Johnny Porno

by Charlie Stella

  “Billy?”

  “I knew it’d be you. Tell me.”

  “I didn’t do anything. I’m alone. I want to talk.”

  “I have an appointment, Kathleen. An important appointment.”

  “Give me five minutes. We need to talk.”

  “What about?”

  “Victor Vasquez.”

  “What about him?”

  “Did you kill him?”

  A pause had followed.

  “Billy?”

  “This conversation being taped?” he’d asked.

  “How could you ask that?”

  “I’ll ask it again, you really want me to.”

  “I’m not taping you, Billy,” she had told him. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I don’t feel comfortable talking on phones anymore, Kathleen. Things get taken out of context over phones.”

  “I’m not coming home until I know you didn’t do it.”

  “I already told you I didn’t.”

  “I don’t know if I believe you.”

  “I really was on my way out,” Billy had said. “Did I mention I have an important appointment.”

  “Billy?”

  “I don’t know why you’d ask me something like that,” Billy had said before he hung up.

  Kathleen had held onto the receiver a long time after the call. She’d felt paralyzed with fear and then she was angry for letting things get so out of control. Their conversation had kept her up most of the night. It continued to haunt her today.

  Billy had made a point of saying he had an important appointment. Kathleen feared it had something to do with John Albano. Lately Billy had been forcing her to repeat Albano’s name before and during sex. He’d done the same thing with Victor Vasquez’s name prior to his murder.

  Kathleen was sure Billy had murdered Victor Vasquez. She felt sick but was too scared to move. It was noon before she finally got out of bed.

  Chapter 34

  The Buick made the turn onto Main Street in Northport and was slowing down when Nick Santorra pulled out of the gas station less than a block away. He had been waiting for John Albano to make the Northport stop since one-thirty.

  He had borrowed a two-year-old brown and beige Chevy Monte Carlo from Mike DiBella at the bar. Nick had claimed he had a family emergency and that his wife had taken their car. He kept his eyes focused ahead as he slowly reached for the ball peen hammer he had slid under the driver’s seat earlier.

  Nick placed the hammer between his legs as Albano parked at the curb and got out of the Buick carrying a small gym bag. There was a large office building at the corner. Albano walked around the corner toward the loading dock. Nick glanced at the time and saw it was two-thirty.

  He figured he had ten, maybe fifteen minutes before Albano would return. He drove past the Buick and made a U-turn at the next corner. He took his time driving back, slowing down to stop alongside a fire hydrant half a block from the office building in case Albano had forgotten something and returned to his car prematurely.

  Nick double-checked the people traffic on both sides of the street. Except for one kid playing stoopball, there were mostly older people passing on Main Street. He pulled on the red baseball cap he’d taken from his son and jerked down on the front brim. The cap was too tight and hurt his forehead where the bump he’d received from Albano was still showing. He cursed from the pain, then grabbed the hammer, wrapped it with a towel and slid out of the Monte Carlo.

  He had left himself three possible escape routes: a left or right at the immediate corner, or the most direct route back to the highway, a straight drive back down Main Street. There were several lights he’d have to negotiate, but there were other cross streets he could use in the event he was chased.

  He took one last look at the people traffic on Main Street before approaching the Buick. He had brought the towel to muffle the sound and intended to break both windshields and at least one of the passenger windows. As he reached out over the hood of the Buick, the towel came loose and slipped off the end of the hammer.

  “Shit,” he said.

  He reached for the towel but the wind blew it off the hood.

  Nick glanced over his right shoulder, then brought the hammer down hard. The noise stunned him; it was like a gunshot. A giant spider web formed from the middle of the windshield, but the glass didn’t break. Panicked at the sound the hammer had made, he ignored the other windows and ran back to the Monte Carlo. He started the engine, checked his side view mirror for traffic, then raced away from the curb.

  As he turned right at the corner, Nick saw the kid that had been playing stoopball staring at him. He drove another few blocks before turning left for Main Street. It should’ve been one block over, but wasn’t there. He turned right at the next corner and drove another block before turning left once more.

  “Fuck,” he yelled when he couldn’t find his way back.

  * * * *

  Her former mother-in-law was in rare form when Nancy picked up Little Jack a few minutes before three o’clock. The boy had just run out to the car when Marie Albano waved Nancy closer to her front door to give her a piece of her mind.

  “You should quit saying nasty things about John in front of his son,” the old lady said. “It’s not right. Some day that boy will figure it out, what you’re doing.”

  “Why don’t you mind your own business?” Nancy had told her.

  They had never gotten along, even before Nancy married John, but Marie Albano was Little Jack’s favorite grandparent. Nancy figured it was because of the way the old lady doted on her only grandchild. Nancy’s mother had remarried several years ago and was living in Florida. She sent birthday and holiday cards when she remembered, but hardly ever called.

  “You’re not fooling anybody,” Marie Albano had said. “No wonder Nathan left you. Good for him.”

  Nancy had flipped the old lady the bird.

  She had arranged to drop Little Jack off at a house in Lynbrook where one of his classmates was having a pool party that started at three o’clock. Nancy had wrapped a model airplane as a gift.

