by Billy Taylor
Easy does it, I told myself. And no matter what happens, don’t do anything stupid.
A bald head poked over the back of the recliner, and a plastic tube ran from the chair to the oxygen tank beside it. I spied the picture of Frank Sinatra hanging over the TV, and as far as prized possessions went, it was pretty underwhelming. I took a deep breath and made a wide arc around the recliner, keeping my eyes on Fat Nicky the entire time. He didn’t grunt, snore, or fart, and I reached out for the picture. It came off the wall with ease, and I was about to slip it in my backpack when the telephone rang.
“What the hell—” Fat Nicky said.
I spun around, and as I aimed my gun at Fat Nicky things began to make sense. The house. The car. My messed-up financial aid. They were all distractions to keep me from figuring out the real plan, which was for me to kill the man sitting less than five feet in front of me. The key to the entire charade was the part about faking Fat Nicky’s death. It was so stupid in an O’Rourke-kind-of-way that my family knew I would fall for it.
Fat Nicky rose from his recliner, and I pointed the gun at his forehead.
“Sit down, old man,” I said in the toughest voice I could muster.
He settled back in his chair and looked me up and down. “Okay,” he said in a weary voice. “Who sent you?”
I was too busy figuring out my next move to answer his question. The person who had made that phone call knew exactly when to do it, which meant that either Roy or Uncle Wonderful was outside watching my every move. They must have thought I’d freak out and shoot Fat Nicky the moment the phone rang. Or that he’d shoot me. Either way, they’d get what they wanted, which was money or revenge.
“C’mon, kid,” Fat Nicky said. “The least you can do is tell me who’s putting up the capital to have me killed.”
Funny you should mention that, I wanted to reply. Because I was thinking the same thing.
“You want to know something?” he said. “I’ve been sitting in this chair for over a decade waiting for you to come. When you didn’t show after the first couple of years I started to think you weren’t coming, and that maybe they forgot about me.” He started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“I never thought you’d be so young and innocent looking. Are you toilet trained yet, baby?”
“Keep your hands where I can see them, and you can call me whatever you want. Just remember, I’m the person who’s going to hear your last words, so if you have something memorable to say, you should be nice to me.”
“You’re smart with your mouth, but you’re not too smart doing a job. If you were, I’d be dead already.”
“And miss all this great conversation?”
Fat Nicky smirked and said, “It was Martinelli who hired you, wasn’t it?”
“No.”
“Pozzaglia?”
“Sorry.”
“Juliano?”
“Not even close.”
“Who was it then? I give up.”
“Mr. DeNunsio.”
Fat Nicky blinked. “Who the hell is that? I don’t know any DeNunsio.”
“His nickname was Sally Broccoli.”
“I don’t know any Sally Broccoli, either.”
“You killed his family in the eighties.”
“What are you talking about? I never killed anybody.”
“What about those guys in that restaurant in Bay Ridge? The newspapers said you killed two of them.”
“I haven’t been to Bay Ridge in, like, twenty years. I think you broke into the wrong house, kid.”
I held up the picture and said, “Then why does the person standing next to Sinatra look so much like you?”
“Because it is me. So what? Last time I checked that wasn’t a reason to shoot a guy.”
“No, but blowing up a man’s family is.”
“Blowing up a—Hold on a second. Who do you think I am?”
“Fat Nicky Gangliosi.”
“The mobster? I thought he was dead.” The oxygen tube fell from his nose, and he reached up to adjust it.
“Put your hand down, or I’ll shoot you in the stomach.”
“Fine. Go ahead and shoot me. But I’m still not Fat Nicky Gangliosi.”
“Then who are you?”
“Louie Jingo.”
“That name means nothing to me.”
“Big deal. I’ve never heard of you either.”
But what he said made sense. The wide open backyard, the big picture window, the absence of bodyguards. Retired or not, no former mob boss would ever leave himself so vulnerable.
“Open your shirt,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“Open your shirt. Fat Nicky was shot in the chest. If I don’t see any scars, then I know you’re not him.”
He did as I asked and his chest was clean.
“Happy?” he asked.
“Overjoyed.”
“Just out of curiosity,” he said, buttoning his shirt, “how much are you getting to take me out?”
“Four hundred bucks.”
Louie Jingo’s jaw almost fell in his lap. “Are you kidding me?”
“Why?” I asked. “Is that too little?”
“Abso-freaking-lutely. I should be worth at least twenty times that. Tell you what. Let me pay you ten grand, and we can forget all about this.”
“It’s not about the money,” I replied. “It’s about my freedom.”
“Bullshit. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this world, it’s whenever somebody tells you it’s not about the money, it’s all about the money.”
“Not for me.”
Fat Nicky snapped his fingers. “Now I know why I never heard of this Sally Broccoli character. He’s subbing you out.”
“What’s that?”
