The Price of Honor: The Making of a Man

by Aleatha Romig

  I stared, unsure how to respond.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Yes, sir.” I nodded as Jimmy helped Carmine out of the car, supporting most of the boss’s weight as together they went up the stairs of the brownstone. For only a moment before Testa took off again, I saw Rose at the top of the steps, her hands clenched over her heart as Carmine’s head shook dismissively at his wife’s concerns.

  We were silent for a few blocks until finally Testa spoke. “Boss, where to?”

  “Pull over.” I’d barely gotten the words from my lips before I opened the door and vomited.

  No longer dry, my mouth filled with spit and bile. As I spat the disgusting combination from my lips, I was consumed with shame at my physical reaction. That was until I saw the red on my own fingers, undoubtedly, from Jimmy’s hands. Scanning myself, I noticed that my jacket and trousers were also marked. Without warning, my hands began to shake with involuntary tremors.

  Closing my eyes, I inhaled—the combination of blood and vomit a putrid stench that would forever be in my memory. Another breath and another. Finally, I consciously willed the trembling to stop. Once it did, I stood and stepped over the mess I’d deposited in the gutter, closed the back door and opened the front passenger. Sitting inside my own car, I sat beside Testa, for once content to be driven.

  I turned his direction. “There’s blood in the backseat.” I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to tell him that, but I did.

  He looked my way and lifted one side of his lips in a lopsided grin. “I never liked how this car pulled to the left.”

  My eyes narrowed. “What?”

  My fried brain couldn’t decipher another riddle.

  Testa put the car in gear and moved us along the street. As if in a dream, we were advancing through the city. The sky was black, but with the streetlights, it was as if day had re-dawned.

  Testa’s voice brought me back. “When I brake, this car pulls. Damn roads are slippery. Could get in an accident.”

  “The blood?” I said again, not certain what he was saying.

  “It won’t clean. Blood don’t clean from fabric or carpet. There’s always a trace.”

  I looked down at my hands, still tasting the rancid remains of my regurgitated dinner. I tried to make a plan. “Take me to the office. I need a shower. I also have a spare suit there.”

  “Yes, boss, and then?”

  “Then...I’m not sure.” It was difficult to think too far into the future, but I tried. “Tomorrow I buy Angelina another car. I’ll take her Continental. You take her shopping and get her something safer, whatever she wants.”

  A surreal conversation as if we hadn’t just seen a man shot—four men or more shot.

  Testa nodded.

  I followed most of Carmine’s advice. After I’d showered, brushed my teeth two or three times, and changed clothes, I stayed at the office. It wasn’t where I wanted to be, but I knew why I was there. The clock continued to tick as I made phone calls to prospective clients and wannabe business partners. Each discussion was traceable. The telephone company would have records. Oren Demetri had been working late on Thursday night, as he did many other nights.

  I didn’t fuck a secretary as Carmine suggested. Julie had long gone home, and that wasn’t an option. Even though there were women still in the building who were probably willing, I wasn’t looking. The only woman I wanted to see was my wife. I doubted that my return home would end the same way as an invitation to my office presented to one of the secretaries from the evening call center would. Nevertheless, I wanted who I knew, who I needed, and who I hoped needed me.

  I longed to be with Angelina, to hold her, and to explain what I’d witnessed. Mostly, I wanted to reassure her that Carmine was safe.

  Following the boss’s instructions kept me away from home until after ten o’clock. I figured that was late enough. On any normal Thursday—one without an assassination attempt—I’d get home about the same time.

  On our drive to Rye, Testa and I discussed the blood-splattered car a little more. I’d given it some thought between phone calls. If a person wanted to get insurance money for a wrecked vehicle, they’d report the accident. If on the other hand, the goal wasn’t a payout but to destroy the vehicle, a junkyard was the answer.

  As it turned out, junk was a profitable business, a business in which I’d already invested. A few years back I’d been made an offer to utilize land upon which nothing could be built. On the outskirts of Jersey was a three-acre plot of land, heavily guarded by a few good old boys and mean-ass dogs. Over the years it had proven a good Demetri Enterprise investment.

