Johnny Porno

by Charlie Stella

  It was something he’d wished he hadn’t shared with the old man. John’s uncle, his mother’s only brother, was involved with a local mob crew when he quit high school. After putting his family through some tough times with a series of arrests, Paolo Zampino disappeared two weeks before the start of a trial for armed robbery. Six months later his body was found in the trunk of a car. Elias had brought the story up more than a few times since John took the weekend job.

  “Yeah,” John said. “It’s true.”

  “And your mother, her family, they were crushed by this, no? The loss of a son and a brother to those animals.”

  John looked straight ahead.

  Elias wagged a finger. “The people you are working for are no fucking good. They use you and when they don’t need you, they throw you away like garbage. Get away from them and stay away. I tell you for your own good.”

  John knew the old man was right, except his immediate economic situation precluded him from taking the advice.

  “I’ll quit as soon as I can,” he said. “I promise.”

  “You don’t hear what I say.”

  “I did,” said John as he stood up. “I just can’t do it now. Not yet.”

  He left the old man and headed inside. He was halfway up the first flight of stairs when the building went dark.

  “God damn it,” he said. He put his hands out to protect himself, gave it a few seconds, then gave up and carefully walked back down the stairs and outside onto the stoop.

  “No lights?” Elias said.

  “Yeah. I can’t sleep like this again.”

  “Go sleep in car.”

  “Huh?”

  “You don’t have girlfriend, go sleep in car.”

  “I’m not sleeping in my car.”

  “Then go to Momma. You can take me. I can cook breakfast in the morning.”

  John stepped off the stoop and was headed for the curb. He turned to point a finger at Elias. “Not funny,” he said.

  The old man stood up. “What? What’s wrong with that?”

  John ignored him and continued back-stepping across the street. The sound of screeching tires broke the silence. He turned in time to see a red sports car racing across the near corner. John was forced to leap out of the way as the car veered toward him before pulling away at the last moment.

  He dove to the ground and rolled against his car. When he got up the sports car was turning off Rockaway Parkway at the far end of the block. He thought of giving chase but knew it was pointless. The Buick would need half a minute to warm up and was no match for a sports car.

  Elias was off the stoop and standing near the curb. “Who was that?” he said.

  “Some asshole,” John said. “Probably some kid playing with his father’s car.”

  “Don’t go looking for him, eh?” Elias said. “Go to Momma’s and get some sleep instead.”

  John started the Buick’s engine. He gave it a few seconds to warm up before stepping on the brake, then slipping the transmission into gear.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he told Elias, then pulled away.

  He drove half a block at normal speed before he fed the engine gas and sped to the corner to make the right turn in pursuit of the car that had nearly run him over.

  Chapter 9

  “Need a hanky?” Detective Sean Kelly asked Eddie Vento’s girlfriend.

  Bridget Malone had just snorted one too many lines of cocaine and was bleeding from her nose. She hadn’t seen Kelly until after she’d wiped her face with the back of her right hand and spotted her arm with blood.

  “Shit,” she said. “God damn it.”

  “Here,” Kelly said. He handed her his handkerchief. “Use this.” She continued wiping her nose with her hand and smeared some across her face. “Hold on a second,” he told her, then guided her head back while he applied the handkerchief to her nose. “Hold it like this. Pinch it a little and tilt your head back. Sit down a second, it’ll stop.”

  He led her to the fender of a car parked at the curb. “Sit,” he said.

  Bridget spoke through the napkin. “I don’t know how this happened,” she said. “It just started bleeding.”

  Kelly knew she was full of shit. He’d been following her since she left the apartment above her boyfriend’s bar. First she’d taken a bus to Prospect Park and made a drug connection. Then she’d gone to a bar on Seventh Avenue and sat drinking with a few people closer to her own age. She’d done at least one line in the ladies’ room because Kelly had been having a beer at the bar and could see her eyes when she came out.

  After learning from Eddie Vento how Bridget Malone had been involved in a heroin bust, Kelly ran her name through department connections but still didn’t know if she had cut a deal or not. While it was possible her legal troubles had died along with her boyfriend, it was equally possible Bridget Malone was working off her end of the heroin bust gathering information against her wiseguy boyfriend. The potential risk was too great for Kelly to accept Eddie Vento’s cocky assurances.

  She had been on her way home and was within a mile of Fast Eddie’s bar and her apartment when she stepped into an alley to do another line. Kelly saw her stagger. Then she had to use the wall to keep from falling. It was then he saw she was bleeding and brought her the handkerchief.

  “You okay?” he asked her now.

  Bridget still had her head back and was holding the handkerchief against her nose. “Yeah,” she said. “Thanks.”

  “I was on my way to see a friend when I thought I recognized you. Eddie’s girl, right?”

  Bridget removed the top of the handkerchief from her eyes but continued pinching her nose. “Yeah,” she said.

  “That was a little awkward the other day,” Kelly said. “I wish Eddie had kept his temper.”

  Bridget wiped around her mouth. “Your name again?”

