Gangster

by Lorenzo Carcaterra

  “No,” she said.

  “Good,” I said. “Because I do. We’ll have lunch there. I’ll meet you at one over by the elevator.”

  “I already packed my lunch,” she said. “I was planning to eat at my desk and work straight through.”

  “Give it to Jeff,” I said. “He’ll eat it, no matter what it is.”

  “Do I get a chance to say yes or no?” she asked.

  “Is there a chance you might say no?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Then no,” I said and turned away.

  • • •

  I SPENT THE next three weeks working alongside Janet, helping her and my team bring to life the three campaigns we needed to rush through. We began work while others still slept, sipping coffee and eating buttered rolls under the lights of her desk. We ate our lunch together, the offices cluttered with folders filled with designs and ad copy. We left the office after midnight and stopped for a drink at any open bar we could find, talking strategy and seeking the right words that would help us sell an old product to new customers. The job consumed us both.

  We delivered the first draft on our biggest account on a Thursday and I gave the staff a three-day break while we waited for a decision to be handed down. “Do you have plans?” she asked, walking with me on Third Avenue, both of us heading for a small, smoky restaurant that had quickly grown into a regular haunt. “For the three days, I mean.”

  “Not really. I don’t like to make plans too far in advance.”

  “It might be a good time to catch-up with your girlfriend. Try to explain why you’ve been spending so much of your time with another woman and a roomful of men.”

  “That would be a great idea,” I told her. “If I had a girlfriend that I needed to explain all of that to.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “I bet you’d make a good boyfriend.”

  “What about you?” I asked. “Who do you have to explain yourself to?”

  “I’m going back to Pittsburgh. I need to finalize my divorce. I’ve been delaying it until we had the first draft in.”

  “I didn’t even know you were married.” I was not able to coat the surprise in my words. “I mean, you never mentioned a husband.”

  “Technically, I’m not a wife anymore,” she said. “And it was never much of a marriage. Lasted less than six months. We both knew soon enough it was a mistake and we looked to get out about as quickly as we got into it.”

  “That can’t be an easy thing to go through,” I said, my fingers grasping her elbow, her skin soft and warm.

  “I thought like every other woman that it would be perfect,” she said, her eyes sad. “But it wasn’t. It wasn’t even close.”

  “You’ll find somebody again, Janet,” I said, trying to ease her obvious pain. “It’d be a cinch to fall in love with somebody like you.”

  “That’s nice to hear. I’m starting to think it’s not going to happen. I have a bad habit of picking the wrong guys for all the wrong reasons. It’s time I broke myself of that.”

  “Maybe it’s the restaurants you like to eat in.” I held the door for her as she walked into the burger shop. “You’re not exactly drawn to top of the line cuisine.”

  “What’s wrong with them?” she asked, feigning anger. “You can smoke, the wine comes out of a jug and the cheeseburgers come with a side order of bacon. Besides, the waiters make me laugh.”

  “You mean like Frank over there?” I followed her down to a corner booth and pointed out a waiter in a stained white shirt. “Did you hear him the other day, talking to a woman at a back table?”

  “No, what?”

  “He comes to the table and the woman asks him why he has his thumb on her steak. And Frank says, ‘So I don’t drop it again.’ I have to admit. That’s something you’d never see at Twenty-one.”

  Janet snapped her head back and laughed. I found myself staring at her in a way I had never looked at a woman. She caught my look and held it, stretching her fingers across the table and touching my hand. “Thank you,” she said in a soft voice. “You’ve helped make these last few weeks a very special time for me.”

  “What happens from here?” I fought the urge to wrap my fingers around hers. “After we finish up the other two projects?”

  “That’s pretty much up to you,” Janet said.

  I nodded and waited as Frank slid two bacon cheeseburger platters in front of us, winking at me as he did. “I still don’t want a full-time job,” she announced as soon as he walked away. “And I don’t think I can keep working for you.”

  “Why not? You’ve been a great addition to the team. As good as my guys are, none of them can do the kind of quality work that you can in a short amount of time.”

  “I’m not talking about the work. That part was great. But . . . I like you, Gabe. I like you very much. And if we keep working together, seeing each other for as many hours a day as we do, it’s not going to be good for either one of us.”

  “You’re too old for me, Janet,” I told her.

  “And younger men are nothing but trouble,” she said, not bothering to hide her smile.

  “I have strong feelings for you.” I was surprised to hear my own words. “To be totally honest, I don’t quite know how to handle them. I’ve never felt like this about anybody else.” At least not anybody who didn’t carry a gun, I thought to myself.

  Janet wiped her mouth and leaned across the table, holding both my hands. “The time we’ve spent together has been special to me as well, more than you’ll ever know. But there might be too many obstacles in our way.”

  “Give me a for instance,” I said.

  “There’s the age difference, for one.”

  “A minor one,” I pointed out.

  “Well, how about the fact that, even though I’m much better at it than you are, you’re still my boss.”

  “I thought you were quitting.”

  “Okay, then let’s not forget one other small detail. I’m still married. At least in the eyes of the law.”

