Son of the Mob (8 page)

I'm not so sure I like the sound of that. But I don't want to push it, so I say, “Thanks, Dad. You won't regret this.”

Ray steps in. “If word gets around that the way to miss a vig is to talk to Vince, that high school is going to need a bigger parking lot.”

“That's Vince's problem,” my father replies. To me he says, “I hope you know what you're getting into.”

I hope so too.

 

CHAPTER TEN

I
CALL
J
IMMY
R
AT
at the only number I have for him, the phone behind the bar at his place of business, a club called Return to Sender. I wonder if he gets any mail with a name like that. Certainly no one's there early enough to straighten out misunderstandings with the letter carrier—I try him all day without results. By the time I get through, I'm on the road to pick up Kendra.

I know this sounds impossible, but when he finally comes on the line, I can actually
hear
the smoke. He cries when I give him the good news, and I get warm all over. I know I've done something special, not just for Jimmy, but for Dad and Tommy too. I've saved them from committing one more immoral act. While that may seem like a drop in the bucket, it feels very big to me.

“So you're off the hook till next Friday,” I finish. “Let's meet on Thursday afternoon so you can give me the money.”

“Yeah, sure,” he agrees. “I'll find you.”

A tiny alarm bell goes off in the back of my mind. “I think we should set a specific time—”

Somehow the connection gets broken, and I can't dial in again. Probably a problem on his end, since my cell phone is brand-new.

I never pick Kendra up at home unless I know her folks aren't there. We always meet somewhere. Today we hook up outside the Barnes and Noble where I supposedly work—one of my ersatz jobs. I may not have a future in the vending-machine business, but I sure seem to have the deceit part down pat. It's nice to know that dating brings out the best in me.

“How was work?” she asks, sliding in beside me.

“Oh, same old, same old.” Our fingers intertwine over the gearshift console.

“What are we doing tonight?”

“It's a surprise,” I tell her.

She goes nuts trying to guess what it is, but I don't spill the beans. Eventually, we're tooling up Sunrise Highway with her clamped on to me, half on the driver's seat, begging.

“See that guy?” I point to a frail elderly man laboriously extricating himself from a parked Volkswagen Beetle. “Santa Claus on Slim-Fast.”

She isn't taking the bait. “Come on. Just tell me.”

I'm enjoying myself so much pulling her chain that I actually pass by the place before circling back into the parking lot.

Rio Grande is a Mexican restaurant, but the thing is there's a karaoke bar too, so Kendra can take her act on the road in front of a real audience.

She turns pale. “I can't do it.”

“Sure you can,” I coax. “You're awesome!”

“No.”

Well, we have to eat anyway—that's the logic I use to get her in the door. Maybe an enchilada will change her mind.

The food is good. Everything is so fiery hot that we're downing pitchers of Coke like water after a marathon. By eight o'clock, when the singing starts, we're both wired from sugar and caffeine. Our table is in a ring of booths around the central bar part, so we're right in the middle of the action.

The first few “performers” flat-out stink. Rio Grande resounds with laughter and catcalls, but the singers shriek and mumble on, even as they are pelted with cherries and tortilla chips. I'm horrified at the raw cruelty, but it slowly sinks in that this is the whole gig here. These people know how terrible they are, and the louder the audience boos, the more they play to it.

Kendra's mesmerized as if we're watching the parting of the Red Sea, and not some three-hundred-pound guy singing “I'm Too Sexy….” Actually, he's the only one this crowd seems to like. He gets a standing ovation, especially when he rips open the shirt he's too sexy for. It brings the house down.

I try to put my arm around Kendra's shoulders, but she's totally rigid. I start to consider that this might be a bad idea. A local college girl is singing Motown—and she's actually pretty decent—when I softly suggest, “Maybe we should get out of here.”

Kendra points to the stage. “Is she really that good?”

“I never said she was—” Then I realize the true meaning of the question. “Kendra, you blow her away.”

She takes a deep breath, combs her blond hair with her fingers, and straightens her blouse. “If I stink, I hate your guts for bringing me here.”

I get a warm glow. If the reverse holds true, she's going to love me.

