“Dig in.”
He’d done all the ordering. Vinny would have preferred to order his own lunch—just on principle—but had no problem with what was coming. What wasn’t to like about these mussels, linguine and clam sauce, and veal piccata with lemon and capers? Besides, if your capo wants to order for you, he orders for you, and you don’t say nothing.
The waiter had brought a double order of the mussels in a big bowl, plus two smaller empty ones for the shells. They each dug in and began using their little two-tined shrimp forks to pluck the plump meats from their shells.
After a little small talk about how fucking cold it was but at least there wasn’t a lot of snow and all that bullshit, Tony got down to the reason for inviting Vinny to lunch. Not that Vinny didn’t know.
“Okay,” Tony said. “You probably know what this is about.”
“Yeah.” Vinny’s stomach turned sour. “Tommy.”
Tony nodded. “I got all kinds a heat on me, Vinny. If John was out and about, it wouldn’t be no problem. He’d tell me to handle it my way and I’d tell Tommy to get his own fucking junkyard.”
Vinny raised his hands. “Everybody says the Chief’s calling the shots from inside.”
Back in December, when the feds raided the Ravenite Club—just around the corner from here on Mulberry Street—and hauled off Gotti and Sammy the Bull and others on a laundry list of charges, the family lost its boss and underboss in one shot. Not to worry, everyone said. The Chief right away set up a ruling panel—or like he called it, an “administration”—of four made guys to oversee the family business. That business ran to half a billion a year, so no one was taking this lightly.
“He is. But he’s only calling them where the big picture’s concerned. This piddly-ass shit—”
“Piddly to you, maybe.”
“Look,” Tony said. “You’re a good soldier, and you’re a smart guy. That junkyard shows you’re thinking of the future, and you’ve shown me respect from the get-go. Don’t think I ain’t noticed.”
The little speech seemed to wind him. He took a couple of deep breaths while he plucked his next mussel.
Vinny preferred to call it a salvage company—Preston Salvage—but he let the junkyard remark go. The idea was to have a way to show the taxman where your money was coming from. Tony had his appliance store in Ozone Park, Vinny had bought a little salvage yard in Canarsie. Aldo was related to Sammy the Nose but that didn’t stop him from looking for his own situation. Tommy, though … Tommy “Ten Thumbs” Totaro was too fucking lazy to start his own front. The goddamn cokehead wanted in on Vinny’s.
Vinny had been careful to give to Tony C a share of whatever came in. Vinny was a member of Tony’s crew. As capo, Tony had a right to respect and Vinny had an obligation to show it. After all, he owed Tony for just about everything he had.
Back in the seventies, when he was nearing the end of his teens in the Flatlands, he started collecting a street tax from the pot sellers in his neighborhood. That part of Brooklyn was Gambino territory at the time, with Roy DeMeo’s crew hanging at the Gemini Lounge, but none of the dealers was connected. Vinny was bigger than most of them and wasn’t afraid to lay a little hurt on them as a convincer. He came from the Mangano wing of the family but his dad steered clear of all the rackets and stuff. Vinny couldn’t claim direct connection with anyone currently in power, so he’d been on his own.
As time went by he teamed up with Aldo D’Amico to augment his shake-down money with smash-and-grab stuff like ripping radios out of luxury cars. Tony the Cannon was lower down the Gambino pecking order then. He didn’t have the appliance store yet, but had a little social club off Avenue J where his small crew would hang out. Tommy Totaro, a couple of years older and a connected Gambino, was already in with them. Vinny and Aldo would bring the radios there and deliver them to Tony in the back room. He was paying between one-fifty and two for a digital Becker. Vinny and Aldo were so regular with their merchandise that Tony told them to hang around and call his club home. Maybe he’d have some work for them.
That was how it began. Tony brought him in, showed him the ropes, gave him work. Tony’s crew grew as he worked his way into other rackets. Vinny helped Tony run his craps and card games, his numbers, and his pony parlors.
Somewhere along the line he picked up the name Vinny Donuts. He wasn’t crazy about it. He liked zeppole and, with a last name like Donato paired with a big round waist, what else were they gonna call him? For a while he gave up the zeppole, but the name stuck, so finally he said, What the fuck, and went back to munching.
