“Yeah, in fact I ran into her a couple of weeks ago. She’s getting married again.”
“Well, good for her. What about you—when you gonna get married again?”
“Maybe never.”
“I bet you’re seeing somebody, aren’t you?”
“I wish I was.”
“Really, what’s her name?”
“There’s no name.” “You can tell me.”
“You’re barking up the wrong tree. Hey, listen, I really came over to talk to you about Nicky.”
The playful smile left her face and she looked down at the green tile floor. “I’m worried about him, too,” she said. “He just is not getting over his dad’s death.”
“Or Steve’s,” I said.
She wiped her hands on a dish towel, then pulled out the chair across the table from me and sat down.
“It’s affecting his work, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” I said. “In fact, I’m thinking of taking him off the street.”
“Can he do some paperwork or something, behind a desk?”
“Well, that’s the problem. Guys are going to think he’s getting a break because he’s my cousin. Then they’ll stop talking to him, stop being friendly. It could make things a lot worse.”
“Can’t you do anything, Eddie?”
“I don’t know. Has he talked to you at all about it?”
Aunt Janet shook her head. “He won’t open up. Maybe he will with you.”
“I’ve tried.”
“Keep trying. You know he worships you.” She put her hand on my hand. “Ever since you were kids, you know that.”
“What am I going to do, take him to a ballgame?”
She thought for a moment, then smiled. “That’s a good idea, Eddie, that’s an excellent idea. Nicky loves baseball, just like his father did.”
That’s how Nick and I ended up sitting in the rain that night at Veterans Stadium, getting soaked to the bone and watching the Phillies get their butts kicked.
Our seats were out in the outfield, in left, but at least we didn’t have to see the expressions on the Phillies’ faces as they struck out, one by one. It started raining, not heavily enough to stop the game, but steadily, and it was like there was a mist between us and home plate. It was warm, so we didn’t mind getting wet, but as the game wore on and the Phillies fell further and further behind, most people left for good. Nick and I just sat there, eating our four-dollar hot dogs and drinking our five-dollar beers, watching the green artificial turf get darker and darker.
For a while we just talked about minor stuff, office gossip, nothing serious. By the sixth inning, we were the only people left in our section, there was just no one else around. We moved up to the front row, as close to the field as we could get, and put our feet up on the rail.
“Nick,” I said, once we were settled into our new seats. “You never did tell me about how Uncle Jimmy died.”
“Sure I did.”
“Well, two sentences maybe. But not how it happened.”
“Why do you want to know all that for?”
“I don’t know, maybe it’ll make it easier for me to deal with it. It’s hard to accept that he’s gone.”
Nick watched the game in silence for a while, then finally turned to me.
“It never would of happened, Eddie, if he didn’t keep makin’ me go up on the roofs. He should’ve just let me be a cop.”
I knew that was something Uncle Jimmy was never willing to do.
When he decided to retire, he tried to get one of his sons to take over the family roofing business. All three Bari boys had worked on the roofs in high school, and even after they got out. Sometimes I joined them to pick up a little extra money. Nick hated it more than any of us. He hated the tar steam, hated having to get the tar off his clothes and his face and hands. He said that whenever he’d go out with a girl, he was sure she could smell the tar on him.
Uncle Jimmy had first tried to get Chris to become his partner. But he didn’t get far—Chris was already a successful electrician, and didn’t want to get back on the roofs. So then my uncle turned to Matt, the middle son. But Matt had his heart set on becoming a chef. He was going to restaurant school, and working part-time in the kitchen at Lucky’s.
That left Nick, and Uncle Jimmy started putting tremendous pressure on him to take over the business. Nick told his father a million times he wasn’t interested, but it was like Uncle Jimmy had cotton stuck in his ears.
Aunt Janet always said Nick became a cop because of me, but I knew a big part of it was wanting to be finally free of his father. Uncle Jimmy never forgave him for it, he even stayed away from Nick’s graduation at the police academy.
We sat there watching the game a little longer, then Nick said, not looking at me, “You really want to know what happened?”
