by Norman Green
“You are the most stubborn person I know. I suppose I should quit wasting my breath.”
“You seen the old man lately?”
“I went in to Bensonhurst last week to visit. The house is the same, I don’t think they changed a thing. New TV in the living room, that was it.”
“He ask about me?” It just came out.
“He don’t ask about nobody, Silvie, he’s like seventy something years old. Only thing he talks about, what he had for breakfast, what he’s gonna eat for dinner, ooh, we got some nice Jersey tomatoes. Couple years ago me and Vin sent the two of them on a cruise, only thing he remembered was the restaurant, Monday we ate this, Tuesday we ate that, Wednesday we ate something else.”
“Terrific.”
“Hey, could be worse. You remember Aunt Mary?” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Remember her stomach was all fucked up?” Silvano suppressed a laugh. More than once he’d seen his petite little sister screaming invective at someone several times her size, but in normal conversation she would lower her voice to swear. “You remember her? Last few years she was alive, all she could talk about was her bowel movements, right up until the day she died.”
“Jesus, what a family. I had a nice bowl of pasta, and then I took a nice big dump. Life is good.”
“Oh, come on, Silvie,” she said, laughing. “It ain’t just us, they’re old now, that’s the way old people are. Are you going to go out to see him, while you’re in town?”
“Am I gonna what? Are you out of your mind?”
“Oh, come on, Sil. How can you be afraid of him if you’re not scared of Domenic? It’s been so many years, he’s not gonna live forever. If you don’t face up you’re gonna feel rotten about it for as long as you live. He’s not that bad.”
Easy for you to say, he thought. You were always Daddy’s Little Angel. Jesus Christ. And it wasn’t that he was afraid of the guy, really, it was more that he didn’t like how it felt to be the object of all that disappointment.
“Silvie, you still there?”
“Yeah, sorry. Some cops were going by.”
“Why would you care? You carrying, you done something bad?”
“No, not yet. You remember what Noonie used to say?”
“Yeah, ‘I already got all the trouble I need.’ Poor guy. I’m really sorry you didn’t get to see him.”
“So’m I. Listen, I don’t wanna run up your phone bill.”
“Pfffft. Gimme a break. All right, Silvie, I’ll let you go. Can I just ask you one thing?”
“What’s that?”
“At least think about it, all right? Think about going down to see him. If Noonie’s really gone, you’re the only son he’s got left now. I know he feels bad about the way things turned out.”
How can you tell, he wanted to ask her, how can you tell he feels anything at all? He had never given any sign of it . . . “All right.” Silvano listened to himself in disbelief. Did I actually agree to this shit? “I’ll go see the old bastard before I leave.”
“Oh, good.” He could hear the relief in her voice. “You’ll feel better when it’s all over, you’ll see. I’d really love to see you too, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. I don’t wanna put Vinnie in a bad spot, though.”
“Vinnie don’t owe them Brooklyn assholes nothing, there’s no way they could think he’s gonna give you up.” The mob was a feudal arrangement, and Vinnie and Domenic were knights who owed their allegiances to different barons. The barons were called capos, and each capo would have somewhere between five and a dozen men like Silvano’s cousin Domenic who answered to him, and he, in turn, would answer to one of the heads of the five families, the godfathers who ruled like kings, high above it all. They would not even know, or care, about the old hatred between Domenic Scalia and Silvano Iurata. The cement that held the arrangement together was money. As long as the money kept flowing upward, from the street level operators all the way up to the godfathers, everyone was happy. If a kink developed in that chain, though, let someone get too greedy and try to keep too much for himself, then the men at the top would begin to bury their problems in shallow graves. The money was all that mattered.
“Well,” he said, “you’re right about that. I tell you what, give me a few days to see what I can find out, and then I’ll call you. Okay?”
“Promise me you won’t go off someplace before you come out to visit. And promise me you’ll be careful.”
“All right,” he said. He said good-bye and hung up the phone, still not quite believing he had promised her he’d go visit his father. He shook his head. Ever since enlisting, he had pretended to himself that he was alone, that there was no one who cared about him or even knew his name. Life seemed so much easier that way. They’re supposed to be on your side, he thought. How is it that they can make you feel so lousy?
