A Quiet Vendetta (36 page)

Where we were was things like that, and though there was always an element of edge to such things, though the fun you got out of it was never more than the fun you made, there were times I believed that I was destined for so much more. And that’s why I spoke to Carlo Evangelisti, and that’s how I ended up involved in the death of Don Ceriano and taking an audience with Sam Giancana’s cousin, Fabio Calligaris.

Early part of 1970. Six months and I would be thirty-four years old. I was all grown up in some ways, other ways still like the kid from way back when. Watched the people around me, watched them well, saw them married, having kids, and then walking out on their wives and screwing some two-bit floozy who shifted smokes from a tray at one of the smaller casinos. Never made a deal of sense to me, but then I don’t know it was ever supposed to. Couldn’t understand how a man could have a family and then do such a thing. Taking a wife and children was the farthest thing from my mind at the time, but right back to my father and the way he treated my mother I could never really understand the seeming absence of loyalty that these people demonstrated. I spoke with Don Ceriano. He took me aside, and quietly he said, ‘There are some things you see, some things not. Likewise, there are some things you hear, and just as many you don’t. A wise man knows which is which, Ernesto,’ and we never spoke of it again.

Business was varied but good. There were younger men earning their scars in my place. Days came when I would be despatching one man to make collections, another for enforcement of an agreement made with the Ceriano crew. I would spend most of my time with Don Ceriano himself, there at his right hand, listening to him, speaking with him, learning more of the ways of the world. Only once during that year was I directly involved in the death of a man. A mile or so from the house, back of the intersection that split that quarter of the city in half, we ran a bookmaker’s shop out of a factory warehouse. Warehouse fronted for some frozen orange juice exporting scam, good-sized operation turning over something in the region of five million a year. Warehouse was owned by one of Slapsie Maxie’s cousins, man by the name of Roberto Albarelli. Fat guy, too fat by too much, and the way he’d lumber across the yard shouting and badmouthing the Ricans and niggers who worked the joint made me smile. Asshole was a good enough guy, but sure as hell he looked like a gunny-sack full of shit tied at the neck and busting in the middle. Rumor had it when he fucked his wife she always had to ride on top, otherwise he would’ve suffocated the poor bitch.

Weekend came around. Me and Slapsie, and another pair from the Alcatraz Swimming Team, went down there to make some book, to collect some dues for Don Ceriano. Found Roberto sweating like a stuck pig on barbecue day in the trailer office he managed on the backlot. Those days I was old enough to do the talking when Slapsie didn’t feel like it so the conversation went down between me and the lard-ass.

‘Jeez, stinks like a Turkish sauna bath in here, Roberto. What the fuck you been doin’?’

‘Got trouble,’ he started, and his voice went high-pitched at the end and I knew there was something he was excited about.

‘Trouble? Kinda trouble?’

‘Got skinned by some asshole Puerto Rican motherfucker for eight grand and change,’ Roberto said.

Slapsie pulled me up a chair and I sat down facing the fat guy. ‘Eight grand? What the fuck you talkin’ about? What Puerto Rican motherfucker?’

‘Puerto Rican motherfucker who skinned me for eight grand this morning,’ Roberto said. ‘That Puerto Rican motherfucker.’

‘Whoa there, slow the fuck down, Roberto. What the hell you talkin’ about?’

Roberto took several deep breaths. He murmured some Italian prayer under his breath. His shirt was black beneath the armpits and he smelled ripe like a sour watermelon.

‘Took a long shot on a mare that should’ve made it no further than the boneyard,’ he said. ‘Thing was nothing more than three pints of glue and a handbag. Took a thousand dollars and knew I had it made . . . dumb stupid motherfuckin’ Puerto Rican asshole wouldn’t know one end of a horse from the next. So anyways and whatever, I took the fucking bet, okay? I took the goddamned stupid fucking bet and the boneyard mule came in just before a pony that’d lost its rider halfway down the lane. Figured I had it made. Cut for Don Ceriano, cut for me, and we’s all happy as Larry for the weekend. Puerto Rican motherfucker comes down with his tab and claims an eight-to-one payback placing first in the line-up. I tells him he’s got a mouth full of shit and a head full of piss, and then in comes three of his asshole Puerto Rican motherfucker friends, and they got heat on them, one’s got a lead pipe and whatever the fuck. He shows me the ticket, and even my blind grandmother, may her soul rest in peace amen, coulda seen that they scratched out the name of the boneyarder and wrote in the name of the winning horse.’