  “Eddie calls me Mr. Horse.”

  “You one of his bookies?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Because those usually show up at the bar on settle-up nights. I don’t remember seeing you there.”

  “We usually meet at a diner.”

  Bridget tested her nose for bleeding, saw it had stopped and straightened her head. She used the handkerchief to wipe some of the residual blood from her face.

  She turned her head and Kelly saw the bruise on the left side of her face from where Eddie Vento had slapped her the other day. He pointed at it. “That hurt?”

  “Only if I touch it. Mr. Horse, you said?”

  “What Eddie calls me, yeah.”

  “But that’s not your real name.”

  “That an issue?”

  “Only if you’re a cop.”

  Kelly forced a smile. “What makes you say that?”

  Bridget didn’t answer. She used the car’s side view mirror and wiped her face with the handkerchief again. When she was satisfied, she turned to Kelly and held up the bloodied hanky.

  “Keep it,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  “You gonna be okay?”

  “I’m fine. Like I said, I don’t know how it happened.”

  Kelly chuckled.

  “What?” Bridget said.

  “Nothing.”

  The two eyeballed each other, Kelly with a frozen smile on his face and Bridget expressionless until he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered her one.

  “No thanks,” she said.

  Kelly continued staring at her as he lit his cigarette.

  “Is there something else?” she asked.

  “You should be more careful,” Kelly said.

  “With Eddie or my nose?”

  “Either or,” he said.

  Bridget waited for more.

  Kelly winked, turned and walked away.

  * * * *

  John had given up his search for the sports car after ten minutes of driving through the neighborhood. Still unsure of how to spend the rest of the night, he headed for Queens on the Belt Parkway. H
e got off at Cross Bay Boulevard and headed north on Woodhaven to Queens Boulevard. It was close to one o’clock in the morning when he decided against spending the night at his mother’s house where he knew the electric would be working and he’d have air conditioning to help him sleep. He headed to the diner where Melinda worked instead.

  He spotted her as soon as he pulled into the diner parking lot. She was still wearing her uniform and had stopped to light a cigarette before descending the back stairs. He wondered if she was on her break or ending for the night, then noticed she was wearing sneakers as she started across the lot.

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to another diner now?” he said.

  He had pulled up alongside her.

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  “I’m John,” he said. “We met inside a few nights ago. Remember the guys got loud with the cashier?”

  She was squinting. She said, “Yeah, I remember you.”

  “Good. You’re still in uniform. You going or coming... Melinda, right?”

  She was confused a moment before she realized what he was talking about. “Oh, this,” she said. “Yes, Melinda. I’m going. I prefer doing my own laundry, why I’m wearing it home.”

  “Can I give you a lift?”

  She pointed to her car, a white 1970 Valiant, about four cars from the end of the lot. “That’s mine,” she said.

  “Feel like a drink someplace?”

  “I’d rather a coffee.”

  “Another diner?”

  “I can always glom some tips.”

  They took separate cars with John doing the following. It was a ten-minute ride to another diner up near the courts on Queens Boulevard. They parked alongside each other, but John was embarrassed because of his car.

  Melinda held up a cigarette for him to light before they went inside.

  “Excuse the dents,” he said as he struck a match. “It’s ugly but it gets me around.”

  “I never judge a man by his car,” Melinda said. “Unless it’s a fancy one. Then I just assume the man is a bad one.”

  “They can’t all be bad,” he said. “Although I never went for women driving Cadillacs.”

  He lit a cigarette of his own and the two exchanged smiles. He was feeling himself blush again when she asked what it was he was doing out so late.

  “The truth?” he said.

  “Unless you feel you have to lie.”

  “The electric went out in the building where I live. Second night in a row. I was thinking about heading to my mother’s place to sleep there, then decided to stop and see if you were still at work.”

  “I feel honored, but just so you know, you won’t be sleeping with me tonight.”

  John held up both his hands. “The thought hadn’t crossed my mind,” he said.

  “I can take that as an insult, you know.”

  “It has crossed my mind, but not tonight. Tonight I just wanted to meet you outside your job to make friends.”

  Melinda was smiling. “Make friends?”

  “I’m saying it wrong,” John said. “You know what I mean.”

  She was close to finished with her cigarette and motioned toward his car with it. “So, you do a lot of driving or something?”

  “Yeah, you count car service. I drive for a place where I live in Canarsie. No medallion or nothing. Although today and the rest of this week I have construction work.”

  “You sound like a busy man.”

  “Except I’m thirty-five and what’s that all about, you’re probably thinking, my driving for a car service.”

  “Actually I wasn’t thinking about it at all, but since you put it that way...”

  “I used to be a carpenter. A union carpenter until I had a problem on the job. I lost my union card and have been doing pickup work ever since, driving and picking up handiwork jobs when I can. The guy I’m working construction for now I’ve worked for before, a private contractor needs help sometimes. This week I’m putting up sheetrock and hanging door bucks.”

  “Door bucks, huh? Sounds exciting.”

  “Now you’re making fun of me.”

