Jimmy pushed aside the bedroom curtains and leaned forward for a better look. The policeman had a cell phone in his hand and he was staring at the screen.
“We have a cell phone here registered to someone named Daniel Capitalupo?”
Jimmy instantly fell back from the window at the sound of his father’s name.
7
WAITS
October 17, 8:49 P.M.
“So,” said Waits, as he leaned into the bar. He faced down a guy with an immaculate baseball cap perfectly positioned backward and pants pulled just-so over the boxer line, an ensemble more JCPenney Fall Spectacular than ghetto. “Remember me?”
The guy did a double take and pretended not to be upset. “Whoa, I didn’t recunnize you!” South Shore Long Island, Adam Sandler accent, thick as Manischewitz.
Waits had traded his leather jacket and who-gives-a-fuck wardrobe for an old Brooks Brothers shirt with jeans. Along with the short hair, gelled so that it looked almost black, Waits could have passed for an overworked college poli-sci major coming off a caffeine high. He hated the look, but it almost always took his clients by surprise. Which seemed to be necessary these days. “I gave you credit,” he said reasonably, “but not forever.”
“Dude. I’m kinda broke.”
“You promised me last month.”
The guy laughed. “Heyyyyyy… what are you, a fuckin’ bankuh? Read my lips. I don’t have it.”
This wasn’t cute anymore. He grabbed the guy’s shirt with his right hand and pulled the little shitbag close, taking no pleasure in the guy’s helpless squeal. With his left hand, in the shadow of the bar but conspicuous enough, Waits pulled out a pocket knife.
Waits tried to flick it open with cool efficiency, but he wasn’t too good with pocket knives. So he just held it there for symbolic effect.
“Yo, yo, yo,” the guy whimpered. “Can’t you take a joke?”
Waits reached into the guy’s pocket, lifted his wallet, then pushed him away. The guy’s license was right up front in the plastic compartment. These bridge-and-tunnels were proud of their licenses. “Joshua Mil—”
“Hey, that’s mine! Give it back. Yo, my dad is a lawyer.”
“What’s his number? He’ll love to hear about his son’s Ecstasy habit.”
“What? It’s not my habit. I give the stuff away!”
“Well, I don’t, motherfucker.” Waits riffled through the wallet. He hated saying motherfucker. When he was a student at Olmsted High, he and his friends had always leaned with special brio into the word motherfucker, thereby putting ironic verbal quotation marks around it. This was considered a social comment. Stripped of that, the word seemed so artless. “Ninety-three Locust Boulevard… area code 516…”
“Asshole.” Joshua reached into his pocket and handed Waits a wad of bills, keeping a ten for himself. “So I can get home. Take the rest. You happy now?”
“I’ll look forward to the balance tomorrow,” Waits said, sticking the wallet in his pocket, “Joshua.”
Josh stormed away in a huff.
Watching him go, Waits felt a stabbing pain in his gut. He’d been having a lot of that lately.
“The little prick giving you trouble?” drawled a nasal voice across the bar. Ed the Bartender was a career guy, pushing fifty, with an orange bandanna covering a multitude of baldness and a personal style honed to perfection around August 1979. No one knew his last name, so over time it had defaulted to “the Bartender.”
“I hate being a ball breaker,” Waits said.
“It doesn’t suit your warm and fuzzy personality,” Ed the Bartender replied. “What’ll it be?”
“Club soda,” Waits answered, which elicited the expected horrified gasp from the older man, to which he replied, “Stomach.”
“Ouch. You’re too young for that shit.”
“When did you become my mother?”
“I tried, but I’m too ugly, and my tits are too big.” Ed the Bartender shrugged amiably, smacking a glass of club soda down on the bar. “Hey. I feel it too, man. The economy is in Suck Mode. When someone starts squeezing you from above, you have to break balls. Am I right?”
Nodding slightly, Waits took the drink. He wondered if the Mob was rolling Ed the Bartender too. Did he know Ianuzzi?
His gut churned acid at the thought of Salvatore Ianuzzi. Even the club soda hurt going down.
