Gone Bamboo

  He walked slowly to the front door, keys at the ready in one hand, the two bags in the other, opening the screen with his foot. Leaning on the edge of the stoop, half into the hydrangea, was a copy of the Sunday New York Times, a paper Paulie did not subscribe to. Assuming it was a fortunate mistake and looking forward to reading the sports section over a bowl of Count Chocula, he leaned down to pick up the thick stack of banded paper, got his hand around it without spilling any groceries or dropping his keys, and was standing up again when he felt the cold barrel of a gun pressed hard against the back of his skull.

  "Hello, Paulie," said the voice.

  "Hey, hey . . . take it easy," said Paulie, freezing.

  "Let's go inside, Paulie," said the voice. "Don't turn around. Just open the door like a good boy, nice and quiet, and step inside."

  Breathing heavily, Paulie put his key carefully in the lock and opened the door. The pressure of the gun in the back of his head did not abate until he was standing inside his darkened foyer, the door closed behind him.

  "Can I turn around?" he asked. "I ain't carryin' nothin' but groceries."

  A hand slipped up and down his sides, patted the small of his back, traveled briskly around his waistband. "Sure," said the voice. "Turn around."

  At first he didn't recognize the man in front of him. He was tall and thin, with a sickly complexion, hair cropped close to the skull, receding on top. He had a neat beard, and he wore gray sweats and athletic shoes like he'd been jogging. The headset to a Walkman hung around his neck. Paulie thought that was a nice touch.

  Things were bad. That much he knew. Paulie knew the kinds of people in his business who were likely to come visit you with a gun at five-thirty in the morning, and he was running down in his mind who he might have pissed off lately.

  "You can put the bags down, and the paper," said the man.

  Paulie obediently put the groceries on the floor, leaning them against an umbrella stand. A sneakered foot came up and kicked him in the belly.

  "Whatchoo do that for?" he asked, keeping his voice down in spite of considerable discomfort.

  "Sorry," said the man. "Just trying to impress upon you the gravity of the situation."

  "Awwww, jeez . . . it's you, ain't it, Henry?" said Paulie, finally recognizing the voice, the way the man spoke. He looked into the cold, unblinking eyes, glanced down and saw the silenced gun, and realized he was never going to eat that bowl of cereal. "You look like half a fag."

  "Really? You think so?"

  "I don't mean that in a bad way," said Paulie. "I mean . . . I know you ain't one."

  "It's my fiendishly clever disguise, Paulie," said Henry, turning his head a fraction of an inch to listen to a passing car. "You know," he said, returning his full attention to Paulie, "I'm awful pissed with you . . . I'm seriously, killing mad at you, in fact."

  "Yeah . . . I can see that."

  "My wife . . . she got shot up pretty bad down there. My friends . . . they're dead, Paulie. My home . . . well, I just don't feel safe there anymore. You can see that, can't you?"

  "Yeah, sure. I unnerstand." Paulie was thinking about his wife in the upstairs bedroom. Would she wake up when Henry pulled the trigger? Would the sound of the shots, or of his body falling to the floor, wake her up, bring her downstairs? "Believe me, I unnerstand," he said. I'm dead already, he was thinking. He wasn't going to plead for his life or anything. He wouldn't crawl or make excuses. This was how it ended. He found himself hoping the cold cuts wouldn't go bad, hoping maybe, at least, Henry would take him somewhere else to shoot him, the backyard, or the garage. He shook his head sadly, thinking about his wife's reaction when she found his body.

  "Let's go sit down somewhere," said Henry, wagging the gun. "Have a nice talk. You got a kitchen? Down there?"

  Paulie sighed and led Henry down the unlit hallway to his small kitchen. The sun was coming up over the airport now; light streamed through the yellow and orange daisy print curtains, illuminating the worn linoleum floor he'd promised her he'd replace but never had, the faded wallpaper, the brand-new refrigerator, swag from some hijacking Jimmy'd got a piece of. The refrigerator door was festooned with colorful magnets of fruit and vegetables, each holding down a child's crayon drawing.

  "Very talented," commented Henry. "Whose?"

  "My niece."

  "She doesn't live here, though?"

  Paulie shook his head and sat down where Henry was waving him with the gun. Henry sat across from him, resting the weapon on a stack of Self magazines and mail-order catalogs, the barrel level with Paulie's throat. He identified the gun as a .22-caliber Hi-Standard, with silencer, and noticed, too, that Henry was wearing gloves. He looked around his kitchen, missing it already.

