Pudge kept walking toward the car, firing bullets with each step. When one gun emptied he tossed it into the river behind him, reached into the back of his trousers for a third and pumped six fresh bullets into the interior. He stopped when he reached the rear door of the car, looked down with experienced calm at the four dead men scattered inside like broken dolls. He put his guns back inside his jacket, turned around and it was then that Pudge Nichols, a gangster his entire life, knew he had made a fatal mistake.
“That wasn’t too bad for an old white man,” Little Ricky Carson said, standing there in his standard long rider coat. Three men were behind him as backup.
Pudge turned to look back at the four bodies in the smoldering Mercedes. “Is that how you treat your crew?” he asked. “Put them in the middle of a setup situation?”
“I hope I stay as tough as you, when I turn old,” Little Ricky said, his hands in the deep pockets of his coat.
“I wouldn’t waste money betting on it,” Pudge told him.
And then Pudge swung the Mercedes door open and dove inside, landing on top of the two dead bodies in the backseat. He searched frantically through the insides of their coat pockets, found two guns, turned on his side and started firing. Little Ricky reeled from the line of fire, diving against the pier door, an alley cat scurrying from his late-night prey. The three gunmen pulled semiautomatics from inside their long coats and, with legs apart and arms braced, started firing a steady stream of bullets inside the dark Mercedes. Pudge braced one of the dead men up and used him as a shield, firing wildly in the direction of the three men. He felt the heat of the bullets whiz past him, several cracking the car windows behind him and a few lodging in the thick leather upholstery. He dropped one empty gun and reached into the pocket of the dead man next to him for a fresh weapon. Wrapping one hand around a .44 bulldog, he turned away from the three gunmen, trying to open the door on the other side of the car. As he lifted the handle, he felt a piercing burn in his shoulder and was sent crashing forward, landing facedown on the dirty street. He leaned against the rear tire, blood rushing out of the wound and down his back, and checked the gun in his hand as a wave of bullets popped holes into the Mercedes exterior. Pudge used his feet to lift himself up, turned and fired three quick volleys, hitting one of the gunmen square in the chest, then shifted his attention to the second gunman. He aimed the large gun, the pain in his shoulder sinking down into his back, and put pressure on the trigger. He squeezed off one round, catching the shooter just below the jaw. Pudge watched him fall, then turned to the third gunmen, who was walking toward him now in a bent position, moving his gun from left to right, looking to get off a final shot. Pudge closed his eyes and knew he was one bullet away from making it a battle between himself and Little Ricky Carson. One bullet away from walking clear of a trap he should have been smart enough not to get caught in. Pudge had been around enough of these last moments to know that they would have little to do with skill. It was now all about luck and how much of it he had left.
As Pudge Nichols felt the cold barrel of the gun lodge against the base of his neck, he knew that his long streak had come to an end.
“Fun’s over, old man,” Little Ricky Carson said.
• • •
THE SUN CAME in through the cracked wooden slats, highlighting the grease and the rummy shacks huddled in corners of the pier. A long line of pigeons draped the upper planks, sitting perched and cooing. Angelo Vestieri stood in the center of the empty port of entry, dirty river water splashing onto his new shoes and wetting the edge of his cuffs. He looked down at Pudge Nichols’s body, bound and tied to a thick wooden board. I stood off in a corner, leaning against a shaky wall, my head resting against the wet wood, my hands covering my face, trying not to let Angelo hear me cry.
“Nico, let me have a knife,” Angelo said. He bent down and ran a hand across his friend’s face, staring at him, his eyes hard but moist, his hands shaking in the filthy shadows of the abandoned dock. He slowly moved his fingers down each of Pudge’s many wounds, some of which had already been gnawed at by the water rats that patrolled the piers. Pudge had been shot several times, but it was the blade of a knife that had ultimately killed him.