  That investment was about to reap me another more beneficial profit.

  “Tomorrow,” I said, “before daybreak, take the Town Car to the junkyard in Jersey. Frankie’s expecting you. They know what to do. It’ll be wrecked and torched with my suit inside. It’s in the trunk. Once the metal is cool enough, they’ll crush it.” I’d called him earlier in the night from an empty office.

  If and when the dots were connected and anyone came looking for the car that drove Carmine Costello away from the scene of his attempted murder, there’d be no picture left to make; the dots would be erased.

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  Before we could say more, my beeper vibrated, and a moment later my car phone began to ring.

  I looked at the car phone. Unlike home phones, car phones had a display showing the telephone number of the incoming caller. Though my nerves had calmed as we entered Rye, I was terrified of the number being Vincent or Carmine.

  I wanted to go home. What if they wanted something else?

  Relief settled in as I saw my own home phone number. “Mio angelo, I’m almost home.”

  “O-Oren.” My wife’s voice was almost unintelligible. “Oren! Talk!”

  “I’m here, mio angelo. What is it?” Her panic rejuvenated my own, bringing the twisting back to my gut and a sheen of perspiration to my freshly showered skin. What could be happening now?

  “Uncle Carmine.” Her phrases were separated by cries. “The news said…he was shot. Is he..? Is he...dead? Why didn’t you call?”

  It had never occurred to me that by delaying my arrival home someone else would deliver the news to Angelina about Carmine—that the television news station would tell her what should have come from her husband. Her panic shouldn’t bring me relief, yet it did. “It’s all going to be okay,” I tried to reassure. “I’m almost home. Don’t watch the news. They don’t know what they’re saying. Keep the doors locked and the alarms on. I’m almost there and can disarm them myself.”

  “Is he dead?” she asked again.

  “Baby, five minutes.”

  I hung up without answering, allowing her question to hang in the air like the ring of the foghorns over the water. Could car phones be bugged? Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Was the news reporting him dead? Did Carmine want people to think that? Did Vincent?

  Once again, I had more questions than answers, and I was present when he was shot.

  “Boss,” Testa said, pulling me from my inner dialogue. “I’ll take the car and park it out of the way for tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll take it to the junkyard.”

  My thoughts were all over the place. Thank God he was keeping things straight. “Good. I don’t want it at the house. Tomorrow, I’ll take Angelina’s car into the city. Use yours to pick her up, take Lennox to school, and then go car shopping.”

  Testa agreed as he steered the winding streets of our neighborhood toward our home. A button within the car opened the gate to our property. Another button on my keyring disarmed the alarms. He brought the car up to the front door. After I got out of the car, I stopped with my hand on the car door and leaned back inside. “I’m not proud of what I did.”

  “What you did? You helped save the boss’s life.”

  My head moved slowly from side to side, unwilling to say what I meant. “I don’t know what happened. It all hit me.”

  Test
a’s chin snapped up and then down in understanding. “You get used to it. Don’t think twice. Anybody who isn’t affected, especially the first time he sees it, ain’t a soldier—he’s a psychopath.”

  I thought of soldiers, of tried-and-true warriors for the family. “Stefano? He didn’t come in with Jimmy. I thought I saw…” I purposely let my words fade into the evening breeze.

  Testa shook his head. “Stefano went out fighting for the family. A man can’t ask for a more honorable way to go. He went fighting, taking a rat with him. You shouldn’t have seen them. If we’d had more time, they would have been hidden. It all happened too fast. The cleaning crew will get the bodies moved. I’m sure they already have.”

  “What will they do?”

  “Like I said, the cleaning crew will take care of it.”

  “You said blood doesn’t clean.”

  “Ain’t nothing clean in that alley. Once it’s hosed down, it’ll be hard to separate the people blood from rat blood, piss, and all-around trash.”

  I took a deep breath. “You’re saying that I’m not a psychopath.”

  “Yeah, boss, I’m saying you wouldn’t be going in that house to his niece if you were.”

