“Yes, sir, Mr. Balboa,” I said, which are the only words Frank told me I could say in the event I met him—unless, of course, “No, sir, Mr. Balboa,” would have been more appropriate.
“Well that’s fuckin’ beautiful,” he said. “Young man like you embarking on a life of crime when you ought’a be shinin’ apples for your teachers, readin’ books and such. Boy, haven’t you heard that a life of crime don’t pay?”
I could not help but make a point of checking out the rich, tailored silk suit he wore, his custom-cobbled Italian shoes. “Obviously crime pays, Mr. Balboa, um, sir, or guys like you would do something else.”
You could chew on the silence that stifled the air, no one willing to react to my statement until they saw how Mr. Balboa did. Expressionless, he simply shook his head at Frank and said, “Out of the mouth of babes,” and walked away.
Hence, my street name.
Me and Sam exchange a few more memories about Frank and Connie, including the sad observation that they both died young, both of lung cancer in their midfifties and within a year of each other. “I miss them,” I say. “They treated me like their natural son.”
Sam nods and thinks a beat, leans over the bar, looks around, and lowers his voice as if to avoid electronic surveillance. “Speakin’ of sons, you hear what Leo did to those two mooks in here yesterday?”
“I did, yes.”
He slaps the bar top, shaking his head in wonder. “Handled ’em like they were fuckin’ tacklin’ dummies. A chip off the old block, man, chip off the old block.”
A door opens and closes in the distance behind me, followed by the creak of two sets of footsteps, then, “Babe.”
I turn, smile, and say, “Hey, Nico, long time.”
An old guy named Jimmy Coyle trails Nico, a sight that makes me uncomfortable.
I shake Nico’s hand, then Jimmy’s, saying hello to Jimmy but unsure whether he recognizes me. Me and Jimmy have known each other a long time, and Jimmy is not that much older than me; his mind, though, I hear, has worn out even faster than the rest of him.
Nico says to him, “You remember Babe Crucci, right, Jimmy?”
Jimmy Coyle’s eyes are blank. “Yeah, sure, how you doin’, Gabe.”
“Babe,” Nico says to him. “His name’s Babe, Jimmy.”
“Oh,” Jimmy says, and robotically sits in the stool next to me.
When Jimmy turns his back to him, Nico looks at me and twirls a forefinger around his ear. “Hey, Jimmy,” he says much louder than usual, touching Jimmy’s shoulder. “I need to talk to Babe in private. Sam wants to show you his new kitchen. Right, Sam?”
“Yeah, Jimm—”
Jimmy talks over Sam, his face reddening. “Yeah, that’s fine, fine. I’ll let you humps talk.” He jabs his finger at Nico. “Just don’t you forget what I told you back there, okay, Nico? I’m right, goddammit. You watch, goddammit. You just fuckin’ watch.”
“Sure, Jimmy, sure, I will.”
“C’mon, Jimmy,” Sam says with a wink. “I got us a fresh bottle of premium gin back here, my private stock.”
“Oh, boy,” Jimmy says, and practically jumps from his stool and heads for the kitchen door.
Nico sits on the barstool to my left, sighing and shaking his head. “Poor bastard.”
“No shit,” I say. “Getting old before your time is a real bitch. Just now, what was he claiming to be so fucking right about?”
Nico waves my question off. “Just bullshit,” he says, and brightens up. “It’s really good to see you, man. You look good.”
Me and Nico have already talked on the phone a couple of times, almost entirely about Leo, but this is the first time we have come face-to-face since my release. Nico grew up at the Venetian, and the way his eyes meet mine at this moment makes him a kid again in my mind: he is about to hustle a buck by offering to wash my car or pick up my cleaning, or is ready to tell me a funny story about how stumbling drunk one of the honchos got here at the bar the night before.
Nico looks at his watch. “Wish I had more time to spend with you, but I don’t want to be here when what you got going down here goes down. Darkie should be here soon. I filled Sam in on what he’s supposed to do, and everything else is set. You need anything?”
“Other than a day off and a little sanity, no.”
He gives me a knowing smile as he rises from his stool. “Let’s get together soon when we can do it right. Maybe get stoned and drunk on our asses.”
