by Robin Yocum
There was an eerie safety to the darkness. He recalled how he had feared the darkness as a boy, how the rumble of the night trains would shake their house. He would cower beneath the covers of his bed, imagining the locomotives and their cyclopean head beam as hulking monsters seeking him out. Now, there was an odd security in the dark. It gave him a few uninterrupted hours to think.
Tony DeMarco wasn’t the least bit concerned about being connected to Moonie’s death. It would never happen. The chief had obviously been bought off, and in a few weeks the investigative file would be relegated to a metal cabinet of officially still-open, but forgotten, cases. Any physical evidence linking Tony to the murder, if it had existed, had disappeared.
It was a cruel injustice.
If Tony DeMarco and Joey Antonelli were ever to be punished, it would have to be by Duke.
And he had a plan.
It had started to formulate the night Moonie was killed. The plan hummed in his head like the windows in Duke’s Place hummed with the sway of the passing coal trains. But unlike the vibration of the windows, which rested when the trains passed, the droning in Duke’s brain refused to cease. It was there, morning and night, at the funeral and at the cemetery; it was in his head at the wake and when he had last made love to Cara; it was there as he wept at Fort Logan, and it was there, at that minute, as he sat alone in the restaurant. At first, it had been like a jigsaw puzzle that someone had emptied on the floor, hundreds of scattered pieces, half upside down, none connecting. But the more he thought, the more the hum continued, the more the plan began to take shape. The outside edges were complete by the time he left the cemetery; the wide blue sky of his puzzle filled in the days after Tony had revealed the frozen head of the Troll. By the time Duke had finished target practice that morning, the puzzle was largely complete. Now, only a few scattered pieces remained.
He had thought it out, ruminated on it over and over, planned it down to the most minute detail. Regardless of the outcome, there was an incredible price to be paid. If he failed, he would pay with his life. If it worked, at best, he would sacrifice his very being.
He loved being the “Duke of Mingo Junction.” He could barely remember a time when it wasn’t part of his persona. He loved it when people walked into Duke’s Place, looked at the black-and-white photo of him throwing up what a few seconds later would be the winning basket in the biggest game in school history. He listened intently—and with no small degree of pride—as his customers retold their version of the story, then pumped money into the jukebox to listen to Red Kilpatrick deliver the Miracle Minute.
If he tried to bring down Tony DeMarco and Joey Antonelli, the “Duke” would cease to exist. Nicholas Ducheski might live on in some form, somewhere, but “the Duke of Mingo Junction” would disappear from the earth.
He hated to give that up.
But he also didn’t see that he had many alternatives. A few months earlier, he had a wonderful life. Duke’s Place was open and successful. Moonie was his business partner. He had a woman he loved more than he thought it possible to love another human being. Now, that was all in shambles. The restaurant was no longer his own, and Cara had been forced out of his life. His best friend was lying in a hillside plot at the New Alexandria Cemetery.
He owed it to Moonie.
Such a decision wasn’t without its consequences. What about Timmy? If he left town, who would take care of him? Duke knew the answer. Nobody, and certainly not Nina. Timmy would be little more than the last tomato on a late-summer vine, alive by the simple fact that nutrients were being pumped into his body until it rotted and died.
That night, the life he had long known, the life of the Duke of Mingo Junction, began a slow walk toward a distant and unknown horizon as he committed to his plan.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The lobby of the Pittsburgh office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was cramped and full of vinyl furniture and tattered, outdated law-enforcement magazines. It looked more like the lobby of a hack doctor than that of the nation’s premier law-enforcement organization. The bureau’s shield was framed and hanging on the back wall. A woman with platinum hair and a mole on her cheek the size of a nickel sat behind a frosted-glass window, which she rattled to the side when Duke entered the lobby. “Can I help you?” she asked with a tone that indicated she really didn’t want to.
“I’d like to speak to an FBI agent, please,” Duke said.
She worked her chewing gum and stared at him for a moment. “Do you have an appointment?”
He shook his head. “No. I didn’t know I needed one.”
