Then when John had tried to walk away, there was no way to avoid what had happened next. The guy had shoved him two or three times before taking a wild swing. John had ducked the punch and hit the guy in self-defense.
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me about that,” Vento said. “She’s not wiseguy pussy, she’s free trade. Was his problem, not yours.”
John cringed at the way Vento described the cop’s wife.
“Was that knockout made me offer you the job,” Vento added. “It was also a way to protect you, putting you on my payroll. And it’s a good thing you’re under my umbrella now, pal. That cop is a last of the Mohican hard-ons. He wanted a piece of you, my friend. We showed a few friendlies the tape we had, I should show it the six o’clock news, it was so good. They’re the ones helped back Hastings down. His buddies convinced him it wasn’t worth his pension doing something stupid like shooting you in the back of the head, but the real reason they backed him down was because we had that tape. Clear as day what he did before you dropped him. Waving the badge around, the shoves he gave you. The swing he took before you nailed him. Was a beautiful stroke of luck on our part we’d just installed the camera because he was shaking down a couple a my bartenders every time he needed money for the junk he was shoving up his nose. Imagine? We gotta install our own crime prevention equipment to avoid the leeches on the police force.”
John was glad he hadn’t known the details behind what had happened that night. He figured he’d been lucky to get out of there without being arrested.
Vento explained how a detective on his payroll had been helpful in cutting the deal whereby the wiseguy refrained from using the tape and Hastings was transferred to another precinct with the understanding he steer clear of the Williamsburg bar and anybody associated with it.
“Like I said,” Vento continued, “that was a beautiful thing, what you did to that cop. It’s legend in here now.”
“I tried to avoid it,” John said.
“But he wouldn’t let you,” Vento said. “What happened upstairs, I understand.”
John was suddenly hopeful of escaping grief for knocking out Nick Santorra.
“I see you around, but only in passing,” Vento said. “How come you don’t hang around the bar?”
“It’s not for me,” John said. “I have child-support payments and a job driving for a local car service. Things are too tight for me to hang around bars.”
“Fair enough,” Vento said. “And don’t take offense my asking what the fuck you’re doing driving car service? You’re around here, you can do better than that.”
John explained how a fistfight with a union shop steward more than a year ago had cost him his job and how he’d just picked up a private job today and that was why he was so late coming to the bar.
Vento sighed when John finished talking. “You have to excuse the mope you hit,” the wiseguy said. “He’s got a fire under his ass since he’s driving for me. He’s my wife’s first cousin, a real moron, but he’s my responsibility now and I can’t let guys take a swing at him like you did tonight, not without they pay a penalty. Looks bad to the other guys, I do that.”
John understood it was a possible way out, but that it would probably cost him money he couldn’t afford to give away.
“I can see you’re a hard working guy and you’re obviously good with your hands,” Vento continued. “I can always use guys are good with their hands. You don’t have to drive cars you don’t like it.”
“It’s not that I enjoy it,” John said.
Vento didn’t hear him. He said, “Of course there is a downside to swinging at somebody every time they piss you off.”
“I can apologize to Nick you want.”
“Huh?” Vento said. He looked confused a moment, then waved off the offer. “That’d only make things worse. He’ll be embarrassed you apologize. It’ll be better you put something in his pocket. Through me, though. Give me, say, I don’t know, fifty bucks? I’ll see he gets it and that’ll be that.”
John felt his stomach churning. He’d just worked half a day putting up sheetrock so he could put fifty bucks in Nick Santorra’s pocket. It was worse than catching a beating, he thought.
“We got you working with the fuck film, right?” Vento said.
“Yeah,” John said. “But I’m not sure how much longer. This construction thing, I might have to work weekends there.”
Vento didn’t hear him again. “We might have another one soon,” he said. He grabbed a folder off his desk and opened it. He pulled two stills of a thin naked woman being escorted by six people in robes. “This thing started on the West Coast is a big hit now. Behind the Green Door. The broad they use is a hot item. Ivory Snow girl or some shit, what they claim. She’s better-looking than the one did the movie we’re hustling now, except she gets boned by some jungle bunny. Anyway, we’ll be looking to move it here on the East Coast soon enough.”
John barely glanced at the pictures before setting them back down.
“How many stops you making now?” Vento asked.
“Seven.”
“You can handle more?”
“I guess.”
“How about double? The extra stops, you can get to them before you’re regular route. Be finished before noon.”
“Mr. Vento, I was thinking—”
“And you’d double your end. Plus expenses—tank of gas and a meal. Least another twenty.”
John imagined the hundred twenty dollars and kept his mouth shut.
Vento said, “It works out, I can get you a union job. We got people there, I’m sure you know that. A friend of ours runs construction in Manhattan. If not there, we can put you in the fish market or over the docks in Brooklyn. Things work out here, I can see to it you’re working steady again. Do the right thing by me, it’ll be a no-show. Then you can really earn.”
“That’s very generous,” John said. “Can I think on it?”
