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He had an old-world Italian accent. “You a-shaved!”

I guess he did recognize me.

So I says, “That’s what they keep telling me. I’m Tommy Davin.”

“I know who you are. I am Guiseppe Contagliere, but my customers call me Jocko.” He tilted his head at the barber chair. “Sit!”

I hesitated. To tell you the truth, in all the years I’d been in the neighborhood, I’d probably seen a customer in Jocko’s place maybe five times. I felt sorry for the old guy, guessed he’d seen Carroll Gardens go from a family neighborhood in the fifties to a war zone in the seventies and now booming with gentrification. His place, like Dominic’s Restaurant, and a handful of other places, was a tiny island of the past in a rising sea of hipsters and real estate speculators. Jocko probably owned the building and didn’t need to cut hair except that it was what he’d always done and needed to do to get up in the morning. The barbershop would turn into a mod dress shop or brioche hut the second they were patting the dirt on Jocko’s grave.

I dropped my overcoat and new hat on one chair and sat in the other.

Jocko swept a sheet over me, and fit my neck with a slip of tissue before cinching the bib tight to my Adam’s apple. Years of sitting in a stylist’s chair had made me forget the barber experience, the smell of the bay rum and talcum. I was suddenly eight years old again, my pop sitting by the barbershop window reading a racing form and smoking a White Owl Invincible.

I watched Jocko’s polished black shoe kick a wooden box next to the chair, and he stood on it. Good thing. Without it, all he’d be trimming was my armpits.

“Tommy, you hava lotta hair. How much you want Jocko to take?” He was leaning in close, the brown shelf of his pompadour perfect above his deeply wrinkled face. Juicy Fruit was on his breath.

He held the scissors up, ready to go at it. I was now worried not just about the money and the cats, but about getting the dorky haircut I had when I was eight, the one where the hair in back always stood up. I put a hand up to my earlobe.

“Bring it up to here. But make sure the hair in back doesn’t stand up, OK, Jocko? It’s very important my hair in back stays long enough that it doesn’t stand up.”

He put a hand on my chest. “Tommy, what kinda barber would Jocko be if he make the hair in back stand up? Eh? I been in this business for fifty years.” He stomped on a pedal, and the chair jerked backward to where I was half laying down. The scissors began to flash.

Well, at least I was helping this poor old guy out like I’d been thinking about doing for twenty years. My stylist could maybe fix whatever damage he did.

“OK if I make a phone call, Jocko?”

“Sure, sure…” He was hacking away on one side, and I dialed a number and put my phone to the other.

A deep voice that sounded sleepy but musical answered. “Walter here.”

“Walter. Tom Davin.”

“Tommy, honey, how are you? You back in Vegas? I have a new show at the Starlight. You and Yvette should come, I’ll comp you tickets. I have some new dresses that are fantasmo, nothing but, fit me perfectly. I lost four and a half pounds.”

Just so you know, Walter is a female impersonator, very talented. I thought I should mention this because you could get confused about who I was talking to. Walter and Yvette were friends. As much as anybody in Vegas showbiz are friends, anyway.

“We split, Walter. You haven’t heard from her?”

There was a sob on the other end. See? That wouldn’t make any sense unless you knew Walter was light in the loafers. I can’t describe what he looked like while I talked to him, but you can be sure he was in some sort of silk robe.

So Walter says, “I am so sorry, Tommy.”

“It’s best, Walter, believe me. Look, I can’t talk long. The point is I have her cats, she left them with me, but somebody took them.”

He says,
“Oh my God.”

So I says, “Yeah, and there was a note saying if she wants her cats back she has to see Gustav. You know who he is?”

“Oh my God.”

“So you know who he is?”

“I don’t feel comfortable talking about Gustav.”

I rolled my eyes, and switched the phone to the other ear to make way for Jocko. “Sweetheart, the point is, I’m a little worried about the cats. Sure, she stuck them with me when she took off, and I’m glad they’re gone, but just the same, I hate to think this guy Gustav might hurt them if Yvette doesn’t contact him. I don’t know where she is and frankly don’t want to know, but if you have some way of finding her—”

“On it, Tommy. I know a
lot
of people who know a
lot
of people.”