In the eighties, when Tony opened a used car lot, Vinny and Aldo helped him stock it. A sweet deal. He’d pay them up to five hundred apiece for any car they could steal, then change the VIN and put it on his lot. Sometimes he’d send them out on what he called “custom orders.” If a guy told Tony he was in the market for a white-on-red ’82 Cutlass Supreme, Vinny and Aldo would go out and find one, usually by the next day.
Tommy had already become Tony’s go-to guy in the crew—that was before he developed a taste for the nose candy. Before long Tony added Vinny and Aldo to his right hand.
Yeah, he owed Tony.
He looked at him. “The salvage business ain’t exactly minting money as it is. With Tommy there…”
“I know, I know. But he’s been whining that he doesn’t have nothin’, and how he’s senior to you, and being a Gotti cousin he got in the ears of Junior and Peter—”
“They should tell him to get off his ass and find his own thing.”
“Hey, easy on the silverware.”
Vinny looked down at his hand and noticed his shrimp fork was bent almost to a right angle. He straightened it out.
“Hey, look,” Tony said, “you got a right to be upset. But don’t think of it as doing something for Tommy, think of it as doing something for me. It gets the association off my back and you pick up a few debts—I’ll owe you, and the Gottis’ll owe you. That ain’t such a bad thing.”
“‘Owes’ will probably be the only thing I’ll have left by the time Tommy’s through.”
Tony leaned forward and gestured with his fork. “Look. I’ll make sure the association sends some extra cleaning your way.”
That would help. A business like Vinny’s was always good for laundering cash.
“And there’s a coupla chop shops in your area who can slip you their leftovers after they’ve stripped what they want.”
That would help too …
“All fine and good, but I’ll still be in business with Fredo.”
Tony looked puzzled, then his eyes lit. “Oh, the Godfather guy.”
“Yeah, the loser brother.”
Vinny didn’t know a single guy in any of the families who didn’t love those films, especially the first one. His own father hadn’t been connected, but he’d taken Vinny to The Godfather shortly before he dropped dead. Vinny still remembered him ranting as they drove home after. Looks great, huh. But they didn’t show you the whores and the junkies and the guys who get the crap beat out of them for being late on their payments.
Eventually Vinny wound up being one of the guys who administered those beatings.
“Yeah, well, unlike the movie, Tommy ain’t John’s brother,” Tony said. “When the Chief gets out, if Tommy don’t clean up his act, he could wind up just like Fredo.”
Vinny nodded agreement, but he wasn’t so sure. Gotti getting out was a “when” as far as Tony was concerned, but more like an “if” for Vinny. Word was the feds had hours and hours of tape from their bugs in the Ravenite Club, and that this time something was gonna stick to the Teflon Don. Then again, John Gotti had a knack for getting to a jury.
His stomach churned at the thought of the Chief landing a life sentence. Vinny would be stuck with Tommy Ten Thumbs forever.
“You’re a smart guy, Vinny. You’ll figure it out.”
Here was the second time Tony had called him “smart.” That wasn’t necessarily a good thing. All the
“family” and “omerta” and the rest of the stuff in the films was just bullshit. Guys would rat out their mothers if they thought it could help them beat a rap, and sometimes even put a couple into the back of a friend’s head when ordered to. And if a boss thought you were too smart, he might think you had an eye on his spot. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown and all that. A boss might want to eliminate a guy who might be too smart for his own good.
Was everything Tony just said bullshit? Was he putting Tommy in with Vinny to keep an eye on him?
5
“Hey, Julio,” Jack called. “Need a hand?”
The Spot had closed early tonight. Yeah, the place was a bar and this was Saturday night, but business sucked. The recession contributed, of course, but The Spot had been going downhill for a while, especially after Harry Detrick, who’d owned a ninety percent share, had let his ex-wife fern it up. Julio had the other ten but that left him no say. The locals’ attitude seemed to be, Been there, done that, don’t feel like doing it again, and so they moved on to other spots. As for tourists, it simply didn’t look that inviting from the outside. Even Lou and Barney had paid up and gone home tonight.