“A subcontractor. Somebody hired him to do the hit, and he hired you to do it for him. How’d you meet this guy, anyway?”
“In a nursing home.”
“Retirement money!” he said with a laugh. “This guy’s a beaut. Somebody pays him twenty Gs to whack me, and he slips you four hundred and hightails it to Miami Beach.”
“No way.”
“Believe what you want, kiddo. You’re being had. Sally Broccoli? Gimme a break.” Then his eyes grew wide and he shouted, “Now, Vito!”
I turned to see if someone was behind me as Louie Jingo jumped up and grabbed the end of my gun. It was a good move and might have worked if his fingers didn’t get caught up in the hose for his oxygen tank. I pulled the trigger, and he flew backward, hitting his head on a table.
“Jesus Christ,” he screamed. “You shot me.”
“No, I didn’t. That was just muzzle flash.”
Louie Jingo pulled his hand away from his chest and saw it was clean. “You’re right,” he said.
“Unfortunately, your head is another story.”
He ran his hand through his hair and his fingers were red with blood. “Damn, that really hurt.”
“You’ll live,” I replied as I picked up a pillow and wrapped it around the barrel of the Walther.
“What are you doing?” he cried.
“Saving both our lives.”
“Wait a minute, I—”
I aimed the pillow above his head and pulled the trigger three times fast. The pillow made an excellent silencer, but I forgot about the feathers, and they filled the room like the snowstorm outside.
“That was stupid,” I said, wiping a feather from my face.
“Are you out of your mind?” Louie Jingo hissed.
“Stop moving,” I said. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
I lowered the gun and looked around. “You have a first aid kit someplace? I need to patch up your head.”
“What do I look like? A park ranger?”
“I guess we’ll have to improvise. But first I need to get you away from that window so whoever’s out there thinks I really killed you.” I grabbed his ankles and said, “You know what I still don’t understand? If you’re a nobody, why would somebody pay twenty thousand dollars to have you killed?”
“Because a long time ago I stole something.”
“What?”
“Two million bucks.”
I let out a low whistle. “Two million. That’s pretty sweet.”
“Biggest mistake of my life.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t know it at the time, but the money was meant for a government sting operation. The job went bad, and by the time the dust settled, I had the Feds after me, the guys I robbed after me, and my ex-partners after me, too. So, as far as people wanting me dead, the list is as long as your arm. Just out of curiosity, what does this Broccoli guy look like?”
“Old, kind of tall, walks with a couple of canes.”
“And let me guess. His knuckles are covered with scars.”
“How’d you know?”
“Because his real name is Chaz Martinelli and he was one of my partners on the heist. I had really hoped the son of a bitch had died.”
“How come he changed his name?”
“Because he shot a treasury agent in the leg, and cops tend to have long memories about stuff like that.”
Now the con—with all its twists and turns—was coming into focus: Louie was lying low with the stolen money, and Chaz was hiding out from the Feds. He’d changed his name to Sal DeNunsio and at some point had a fling with my mother. Years later, my mother found out her old boyfriend was living at Shady Oaks and figured she’d con him out of his life savings. She lost some weight, got herself committed, and tried to convince Chaz I was his son. The only question remaining was whether my family was conning Chaz, or if Chaz was conning my family.
I dragged Louie Jingo into the kitchen with his oxygen tank still hooked to his nose and pulled a dish towel from a drawer. As I bandaged his head, I realized that he and I had something in common. We both had people who wanted to kill us for money we stole.
“And you know what the saddest part of my story is?” he asked.
“What?”
“The money was worthless. It was less than worthless.”
“Why?”
“The bills were marked. I tried to pass a couple and I nearly got pinched by a dozen treasury agents.”
“Do you still have it?” I asked.
“What? The money? Only an idiot would hold on to something like that.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Louie Jingo smiled. “Of course I still have it. I went through hell getting that money and I’ll be damned if I was just gonna throw it away.”
“Good,” I said, seeing a chance to get away from my family once and for all. “Because I want half of it.”
30
ONCE LOUIE JINGO’S HEAD WAS BANDAGED, I HAD TO MOVE fast. I didn’t know if Roy or Uncle Wonderful were still outside, and as much as I would have enjoyed flipping them off, I had more important things to do. Like getting out of there alive, for example. I drew the curtains over the big glass windows, and while Louie Jingo dug out his good name and made plans to leave Long Island permanently, I grabbed a couple of big plastic garbage bags and filled them with towels, frozen hamburger, and everything else I could find that looked like a dead body. After that, I smeared Uncle Wonderful’s gun and false teeth with Louie Jingo’s blood and stuffed them in a Ziploc bag. Then, for my last and most important trick, I dragged the bags across the backyard and dove into the canal with them clutched in my arms.