  Louis wanted her at the bazaar no later than five o’clock, but she was already running late. It was close to three when she stopped at an ice cream parlor on Merrick Boulevard in Valley Stream. Six tables with umbrellas dotted the area alongside a small parking lot. Nancy ordered her son a vanilla malted while he talked with two kids sitting with their mother at one of three occupied tables. Nancy waited, paid for the malted, then asked the woman watching her kids if she’d mind watching Little Jack while she made a few phone calls.

  She used a pay phone alongside the wall of the ice cream parlor facing the small parking lot and called the bar in Williamsburg. Nancy feigned panic when someone answered.

  “Is John Albano there?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Is John there? John Albano. This is his ex-wife. It’s an emergency. I think our son was kidnapped.”

  “Jesus, lady, you sure?”

  “I don’t know. He was there and some guy took him I think. I can’t find him.”

  “I’ll get him the message. Where are you?”

  “I’m not home. Let me give you this number but I don’t know if I’ll be here when he calls.”

  She gave the pay phone number.

  “Alright, lady, I’ll find him.”

  “Thank you,” Nancy said. “Please, hurry.”

  Then she hung up, rolled her eyes and looked at her watch. She was supposed to call Louis at another pay phone, but decided to call Nathan first. She had to look up her sister-in-law’s phone number in her address book before she dialed.

  “It’s me,” she said when Nathan answered.

  “Nancy?”

  “I just said.”

  “What are you calling here for?”

  “To let you know I did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “Called John’s bluff. Now we’ll see how much he cares about his son.”

  “What are
you talking about?”

  “What I told you yesterday. What I wanted to bet you yesterday but you were too cheap.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I told him Little Jack was abducted.”

  “What!”

  “That’s right. A few minutes ago and now it’ll be all day before he gets back to me. His son will be sleeping in bed before we hear from his father.”

  “You told the man his son was kidnapped? What’s wrong with you?”

  “Don’t be a sucker all your life, Nathan. It’s the only way to prove to you I was right.”

  “You can’t do that to a person. He’ll be frantic.”

  “I’ll win the bet is all that’ll happen.”

  “Call him back and tell him what you did,” Nathan said. “Don’t make the man suffer.”

  “You see what I mean, how you are? He’s more important than me. Why don’t you call him?”

  “I will. Give me his number.”

  “Oh, you’re such a dope sometimes.”

  The operator interrupted the call for another dime. Nancy deposited two nickels and said, “You still there?”

  “You have to call John and tell him what you did,” Nathan said. “Please, Nancy.”

  “Jesus Christ, Nathan, why can’t you side with me on this? Just once, why don’t you?”

  “Because it’s crazy. I don’t know why you did it, but it’s wrong.”

  “Maybe I did it for us,” Nancy said. “Ever think about that? To see if you would side with me for a change instead of defending John all the time. Maybe I wanted to see if you’d care about me for a change.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  “Nathan?” she said.

  “You’re full of shit,” he said. “I don’t know what this is about, but I know when you’re full of shit. I hope you didn’t do something you’ll regret. For your son’s sake, I hope you didn’t.”

  “Oh, fuck you,” Nancy said.

  She slammed the receiver down hard and had to walk off her anger before going back to the phone to make the call to Louis. She went through her purse to find another dime while Little Jack sat with the woman and her kids.

  It took her a few minutes before Nancy found a dime and when she did it was between two five-dollar bills. The cash reminded her about John and that he’d be getting robbed by Louis sometime after she made the call. It made her stomach queasy to think she would be responsible if anything bad happened.

  She glanced at her watch and realized she had wasted too much time thinking about it. Either she went ahead with Louis on this and they had something to start over with or he’d cut her off once and for all and find somebody else. It was a big move, he had told her, but one they could build off of once they had the money.

  Nancy dropped the dime into the coin slot and dialed Louis’s number. He answered on the first ring.

  Chapter 35

  “He had a red hat and jeans and something was hanging around his neck,” the kid had told John. “Then he got in a brown car and drove that way, down that street.” The kid pointed at the cross street alongside the office building. “This towel was wrapped around the hammer.”

  He knew who it was as soon as the kid mentioned something was hanging around his neck, but now he had the towel, too, a souvenir he’d like to ram down Nick Santorra’s throat.

  John wrapped his right hand with the towel and lightly pressed on the windshield to see if it would give. It was loose but wouldn’t break through. He sat behind the wheel and could see enough of the road to keep driving. He fished a single dollar bill from his pants pocket and handed it to the kid.

  “Thanks,” he’d told the boy.

  That had been a few hours ago. Now he was barely able to see above the spider web of cracked glass and had three more stops.

  It was getting close to six o’clock when he made it to Rockville Center, his next to last stop. They were showing the film in the basement of a karate school on Sunrise Highway. The guy in charge had decided to give another showing when he saw John was late. There were ten customers watching the movie.

  “How much longer?” John asked.

  “She just did the deep-throat thing,” the guy in charge said. “About forty minutes, I guess, but a guy Eugene called and said you should call the bar when you got here.”

