Cold City

  The cuffs were part of Tommy’s act. The coke he used before he braced losers brought out not only his inner blabbermouth but his inner drama queen as well. Pretty soon the little black book would appear.

  “Hush now,” Tommy said softly as he clicked the other half of the pair around his own left wrist. “We now have a more tangible bond, one that will remain in place until I feel a little of that love reversing its course and flowing toward me.”

  Harry got this panicky look and started twisting in his chair, pushing at the cuff as if he was going to slip out of it. Whimpering, he jumped up from the chair and began shaking his arm which, of course, shook Tommy’s arm.

  Vinny knew what was coming next. Because Tommy didn’t like the customers shaking his arm.

  Tommy gave him the look. “Vinny?”

  Vinny swallowed his zeppole and reached into his jacket pocket. The taser was all charged and ready to go. He whipped it out, jammed it against Harry’s upper arm, and hit the button. Harry stiffened, then dropped to the floor where he did a little twitching. Vinny had hit him with a short zap. By the time he’d pocketed the taser and put down his donuts, Harry was quiet and limp, breathing hard, eyes staring.

  Vinny and Aldo hauled him up and draped him back into the chair where he dangled like overcooked linguine. In a little bit he got control of his muscles again and straightened.

  “Tommy…” His voice sounded strangled. “Tommy, please…”

  Tommy motioned to the donut bag and removed a zeppole when Vinny held it out to him.

  “Harry, Harry, Harry.” He bit into the zeppole. “I need love, Harry. You gonna give me love?”

  “Tommy, please. After all these years, ain’t I always been good for it?”

  “You know the expression, Harry: Yeah, but what have you done for me lately?”

  “I been sick, and business has been slow. Maybe you don’t feel it in your business, but there’s a recession going on out there.”

  “Yeah, I’m hearing that a lot lately, Harry, and I sympathize, I really do, but it’s not like I’m in this alone, you know. If it was just me, I’d give you a break. But I got Vinny and Ali-D here to worry about.”

  He noticed Aldo shift on his feet. He hated that name. Only Tommy Ten-thumbs called him Ali-D. No one else dared. To everyone else he was Aldo. Al-doe. The whole name. Forget Paul Simon – you did not call this guy “Al.” Aldo. Nothing else.

  “Yeah, they don’t look it, but my guys need love too. But even then, considering our karmic connection, I might even be able to let them go without love. But let me ask you, Harry. You ever hear that expression, ‘The buck stops here’? Hmmm, Harry?”

  Harry nodded. “Tommy…”

  “Just listen. The problem is that the buck don’t stop here, it don’t stop with me. It’s gotta go beyond me. And you know who that buck goes to, don’t you, Harry.”

  Harry shuddered and nodded again. “Tony Cannon.”

  “Righto. Tony ‘the Cannon’ Campisi. And Tony ain’t got no love connection with you, Harry. Tony’s all about the money. Now, the money I loaned you comes from him. He wants it back – with his interest. And if he can’t get the principal, he wants the vig, he wants his juice.”

  Tommy finished the zeppole and reached into his back pocket with his free hand. Out it came: the little black book.

  “Let’s see, Harry. I got you bookmarked here and it says… it says you’re late – way late – with principal and vig.”

  “Ten percent a week.” Harry groaned. “I can’t keep doing it. Can he give me a break on the rate?”

  “He already did, Harry. It’s been twelve for a while now. He let you have the old rate because you were a return customer. Now you’ve made him regret that. I mean, you’re backed up three weeks, Harry, and that’s not good because now not only are you paying ten percent on the principal, you’re paying ten percent on the vig as well.”

  “You couldn’t ask him? Please?”

  “And get my balls cut off with a butter knife? We’re bonded, Harry, but not that close. Tony wanted me to deliver a message.”

  Which was bullshit. Tony Cannon had said, “See that he catches up.” Nothing more. All this drama was Tommy’s idea. At times like this Vinny felt like he was in the cast of some sort of traveling troupe. The Ten-Thumbs Theater.