“How about later today at Joe’s place? Word is he is having a little get-together.”
He brightens. “Joe said nothing to me about it, but that’s not unusual. I’ll be there.” He gives me a wink and a pat on the shoulder and walks out.
Darkie D’Arco joins me at the bar a few minutes later, having parked his ride in the rear loading dock next to Jimmy Coyle’s. Jimmy walks out from the kitchen not long after that, and again I have to remind him who I am. Both Darkie and Jimmy have been connected to the Balboas and to Joe Sacci as long as me, more or less, and we have what turns out to be an uncomfortable reunion over drinks—at least it is uncomfortable for me. Darkie suggests we all have lunch in a private dining room in back, and Jimmy Coyle and I agree.
Unknown to Jimmy Coyle, this lunch was not the random occurrence it appeared to be.
Unknown to Jimmy Coyle, this lunch is business.
As nostalgic as my return to the Venetian has been, I must admit this is not where I wanted to eat lunch. The primary reason I did not want to eat lunch here is Maggie. Maggie wanted to have lunch alfresco at Café Bonaparte, just steps away from Hermosa Beach, where we would eat chicken salad spread on fresh croissants against the backdrop of crashing waves and screeching gulls. After lunch, we planned to buy updated clothes for me on the nearby Hermosa strip, then proceed to my house where she would serve me my daily lunch dessert—i.e., her.
I reluctantly canceled my date with Maggie this morning after Joe Sacci called at the tail end of my conversation with Chief. His call involved an offer of new business, business that led me to have lunch here at the Venetian with Jimmy Coyle and Darkie D’Arco. Believe me when I say Joe and Viktor had to promise me a lot of money to pass up my afternoon with Maggie—a lot of money.
Babe
Now me, Darkie D’Arco, and Jimmy Coyle are all seated in this private meeting room located in the bowels of the Venetian. We have finished our rib eye steaks and pork chops and our sides of spaghetti marinara. Aside from having to cancel my lunch date with Maggie, the other reason I did not want to eat here is the food I just ate. In addition to being the only bartender, Sam doubles as the only cook and triples as the only waiter. He fries a passable cheeseburger if what you are looking to pass is a deadly amount of grease through your arteries, and will also grill an edible steak or a pork chop when you first threaten him with immense bodily harm if he fucks it up. Sam also cooks pasta, of course, invariably spaghetti with a marinara sauce he claims is homemade. We all know, though, that his sauce is actually made and packaged by the Bertolli Company in quart-sized cans he hides in the pantry. Over the years we taunted Sam about a lot of things, but never, ever, about his counterfeit homemade marinara sauce. We always feared he would exact revenge by making it himself.
Sam cleared the dishes and left the room, having replenished our four top with a just-opened bottle of cheap Chianti, two bottles of beer, and a tall gin on the rocks with a squeeze of lemon. Up until now our conversation has been light and airy, the point being to put Jimmy Coyle at complete ease. Jimmy’s a full-time pimp and part-time bookmaker, an old warhorse whose mind, I am told, has slipped slowly over the years to the point where his big mouth has become a liability to others and, sadly, to himself.
Our conversation will now take a definitive turn toward the business Joe and Viktor are paying me to conduct. I know this because Darkie D’Arco just told Sam before he left the room to grill him another rib eye he can carry home. Sam knows from his previous discussion with Nico that Darkie really does
not want a rib eye. What Darkie really wants is for Sam to leave us the fuck alone and forget he saw us here today.
Forgetting who comes here and who leaves here alive are things Sam does very well.
Darkie sits to my immediate left. Darkie is of fair northern-Italian stock; his nickname originated as an ironic play on his blue eyes and once-wavy blonde hair. Now he’s completely bald, his body is as big as an upright safe, and his tiny head rests on top of it like a grenade. His face has taken a lot of punishment over the years, and the running joke is that one of Jimmy’s prostitutes once took a single look at him and shrieked in terror, saying later she freaked over his creepy resemblance to a fairy-tale monster she had nightmares about as a kid.
Darkie speaks with a croaky smoker’s voice. “So, Babe, you hear the rumor goin’ around?”
He gives me a conspiratorial wink, one Jimmy Coyle misses.
“About what?” I say.
“Macky,” he says.