“Yeah, I do.”
It took him another three minutes to begin.
“It was a Thursday, my RDO.” That was Regular Day Off. “My father calls me at five-thirty in the morning and says he wants me to go with him on a job. I told him I had worked till midnight the night before and me and some of the other guys from the district had gone out drinking till about three in the morning.
“You know my father, he was the type of guy, you could tell him that stuff, and it was like he wasn’t even listening. ‘I need you on a job,’ he says. ‘Three guys called in sick. I got to get on the roof myself. I need one more man.’
“I could hear my mother in the background telling him to leave me alone. But my father only ever heard one voice: his own, you know that. I felt like asking him, Did you call Chris? Did you call Matt? But he would’ve just said, Oh, they work today. Like he ever called them, even on Saturdays. He always called me, just me.
“What could I do, Eddie? Whenever he asked me, I couldn’t say no. He was my father. I had to go, I always had to go. It got to the point where I was afraid to pick up the phone. It was driving me crazy. It was like he had something in his head that prevented him from letting me live my own life. I used to picture myself as a cop, forty-five years old, my father still calling me to go work a roof. He just wasn’t going to let go.
“One time I talked to my mom about it, she said she’d talk to him. I don’t know what she said, but for the next six months he never called me about a job. Whenever I’d stop by the house for dinner or whatever, he never brought up the subject. But I knew my father. I could tell he was thinking about it. I knew that sooner or later he would start calling me again.
“And of course he did. The first time, I just flat-out refused. I told him I was a cop, not a roofer. Of course he hit the ceiling. ‘You’re too good to be a roofer, is that it? You’re too good to help your father when he needs your help?’ So I went over and did the job. Whenever I’d stop by the house, me and my father would always argue and end up yelling. Mom tried to stop it, but as soon as she left the room we’d start yelling again.
“He’d always say, I was his last hope. If I didn’t take over the business, he’d have to sell it, and everything he worked for his whole life would be gone. Like that was my fault. I tried to tell him that he should just take the money and enjoy it, but he always yelled back at me, ‘It ain’t the money. It ain’t the money.’ But, you know, Eddie, he never said what it was, never. Eddie, look!”
One of the Phillies had hit a deep drive right at us, and we jumped to our feet. It looked like we’d be able to just reach out over the rail and grab the ball, but as it sailed through the air, the rain seemed to get in its way, pushing it down toward the earth. The Astros left fielder was waiting when the ball gave up the fight ten feet in front of the warning track. Nick and I looked at each other, shrugged, and sat back down.
We watched the game for a while without saying anything. Nick was building a neat little stack of empty beer cups at his feet.
Finally, he looked at me, and asked, “Want to hear the rest of the story?”
“Sure.”
“Like I said
, the morning that he died my father called me up about five-thirty. I think I was still half drunk, I only had about two hours of sleep, I told him to get someone else. He said he couldn’t get no one else, and if he didn’t he would lose the job. So I said, so what, what’s the big deal about one fuckin’ job. Can’t you lose one fuckin’ job?
“I had never cursed in front of my father like that. He got real quiet, and then he said, ‘The job is at 7923 Pine, does that mean anything to you?’ I said no, and he said, ‘Have you ever heard of Mickey Bravelli? Well, this is the house of Mickey Bravelli’s mother. You want me to tell Mickey Bravelli I couldn’t put a roof on his mother’s house because my son was too lazy to get out of bed in the morning?’
“My first reaction was to say, yeah, what do you care about Bravelli, let him get someone else to give his mother a new roof. But I couldn’t say that, I didn’t want to put my father in that situation.
“So the next thing I know it’s seven in the fuckin’ morning and I’m up on Bravelli’s mother’s roof. Fortunately it was the flat kind, those are easier to do. There were two other guys there who worked for my father, Johnny Presario and Ralph Knox, I don’t know if you know them. Good guys. So it was just the four of us, but that’s all you really need.
