway to Boston to New York. Knocked up my mother here, hung around long enough to teach me to take a punch and off he ran. He’s still alive, it’s in Boston. Haven’t seen or heard from him since I made my confession a dozen years ago.”

  Vento slapped Burns on the back before returning to his chair. “He did something right, your old man. I had a dozen guys half as tough as you I’d be one happy guinea.”

  “I appreciate it, Mr. V. My father, too, I suppose.”

  Vento opened the second drawer in his desk and removed a stack of twenty-dollar bills secured by a rubber band. He set the money on top of the Racing Form and pointed to one of two folding chairs facing the desk. “Sit,” he said. “That’s a bonus, fifty fresh ones from the Williamsburg Savings Bank.”

  Burns looked at the stack of cash. “Wasn’t a big deal,” he said. “Tommy DeLuca left a trail of skanks he was sleeping with after he was flush with what he stole.”

  “I won’t ask where you kept him, but I am curious where you gave him the manicure.”

  “Hudson Street,” Burns said. “One of the lithography joints runs along the entrance to the Holland Tunnel downtown. Guy works in one owed me. Let us up, showed me how to use one of the paper cutters they have. Very clean.”

  Vento’s eyebrows furrowed. “Who’s us?”

  “Not to worry, family on my mother’s side. Was here visiting the week before, was back in Galway the next day.”

  Vento’s concern evaporated as his eyebrows relaxed again. “What can I say? Balls and smart. I really do wish you were Italian.”

  “The trick was the dumpster,” Burns said. “Getting him in the thing. I must’ve hurled half a dozen times before I got home. Spent the first hour burning my clothes and the next two showering. The dead, Mr. V., they fucking stink.”

  “So they say,” Vento said. He grabbed a bottle of Johnny Walker Black and two shot glasses from a shelf behind his desk. He set the glasses on the desk and poured two drinks.

  “You’re making your way in this world,” he said. “A couple days ago I passed your name along to a friend of mine. Guy might be a boss someday. He’s having issues with his wife, asked if you’d have objections to something like that. I told him no. Was I right?”

  “He’s a friend of yours, say no more.”

  Both men grabbed a shot glass.

  “Salute,” Vento said.

  “Sláinte,” Burns said.

  They touched glasses and downed their drinks. Vento immediately poured refills. He noticed the money still on the desk and pointed to it.

  “Take that,” he said.

  Burns took the cash off the desk and folded it before stashing it inside his right pants pocket.

  Vento said, “You might want to count it.”

  “I wouldn’t insult you.”

  Vento winked at Burns and raised his glass. Burns grabbed his glass and the two men downed their drinks in silence.

  “It okay if I smoke?” Burns asked after setting the shot glass back on the desk.

  “You gotta ask?”

  Burns lit a Camel regular. Vento relit a cigar he’d left in an ashtray.

  “I might have something special coming up,” he said.

  “I’ll be around,” Burns said.

  “Good, because it can’t be one of my own. This one brings extra heat.”

  “Sounds like a badge.”

  “It is and it has stripes and has to disappear, the time comes. Disappear as in vanish.”

  “The meantime I’ll prepare.”

  “Do that, because this guy, he goes, he can’t be found. Not while I’m around.”

  Burns took a long drag off his cigarette.

  “You ever think to use a filter?” Vento asked.

  “Too used to these,” Burns said. “Anything else, I
wind up sucking harder just to get a taste, give myself a headache.”

  “This badge,” Vento said. “He’s dirty so there’s a hefty stash somewhere we don’t know. You find that on your own, it’s yours on top of a fee.”

  Burns acknowledged the tip with a head nod.

  “Meantime, keep your distance from this joint until I call you,” Vento said. “Go out the back when you leave from here. It’ll make the feds filming the entrance dizzy you don’t come back out the front.”

  “I saw them on my way over,” Burns said. “They’re in a plumbing van off Hooper Street. They stay out there all night?”

  Vento poured himself another shot. “Giving each other hand jobs, probably.” He held the bottle up.

  Burns declined. “I’m up early for mass tomorrow,” he said. “My mother’s a stubborn woman. Insists I go with her every Monday.”