Nico came up behind Angelo and handed him the knife, then walked back into the shadows, leaving the two men their final moments together. Angelo clicked open the switchblade and cut the thick cord away from Pudge’s body. He worked his way from chest to feet and, when he was done, closed the blade and tossed the knife into the murky waves. He gently shoved his arms under Pudge’s body, lifted him to his chest, rose to his feet and began his slow walk out. I followed him, Nico in step alongside me. I had never seen a dead body before, let alone that of someone I loved, but I was numb to any reaction other than sorrow.
I touched the top of Pudge’s head, cold and wet from the long night floating in the hull of a port he had once brought to life. I wanted so much to tell him that I would miss him more than I could even imagine. I never needed a brother or a sister or a mother as long as Pudge was around. He always made it his business to be everything to me that Angelo could never be. Now that was all gone.
“We’ll stop at the bar first,” Angelo said. “Get Pudge some clean clothes. Then, we’ll go up to Ida’s farm and bury him the right way.”
I knew he didn’t even know I was there at this moment. I knew he was alone in the company of the one man in this world he could call a friend.
I also knew that after this day Angelo would never be, could never be, the same. His final link to the past had been stripped away.
• • •
I LOOKED OVER at Mary as she took a bite of her Reuben sandwich and wiped the corner of her lips with the folded end of a cloth napkin. I took a long drink from a glass of mineral water and shrugged my shoulders. “That was the worst day of my life,” I said to her. “Losing Pudge in that way is something I don’t think I’ve ever recovered from. It showed me a side of their world that I just didn’t want any part of. Being with people you love and being able to do what you want, not having to worry about money or work, that was fun. But the reality of it is that those periods only last a short while. Most of the time you’re trying not to get either yourself or the people around you killed.”
“Pudge didn’t want that life for you.” Mary rested her elbows on the counter, ignoring the cigarette smoke from the table behind her.
“Maybe,” I said. “When I think back on it and remember all the things he told me, they applied as much to the outside world as they did to his. That was his way of teaching me there weren’t too many differences between the two, and that I had to get ready to face one of them.”
“Who were you closer to, Angelo or Pudge?” Mary asked, pushing her platter off to one side of the ceramic tabletop.
“Pudge was always easier to talk to,” I told her. “He’s the guy you went to after a first date or a first kiss or pretty much a first anything. And whatever you had to say, he made you feel good about it. I wanted to be more like Pudge. But inside, I felt more like Angelo. I didn’t act like him or treat people the way he did and, God knows, I talked a lot more than he did. But I felt closed off from the world, much like he was. And I always felt different from those around me, as if I was holding a secret that no one else could know. Maybe more of him rubbed off on me than I thought.”
“He had a stronger personality than Pudge,” Mary said, sitting back in her chair. “He didn’t have to say as much to have an impact. Plus, you didn’t have as much time with Pudge. He died when you were still a boy. And what other people thought never really mattered to Pudge, as long as their thinking didn’t affect the way he lived his life. Angelo looked to force his will on others, align them to his way of thinking. It was a part of his power and he was very good at it.”
“You talking from experience?” I asked, signaling a hovering waiter for a check. “Or just as a casual observer?”
“I’m talking as a victim,” Mary said, a slight crack to her voi
ce. “Just like you.”
• • •
COOTIE TURNBILL SAT across from Angelo, finished off the last of his bourbon and took a long, full drag on his cigar. Sitting around him, each holding a drink and a lit cigar, were his three main lieutenants. Sharpe Baylor was the youngest of the trio, a thirty-five-year-old hard case who controlled the streets for Turnbill’s team. Gil Scully handled the crew’s money, his clean hands capable of washing thousands of illegal dollars, turning them into solid investments overnight. Then there was Step, who had been running rackets out of Harlem since the early 1930s and had been Cootie’s partner since the start of World War II. Angelo sat across from the four, his hands resting flat on top of his desk, an untouched glass of milk sitting on a coaster to his right. “There isn’t time to think this over,” he told them. “I need a yes or a no now.”
“Carson’s adding muscle every day,” Sharpe Baylor said. “The hit on Pudge added seriously to his presence on the street. The word we get back is that the young guns all believe he’s one bullet from the top spot. That means, right now, we’re looking at a crew that’s at least four hundred deep. Maybe more.”