  Harry sobbed and blubbered as Aldo began to pull on black leather gloves.

  “I don’t want you to take this personal, Harry, because it’s not. I like you, I really do, but I ain’t got a choice. Really, I feel so bonded to you that I’m going to let Ali-D deliver Tony’s message. You know why I call him Ali-D, don’t you? Because he’s got a punch like Muhammad Ali. And what’s more, he likes to punch. Me, I’ve got no taste for it. Especially when a karmic pal like you is involved.” He motioned Aldo forward. “Harry, meet Ali-D.”

  …he’s got a punch like Muhammad Ali…

  That was what pissed off Aldo so much about the name. He didn’t want to be connected to no moulinyan, even if he’d been world champ.

  Aldo landed a right jab into the center of Harry’s face, rocking his head back. He groaned as blood began to trickle from his nose.

  “Body shots, Ali!” Tommy cried, holding up his cuffed wrist and dragging Harry’s with it. “Body shots! We’re connected here, and I don’t want no splatter!”

  So Aldo worked Harry’s ribs and gut, which wasn’t so easy on a guy in a chair. Harry pleaded at first, tried to protect himself with his free hand, but Aldo was quick and strong and landed one solid shot after another. Vinny offered Tommy another zeppole but he passed. He was too involved in watching Harry receive his “message.”

  Vinny popped another into his mouth and wandered away. He didn’t approve of beat-downs like this – not on someone who owed you money. Someone who’d ratted you out, that was a different story. You wanted to do major damage then. You wanted to inflict major hurt before you put them down. Because you wanted their body found and its condition to send a message loud and clear.

  But someone who owed you money, someone you were doing business with, like Harry, you didn’t need this shit. When Vinny was sent out to encourage a loanee in arrears to catch up, all he took along was a pair of pliers, or maybe a ball-peen hammer. A dislocated or broken finger was ninety-five percent effective. For the other five percent, you brought out the artillery and asked Aldo along.

  Harry stopped begging. Vinny turned back toward the others in time to see him slump forward and slide to the floor.

  “Hey, what gives?” Tommy said. “You give him another head shot?”

  Aldo shook his head. “Not even close.”

  Vinny stepped up for a closer look. He watched Harry’s chest, waiting to see him take a breath. His gut clenched when he didn’t.

  “Hey, he ain’t breathin’!”

  “Oh, shit!” Aldo knelt and lifted Harry’s head. Unblinking baby blues stared ceilingward.

  “He’s gone!” Vinny said.

  “Whatta y’mean, ‘gone’?”

  “Gone as in dead.”

  “Christ!” Tommy cried, pawing at his pockets. “I’m cuffed to a fuckin’ dead man! Get him offa me!”

  “Where’s the key?” Aldo said.

  As Tommy continued to search his pockets, Vinny thought about what deep shit they were in. Tony Cannon always warned about getting too rough with a loanee. If the guy was completely tapped out, a through-and-through deadbeat who was never gonna pay, then yeah, mess him up and make him disappear. But you did not want to lose a guy with assets of any kind, because that was a guy with paying potential.

  “Dead guys don’t pay no vig.” How many times had he heard the Cannon say that?

  Looked like he’d be hearing it again. Real soon. That would be the least of it. Because the Cannon – who more correctly should have been called Tony “Penny-pincher” Campisi – would be pissed to beat all hell.

  Tommy finally produced the key but his shaky fat fingers couldn’t work it into the keyhole. After
a half dozen tries, he threw it at Aldo.

  “Unlock it!” His voice was rising toward girly levels. “Get this dead fucker offa me!”

  Vinny turned away. Pathetic.

  4

  Jack found a note slipped under his door when he got back to his apartment.

  Your boss called

  The movies had siphoned off some of his anger, leaving him strangely relaxed. But he felt himself tensing up again as he plunked coins in the hallway pay phone. He recognized Giovanni’s voice when he answered.

  “It’s Jack. You rang?”

  “Why don’t you have a goddamn phone?”

  “Because nobody calls me.”

  And because the phone company wanted all sorts of ID.

