The Boys from Eighth and Carpenter

by Tom Mendicino

  The stairs are impossibly steep, the walls unbearably close, but Frankie is compelled to keep climbing. His legs are dead weight, his chest tight, every muscle constricted, his lungs starved for nourishing oxygen. Papa is summoning him, demanding his presence. His father’s voice grows less patient each time he repeats his errant son’s name. Frankie tries to answer, hoping to appease him with promises of his imminent arrival, but he’s out of breath, unable to speak. The stench grows stronger the higher he climbs; the atmosphere is sulfurous, corrosive, bringing tears to his eyes. At the top of the stairs is an unlocked door; it opens into a large room flooded with dusty sunlight, airless, the only furnishing a hospital bed in a distant corner. The buzzing drone of circling flies, mechanical, relentless, is ringing in his ears. Papa stands waiting, his arm wrapped tightly around his younger son’s shoulder to keep him from running away. Michael’s once crisp white shirt is smeared with melted chocolate. The red imprint of Papa’s palm is still visible on his cheek.

  A woman wearing an emerald-green dress with a plunging neckline lies on the mattress. Her orange wig is combed and lacquered, the ruby-red lipstick perfectly applied. Are you happy now? Papa gloats. Isn’t this what you wanted? What you prayed for? A plump rat pokes its snout in his stepmother’s eye socket. It bares its teeth, hissing at Frankie, slapping the corpse’s cheek with its long tail as it scurries off the bed. Papa pushes his terrified younger son into Frankie’s arms. Tell him to kiss her good-bye, Papa insists, growing impatient. Frankie can see the thread Casano used to sew together her lips. Something, a nest of maggots most likely, is squirming just below the surface of her skin. Be a man, you filthy little finocchio, and make him kiss her good-bye.

  He opens his eyes, adrift in the twilight where the ghosts that dwell in the deep recesses of memory emerge in unsettling dreams. He vaguely recalls taking another Ambien after Jack finally left, then a second when drowsiness refused to come, then remembers nothing more until Papa’s voice demanded he climb the stairs. The image of Miss Eileen is fading now, water swirling down the drain.

  “Frankie, Frankie . . .”

  The shrill tones and heavy accent sound nothing like Papa’s commanding voice. It’s Mariano, home at last; the poor kid is tired, sure to be hungry. There’s cheese in the refrigerator, eggs and milk, sausage. A loaf in the bread box. Enough for Frankie to make the boy a simple meal. But he stumbles as he tries to stand and throws out an arm to steady himself against the wall. The bedside alarm clock says it’s 3:12 and he’s still fully dressed, wearing shoes and socks. Mariano is climbing the stairs, calling his name. Dizzy, unsteady on his feet, Frankie slumps back on the bed, gazing at the packed suitcase in the middle of the room. He panics, not wanting Mariano to discover he’s being banished from his home. He doesn’t have the stamina for the fighting and tears, the accusations and threats. He drops to his hands and knees, grunting. The oversize luggage won’t fit beneath the bed. Mariano snatches the suitcase from his hands and dumps its contents, all of the boy’s earthly possessions, over Frankie’s head.

  It’s impossible to read the boy’s expression, to determine whether his crooked smile is benign or evil. Mariano lifts his leg and gently places his right foot on Frankie’s throat. Frankie braces himself for a swift, crippling kick, but the boy has a change of heart and removes his foot and lifts him onto the bed. Mariano sings a familiar song, “Rhiannon,” as he unbuttons Frankie’s shirt and removes his shoes. Frankie looks up at him helplessly, grateful for a simple act of kindness, not expecting the hard slap that bloodies his lip, followed by a backhand that sends him sprawling across the mattress.

  “I stay here with you now, Frankie,” Mariano says and Frankie feels the sharp tip of a blade, either scissors or a knife, pressed against the soft flesh under his chin. “I go nowhere.”

  Frankie closes his eyes, tasting the blood in his mouth. He hears water running in the bathroom. The pills are dragging him down again. He’s slipping away, drifting off.