“No, what is the word on him?”
“There are different theories,” Darkie says with an eye on Jimmy, “all of which include Macky leavin’ this world. Word on the street is buon’ anima, Macky.”
Jimmy Coyle sits to my right and closer to Darkie, silently gulping his tall gin on the rocks. The oldest guy at the table, Jimmy is a bald guy with no chin and a nose so small it would not be out of place on a six-year-old if it was not crawling with burst veins. A misaligned toupee rests on his head and his bloodshot eyes bulge behind thick eyeglasses. He looks eighty but is around sixty, rumor being his so-called alcoholism has aged him and given him his runaway mouth. Another theory is that Jimmy is suffering from Alzheimer’s or some such. Whatever the cause, Darkie and I have orders to discover the source of the so-called rumors that have spewed from Jimmy’s loose lips the last few days.
“That is too bad,” I say, casting a dead eye at Jimmy myself. “Macky was all right in my book.”
Jimmy turns his head away to avoid meeting my gaze.
Darkie says, “I heard a Cambodian gang hired two of Macky’s people to take out Macky and his bodyguards. He said the traitors were Latzo and Levitch. Joe found out about Levitch and Latzo almost right away, then later that night had the Russians take ’em out with a fuckin’ flamethrower.”
I say, “Hey, I saw the so-called gangland massacre reported in the Times. Coroner says it took the fire department so long to get there that identifying the bodies will be next to impossible. I would bet my retirement stash that somebody paid off the station captain to drag his feet.”
“Crispy fuckin’ critters,” Darkie says on my heels. “It’s like killin’ two birds with one stone, so to speak.” A chuckle. “You kill the fuckers and at the same time don’t have to worry about disposing of the bodies.”
“I don’t buy none of it,” Jimmy says, slurring and taking a deep drink from his gin, his third in our presence. He cuffs the moisture from his mouth and leans forward on his elbows. “Al Levitch was Macky’s niece, fer Christ sake, and worshiped the dog shit stuck on the soles of his shoes. And Latzo, c’mon, was just too fuckin’ simple to be a traitor. My guess is the Cambodian story is nothin’ but a ginned-up reason for Joe and the fuckin’ Russian to go to war with the gooks. Shit, Joe and this Tarasov hump are plannin’ a raid on the Cambodians this week. Friday, I think it is, they’re takin’ down a stash house on Fifty-Third near the projects over there.”
No one has told me about this; this is not surprising, considering I have one foot and most of my torso out the door of Sacci’s crew.
Darkie apparently knows nothing of this raid either, but it is difficult for me to say this with certainty. He casts a wary eye at me before he says, “Jimmy,” a mild but clear warning in his voice, “tell us what you know about this raid.”
Jimmy shrugs. “All I know is some Cambodian whore told Joe or somebody about some big delivery of smack or coke or some shit, and—”
“A Cambodian whore did what?”
Jimmy speaks louder. “What, you goin’ deaf? A Cambodian whore, a gook, told somebody about a shipment of horse the Cambodians have comin’ in at a plumbin’ company over there. Joe and the Russian then planned this raid. You got it now?”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it. Who told you all this?”
“Forget about it,” Jimmy replies, so blindly agitated and homeless drunk he cannot see the threat Darkie presents to him. “My point is Joe’s tellin’ people the raid’s some kind of vengeance for Macky, and that’s bullshit. Joe’s been plannin’ this thing before Macky died, and he didn’t tell Macky ’cause he knew Macky wouldn’t go along with it. So he got the Russian to go along with it, and they got together and wasted Macky. Now they’re tryin’ta sheep-dip Latzo and Levitch as traitors to cover their asses.”
“I asked who told you about that raid,” Darkie says, “and you better fuckin’ tell me.”
Jimmy belittles the question with a dismissive wave of his hand. “One a Macky’s guys, Grogan or Hill, fuck, I dunno. One of ’em, maybe both, maybe neither. What the fuck’s it matter?” He shakes his head, gulps more gin, and addresses the table. “What I’m sayin’ is, This Thing of Ours is goin’ straight down the fuckin’ crapper. Goddamn Russians have already been pushin’ us white men outta the big picture and now Joe’s sellin’ out Irishmen and givin’ Russians a even bigger piece. Mr. Balboa would’a already had you,” he says to Darkie, jabbing a finger in his chest, “splatter some fuckin’ brains and get the foreigners scramblin’ for the next boat home. Joe don’t have the stones for it no more. To hell with us, all Joe wants is to kill Irishmen and suck Russian dick.”
