He could always come back another night.
Chapter 17
John was up early Friday morning. He shaved and showered while his coffee brewed. Afterward he sat down to a breakfast of toast with peanut butter and coffee. He listened to Sports Radio 66 and learned both New York teams had won the night before.
John was feeling good about Melinda’s phone call and that she’d mentioned she had been thinking of him. He’d flirted with her and was pleasantly surprised when she flirted right back. He also remembered how she hadn’t seemed too keen on going to a baseball game. They had settled for a movie instead, The Friends of Eddie Coyle. He had told her he’d lend her the book the movie was based on and found it in the kitchen.
John took the book with him when he left. He could drop it off at the diner for Melinda at some point during the day after he replaced the two tires that had been slashed. He looked at the car from the stoop and saw how the right front end appeared to droop. He crossed the street and saw the right front tire was flat.
It took three hours and sixty-five dollars, half of the cost of which he had promised to pay the next week, before a local garage had him back on the road with three retread tires. It was another financial hit he couldn’t afford. Between losing his construction and driving work, John was beginning to appreciate the job offer Eddie Vento had made.
He drove straight to the bar in Williamsburg and promised himself he’d be smarter about Nick Santorra if the punk goaded him again. He said hello to the few faces he recognized and sat at the near hook of the bar closest to the street windows. He spotted Santorra sitting at one of the tables in the back reading a newspaper.
“Mr. Vento in?” John asked the bartender, Eugene.
“Not until later,” Eugene said. “No trouble today, okay?”
“Not from me.”
“You want anything?”
John knew he should leave, but couldn’t resist playing a hunch. “Coffee,” he said.
Eugene headed for the coffeepot at the far end of the bar. John winked when Santorra looked up from his newspaper.
Eugene brought the coffee back and then waved John off when he tried to pay.
“Thanks,” John said.
He sat staring at Santorra while he drank his coffee. He was close to leaving when another guy in Eddie Vento’s crew introduced himself and asked how it was going.
“Not so good,” said John louder than necessary. “Some punk slashed my tires the last two nights. Somebody without balls. I almost feel sorry for him, guy’s gotta run around the middle of the night like that.”
He could tell Santorra was listening because the wannabe’s face had turned red, a sure sign of his guilt, John thought. Eugene saw what John was up to and reminded him about not causing trouble.
“Promise,” said John, crossing his heart. He turned his attention to his new friend, the one who had just introduced himself. “Thing of it is,” he said, “that kind of bullshit, giving somebody flats works both ways. Any asshole can do it. Or they can hire some kids to do it.”
Santorra had apparently heard enough. He got up to use the men’s room, slamming the door shut behind him.
John glanced at his watch, acted surprised at the time and said he had to get going. He left a message for Eddie Vento that he would be back later. Then he tried to leave Eugene a tip but was stopped again.
“Forget it,” Eugene said.
“Thanks again,” John said.
Eugene turned away at the same time Santorra came back out of the bathroom. “You think he remembered to flush?” John said.
Eugene stopped, turned around again, and said, “You can’t help yourself, can you?”
John winked at Eugene and got out of there.
* * * *
He imagined using the butter on her young perky ass the way Marlon Brando had used it on the French girl in the movie and how it would taste to lick some of it before he used the rest to enter her. She would hurt at first but then the butter would lubricate her and she would meet his thrusts with her own and eventually they would collapse on the bed and he’d never let her leave his apartment, at least not for the rest of the day and maybe through the night.
It was what Professor Joseph Jacobs couldn’t stop thinking after they had watched Last Tango in Paris together in his living room on the projector he’d borrowed from the university.
“My favorite scene was that first one,” Holly said. “When he ravaged her. It was sooooo exhilarating. My God.”
Jacobs wanted to ask her if she was as wet as he was hard. Too nervous to do so, he handed her the joint he’d been smoking, then went into the kitchen to hide his erection.
Holly had seemed to be excited, too, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He’d had a problem once before with a student he thought was ready and willing and it had nearly cost him his tenure. Jacobs wasn’t about to go down that road again, not without this one making the first move.
“I don’t see this as porno,” she said from the living room.
He was trying to push his erection so it faced down and wouldn’t show through his sweatpants.
“It’s not like the smut they show on Forty-second Street,” she added. “I don’t think Brando would’ve done a porno.”
She had argued vehemently against pornography in his sociology class when the topic was brought up. Jacobs had taken a more liberal view of the issue and when Holly showed up at his office to discuss the topic of her term paper, he asked her if she had ever seen the controversial film starring Marlon Brando. Holly said she hadn’t.
“Perhaps you should someday,” he’d told her.
“I’m not sure I’d want to,” she had said.
“You really can’t argue against something without knowing the facts. Some people consider Last Tango art. Others call it pornography. And some say it’s a dirty old man’s way of getting laid, although I doubt that’s an issue for Marlon Brando.”
“What do you think?” she had asked. “Really.”