  “I do.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  Jack usually called Giovanni so he’d know where to meet up the next morning.

  “Anyways, you messed up Rico pretty bad. His knee’s swole up like a cantaloupe.”

  “Really.”

  Jack rubbed his swollen cheek. Couldn’t dredge up much sympathy for the guy. All he felt was bewilderment about how much damage he’d inflicted so quickly.

  “Yeah. Really. He can’t work. Which means I’ve got a short crew.”

  “The four of us can handle–”

  “Ain’t no four of you. Only three. You can’t come back.”

  Jack tightened his grip on the receiver. “What?”

  “They’ll kill you, Jack. You show up, you’re gonna get cut up.”

  Jack swallowed. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I wish.”

  “They didn’t look all crazy mad when I left.”

  “That’s ’cause they was in shock. Me too. None of us ever seen anything like that. You was like – I don’t know what you was like. Like a psycho. But after you left and they figured out what kinda shape Rico was in, they was gonna go after you. I told them they leave the job, don’t come back.”

  “You don’t think they’ll cool off?”

  “No way. They’re super pissed because Rico’s down and won’t be bringing in his rent and food money and they’ll have to stake him that until he’s back on his feet. You know my Spanish ain’t that good, but I heard them talking about some new gang – ‘day-day-pay’ or something like that. They want to sic ’em on you.”

  D-D-P?

  “Never heard of it.”

  He’d heard of Bloods and Crips and Latin Kings, but knew next to nothing about New York’s gang culture.

  “You know those machetes they like to use to clear brush? Well, they was swinging them around and talking about looking you up. They don’t know where you live – neither do I, for that matter – but they see you, they gonna cut you up in little pieces.”

  “Jeez.”

  “Yeah. Jeez.”

  The realization hit him. “So I’m out of a job.”

  “No way you can come back, man. Season’s coming to a close anyway. I can send what I owe you.”

  Jack gave him the address of the mailbox he rented over on Tenth Avenue.

  “Hey, Jack – good luck and… get yourself a gun.”

  “What?”

  “I’m serious. Somebody brings a knife, you bring a machete. Somebody brings a machete – like these guys – you better bring a gun.”

  A gun…jeez.

  “Well, it was good knowing you, Giovanni.”

  “Yeah, me too. You’re a good worker, Jack. Sorry to lose you. Remember what I said.”

  “Giovanni… just one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Fuck you.”

  He slammed the phone down and, as soon as it hit the cradle, thought, Why’d I say that?

  Really…what was the matter with him? Giovanni was a good guy. He’d just warned him about a possible threat to his life.

  What’s wrong with me?

  Jack returned to his apartment and stepped to his window. One floor below, Sixth Avenue churned in the growing darkness. Bumper-to-bumper cars and people heading home from their jobs.

  He shook his head. He’d started the day with a job and not an enemy in the world. Now he was out of work and had a bunch of Dominicans out for his blood. But the worst of it, he was having trouble remembering the fight. Fight? Could he call it a fight? Rico had landed the first shot and became a punching/kicking bag after that. Jack remembered the dark surge swelling within, and then something else had seemed in control. The rock was the scariest part of it all. Would he have really crushed Rico’s skull if Giovanni hadn’t stopped him?

  Wouldn’t be the first time he’d killed someone.

  He’d given into that darkness once before, but he’d had some control then and remembered every detail about that time.

  Giovanni’s words came back to him.

  You was like – I don’t know what you was like. Like a psycho.

  He guessed he’d just snapped. The combination of Rico’s riding him day after day, week after week, had built up a charge and the punch had hit the detonator. Never happened before. Hoped it never happened again. He didn’t like being out of control.

  …get yourself a gun.

  Maybe not a bad idea. He’d wanted one since he was a kid but his father would never allow a gun in the house. No longer a matter of want. Now it appeared he needed one.

  But where to find one? He’d have to get on the radar to buy one legally, and he didn’t want to do that. So he’d have to go black market. And if he did find one, how much would it cost? He was out of a job and his life savings were in a Ziploc bag behind the floor molding in his bedroom. He had monthly rent to pay and food to buy and jobs of any kind were scarce – especially jobs that paid cash.