  Charlie Haldermann steps forward and emerges from the gloaming. Impatient as always, he turns his back on Frankie, who follows him down a long, narrow corridor. Huffing and puffing, gasping for air, Charlie insists they’re going to join a gym tomorrow, both of them. Frankie suddenly stops, finding himself standing alone in a church. Charlie is nowhere to be seen, gone, vanishing without a trace, though the room has no doors or windows through which he could have made his escape. A young woman sits in a rocking chair, cradling a blanketed bundle on her lap. She’s singing quietly, her weary voice barely more than a whisper. He takes a cautious step forward, charmed by her lovely song, and she looks at him and smiles. He recognizes her familiar face, the Madonna of the Pilgrims, and falls to his knees, asking for her blessing. She speaks softly, asking if he wants to hold the baby. Don’t be afraid, he won’t hurt you, you’ve been waiting for him, praying for this day to come. His name is Mariano, she tells him, placing a scaly, hairless, brown-eyed Cyclops with a coiled, spiny tail, slick with blood, in his arms.

  He rolls on his back, emerging from a trance, eyes wide-open again, staring at the ceiling. He hears the gentle splashing of water and a voice, neither masculine nor feminine, singing in Spanish. A ring tone, Taylor Swift’s “Our Song,” announces an incoming call on the cell phone in the pocket of the jeans Mariano tossed on the bedroom floor as he undressed. Frankie rolls off the bed and retrieves it. It’s one of those cheap disposable phone card cells they sell in all the bodegas, not the expensive iPhone Mariano had pleaded that Frankie buy him. He presses his thumb on the answer button, but doesn’t speak. A woman—is it Christine?—repeats Mariano’s name, once, twice, three times, finally exploding in a rage when he doesn’t respond. He turns off the phone and shoves it back in the boy’s pocket.

  He tastes blood on his tongue, feels it dripping down his throat. His left eye is beginning to swell shut and his nose, still not completely healed from the last beating, is throbbing. Who was that shrieking woman, what urgent message was she attempting to convey? What if the paper is wrong and bail has been made, or, worse, that Randy Salazar or Randy Garza, whatever his name is, has escaped custody and is making his way to Eighth and Carpenter, knowing a conspiring hand will unlock the door, allowing him to enter and take Frankie prisoner, a hostage in his own home? He picks himself up off the floor, emboldened by the blood he’s swallowed, and walks to the bathroom. Mariano, soaking in the Jacuzzi, vamping and posing like a pop star luxuriating in her bath, is too distracted to notice him enter. He doesn’t see Frankie lift the heavy ceramic lid from the toilet tank, never knows what hit him as Frankie smacks him on the head, fracturing his skull. The blow isn’t fatal, but the boy knows he’s defeated, barely struggling as Frankie holds his head under water until the last bubbles of his dying breath break on the surface.

  APRIL 12, 2008 (LATE AFTERNOON UNTIL EVENING)

  “How old is she, Frankie?”

  “I’m not sure. Fifty? Fifty-one?”

  “Don’t be silly. She was a star in the seventies. I can’t believe you don’t know how old she is.”

  Angela Marcaccio is incredulous that Frankie doesn’t know the exact year, month, day, and hour of Stevie Nicks’s birth. Connie hovers close by, monitoring the tone of the conversation. Ever vigilant, she listens for lapses in Frankie’s concentration, ready to jump into the fray and ride to the rescue.

  “I bet she’s at least sixty,” Angela insists. “Google her on your BlackBerry.”

  “You heard what the weather’s gonna be like the rest of the weekend?” Connie asks, trying to distract the chattering woman so Frankie can finish her highlights.

  “You got plans, Connie?” Angela asks.

  “I’m goin’ down Ventnor tomorrow for my nephew’s baby’s christening. He had a little girl.”

  “Which nephew?”

  “My sister’s boy. Vincent. He’s a dealer at Bally’s.”

  “I only go to the Borgata,” Angela sneers. “What are they calling her?”

  “Mara. Mara
Christine Luongo. Her mother’s Irish.”

  “Did you look it up, Frankie?” Angela asks, clearly bored by Connie’s family tree. “I’m sure Stevie Nicks is at least sixty years old.”

  In the span of two minutes, he’s lost track of the conversation. His thoughts are in the room at the top of the stairs, on the highest floor, behind closed doors. He’s climbed the steps five times today, each time expecting to discover his mind has been playing tricks on him, that he’ll open the bathroom door and find an empty bathtub, dry as a bone, everything in order, nothing out of place. He feels like he’s inhabiting someone else’s body. Muscle memory is guiding the scissors and combs.