“I didn’t say nothing to my father all morning, I just did the work. But I was mad the whole time. I was thinking, why do I have to be up here? Why can’t he get enough people so that when they call in sick, he doesn’t have to call me? Why does he always call me, why not Chris, why not Matt? Why doesn’t he let me live my own life? I just kept getting madder and madder. It got to so I wouldn’t even look at my father. He didn’t notice, which got me even more upset. We stopped for lunch at eleven, and I’ll tell you, I was about ready to explode.
“Ralph had went down to the corner to get me and Johnny and him some hoagies, and we ate on the steps of a house across the street. Usually we would of hung out in front of the house we were working, but considering whose house it was, we decided not to.
“My father didn’t eat with us. He said he had some work at the office and drove off in the truck. It was a nice break not having him there, and I started to cool down a little. I figured just four more hours and I could go home.
“Just as we’re getting back on the roof, my father comes back. He starts climbing the ladder, but then Mickey Bravelli drives up, so my father gets back down and starts talking to him. After a couple of minutes, my father calls out, ‘Yo, Nick,’ and I come over to the edge of the roof and he waves me down. ‘I want you to meet someone,’ he says. So I climb down the ladder and take off my gloves and my father says, ‘Mr. Bravelli, this is my son Nick, my youngest.’
“That was the first time I had ever met him, and you know, Eddie, I remember thinking, this guy’s nothin’ special, just another criminal, just another asshole like the kind I lock up every day. My father said why don’t you get back on the roof, so I climbed back up the ladder.
“OK, after a while my father comes up on the roof, and says that Mr. Bravelli has gone inside his mother’s house. He says that this Bravelli is going to invest some money in the business. I just look at my father like he’s crazy.
“'Listen, Nick,’ he says. ‘I want to buy a couple more trucks, expand the business. Right now, I only got three crews. With this money, I can build it up to six. Double the money I’m takin’ in.’
“'You gonna go partners with him?’ I ask. ‘'Cause if you are, you ain’t going to double your money. He’s going to take all the extra.’ My father shook his head. ‘No, we got a deal. I pay him back such and such a month. I got it figured out.’
“The whole thing didn’t make no sense. My father was almost sixty years old. Instead of thinking of retiring, here he was talking about expanding the business. There would be no way he could keep track of everything unless he hired someone to help him. My father was still looking at me. His eyes were kind of soft, if you know what I mean, like they used to get when I was a kid and he would say, ‘Let’s go buy you a baseball glove’ or something like that.
“I got a knot in my stomach. I knew what was going on. My father wanted me to be the one to run the business. That was the whole reason he got me to come today. That thing about three people being sick was probably bullshit. He wanted me to meet Bravelli and then make the pitch to me. And you know what? I was right. The very next thing my father said to me was, ‘You come work with me, Nicky, I’ll give you half of the business, yours to keep. And when I retire you get the whole thing.’
“I told him for the eighty millionth time that I was a cop, not a roofer. So he says, ‘Forget about that cop bullshit, you can make a lot more money with me. That’s why I got Bravelli—with him we can build up the business, we could be the biggest roofers in Westmount.’
“I couldn’t believe it. Nothing I was ever going to say was ever going to convince him. He wanted what he wanted, and he didn’t care about no one else. ‘You never listen to me, do you,’ I said. And he said, ‘I know what’s best for you. Come work with your father.’
“I told him this was my last time on a roof. I said, ‘I’ll finish this job, but that’s it.’ So now he’s yelling. ‘Whaddaya mean, that’s it? I got it all planned out.’ I started yelling back at him.
“I said, ‘Chris didn’t want to be a roofer, you said OK. Matt didn’t want to be a roofer, you said OK. Why does it have to be me?’
“So my father said, ‘'Cause you’re all I got left. I need you. Your father says he needs you and you just turn your back on him.’
“Eddie, I was tired of him puttin’ this guilt trip thing on me. I just walked over to the ladder to get off the roof. So I’m walking over there, and my father catches up with me and grabs my arm. He’s yellin', ‘Where do you think you’re goin'? I worked out a deal with Bravelli. What am I gonna tell him?’
