The Temptations of St. Frank

by Anthony Bruno

  “SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP, MR. GRIM—”

  “FOR A GUY WHO’S BEEN DOING IT WITH MOTHER OF PEACE GIRL, YOU’VE GOT A LOT OF FUCKING NERVE TELLING US ABOUT FORNICATION FANTASIES.”

  Time stopped. Fitzgerald’s face turned devil red. Then time started up again, and Frank heard voices and agitation all around him.

  Musso charged up the bleachers, shoving students out of his way. “You are dead meat, Grimaldi!”

  Terror zinged through Frank. Musso was crazy. And he was a sadist. He would hurt a kid. Frank had no doubt about that.

  “Get over here, Grimaldi.” The Moose reached out with his big fat hands. He was Hulking out.

  Frank froze, deer in the headlights, certain that he was going to be pulverized. The Moose was just four steps down.

  But then Wilenski showed up, shoving his way in front of Musso and making himself a wall.

  “Get out of my way, Wilenski. Move!”

  But Wilenski didn’t move. He was bigger than the Moose and looked down at him with half-closed eyes, daring him to try something.

  Musso tried to get around him, but other guys in the bleachers closed ranks and wouldn’t let him pass. Gdowski, O’Keefe, Ruselli, Long, and Vitale formed a tight semi-circle around Frank.

  “Way to go, Frank,” Vitale said. “You are the man.”

  The other gym teachers attempted to mount the bleachers, but more boys joined the blockade, and the teachers backed off.

  Down on the floor, the Walrus King cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “SIT DOWN! BACK IN YOUR SEATS!”

  Frank scanned the row of teachers by the front doors. Pomeroy looked demented, his head imploding, his world falling apart. Mr. Ianelli scowled and sputtered. But Mr. Dalton’s expression was as neutral as a stone Buddha. He was looking right at Frank like all the others, but he was the only one not going nuts, and Frank took it as a sign of encouragement.

  “And another thing,” Frank shouted to his classmates. “There’s a reason why he wants to pulp the yearbook. There’s this landfill in—”

  “PAY NO ATTENTION TO HIM,” Fitzgerald shouted at the top of his lungs into the mike, drowning Frank out.

  Frank strained his voice to be heard. “There’s this landfill in Jersey City! It’s toxic! It’s killing people! And guess who owns—”

  “I HOPE YOU BOYS WILL SEARCH YOUR SOULS AND SEE IN MR. GRIMALDI AN EXTREME EXAMPLE OF WHAT YOU HAVE ALL BECOME! I EXPECT YOU ALL TO MAKE YOUR CONFESSIONS WITH GOD. REALIZE WHERE YOU HAVE STRAYED FROM THE PATH OF NORMALCY…” Fitzgerald ranted on and on, crazy as a Bible-Belt evangelist, saying anything to keep Frank from being heard.

  Frank tried to override him, but without a mike it was useless. His throat was raw from shouting, and he couldn’t even hear himself. Down on the floor Whalley motioned like a coach, instructing the gym teachers to make an end run around Frank’s human shield. The younger teachers were in great shape and they ran up the bleachers to take Frank from the higher steps. These were the teachers Frank had hated and who hated him—Mr. Archer who had made him climb the rope freshman year, Mr. Naylor who made him do sit-ups until he was too sore to stand up, Mr. Gunwald who demanded at least ten chin-ups in a row and ridiculed him while he struggled, and Musso the maniac this year.

  Frank looked around for an escape and spotted an open casement window at the top of the bleachers, but he’d have to get there before the gym teachers got to him. He turned and scrambled up the steps, Wilenski right behind him, covering his back.

  When Frank got to the window, he shouted as loud as he could, pointing at Fitzgerald, “The church and the mob own a toxic landfill in Jersey City! And he’s part of it!” He had no idea if anyone had heard him and doubted that they had because Fitzgerald was practically talking in tongues, screaming anything and everything to drown him out, but as Frank ducked through the open window, he was glad that he’d said it.

  Frank felt instant relief when he breathed fresh air and felt the sunshine on his face. But then he looked down. He was two stories above the ground, staring down at a row of hedges. Shit!

  He had one leg still inside the gym, and he could hear the Moose bellowing. He quickly pulled his leg out and stood on the ledge, grabbing a painted metal downspout to steady himself.