“What’s this in reference to, sir?”
“I’d rather not say until I’m talking to an agent.”
One brow arched, and she glared at him.
“What’s your name, sir?”
“Ducheski. Nicholas Ducheski.”
“Spell that, please.”
“D-u-c-h-e-s-k-i.”
“Thank you. Have a seat, Mr. Ducheski,” she said, sliding the window closed with the perturbation of someone whose routine has just been disturbed.
Twenty minutes later, the door opened and an agent finally came into the lobby. His name was Michael Kinnicki. If there had been a thousand people in a room and Duke had been asked to pick out the cop, he would have put his finger on Kinnicki. He had a tired, chimp-like face with a beard so dark it had a purple hue over loose jowls. His hair was thin and smeared down with gel, and he had a wild spray of salt-and-pepper eyebrows meandering across his forehead. The tie was slightly askew over a white, short-sleeved shirt.
Duke stood and extended his hand. Kinnicki shook it without conviction. Duke sensed Kinnicki had been through this drill too many times. People would wander in off the street to share their stories of flying saucers and extraterrestrials, Kennedy-assassination conspiracy theories, their proof that the KGB had planted radio transmitters in their brains, or any number of other wild, delusional tales. As a young agent, Kinnicki had probably been amused by the walk-ins. Now, he just wanted them out of the office as quickly as possible.
He was, however, polite to a fault. “Mr. Du-kesky?”
“Ducheski. Nick Ducheski.”
He nodded. “What can I do for you, sir?”
“I have some information I want to give someone.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
Duke looked around the empty room. “Do you want to talk out here?”
The agent winked. “It’ll do for now.” He pointed to an empty chair. “Have a seat. What’s on your mind?”
“It’s a complicated story.”
“They always are,” Kinnicki said, the slightest of smiles pursing his lips. “Give it a whirl.”
“Well, a buddy of mine was murdered and—”
“Homicide investigations usually fall under the jurisdiction of the local authorities,” Kinnicki interrupted, hoping to end the conversation in a hurry. “We don’t really investigate many murders.”
Duke could feel a wave of heat building under his collar as Kinnicki attempted to put him off. “Actually, I have a pretty good understanding of what the FBI does, Agent Kinnicki. A buddy of mine—my best friend in the world—was murdered by the mob. The local cops are covering it up, and I’m being blackmailed for a different murder. So, as you can see, I’ve got plenty of problems that the FBI can’t help me with. But, I think I can help you with some of your problems, which would in turn help me with mine.”
Kinnicki nodded. “How so?”
“The guy who committed the murder that I would like to see avenged is Tony DeMarco.”
The agent frowned, as though searching the memory banks for the name. “Tony DeMarco?” he said. “I should know the name. Help me out. Who is he?”
“He controls the gambling and the drug traffic in the Ohio Valley between East Liverpool and Wheeling. He’s an enforcer for Joey Antonelli.”
“How do you know this?”
“First of all, it’s common knowledge. But, I know more than
most people because he’s my brother-in-law.”
Agent Michael Kinnicki’s bushy brows looked like two cats had arched their backs on his forehead. “Why don’t we go back to my office?” the agent said.
A second agent joined them in Kinnicki’s office, which was a sparse nook whose only adornment was a framed black and white photo of Kinnicki and seven other agents gathered around a very constipated-looking J. Edgar Hoover. He had an institutional steel desk, in front of which were two chairs, government-issue, with soiled green cloth seats. It took Duke the better part of an hour to explain the sordid tale. Duke was truthful about everything except for the part about burying the Troll’s head. He told them that Moonie had put the head in one of his old bowling bags and buried it somewhere.
“Where?” Kinnicki asked.
“I don’t know,” Duke said. “He didn’t offer and I didn’t ask. All I know is that it was somewhere around Mingo Junction.”
The yarn left Kinnicki scratching his greasy scalp. The second agent, Forrest Gilman, who was the Pittsburgh office’s organized-crime expert, thumbed through a manila file folder, occasionally lifting his head and scrawling a terse note on the inside of the folder.
