“He's leaving,” Tommy said. “You got the stuff?”
Nicky nodded and said, “Listen, I opened one of them. It's not what you think it is.”
“What do I think it is?”
“I don't know, but not this,” Nicky said. “It's Black-Planet Twol Bootlegged master copies of the computer chip.”
Tommy stared at the backpack. “That's serious. Let me see.”
Nicky handed him one of the packages. Tommy quickly unwrapped it, whistled and wrapped it back up. “C'mon. Let's get this over with.”
They left the school grounds, going away from the church. At the next corner, Nicky said hello to Mrs. Felco and two other women.
“Tell your grandmother Angela Cortona said hello,” one said to Nicky.
A block on, Nicky was greeted by Mikey, who ran the corner store.
“Hey, yo, Nicky. Whassappening ?” “I'm running an errand for my grandmother.” “Good kid,” Mikey said. “I'll see you around.” When they were away from him, Tommy said, “Do you know everybody?”
“It's not me,” Nicky said. “It's my grandmother.” “And your uncle,” Tommy said. “Turn left here.” Soon they were in a neighborhood that Nicky didn't know. There were fewer Italian names on the shops. The streets were emptier. There were no old men sitting on the stoops.
“Where are we?” Nicky asked.
“This is near where we met that guy with the fake twenties,” Tommy answered. “That candy store is two blocks that way.”
Nicky turned in the direction Tommy was pointing—and saw the man with the yellow skin standing next to an open car door, staring at the two boys.
“Tell me that ain't the guy,” Tommy said.
“That is the guy,” Nicky said.
“Hey!” the yellow man shouted. “Stop right there, you punks!”
Then he was running toward them.
Tommy took off down the block. Nicky ran after him. At the corner, Tommy said, “I'm going left. You go right. Meet me at the corner of Benson and Twenty-fifth. Go!”
Nicky, grateful that he'd put on his new black sneakers, tore down the next block. When he turned to look, he saw that the yellow man had turned left, too, and was catching up to Tommy.
Nicky couldn't run away. Suddenly afraid for his friend, he reversed direction and started running after Tommy and the yellow-skinned man.
After two blocks of running, Nicky had almost caught up to them. Tommy was nearing the corner. The yellow-skinned man was a half block behind him. Then Tommy fell. The blue dry cleaning package skidded away from him. Nicky saw Tommy grab the package. Then Nicky watched as the yellow man caught up and grabbed Tommy. Nicky turned and ran the other way.
He stopped at the next corner and hid behind a stoop. His heart was pounding and his chest hurt when he breathed. He was drenched in sweat. He wiped his face with his shirtsleeve and peeked around the corner. The yellow man was yanking Tommy down the block by his shirt collar. He had one hand stuck in Tommy's back, too—holding a knife, or a gun? What could the yellow man want? Could he know about the packages?
Then Nicky remembered. Tommy had told him they weren't going back to see the yellow man again. Nicky said, “We have to give him his change.” Tommy answered, “I took care of that already.”
Tommy had cheated the yellow-skinned man—and now this!
Nicky sat down and asked himself again, What would a goomba do? Well, he would not abandon his friend. He would not be afraid.
Nicky was no goomba. He was very afraid.
He started walking to Twentieth Avenue, to Jerry's Fish.
The front door was locked, and Nicky could see through the window that there was no one inside. He went to the end of the block, found an alley and followed that until he came to the rear of the fish store.
A man wearing rubber boots was washing out the inside of a panel truck with a hose. It smelled like dead fish. The man nodded at Nicky and jerked his hose at the back door.
It was dark inside, a big empty warehouse. Nicky could see light at one end. He went toward it, his shoes slipping on the wet concrete floor.
The light came from an office. Nicky pulled the door open and looked inside.
A middle-aged man in a cardigan sweater was sitting at a desk, talking on a cell phone. He waved Nicky inside and said into the phone, “Tomorrow morning. Five o'clock. I'll be waiting.” He clicked the phone closed and held out his hand.
Nicky reached into his backpack, took out the blue paper package and set it on the desk.