I was watching Roberto with both my eyes going the same way. Roberto was family, as good as family got, but he had a reputation for varnishing the lies with a gloss of truth. He knew well enough that any lie around this place walked with mighty short legs, but that wouldn’t have stopped him hitting on the race winnings for a few grand. From what I could see he was telling the truth, and already my mind was asking premature questions.

‘So these assholes demanded a payback of eight grand, and shit I didn’t wanna die, Ernesto, I really didn’t wanna die today, so what the fuck was I gonna do? There was four of them and one of me, and you know I don’t move so fast these days, and they had heat and they had a freakin’ lead pipe, and it was right there in their eyes that they didn’t give one single scrawny rat’s ass about whacking me and taking everything I got.’

Roberto started blubbering then, shaking like Jell-O near a drum roll, and I gripped his shoulder and held it firm and made him look in my eyes and tell that what he was saying was the truth so help him God.

‘Sure as shit is brown and the Pope ain’t never got laid,’ he said.

‘It’s the fucking truth, Ernesto . . . those asshole Puerto Rican motherfuckers took eight grand off of me and Don Ceriano, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna do.’

‘Where’re they at, Roberto?’

He looked surprised. ‘Who?’

‘The goddamned Puerto Ricans, Roberto, who the fuck d’ya think I mean? Jeez, goddammit, Roberto, sometimes you are the dumbest motherfucker ever to walk the face of God’s green earth.’

‘The bowling alley down on southside, you know?’

I shook my head. ‘No, I don’t fucking know, Roberto. What bowling alley?’

‘Near Seventh and Stinson—’

‘I know where he means,’ Slapsie said quietly.

‘So I’m gonna go down there, Roberto, and I’m gonna find me some Puerto Ricans living the high-life with eight grand and change, and I’m gonna sort this thing out. But I’ll tell you once and once only . . . I go down there and you’ve pissed down my back and told me it’s rainin’ then I’m gonna come back and cut your goddamned pecker off and make you eat it, you get it?’

‘It’s true, all of it’s true,’ Roberto said, and then he started crying and blubbering again.

I stood up. I looked at Slapsie. ‘You come with me, and you,’ I said pointing to another of the crew. I turned back to Roberto. ‘I’m gonna leave one of the boys here to take care of you ’til we get back, okay? You try any weird shit and he’s gonna ventilate your fucking head, you understand?’

Roberto nodded. He nodded between one sobbing wretched sound and the next.

Me and Slapsie and the younger guy, kid with bad skin and crooked teeth called Marco who was related to Johnny the Limpet in some way or other – we took the car and headed southside. Slapsie drove, he knew the way, and within twenty-five minutes we’d pulled up outside some beat-to-shit bowling alley with a small greasy-looking diner attached to the side like a malignant tumor. Outside there was one teenager, couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen, and from the look of him he was as high as Vesuvius on some filthy-smelling shit these assholes always smoked.

I nodded at Marco. He got out of the car and walked straight towards the kid. A handful of words. The kid nodded and sat down on the ground. He pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, lowered his head until his chin touched his chest and he stayed there like a sleeping Mexican outside a five-dollar bordello.

Me and Slapsie came from the front of the car. Slapsie carried a baseball bat, a good solid wooden thing with a four-inch nail hammered through the head. See him coming like that and you’d piss your pants and reaffirm your belief in the baby Jesus. I smiled to myself. Adrenaline pumped like a jailhouse bodybuilder.

The door wasn’t locked. Me and Slapsie went through quietly. Could hear voices as soon as we were inside, that and the thunder of a bowling ball making its way down one of the lanes, the clatter of pins as the ball made its target, the whoops and hollers of three or four dumbass Puerto Rican motherfuckers who’d figured their luck was in when they took down Roberto Albarelli for eight grand and change.

They saw Slapsie first. The one nearest us couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. He looked for a second like someone had asked him to cut his own pecker off, and then he started screaming at us in Spanish. The second Rican came up behind him. He looked pissed, real pissed, and then the third one came, and the third one was reaching in back of his pants waistband for what could only have been his heat.