When Hannibal pointed his elephants at the Alps and yelled
giddyup
, he had the same look in his eyes as Kendra, marching over to that microphone.

She's a showstopper. Well, not exactly, but nobody throws any fruit at her, and that's a big deal with this crowd. She starts off nervous, but really loosens up, belting out everything from “What a Girl Wants” to “Stairway to Heaven.” By her third or fourth song, she's picking up a core of fans. Remember, this place is also a bar. We're not drinking, but everybody else is, and the crowd's appreciation of the music seems to rise with their intoxication level.

“You're a smash!” I crow.

She grabs my arm. “Get up here!”

“But I can't—”

“I need a backup singer!”

Well, maybe Kendra doesn't stink, but I
do.
I take a few direct hits from maraschino cherries, but nothing touches her. Highly selective abusers, this crowd.

We're back at the table when in walks a tall cadaverous man in black slacks and turtleneck. I almost inhale my straw when I recognize the guy. It's a good thing there's music on because I think I scream. It's Uncle Pampers.

The thought of Uncle Pampers in a karaoke bar kind of makes me want to laugh and be sick at the same time. He holds a special place in Dad's organization. He doesn't hang out with the other uncles. I'm pretty sure they're afraid of him. Quite frankly, I think Dad might be too. That's where the nickname comes from. If you open your door and see Uncle Pampers standing there, you—ahem—you get the picture. “I hope he's got his Pampers on,” the uncles used to joke whenever he got sent to pay a visit to somebody.

At least, that's Tommy's version. I only talked to Dad about Uncle Pampers once, and he got pretty uncomfortable about it, as if we were discussing the birds and the bees. The official job description is “problem solver.” As in: “You got a problem, you call up your uncle Pampers, and he makes it go away.” I've also heard it as “troubleshooter,” with an ominous emphasis on
shoot
, although Tommy assures me that Uncle Pampers prefers to work more quietly. Mario Calabrese, for example, was strangled with the cord from his own Walkman while jogging. Naturally, the case remains unsolved. But if it's true that Dad gave the order, the job was almost certainly carried out by Uncle Pampers.

Nobody ever said explicitly that the “problems” he solves are actual people. I kind of figured it out from the way the other uncles, their wives, and even Dad stay away from him. At family gatherings he plays with the little kids. I used to assume he loves children, but now I realize that they're the only ones who can look at him without thinking about what he does to make a buck.

And here he is at Rio Grande. I shrink a little lower in my seat. The last thing I need is a friendly how's-it-going chat with a professional killer. That's a definite dating no-no—right up there with having an unconscious guy in your trunk. Especially when the date is with Kendra, whose father probably has a file on Uncle Pampers that's even thicker than the one on Dad.

He takes a sip of his drink and steps up to the microphone. With each passing second, this night is turning into a comic opera of the absurd. Uncle Pampers singing? This I've got to hear!

Twangy guitar swells, and the Grim Reaper of the vending-machine business launches into a whiny, nasal rendition of an old country song called “The Lowdown Blues.”

A cocktail umbrella bounces off his nose, and I hold my breath, waiting for Uncle Pampers to perform the first-ever karaoke bar splenectomy. But he keeps wailing away. And because the music is so grating, it takes everybody a minute to realize how
fantastic
he is. He's not just singing—he's moaning, howling, lamenting, and yodeling.
Yodeling!
If somebody told me that either the moon was going to fall out of the sky, or Uncle Pampers would yodel, I'd stack all my chips on the moon. But here he is, putting on a performance worthy of Hank Williams himself. And not Junior. I'm talking about Hank Williams
Senior
!

When he finishes, Rio Grande rocks with thunderous applause. Uncle Pampers has pulled off the karaoke feat of the century. I'll bet not a single soul in the building actually likes that kind of music, yet he won them over. I mean, he usually wins people over. But this time he didn't have to threaten to kill them. Oblivious to the adulation, he returns to the bar to sip quietly at his drink.

Kendra's face is pink with excitement. “That was awesome!” she raves. “Let's go congratulate him!”

Uh-oh. “He seems like a pretty private person,” I put in quickly. “Maybe we should leave him alone.”