“And you are married to Tony DeMarco’s sister, right?” Gilman asked.
“Yes.”
“That would be Nina?”
“It would.” Duke swallowed. “How did you know that?”
“We have a pretty extensive dossier on Mr. DeMarco.” He flipped back to the front page of the folder. “Anthony Dominic DeMarco. AKA: Little Tony, Tony the Tiger, Tough Tony, and . . .” The agent looked up from the folder and grinned. “. . . my personal favorite, Queer Tony.”
“Queer Tony?” Duke asked.
“Didn’t know that one, huh? Yeah, your brother-in-law likes guys. It’s not something the Antonelli family likes to promote. But trust me on this one. It’s true. He’s not too happy with himself, either. When he’s done, he likes to beat the living hell out of them, bust ’em up pretty bad. All that pent-up guilt. Must be tough on a good Catholic boy with all that Italian machismo.”
Duke found the news slightly amusing and tried to choke back a grin.
Gilman tossed the file folder on Kinnicki’s desk and leaned back in his chair, lifting the front two legs off the ground. “I’ve been tracking the Antonelli crime family for fifteen years, starting with Salvatore and now his kid. I’ve watched that prick DeMarco a thousand times. He’s a nasty one. I’ve followed him and a half a dozen other Antonelli lieutenants all across the country—Florida, New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Jesus-knows-where-else. You know what I’ve got on them? Lots of file folders full of lots of rumors. Convictions? I got dick. They’ve been impossible to pin down.”
Duke nodded. “Understood. So, maybe I can help you.”
“Maybe you can,” Gilman said. “Are you part of his inner circle?”
“No. Actually, I’m about as far on the outside as you can get.”
“Can you work your way in?”
“I doubt it. If I wasn’t his brother-in-law, I doubt I’d still be alive. But suppose I could produce irrefutable proof that DeMarco and Antonelli are involved in organized crime—maybe not get them for my friend’s murder, but what if I was able to prove some other things?”
Gilman leaned forward on his chair, settling it on all fours, and rested his elbows on his knees. “If you’ve got something on your brother-in-law that you’d like to share, we’d love to listen.”
“And if I produce something, something good, then what? Who protects me?”
Gilman shrugged. “That depends. If your information is good enough, we’d protect you.”
“Yeah, but for how long? The Antonellis have long memories.”
“Forever. If you have information on Joey Antonelli that could help us put him away, we could get you in the federal witness-protection program—give you a new name, new job, new life. But the information would have to be exceptional. And you have to ask yourself, ‘What’s it worth?’ I’ve got to level with you. It would be extremely difficult to move and take a new identity with your wife being Tony DeMarco’s sister.”
Duke shook his head. “It’s not as much of a problem as you might think.”
“Well, then, the ball’s in your court,” Gilman said. “How bad do you want to avenge your buddy’s murder? Because it seems to me that this is your only option. The police chief is going to let this go cold, and we can’t help you there. You give us some concrete information that will jam up Tony DeMarco and Joey Antonelli, and we’ll take good care of you. Frankly, you probably don’t have enough to put them away. It takes a hell of a lot more than hearsay—you know, the he-said, she-said stuff. You have to have tangible evidence. However, just so you know, the offer’s on the table.” Gilman pulled a business card out of his shirt pocket and handed it to Duke. “Just for the record, I’d love to see Mr. DeMarco and Mr. Antonelli as cellmates in a federal penitentiary somewhere, but I’m not sure you appreciate just how nasty these people can be. Think long and hard. You might be better off to find a new best friend and get on with your life.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Thursday was pinochle night at Carmine’s Lounge, and it generally lasted until two o’clock Friday morning. The cast of regulars included Nate Shaw, the owner of Shaw Motors, who had thick and powerful hands, the lines and fine ridges of which were caked with decades of axle grease that he would take to his grave; the Honorable Judge of the Court of Common Pleas Hickman Jewell Pryce; ne’er-do-well Ugo Moretti, whose only job was as a part-timer on the Mingo Junction street crew and who lived in a scroungy flat above the VFW, but who always had cash for a card game; and Joe “Daddy Fats” DiCola, who owned the Rathskeller Restaurant in Steubenville and was a boyhood friend of Dean Martin. After he became famous, Martin would sometimes visit DiCola at the Rathskeller and treat the diners to a song or two. After this occurred a few times, DiCola would periodically tell a few well-placed blabber mouths, “Dino might be coming in Saturday, but keep it to yourself.” It would soon be all over town, assuring Daddy Fats a full house on Saturday, even though Martin wasn’t within three thousand miles of Steubenville, Ohio.