  She dropped her cigarette and stepped on it. “No, not at all,” she said. “You sound like a hard-working guy.”

  “When there’s work available, yeah. I’m a kind of jack-of-all-trades, I guess.”

  “And your name’s John and that’s as good as Jack,” Melinda said.

  John wasn’t sure if she was ribbing him.

  “Never apologize for being a working man, hon,” she said. “Come on, I’ll buy you a cup of joe.”

  * * * *

  She told him about her previous marriage to a New York City cop and how it had turned to shit the day she learned he was shaking down prostitutes for sex. The story had broken the same night she had a college exam that she wound up skipping to avoid the local news teams camped at the curb in front of her house.

  “He was screwing prostitutes,” Melinda said. “Imagine?”

  “He get in trouble?”

  “Besides my going to a divorce lawyer the next morning? Yeah, but then he did some kind of plea bargain and only did six months. He did lose his job and pension, but I was the one who suffered. I must’ve taken two dozen tests for VD afterward. I swear it was when my first gray hairs started showing.”

  “Where’s he now?”

  “Who knows and who cares. Florida, I think. He had the nerve to ask me for a temporary loan, what he called it, the day he got out of prison, but I hung up on him.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Yeah, except I never felt like such a fool before. Prostitutes, for Christ sake. I had nightmares about venereal diseases the next five years.”

  “Well, my divorce wasn’t as dramatic, but it had to do with cheating, too.”

  “Hers or yours?”

  “Hers, with her first husband, you can believe it.”

  “I hope I can. I read somewhere that men use that as a pickup line, how their wives cheated on them. Some women like to hear that stuff.”

  “You?”

  “I don’t know yet,” she said. “Tell me more. How’d you meet?”

  “I was doing the drywall in the building where she lived.”

  “She younger?”

  “Same age as me. Thirty-five, but her first husband was a couple years younger.”

  “And?”

  “We started talking one day and I asked her out. One thing led to another, but she never let me in on the situation with her ex or I might’ve paid a little more attention. She went down to Florida a few days before we were married. She said to see her grandmother. Her mother covered for her, but we spoke over the phone so I didn’t question it. She probably started cheating before we were married. That or she never stopped sleeping with her ex.”

  “She sounds horrible.”

  “She is, but we have a kid together so there’s that between us, too.”

  “How old?”

  “Nine. Gonna be ten soon. Name’s John also, but we call him Jack.”

  “You get to see him?”

  “Not as much as I should, but that has more to do with work. I think Nancy, my ex, would let me take him if I ever got my feet on the ground. I don’t think she much cares for being a mother.”

  “Well, I never did finish college so he ruined that, too, for me. I am grateful we didn’t have kids, though. He couldn’t. I don’t know how I would have dealt with the situation if there was a kid involved. Sometimes I wish I’d had one anyway.”

  “You’re still young enough, no?”

  “I’m thirty-seven, John.”

  “I wasn’t asking your age.”

  “In case you were wondering.”

  “I would’ve guessed younger.”

  “Thanks. I’m also a good girl, though, in case you’re wondering about that. I don’t kiss on first dates, never mind the rest of it.”

  “That’s twice you made that point.”

  “I’m glad you’re counting.”

  �
��I’m good until I run out of fingers.”

  “How often do you see your boy?” she asked.

  John lit a fresh cigarette. “Not enough,” he said. “Between driving during the week, at least until today, then having to deal with clowns like that asshole in the diner the other night, it doesn’t leave much time for recreation.”

  Melinda was confused. “You knew those jerks?”

  “One of them,” John said. “The big mouth. He gave me some lip a few hours before I met you the first time. It’s a long story.”

  “Should I hear it?”

  “Only if you wanna be bored.”

  “Nobody wants that, but tell me anyway. How do you know him?”

  John had to think of something to say.

  “I borrowed money,” he lied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was short and he puts it out. I borrowed some.”

  She leaned forward, both arms on the table. “Are you kidding me? He’s a loan shark? That’s what that guy was?”

  John’s face flushed red.

  “Jesus, how much did you borrow?”

  “Not a lot. Enough, though. Enough so he could get loud when I come up short.”

  Melinda was trying to gauge whether or not he was telling the truth, then thought why would he lie about it.

  “Tell me I didn’t scare you off,” he said. “I’m not half the screwup I probably sound like.”

  She was still trying to understand. “Is there a reason you needed the money? A good reason, although I can’t imagine any good enough to go to those people for anything.”

  “My kid,” he said. “Child support, rent, his shoes, my shoes. Life, I guess. I didn’t have much saved when I was married and what I had she did a good job of costing me in court when we divorced.”

  “Jesus,” Melinda said. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say you’ll see me again. That’ll take some of the sting out of what I can’t believe I just told you.”

  Melinda was suddenly uncomfortable. “You’re not some kind of gambler, I hope. They’re the people go to loan sharks.”

  “Trust me, I’m no gambler.”

  “Hold on a minute,” she said. “Let me ask Jill.”