Should there come a great apocalypse, destroying most of the watering holes in the five boroughs, The Spot would still have a tough time making Zagat’s Top One Hundred Taverns in NYC. The small bar that occupied the end of the room nearest the door had bottles racked against the de rigueur mirrored wall behind it. Square tables were scattered about the rest of the space. Usually the place was dim, lit only by beer signs and the bulbs in sconces along the wall. Now the overheads were on for cleanup, revealing the tacky, peeling wallpaper and flaking hammered-tin ceiling.
Julio glanced up from where he was wiping down one of the tables. He was short and muscular with wavy black hair and a thin mustache.
“Nah, you been cut, meng.”
“That was my left arm. I’m right-handed.”
The shoulder was bothering him some, but no biggie.
Since he’d first discovered it last year, The Spot had become Jack’s favorite hang. That was why he’d stopped by after spending the bulk of the afternoon in search of a new apartment.
After Doc Hargus had finished his stitch job, Jack had dressed in the hall and headed for home. Trouble was, Rico and his DDP goons could still be patrolling his neighborhood. They didn’t know Jack’s address—only Abe knew that—but they’d spotted him on West 21st last fall and chased him before he’d lost them. That must have been why they were on 23rd today: They figured he lived somewhere in Chelsea. Technically he lived in the Flower District, which was part of Chelsea. But if they were still cruising the area they might spot him again.
And so he’d ditched his sliced, bloody, filthy jacket, substituting a hoodie and big, hip-hop shades. Hood up and pulled way forward, he’d taken the D downtown to the 34th Street stop and quick-walked home from there. After a shower and a set of fresh clothes, he got back into disguise—this time with his Ruger .357 Magnum tucked in the small of his back—and went in search of a real estate agent to show him some apartments in a less hostile neighborhood.
The latest apartment he’d seen—he’d decided it was too small—had been here on the Upper West Side, so he’d naturally gravitated to The Spot for shelter from the February chill. Regular though he was, he’d never been here at closing time.
“Give me a rag and I’ll help you out,” Jack said.
Julio shrugged. “They in the back.”
As he was searching the curtained-off back room behind the bar, he heard the front door open. When Julio’s surprised “Darren!” filtered back, he stepped up to the curtain and peered around the edge in time to see a guy about Jack’s age walk in. Well, walked wasn’t quite right. He was on crutches.
“Hey, Julio.”
Darren … wasn’t that the name of Harry Detrick’s kid? This guy seemed the right age. He had a thick neck and huge shoulders and upper arms; looked like he worked out a lot—a lot.
One peek at how the left leg of Darren’s warm-up pants was pinned up to his knee was all Jack needed to answer a lot of the questions that had been bugging Julio and him.
“¡Mierda!” Julio said. “What—?”
Darren said, “Accident,” but offered nothing more. His tone and expression were bland but his eyes held a bitter blaze.
He had a right to pop into The Spot whenever he damn well pleased: His father’s will had left him ninety percent ownership.
Jack decided he’d be a fifth wheel out there, so he stayed put.
“But how, meng?”
Darren shrugged. “Friendly fire.”
What? Last they’d heard, Darren was in the army and had been shipped over to Saudi Arabia for Desert Shield. Everyone knew war with Iraq was coming but it hadn’t started yet. At least it hadn’t made it to the news yet.
A middle-aged woman in a pants suit came in behind him. “Some asshole got careless with a machine gun and shot his leg off.” She wasn’t holding back: Her bitter expression matched her tone.
Jack had seen her before—Nita, Darren’s mom, Harry’s ex. She used to come in and water the ferns in the windows, but three months ago, somewhere around Thanksgiving, she seemed to drop off the earth. Now Jack had a pretty good idea why.
“We were on maneuvers,” Darren said. “One lousy fifty-cal round in the worst possible spot. They couldn’t save it.”
“You could have been killed,” Nita said.
You poor bastard, Jack thought. You get sent over there to fight for some other country’s oil fields and you lose a leg before the fighting begins. What the fuck is wrong with this picture?