  “If I were you, I’d sue that cab driver. He probably don’t even have insurance. When was the last time you got into a taxi and the driver spoke English?” Angela complains.

  Connie’s wits are quicker than he gives her credit for. That was the story she gave when his first customer this morning commented on his fresh bruises. They’ve stuck by it all day: He’d been riding in a cab and smashed his face into the plastic protection screen when the driver slammed the brakes after running a red light.

  “Don’t worry, Frankie. Your pretty face won’t have any scars,” Angela comments. “Speaking of pretty faces, where’s my little Mariano today?”

  Connie tenses and Frankie’s at a loss for words.

  “He’s going back to Mexico,” Connie finally volunteers, the answer she’s repeated throughout the day.

  “When will he be back?”

  “We don’t know. His mother is very sick.”

  “Good Lord, I wouldn’t want to get sick in Mexico. We crossed the border to Nogales when we visited my sister in Phoenix. It was the filthiest place I’ve ever seen. You couldn’t pay me to go back there,” Angela opines. “I’ll keep her in my prayers,” she says, subject closed, her curiosity satisfied.

  Frankie appreciates that Connie’s been a loyal soldier, a saint today. He doesn’t know what he would have done without her. He swears he will never, ever, criticize her again. He appreciates her discretion. She may not be terribly bright, but she’s awfully cunning. She knows there’s more to Mariano’s sudden disappearance than Frankie’s admitting, but she’s refrained from asking for details. Twice today, he’s almost taken her into his confidence before suppressing the powerful urge to confess that Mariano’s lying dead in his bathtub. Not even Connie would believe he doesn’t know or can’t remember how the boy got there.

  The first thing he’s going to do after closing up the shop is flush the rest of the Ambien down the drain. How many did he take? He’s counted and recounted the pills in the bottle and the numbers always come up the same. A thirty-day prescription, refilled five days ago, only sixteen tablets remaining. He’s certain he swallowed one last night; he knows he took a second. He remembers fretting, anxious for sleep to come, trying to relax with a glass of wine, refilling his glass, unable to wind down, resisting the temptation to take a third pill . . .

  . . . And then recalling nothing until he woke up lying on his bed, drool on the pillowcase, his eyes as dry as cornflakes. Connie was calling him, shaking him by the ankle, insisting it was time to wake up. Nine o’clock had come and gone and he hadn’t appeared. Reluctant to invade his privacy, but worried when he didn’t answer his cell phone, she’d climbed the stairs to his private sanctuary, up to the top floor, finding clothes scattered across the bedroom floor, and Frankie, asleep, breathing heavily.

  “Where the fuck is Taco Bell?” she’d asked, confronting him as he stirred on the bed, struggling to come back to life. Connie, unlike his clients, had proven immune to Mariano’s charms. She’d grabbed Frankie’s chin and leered into his face, angered by the blood and the bruises.

  “I don’t know,” he’d answered truthfully.

  “Well, it looks like he’s planning to take a little trip,” she’d said, eyeing the empty suitcase lying by the bed.

  Frankie had sat up on the bed and dropped his aching head into his hands.

  “His mother’s dying. He’s going back to Mexico,” he says, remembering the unpleasant and unexpected visit from Christine.

  “I’m calling the locksmith to change the locks. Today. You can leave his suitcase on the street for all I care.”

  He’d looked up from the bed, conceding, acquiescing in her decision.

  “Just don’t say anything to Jack. Please!” he’d pleaded.

  “You go jump in the shower. Patty Corella is downstairs for her appointment. I’ll put her off until you’re dressed. Hurry up, now. Don’t you lie back down when I go downstairs.”

  He’d touched his swollen face as she turned and left, wondering if he’d fallen on the stairs. Everything would be better after a hot shower and a strong espresso with a teaspoon of sugar to kick-start his engine. He’d stood and stretched, resisting the strong urge to curl up and go back to sleep, and walked to the bathroom and opened the closed door, his tenuous equilibrium shattered by the shock of discovering Mariano lying in the cold water of the Jacuzzi and finding the toilet tank top on the floor.