  I looked out the window, watching hurried faces rush eagerly back to work or run to catch a distant cab or a moving bus. “I’ve never been concerned with the eyes of the law,” I said.

  • • •

  OUR TIME TOGETHER was magical. In Janet, I had found someone who made me feel whole, who loved me readily despite all my apparent limitations at grasping life in a world she knew so much better than I did. She loved me without condition, asking little in return and assuming nothing other than I stay with her for as long as our emotional ride lasted. We had grown together as friends before we became lovers and that gave us a solid foundation to build on. I had not known anyone like her before and I felt the same was true from her about me. We trusted each other and knew that neither one would ever do anything to knowingly betray that bond.

  We all struggle in our lives trying to find a person somewhere who makes the perfect fit and most of us are never successful in our search. And now, deep into my twenties, I had found that person in Janet, and I was determined not to lose her.

  I believed that she would be the final piece of a complicated puzzle that would completely sever the emotional ties I still might have to the gangster life. I had turned my back on a power that I might never know in the civilian world and had adjusted well to it. I did not see what I had done to be any great sacrifice on my part, but rather a breaking of life-restraining bonds which enabled me to feel free and allowed me to fall in love with a woman who had lived only in my dreams. But I also remained cautious; I had spent too many years in the company of hoodlums not to do otherwise. I worried, and had for years, that Angelo had not completely surrendered his quest. That the shadows I suspected of casting their gaze in my direction, alert to my every movement, would soon emerge from their hiding place, ruled by his hand, and lash out at me in a final attempt to weld me to their side.

  But for now, I continued my steps toward a real life, with a woman in whose company I felt warm and happy a
nd safe. In those heady early days wrapped in Janet’s soft arms and hidden in the womb of her small apartment, I had found the secret to a complete life. I had found my escape in someone with whom I could share my journey.

  I had found Janet Wallace.

  And I had found love.

  20

  * * *

  Fall, 1980

  JANET AND I had been together for two months before I told her about Angelo and the early years of my life. We were having coffee at a small table facing a large window that looked out at the New Jersey skyline. She remained silent for several minutes after I had finished and then looked up at me. “Are you in any danger?” she asked.

  “If he thought I was a threat to him he would have killed me years ago,” I said. “I’ve never had to worry about that.”

  “Then maybe you don’t have to worry about anything at all,” she said. “It’s been years since you’ve seen him. And you said he’s never approached or confronted you in all that time. He might just have accepted your decision and left it at that.”

  I reached for the coffeepot and refilled both our cups. “The only decisions he accepts are his own. No one else’s have ever mattered, mine included.”

  Janet added milk to one and cream to the other and leaned back in her chair. “What are you afraid of?” she asked, her eyes locked into mine.

  “I don’t think he’s ever left me,” I admitted. “I feel his hand behind everything I’ve done since the day I left the bar. It’s all gone so well, so quickly, that I just can’t lay everything down to hard work and a little luck.”

  “You’re very good at what you do, Gabe. There might not be anything more to it than that.”

  “About a year ago I was bidding on a job at Nissan,” I told her. “It came down to two companies, mine and Tom Hannibal’s agency. Two nights before the final bids, I came into work and found a packet on my desk. Inside I found Tom’s proposal and projected campaign. It was everything Nissan was looking for and as fresh and clever as anything that was out there. Hands down his was twice as good as mine. He was a lock to land the account.”

  “And did he?”

  “No,” I said. “He dropped out the night before the presentations were due. He claimed his agency was overworked and couldn’t handle the extra workload.”

  “Then why go to all the trouble to do the proposal to begin with?” Janet shook her head and finished her coffee.

  I reached across the table and held her hand. “I promise I won’t ever let him hurt you,” I said.

  “Me?” she asked. “Why would he want to hurt me?”

  “If he’s going to make a move, it’ll be against you.” I was well aware that my words were making her nervous. “You’ll be the target to get to me.”

  “How can you know that for sure?” She took a deep breath as she spoke.

  “Because I know Angelo,” I said.

  “How much longer will he wait?” Now a trace of anger moved in alongside the fear.

  “I got a call from one of his men yesterday,” I told her. “Angelo wants to see me.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. I listened, put down the phone and came home to you.”

  I stood and walked over to the window, staring down at the traffic. Janet stepped up behind me and wrapped her arms around me. “When do you go?” she whispered.

  “Tomorrow night,” I said.

  • • •

  THE DRIVER, A burly young associate named Gino, brought the car to a stop next to a fire hydrant across from the Duane Reade on Broadway and Seventy-first and watched as I slid into the passenger seat. He nodded at me, then shifted into gear and pulled the dark sedan back into the traffic to begin the slow ride downtown. I was wearing dark slacks and a dark button-down shirt, clothes I hadn’t touched in years, but figured appropriate for this meeting. I leaned my head against the soft leather and realized what troubled me the most was the unknown. I was unsure from which direction Angelo’s final attack would come. While I knew it would not be fatal, I still wondered if, by its end, I would be able to escape from it intact.

