A Perfect Shot

by Robin Yocum

  Duke was a particular thorn to Tony. He was a guy who made a lucky shot in a high school basketball game and was still milking the moment two decades later. It grated on Tony that Duke would walk down the streets of Mingo Junction in work boots and faded blue jeans, and people still went out of their way to speak to him. Tony wore expensive Italian loafers and custom-tailored suits, but the same people looked at him with the malevolence they would a streak of dog shit on the soles of their shoes. Unless they owed him money, most people in Mingo Junction saw Tony DeMarco for what he was—a thug who had wandered out of Dago Flats under the wing of a Mafia don. You could dress him up, but he was still the same wop who used to roll drunks for pocket change.

  For years, Duke had been indifferent to Tony. He orbited Duke’s world, but always on the outer reaches of the solar system; he would pass by at family functions, but he had no influence on Duke’s daily life. Like everyone else in Mingo Junction, Duke knew what Tony did and for whom he did it, so he kept his distance. The closest Duke got to his brother-in-law was sitting across the table from him at Sunday dinners.

  Things between them changed the Saturday after Duke informed Nina that he wanted a divorce and she hit him with the frying pan. It was early afternoon, and Duke was working in the garage at his fishing cabin, the radio blaring, and he didn’t hear Tony walk up behind him. Tony grabbed Duke by the shoulder, spun him around, and jammed the barrel of a chrome-plated .22-caliber pistol into his mouth, splitting his upper lip before sliding it into the gap in his mouth where Nina and the frying pan had relieved him of his teeth. His left hand clutched Duke’s hair on the back of his head, and he pushed the barrel of the revolver deeper into his mouth. His eyes were dark, dead, and depthless. It was, Duke assumed, like being neck-deep in the ocean and suddenly finding yourself nose-to-nose with a great white shark. Simply, he was at Tony’s mercy. He saw Tony’s thumb roll back and heard the hammer click into place, and he thought the life of Duke Ducheski had come to an end.

  “I understand you want to divorce my sister,” Tony said. Duke was afraid to move or try to answer. The gun barrel was gagging him. Tony waited a long moment before speaking again. “She doesn’t want a divorce. I don’t know why she wants to stay married to a dumb-ass Polack like you, but she does. So, let’s make this easy. You forget about getting divorced, and we’ll all get along, understand?” Duke nodded. “Good. My sister’s bat-shit crazy and a pain in the ass. I got that. But you’re the one who knocked her up, so you’re going to keep her. You can keep pounding that little nurse on the side. I don’t give a shit about that, but there’s to be no divorce.” He pulled the gun out of Duke’s mouth and wiped it off on his T-shirt. “We have an understanding, right?” He pulled a clean handkerchief from his pants pocket and held it to Duke’s lip until Duke raised a hand and applied pressure to the pulpy mess.

  After a moment, Duke nodded his head and said, “I got it.”

  Tony slapped Duke twice on the open cheek. “Good boy.”

  Duke’s indifference to Tony died that day. It was replaced with a combination of loathing and abject fear. Like any predator, Tony had seen the fear flash in Duke’s eyes, and he knew the dynamics of their relationship had changed. Tony had inserted a gun into Duke’s mouth and just as quickly inserted himself into Duke’s psyche.

  Tony relished this, and in the ensuing weeks at dinner he would drape a heavy arm around Duke’s shoulder, pat him on the back, and call him “paisano.” Duke smiled and pretended not to be offended. As dinner finished one Sunday afternoon and the women began cleaning up the kitchen, Tony grabbed two bottles of cabernet and two glasses, squeezed Duke’s shoulder, and said, “Duke, my friend, my brother, let’s go outside and enjoy this beautiful afternoon.” Duke had planned to go visit Timmy. Instead, he obediently followed Tony to the side yard. Did he really want to be Duke’s friend? Probably not. He was simply enjoying the control he now held.

  It was a sunny afternoon and seventy degrees. They sat in two Adirondack chairs beneath a spreading maple that cast the entire side yard in shade. He poured a large glass of wine, tossed it back, and refilled his glass before offering Duke a drink. Duke took the bottle and poured himself a meager serving. Tony dusted the first bottle in short order. When he started on the second, his speech was slightly slurred.