“Anyway,” Darren said, “I know you’ve been wanting to talk to me, but I’ve been kinda busy rehabbing down at Walter Reed.”
Julio shook his head in dismay and gestured to the nearest chair. “Don’t even think about it, meng. Sit down.” He looked at Nita. “You shoulda told me.”
“I didn’t think. I was down there with him.”
She walked in but came to a sharp halt when she saw the dead ferns.
“You didn’t water them.”
“I kept thinking you’d show up. Sorry.”
Jack hid a smile. He knew Julio wasn’t the least bit sorry. He hated those ferns.
“Hey, Ma, don’t worry about the ferns. You can always get new ones.”
Jack caught Julio’s quick eye roll.
“You wanted to talk?” Darren said.
“Yeah.” Julio glanced at the place where Darren’s lower left leg used to be. “But—”
“No. Go ahead. Shoot.”
“Darren!” Nita said. “Must you?”
“Sorry, Ma.”
Julio took a deep breath. “I wish you’d wouldn’t sell to Zalesky. Anybody but.”
“Why?”
“He used to be married to my sister Rosa. We got bad blood.”
Jack managed a grim smile. Bad blood barely touched it.
Neil Zalesky, affectionately known in these parts as hijo de puta, had gotten a little too rough with Rosa once too often during their marriage, so she dumped him. Zalesky couldn’t let go. Jack didn’t know if it was some obsessive attraction or whether he simply hated the idea of being rejected by any woman. Whatever it was, Zalesky had started an ongoing campaign of harassment—juvenile stuff like sneaking in while she was out and peeing on her bed, or worse. Despite numerous restraining orders, he’d kept it up. No physical harm done, but knowing he was getting into her home whenever he felt like it was freaking Rosa.
Julio had reached the breaking point. His proposed solution was to take the Louisville Slugger he kept behind the bar and apply it repeatedly to the hijo de puta’s skull until he’d reduced it to the consistency of rice pudding. To keep Julio from landing on Death Row, Jack had followed Zalesky to Rosa’s one night. Unseen, he had orchestrated a nasty fall that resulted in multiple fractures. While Zalesky was in the hospital, Jack had invaded his apartment and robbed him of all his hidden ca
sh, every last dollar.
Zalesky blamed Julio, of course, and had decided buying The Spot was the best revenge.
“Oh.” Darren glanced at his mother. “I didn’t know.”
Nita stepped forward. “We’ve had no other offers, Julio. In case you didn’t know, there’s a recession going on.”
“I know it.” He gestured around at the empty bar. “Believe me, I know like crazy.”
“Well, you can appreciate how lucky we feel we got any offer.”
Jack fought an urge to step out there and say something. He’d offered to loan Julio the down payment, but the stubborn bastard wouldn’t take it. Some Puerto Rican macho thing.
“Listen,” Julio said. “Lemme take over the place and run it. I buy you out slow, a little bit at a time, but in the end I’ll see you wind up with more than that puta will give you. You know I’m good for it.”
Darren shrugged. “I got no doubt about that, Julio. Dad always said you were the only reason the place kept running. I don’t want to sell it, but…”
“We’d both like to keep it in the family,” Nita said, “and you’re like family, Julio. It’s been what?—a dozen years now.”
Jack had heard the story a number of times. When his dad died, Harry—Darren’s father—was beneficiary of the old guy’s life insurance policy. After paying the funeral expenses, he took what was left over and bought The Spot. This was right after the city almost went broke and property values were in the dumps, so he was able to buy it for cash at a bargain-basement price.
“Thirteen,” Julio said.
She nodded. “Things were great until that bum started gambling—”
“Ma,” Darren said. “Do we have to?”
She got all teary. “Sorry, honey. It’s just…”
Darren looked at Julio. “Thing is, I know the place’ll be worth more once the economy comes back, but I need the money now.” He tapped his left thigh. “The army’s fitting me with a new leg and I want to get a new start somewhere else. A new life, you know? Somewhere warm, someplace far away from here, where nobody knows the old me.”