Carmine hated pinochle night. It lasted too late and invariably ended up in a shouting match, generally between Nate and Ugo. Nate owned the largest automobile dealership in the valley and had no tolerance for the indolent Ugo. However disreputable and lazy Ugo might have been, he was a tremendous pinochle player, and in reality this was what really angered Nate.
For hosting this weekly lovefest, Carmine received 10 percent of the pot. The Judge and Daddy Fats always spiffed him anywhere from fifty to a C-note each, depending on their luck. So, Carmine generally walked away with three or four hundred bucks, plus whatever he made from setting out a cooler of iced beer. Times being what they were, he couldn’t afford not to host the pinochle game.
He also did it to keep the judge happy. Since he was operating a front business for the Antonellis, Carmine never knew when he might find himself standing in front of his honor. Judge Pryce was one of the few honest judges in the county, a devoutly religious man, a Methodist, who viewed gambling as a minor sin, a vice he was entitled to for dispensing a dose of the Lord with his justice. He frequently asked those convicted in his court if they had asked Jesus for forgiveness of their sins. Looking for an opening, the convicts would respond in the affirmative. “Yes, sir. I’ve seen the error of my ways, and I pray for forgiveness every night.”
The judge would smile and nod, and say, “My son, you should know that the Lord Savior Jesus Christ forgives you of your sins. And, I forgive you of your sins. But the state of Ohio demands that you do six to twelve years in the penitentiary before forgiveness is granted.”
The pinochle game ended at 1:30 on this Friday morning, and without incident. Daddy Fats and Nate lost a couple grand early and couldn’t dig themselves out of the hole. They quit three thousand down. Daddy Fats grunted a good night and gave half a
wave with a gnawed and soggy cigar butt. Ugo took his money and scooted. Nate said he didn’t understand why Ugo couldn’t spend some of his earnings on a box of breath mints. The judge simply pulled on his sport coat, tugged on his tweed cap, and nodded as he and Nate left together.
Carmine locked the door behind the judge, then quickly went to the back door and moved the deadbolt into the locked position. It gave him a chill each time he locked the back door, as though he was racing against time, a child trying to lock a door before a nameless monster burst inside. However, Carmine’s monster had a name—Tony DeMarco.
Carmine had seen a subtle change in Tony over the past few weeks. He had been too friendly. Chummy, in fact. It was too much out of character not to raise suspicion. He continued to squeeze Carmine for every dime, but he was almost apologetic about it, blaming it on the pressure he was receiving from Joey Antonelli. Carmine knew better. Tony DeMarco never did anything without a reason. He had started asking questions about the business, always in a coy manner, as though he was simply making conversation and really wasn’t interested in the answer. But Carmine knew he was listening to every word, absorbing every nugget of information. Tony wanted the lounge. That would give him a legitimate front business from which to run his operations, and, if it ever became an issue, it would keep the Internal Revenue Service off his back. Tony believed he could launder a lot of money through the lounge.
There would come a time, Carmine assumed, when Tony would lean on him to sell the lounge for a pittance. Tony would come into the lounge one day, drape one of his hairy, muscular arms around Carmine’s shoulder, putting a clamp of a hand on the old man’s trapezoid muscle, and say, “You’re getting kind of old for this business, don’t you think, Carmine?” As he spoke, he would tighten his grip on the muscle, reinforcing his message. “I think you should sell this place, Carm. Go south. Enjoy the rest of your life. You never know how long you’ve got left, you know what I mean?”