“Absolutely,” Vento said. “So long’s you show respect and don’t think on it too long. I don’t like making an offer to somebody, they disrespect it by ignoring me.”
“I’ll let you know,” John said.
“It’s only right.”
“I understand.”
“Good then,” Vento said. He stood up behind his desk and shook John’s hand. Then he reached down and grabbed a poster of some kind and held it open for John. “Nick tell you what you were coming here to pick up today?”
John’s eyes narrowed when he saw it was a poster of a woman in a nurse outfit. He squinted trying to see the signature in the bottom right-hand corner.
“Linda Lovelace,” Vento said. “It’s the broad does the sword-swallowing in the fuck movie. I was thinking we put ‘Head Nurse’ right below the signature. What do you think?”
“Makes sense, I guess,” John said. “That really her signature?”
“As far as the jerkoffs buying it goes it is. We’re gonna distribute them to the guys showing the movie and squeeze some extra cash out of the thing before it dies. Receipts are starting to slow up. Business needs a boost.”
John was thinking about George in Massapequa and his idea about having Linda Lovelace show up to sign autographs.
“I kind of like it, the ‘head nurse’ thing,” Vento said. “Nick did the signatures. He’s not gonna be happy he has to add that, though, not after this. Said his hand was all cramped when he finished. Probably why he’s so cranky upstairs before.”
John took pleasure at the thought of Santorra having to sign the posters. Then he took a closer look at the handwriting and noticed something wrong. He pointed to it.
“What?” Vento said.
“Lovelace,” John said. “He spelled it with an ‘s.’ I’m pretty sure it’s a ‘c.’”
* * * *
Billy Hastings saw his eyes were bloodshot in the mirror’s reflection and splashed cold water on his face. He’d been up nearly forty-eight hours. To supplement his adrenaline as it faded, Billy had used a
mphetamines, heroin and cocaine. Twelve hours ago, hopped up on a speedball he’d injected under his tongue, Billy had killed a man.
Now that he was crashing, Billy popped the cap from a small vial of cocaine and poured some onto the edge of the bathroom sink. He flushed the toilet to drown out his snorting and the adrenaline-induced gasp that followed. A few seconds later, his energy magically restored, Billy put his stash and equipment away. He returned to the kitchen where his wife was still sitting at the table. Earlier she’d been reading aloud to him from a notebook half filled with her handwritten confessions to several extramarital affairs. Billy motioned at her to continue.
“You sure?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Billy said.
Kathleen Hastings used a finger to find her place before she picked up where she had left off.
“‘He drove inside the garage and we went up the ramps until he got to his space and then he parked,’” she read. “‘He let the car run and put on the radio. Then he lit a joint.’”
Billy sniffled as he pinched the tip of his nose through a tissue. The rush was already fading. He wet his lips and leaned against the refrigerator.
“You sure you’re okay?” Kathleen asked.
“Yeah,” Billy said. “Go ’head. Then what?”
“‘He gave me the joint and I smoked it,’” Kathleen read. “‘I held it in my lungs a long time and while I did that he leaned over and felt my breasts.’”
“What were you wearing?”
Kathleen looked up from the notebook. “My green halter.”
“No bra, right?”
“No bra.”
“Keep reading.”
“‘I let him kiss me on the mouth and then he untied my halter and kissed my tits. He sucked one of them and then put a hand between my legs.’”
Billy moaned. Hearing her tell the story again excited him. He grabbed himself through his sweatpants.
“Keep going,” he said.
“‘I had my jeans on and told him it was too hard to take them off in the car and that there were other cars that might pass and see us. He told me I couldn’t leave him like that and put my hand between his legs. He made me rub him there until he was hard. Then he opened his pants and pushed my head down.’”
Billy knew his wife’s confessions were partial truths, but what was left to his imagination always proved electric. The images of Kathleen with other men had become continuous loops in Billy’s head; pure carnal passion caught in a series of snapshots that both enraged and excited him.
The man he’d killed last night had been the first one listed in the same notebook, a thirty-four-year-old building superintendent Kathleen claimed to have met at a bowling alley more than three years ago. Although, over time, Billy had adapted to the sexually deviant lifestyle they currently engaged in, he continued to blame Victor Vasquez for his wife’s initial betrayal.
With Vasquez erased from the slate, Billy was anxious to eliminate the other man responsible for dishonoring his pride. First, though, he needed to see the man defiling Kathleen.
“Inside,” he told her.
Kathleen pushed her chair back from the table, stood up and walked to their bedroom. Billy followed her up to the doorway, then stopped to watch as she sat on the edge of the bed. She removed her pants first, then underwear.
“Show me,” he said.
Kathleen turned on the bed to face him and slowly spread her legs. Billy was touching himself through the sweatpants.
“Do it,” he said.
Kathleen closed her eyes and licked her lips as she slowly gyrated her pelvis.
“That’s it,” Billy said.
Kathleen moaned.
Billy watched a while, then said, “Yeah. Do it.”
“Yes,” Kathleen said.
“Fuck that guy.”