  There is a myth regarding the code of silence in the Mafia. Duke could only conclude that it was a myth because the only member of the Mafia he knew was his brother-in-law, and after a few drinks Tony couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

  “I can’t drink too much,” Duke said. “I go on two weeks of midnight starting tonight.”

  “Why do you do that?” Tony asked.

  “Why do I go to work?”

  “Why do you go to work in that dirty-ass mill, busting your balls for chump change?”

  “Thanks for that.”

  Tony dug a hand into a front pocket and asked, “Do you know how much money I make?”

  Duke shook his head. “No.”

  “A fuckin’ lot, that’s how much.” He pulled his hand from the pocket and held an impressive wad of fifty-dollar bills in front of Duke’s nose. “I made more money last week than you’ll make in a year.” He lifted his left foot off the grass. “These shoes cost more than your house.” He pointed an index finger at Duke. “I could get you a sweet job with the Antonellis.”

  “Thanks for the offer, Tony, but I’m pretty content in the mill.”

  “You could wear a white shirt every day, and you wouldn’t be cleaning dirt out from under your fingernails all the time.” His eyelids drooped, and he gave Duke a smirk. “I read a book about Al Capone.” (Astonishing, Duke thought, because he wasn’t sure Tony could read.) “Did you know that when he went to baseball games, people treated him like royalty? He was like a fuckin’ god to people in Chicago.”

  “That’s your role model—Al Capone?”

  “You wouldn’t fuckin’ understand.” He finished off another glass of wine. “You’re a good paisano.” A bit of drool ran from the corner of his mouth, and he swiped it with a backhand, leaving a sheen of silvery spit on his black stubble. He sat in silence for a long minute, and Duke was ready to call it a day when Tony asked, “Do you know what I do, paisano?”

  “Sure, you’ve told me a hundred times. You’re an associate of the Antonellis.”

  Tony cinched up his eyes and shook his head, waving a hand in front of his face as though shooing a pesky fly. “No, that’s who I am. Do you know what I do?”

  “I’ve got a pretty fair idea.”

  “No, you don’t. You think you do, but you don’t. When Salvatore Antonelli had a problem . . .” Tony pointed a thumb to his chest. “He called me. Me! I was his number one man. Number one. You remember that science teacher from Steubenville who they found dead in the woods a few years back?”

  Duke nodded. “Yeah, I remember. The one who committed suicide.”

  Tony laughed and took another hit of his wine. “In a manner of speaking, yes. If you owed the Antonellis thirty large and had no way to pay it back, it would be suicide.” He roared at his own joke. “Kind of funny, he was this pillar of the community and won all them awards for teaching, but he was up to his queer ass in gambling debts.”

  “Whoa, Tony, maybe you . . .”

  “We were waiting for him in his house—sitting in the dark. He turns on the light and right away starts cryin’ and beggin’ us not to hurt him. I fuckin’ hate it when they cry. They should just take it like a man, ya know? I told him we just wanted to take a ride and talk, and the dumb-ass gets in the car. Personally, if I’m gonna get whacked, you’re going to have to do it right there, because I ain’t gettin’ in no fuckin’ car, I can tell you that, straight up. He’s in the car, blubbering and really pissin’ me off. He offered me a blow job not to kill him. Like I’d give up the chance to put one in his brain for a lousy blow job. I couldn’t wait to get his sorry ass out of the car so I could kill him. I put one in his temple and dropped the piece beside
him. It looked like a suicide.”

  “Holy Christ, Tony, I don’t want to know all this.”

  He laughed. “We’re paisanos, remember. More than that . . .” He poked Duke’s shoulder twice with an index finger. “. . . We’re family.”

  “You know who else I whacked?”

  “Tony, I don’t really want to hear about . . .”

  “Sammy Stein, that lousy Jew bastard.”

  Duke’s eyes widened at that bit of information. He was morbidly curious. “Sammy Stein? Really?”

  Stein was a prominent businessman in the Upper Ohio Valley. He had a large produce company in Weirton, owned a chain of seven drive-through package stores, twenty car washes, a scrap yard, and the Pier Restaurant in Follansbee. A few years earlier, he left for work on a Sunday morning and was never seen again. Rumors, speculation, and conspiracy theories filled the pages of the newspapers for months. It was one of the Ohio Valley’s great mysteries.