  “Get back in here, Grimaldi!” Musso’s big ugly head was in the window, a snarling grizzly bear. “Do not make me come out and get you!”

  Frank looked down and remembered jumping off the roof at Annette’s house. This was a farther drop, but he had the downspout, and fortunately he was wearing his rubber-soled desert boots. He could climb down, and if worst came to worst, the hedges would break his fall… he hoped.

  “You are a dead man, Grimaldi!” Musso reached out with his body-builder arms and swiped the air, trying to grab a piece of Frank. He snagged Frank’s ripped sleeve in his fist and pulled.

  Frank pulled back as best he could while balanced on the cement ledge. He gripped the downspout with both hands and moved off the ledge, pressing his feet against the brick wall. He lowered himself down, learning how to do it as he went, carefully sliding his hands down the pipe and walking down the wall in baby steps. But the Moose wouldn’t let go of his sleeve, and his yanking threatened to pull Frank off the pipe. But Frank kept going—he had no choice—scraping his knuckles on the rough bricks, the rusty backside of the pipe gritty in his fingers. He kept inching down, the Moose pulling on his sleeve with a steady, violent rhythm as he yelled, “GET… BACK… IN… HERE…GRIMAL… DI!”

  Frank thought Musso was going to pull him off the pipe, but by the time he got to the last syllable of Frank’s name, the sleeve finally gave way. It fluttered in the Moose’s big paw. Frank picked up his pace and moved faster, ignoring the constant scrapes to his knuckles.

  He looked up and saw his sleeve slurped out of view, like a strand of spaghetti sucked into a giant’s mouth. Frank looked down. He was about halfway to the ground.

  Musso stuck his head out the window. “GRIMALDI, I AM WARNING YOU! GET BACK IN HERE!”

  “KISS MY ASS!” Frank shouted back.

  When he didn’t hear an angry response, he feared that the Moose was running down the bleachers and across the court, running for an exit so he could intercept Frank before he reached the ground.

  Frank looked down again. His heart was pounding so hard his chest hurt. It wasn’t that far, he told himself. He’d jumped this distance before. At Annette’s house. He picked a spot where the hedges grew thickest and let go of the pipe, freefalling on his back. The branches broke his fall, but some of them were woody and thick, and they hurt. He felt a sharp poke in his side and a sting along his naked forearm where a deep five-inch scratch started to show blood.

  He rolled out of the bushes and looked all around, panicked that there was no safe place to go. The gym was surrounded by a big parking lot. Anyplace he ran he’d be spotted immediately. He couldn’t go back into the gym. He thought maybe he could sneak across the lot, moving from parked car to car for cover, but the cars were few and far between, not enough to hide him from Musso and the lynch mob. He was the Frankenstein monster, running from the torches and farm tools of the angry villagers. They were going to burn him alive!

  A big shiny black car glided along the curb, heading toward Frank. Maybe he could flag it down and bum a ride out to the road or even down to the bus stop where he could catch a bus home. Frank raised his sleeveless arm to wave the car down but then hesitated when he saw that it was a Lincoln. That could be the archbishop’s car for all he knew.

  The car slowed down as it approached him, and the back door opened as it pulled to a stop. To Frank’s surprise, Mr. Nunziato climbed out of the backseat, wearing his usual white belt and white shoes. His big gap-toothed smile shifted to an expression of deep concern when he saw Frank’s bloody arm and ruined blazer.

  “Frankie, what
the hell happened to you? You’re bleeding.”

  “Yeah, I know. I fell…” Frank didn’t know how to begin to explain how he’d gotten this way.

  “Come on. Get in the car.” Mr. Nunziato shepherded him toward the Lincoln. The look of parental concern on his face put Frank at ease. The Moose wasn’t gonna catch him. Frank ducked his head and scooted into the backseat.

  Mr. Nunziato jumped in after him and slammed the door shut. “Drive!” he said to the fat-necked man behind the wheel.

  Frank then realized that there was someone on his other side, shoulder to sleeveless shoulder with him. Mr. Trombetta. He stared hard at Frank, jaw muscles pulsing, like a dog ready to bite. He had something in his lap, impatiently tapping his manicured fingernails on it. A copy of the yearbook.