“I appreciate it, Walter. I have no idea how she should get in touch with this catnapper, that’s her problem. I don’t want anything more to do with Yvette. Her cats, her problem. But that’s no reason the cats should suffer.”

“Catnapper?
Ha ha ha
. That’s fantasmo. You are such a scream sometimes, Tommy, I swear. Look, I’ll put the bloodhounds on this and let you know.”

“Thanks. Hope the new show is a smash, honey. I’ll come see it next time I’m in Vee.”

“Ciao!”

The call was over, and I looked at my e-mail. No photo yet.

Jocko stomped on a pedal, and the chair popped upright. He now went to work on the back of my head.

I says, “Not too short, OK?”

So he says, “You know, there was a day that I cut the hair of John Gotti?”

Gotti was a famous Brooklyn mobster in the eighties.

“No shit?”

“Right in this chair.”

“No shit?”

“It’s true, right in this chair.” Jocko was behind me snip-snipping. “If I mess up the back of Gotti’s head, the hair there, which was very thin, he have me killed. I still alive. So now you think I mess up the back of
your
head? Eh? You have a lotta hair back here, Tommy. Too much. It is good you came to me. You going to Johnny’s funeral tomorrow?”

“You knew One-Ball?”

“Of course. My customer for many years, the week before he died. Terrible what happened to him. You were there, so you know. Of course it will be a closed casket. Someone must have been very angry to kill him this way. Some of course think it is the Black Hand.”

I guessed as the local barber, he was expected to know everything about everybody. Even so, his words gave me hope that somehow Johnny’s death had nothing to do with me, that the second shot was maybe something to throw the cops off.

So I says, “Jocko, I knew Johnny for many years, like yourself. A wonderful person.”

“Yes.”

“A family man. Until his divorce.”

“Yes.”

“Beautiful kids. Except the daughter.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been around a long time, though, Jocko. Sometimes you have a window only into certain things about a person, at a certain level, but not more.”

“Yes.”

“See, I knew Johnny professionally, not just at the restaurant, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

“Well, I didn’t really figure he was that mobbed up to get taken out like that. Their style is to squeeze someone like Jo-Ball for all he’s worth and next you know he’s in the canal bobbing for jellyfish. A sniper just isn’t their style. That’s West Coast shit. And let’s be honest. The wiseguys aren’t around so much anymore. I don’t doubt Johnny may have paid some sort of vig to the local association, but…”

I felt the straight razor begin to scrape the back of my neck, and I tensed. That brought back memories. Scared the hell out of me when I was a really little kid in the barber chair, I don’t know why. Made me cry.

In the mirror, Jocko’s brown pompadour and brown face appeared over my left shoulder, the gleaming old straight razor in his hand. “Are you asking me a question, Tommy?”

His wet old eyes locked onto mine, unblinking. I couldn’t tell if he was pissed off or not. I didn’t really like the way he was holding the straight razor.

“Can I tell you something, Jocko, mano a mano?”

His brown eyes sparked with interest. “I would be honored, Tommy, to have your confidence.”

“You know I was there when he was shot.”

“Yes.”

“There was a second shot, and it just missed me.”

“Ohhhh…”

“You see? I don’t know if they were really trying to kill me or just took a shot at me as a witness or what. I would value your opinion of this matter.”

Jocko touched the flat of the razor blade to his chin. Thoughtfully, his eyes turned on the shop’s front windows. He stepped off his box and circled around in front of me. He pursed his lips and gestured at me with the razor.

“It used to be that a barber would be asked by the Black Hand to perform services. A customer in a barber chair is … unsuspecting.”

There was an awkward pause that caused me a little anxiety. He was freaking me out a little with that razor, and I couldn’t tell if he was doing it on purpose or I was just edgy. I mean, from what I said, why would he go at me with the razor? Because I was asking if Johnny was more mobbed up than the local deli? It sounded like Jocko himself had accommodated the mob, had set up people in the barber chair to be diced. Or worse: that on command, he’d slit customers’ throats. It was possible. Some of these old-time Sicilian guys are pretty touchy about the Cosa Nostra.