  I stood taller, expanded my chest as I inhaled. Deep into my lungs…the night air was cool and life-giving, so unlike the coppery scent of blood. I let my gaze fall upon the driveway, our home, the quietness of the neighborhood. The sky was black above the house’s lights. And then I turned back to Testa one last time. “Do you...get used to it?”

  “The last few years, working for you, I’ve had it easy. But it never goes away.”

  “Like riding a bike.”

  He nodded with a sad grin.

  I thought about how Vincent and Gioconda questioned my allegiance, yet Jimmy didn’t. He didn’t question Testa’s either. He didn’t question Testa driving Carmine. It had to mean he trusted him. “So when you went for the car, Stefano was dead?”

  He nodded again.

  “The other two?”

  “Like I said, Stefano went out fighting. Boss, you don’t want to know more. I’ll tell you...if you order me to tell you. If you don’t... you can sleep tonight knowing that sending me out there helped Jimmy and Stefano save the family. This thing…” His hands moved around. “Whatever’s happening now—tonight—is an onion.”

  “An onion? It stinks?”

  “That but mostly it has layers. Nicholai was scrappy. He didn’t say who sent him to make a scene. We didn’t have time to make him talk. He had backup waiting. Anyways, I got the feeling they was supposed to go back inside once they finished off Jimmy and Stefano and take care of things in there.” Testa’s hands left the steering wheel and slapped back down. “I don’t know. I really don’t. I just believe that if even one of them had made it back inside past Jimmy, things could’ve been different.”

  The adrenaline was gone. Exhaustion washed through me in a wave, weakening my knees. My knuckles blanched as I gripped the top of the door tighter. If what he was saying were true, this was a planned assassination, not only of Carmine but of the Costello family. “Stefano? He wasn’t part of it?”

  Testa’s head moved back and forth. “He was going, practically gone, by the time I got out there. I don’t know. I don’t think so.” He shrugged. “I sure as hell hope not.”

  “Jimmy?”

  “He’d take a bullet before letting one hit the boss…he’d take one for Vincent too. He’d protect them both with his life. It’s the commitment. We all make it. Only some of us mean it.”

  “It’s hard to know who to trust.”

  “The boss is safe,” Testa said. He tilted his chin toward the front door.

  I turned to see my wife who’d opened the door. No longer safe behind alarms, she was standing in the doorway, her eyes red and puffy. A white satin robe wrapped around her body blew in the breeze, showcasing her petite frame as her arms wrapped around her own waist. No doubt, she’d been watching as we pulled up.

  “Good night,” I said.

  “I’ll be here for Mrs. Demetri and Lennox in the morning.”

  “I trust you,” I said.

  I did. Just like I wouldn’t be going into the house to my wife—Angelina Costello—if I weren’t trusted, he wouldn’t be allowed with my wife and son if I didn’t trust him. For some reason, I respected the fact that Testa hadn’t proclaimed his loyalty. It almost made it better.

  “Thanks, boss. I won’t let you down.”

  Nodding, I shut the car door and turned back to Angelina.

  Within the archway to our home, Angelina’s body became liquid in my hands. Her dark hair was tousled from the wind and worry. I wrapped her trembling form in my embrace and breath by breath, accepted her fear and sorrow, wanting to take it away and make everything better. “He’s—”

  Before I could complete my sentence, she stiffened in my grasp. Her head snapped up and tear-swollen eyes narrowed. “Where the hell have you been? You smell...clean.” She took a step backward.

  I reached for her hand and tugged her toward me. “I had to shower at the office. My suit...was dirty.”

  Her tone and expression said it all. The pain she inflicted was as debilitating as the idea of losing Carmine. Daggers shot from her tear-filled eyes as she weighed my words. “Dirty?”

  I’d never come home to her with the scent of another woman on me. I wouldn’t do that to her. However, over the course of our marriage, my clean and showered arrival was met with as much discontent as my entering with the aroma of another woman’s perfume.

  Angelina’s head continued shaking back and forth as she attempted to push me away. “I don’t believe you. Where have you been? Were you even with Uncle Carmine when he was shot?” Anger gave way to grief as her face fell forward. “Is he…? Tell me.”