  Where the hell did he get that? Frank wondered. From his buddy Fitzgerald?

  Frank looked to Mr. Nunziato, but his face was blank, the look of concern long gone. He was just a block of flesh, a bookend holding Frank in place on one end, Mr. Trombetta on the other. Frank tried to make himself smaller so he wouldn’t have to touch Annette’s father.

  The car whizzed through the parking lot and hit the street, hardly slowing down to make the turn. The air inside was frigid with air conditioning.

  No one said anything. Frank didn’t dare open his mouth and didn’t even want to look at the yearbook. But if Trombetta was pissed off about the photo, then he knew that Frank knew about the landfill. Fuck!

  The driver turned his head toward the backseat. “Where to, Mr. Trombetta?”

  “You know where.” Trombetta arched a menacing eyebrow at Frank.

  “You got it,” the driver said.

  The car picked up speed. The sound of Trombetta drumming his fingernails on the Summit filled the silence.

  Frank stared straight ahead through the windshield. He was barely breathing.

  Chapter 28

  The Lincoln bounced over ruts and bumps, crossing a dusty city lot in the middle of nowhere. The empty shell of an abandoned high-rise project building stood at one end of the lot, waiting to be demolished. It was covered with graffiti on every balcony, like a tattooed corpse. A cluster of slightly newer projects loomed a block away, almost as dirty and run-down as the abandoned one.

  Frank had no idea where they were. It was somewhere in Newark, he figured, because he could see planes coming in low to the airport, but he didn’t recognized the neighborhood at all. He’d tried to pay attention to the roads as they drove here, but the driver mostly took side streets, and Frank was soon confused.

  “Stop,” Trombetta said. “Right here.” It was the first thing anyone had said since they’d started out. He was still drumming his fingers on the yearbook in his lap. Frank’s heart was pumping twice as fast.

  Cold air blew into the backseat from the air-conditioner, but Frank was sweating buckets, even the armpit that didn’t have a sleeve. He looked to Mr. Nunziato for help, but he wouldn’t look at Frank, his expression hard.

  Trombetta opened the yearbook and flipped to the back. Frank knew exactly where he was going. To the humor section. To the photo. When Trombetta found the page, he banged his finger on the picture of the unholy trinity and barked, “What the fuck is this supposed to mean?”

  Frank glanced down at the caption he’d written: When the smoke gets in your eyes…

  “I’m waiting, smart guy. Explain.”

  “Well,” Frank started. “Everybody in the picture is smoking. Monsignor Fitzgerald, the mayor… you.”

  “But what the fuck does it mean?”

  “It’s like the old song. You know, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”? The Platters?” Frank cringed. It was such a lame joke, but it was the only thing he could think of the night he’d written it. The night he saw Tina in Monsignor Fitzgerald’s room.

  Trombetta glared at him. “Is it supposed to be funny? I don’t get it. Explain it to me. Tell me what’s funny about this?”

  “Well, it’s not funny like a joke. It’s just a funny observation. A slice of life.” Frank felt like an idiot saying “slice of life” to a mob boss. What the fuck did he know about slices of life? What did he care?

  “How did this get in here?” He banged his finger on the page. “Who put it in here?”

  Frank exhaled slowly. If he started lying, it was only going to get worse. “I wrote it,” he said.

  “And who approved it? Wasn’t there a teacher or something who approves this shit?”

  “The monsignor approves everything that goes in the book. But he was busy the night I tried to give it to him. So…” Frank shrugged. “It just got in.” Frank thought about telling Trombetta about Fitzgerald messing around with a high-school girl, a girl just like his daughter, but he worried that it might backfire. Trombetta might not believe him. He might think Frank was bad-mouthing a man of God and that he was making it up. The Trombettas had Annette’s First Holy Communion picture hanging on the wall outside their bedroom. They were good Catholics. Squealing on the monsignor might piss off Trombetta more. If that was possible.

  Trombetta got in Frank’s face. His eyes were like atomic missiles on target to blow Frank’s ass to kingdom come. Frank could feel his hot breath. “I think you think you know something.”

  Frank didn’t know how to respond to that, so he kept his mouth shut.

  “What the fuck do you think you know? About me. About smoke getting in your fuckin’ eyes. Huh? Answer me.”