Slapsie was a big guy, big like Joe Louis, yet when he decided to run he ran like one of those small greyhound niggers, all stick-bones and painted-on muscles and not an ounce of fat to share around.

He came alongside the first guy and pushed him aside, the second one too, and then he let fly with his bat and caught the gun-puller in the upper arm with the four-inch nail.

Can’t remember a scream that ever sounded quite like that before or after. Later I figured it must have been the acoustics of that place, for the sound that erupted from his mouth was like some strange prehistoric bird. He went down like a bag of bricks and lay there for some time. Slapsie kicked him sideways into the bowling lane and he didn’t move. I don’t know whether he was out cold or frightened stiff, but whichever it was it was fine by me.

I approached the taller of the Ricans. In my hand I held a .38, just loose at my side but enough so they both could see it.

‘Eight grand and change, please,’ I said.

The taller one looked at me kind of weird. I shot him in the left foot. He went down silent, didn’t even utter a sound, and but for the scrabbling of his foot on the glossed surface of the floor you wouldn’t have known he was there.

‘Eight grand and change, please . . . and don’t make me ask you again or you’ll be leaking out through a hole in your fucking head.’

The shorter one made a move. Slapsie had him gripped by the back of his neck before he went a foot.

‘You wanna play a ball or two?’ I asked Slapsie.

Slapsie grinned. ‘Sure . . . ain’t played this shit for years.’

‘Put his head in there,’ I told Slapsie, and Slapsie dragged the kid across the floor and pushed his head down into the bowling ball return chute. I could hear him screaming. Sound echoed out from the chute like he was calling me long-distance from Poughkeepsie.

The first ball Slapsie threw went like a rocket along the lane and would’ve broken any number of pins had his aim been any good.

‘Throw like a bitch,’ I said, and Slapsie laughed.

I heard the ball go back over the far edge and drop into the return runway. I listened as it was projected back upwards and started its rapidly accelerating journey home.

The kid screamed. He knew what was coming.

The sound as that bowling ball hammered into the top of his skull was like Slapsie’s baseball bat colliding with a side of beef. The kid didn’t utter a sound.

I turned and looked at the kid with the bullet in his foot. His eyes were wide, his skin white like a nun in wintertime.

‘Try again,’ I told Slapsie, and he let another ball fly down the lane.

Bang on target. Strike.

The pins caterwauled away like frightened children, every last one of them.

‘Motherfucker!’ Slapsie shouted, and he did this little dance from one foot to the other.

We waited. We quietened down. The ball dropped down the back and started its way home.

The sound of contact was wet and crunching. Whatever tension may have existed in the kid’s body dropped out of him completely. I hauled him up and let him slide to the ground. The top of his head was little more than mush as far down as the bridge of his nose. One of his eyes lolled drunkenly out of its socket and dangled against his blood-spattered cheek.

I turned and looked at the kid on the floor.

‘Eight grand and change, please,’ I said quietly.

The kid raised his hand and pointed to a bag on the seats behind us. Slapsie walked over and opened it up. He smiled. He nodded. He picked up the bag with his left hand, and then he took one step backwards, another, and with his right hand he raised his bat way over his shoulder and brought it down like Thor’s hammer. The four-inch nail punctured the kid’s forehead. His eyes bugged out like they were on springs, and then there was nothing but the nail through the bat holding him up off the ground. Slapsie wrenched sideways and the nail tore free. The kid slumped to the ground and rolled onto his side.

I looked at Slapsie. Slapsie looked at me.

‘Figure the fat guy is off the hook,’ he said quietly.

‘Figure he is,’ I replied.

We left as quietly as we had entered. The teenager outside still sat there with his head on his knees. Back of his neck showed a dark black bruise just above his shoulders. Marco had more than likely stamped on him and just broken his freakin’ neck.

Business done, we went back to see Albarelli. We gave him the money. He would’ve sucked my dick if I’d asked him. Told him not to say a word. Way it worked was that you just dealt with the bad news, but you never passed it up the line. Albarelli wouldn’t have said a word anyway, would’ve shot his reputation to pieces, but despite that there was a form and a protocol to these things. Don Ceriano never knew what Don Ceriano didn’t need to know. Like he’d told me himself,
There are some things you see, some things not. Likewise there are some things you hear, and just as many you don’t. A wise man knows which is which
.