He looked down Montague Street. It was only a couple of blocks to the end, where the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway ran underneath the Promenade. It was just a short ride, he knew, jump on and head south, bear left at the split for the Verrazano and you’re on the Belt Parkway swinging down along the southern shore of Brooklyn, where he’d grown up. It isn’t home anymore, he thought, you don’t belong down there. Still, he could feel it pulling at him.
“I want you to do me a favor.”
It was Angelo, his uncle, and you couldn’t say no to Angelo even if you wanted to. Not that Silvano wanted to say no; at seventeen, he looked up to his uncle. Angelo walked through the neighborhood like he owned it, and if you thought about things in a certain way, he did. Everyone knew who he was, they all said hello, politely. There was always a certain kind of deference in the way people looked at him. If you had a problem, say you hit the number and the guy wouldn’t pay off, Angelo was the guy you wanted to talk to, because he would take care of you. The only other alternative was Angelo’s father, Domenic, and the old man was so savage and unpredictable you never knew what kind of treatment you were going to get. Better you should talk to Angelo.
“Anything,” Sylvano told him. “You name it.”
“Come with me,” Angelo told him. “We’ll talk in the car.”
Angelo drove an enormous Chrysler St. Regis, Silvano loved the big chrome beast. He watched Angelo drive, muscling the big steering wheel with one hand, even when the car was sitting still, when most people would have to wrestle the wheel with both hands. Angelo looked over at him. “Your aunt can never know about this. You understand me?”
“She’ll never hear anything from me.” It was old news, though, everybody in the neighborhood had heard the story. Angelo had a mistress, not that it was a big deal, not for a man of his stature. What had gotten everyone talking was the fact that the mistress wanted Angelo to divorce his wife and marry her, and he was actually considering it.
Things had gotten worse when Angelo’s wife finally caught on. Silvano had been visiting his cousin Little Dom when Angelo came walking into the house. The next thing he knew, Angelo and his wife were having a screaming match in the kitchen. This, too, was not all that unusual, but this argument continued with an intensity and a duration that told Silvano that this time it was different. He and Dom both left the house then. “Don’t say anything to anybody,” Dom said to him. “Promise me.”
Silvano had promised, and he had kept his mouth shut, but Angelo’s wife was under no such compunction, because soon afterward, the entire neighborhood knew that Angelo was sleeping on his own couch.
Angelo looked over at Silvano. “You heard the stories?”
“I ain’t said nothing to nobody.”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
Silvano could feel his heart beating wildly in his chest. No easy way around this, he thought. You gotta tell the truth. “This has been going on for a year, Uncle Angelo. Everybody’s heard the stories.”
Angelo drove in silence for a few blocks. “All right,” he finally said. “Fine. But now I’m gonna tell you something nobody knows, and if it gets out, I’l
l know it was you. You understand me?”
Silvano could feel the anxiety eating at the pit of his stomach. “Yes, Uncle Angelo.”
He didn’t look at Silvano when he said it. “She’s been shooting dope.”
“Who?”
“Who the fuck we been talking about?”
“I’m sorry—”
“Shut up and listen.” But then he didn’t say anything. Silvano sat in fearful silence. “I found out about this about six months ago,” Angelo finally said. “I told her I was going to kill her, told her I’d throw her right out the fucking window . . . She cries, she begs, she promises me she’ll never touch it again. I put her in a place where they clean you up. She gets out, I take her home, everybody’s happy. Couple weeks later she’s shooting up again.” Silvano could feel Angelo getting angrier and angrier. “Finally I said, fuck it, she loves the spike more than she loves me, let her kill herself, I’m done with her.” He stopped at a red light, watched the cars go by. “How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
Angelo shook his head. “Shit. Seventeen. I’m sorry I gotta come to you with this, but I know you’re tough enough to handle it. Your cousin Domenic, I ain’t saying he’s soft, but he’s a scholar. He’s gonna go to college to be something. There’s too many things about the street he don’t know. And I can’t go to my regular people, they all owe too much loyalty to my father, and I’ve already taken too much shit from him over this. That leaves you.”
