City of Margins

by William Boyle

  CITY OF MARGINS

  A NOVEL

  WILLIAM BOYLE

  Dedicated to the memory of David Berman.

  Thank you for the songs and poems.

  From a distance,

  The city looks like broken glass.

  —Joe Bolton, “Little Testament”

  I’m the fire, I’m the fire’s reflection

  I’m just a constant warning to take the other direction.

  —Jim Carroll, “City Drops into the Night”

  She believed that all life from the womb to the grave was a coincidence. She knew that in the womb it was indubitably coincidence; in fact, everything about the womb was coincidence, from what went in it to what came out of it. She believed in coincidence as a pilot believes in air. He doesn’t see it, but he’s flying many tons of steel on it, so it must be there.

  Her whole life was a series of coincidences, one stumbling after another.

  —Chester Himes, Pinktoes

  CONTENTS

  Prologue: July 1991 | Southern Brooklyn

  Donnie Parascandolo

  July 1993

  Ava Bifulco

  Nick Bifulco

  Mikey Baldini

  Rosemarie Baldini

  Ava Bifulco

  Donnie Parascandolo

  Mikey Baldini

  Donna Rotante

  Nick Bifulco

  Antonina Divino

  Rosemarie Baldini

  Mikey Baldini

  Ava Bifulco

  Donnie Parascandolo

  Nick Bifulco

  Donna Rotante

  Donnie Parascandolo

  Antonina Divino

  Rosemarie Baldini

  Ava Bifulco

  Nick Bifulco

  Donnie Parascandolo

  Mikey Baldini

  Ava Bifulco

  Antonina Divino

  Donnie Parascandolo

  Rosemarie Baldini

  Ava Bifulco

  Mikey Baldini

  Donna Rotante

  Donnie Parascandolo

  Antonina Divino

  Nick Bifulco

  Ava Bifulco

  Donna Rotante

  Mikey Baldini

  Nick Bifulco

  Donnie Parascandolo

  Antonina Divino

  Ava Bifulco

  Mikey Baldini

  Epilogue: Two Weeks Before Christmas | 1994

  Nick Bifulco

  Antonina Divino

  Mikey Baldini

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  JULY 1991 | SOUTHERN BROOKLYN

  DONNIE PARASCANDOLO

  “I was with Suzy when it happened,” Donnie Parascandolo says, stepping away from the kitchen counter, his beer getting warm in his hand. “I’m telling you. I don’t know what it is about this broad. She loves the fights. She loves grilled cheeses. She loves Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. She’s around when weird things happen.”

  “No shit she loves Rudolph,” Sottile says from the couch, thumping his chest. “I love Rudolph.”

  “You love Rudolph?” Pags says, moving over to the fridge for another Bud.

  “Look at him,” Donnie says. “Of course he loves Rudolph. He probably jerks off to Rudolph. You jerk off to Rudolph, Sottile?”

  “I tried once,” Sottile says without hesitation. “Didn’t do nothing for me.”

  They all laugh.

  They’re in Donnie’s living room. It’s a big house for a guy by himself. He had a family once, a wife and a kid. Donna was his wife. Donnie and Donna. Perfect. They had a wall plaque with their names on it, a match made in guinea heaven. And Gabe was their kid. Donna came up with the name Gabe. Always sounded to Donnie like the name of a first baseman who batted .232, hit about six homers, drove in forty-something runs, but kept his job because he was good with a glove. Gabe was a troubled kid. Moody. His second year of high school, a little over a year before, he offed himself. Nothing too bad happened that Donnie knew of to prompt it. It was in Gabe’s blood, the depression or whatever. Hanged himself in the cellar from a water pipe. Donna found him. They lasted about two months after the funeral and then got a divorce.

  Donna still lives in the neighborhood, over on Eighty-Fourth Street. She said she didn’t want anything from him, money-wise. She just wanted to try to start over. She took her records—she loved her records—and a few boxes of Gabe’s stuff and moved into a small apartment she rented from some lady who used to play pinochle with her mother. He let it go. What else could he do? Other than the stuff Donna claimed—some of Gabe’s books, baseball cards, toys from when he was a little kid, and even some of his clothes—Gabe’s room is just as he left it. Donnie keeps the door shut and never goes in there.