It takes a while for the place to get back to normal. Nobody wants to be the act to follow Uncle Pampers. Eventually some poor sap decides to brave the abuse, and things get rolling again. Kendra goes up a few more times, but I demur from my backup singing job—at least until Uncle Pampers leaves. He gives an encore performance of yodelmania before he takes off, singing a pathetic song about a broken-down pickup truck and a three-legged dog.

I breathe a sigh of relief once he's gone.

It's almost eleven when I finally signal our waitress. She shoots me a questioning look.

“We're ready for our check.”

She seems confused. “It's already been taken care of.”

I'm amazed. “By who?”

“The tall man who sings Hank Williams. Good tipper, too.”

All the way out, Kendra is on my case. “Why didn't you tell me you know him?”

“Because I don't,” I defend myself. “He's just a guy who sometimes does—odd jobs for my father. I wasn't even sure it was him at first.”

She doesn't say anything, but I catch a glimpse of her reporter's face as we head out to the parking lot. Either that or it's the expression of someone who can spot a gangster a mile away after she's just heard one yodeling.

Everything's okay back in the Mazda, though. We fold readily into an embrace that's become both exciting and familiar. “I had a great time, Vince,” she murmurs in my ear. “Thanks for making me have the guts to do it.”

“You were the hit of the show,” I assure her. Strictly speaking, she was only runner-up, but I'm definitely not in the mood to bring up Uncle Pampers again.

“Hey, what are you doing next Friday?” she asks suddenly.

“This,” I reply, kissing her.

“Seriously,” she laughs, pushing me away. “How about dinner at my house?”

They say when you're in a car accident, there's a split second where you know what's going to happen, but you can't do anything about it. That's me. Agent Bite-Me's dinner table is hurtling toward me at sixty miles an hour, and my foot can't find the brake pedal.

She senses something is wrong. “What?”

“Nothing. It's just that—you told your parents about me?”

“Of course. Well, my mom, anyway. My father's been working a lot. I haven't really seen him all that much. But they're not stupid, Vince. They can tell I've been dating somebody.”

“Well, uh”—I'm grasping at straws—“do we really have to bring parents into it already? I mean we've only been going out for three weeks.”

She's bewildered. “It's not like we're meeting at the caterers to pick out hors d'oeuvres for our wedding! It's just dinner. My girlfriends come over all the time. What's so different about this?”

For starters, your dad isn't bugging any of their houses. “What we've got, Kendra—it's going so great. I guess it's just that I don't want to mess with it. And bringing parents in might change things.”

She looks troubled. “What are you saying? You'll never meet my parents, and I'll never meet yours?”

“Of course not,” I protest, but in reality, I can't see how it could work any other way. “Let's keep it just our thing a while longer. Then our relationship will be rock solid, and we'll be able to handle the pressures.”

Our thing. What an unfortunate choice of words. In Italian, “our thing” translates as
cosa
nostra.

She's more than merely silent. She's silent with extreme prejudice. In her eyes, I've just crossed a line.

“What?” I ask gently.

She shakes her head. “I don't know. It's like there's something you're not telling me. Like you have a secret life.”

I try to make a joke out of it. “Everybody has a secret life. At least everybody we pass in the car. Remember that nun who worked for the Mossad….”

My voice trails off. She's not letting me get away with it. She's really mad.

“Something's not right. I don't know if it's you or me, but something's messed up here.”

“It's just temporary,” I plead. “When we've been going out a little bit longer, I promise this'll be no big deal.”

She eyes me suspiciously. “But it'll happen eventually, right? Dinner with my folks?”

“Oh, sure. Eventually.”

The next ice age is coming eventually, too.

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“H
EY
, V
INCE, HOW COME
you never told me you got a girlfriend?”

I'm trying to check up on iluvmycat.usa, but Tommy's hogging my computer. Ever since my mini lesson, he's been hooked. Actually, I'm more impressed than annoyed. I never would have pegged my brother as the Web-surfer type.

“She's not my girlfriend,” I say quickly. “We've only been dating a few weeks. Who told you? Did you bludgeon it out of Alex?”

“Nah,” he chuckles, “Uncle Pampers saw you and her at some burrito joint.”