The man looked at the package. “No good, kid. Where's the other one?”
Nicky took a deep breath. “We had a little problem. My friend, with the other package, he got attacked by this guy who maybe he owes money to. The guy took the other package. Now, I'm sure they're going to work it all out. And Tommy—that's my friend—I'm sure he's on his way here now.”
“No good, kid,” the man said. “Who's the guy that attacked him?”
“He's this guy with yellow skin and a long overcoat. He—”
The man held his hand up. “Kid, you're in trouble,” he said. “Let me show you what happens to people who steal from people like me.”
The man stood and grabbed the door of a big walk-in refrigerator. He pulled it open. A cloud of vapor escaped. Through the cloud, Nicky could see the body of a boy, frozen solid, standing in the cold. He gasped.
“Out,” the man said.
The frozen boy took a step forward. He was holding a small package. It was Tommy.
“You too, you idiot,” the man said. Nicky took his eyes off Tommy and looked back into the deep freezer. The yellow-skinned man, stiff and shivering, stepped into the little office. “You and that idiot dry cleaner, hiring kids to deliver this kind of merchandise! Little Johnny's going to cut your heart out.”
The yellow-skinned man said, “D-d-d-dominick, you do-do-don't understand!”
“Shut up, you Popsicle,” Dominick snarled. “And give me that package.”
Tommy, shivering from the cold, dropped the blue package onto the floor. Then, bending down, he glanced at Nicky and winked. He tucked the package under his arm and squatted in a football stance.
Then he shouted, “Go, Nicky!” and shot to his feet and charged into Dominick. He hit the middle-aged man hard, waist high. The two of them crashed onto the floor.
Nicky ran out the office door and slid across the warehouse floor. He heard the door slam open behind him and turned to look. Dominick dashed into the warehouse after him. His leather shoes hit the slick floor, and he slipped and went down. Nicky dashed out the door and was in the alley.
He ran down the alley, onto the street and around the corner. He was halfway home before he realized no one was chasing him.
Why would they be? They had the packages. And a hostage.
There was a note from Nicky's grandmother on the kitchen table. She had decided to meet him at Santo Pietro.
Santo Pietro! Nicky had forgotten all about it. He had missed his ringtoss date with Donna. That creep Conrad had probably won the big teddy bear by now. His grandmother would be worried, too, when she didn't see him. But he had to go back for Tommy.
Nicky had an idea. He ran to his grandmother's telephone-address book. He opened it to the first page. Grabbing the phone, he dialed the number penciled in on the inside of the cover.
The phone rang. Then there was a beep.
Nicky said, “Hello? Uncle Frankie?”
Nothing happened. He thought for a minute. He looked in the telephone book under B and found the number for the Bath Avenue Social Club. He dialed and waited. There was no answer. Of course. The guys would be out with Frankie, on the job. Nicky hung up and dialed the penciled-in number again. He got the same thing. It rang, then made another beep. Was it a pager number? Nicky hung up and hung his head.
There wasn't anybody else to call.
Except …
His dad had told him once, “If you're in trouble, you call me first. No matter what you've don
e, you always call me first.”
Nicky went to his room and got his cell phone. He scrolled through his phone book until he found “Dad.” It was his father's private cell phone line—for emergencies only. Well, this was an emergency.
His father answered on the second ring. “Borelli.”
“Dad?”
“Nicholas! Is something wrong? Is it your grandmother ?”
“No, Dad, Grandma's fine,” Nicky said. “But I'm in trouble—serious trouble.”
Nicky choked the words out—the packages, the yellow-skinned man, Jerry's Fish, the movie theater … everything.
“Okay,” his dad said. “What's in the packages?”
“Computer chips, for a new game.”
There was silence, then a sigh. “So, some local kid hired your friend Tommy to deliver these computer chips, and you got dragged into it.”
“He's not a kid,” Nicky said. “He's a gangster. He's holding Tommy hostage.”
“Let's not exaggerate, Nicholas,” his father said. “This guy isn't Don Corleone, and Tommy's going to be fine. Relax. I'll be there as fast as I can, and I'll get the whole thing sorted out. Okay?”