  He’s been on-again off-again with Suzy for about six months now. Nothing serious. No way he’ll ever let her move in. At forty-four and with a dead kid in his rearview, he doesn’t mind the feeling of being free. He likes being a cop okay. He likes drinking with Sottile and Pags. He likes eating Chinese food and pizza and buttered rolls every meal. Truth is, he likes not having to worry about a kid anymore. Having a kid meant stress. School, doctors, a million expenses. Never mind the fact that you’ve got the pain of another existence on your hands. He learned that the hard way with Gabe.

  Sottile and Pags don’t have kids, thank Christ. They never fell down that hole. Well, Sottile did briefly. Back before Donnie knew him. His baby was born dead. The wife died not long after. Donnie doesn’t know what her name was. Sottile didn’t feel like he had anything in common with Donnie, being that his kid never lived. Pags was allergic to getting too close to women. That makes it easier for Donnie to be around these guys. They were married with kids, he’d have to choke on his emotions over Gabe. He doesn’t talk about that stuff, but it’s there in his memory. Gabe as a baby in his arms, sleeping on his chest, playing around on the living room floor, dressed like an elf for Christmas. Can’t just wipe it all away.

  Now he’s got his routine with Sottile and Pags. There’s the job, number one. There’s going to Blue Sticks Bar or the Wrong Number after they get off or coming over here to drink and watch the Yanks. And then there’s the side work they do for Big Time Tommy Ficalora. Donnie’s been into this from the start, but it’s amped up since Gabe’s death. Tommy is the head of one of the neighborhood crews. He likes having cops and ex-cops on his payroll. They mostly do strong-arm stuff for him, collections and whatnot. Sometimes they transport shit. Sometimes they get rid of things that need to get gotten rid of. Sometimes they do real dirty work. Donnie’s good at that, breaking an arm, choking a guy out, going further when it’s mandated. He has no trouble reconciling being crooked and being police. Pretty much every cop he knows is crooked in some way. They all take bribes or steal outright. Most take payoffs for protection. Some are into insurance fraud, burning bars down for the mob, that kind of shit. The ones who have wives cheat on them or beat them, though Donnie was never one of those. At least one he knows is into raping hookers, and nobody will pinch the crazy fuck over it. Many work for the opposition in their spare time, and many work for the opposition while they’re on the clock. They’re bad a million ways. They betray any ethics they once had. It’s the culture.

  Anyhow, comes down to it, Donnie doesn’t mind having this big house to himself these days. After Donna split, he thought he might sell it and get a small apartment like she did, but he likes wandering around, opening and closing doors, sleeping in different rooms, looking out windows for different angles on the sidewalk and the P.S. 101 schoolyard across the street. He just doesn’t go in the cellar or Gabe’s room.

  “You were saying?” Sottile says.

  “I was saying what?” Donnie says.

  “You were telling
us about something that happened that Suzy was there for.”

  “Shit, that’s right.” Donnie pounds the rest of his beer and rips a loud belch.

  Pags claps, his can thunking against his palm. He’s back on the couch next to Sottile. The TV’s on behind them, the sound low, the game coming back from commercial. It’s the bottom of the tenth. The Yanks are trying to finish up a close one against the Angels.

  “Let’s watch this and then I’ll tell you,” Donnie says. He goes over to the fridge for another beer. He opens the door. It’s a sad scene in the fridge. Six Buds left. A thing of olives from Pastosa. Some Parmesan cheese. A quarter of a roast beef sandwich. Yesterday’s container of lo mein leaking, leaving brown smudges on the shelf. He pops the beer and slams the door shut. He joins Sottile and Pags on the couch.

  The Yanks are taking Howe out and putting Farr in.

  “Now?” Sottile says.

  “Okay,” Donnie says. “We’re just sitting at Lombardo’s. I’ve got the veal. Suzy’s got the fish. We’re having a little wine.”

  “That’s when he comes in?”

  “Fucking Dunbar. Just struts into the joint. He’s got a nice-looking broad on his arm.”

  “So, what’s he say?” Pags says.

  “He says, ‘Parascandolo, you clean up nice.’ Then he turns to Suzy, and he says, ‘How much is he paying you? It’s not enough.’ He laughs his ass off.”

  “You ignore him?”