I was getting mentally ready to defend myself, trying not to look at the door, or on the counter for some sort of weapon. Though in truth, I could make pretty good work of this old guinea shrimp with one swing of the fist, just below the pompadour.

I had to say something, even at the risk of inviting trouble, so I said, “I’m a clever guy, Jocko, but not always too smart. I’m not following what you’re saying.”

Where he was standing I could probably have kicked him in the face, too.

Then he says, “Ah, but the barber can hardly be blamed. He has to look out for his family. There are all kinds of barbers.”

Now I had goose bumps.

“I still don’t follow, Jocko.”

He looked at the floor. “Nobody would blame you, Tommy.”

“Blame me? Jocko, for Christ sake, what are you talking about?”

He made a slight shrug, the type one makes when trying to forget something unpleasant. “You were his friend. You stepped outside with him. This is all very natural.”

I stared at him a moment, and then laughed. “You’re joking.”

His eyes had the patina of shame in them, and they met mine in the mirror. “This is what they are saying in the neighborhood.”

“That it was me who set him up to get his head blown off?”

“You were his competitor.”

“Friends first. Competitors second.”

“He was Italian.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Certain people … they are unhappy.”

The goose bumps were back, and they were on top of other goose bumps. I leaned forward as he turned with shave cream steaming in his hand.

“Certain people?”

“Certain people.”

“How can I talk to these certain people and tell them I had nothing to do with it?”

“The funeral is tomorrow at the Viscotti funeral home, on Carroll. I will be there. They will be there.”

“Jocko, please tell me: Are these certain people really
really
pissed off or can this actually wait until tomorrow?”

He looked at his razor, then at me. “Wait until tomorrow.”

Don’t ask me why I let him finish the haircut, with the straight razor behind my head. Maybe it was because if the Mafia was going to kill me I’d rather have it done sooner than later. Save me a lot of running around trying to raise fifteen grand for the pink monkey.

I WALKED DOWN SMITH STREET
feeling the back of my neck. It had been a long time since it had been exposed like that, and I felt kind of naked in the breezy fall morning. On the other hand, the feeling of having so much less hair was also kind of liberating. I was lighter, sharper. I would need to be if the Mafia was after me.

Then again, it could have been that my lighter step was just the result of not having my throat slit by Jocko.

Of course, now I had one more thing I didn’t need on my plate: the local Mafia pissed off with me, thinking I killed Jo-Ball. At least I knew when and where to straighten that out.

Anyway, in a matter of moments I hoped to have things straightened out with Huey and get my due on those paintings. I was ready to confront Huey, and I could see him just up ahead in front of his wife’s bistro, smoking and nervous. His white hair glowed in the yellow October sun.

I was on the southwest corner of the intersection and waiting for the traffic to clear the crosswalk. My phone buzzed. An e-mail had come in, and I stopped to read it. I shaded the screen with myhand to look at the attached photo. Yup. There was ol’ Huey slipping into Bridget’s green loft building. The picture was small, but I could see that white hair and hunched frame.

I looked up from the screen. Huey was eyeing me from across the intersection. He was in the midst of taking a deep suck of smoke.

I gave a little two-fingered wave, and then he seemed to recognize me. I think he was staring at me thinking I looked familiar but couldn’t place me.

He flicked his smoke into the gutter, and gave me one of those little French shrugs as I approached.

“Huey, what do you have for me?” A gust of wind almost took my hat, and I grabbed it.

“Tommy, what can I say?”

“You can say what you were doing at Billy Bank yesterday, and tell me what you put in storage.”

His eyes narrowed, flitted across the passing pedestrians. Some fast thinking was going on.

“Huey, it was a cute move, but I know where you’ve been the last twenty-four hours. All I care about is that I get my original cut, forty grand. All in all, I think that’s pretty fair. If it got around about this monkey business, you might find it hard to put together a string or sell. I’d never settle any more goodies for you, that’s for sure. Either that or get me those paintings back.”

“I cannot.”

“Cannot what?”

“I never had the paintings. It’s too late anyway.”

“Never too late for me to show Ariel this.” I took out my phone with one hand and pointed to the screen with the other. “That’s you going in to see Bridget.”