Nicky hung up. His eyes filled with tears. He remembered that it had taken Clarence almost forty-five minutes to drive him from Carrington to Brooklyn. This was going to be a long wait.
Nicky went back to the kitchen. He put the cell phone on the table, in case his father called back, opened his sketch pad and began drawing. He made a cartoon strip of himself delivering the package to Jerry's Fish, and the man in the cardigan, and Tommy and the yellow-skinned man in the deep freezer …
The knock at the door came sooner than he'd expected. Nicky dropped his pencil and ran to answer it. He yanked it open and yelled, “Dad!”
“Not quite.” The yellow-skinned man reached inside and grabbed Nicky by the collar. “Come on.”
There was a car waiting at the curb, with its back passenger door open. The yellow-skinned man hurled Nicky inside and slammed the door, then got behind the wheel and sped away.
In the dark warehouse, Tommy was sitting on the floor, in a corner, with his hands behind his back. The yellow-skinned man pushed Nicky into the corner and tied his hands behind his back, too. Then he walked off and disappeared into the warehouse office.
Nicky whispered, “Did they hurt you?”
“Not yet.”
“What's going to happen?”
“I don't know,” Tommy answered. “But it isn't going to be good.”
“I called my dad. I told him everything. He told me to wait at my grandmother's house. But they came to get me before he got there.”
“So now what?”
“I don't know,” Nicky said. “He knows where we are. I told him Jerry's Fish, on Twentieth Avenue. I bet he's going to come here.”
Tommy said, “Is that good? Is he, like, in the same line of work as Frankie ?”
“He's a lawyer.”
“A lawyer?” Tommy said. “We're dead.”
Around four o'clock there was a knock at the warehouse door. Nicky stared into the darkness. The office door swung open again, and the yellow-skinned man walked across the warehouse floor. Blazing light poured in as he opened the door to the alley. Nicky could see the silhouette of a man. It was his father.
He whispered, “That's him. That's my dad.”
Tommy said, “Great. I've almost got my ropes undone. How about you?”
“I haven't even tried.”
“What have you been doing over there?”
“Nothing.”
“Idiot. Grab my rope and tug on it. I think I'm almost untied.”
Nicky shifted around. His fingers found one end of Tommy's rope. The end pulled free.
Tommy said, “Okay. Don't move. Let me try yours.”
The yellow-skinned man led Nicky's father into the office, where Dominick was talking on the phone. Dominick nodded at a chair in the corner. Nicky's father didn't sit down. Dominick set the phone down and said, “Who the hell are you?”
Nicky's father said, “My name is Nicholas Borelli. I'm the father of one of the two boys you're holding in the other room. I'm here to take them home.”
Dominick smiled. “Uh-huh. Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Nicky's father said. “I don't think you understand the laws regarding kidnapping. I'm a lawyer, so I do. In this state, it gets you the death penalty. You're in an enormous amount of trouble. I'm here to get you out of it.”
Dominick said, “You mean kidnapping is against the law?1 had no idea. What's your offer?”
“I have people waiting for me to come out with my son,” Nicholas Borelli said. “If I don't walk through that door in the next five minutes, they're coming in with cops.”
“Let's see.” Dominick lit a cigar and winked at the yellow-skinned man. “I let you go, in which case you run directly to the police, or I don't let you go, in which case the police come directly to me. Is that it? I think I'll save you the effort, and let the cops come here. Tie him up!”
The yellow-skinned man stepped forward, the rope taut in his hands.
Sitting on the floor, his own ropes almost free, Nicky heard the squeak of the warehouse door and saw a figure slip silently into the darkness. The figure moved across the warehouse floor and into the light coming from the office. Then Nicky saw. It was Clarence.
In the office, the yellow-skinned man said, “Turn around, pal.” Nicky's father waited until the man's hand was on his wrists. Then he turned and hit the man hard across the windpipe. The yellow-skinned man fell to the floor, clutching his throat.
Just then Clarence burst into the office, leapt over the fallen body and crashed into Dominick. The two big men tumbled to the floor and the door slammed shut.