  “He only owed us a couple thousand bucks, but he was so fuckin’ annoying, I had to kill him. You know what I mean, right, when someone is annoying you so bad that you want to kill them?”

  “Not really, Tony.”

  He poured more wine, slopping as much outside the glass as went in. “I went to talk to him about his debt. Just talk, ’cause he was a good customer, but he was always a couple of bills in the red, and always fuckin’ whining about something. Perpetuating the stereotype, you know what I mean?” He laughed, then took a drink of his wine. “So, anyway, I go to talk to him, and he starts giving me a rash of shit. Well, you know what I want when I come knockin’ on your door? A little fuckin’ respect. You understand?”

  “I think so,” Duke said, recalling the day when Tony had put a pistol in his mouth.

  “I tracked him down at that fruit-and-vegetable warehouse he owned on the north side of Weirton. He holds out the money and, as I’m reaching for the dough, he drops it on the floor. Can you believe that shit? He drops it on the floor and says, ‘There’s your money, wop.’ It was a Sunday morning, fuckin’ Jew was the only one in the place. I thought, ‘What the fuck?’ I punched him in the face, and he hit the deck. Before he could get up, I took off my belt and looped it around his neck. I liked killing him that way because it gave the fat puke a little time to think about the gravity of his mistake. I wrapped him up in a plastic tarp and, here’s the funny thing, I came down here for Sunday dinner. I was inside, eating spinach-and-cheese cannelloni, and Mr. Jew was cooking in the trunk of my car. I had a guy who worked at the blast furnace at Homestead Steel in Pittsburgh who owed me a favor, and that night, good-bye, Sammy. Let me tell you something, if you got access to a blast furnace, it makes for a very neat job.”

  Duke had been curious about Sammy Stein. However, once he knew what happened, he wished he didn’t. It was dangerous information to possess, the kind that could cause you to disappear like Sammy Stein. They sat in the Adirondacks for a few more minutes until the wine glass slipped from Tony’s hand and he began lightly snoring. When Duke got home from his 12:00–8:00 a.m. shift, Tony was sitting in his car in front of Duke’s house. As Duke made his way up the sidewalk, Tony stepped out of the car and stood between the open door and the frame and said, “About what I told you yesterday . . .”

  Duke said, “I was pretty tired, Tony. I really don’t recall our conversation.”

  “Good,” he said, reaching over to pat Duke twice on the shoulder. “Very good. Sometimes it’s good to have a faulty memory, huh?”

  It was the fourth Sunday of September 1993. Following dinner, the men were in the screened-in back porch, playing pinochle; the women were sitting around the kitchen table, drinking white wine, gossiping, and laughing too loud. Duke slipped out the front door and took a seat on the glider on the porch. It was his favorite place to escape. He could rest his feet on the railing and overlook a slow bend in Cross Creek. It was a peaceful, quiet time. Smoke billowed out of the mill, caught a zephyr from the west, and dissipated beyond the West Virginia hills. In the distance, the muted roar of the open hearth vibrated through the valley.

  Duke pushed slowly against the railing, enjoying the solitude. The sun was sinking over the hills to the west, casting long shadows over the yard. His eyelids were beginning to sag when he heard the door on the screened-in back porch slap shut. A moment later, Tony came around the side of the house, his cell phone in one ear, an index finger pushing against the other. In the gloaming, Duke could see the glow of red covering Tony’s neck and ears. It was several minutes before he spoke.

  “Yeah, I heard you the first eight times you told me. . . . I’m not being a wise ass, I just need to know what you want me to do about it . . . I don’t fuckin’ know. How would I know? . . . I haven’t seen him . . . How should I know? A month, three weeks ago, I don’t keep track . . . I will . . . I will . . . I said, ‘I will,’ goddammit . . . Huh? . . . Are you accusing me? . . . What? . . . You know . . . Uh-huh . . . Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . I’m going to hang up now before I say something I’ll regret . . . I am . . . I will . . . I’m hanging up. Good-bye.”