  Vento set the bottle back down, downed the shot he’d poured for himself, and stepped around the desk to hug Burns good-bye. He said, “Don’t blow it all on one broad, the money.”

  “Never,” Burns said. “I’d give it to my mother, but then she’d hand it off to the church and I’d have a problem with that, it being blood money.”

  Vento was feeling the booze. He took an awkward step back and had to grab the desk. “You think the church gives a fuck where their money comes from?”

  “Probably not, but I’d know,” Burns said. “I still get nightmares from the statues in Holy Family when I went to school there. I even think about them, I see them moving. In my head like. The eyes and whatnot.”

  “St. Anthony?”

  “Huh?”

  “You pray to him to find your pecker?”

  Burns got it. He forced a chuckle. “Another thing my old man gave me, I’m sure,” he said. “Fuckin’ Irish curse.”

  “Well, just let me know when you wanna get it wet, your limp noodle. I’ll send a broad over take care of you.”

  “I’m free tomorrow night. Or is it tonight already?” He looked at his watch and said, “Tonight, I guess.”

  “You still by the Canarsie market?”

  “Ninety-third between Foster and Farragut.”

  “You alone?”

  “I’m having company I will be.”

  “Okay. Still go for the dark stuff?”

  “I do indeed. A little meat on their bones is good, too.”

  “I’ll find somebody,” Vento said. “Somebody clean, but wear a hat anyway. Never know with these broads. Some don’t know enough to douche, the stink alone’ll peel your eyelids.”

  “It’s the way of the modern world,” Burns said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Last thing the old man said to me before he scrammed. Told me he was leaving, I started to sniffle and he cuffed me one. ‘Don’t look at me like that, boyo,’ he says. ‘Parents split up all the time nowadays. It’s the way of the modern world.’”

  “He was right, your old man, the way things are today.”

  Burns said, “And a fuckin’ shame it is.”

  * * * *

  Before he went to the bar to sell his last ounce of marijuana, Louis double-checked his gambling figures for the week. He had called in six bets Saturday afternoon and lost five, two of the favorites he’d bet, Cincinnati and Los Angeles, laying two-to-one. Sunday he’d bet the Reds again and lost again. He also lost the other five bets he’d made, but at least those were underdogs and he wouldn’t have to pay a premium for laying odds. He would need eleven hundred dollars for one bookie and another six hundred for the new office he’d been calling to shop a better line.

  Between the money he owed a loan shark, his betting losses, and living expenses, Louis needed a score and soon. Earlier the bartender at the corner tavern had told him he had a fish on the line, some young kid from the neighborhood looking to deal nickel bags. Louis couldn’t cut his weed with any more oregano than he already had, but if the kid was naïve, he could pad the price enough to pay the weekly interest he owed his shylock.

  When he was inside the bar, he saw Jimmy the loan shark was already perched on his stool. Louis was three days late on the interest from a two-thousand-dollar street loan. At three points a week, he owed sixty dollars. In four days it would be ninety. He had exactly six dollars in his pocket.

  The bartender motioned toward the kid looking to buy marijuana, but there was no way Louis could bypass the loan shark. He signaled the bartender to hold the kid off and went to see the big man.

  “I rang your phone enough times,” Jimmy said. “You ignoring me?”

  “Never,” Louis said.

  Jimmy was a three-hundred-pounder with broad shoulders and a perpetual scowl on his face; there was no reading what he was thinking.

  “You got my money?” he asked.

  “Can you give me five minutes?”

  “Why, you gonna hold up the joint?”

  Louis didn’t get it at first and couldn’t tell if Jimmy was joking. He forced a chuckle, but the big man wasn’t smiling.

  Or maybe he was.

  “I have a little business to conduct in the bathroom and I’ll be right back,” Louis said.

  Jimmy reached for his drink, a scotch and soda. “Funny,” he said with no expression, “a good-looking kid like you, I never took you for a fag.”

  That one Louis got. He laughed for effect. “Good one,” he said. “I’m right back, okay?”

  The big man looked at his watch. “Five minutes,” he said.

