Prayers for Rain (22 page)

By the time I reached the Clarendon Street end of the alley, he was gone. Shoppers and tourists and high school students filled the sidewalks. I saw men in trench coats and yellow macs and construction workers drenched to the bone. I saw steam rising from the sewer grates and enveloping taxis as they rolled past. I saw a kid on Rollerblades wipe out in front of a parking lot on Newbury. But not Wesley.

Just the mist and rain he’d left behind.

The morning after I had my encounter with Wesley in the rain, I got a call from Bubba telling me to be outside my house in half an hour because he was coming to pick me up.

“Where we going?”

“To see Stevie Zambuca.”

I stepped back from the small telephone table, took a long breath. Stevie Zambuca? Why the hell would he want to see me? I’d never met the man. I would have assumed the man had never heard of me. I’d been kind of hoping to keep it that way.

“Why?”

“Dunno. He called me, said to come to his house and bring you.”

“I was requested.”

“You wanna call it that, sure. You were requested.” Bubba hung up.

I went back out into the kitchen and sat at the table, drank my morning coffee, and tried to breathe steadily enough to avoid a panic attack. Yes, Stevie Zambuca scared me, but that wasn’t rare. Stevie Zambuca scared most people.

Stevie “The Pick” Zambuca ran a crew out of East Boston and Revere that, among other things, controlled most North Shore gambling, prostitution, narcotics, and chop-shop operations. Stevie was called “The
Pick” not because he carried an ice pick or because he was skinny or knew his way around a lock, but because he was famous for giving his victims a choice on how they’d die. Stevie would enter a room where three or four of his goons held a guy to a chair, and he’d place an ax and a hacksaw in front of the guy and tell the guy to pick. Ax or saw. Knife or sword. Garrote or hammer. If the victim couldn’t pick, or didn’t do so in time, Stevie was rumored to use a drill, his weapon of choice. This was one of the reasons why newspapers sometimes erroneously called Stevie “The Drill,” which, according to rumor, pissed off a Somerville made guy named Frankie DiFalco who had a really big dick.

For half a second I wondered if Cody Falk’s bodyguard, Leonard, could be connected to this. I’d made him for a North Shore guy, after all. But that was just the panic. If Leonard had enough pull to get Stevie Zambuca to call me to his house, then Leonard wouldn’t have needed to hire himself out to Cody Falk.

This didn’t make sense. Bubba traveled in mob circles. I didn’t.

So why did Stevie Zambuca want to see me? What had I done? And how could I undo it? Quickly. Really quickly. By yesterday, perhaps.

Stevie Zambuca’s house was a small, unprepossessing split-level ranch that sat on the end of a dead-end street on top of a hill that looked down over Route 1 and Logan Airport in East Boston. He could even see the harbor from there, though I doubt he looked much. All Stevie needed to see was the airport; half his crew’s income came from there—baggage handlers’ unions, transport unions, shit that fell off the back of trucks and planes and landed in Stevie’s lap.

The house had an above-ground pool and a chain-link fence surrounding a small front yard. The backyard was bigger, but not by much, and kerosene torches were staked
into the ground every ten feet, throwing light on a summer morning made blue by fog and a temperature dip that felt more like October than August.

“It’s his Saturday brunch,” Bubba said as we exited his Humvee and headed for the house. “He does it every week.”

“A wise guy brunch,” I said. “How quaint.”

“The mimosas are good,” Bubba said. “But stay away from the canoli, or the rest of the day your best friend will be your fucking toilet seat.”

A fifteen-year-old girl with a waterfall of orange-highlighted black hair pushed up off her forehead opened the door, her face a mask of fifteen-year-old fuck-you apathy and repressed anger she had no idea what to do with yet.

Then she recognized Bubba and a shy smile fought its way across her dim lips. “Mr. Rogowski. Hi.”

“Hey, Josephina. Nice streaks.”

She touched her hair nervously. “The orange? You like it?”

“It kicks,” Bubba said.

Josephina looked down at her knees and twisted her ankles together, swayed slightly in the doorway. “My dad hates it.”

“Hey,” Bubba said, “that’s what dads do.”

Josephina absently pulled a strand of hair into her mouth, continued to sway a bit under Bubba’s open gaze and wide smile.

Bubba as sex symbol. Now I’d seen it all.

“Your dad around?” Bubba asked.

“He’s in back?” Josephina said as if asking Bubba if that were okay.

“We’ll find him.” Bubba kissed her cheek. “How’s your mom?”

“On my ass,” Josephina said. “Like, constantly.”