Darkie points the business end of a steak knife at Jimmy. “Grogan, Hill, or somebody else, you drunk fuckin’ Mick. Who told you about that raid?”
Jimmy sulks, gulps more gin.
“Jimmy?” Darkie says.
Jimmy pats his lips together like he just applied Chapstick and is evening it out, clamps them into a thin line and shoots Darkie a red-faced look of defiance.
At which point Darkie matter-of-factly jabs the point of his steak knife into the fleshy part of Jimmy’s cheek.
Jimmy clamps both hands over what, in light of the fate that will soon befall him, amounts to a minor injury, and howls, rocking back and forth in his seat. “Owwww, shit, goddamn you, what’d ya do that for, owwww, goddamn….”
Jimmy stands.
I stand faster, push him back into his chair and hold him firmly in place by his shoulders.
Darkie allows Jimmy’s howls to subside before he speaks. “Listen to me.”
Jimmy presses a napkin against his cheek, cuts his hate-inflamed eyes up at me, then settles them on Darkie.
Darkie talks in a calm voice. “I’ve known you a long time, Jimmy, and I like you. Babe’s known you a long time and he likes you as much as me. We don’t like hurtin’ you neither. The thing is, I don’t know nothin’ about what Joe and Tarasov are plannin’ to do to this fuckin’ gook stash house this week.” Darkie eyes me briefly. I nod and he continues. “Now, Jimmy, listen close. If this raid’s for real, and I don’t know that it is, but if it is, the reason I don’t know nothin’ about it is because Joe don’t want nobody to know about it, at least not nobody who’s not involved in it. And Joe’s gonna be real interested to know somebody’s blabbin’ about it and he’s gonna want to know who that somebody is. And I’m gonna tell him who that somebody is because you, Jimmy boy, are gonna tell me who it is.” He flicks the bloody point of the steak knife to within an inch of Jimmy’s right eye. “If you refuse to tell me again, this time I will stick this knife in your fucking eye and pluck it from its socket. Then, if you still refuse to tell me, to balance out your face I will pluck out the other one.”
His right eye riveted on the point of the knife, Jimmy says, “I want to talk to Joe.”
“Hold this stubborn Mick’s head still,” Darkie says.
I grab hold of Jimmy’s ears.
“All right, all right, shit,” Jimmy says as Darkie moves
into position to pluck out his eye. “Last night, at Casey’s bar over on Grand, Tommy Mosko told me about it.”
Something goes wrong in Darkie’s eyes, the smallest flinch. He clears his throat, twists his neck. “Oh, ah, thank you, Jimmy boy, for your willing cooperation.” Darkie withdraws the blade from the vicinity of Jimmy’s eye. He acts like he doesn’t want to ask the next obvious question, but he does, reluctantly, beads of sweat freckling his brow. “Now I’m gonna ask you another question: Since we all know Tommy Mosko’s always worked for Macky and has no ties to Joe or the Russian, how the fuck do you think he knows about this raid?”
“I. Don’t. Know. The only thing else Tommy said was that he knew Joe was trying to rig a race at Hollywood Park this week.”
Darkie casts a mischievous grin my way. “No shit? Which horse in which race?”
“Fuck if I know.”
“Jimmy?”
His face appearing as if he just walked out of a sauna, a constellation of sweat beading on his forehead, Jimmy says, “I don’t know. I swear I don’t.”
“Okay,” Darkie says, shaking his head and moving the blade closer to Jimmy’s eye. “Now, Jimmy, here’s the ten-million-dollar question, and you better be honest with me. Who else have you told about this supposed raid? If we ever find out you’re lyin’, we’ll fuckin’ kill ya, you understand that?”
Jimmy works his mouth around to build wetness, then gulps, thinking through his answer like his life depends on it; his eye depends on it, yes, but his life is beyond saving at this point. “I told Nico.”
Deadly Lullaby Page 13