  Louis had the bartender introduce him to the kid, who looked no older than seventeen. They used the men’s room to conduct business. Normally Louis didn’t deal with kids because they couldn’t be trusted, but in this case he was more than willing to make an exception. You could only bullshit guys like Jimmy so long before they broke one of your arms.

  A few minutes later he returned to the bar and handed off the interest he owed the loan shark. Jimmy saw Louis had some extra cash in his hand and offered to take it.

  “So we don’t have to go through this again next week,” he said. “Sunday nights I like to catch up on my beauty rest.”

  “And here I am thinking I might be able to pay you off next week,” Louis said.

  “And how’s that gonna happen? You gonna parlay the few bucks you have phoning bets in?”

  “It’s a secret,” Louis said.

  Jimmy patted the empty stool next to him. “Then sit here and buy me one so’s I don’t feel neglected.”

  Louis had better things to do, but there was no refusing the big man. He sat on the stool, set a ten-dollar bill down and motioned at the bartender.

  “Jimmy’s with me,” he said.

  “I’d thank you but I shouldn’t a hadda tell you,” Jimmy said.

  The bartender served Jimmy a scotch and soda before pouring a beer from the tap for Louis. The two men drank in silence while a conversation about blow jobs mid-bar became loud. One drunk preferred the use of hands when getting head. The other claimed it wasn’t a blow job if a woman used her hands.

  “Personally, I could give a fuck,” Jimmy said to Louis. “It’s the idea anyway, some broad taking it in the mouth.”

  Louis wasn’t sure what the big man was getting at and the last thing he wanted was to discuss it. He listened as the two drunks continued their argument six stools away.

  “She uses her hand, she’s jerking you off,” the one drunk said. “You could do that yourself.”

  “Yeah?” the other drunk said. “Can you put it in your mouth at the same time?”

  “He’s got a point,” Jimmy said.

  Louis saw it was getting late. He was supposed to pick up his girlfriend and was afraid he’d miss her call sitting there being bored out of his mind. He was about to say he had to leave when Jimmy nudged him with an elbow.

  “Speaking of blow jobs,” he said, “a friend of a friend of mine, some whale bets ten dimes a day the office on one-eleven, he has a guy looking to buy the car they used in that movie.”

  “What
car in what movie?”

  “The blow job thing... somebody’s throat?”

  “Deep Throat,” Louis said.

  “Whatever. There’s a car they use in the thing, an Eldorado something. A Fleetwood, I think. Some Cadillac the guy says he’ll go five large above original sticker price for.”

  Louis hadn’t seen the movie, but remembered his ex-wife had mentioned something about the director.

  “He can buy one new for less,” Louis said. “Caddy’s go for what, seven, eight grand maybe. What year’s the thing?”

  “I don’t know,” Jimmy said. “He wants it should be the one from the movie. He thinks it’ll be worth a lot some day.”

  Louis was about to mention what his ex-wife had told him, but stopped short and asked a question instead.

  “How does he verify something like that?”

  “What?”

  “That he doesn’t get sold a replica off a lot someplace?”

  “I guess the paperwork, I don’t know.”

  “Or maybe they get somebody from the movie to do it?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Verify it’s the right car.”

  “Whatever,” Jimmy said. “I’ll tell you something else, this guy wants the car, my friend says he’s got it bad for the broad did the movie. He’d probably throw her an extra grand or two she cleaned his pipes.”

  Louis saw it was after one o’clock in the morning and slid off the stool. “She probably gets two dozen offers a day for that,” he said. He grabbed his change from the bar, except for two dollars for a tip.

  “Next time you’re late, you’re buying me dinner,” Jimmy said.

  “I’m not sure I could afford it,” said Louis, trying to crack a joke.

  The big man gave him the blank look again. He blinked twice and made it all the more confusing.

  Louis patted Jimmy on the near shoulder. “Thanks,” he said. “You gave me a good idea.”

  “What’s that?” Jimmy said.

  “If your friend’ll really pay two grand for a blow job, somebody should arrange it.”

  “That’d make you a pimp.”

  “I can pay your weekly juice, would it make a difference?”

  “See you in four days,” said Jimmy, before he held up four fingers and repeated himself. “Four.”