Step stood and walked over toward Angelo’s desk. “It hurt me a lot to see Pudge go out the way he did. If my vote means anything, then we go out and start shooting down some of these bastards.”
“Before I put out my vote, I’d like to ask you a question,” Gil Scully said, his voice the least emotional of the group. “I want to know why a tough boss like you needs to reach out to a gang of niggers?”
“I’m a gangster,” Angelo said. “That’s the same as being a nigger. In this room or in any other, I don’t see the difference and I never have.”
“How you want it to break down?” Cootie Turnbill asked, placing his empty whiskey glass on the side of Angelo’s desk.
“I don’t want anything from the new action he’s picked up or what he had before it,” Angelo said. “That’s yours to give out.”
“We’ll need your guns in this as well,” Gil Scully said. “Alone we about match up. Your boys give us enough timber to send them off.”
“I’ve told Nico to walk with you on every step,” Angelo said, lifting the glass of milk to his lips. “Whatever you need—men, guns, cars, money. It’ll be there.”
“You ain’t the type to sit back and let other people run your fight card,” Step said. “You’ll want a place on the ticket. Now tell me, where’s that place gonna be?”
Angelo stared at Step and nodded. “Do what you want with Little Ricky Carson’s crew,” he said in a low, powerful voice. “How they die, and where, is your business. Except for one. No one but me touches Little Ricky.”
“Humor an old friend, Angelo,” Cootie Turnbill said. “What if we take a pass on all this? Sit down with Little Ricky and cut our own deal with him. We do that, where does that leave you?”
Angelo pushed his chair back and stood to face the four men. “On my own. And believe me when I say that alone or with you, I’ll make sure every member of that crew, from Little Ricky on down, ends up dead.”
Cootie cleared his throat. “A handshake seals it,” he said. “I don’t see a need to take it further. Especially coming from one nigger to another.”
• • •
THE THIN YOUNG drug dealer sat in the hard-back chair in the center of the empty room. He was stripped down to a T-shirt and boxer shorts and was shivering from the overhead fans that were blowing a cool wind down at him at full speed. He had been in the room for more than an hour, placed there by the three strong arms that had dragged him out of his bed in the middle of the night and tossed him into the backseat of a large car.
“You guys ain’t been to enough movies,” he said to them at one point during the one-hour ride downtown to the warehouse. “If you had, you woulda known that you blindfold a guy after you lift him. This way when he comes gunning for you, he won’t know which way to go.”
The driver, a large man with a hard body, shook his head. “Take it all in,” he said to the dealer. “Take some pictures if you got a camera. It won’t matter. Everything you see is the last time you’re gonna see it. So, knock yourself out. If nothing else, it’ll make the ride go faster.”
The drug dealer jumped in his seat when he heard the dead bolt on the center door snap open. Angelo Vestieri stepped through the doorway and made his way slowly toward the dealer, a gun in his right hand. He stopped when he was directly in front of the dealer and stared down at him. Nico followed him into the room and stood off to the side.
Since the agreement with Cootie and his crew, there was only silence and death surrounding Angelo. True to their word, Turnbill let loose his well-organized mob with a vicious fury not seen since the big gang wars of the 1930s, and combined with what was left of Angelo’s gang, they inflicted heavy losses on Little Ricky Carson and his troops. As the body count rose by alarming numbers, Carson looked for an escape route out of the war and arranged for his brother, Gerald, to meet with Cootie, hoping to see if a truce could be arranged. He got his answer when one of Sharpe Baylor’s hit men left Gerald’s decapitated body hanging by the shoulders on the electric garage door chains for Little Ricky to see when he left the next morning to check on his overnight business.
Angelo rested the barrel of the gun on top of the drug dealer’s knee and pulled the trigger. The sound of the bullet going through flesh and bone was displaced by the dealer’s screams. He sat in the chair, rocking back and forth, his eyes looking up to the tin ceiling, his mouth filled with spit and foam. Both of his hands were wrapped around his leg, blood gushing through his fingers and down the sides.