The key to everything was for my family to believe I had actually killed Louie Jingo. Lucky for me, the tide was going out, and the waves took the “body” with them. Unlucky for me, I had left my neoprene gloves at Louie Jingo’s house. I thought I could tough it out instead of going back for them, but by the time I got back to the Cheshire Arms my hands were swollen and burning with frostbite. I managed to drive the Accord to the Taco Bell, but if Claire hadn’t picked me up I never would have made it back to Shady Oaks.
“Oh my God,” she shrieked when I emptied out my backpack and she saw the Ziploc bag with the gun and teeth. “You didn’t—”
“Kill him? No.”
“But that blood. It has to belong to someone.”
“Oh, it certainly does.”
As we left Taco Bell, I told Claire about Louie Jingo, and how my family planned for me to kill him. From the expression on her face I could see that the gravity of my situation had finally become real to her. This wasn’t just a bunch of rich developers indicting one another for fun and profit. It was life and death.
“What are you going to do?” she asked. “Those people—your family—they’re still out there.”
“I know, and that’s why I need you to do something for me. It’s a little dangerous, and if you don’t want to do it I totally understand.”
“What is it?”
“I need you to go to Louie Jingo’s house, pick up a million bucks, then go back to school and wait for me.”
It was hell changing out of my wet suit in the front seat of the BMW, but fifteen minutes later I slipped into the Williams Pavilion and raced to the employees’ restroom. My hands were still swollen and throbbing, and I held my fingers under warm water to take the edge off the pain. It was just starting to fade when someone knocked on the bathroom door.
“Skip?” came a voice from the hallway. “Are you in there?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Valerie from the O’Neil Pavilion. You better come quick.”
“What is it?”
“A nurse found your mother on the floor of her room. They think she had a stroke.”
I followed Valerie to the O’Neil Pavilion, and when we got to my mother’s room it was like stumbling upon the scene of a car accident. A doctor, three nurses, and a pair of technicians were circling her bed and shouting at one another in rapid-fire medicalese. My mother looked completely out of it, but when I grabbed her hand her eyes lit up, and she made a croaking noise.
“What did she say?” I asked the doctor.
“I’m not sure, but it’s probably not what she intended. Garbled speech is a common symptom in these situations.”
“Is it permanent?”
“Too early to tell. We’re just lucky the nurse found her when she did. If it is a stroke, the sooner she’s treated the better.”
“When did it happen?”
“We can’t say exactly, but judging from her condition no more than an hour.”
An hour. Right about the time I was supposed to kill Louie Jingo. There was a clattering behind me and two paramedics rushed in with a gurney.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
The doctor flashed a light in my mother’s right eye and said, “We’re taking her to the hospital for a CT scan. Once we assess the extent of the bleed—if it is a bleed—we’ll know if we have to operate or not.”
“And if you do?”
“It’s going to be a very long night.” He flashed a light in her left eye. “You need to wait outside for the next few minutes. After that, you can ride with her in the ambulance.”
“Okay,” I said, and headed toward the door. Then something occurred to me, and I turned back to the doctor.
“Is it possible to fake a stroke?” I asked.
The doctor stopped what he was doing and looked at me like I was the one who belonged in a mental institution. “Maybe,” he said. “Why?”
“Just curious.” I glanced at my mother, and she quickly looked away. Bingo.
I stepped outside, and Valerie was waiting for me.
“How’s she doing?” she asked.
“The doctor’s not sure yet.”
>
“It’s a good thing they found her when they did. With stroke victims the sooner they’re treated the better.”
“That’s what he said.”
Valerie scanned the hallway. “I’m surprised your Uncle Wonderful isn’t here.” She grabbed the chart hanging next to the door and flipped it open. “He’s listed as her next of kin. They should have called him the minute they found her. It’s the law.”
That’s because he was too busy trying to get me killed, I wanted to reply. Instead I asked, “Who should have called him?”
“The nurse on duty.”
I was 90 percent sure Uncle Wonderful was the person who had been hiding in Louie Jingo’s backyard, but I needed proof and dialed Uncle Wonderful’s house on my iPhone.
“Hello?” answered the scratchy voice of my aunt Marie.
“This is Skip. I’m sorry for calling so late, but is Uncle Wonderful there?”
“No, the bastards took him away.”
“What bastards?” I asked. “Who took him away?”
“The Federal Bureau of Idiots, that’s who.”
“The FBI? What did they want?”
“How am I supposed to know? You think Wonderful tells me anything? He could be the president of the United States, and I wouldn’t know about it until two weeks after the inauguration.”
“When did they take him?”
“This morning while I was out shopping. They waited for me to leave so there wouldn’t be any witnesses if he fell on his way out the door.”
“Have you spoken to him?”
“No, he called his lawyer, and his lawyer called me.”
“I’m really sorry, Aunt Marie.”
“What do you expect? You play with fire long enough and sooner or later you get burned.”
“Did the people from Shady Oaks call?”