  Tony snapped his phone shut, then bent over and rested both palms on his knees. He took a few cleansing breaths, then walked toward the house, trudging up the stairs to the front porch.

  “Trouble in paradise?” Duke asked.

  Tony jerked his head toward the voice, surprised to see his brother-in-law on the porch. “A little bit,” Tony said. “I need a lift up to Steubenville.”

  “No, I . . .”

  “Come on, goddammit. Give me a ride. I’m about out of gas and the station closed at five. I just need to run up to the newsstand and check on something. It’ll take five minutes. Up and back.”

  A few minutes later, Duke was behind the wheel of the Jeep, with Tony in the passenger seat, heading toward Steubenville. Duke slipped a Dean Martin CD into the stereo just to screw with Tony. As they pulled onto Ohio Route 7, Tony’s grinding teeth could be heard over the hum of the engine and “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head?” They were barely out of town when Tony rolled his right fist into his left palm and said, “He disrespects me every chance he gets.”

  “Who?”

  Tony reached over and turned off the CD player. “Who? Who do you fuckin’ think? That little prick Joey Antonelli. Didn’t you hear that conversation back there?”

  “I heard you. I didn’t know who you were talking to.”

  Tony twice punched the passenger door.

  “Hey, easy.”

  The muscles in Tony’s face strained and air whistled through his nostrils. “You know, the old man, Salvatore, he’d call me and we’d have a conversation that might last four seconds. He’d say, ‘Tony, we got a problem with So-and-So. Deal with it. Let me know how it goes.’ Click. He trusted me to handle it, but that whiny scrotum Joey, he treats me like I’m fuckin’ retarded. I’m the most loyal guy he’s got, and you know what I get in return? Smart-ass remarks and disrespect. I’m always taking it up the tailpipe from that son of a bitch. He expects me to do all his dirty work, all his heavy liftin’, but he don’t show me no respect. None. He wants to think I’m a joke, fine, I’m going to show him a joke.”

  He banged on the door three times.

  “Tony, easy, this Jeep has to last me.”

  “You know what I’ve been doing?”

  Again, Duke shook his head. “No idea.”

  “I’ve been tape-recording that dumb-ass. I got him giving orders to whack a couple of guys, shit on how he buys and sell drugs, him bragging about choking one of his whores to death, him talking about the gambling operation and how he’s laundering money and hiding it from the IRS. It’s dynamite shit.”

  “You what?” Duke asked, again, finding himself the recipient of information that he would rather not possess. “Have you lost your marbles? If he finds out, he’ll kill you.”

  “He ain’t gonna find out. I got cassette players by every phone in the house, and I record his phone calls.” He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled
out a cassette, and held it out where Duke could see it. “Joey’s such a dipshit. He gets a couple drinks in him, and he can’t keep his mouth shut.” Duke looked over at Tony. Obviously, he didn’t see the irony in the statement. “The old man, he never talked about anything unless it was one-on-one. Then, he always knew who he told. Joey, he talks all the time. He’s got diarrhea of the mouth—always runnin’. He’s going to try to run me out of the operation one of these days, or worse. When he does, I’m going to use the tapes to blackmail his ass.”

  “I don’t need to know a lot about this, but don’t they implicate you, too?”

  “If I have to use them, the feds will give me immunity. I’m small potatoes compared to an Antonelli. He would be a real trophy. But, I won’t have to. If you tried something like this with Il Tigre, he’d slit your throat. Joey, he’s a puss. When I’m ready, I’ll blackmail his ass to take control of my territory. I’ll run the show and cut him out of the mix.”

  Duke pulled up in front of Herald Square News & Tobacco. “Tony, you wear me out,” Duke said, nodding toward the front door. “Remember, you said five minutes.”

  He watched from the curb as Tony entered the store. There was a brief exchange between Tony and a thin, balding man with a cigarette tucked behind his ear. The man disappeared into a room in the back, then returned a few minutes later with a thick-shouldered guy who had a round head and slicked-back, salt-and-pepper hair. They spoke for a few minutes. The big man shrugged, and the side of his lip curled. Tony shook a finger at the man, who looked as though Tony had insulted his mother. The man jabbed at Tony with an index and middle finger, between which was the stub of a cigar, one end soaked in spit.