  Kit and Michael had placed bets on whether Kettleman would actually show. She’d predicted that some pressing obligation or imagined crisis at Clinton headquarters would require him to board the next Washington-bound Acela to hold the hands of a distraught campaign adjutant. Michael had assured her not even a summons from the lady herself would be enough to keep him from being in attendance when the legendary director of three of the top-ten-grossing movies in Hollywood history is feted as this year’s honored recipient of the Abraham and Selma Grossman Foundation Humanitarian of the Year award. Abraham and Selma’s son and his well-born wife are the most influential Democratic fundraisers in the Commonwealth, and Kettleman has decided to make a midterm run in 2010 for a House seat against the dyspeptic seven-term Republican incumbent. The congressional district, once a solid red, has been turning purple the past few cycles, and is projected to be a dependable blue two years hence. The support of the Grossmans is essential and Kettleman’s contribution to the Foundation was exceedingly generous.

  “You better get used to it. It’s part of the territory,” Kit cautions her husband, who seems unusually skittish as they enter the thousand-dollar-ticket event.

  He doesn’t like crowds except at a Springsteen stadium show and the thought of glad-handing makes him nauseous. But Kettleman has ignited the embers of Michael’s ambition. He’s suggested his deputy approach the Grossmans, but Michael scoffs at the idea they would devote precious time and assets to a county race for District Attorney. Besides, he’s having his doubts. He knows he’s no damn politician. He can be brusque to the point of seeming arrogant and he doesn’t suffer fools gladly—character traits that aren’t appreciated on the campaign trail. Kit brushes aside his protests that he’s charisma-challenged and resembles a haunted vampire in photographs. Women are attracted to his looks and his deep voice, sensing the gentleness beneath the gruff, aggressive exterior. Men want to be his friend, a member of his crew. And, of course, juries love him.

  “I think you’re afraid of losing.”

  Her insight, as always, is right on the mark.

  “You’ll look damn sexy in the campaign mailers,” she assures him as she straightens his collar.

  “We have plenty of time to think about it,” he insists. “It’s not like we have to make a decision tomorrow.”

  Kettleman is seething at being banished to a table in the Siberian quadrant of the Academy of Music Ballroom. Whoever assumed he’d appreciate being seated with his deputy and their respective spouses didn’t know much about Steven Kettleman. He wolfs down his petite filet in three bites, anxious to free himself from present company. Even Kit, who he usually fawns over, receives the cold shoulder when he’s surrounded by so many potential contributors to his latest ambition. Kettleman’s young wife, clearly humiliated by his indifferent treatment, is near tears and Kit comes to her rescue, requesting her assistance in the ladies’ room for an unexpected ward
robe malfunction.

  “At last, I’ve got you all to myself. I came over to see if you needed help cutting your meat.”

  Amy Grossman’s flirting is harmless, hardly sexual, certainly not in Michael’s eyes. He doesn’t encourage it, knowing it bothers his wife, who suspects many of the middle-aged woman in the room, single or otherwise, would like to take a run at her husband. Amy Grossman is still a great beauty in her forties, with magnificent sculpted cheekbones and azure eyes, her bearing as patrician as his wife’s. A Morganthau by birth, a direct descendant of the Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, she’s recognized as royalty in the most exclusive addresses of the Upper East Side. She and Kit have been careful adversaries since Penn Law, respecting each other’s ability and genealogy. Kit will make snide remarks about the exquisite craftsmanship of the surgical corrections to the minor imperfections of Amy’s face, just as Michael is certain Amy has commented to her husband that it’s tragic that a woman with such fine, fair skin as Kit’s would so carelessly expose it to the sun. There are rumors aplenty about an “arrangement” between the Grossmans. Kit has taken to calling Amy a cougar, which Michael says she ought to find very reassuring because he’s far too old to be desirable prey for a middle-aged female on the prowl for virile young men.

  “God, I despise that man,” Amy Grossman says, commenting on Kettleman’s unctuous style of working the room. “I have to admit he’s no slouch. It’s the smart move to join the governor’s staff. He’ll have a much larger profile in Harrisburg when he runs for Congress than he ever could in Media. Your boss certainly thinks big. He’s already scheduled a breakfast meeting with my husband to gauge our interest in supporting his congressional ambitions. I’m a little hurt you haven’t come to us now that you’re considering a political career yourself.”

  “Amy, we’re talking about the DA’s Office, not the presidency. I’d hardly call that a political career. And we haven’t decided yet if I’m going to run.”