“I am.”
Billy licked his lips. “Is it good?”
“Yes.”
“Is it?”
Kathleen moaned again, louder this time.
“Who is it?” Billy said.
Kathleen continued moaning.
“Who?” Billy said.
“You know.”
“Say his name.”
“No.”
“Say it.”
“You say it.”
“Please, baby.”
“No.”
“Say his name.”
Kathleen rolled over, raised her ass and continued gyrating her hips.
Billy was worked up to tears. They began to flow down his cheeks. “Oh, God!” he cried. “Say his name for me. Please!”
“Johnny,” she said.
“Johnny who?”
“Johnny Albano.”
“Oh, God, baby. Oh, fucking God. What’s he... what’s he... tell him to fuck you.”
“Yes.”
“Tell him.”
“I will.”
Billy was close to orgasm. He slapped the open door with his free hand. “Tell him!”
“Fuck me, Johnny!” Kathleen yelled. “Fuck me!”
A growl erupted from the bottom of Billy’s throat as his release began. His hips bucked a few times as he grunted from somewhere deep in his chest. Then he felt light-headed and needed to brace his back against the doorframe.
Kathleen had turned on the bed and was sitting on the edge. She crossed her legs and watched as her husband slid down the bottom half of the door to the floor. He was breathing hard. She waited until his breathing relaxed, then got up off the bed.
“You want pancakes?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Billy managed to say.
“Bacon?”
“Yeah.”
Kathleen had to step over him. “Don’t move,” she said as she did so.
Billy watched his wife heading toward the kitchen. “I love you,” he told her.
“I know,” she said. “I love you, too.”
* * * *
John saw there were lights on in the windows of the apartment building where he lived and breathed a sigh of relief. Last night he’d barely slept from the heat and humidity and couldn’t imagine another night without air-conditioning.
He parked the Buick across the street, grabbed his cigarettes off the passenger seat and pulled one from the pack before getting out of the car.
Old man Elias was sitting on the stoop smoking a cigarette of his own. John tapped his front pants pocket for his matches as he crossed the street but didn’t feel them. He tapped his rear pockets and was about to backtrack to the car when Elias called to him.
“What you are doing, some kind of dance?”
“Huh?” John said. He gave up on the matches and headed back toward the stoop. “Give me a light.”
Elias handed him his lit cigarette. John lit his cigarette and returned the one he borrowed.
“You work late, eh?” the old man said.
John knew Elias was fishing. “Something like that.”
“Something like what?” he said. “You work late or you don’t.”
“I had an interview, sort of.”
“Sort of. What is sort of?”
The old man wasn’t going to let go. John said, “I had an interview to take on more weekend work. That okay with you?”
“For Mafia?”
“Distributing the film.”
“Working for Mafia.”
“I do it for the money,” said John, frustrated for having to go through it again. “I need the work, Alex. I know you don’t like to hear that, but I don’t have a choice right now.”
“Bullshit. Man is free, always has choice. You do this because you are young and stupid, not because of money. Money you can get somewhere else.”
John took a long drag on his cigarette.
“And don’t call me Alex, I told you.” The old man tapped his chest. “I am Zorba.”
“You’re senile is what I’m starting to think.”
Elias waved John off.
“Anyway, I’m not in the mood for an argument now,” John said. “
I’m tired and I need to get some sleep.”
“Stay with Mafia friends and they put you to sleep.”
“Right,” John said. “Good night.” He took a step to his right onto the stoop.
Elias grabbed his foot. “Don’t run away from me, idiot. Stay two minutes. Listen.”
John stepped back down off the stoop.
“Two things,” Elias said.
“What?”
“First, you can get money somewhere else.”
“Driving car service? No thanks. I hate it.”
“What they are doing for you, these Mafioso? What, they are making you rich? You want to be one of them now?”
There was no avoiding the old man’s directness. John leaned against the railing on the stoop.
“So?” the old man said.
“They’re giving me extra work,” John said. “Doubling my route. They can get me back in the union. I can do that, I wouldn’t have to do this other shit.”
“Really? They do all this favors for you because why, you’re handsome man? You have big one?”
“I get back in the union, I’m not gonna need the weekend work. That’s all I’m saying.”
The old man pointed a finger. “They give you something, it’s not for nothing. What’s the matter with you?”
John was thinking back to his conversation with Eddie Vento and the way the man had laid it out. Between the extra stops he was getting and the union pull Vento had dangled like a carrot on a stick, he was seeing some light at the end of what had been a long and dark financial tunnel. Although he’d be expected to hang around the bar and get more involved, if the wiseguy could get him reinstated in the carpenters’ union, John would have a lot more of his life back, not to mention the extra money he’d have for a change.
On the other hand, the old man was right, Vento was a wiseguy and John knew better than to get involved with “those people,” what his father used to call them.
“What was the other thing?” he asked Elias.
“Your mother has brother was killed by Mafia, no? He wants to be like them and they kill him. You told me this already, why your mother is upset now, what you’re doing.”
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