  “I say, ‘Good evening, Captain.’ Something real polite like that.”

  “Tuck your dick between your legs.”

  “Fuck am I supposed to do?”

  The game’s back on. Donnie pounds the arm of the couch. Yanks need one. Come on.

  “So, that’s it?” Sottile says.

  “That’s just the start,” Donnie says.

  “What’s the rest?”

  “Wait, wait. He’s got it. Two down here.”

  “Jesus Christ, you’re really dragging this out.”

  Farr gets the outs. Donnie stands up, puts the beer on his TV table next to the videotapes he has out from Wolfman’s. Pacific Heights and Cobra and Young Guns II again. He rents the same movies a lot.

  “Okay,” Pags says.

  “The rest is I go into the can after dessert, Dunbar’s in there pissing. He tells me he knows how I feel about him, how youse two feel about him, how all the white cops in the department feel about him. That’s what he says. ‘All the white cops.’ We’re all white cops.”

  “So, you grew some balls and told him to go shave Sharpton’s bush, or what?”

  “I said, ‘I’m a fair guy. I give everyone a fair shake.’ He says to me, ‘You think you’re hot shit. You think you’re Stallone.’”

  “You do resemble Sly. But a more washed-up version. Sly would have to let himself go for years to play you in a movie.”

  “Fuck you,” Donnie says, but he’s laughing about it. Sottile and Pags kid him about his looks a lot. He’s a little washed-up, sure, but he’s a handsome bastard. Sottile and Pags are Dennis Franz type motherfuckers, donut-bellies, the kind of guys who have pit stains and bristly mustaches decorated with crumbs and wear boxers that smell like they’ve been washed in a corned beef bath.

  “Back to Captain Dunbar, come on,” Sottile says.

  “So Dunbar jabs his finger against my chest. His eyes are all bloodshot. He looks like Yaphet Kotto. I can tell he’s a few drinks in.”

  “Sly and Yaphet Kotto,” Sottile says. “Showdown in the can. Tension’s high.”

  “Who’s Yaphet Kotto?” Pags asks.

  “You don’t know Yaphet Kotto? He’s from Alien and Midnight Run.”

  Pags nodding now.

  Donnie continues: “He says to me, ‘I know you’ve had it tough the last year, but you better get your shit together or you’ll be washing windshields on a street corner somewhere.’ Then he does this—if I may say so—offensive Italian voice: ‘Capisce?’”

  “No shit,” Pags says.

  “Hand to God,” Donnie says.

  “This guy’s got stones. What’d you say?”

  “I grab his forearm as he’s about to jab my chest again. I say, ‘Have a good night, Captain Dunbar,’ and I give him this big shit-eating grin.”

  “Cool and collected,” Pags says. “I bet that drove him wild.”

  “You’re something, I’ll give you that,” Sottile says.

  Donnie gets up and goes over by the TV. He leans down to shut it off just as the news comes screaming on. He pauses because the woman behind the desk is the one he likes and she’s wearing a red dress tonight and has on murder-red lipstick. But then she’s gone and some reporter in a trench coat is at a crime scene somewhere, standing in front of a blinking traffic light. Donnie twists the knob to off.

  He roams over to the window behind the TV and pushes back the curtains. It was up to him, he wouldn’t have curtains like this. He’d have blinds or nothing at all. These curtains, his mother made. They’re papery and frail. He won’t take them down because they’re hers but also because he doesn’t give enough of a shit to put in the effort.

  He’s looking at the schoolyard across the street now. A light hangs next to the basketball hoop and casts out a cone of brightness. He sees chalk graffiti on the blacktop. He’s thinking it looks like a sad painting. The darkness all around, the half-busted hoop, the circle of light, the stillness.

  Just then he sees little Antonina Divino emerge from the darkness. Well, she used to be little. She lives around the corner with her father, Sonny, and her mother, Josephine. Donnie used to watch her do laps around the block on her bike. See her with her Hula-Hoop in the schoolyard or playing hopscotch with her friends. Cute kid. Always full of energy. Gotta be fourteen, fifteen now, wearing nothing but a white bra and pink shorts. Laughing. Her brown hair draped over her neck. He can’t imagine what he’s seeing is real. He’s thinking maybe she’s on drugs. He’s about to call Sottile and Pags over.