“I think it’s always up to the observer,” he’d told her. “For me it’s between art and erotica, but it’s definitely not porn. I don’t see it as that.”
Holly had waited for more.
He said, “It’s not like you’d go blind from seeing it.”
“I guess not. But how would I go about it? I’m not comfortable going to a theater on Forty-second Street.”
“It’s not in those theaters, not Last Tango. Respectable people are seeing it.”
“Because of Marlon Brando?”
“Probably. Look, the school has a film department. A quite famous one, actually. I can ask, if you’re interested.”
“Really?”
“Sure. If you’re serious. I wouldn’t want to bother anyone if you’re not.”
“No, I’ll watch it.”
“Good, then. I’ll see what I can do.”
That had been a week ago. Jacobs borrowed a copy of the film the department head had access to and brought it home along with a projector. He told Holly about it the night before when they went for a long walk through the Village and this morning she showed up bright and early to view it with him.
He had become infatuated with her since the first morning she showed up for his summer class on modern society wearing white shorts and a tight T-shirt. Holly was flat-chested compared to the buxom women he was usually attracted to, but her blonde hair and blue eyes and wholesome look gave her an ingénue edge he couldn’t ignore.
She was taking two courses over the summer and his was her favorite, she had told him. She had also mentioned having a boyfriend she’d met before the spring semester ended, but that it might’ve been an infatuation more than anything serious.
And now she was saying she liked the scene where Brando had rough sex with the French girl.
“See?” he told her from the kitchen. “Some people look at it as a rape scene and you found it exhilarating.”
“It was,” Holly said. He could hear her getting up and then
she was standing in the doorway between the two rooms. “I mean, she obviously liked it. She went along with it. She didn’t stop him.”
“A man could get in a lot of trouble saying exactly the same thing,” Jacobs said. “She liked it? Think about it.”
“I guess,” Holly said. “Some of the women I’ve met said they saw it and didn’t appreciate the way the girl accepted what he did to her. They claim that’s just the male ego. Something to do with a man’s fantasy about rape.”
Jacobs turned to her and saw she was leaning against the kitchen wall. “And maybe that’s because they prejudged it,” he said. “Sometimes it’s just six of one, half a dozen of another. What’s that Sly and the Family Stone line, ‘Different strokes for different folks’?”
“I guess,” she said.
She had showed up this morning wearing shorts again and he had hardly been able to keep from looking at her legs the entire length of the movie. The light blue halter she wore had clung to her small breasts until he turned on the air-conditioning and woke her nipples up. They were still perky he noticed when he turned to face her again.
“I’ve had a fascination with older men, too,” she said. “A few times since high school.”
Was she telling him it was okay for him to make a move? He smiled in case she was and then she blushed; a good sign, he thought.
“Maybe she needed to go through that, the girl in the movie,” Holly said.
He was hard as a rock and couldn’t stand it much longer.
“You ever do that?” she asked. “With butter, I mean.”
He felt a tingle and had to turn away from her.
“It was pretty wild,” she said.
“Yeah, it was.”
“I know it’s supposed to hurt.”
“Anal sex? I guess. Probably why they used the butter.”
Holly blushed again. “Don’t people use Vaseline or K-Y Jelly or something like that?”
“If they have it. If not, I guess butter’s the next best thing.”
Holly jammed her hands inside her shorts pockets then, tugging the front waist down a little. “Can I ask you a question?” she said.
Jacobs’s eyes had moved to her waist in anticipation of maybe seeing the start of her pubic patch. He forced himself to look up at her face again. “Sure.”
“Promise you won’t be embarrassed?”
She wants it, he thought. This is it. “Sure,” he said.
“Promise?” she said.
He could barely speak. “Promise,” he managed to say.
Holly’s hands were out of her pockets. “Have you ever...”
He was too excited to let her finish. The words were out of his mouth before he could stop. “I want to fuck you so bad, Holly.”
Her eyes opened wide. He thought she might scream, but then she looked down and her face registered disgust a moment before she turned away and walked out of the apartment.
Jacobs yelled her name but couldn’t move from where he was standing. He looked down and saw he was holding himself inside his sweatpants.
“Oh, fuck,” he said. “Oh, shit.”
* * * *
The air smelled foul when John first returned to his car after leaving the bar. He lit a cigarette, but it was too hot to smoke. The humidity had gone up a notch; so had the temperature. Ten-Ten WINS put it at eighty-six with ninety-five percent humidity. The streets were steamy.
He waited less than two minutes before Nick Santorra was out of the bar checking on his year-old blue Pontiac Lemans. John wrote down the tag numbers as Santorra walked around the car and checked all four tires. Next Santorra ran his hand along the finish and was on his way back to the bar when John pulled away from the curb. He beeped to get Santorra’s attention, then waved as he drove past the bar.
A look of anguish appeared on Santorra’s face.
“How’s it feel?” said John at the rearview mirror. He watched as Santorra stepped out into the middle of the street staring after him.