  "Where's Jimmy?" asked Henry. "Right now, I mean. Will you tell me that, please?"

  "You gonna kill me anyways, Henry, right?" said Paulie, shrugging rather heroically, he thought. "So why I gonna tell you somethin' like that?"

  "I don't care why you do it, Paulie," said Henry, in a flat, uninflected monotone. "As long as you do tell me. And understand me, please . . . you are going to tell me . . . If I have to lift your eyeballs outta their sockets with a fucking butter knife, one at a fucking time, you are going to tell me. So don't be silly. I'm a very determined man right now."

  Paulie shuddered slightly, sweat running down his back into the crack of his ass, making him itch. He squirmed in his chair, but still he shook his head, his lips pursed.

  "You know I did two tours in Vietnam. Did you know that?" said Henry.

  "No. . . I din't know that."

  "You?"

  "Me? No . . . bad back. I woulda, but . . ."

  "I served for a while with a bunch of fellows, Vietnamese, Cambodians, called PRUs. Nice enough boys once you got to know them, but hell on the enemy. We did some ugly things over there, Paulie. Real, real ugly. Things hadn't been going well for us. Sometimes we had to know things. Had to know, if you see what I'm saying. I didn't much like that kind of thing . . . Still don't. But . . . lives were at stake, and I did them. Like now, Paulie. Way I see it, lives are at stake here too. So don't just sit there like a dumb lump and think you aren't gonna tell me what I want. Because that's bullshit. You will. Everybody does. Everybody."

  "Fuck you, Henry. Sorry," said Paulie, keeping his voice down.

  "Hell, just looking around this kitchen . . . why, I see four or five common household objects which properly applied'll have you bucking up and down and shitting yourself. They tend to do that, I'm afraid, shit themselves. You won't even know what you're telling me, okay? But you will tell me. I'm a serious man."

  "Fuck you. You ain't gonna do nothin'."

  "Fuck me?" said Henry, getting loud. "Fuck me? Fuck you! You think I'm some sort of nice guy, I don't go in for some a' your Sicilian hijinks before? Is that what you're thinking? That was then. This is now. I'm talking about protecting my wife, asshole. My home! You think for a second what you'd be willing to do, right now, keep me from walking up those stairs and feeding your wife's tits into the toaster. I've got to think about Jimmy fucking Pazz for the rest of my life? No way. I will cheerfully, cheerfully eat my fucking breakfast outta your wife's empty fucking skull, I have to, Paulie!"

  He tightened his hand on the gun, and the muzzle wandered around over Paulie's body for a while, looking for someplace painful.

  "Can't you just take me out the fuckin' garage an' get this over with, Henry? I don't wanna wake her."

  "My wife . . . My wife," said Henry, his face tightening.

  "I'm sorry about that," said Paulie. "Really. You . . . you got a legitimate beef wit' me. I see that. You wanna take me outside, inna garage, put a few inta my head . . . I can't complain. I unnerstand that. But, c'mon . . . You wouldn't do nothin' to my wife, would you, Henry? She didn't do nothin'. That wouldn't be right."

  "I'm sorry too, Paulie. But I just have to know."

  Paulie did not like the look on Henry's face at all. He was getting ready to do som
ething, he could see that. He considered diving for the gun, pictured himself dead, stretched out on the kitchen table. He thought about what Henry had said, about shitting yourself, how undignified that would look.

  "Paulie?" came a thin voice from the stairs. "That you, honey?"

  Paulie went pale. Across the table, Henry's face showed uncertainty for the first time as the padding of slippered feet drew closer. Neither man moved.

  "Oh! You've got company," said the tiny woman in the canary yellow housecoat. She might have been pretty once, without the curlers, the slippers with the bunny faces on them - a pleasant, child's face, gone to fat under the frosted curls. "You get everything on the list? Remember the food for kitty?"

  "Yeah, yeah. I got it," said Paulie, his voice cracking.

  "Crab and tuna flavor? She don't like the other kinds."

  "Yeah. I got it."

  Henry had just slipped the gun onto his lap, mind racing. He was stunned by what happened next.

  Mrs Caifano leaned over and, without a moment's hesitation, picked up the silenced pistol, holding it between her fingers like a schoolmarm impounding a slingshot. She headed off to the foyer.