  That’s when Mikey Baldini steps out of the darkness and wraps his arms around Antonina. Mikey’s old man is Giuseppe, who’s in the hole to Big Time Tommy for twenty-five large. On the docket for tomorrow, by pure chance, is a visit to Giuseppe, Big Time Tommy saying it’s time to kneecap the guy if need be. A kneecapping’s the beginning. Then both arms get busted. Then, it comes to it, the guy goes for a swim. Donnie would just as soon skip steps one and two. Giuseppe’s a pathetic piece of shit. And look at his kid out there. A fucking freak. Donnie only knows him from a distance. Back from his first semester of college upstate with those things, those plugs, in his ears, and a plain black line tattooed on his chin—fuck’s that all about? Good-looking once maybe, in his Our Lady of the Narrows uniform, but now he looks like a real scumbag. His hair all knotted up. Wearing a dirty hoodie. A kid like this, he’s scoring with little Antonina? To mention nothing of the fact that she isn’t of age.

  “What’s going on?” Sottile says, as Donnie charges into the empty bedroom at the back of the house. Donnie ignores him and grabs the Louisville Slugger he keeps behind the dresser.

  “What’d you see?” Pags asks.

  “Jesus Christ.” Sottile gets up reluctantly. “I’m trying to tie one on here.”

  “Antonina from around the block,” Donnie explains. “She’s fifteen, tops. Giuseppe Baldini’s son’s there. He’s looking like he’s about ready to fuck her on the concrete under the basketball hoop.”

  “No shit,” Sottile says.

  “Let’s go,” Pags says.

  They’re out the front door now, Donnie leading the way, the bat held at his side, Sottile and Pags fanned out behind him. As they cross the street and pass behind a parked van, they head for the main entrance to the schoolyard on the corner.

  Donnie can see through the chain link. Mikey’s kissing Antonina’s neck. His hands are on her hips. He looks up at the sound of their feet. Antonina does, too.

  The three men enter through the gate. They’re in a dark stretch of the schoolyard now.
/>   “Who’s there?” Antonina says.

  “Don’t move,” Donnie says.

  “What the fuck?” Mikey says.

  Donnie comes out in the light, Sottile and Pags at his side. “Step away from the girl. Put your hands up.”

  Mikey looks like he’s about to shit himself, probably over the presence of the bat.

  Antonina recognizes Donnie. “Mr. Parascandolo,” she says, her arms across her chest now. “It’s okay. He’s my friend.”

  “This is your friend?” Donnie says to her. “How old’s your friend? You’re what, fifteen? He’s eighteen, nineteen, right? That ain’t kosher.”

  “Who are these guys?” Mikey says.

  “You don’t know me?” Donnie says.

  “They’re cops,” Antonina says to Mikey. And then to Donnie: “Leave him alone, please. We were just having fun.”

  “He give you something?” Donnie asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You on drugs?”

  “Mr. P, I don’t do drugs.”

  “You’re in school at Kearney, right?”

  “Right.”

  “This is what they teach you there? Go ball the first freak who comes along? Look at this prick.”

  Donnie sees Mikey’s face in full now. That black vertical line tattoo from the bottom of his lip to the bottom of his chin is surrounded by little black dots.

  “What’s that tattoo all about?” he asks the kid.

  Mikey jumps in, his voice wavering: “I got to be friends with some crust punks up in New Paltz. They did it for me. Looks badass.” He’s loosening up, thinking maybe the bat’s just for show.

  “Hell’s a crust punk?” Donnie says. “Kid’s lost his goddamn marbles. I’m gonna call you Chin from now on. And what’s that junkyard shit in your ears all about?”

  Mikey shrugs, thumbs the black plugs that have stretched his earlobes to the size of nickels.

  “He likes it,” Donnie says, miming the voice of the kid from the Life cereal commercials. Pags and Sottile laugh.

  This Mikey, this piece-of-shit freak right in front of him who’d never be mistaken for a happy-go-lucky kid in a cereal commercial, takes a bottle of MD 20/20 from the pocket of his hoodie, unscrews the cap, and slugs from it. A healthy three-, four-second slug. This bum, drinking his bum wine, he’s alive and well and Gabe’s gone forever—that’s what Donnie’s thinking a few beers in.