“So I yell back, ‘You want to put me in business with a gangster? What kind of father are you?’
“So he yells, ‘Don’t you ever talk to me like that. Don’t you ever talk to your father like that.’
“I’ve never seen him so upset, even when my brothers and me were kids and got into trouble. I knew he couldn’t see straight, and I had a sort of feeling, like that he was so upset he might fall. Right then, I should’ve tried to calm him down, tell him I would think about it, apologize for the way I was acting. If we were going to argue, we shouldn’t do it on the roof. That was the first rule—don’t do nothin’ on the roof that could get someone hurt.
“All it would have taken was for me to say, ‘O?, I’ll think about it. I appreciate what you’re doing.’ But I was upset, too. Like father, like son, you know. So I didn’t say nothing. I didn’t really think he would fall.
“OK, what happens next is that he turns away from me real quick, and walks toward the ladder. I knew he wasn’t watching where he was going. Right before he reaches the ladder he turns back toward me and yells, ‘Don’t you ever talk to me like that again.’ And when he turns back around he trips over an empty tar pail.
“It was like I knew it was going to happen, Eddie. It was so weird. I thought he might catch himself, but he was too close to the edge. He went over, looking up like he was looking at the clouds. I wanted to grab him back but it was too late, he was too far away, and then I couldn’t see him no more. I looked over the edge and he’s lying on his back next to the step. The roof is three stories high. I get down the ladder as fast as I could and as soon as I got to my father I can tell he’s dead.”
Nick looked at me for a moment, then turned away. I knew then that he would blame himself the rest of his life, it didn’t matter what I said, what anyone else said. He would carry it with him until he himself was in the ground.
FOURTEEN
My pager woke me the next morning, its beeeep, beeeep, beeeep boring a hole through my head until I opened my eyes and slammed my palm down on my alarm clock.
Beeeep, beeeep, beeeep.
I found my pants, found my pager sti
ll hooked to the belt, checked the page, didn’t recognize the number, and went back to bed.
Ten minutes later, it woke me again. Same number. I should have just turned the pager off and got some more sleep, but I was curious. Someone really wanted to reach me.
“This Eddie?” a voice asked, when I called the number.
“That’s right.”
“Hey, pal, long face no see.”
Sounded like Max Tuba—he had his own special way with the English language. I wasn’t sure it was him, though. Max was an old mob snitch, but I had long ago lost contact with him.
“Is this who I think it is?” I asked.
“Is that a trick question?”
“Is what a trick question?”
“Sometimes,” he said.
“What?”
“Exactly.”
“What?” I asked again.
“Exactly,” he said. “Sometimes ‘What?’ is a trick question.”
It was definitely Max. Our conversations always sounded a little like Abbott and Costello.
“I got to talk to you, pal,” he said. “How about lunch?”
“Listen, I’m not in the Organized Crime Unit anymore.”
“I know that. You’re in the Twentieth. I don’t care, I still got to talk to you.”
I hesitated. I couldn’t imagine what Max could tell me that would be very important.
I heard a woman’s voice in the background, and then Max said, “Gotta go. How about our McDonald’s on Ridge, at high noon?”
I told him OK. At least he had picked a classy restaurant.
When I pulled into the McDonald’s a few hours later, I spotted Max’s big yellow Lincoln Continental in the parking lot. The bright sunshine glinted off the Lincoln’s shiny chrome bumpers and side-view mirrors, and slid off the roof and hood in all directions, so that it looked like the car was generating its own light.
I parked my Blazer a few spaces away, and headed for the entrance. The smell of French fries washed over me in a wave, opening my nostrils and making my mouth water. Nothing like McDonald’s fries. It was one of those clear July mornings that can trick you into thinking the summer’s never going to get stifling hot. I had on khaki shorts and a light blue golf shirt, and as I walked through the lot I enjoyed the feel of the cool breeze on my arms and legs. I almost forgot why I was there.
Sons of the City Page 16