“It’s all right,” Silvano said. “Tell me what to do.”
The light turned green and Angelo drove off. “I quit giving her money the first time I found out. I thought, she can’t pay for it, she can’t get it. But I think she’s whoring for it. I think whoever sells her this shit, she’s fucking him.” He was fuming. “Whoever this guy is, he caused me a lot of fucking trouble. Don’t get me wrong, I’m walking away from her, but I want to whack the guy first. First, though, I gotta find out who he is. I rented the apartment across the hall from hers, okay, I want you inside, watching who comes and goes. You understand me?”
“Yes, Uncle Angelo.”
Angelo looked over at him. “You’re a smart kid. Too smart for this shit. You should go to fucking school. I was your father, I would have kicked your ass every time you brought home a lousy report card.”
Silvano didn’t know what to say to that.
Angelo fished a business card out of his pocket. “You call this number once a day,” he said. “There’s always someone there. The guy we’re looking for is gonna be a guy who shows up regular, you understand? You see a guy once and he don’t come back, that ain’t him. You know who our guy is, you call that number, you say, ‘I gotta see Angelo right away.’ You understand me?”
“Yeah.”
“Good boy. You do this for me, I’ll take care of you. We gotta get you out of this life, it’s no good for you. You should be in school, you should be learning to be something.” He hesitated. “I know he’s got problems, but your father shoulda seen to that. We’re gonna go by your house, I want you to grab whatever you need for like three days. Three days, and this will all be over.”
It hadn’t worked out that way.
SHE WAS BACK in front of his door again, and she began to panic when she saw him coming.
“Claaark, Claaark . . .”
He stood there behind her, counting his inhalations, one to ten, but she didn’t move. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the elevators. “He ain’t here. He ain’t coming back. Why don’t you go downstairs and see if he’s in the Dumpster.” He kicked her shopping bag away from the door. “Go on, get outta here.”
She scuttled hastily down the corridor to retrieve her bag, whimpering to herself as she went. He shook his head, sorry already. Proud of yourself, he asked silently.
Inside, he lay down in his bed, with an old bed you don’t lay on it, you lay in it, and he stared at the green ceiling, feeling himself breathe. In the next room, some old fart was listening to a baseball game on the radio. Silvano’s sense of hearing was unusually acute, but at times like this he didn’t know if it was a blessing or a curse. Mets were playing Cincinnati, Mets were good that year and they were playing Cinci tough, and even though he didn’t recognize the names, everything else was the same, the sound of the ball hitting the catcher’s mitt, the pitcher toying with the batter, the batter working the pitcher, walk to first, get bunted over, steal third, pray for a hit, in fact it was the one thing that seemed to be exactly what he remembered it to be, and not fundamentally different in some way, challenging him to learn it all over again. Still, he told himself, gotta get earplugs tomorrow.
The pitcher struck the next two batters out, stranding the runner at third.
Freakin’ Mets, he told himself. Earplugs tomorrow, definitely.
DOM HATED THIS, hated being summoned like a busboy and then forced to sit around all afternoon drinking espresso and sambuca, watching while Antonio conducted business out of a bar he owned down on Cropsey Avenue. The old man was doing it to him on purpose, of course, it was just one of his not-so-subtle ways of reminding everyone who was in charge, who held the string and who danced. It was a dangerous combination for him, caffeine, alcohol, and impatience, because Antonio was unpredictable and totally without mercy, sensitive to any slight.
“Carlo,” he said to the stiff Antonio had working the bar. “Rack ’em up again.” He’d been doing it for the past couple of hours, buying rounds for the house, forcing the pace, throwing twenties at Carlo. It was his own not-so-subtle way of registering his displeasure. Fuck it, he thought. Drag me all the way down here, down to the asshole end of Brooklyn, this is what you get. He watched Carlo raise an eyebrow, looking at Antonio, asking, and Antonio’s quick scowling answer in return, “Yeah, why not, I’ll drink him fucking blind . . .” Antonio never backed down, ever.