“And that’s what moms do,” Bubba said. “Fun being fifteen, huh?”

Josephina looked up at him and for a moment I feared
she’d grab his face right there and plant one on his oversized lips.

Instead, she pivoted on her toes like a dancer and said, “I gotta go,” and ran out of the room.

“Weird kid,” Bubba said.

“She’s got a crush on you.”

“Fuck off.”

“She does, you idiot. Are you blind?”

“Fuck off or I’ll kill you.”

“Oh,” I said. “In that case never mind.”

“Better,” Bubba said as we worked our way through a crowd in the kitchen.

“She does, though.”

“You’re dead.”

“Kill me later.”

“If there’s anything left after Stevie gets through.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You’re pissa.”

The small house was jammed. Everywhere you looked, you saw a wise guy or a wise guy’s wife or a wise guy’s kid. It was a crowd of crushed velour jogging suits and Champion sweatshirts on the men, black nylon stretch pants and loud yellow-and-black or purple-and-black or white-and-silver blouses on the women. The kids wore mostly pro sports team apparel, the brighter the better, and all of it loose and baggy and uniform so that a Cincinnati Bengals red-and-black zebra-striped hat gave way to an identical jersey and sweatpants.

The interior of the house was one of the ugliest I’d ever seen. White marble steps dropped off the kitchen and into a living room covered in white shag carpeting so deep you couldn’t see anyone’s shoes. Running through the white shag were what appeared to be sparkling pinstripes the color of pearl. The couches and armchairs were white leather, but the coffee table, end tables, and enormous home entertainment armoire were a shiny metallic black. The lower half of the walls was covered by an industrial plastic shell made to look like cave rock, and the upper
half was clad in red silk wallpaper. A wet bar, encased in mirrored glass and lit by 150-watt bulbs, was built into the far corner of all that red and cave rock, and painted black to match the armoire. Amid pictures of Stevie and his family hanging from the walls, the Zambucas had placed framed photos of their favorite Italians—John Travolta as Tony Manero, Al Pacino as Michael Corleone, Frank Sinatra, Dino, Sophia Loren, Vince Lombardi, and, inexplicably, Elvis. I guess with the dark hair and the questionable taste in clothing, the King was an honorary goomba, kind of guy you could’ve trusted to do a hit and keep his mouth shut, make you a nice sausage-and-peppers hoagie afterward.

Bubba shook a bunch of hands, kissed a few cheeks, but didn’t pause for conversation, and no one looked like they wanted to engage him in one anyway. Even in a room full of second-story men, bank robbers, bookies, and killers, Bubba sent an electric trill through the house, a distinct aura of threat and otherworldliness. The men’s smiles were fragmented and slightly shaky when they saw him, and the women’s reconstructed faces bore an odd mixture of fear and arousal.

As we neared the edge of the living room, a middle-aged woman with bleached-blond hair and tanning-lamp flesh threw out her arms and screamed, “Aaah, Bubba!”

He lifted her off her feet when he hugged her and she smacked a kiss as loud as her greeting onto the side of his face.

He deposited her gently back to the shag carpet and said, “Mira, how are ya, hon?”

“Great, big fella!” She leaned back and cupped her elbow in her hand as she took a drag from a white cigarette so long it could have hit somebody in the kitchen if she’d turned without warning. She wore a bright blue blouse over matching blue pants and blue open-toed heels with four-inch spikes. Her face and body were a miracle of modern medicine—tiny tuck marks where the jaw line
met the ears, jutting ass and breasts an eighteen-year-old would envy, hands as creamy porcelain as a doll’s. “Where you been hiding? You seen Josephina?”

Bubba answered the second question. “She let us in, yeah. She looks great.”

“Pain in my patootie,” Mira said, and laughed through a burst of smoke. “Stevie wants to put her in a convent.”

“Sister Josephina?” Bubba asked with a cocked eyebrow.

Mira’s cackle ripped through the room. “Wouldn’t that be a sight? Ha!”

She looked at me suddenly and her bright eyes dulled with suspicion.

“Mira,” Bubba said, “this is my friend Patrick. Stevie has some business with him.”

Mira slid a smooth hand into mine. “Mira Zambuca. Pleased to meet you, Pat.”

I hate being called Pat, but I decided not to mention it.

“Mrs. Zambuca,” I said, “a pleasure.”

Mira didn’t look all that pleased having a pale-faced Mick in her living room, but she gave me a distant smile that told me she’d bear it as long I stayed away from the silverware.

“Stevie’s out by the grill.” She cocked her head in the direction of streams of smoke billowing by the glass doors that led out back. “Making them veal and pork sausages everyone loves so much.”