The grinning face, bloated to a waxy sheen by a lifetime of worship at the Church of the Immoderate Consumption, was never far from Waits’s thoughts these days. Nor was the unctuous gravel-voice. Ayyyy, Watts, selling to high school and college is your niche (the only part worse than the pronunciation of Waits as “Watts” being the pronunciation of niche as “nitchy”)—it is an investment in the future. They don’t pay on time, sometimes they don’t pay at all, but that’s not the point. They’re fuckin’ kids—America’s future! So we write it off. We grow our database. Build our brand. They come back to us, and they bring their friends. A rising tide lifts all boats.
It was the same speech every time. And it was total crap.
No one talked about what happened when the tide came in.
Waits leaned against the bar and surveyed the place—a typical Brooklyn mix of hipsters, trustafarians, Wall Street grunts, bridge-and-tunnel puppies—hoping to spot more clients. Everyone was bitching about money these days, just like the nattering heads on the bar TV.
Most of these guys were his age. He’d give anything to be in their shoes now. Even being fired and out on your ass was better than having your life in the hands of Salvatore Ianuzzi.
“Hey, speaking of squeeze, I saw yours yesterday, at Smitty’s,” Ed the Bartender piped up. He waggled his eyebrows. “Reenie—rowf, rowf! She told me she wanted to put a lip lock on my love muscle, but I said she should save herself for you.”
“Her name is Reina, she is not my squeeze, no one even says squeeze anymore, she is barely my friend, and fuck you.”
Ed the Bartender looked disappointed. “Friend… meaning friend with profits?”
“Benefits, Grandpa. Not profits. And no.”
“But you wish, huh? Admit it. I wouldn’t mind getting into her pants, if I could remember how it’s done….”
Waits finished his drink and pushed the glass away. He wasn’t recognizing any of these faces. And he didn’t have the stomach to keep dunning people, or to listen to Ed the Bartender. “Gotta go. Thanks for the superb drinks and conversation.”
“Jesus, club soda… a guy your age…” Ed the Bartender shook his head. “Must be too much sex. It gives you an ulcer.”
Waits slapped a twenty on the bar. “Before that last remark, I was going to give you twice as much.”
“I can take out my teeth,” Ed the Bartender offered cheerfully, “and give you a—”
“Don’t finish that sentence!” Waits said with a groan. “You just ruined my day.”
As he headed for the entrance, he stopped in his tracks.
There was a funny movement among the mass of Elvis Costello glasses and bony shoulders. Waits didn’t have to see it directly. It was a matter of tectonics, the movement of the bar’s human geography to accommodate something that didn’t fit. Shoulders the size of an ox yoke.
He was being tailed.
Shit.
Waits changed direction, heading quickly toward the back of the bar. Immediately he heard noises behind him—jostling, the hissing complaints of offended hipsters. He turned briefly. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see an overweight goombah the size of a water tank barreling through the crowd.
Ianuzzi had no sense. In this area of Brooklyn, sending this guy was like dropping an extra from the Sopranos onto the set of a Kevin Smith movie.
Waits elbowed his way past the bar crowd, crouching low. As he passed the bathroom, he flipped the door open and then slammed it shut, keeping himself on the outside. It would look like he’d ducked into the john.
Then he slipped into the kitchen through a hanging bedsheet and ran out the back doo
r, into the night.
8
9:04 P.M.
As Waits raced into Prospect Park, Cassie began singing in his pocket.
He was sick of Cassie. He would have to change the ring tone.
He ducked behind the stone wall, peering over. The tail was gone. Quickly silencing the phone, he noticed the name on the screen. Hong. What the fuck did he want now?
“This better be good,” he whispered.
“We’re on the road,” Cam’s voice said.
“Is this a fucking field trip? Do I need to give you a permission slip?”
“Dude. That was nasty. I’m just staying in touch.”
“Touch my ass. And don’t call until you have my money. And that better be tonight.” He paused and added, “Motherfucker.”
As he snapped the phone shut, he slipped farther into the park. The sounds of the street were receding. The park was a weird parallel world. In the streets you heard rain from below, the tires sluicing through puddles, the metallic pounding on car hoods. Once you crossed the stone gates, the sonic landscape shifted. Rain pattered overhead on papery leaves. Branches swayed impatiently. You could hear yourself breathe. Footsteps were loud and obvious.