  “I—“ Frank glanced at Mr. Nunziato. “I— It’s just a joke. A bad joke. About you guys all smoking.”

  Just shut up, he told himself. If you’re gonna die, you don’t wanna die sounding like an idiot.

  “Smoke, huh?” Trombetta started nodding that small nervous kind of nod that means bad shit is just about to happen. Not that any of this had been good shit so far.

  Trombetta looked past Frank to Mr. Nunziato. “I can’t believe this fuckin’ kid. I let him into my fuckin’ house. Let him date my daughter. My daughter! And this is what he does!” Trombetta threw the yearbook onto the floor and stomped on it repeatedly, like a toddler having a tantrum.

  A strong wind blew a cloud of dust across the car. Like the landfill smoke, Frank thought. He was starting to feel numb. He wasn’t as scared as he was resigned. This was about the landfill—that was obvious. But what were they gonna do? Kill him? For a lame joke in a high school yearbook? Or would they just beat the shit out of him? He glanced at Mr. Nunziato. Was he gonna do the beating? Or would they let the beefy driver do it? Or would it be Trombetta himself? Probably not with his manicured hands. Probably with a baseball bat. Or a lead pipe. Something like that.

  Trombetta nodded to Mr. Nunziato. “Take his wallet.”

  What the fuck? Frank thought. So the cops couldn’t identify the corpse?

  Mr. Nunziato put out his hand. “Gimme your wallet, Frankie.” He meant business.

  Frank shifted his weight on one cheek of his ass so he could get to his back pocket, trying not to touch Mr. Trombetta any more than he had to. As soon as he pulled out the worn brown leather wallet, he panicked. The condom was in there. Was this evidence of what kind of person he was? Would Mr. Trombetta think that he had done it with Annette because he kept condoms in his wallet? Sure, he wanted to, but he never got to home base with her. But Mr. Trombetta was gonna think he did. Shit!

  Mr. Nunziato snatched the wallet out of his hand. Frank tried to make eye contact with him and beg for mercy, but he wouldn’t look at Frank. Mr. Nunziato opened it and pulled out the cash. He counted the bills fast with an angry snap.

  One dollar. Two dollars. Three dollars. A five. A hundred.

  “Whoa!” Trombetta gestured at the $100 bill. “Where’d you get that?”

  Frank looked at Mr. Nunziato, and this time he caught his eye. It was the hundred he had given Frank when
he’d caught him coming out of Mrs. Trombetta’s bedroom in the middle of the afternoon. Mr. Nunziato didn’t look like he was made of granite all of a sudden.

  “I asked you a question,” Trombetta said. “Where’d you get the hundred?”

  Mr. Nunziato’s brows slanted back. Frank remembered what he’d told him when he gave him the money. “Do the right thing.”

  “Whatta you, retarded?” Trombetta barked. “I asked you a question. Where’d that hundred come from?”

  The driver was staring at Frank, his arm draped over the seatback, but Frank was looking at Mr. Nunziato. Frank saw a way to turn this all around. But Mr. Nunziato was looking a little scared, and until today he’d always been very good to Frank. Like another father. A father who didn’t drive him crazy and make him mow lawns.

  Trombetta grabbed Frank’s tie and yanked him like a bad dog. “You think you’re pretty fuckin’ clever. You think you know things. You think you’re hot shit. Well, I’m gonna show you what happens to little shits like you.”

  “I don’t think he knows nothing.” Mr. Nunziato had that hard-ass look on his face again. He folded Frank’s money in half and put it in his own shirt pocket, then dropped the empty wallet in Frank’s lap. “Maybe we should just leave him here before he pisses his pants on your seats.”

  “You’re only saying that ‘cause he’s your buddy’s kid. You wanna protect him.”

  Mr. Nunziato shrugged. “Hey, I don’t give a shit one way or another. You want to do him, we do him. I just don’t think it’s worth it.”

  “How come?”

  “’Cause what’s he gonna do to you? He ain’t J. Edgar Hoover for chrissake. He’s just some jooch trying to be a wiseass.”

  “So what do you think we should do with him?”

  “Leave him here.”

  Frank’s stomach bottomed out. He looked over at the looming projects. This was the goddamn ghetto. He could get killed here.