Particularly for brunch, I thought.

“Thanks, hon,” Bubba said. “You look dynamite, by the way.”

“Aw, thanks, sweetie. Ain’t you a caution?” She turned away from us and almost ignited sixteen pounds of another woman’s hair with her cigarette before the woman saw it coming and leaned back.

Bubba and I worked our way through the rest of the crowd and out through the back. We closed the door behind us and waved at the clouds of smoke filling the back deck.

Out here, it was strictly men, and a master blaster propped up on the deck rail played Springsteen, another honorary goomba, and most of the guys were fatter than the ones inside, stuffing their mouths even now with cheeseburgers and hot dogs piled high with peppers and onions and relish chunks the size of bricks.

A short guy worked the grill, his jet-black pompadour adding three inches to his height. He wore jeans over white running shoes and sported a T-shirt emblazoned with the words
WORLD’S GREATEST DAD
on the back. A red-and-white-checkered apron covered the front of him as he worked a steel spatula over a two-tiered grill stuffed from end to end with sausages, hamburgers, marinated chicken breasts, hot dogs, red and green peppers, onions, and a small pile of garlic chunks in a nest of foil.

“Hey, Charlie,” the short guy called out, “you like your burger black, right?”

“Black as Michael Jordan,” a greasy sea of flesh called back as several men laughed.

“That’s some black.” The short guy nodded and lifted a cigar from an ashtray beside the grill and popped it in his mouth.

“Stevie,” Bubba said.

The guy turned and smiled around his cigar. “Hey, Rogowski! Hey, everyone, the Polack’s here!”

There were calls of “Bub-ba!” and “Rogowski!” and “Kill-a!” and several men slapped Bubba’s broad back or shook his hand, but no one acknowledged my presence, because Stevie hadn’t. It was as if I wouldn’t exist until he said so.

“That thing last week,” Stevie Zambuca said to Bubba. “You have any problems?”

“Nope.”

“That guy was talking shit? He give you any headaches?”

“Nope,” Bubba said again.

“Heard that suit in Norfolk is looking to give you grief.”

“Heard that, too,” Bubba said.

“You want a hand with it?”

“No, thanks,” Bubba said.

“You sure? Be the least we could do.”

“Thanks,” Bubba said, “but I got it covered.”

Stevie Zambuca looked up from the grill and smiled at Bubba. “You don’t ever ask for nothing, Rogowski. It makes people nervous.”

“You, Stevie?”

“Me?” He shook his head. “No. It’s old school, far as I’m concerned. Something most of these fucking guys could learn from. Me and you, Rogowski, we’re almost all that’s left of the old days and we ain’t that old. The rest of these fucking guys?” He looked back over his shoulder at the fat farm on his porch. “They’re hoping for movie deals, shopping book ideas to agents.”

Bubba glanced at the men with complete disinterest. “Freddy’s got it bad, I hear.”

Fat Freddy Constantine ran the mob here, but word was he wouldn’t be around much longer. The guy favored to take his seat was currently grilling sausage in front of us.

Stevie nodded. “His entire prostate’s in a biohazard bag at Brigham and Women’s. I hear his intestinal tract’s next.”

“Too bad,” Bubba said.

Stevie shrugged. “Hey, it’s nature, right? You live, you die, people cry, and then they think about where they’re gonna eat.” Stevie shoveled five burgers onto a plate the size of a gladiator’s shield, followed them with a half dozen hot dogs and some chicken. He held the plate over his shoulder and said, “Come get it, you fat fucking humps.”

Bubba leaned back on his heels and dug his hands into his trench coat as one of the blobs took the plate from Stevie’s hand and walked it back to the condiment table.

Stevie closed the grill cover. He placed the spatula on the grill tray and look a long puff on his cigar.

“Bubba, you go mingle, get something to eat. Me and your friend going to take a walk around the yard.”

Bubba shrugged and stayed where he was.

Stevie Zambuca held out a hand. “Kenzie, right? Walk with me.”

We walked off the small porch and down into the yard, made our way between empty white tables and lawn sprinklers that were shut off, down to a small garden encased in brick that hosted a sickly array of dandelions and crocuses.

Beside the garden was a wooden porch swing hanging from metal posts and a rod that had once supported a clothesline. Stevie Zambuca sat on the right side of the porch swing and patted the wood.

“Have a seat, Kenzie.”

I sat.

Stevie leaned back and took a long toke from his cigar, blew the smoke back out as he lifted his legs off the ground, held his heels over the grass for a moment, seemed fascinated by his white running shoes.