“I ask one question,” Angelo said, waiting until he knew he had the dealer’s attention. “And I want one answer. If it’s the right one, all you have to worry about is one more bullet. But if it’s not, this will be the worst last day of any man’s life. Are you ready for my question?”
The dealer didn’t speak, but through the sweat pouring down the sides of his face and the tears welling in his eyes he managed a nervous nod. Angelo took a step closer to him, put out his hand and gripped the dealer by the chin. “I know you do your work for Little Ricky,” Angelo said in a voice as cold as a winter grave. “I know you sell his drugs and you kill people he asks you to kill. I know the two of you grew up together and have stayed good friends. I know he likes and trusts you. What I don’t know is where I can find him. And that’s the one question I want you to answer. Where can I find Little Ricky Carson?”
The drug dealer swallowed hard, more out of fear than need. The hesitation was enough for Angelo to lift the gun and bring it down on the dealer’s other leg. He pressed it against the soft flesh of the man’s thigh and pulled the trigger. The dealer’s screams came from out of a hidden place that was welled solid with pain and misery. He rocked violently back and forth, alternating pitiful moans with massive shrieks, his puffy eyes looking up to Angelo for relief. But Angelo shook his head. This was not a day for relief.
“You scream loud,” Angelo said. “Talk the same way.”
“He’s in a building on the Upper West Side,” the dealer sputtered, the space around his feet thick with blood. “Top floor. He keeps it quiet. Most of his top guys don’t even know about it. When he doesn’t want to be found, he cribs up there.”
“Don’t make me guess the number of the building,” Angelo said.
“I got it on a piece of paper in my wallet. In the pants your boys took off me. Don’t remember it right off.”
Angelo glanced at Nico who nodded back and walked down the length of the long warehouse floor to where the dealer’s clothes were stacked in a corner pile. Nico pulled a black leather wallet out of the back pocket of a pair of crisp jeans, scattering its contents on the floor until he found what he wanted. He held up a folded piece of yellow paper. “It’s an address,” he said. “And an apartment number.”
Angelo’s dead eyes moved from Nico back down to the dealer, whose upper body was trembling, his lower ha
lf washed over with blood. “I gave him up, just like you asked. Gave you what you wanted, didn’t I?”
Angelo nodded, lifted the gun and rested it on the dealer’s forehead. He looked down and saw the young man’s eyes bulge, his lips moving but lacking the ability to form words. He held up two bloody hands against Angelo’s rich dark suit and tried to push him away. Angelo squeezed the trigger and blew out the back of the dealer’s head, sending him crashing to the floor in a rubbery heap. He slipped the gun into his pocket and walked over to Nico. He put his hand out and looked down at the yellow piece of paper Nico handed him.
“Let’s go,” he said, crumpling the paper and tossing it behind his back. “I want to make sure Little Ricky’s best friend didn’t die a liar.”
• • •
I SAT IN the backseat next to Angelo, Nico driving at a fast clip through the side streets of Washington Heights. We had spoken very little since Pudge’s death. His burial on Ida the Goose’s property in Roscoe had been a somber affair attended by only a handful of mourners. Neither Angelo nor Pudge cared much for those large, flower-drenched funerals that were so often a highlight of a gangster’s newsreel footage. They thought those events were only put on for show, to give the appearance of power and deprived such moments of the privacy they deserved. “Tell me this,” Pudge would often ask me, as he sat and read about the exorbitant funeral of a rival. “If he was the guy with all the power, then how come he’s riding in the lead car, stuffed inside a coffin?”
I looked out at the crowded streets as they rushed past, eager young faces in sweaters and skirts mingling with old women pulling shopping carts filled with a few days of groceries. I turned away to look at Angelo, his head against the leather rest, his mind lost in the moment, his eyes ignoring all the activity taking place around him. The weight of Pudge’s death had taken its toll. Angelo already felt that he was a danger to anyone he drew close to, that he was cursed to bring a painful death to those who took the time to befriend him. I was starting to sense that such fears were now being directed my way.