  “Alright,” John said. “You got a phone I can use?”

  He was brought upstairs to the karate school office. He used the phone there and called the bar. He was put on hold when somebody strange answered the phone. John figured it was one of the bus boys.

  A few seconds passed before Eugene was on the line. He said something that nearly stopped John’s heart. Then his heart was racing and he couldn’t stop asking questions. Eugene shouted at him to calm down and write down the phone number he was giving him. John did as he was told.

  “She call the police?” John asked.

  “She didn’t say,” Eugene said.

  “Jesus Christ. She call back?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Tell her to stay put if she calls again.”

  “Of course.”

  “And do me a favor and call this number in case she’s there,” John said. He gave Eugene his ex-wife’s home phone number.

  “You want us to send somebody your last stop?” Eugene asked.

  “Yeah, please,” John said. “It’s Valley Stream.”

  “Okay,” Eugene said.

  John hung up and immediately dialed the number Eugene had given him. The line rang five times before Nancy answered.

  “It’s me,” John said.

  “Jesus Christ, you took your time about it.”

  “Where’s Jack?”

  “I don’t know. I think somebody took him.”

  “What do you mean, you think? Where are you?”

  “The bazaar I wanted you to take him to on Merrick Boulevard.”

  “You call the cops?”

  “No, I’m afraid to. He went in a big tent and hasn’t come out yet. I’m watching out front.”

  “What?”

  “Just come, John, okay? I’m scared shitless out here. I’m afraid to leave to make the call.”

  “Didn’t you ask someone for help?”

  “I can’t, god damn it! Just come, okay? We’re on Merrick Boulevard off Liberty, the bazaar in the park there. Hurry!”

  John nearly dropped the phone when she hung up. He raced down the stairs where he was told there was still twenty-five minutes left in the movie.

  John wasn’t hearing it. He didn’t bother counting the tally and stashed the money in the gym bag already stuffed with cash from his other stops. He was in the car a few minutes later, jumping the light at Sunrise Highway as he sped east toward Valley Stream.

  He was thinking nothing made sense as he weaved in and out of traffic and finally had to slow down when he spotted a police cruiser on the opposite side of Sunrise Highway. Nancy had claimed she couldn’t call the police, yet she had made the call to the bar. Or had he heard her right?

  He couldn’t think straight. He glanced up at the rearview mirror to make sure the police cruiser was still on the other side of the highway divider, then floored the gas pedal and went back to weaving around cars moving way too slow.

  * * * *

  Today Louis had worn his ponytail tied up under a hat. He’d also had Holly draw pictures on his legs with a ballpoint pen that looked like tattoos from a distance. He wore an oversized long-sleeve shirt and high-top sneakers. A slim-jim was tucked down the back of his shorts.

  Nancy had called the bar a few hours ago and was supposed to be outside the bazaar at five o’clock but wasn’t there yet. Assuming she dropped the kid off at the pool party, what she had said she would do, it might add another ten, fifteen minutes to her time before she was in position to meet Albano whenever he showed up. Allowing for an extra few minutes, she was still half an hour late.

  Louis had already parked close enough to the bazaar so he could spot
John Albano’s car when it pulled up to the bazaar entrance facing Merrick Boulevard. The trick would be keeping each woman from seeing the other. He had Holly lay down on the back seat just in case Nancy spotted his car. After fifteen minutes with no sign of his ex-wife, Louis became concerned Nancy had screwed something up. It was another ten minutes before he finally saw her in his rearview mirror.

  Nancy paced back and forth underneath the welcome sign to the bazaar while Louis grew concerned Albano wasn’t going to show. Suddenly he saw Nancy step back closer to the entrance, her arms waving toward the street. Then he could hear Albano’s car before he could see it. He watched as the Buick stopped for a red light, then edged its way through the light and pulled up to the curb.

  Louis thought he could see the windshield was shattered. Then Albano was out of the car and running around the front end toward the bazaar entrance. Louis grinned when he saw Albano wasn’t carrying anything. His grin widened when he saw Nancy waving her ex-husband toward the big tent.

  “Finally,” he said.

  “Everything okay?” Holly asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go. You’re driving.”

  He had already scoped out the bazaar and knew the big tent was deep and wide with several rows of individual games of chance. In the farthest corner from the mouth of the tent was the goldfish toss. There was an exit behind the goldfish stand that led to a parking lot. Nancy was supposed to bring her ex to the goldfish toss, then out into the lot before she told him it was just a bet. Louis would only need a few minutes to boost the car and get out of there.

  He ran toward the Buick as soon as Albano disappeared inside the tent. He spotted the gym bag at the base of the passenger seat and crowded up close to the door to hide his using the slim-jim. Ten seconds later Louis had the door open and immediately went to work on the ignition system. It took him less than a minute to start the car. Then Holly backed up alongside him in his car.

  His plan was to take the money somewhere safe and hide until he knew Nancy had held her water. John Albano would have his hands full with the guys he worked for. The mob would assume the robbery was an inside job.