  Any gangster can rid himself of an enemy with a bullet. A great one seeks to conquer the mind of his opponent as well as his body. In my case, my war with Angelo would not be one of turf but of control. He was prepared to pit his will against my love for Janet. It was a match I was sure he looked forward to as much as I dreaded.

  “How long since you’ve seen the old man?” Gino asked, weaving his way through street traffic.

  “How long have you been working for him?” I asked.

  “Five years, going on six now,” Gino said.

  “And have you ever seen me before?”

  “I heard about you from some of the other guys in the crew,” Gino said. “But tonight’s the first I laid eyes on you.”

  “You ever drive Angelo?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Let me give you some advice then,” I said. “Never talk to people you don’t know. And if you really want to go far, it’d be better not to talk at all. That’s especially true if Angelo’s ever sitting in the back. It might let you live a few years longer.”

  “I’ll try to keep it in mind,” Gino said with a shrug.

  “You can start practicing now.” I turned my head and stared up at the lights of the empty buildings that lined the streets.

  • • •

  ANGELO SAT ON the couch, his feet stretched out on a handmade stool, the ever-present large glass of milk resting, half empty, on the coffee table. He had aged a great deal in the years since I’d last seen him, his fine facial features beginning their inevitable surrender to the advances of time. His right hand shook slightly and the rasp that rose out of his lungs had grown worse, the scars of birth often forcing him to breath through his mouth and become more dependent on his spray medication.

  I stood in the middle of the well-lit den. It was a room where I had spent so many of my younger days reading the books stacked on the shelves while Pudge scanned the day’s racing sheet, tracking the bookmaking take. There was a desk near the large window in the corner with yellow folders stacked high on top of it. Next to the desk lamp were two packages, wrapped and tied together with string.

  We were both looking at a corner of the den, watching a two-month-old pit bull try to lock jaws around a thick bone-shaped chew. “Did you get yourself another Ida?” I asked, nodding toward the white puppy.

  “This one’s a Pudge,” he said, turning away from the dog to look at me. “And he goes his own way. Just like the guy he’s named after.”

  I stared down at the empty cup of coffee in my hand, thinking of Pudge and how much I missed having him in my life. “He looks like he’ll be good company for you,” I said.

  “It’s an interesting business you’ve chosen,” Angelo began, his hands resting flat on his legs. “You come up with the right words and pictures and people go out and buy what it is you tell them to buy.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Still, it can be treacherous. A big agency sees a little one doing well, it makes a move to buy it and swallow it up. The little guy ends up with some cash in his hand and his company in somebody else’s pocket. That almost happened to you last year. I forget the name of the agency that tried to buy you out?”

  “The Dunhill Group,” I told him, although I knew it was unnecessary. There was no way he had forgotten the name.

  “That’s right,” he nodded. “They own a couple of construction companies, too. It was the wrong time for them to make a move. Their finances were stretched a little thin.”

  “I would have handled it,” I said.

  “Who said you didn’t?” Angelo feigned a casual indifference, but I had seen that hard look in his eyes many times and it never reflected a happy mood.

  “What did you want to see me about?”

  “A woman you know,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “What is she to you?” he asked, ignoring my qu
estion.

  “Someone I love,” I said. “Someone I’d like to marry.”

  “How much does she know about you? About your life here?”

  “I’ve told her what she needs to know,” I explained. “If she’s going to marry me, it’s only fair.”

  “And what do you know about her?”

  I looked down and watched the puppy gnaw on the edges of my desert boots, his small teeth sinking into the soft heel. I leaned over and petted the top of his head. “That when she tells me she loves me she means it,” I said, looking at Angelo.

  “Do you know her well enough to trust her?” he asked.

  “More than anyone I know,” I said.

  Angelo picked up two sheets of paper that were resting on the coffee table. “Her name is Janet Wallace and she’s thirty years old,” he said. “She comes from a successful, upper-class family in Dearborn, Michigan. Her father was a full partner in a small accounting firm and died when she was in college. Her mother works for the local city council and is active in a variety of civic groups. Janet is an only child and graduated with honors and earns $55,000 in a good year. She smokes a pack of Marlboros a day and drinks wine with lunch and dinner.”

  “I know all that,” I told him, my eyes never straying from his face.

  “Now let me tell you what you don’t know,” Angelo said.

  I could feel sweat break out against the back of my neck, my eyes looking at the folders and the two wrapped packages, the room around me suddenly feeling smaller. My mouth was dry and my face felt hot. “I can stop now,” he said, walking slowly toward the desk.

  I shook my head. “Finish it.”

  He stood behind the desk, picked up a folder and opened it. “This woman you love and trust so much has had many lovers before you,” he said. “These folders will tell you all about them. They’re from all over. One’s a writer, one an actor, a few lawyers, a plastic surgeon, a cop, even a drug dealer. Three years ago she got pregnant with one of them, only she wasn’t sure which one. But she cleared up that problem. She was into drugs pretty heavy, cocaine and grass mostly, and drank a lot more than she does now. This guy she just divorced is an AA dropout who dropped back into cocaine.”