Nicky heard crashing furniture. Glass shattered. Someone grunted. Nicky's father called out, “Clarence!” and there was a gunshot. Then there was silence.
The office door swung open. Nicky's father came out first, his hands over his head. Clarence came out next. Behind them, holding pistols, came Dominick and the yellow-skinned man.
“Tie them up,” Dominick said. “And try not to screw it up this time.”
Dominick held the gun on Clarence and Nicky's father while the yellow-skinned man tied their hands behind their backs. When he was done, he shoved them roughly to the ground. Holding his throat, he kicked Nicky's father in the ribs and cursed quietly.
Then they were alone in the dark.
“Dad?”
“I'm okay,” Nicky's father said. “What about you boys? Did they hurt you?”
“We're okay,” Nicky said. “They tied us up. But we got our ropes off. We were coming in to help you guys.”
“It's good you didn't,” Clarence said. “They've got guns. They're willing to use them, too.”
“So what do we do now?”
“We make a plan,” Nicky's father said.
rankie Borelli was riding in the passenger seat of a panel truck that said “Hector's TV-VCR Repair” on the side. He said to the driver, “Pull over here, Danny. This is my mother's place.”
“Sure thing, boss. I hope it's nothing serious.” “Two pages in five minutes? She's the only one who has that number. Believe me, it's serious.”
Frankie jumped out of the car and sprinted across the street, house key in his hand. But the front door swung open. Frankie stuck the key into his pocket, pulled a pistol out of his shoulder holster and went inside.
The apartment was empty. Going into the kitchen, he called out, “Ma! You home?”
Nothing. He felt the stove, and the coffeemaker. Cold. He checked his mother's bedroom. Empty. He checked Nicky's bedroom. Nothing.
Back in the kitchen, he noticed three things. First, his mother's telephone-address book lay open on the counter. Frankie picked up the phone and pushed the redial button. The pager clipped to his belt began to beep. He said, “Okay. That explains that.”
Second, there was a note from his mother to his
nephew and a cell phone lying on the kitchen table. He punched the redial button. The other end rang, and a voice said, “This is Nicholas Borelli. Please leave me a detailed message.”
Frankie put the phone in his pocket and said, “Okay. Ma's fine, but Nicky's involved.”
Third, he noticed Nicky's sketch pad open on the kitchen table. He saw Nicky's drawings—the yellow-skinned man, the dry cleaner, the man in the cardigan sweater, the boy delivering the package. He saw Nicky's drawings of Tommy, and Little Johnny Vegas.
He said, “That's what's going on.”
He took a notepad off the counter and wrote a note.
Ma: Nicky's in a jam. I'm going after him. Don't call anybody—especially me, on my pager. If I'm not back tomorrow morning, call Jeff Tomlinson. Tell him to come see you. Show him Nicky's sketchpad. 1 love you. Frankie
Frankie locked the door behind him and went down the stairs. Nutty was standing at the bottom, dressed like a naval cadet, in white shirt and pants and a peaked cap. He snapped to attention. Frankie stopped and saluted. He said, “Ensign Nutty. Do you have anything to report?”
“Sir, yes sir! Your nephew, leaving the house under protest, sirl”
“Was he with a guy with stringy hair and yellow skin?”
“Sir, yes sir!”
“Did they walk away, or drive?”
“They drove, sir!”
“Can you describe the car?”
“Black Montego, sir! New York license A-six-six-eight'two-oh'seven, sir!”
“Excellent work, Ensign Nutty. At ease!”
Frankie jumped back into the panel truck and dialed a number on his cell phone. “What can you give me on New York plate A-six-six-eight'two-oh'seven?”
He waited.
“Yeah. I know him. Thanks.”
He put the phone away and said, “We gotta make a call on Dominick Pavese.”
“Little Johnny's guy?”
“Yeah. It ain't no social visit, either. I think we'd better dress up.”
Frankie moved to the back of the panel truck. He rummaged around and came up with two Kevlar bulletproof vests. He handed one to his partner and said, “Put this on. I'm going to try to get my brother on the line.”
Welcome to the Family Page 9