He stuck to the shadows, avoiding the circles of street-lamp light. His breaths rose in agitated wisps as he cut across an access road, jogged over a hill. He glanced over his shoulder again and spotted a couple of silhouettes—two guys, one old and one young. Just hanging out in the pouring rain.
To each his own.
As he angled across a thicket of pine trees, lightning flashed, creating a tesseract of shadows on the ground. Not a good idea to be in the park during a thunderstorm.
Distance from lightning: one mile for each second from the sound of thunder.
One… two…
He just needed till tomorrow. Then Cam’s payment would be in. Pure profit. Waits would give it up to Ianuzzi. They would have a talk. Mano a mano.
Three…
He would tell Ianuzzi how he felt. This life sucked and he wanted out. He’d apologize for losing the tail. Then he’d make a payment plan for whatever was left. And then maybe he could actually talk to Reina and not feel like such a loser.
Four… five…
As the thunder sounded, an arm whipped around from behind him and closed around his neck.
9
9:10 P.M.
“I hate the fuckin’ rain,” came the voice behind Waits’s left ear.
“Achhh… arrrglll…”
The arm was choking him, cutting off air.
“I like snow better. Snow is so pretty in the park. Fuckin’ global warming. Do you like snow?”
“Heccchhh…”
Suddenly Waits felt himself spinning, floating. His jaw hit the ground, and he coughed wildly, gulping for air.
“I need… time,” Waits said, trying to dig his feet into the ground, anything to gain distance. “Just don’t… do anything to me….”
“Yo, what do you think I am, an animal?” the guy said. “Do I look like an animal to you?”
“I’ll pay,” Waits said. “I promise, dude.”
“Yeah, you’ll pay.” The guy reached inside his jacket.
Shit.
“Don’t! Jesus!” Waits tried to scramble to his feet.
“Want some gum?” the goon said.
“What?”
“Gum.” The guy was holding out a pack of Trident. “G-u-m-m.”
“No, thanks.”
“Remember that Woody Allen movie where he holds up a bank, only the teller thinks his note says ‘I have a gub’? And he calls over all the personnel and they’re arguing about what the note really says? It’s like, ‘gub!’ ‘No, gun!’ ‘No, gub!’ I love that movie.” He laughed, carefully inserting three sticks of gum in his mouth. “Mmmm, they got these tropical flavors now. So, anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, pay up or I rip your fucking fingers out, okay?”
“Okay. I will. Tell Ianuzzi I will.”
“He’s mad. He says you moved out of your apartment and didn’t tell him.”
“Privacy issues,” Waits said, not wanting to tell the truth: that he wanted to pay what he owed, get out of the business, and cut all ties from Ianuzzi.
“Whatever. He wants fifty.”
“Fifty? Fifty grand? I don’t owe him that much—”
“Fifty percent. Of what you owe him. Now.”
Waits’s heartbeat leveled. With the take from Joshua and the cash on hand, he would be relatively close. “I—I think I might have that. Or maybe a little less.”
Chewing mightily, the guy made a sad face. “Aw, come on, you have it, right? Please? I hate this fucking job. Especially when I have to work on kids. Ask anyone, does Feets like doing a number on kids? No, he does not.”
“Feets? That’s your name?”
“Short for Uffizi, like the gallery.” The guy’s face was like stone. “You come inna my house, you wipe-a Uffizi.”
“Uh… what?” Waits said weakly.
“Wipe-a Uffizi? It’s a joke.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Christ, no fuckin’ sense of humor.” Feets leaned closer to Waits, giving off a faint, vaguely rotten odor of fish and rancid olive oil. “You gotta have humor in this business or it kills you.”
He was a psychopath. A fish-addled homicidal loony. “Look, I—I’ll get the money. When does Ianuzzi want it?”
Feets pulled a small sheet of paper out of his pocket and squinted. “‘Simmit’s.’ I’m supposed to meet you at Simmit’s at eleven-thirty.”
“Simmit’s? You mean, Smitty’s?”
“Whatever.”
“Willard Street?”