  "What I tell you, Paulie, about bringing guns inta the house? You tell your friend. House rules . . . He can pick up his thingy when he leaves. It'll be right in the drawer there."

  Henry sat dumbstruck, listening as the middle-aged woman in the housecoat shuffled sleepily down the hall, dropped his gun into a bureau, closed the drawer, and returned carrying the two bags of groceries.

  She immediately set about putting away the perishables.

  "You're being very rude, Paulie, not introducing me."

  "Sorry, Marie. This is Henry . . . Henry; my wife, Marie," said Paulie, looking sheepish.

  "A friend from work? You boys work together with that terrible man?"

  "Yes," said Henry, finding his voice. "Work." He felt utterly foolish, wondering whether Paulie was going, at any second, to come lunging across the kitchen table at him.

  "He calls here all the time . . . always . . . Tell Paulie do this, tell Paulie do that. I don't see how you boys work with a person like that. He's got no respect for privacy, that man."

  She put the half-empty shopping bags on the table between Henry and Paulie, who played peekaboo while she put the remaining items in the cupboards, maintaining a steady, friendly patter the whole time.

  "Have you had any breakfast? How 'bout I make some nice scrambled eggs with some sausages?" To Henry, she confided, "Paulie was so good to remember the groceries. He always forgets." And Henry saw, beneath the familiarities, fear in Mrs Caifano's face, hidden by the talk of breakfast and groceries, but there. It made him feel ashamed of himself, and he tried to smile sympathetically.

  "And so late," she babbled on, "always so late . . . the drinking, the smoking. Henry . . . you should hear this man, he gets up inna morning, the coughing and wheezing. I swear." She shook her head.

  "I could use a cig right now," said Paulie, searching his pockets for a pack. "Shit. I knew I forgot something . . ."

  Eager for a smoke himself, Henry pulled out his own, a crumpled pack of Gitanes. He lit one for himself, then, seeing the look on Paulie's face, trying to suck smoke into his lungs from across the table, passed him the pack.

  "Thanks," said Paulie.

  "Oooh, are those French?" asked Mrs Caifano. "I never seen those. You from France, Henry?"

  "No, ma'am," said Henry. "I just like them."

  "So can I get you somethin' to eat, Paulie? Henry looks so skinny. Let me make you something—"

  "We ate," said Paulie, his stomach growling. "At the diner, we had somethin' before."

  "Well, you'll have some coffee. I'm just gonna make a little toast for myself, you don't mind. If you boys wanna talk business, I'll be out of your way inna min. Will you have some coffee, Henry? I grind my own beans."

  A roar settled on the house as a jet passed low overhead. Henry could hear the tires squeal as the plane settled down onto the nearby runway. When the noise was gone, Henry looked across the table and saw an amused look on Paulie's face, much less worried now.

  "Sure," he said. "Thanks, Mrs Caifano, I'll have a cup."

  "You wanta show Henry the yard, Paulie. I'll call yez when it's ready," said Mrs Caifano. "We're putting in a pool, you know, Henry. Paulie, show him what you done so far. I'll give a yell. Youse can have it onna patio, it's ready."

  Paulie stood up, turned his back on Henry, and walked out the screen door into his backyard, holding the screen until Henry followed.

  "Thank you," said Henry to Mrs Caifano.

  "Nice lady," said Henry.

  "Twenny-two years married," said Paulie, not looking at Henry but gazing distractedly into the empty pit in the center of the small, fenced-in yard.

  "Really? That's a long time," said Henry.

  "You know . . . all 'at time, I never fucked around on her. Not once. The whole time."

  "That's . . . extraordinary," said Henry, taken slightly aback. "I mean . . . you know . . . people in your outfit—"

  "Twenny-two years. Not once."

  "That's . . . admirable, Paulie. Really. I imagine most of your colleagues don't share your views on the sanctity of marriage."

  Paulie laughed. "No . . . no they don't." He hoisted up his pants and stepped down into the half-empty pit, kicking at a rock on his way to the deepest point. "You know, I saw youse that night down there. I saw your wife there inna stretcher. She gonna be okay now?"

  "Yeah . . . she'll be okay."

  "I felt bad about that."

  "I get the sense . . . that. . . Well, let's just say you're an unusual man, Paulie."

  "Yeah." Paulie chuckled. "I guess so."