  He realized the middle of a recession had not been the best time to drop off the map. But he hadn’t thought about that in June when he’d packed up his stuff, emptied his bank account, and hopped on his Harley. He’d left a note saying he’d be on the road and not to worry.

  Impulse had nothing to do with it.

  Whoever Jack had been during the first twenty-one years of his life had begun to fade months earlier when, on a snowy night back in February, he’d let the darkness take over. But instead of today’s blinding black heat, he’d fallen under the sway of a fury as icy as the wind ripping along the turnpike that night. He’d hung a man by his feet from an overpass, made him a human piñata that the racing southbound traffic battered to an unrecognizable pulp.

  After that, the world changed – or at least the way it looked to him. Maybe cold-blooded murder does that. Killing Ed hadn’t eased the rage. Instead, it seemed to become a part of him, coloring all his perceptions. His grades at Rutgers plummeted. He was going to fail out so he dropped out. School, grades, they didn’t seem to matter.

  Nothing mattered and everything – every goddamn thing – annoyed the hell out of him. His older brother Tom had always been an ass, and good thing he wasn’t around much because he might have ended up like Rico, or worse. Much as he loved his sister Kate, her marital bliss set his teeth on edge. And Dad… Dad was the worst. He hadn’t done anything about Mom’s murder beyond bugging the cops about finding her killer. Couldn’t he see she was just another statistic to them? He kept waiting for someone else to handle it. So many times Jack had wanted to grab him and shake him and scream in his face that he’d be waiting forever because the cops weren’t going to find the guy because Jack had already found him and fixed it so the fucker would never again throw another cinder block off another overpass. Ever. In fact he’d never do anything again. EVER!

  Finally he couldn’t take it any more. He couldn’t stand being Jack from Johnson another day. He needed to be Jack from nowhere. No family, no history, no last name except the one he’d chosen for the day or the week or the month or maybe just the moment.

  And why the hell not? He was fed up with belonging, had it up to here with participating. He wanted out and goddammit he was getting out. No woman in his life – Karina had left for Berkeley and no one knew what she was
into these days, probably Kristin least of all. He had no one new he cared about or who cared about him. With Weezy and Eddie off to their respective schools and out of touch, he had no close friends. He was born before a Social Security number was mandatory and had never bothered to apply for one. No one had ever paid him on the books so officialdom had no tax records on him. Didn’t even have a driver’s license. He’d bought the Harley used from a newspaper ad and had never bothered to register it.

  Beyond a name on the Rutgers University class of ’91 student rolls, he had no official existence.

  Why not keep it that way?

  So he dropped out.

  Probably caused a lot of consternation and confusion at home, but he’d spent his whole life being the good son. No more. He was now a killer. And not by accident. He’d murdered someone in cold blood. That case was still open. The cops had expended tons more effort trying to solve Ed’s murder than his mother’s. After all, Ed’s death had made the national press, blurry photos of his battered body swinging from the overpass appeared in every major paper, while Mom had never been more than a footnote.

  Earlier today on the turnpike, some lady riding along with her husband and son had the life crushed out of her by a cinder block dropped from an overpass. And in other news…

  Subsequent details of Ed’s unsavory past had dimmed the hue and cry for justice. Eight months now and no announcement of a suspect. That didn’t mean they couldn’t get a break. Jack didn’t want to be around if they did.

  Committing cold-blooded murder, even if no one else knew about it, seemed to have drawn a line in the sand between him and everyone he knew.

  So far, so good. The building owner didn’t care who he was, only that he paid his rent on time. The rent included utilities. Jack paid cash. He worked for cash. The only tax he paid – at least knowingly – was sales tax.

  The invisible man.

  Well, not really. If truly invisible he wouldn’t need a gun.

  Again…where to find one? No clue. But he had an idea of a guy who might point him in the right direction.

  5

  Jack was relieved to see the OPEN sign in the door to the Isher Sports Shop. A bell dinged as he opened it.