“What do I look like, fucking MapQuest? Just be there.” The guy crumpled up the sheet and threw it on the ground. As he turned to leave, he let out a sneeze that sounded like a lion’s roar. “You know what kind of car Ianuzzi has?”
“A black Cadillac.”
“A Hummuh,” Feets said, lowering his voice to a religious hush. A pained expression twisted his face, his features muscling awkwardly into an expression Waits took to be a smile. “He has a black Hummuh. I get to drive a black Hummuh. And if you don’t watch yusself, you will be going for a ride in the trunk.”
10
REINA
October 17, 8:43 P.M.
ru on yr way? its late! u said 8:30.
* SENT 8:43 P.M. 10/17
o shit i 4got sorrrrryyyyy
* cam h RECEIVED 8:49 P.M. 10/17
what do u mean, 4got??????? we were sposed to hang tonite!
* SENT 8:50 P.M. 10/17
i 4got i had 2 go 2 this party in wchester. i know i suck.
* cam h RECEIVED 8:52 P.M. 10/17
where ru?
* SENT 8:52 P.M. 10/17
in a car w byron & jimmy
* cam h RECEIVED 8:54 P.M. 10/17
ne1 else?
* SENT 8:55 P.M. 10/17
no. like who?
* cam h RECEIVED 8:56 P.M. 10/17
like that low-life drug dealer?
* SENT 8:57 P.M. 10/17
f*** wates. i eat him 4 lunch.
* cam h RECEIVED 8:59 P.M. 10/17
right.
* SENT 8:59 P.M. 10/17
ru mad at me?
* cam h RECEIVED 9:00 P.M. 10/17
cuz the fuckin mets r losing & i cant stand the idea of you being mad
* cam h RECEIVED 9:01 P.M. 10/17
reina?
* cam h RECEIVED 9:03 P.M. 10/17
Reina snapped her phone shut. The popping sound was louder than she expected. It startled her boss, who was getting ready to leave the late shift for her. “Everything all right, babe?”
All right?
All right?
Cam was magic. He was smart and funny, and the best dancer she’d ever known. The way he’d get around his football friends—monosyllabic, crude, and corny—she always figured that was a coping mechanism, boy crap. She could live with two Cams, as long as she got the good
one. She hadn’t been prepared for the two of them to morph into Mr. Hyde before her eyes.
She began scrubbing the counter with ferocity. “Fine.”
“It’s that Asian linebacker,” said her cousin Gino, sipping a black coffee alone at the deuce near the cash register. “Isn’t that an oxymoron? You should never go out with an oxymoron.”
“That is a really offensive ethnic stereotype and I can’t believe you said it,” Reina said.
Gino grinned, springing up from his seat and suddenly vaulting over the counter with the agility that had won him a spot on the Olmsted third-string track team in 1999. She screamed in protest, but he threw his arms around her. “I am an offensive ethnic stereotype and proud of it. Eye-talians on the march! Behold, garlic breath—hhhhhhhhhhh!”
“Stop!” Reina screamed.
Behind them, her boss was chuckling. The two guys had been friends ever since her boss had coached Gino in CYO baseball back in the nineties. “Break it up, this is bad for business.”
“What business? No one’s in here!” Gino protested. “Ted, this guy Cam is a turd and deserves to be hung by his short hairs for what he’s done to my sweet, innocent, half-breed Puerto Rican cousin, awww, look at da sad widdo puss puss…”
Reina threw a Tazo tea bag at him.
“What’d he do this time anyway?” Gino asked.
Reina shrugged. “He was supposed to come here and hang. Listen to tunes. And then after work, we were going to go to the club.”
“Club?” Gino looked shocked. “My club? Did you clear this with the manager? Do you know how hard it is to get into Blowback?”
“I personally know the manager,” Reina said, “and he’s a real dick.”
“Language, darling…,” Ted said, glancing around the empty shop. “This is a family coffee establishment.”
“Come anyway,” Gino said. “Call another friend. Or come by yourself. Help me run the light show. It’s fun.”
“I’ll think about it,” Reina said.
Ted glanced out the door. “You know, it is kind of dead tonight. You probably won’t need to stay open the whole time. Tell you what. Shut ’er down at midnight.”
Gino rolled his eyes. “Ted, you have a heart of prune.”