  "So. What do we do now?" asked Henry. "We going to wrestle around the backyard for a while? The wife gonna come out with my piece, take a few shots at me? What's next?"

  "Nah . . . she ain't gonna do nothin' like that."

  "She calling somebody on the phone?"

  "Who she supposedta call?"

  "I don't know."

  Paulie stepped in front of Henry, hands at his sides. "You ain't gonna hurt my wife, Henry. Even you had yer gun now, you wouldn't do nothin' like that. You ain't gonna shoot no old lady in her bunny slippers."

  "No," admitted Henry. "I guess not."

  Paulie nodded and looked up at the sky for a long time. If Henry wanted to, he could have killed him right then. A hand across the windpipe, maybe. He let the moment pass. "I guess I could beat you to death. Kick in the nuts, chop in the neck . . ."

  "Yeah, right. We'd look pretty fuckin' stupid, rollin' aroun' inna dirt."

  Another plane came in low, the noise building to a deafening whine as it dropped out of the steel gray sky over Paulie's house. The neighbors were waking up now. Henry could smell cooking bacon and burning English muffins. Somebody was yelling at kids in the next house over.

  "I don't know, Paulie," said Henry, sighing. "You got any ideas?"

  Paulie smiled, his eyes turning to slits as he took Henry's arm. "Actually," he said, "I'm thinkin' a' somethin'."

  43

  Paulie Brown was a film star. "Popping up everywhere at a theater near you," joked one of the bleary-eyed FBI men, watching a grainy surveillance tape of Paulie having a midday walk-talk with Jerry "Dogs" Camino.

  Paulie's sudden emergence as social butterfly over the last few days was causing a lot of speculation in the Foley Square offices of the Organized Crime Strike Force. From Jimmy Pazz's rarely seen factotum to roving diplomat in the blink of an eye, Paulie had been observed having espresso in Brooklyn with Benny "Red" Merlino, lunch in the Village with Jackie Essa, midafternoon walk-talks with Jerry Dogs, as well as his usual schedule of errands and meetings with his "known associates," Jimmy Pazz and Richie Gianelli.

  "Jimmy's gotta be makin' a move," said one of the experts assigned from OCCB to the strike force after viewing Paulie's third appearance on videotape that day. "What are we hearing
from snitches?"

  "Dick," answered the exasperated FBI guy. "We're getting dick. Nobody knows nothing."

  "Then what the fuck is going on?" railed the OCCB guy. " What is he doing?"

  Informant reports continued to hint at nothing. Nobody got shot. Nobody disappeared - all the usual faces were observed showing up at their usual haunts. There were no unusual outbreaks of cheek kissing or backslapping to indicate a shifting of power or loyalty. Life went on. The only thing different was that Paulie Brown had suddenly gone from knuckle dragger to Kissinger, and nobody could figure it out.

  Surveillance was stepped up, of course. Jimmy Pazz's trailer was watched more closely than before. Paulie was followed from pay phone to pay phone; but as he never used the same one twice, it was impossible to listen in. An effort was even made to run a wire into Paulie's house; an agent dressed as a cable TV repairman tried to get past Mrs Caifano one afternoon. The old lady had a lawyer pulling into the driveway before the agent was halfway through his pitch. What little Jimmy said on his office phone was indecipherable and useless, and, since his offices were swept for listening devices twice a week, a room mike was out of the question.

  Then, just as suddenly as it started, it stopped. Traveling Paulie Brown became good old Predictable Paulie Brown again, and things went back to normal. Eleven A.M., Subject Paul Caifano woke up, had breakfast with his wife, and went to the racetrack. One-thirty P.M., Paul Caifano had lunch with his usual associates, Edward "Boy" De Cecco (known gambler), Robert "Ruby" Marx (suspected loan shark), and Charles "Chickie" Lowenstein (known bookmaker). They ate, as always, at the Turf and Surf Lounge at the track. Paulie was known to favor the pastrami. At four P.M., Paul Caifano visited the West Side Poultry Barn, a business in which he was known to have a controlling interest; from there he went to the Best of Friends Social Club on Arthur Avenue, where Jimmy's crew were known to assemble. At nine P.M., Paul Caifano had dinner with Richie "Tic" Gianelli (alleged soldier in the Calabrese crime family), finishing up at eleven-thirty. He had drinks, alone, at Mary's Bar near his Howard Beach home, after which he retired.