Thirty minutes later John dropped the novel off for Melinda at the diner in Queens on his way to see his son. The upside to his weekday unemployment was the opportunity to spend the afternoon with Little Jack. Sometimes sharing a hamburger at a diner was enough to carry him to the next visit. He hoped his boy felt the same way.
He had just under twenty-five dollars in his wallet, all of it owed, but he’d have cash again tomorrow. At least he could take the kid out for dinner.
He had arranged with Nancy for their son to be home from camp after lunch and was surprised to find Nathan instead of his ex-wife at the house.
“The little man around?” John asked.
Nathan Ackerman opened the door and waved John inside. “Sure is,” he said. “And he’s anxious to see you.”
John was met with a big hug from his son. He picked his boy up and kissed him on the cheek.
“Coffee, John?” Nathan asked.
“I don’t wanna put you out.”
“Nonsense, I’ll put up a pot.”
Nathan was gone before John could stop him.
“We have the whole day?” Little Jack asked.
“Until you get bored with me,” John said.
His son’s face lit up in a smile.
They spent the next half hour in the kitchen. John having coffee and his son showing off the baseball tickets Nathan refused to take any money for.
“It’s my pleasure,” Nathan said. “Besides, I got them from somebody myself. Didn’t cost a dime.”
“You’re a good guy,” John said. “I’m not sure you’d tell me if they did cost you, but there’s something to a man paying his own freight, ’specially it comes to his son.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” Nathan said. “Because you’re a good man yourself, but I did get them for free. In the meantime, I have to practice my flute.”
“I thought you played the bass?”
“He’s joking,” his son said.
It had to do with an argument one night between Nathan and Nancy. Nancy had told him to “go play your flute.” Ignoring the sexual connotations, Nathan had used the phrase as a private joke with which to bond with his stepson.
Nathan ruffled Little Jack’s hair and wished them both a good time. He was on his way upstairs when John wondered for the fifth or sixth time since he had first met Nathan Ackerman what the hell he was doing with Nancy.
* * * *
The first few weeks after the incident in Eddie Vento’s bar Billy Hastings listened to friends on the force and stayed clear of John Albano. Rather than seeking immediate revenge, Billy used department resources to gather information and quickly learned the details of Albano’s life.
The out-of-work construction worker had been brought up in Canarsie, Brooklyn, had moved to Sheepshead Bay after marrying a divorced woman from Queens, then moved back to Canarsie when they divorced two years later. Albano had a nine-year-old son that lived with his ex-wife, who had remarried and returned to Queens. Billy also learned where Albano lived, the make of the car he owned and where his mother had recently moved to in Queens to be close to her grandson.
Two men had haunted Billy’s psyche. He was quick to move on the first after he was forced to resign from the police department. Having already dispatched Victor Vasquez, Billy turned his attention on John Albano.
First he needed to catch up on Albano’s daily routines and habits. Wearing a disguise that included a wig, fake mustache and thick glasses, Billy drove to Canarsie and parked across the street from the apartment building where Albano lived. He spent half an hour sitting and observing the people traffic in the area until he was forced to move when an old man seemed to be staring at him from the stoop. Billy moved further up the block and parked alongside a fire hydrant. He waited more than an hour before the old man left the stoop and then Albano finally appeared.
Billy circled the block and parked off a near corner this time. He watched from behind a Daily News he made believe he was reading as Albano discovered his
Buick had flat tires. After a trip to a nearby gas station where the Buick was refitted with tires, Albano drove to Eddie Vento’s bar in Williamsburg.
Nearly half an hour passed before Albano was out of the bar. Then he sat in the Buick with the engine running a few minutes before he pulled away. Billy followed the Buick to the Ozone Park address in Queens where Albano’s ex-wife and son lived with her current husband, a Jewish guy named Ackerman. Billy made himself comfortable as he waited in his car parked up the block from where Albano would have to pass when he left on the one-way street.
Chapter 18
Louis was waiting for Nancy outside the bar on Jamaica Avenue. He appeared anxious. When she asked him what was wrong, he said there was something he needed to discuss, something important. Nancy could only imagine what it was this time.
He guided her inside the bar with the excuse he had to make a phone call. Nancy waited at a table while he used the pay phone in the back. She recognized two of the men sitting at the bar and the bartender from when she had stopped there earlier in the week. The bartender nodded before asking her what she’d like to drink. Nancy told him a white wine spritzer. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Louis had huddled inside the phone booth with the receiver to his ear. She lit a cigarette while she waited.
A few minutes later Louis grabbed his beer and the white wine spritzer off the bar. He brought them to the table, handed Nancy her drink, and said, “Cheers.”
Nancy touched his Budweiser bottle with the edge of her wineglass. “What’s it about?” she said. “What are we doing in here?”
“I figured we might as well have a drink since we can’t have sex,” Louis said.
“Bullshit,” Nancy said. “What is it? Really, Louis.”
A big, well-dressed heavy man carrying a sports jacket folded over his right arm walked in the bar. Louis waved at him, then asked Nancy for fifty dollars.
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