Domenic Scalia was his full name. Behind his back they called him the Fish because he rarely betrayed any emotion, even under extreme stress he almost always appeared calm, cold, and logical. To his face they called him Little Dom, which he didn’t mind because it reminded them all of Big Dom, his grandfather, and they would look at him with a glint of fear in their eyes because he was enough like the old man that nobody wanted to get too close.
There was a black guy and a Chinese guy in the bar, that had to be a fucking first, they were both from Jamaica, and they had started up a big bakery with Antonio’s assistance and some of his money. Antonio was disabusing them of the notion that once they paid him back he was out of their hair. He put his arm around the black guy’s shoulders and began walking him toward the exit, up past where Domenic sat at the bar. The Chinese guy trailed unhappily behind, followed by two of Antonio’s guys, Victor and Ivan. Victor was almost as old as Antonio, he’d been Antonio’s muscle for half a century. He might have lost half a step, but you wouldn’t want to be the one to test the theory, the guy still got the job done. Ivan was the understudy. He had been friends with Domenic for years, Domenic knew he was the only guy in the world Ivan was afraid of.
Antonio halted the procession when they got to where Domenic sat at the bar. “My friends and I gotta take a little walk,” he said. “We gotta talk a little business. You mind, hanging around a little longer? I know you don’t like the old neighborhood no more.” He turned to speak over his shoulder to the Greek chorus that followed him. “Greenwich Village, this teste di gatz lives in.”
Domenic was annoyed, but he didn’t let it show. It was just Antonio, breaking his balls. “Take your time,” he said.
“Well, I know you got a long ride back.” Antonio turned to the frightened Jamaican in his grasp. “A beautiful wife, he’s got, two beautiful kids. Nice house in Howard Beach, but he has to go live in Greenwich fucking Village.”
Domenic rolled his eyes. “We gotta go through all that again?”
Antonio stared at him with a sorrowful look on his face. “No,” he said. “But I don’t understand you.”
“You d
idn’t have to fucking live with her.”
“We’ll be back.”
Domenic watched Antonio and his entourage go through the front door out into the bright afternoon sun. Fucking asshole, he thought, he’s not gonna be happy until I’m back in with Gina.
He had given the house to her and the kids, moved to the place in the Village, that had been back before it got overrun with fags and flower children. He remembered sitting in her kitchen, considering his options coldly. What he really wanted to do was kill her, wrap his hands around her fucking neck and squeeze the life out of her, but then he’d be stuck with two kids, responsible for feeding them, taking them to school, and wiping their snotty noses, and who fucking needed that? He remembered thinking, at the time, how life is like a spider’s web, you take a step without thinking and you wind up stuck. Everything you think you want, in this case Gina, later on you find out you’re stuck with, and you got to fight to get loose.
Don’t you call me, he’d told her, don’t call me, don’t write me, don’t fucking sue me I swear to God I’ll kill you, I’ll put you down at the bottom of one of those big piles of garbage we’re building out on Staten Island, that’s where you belong, you piece of shit. You take the house, you take the money, it’s in an annuity so I don’t even have to think of your fucking name, you get a check once a month from the insurance company, and you take care of these two brats, they’re the only reason I’m letting you live. You hear me? And don’t you call me, don’t you even fucking look at me. I don’t care what you do, fuck the pool boy for all I care, but if he moves in with you I’ll cut his fucking dick off, I swear to Christ . . . You hear me?
He gritted his teeth, clenched his fists until his knuckles were white, every muscle in his body tense as he felt it all over again, for the umpteenth time, every emotion he’d felt at that moment amplified by time and practice.
It ebbed out of him slowly, he could feel it seep away until he was cold and limp. That’s how it is, he told himself, that’s life, learn from it or do it all over again. You’re better off just going to a whorehouse, you leave your money on the table, take some female into a back room, get your nut off and walk away, you don’t even have to know her name, don’t have to talk to her, listen to her, look at her, nothing.