  I wouldn’t release her, no matter how hard she pulled. Instead, I moved us inside our home, in the foyer. Once I had the door shut, when I should have been comforting my wife, I instead defended my actions.

  “Mio angelo, stop. You’re not thinking straight. First, no, he’s not dead. Let me tell you what happened.”

  “Oren, goddamn you.”

  I scoffed as I pulled her close to me once again, holding her tightly to my chest. With my chin over her head, I said, “Oh, don’t worry. He will. But not for what happened tonight.”

  Her fists pounded my chest, each strike losing strength. “Tell me you were there! Tell me you weren’t with some whore.”

  I took a step back, my heart racing. Our gazes met, each second of her accusations fueled my rebuttal. “There was one goddamn woman I wanted to be with tonight, and I’m here. I came home as soon as I could because I wanted to be with you. I came home because I wanted to be the one to tell you what happened.” My voice grew louder. “I came home to find and give some goddamn comfort because what happened tonight shook me in a way I’ve never been shook.” Letting go of her, I turned a circle, still in the entryway, trying to calm myself as the night’s emotions bubbled to the surface. No longer was it bile but rage.

  With anyone else, I meet their emotions with indifference. Not Angelina. I wanted her. I needed her. I loved her, and sometimes I hated her. “That’s why I came home. Fuck, maybe I should have looked elsewhere for comfort.”

  Her anger disappeared in a wave as sadness fought for supremacy.

  I’ve never hated myself as much as I did at that moment. “Mio angelo. No. I’m sorry.”

  “Go! Just go! I’ll call Aunt Rose. I’ll call Vincent or Bella. Go wherever you can find whatever in the hell you don’t get here!”

  “Do you think for one fucking second you could listen to me and not fucking yell at me? I took a damn shower to get the blood off me. Nothing else!”

  “Mom?”

  We both turned toward the staircase.

  Fuck.

  “Lennox,” I said more sternly than necessary, “go to bed.”

  His blue-eyed stare didn’t even register my voice. He was looking at his mother.
“Mom, what’s wrong. Why are you yelling?”

  Angelina’s stance softened as she turned to the stairs. “Honey, sometimes grown-ups yell when they’re scared. You need to go back to bed.”

  “You and Dad are scared?”

  I walked behind Angelina and wrapped my arms around her waist, talking over her shoulder. “Uncle Carmine was almost hurt tonight.”

  Angelina’s face turned to me, warning me not to say too much.

  “Is he okay?” our son asked.

  I nodded and softened my tone. “He is. We’ll see him soon, I’m sure. Now listen to your mom and go to bed.”

  Angelina went up a few stairs and palming our son’s cheeks, kissed his forehead. “Good night, little man. There’s nothing to worry about. We’ll be quieter.”

  He lifted his hand to her cheek. “You’re crying.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Good. I don’t want you to cry.”

  She kissed his head. “I love you, Lennox.”

  “‘Night, Mom.”

  “Good night.”

  Lennox nodded as he disappeared to the second floor.

  “I’m sorry,” Angelina and I said in unison as she turned my way.

  She was a few steps higher than me, her lips above mine. I reached again for her waist and pulled her toward me. Her chin lowered allowing our lips to unite, bringing me the comfort I’d been seeking since before I came home.

  Angelina’s arms surrounded my neck. “I love you, Oren Demetri. I also hate you.”

  I knew exactly what she meant. Instead of saying that, I said, “Tonight, could you maybe just love me?”

  “Tonight.” She nodded as she took a step down and then another. Once we were both on the landing, we reached for one another’s hand and our fingers intertwined. Hand in hand, we walked into the sitting room. “Can you tell me what happened?” she asked.

  Sitting knee-to-knee on the long sofa, I looked down at our hands and then to my own lap. “This wasn’t the suit I wore to the office today. The suit I wore and my hands…” I lifted the one not holding hers and splayed my fingers, inspecting them. “…had blood on them. Testa said it wouldn’t clean. I needed to get out of the suit and do whatever I could to clean my hands. My car was seen driving away from the scene. The blood can’t be traced back to me.”