“Uncle Pampers came here last night?” It's only Sunday morning.

He nods. “Business thing.”

Unbelievable. The guy went straight from yodeling to doing business.
Business!

Tommy notices the look of distaste on my face. “Take it easy, Eliot Ness. We just needed him to go with No-Nose to make a point with somebody. Friend of your buddy Jimmy Rat.”

My brother hasn't shut up for two seconds about the Jimmy Rat thing. There he's found a surprise ally in Ray. But while Tommy raves about how Dad's gone crazy, Ray just thinks it's bad business. I'm not so sure. Anthony Luca may be a lot of things, but he's not stupid.

If there's an undercover agent in the organization somewhere, maybe Dad thinks that throwing me into the mix might confuse him. After all, the vending-machine business is as organized as a Roman legion, complete with captains and soldiers and a chain of command. Turning loose a squeaky-clean seventeen-year-old civilian on an errand of mercy could mislead the investigation. Especially me, because the uncles never know quite what to make of me.

On the one hand, I'm an outsider, and that's by Dad's orders. On the other, I'm the boss's son, which is as inside as you can get. Either way, they have to deal with me, if for no other reason than the fact that our house is like vending-machine headquarters, and Mom's dinner table is the commissary. For good or ill, we're doomed to tread the same real estate. I can't even count the number of times I've padded barefoot down to the kitchen for breakfast only to find myself sharing the coffeepot with some uncle or soldier who hasn't been to bed yet. And when my bleary eyes finally focus, I notice he's holding an ice pack over his head where he's obviously been hit by a pipe or a baseball bat. But we can't talk about that because I'm “out.” So we discuss the weather or the Knicks game while we drink coffee, and he bleeds, and I ask myself, Is this really happening, or is it part of some weird dream directed by Fellini? God only knows what these guys think of me.

If there is an inside man, he's already confused by my role. Sending me to collect from a deadbeat could be the perfect smokescreen.

More likely, though, Dad's just letting me fool around. He thinks I'm unmotivated, so he wants to see what happens when I put my mind to something. It's like when a farmer gives his kid a baby sheep or pig to take care of. Jimmy Rat is my barnyard pet, which seems totally appropriate as far as the guy's personal grooming is concerned. I'm not sure exactly how it works on the farm, but I have a sneaking suspicion that those animals end up in the slaughterhouse along with all the others. Then the kids learn the lesson that the world can be a cold and ruthless place.

I hope that's not the plan for Jimmy Rat and me.

Tommy stands up, and I take my place at the keyboard. “Don't get me wrong, Vince. I'm thrilled that you're finally getting some. When you blew off Cece, I thought you were—”

“Listen,” I interrupt, “I've got a lot of work to do.” Did Wally ever have this conversation with the Beaver?

The Web sites for New Media are all up and running, and some of them are starting to generate a handful of hits. Mr. Mullinicks assures us that most of the early action is from proud parents, aunts, and uncles. That explains why iluvmycat.usa is lagging behind some of the others—the only computers in the possession of my relatives are being sold off the back of a truck.

Much to Alex's dismay, Fiona, who he now calls The Hated One, boasts the class's top site, www.cyberpharaoh.com. She's an ancient Egypt buff, which is kind of cool, I think. In Alex's eyes, she'll never be forgiven for not being an Alex Tarkanian buff.

“What a joke!” he snorts. “Do you have any idea how many Egyptology sites are out there?”

“Well, there must also be a whole lot of closet Egyptologists,” I reply, “because she got over a hundred hits in the first week.”

“I hope a pyramid rolls over on her,” he mutters. “Egyptology. Stick this in your sphinx.” (Obscene gesture.)

Misterferraridriver.com comes in a surprise second with sixty hits. I'm positive that not a single one of those originates from a person who actually drives a Ferrari. Judging by the writing on the bulletin board postings, I'd say the vehicle of choice among Alex's constituency is a tricycle.

But I don't have much to say about it, because thus far I've received a grand total of one hit. It's from an eighty-five-year-old lady in Maryland. She's not even technically a real cat owner, because her cat died over the summer. But that doesn't stop her from telling Fluffy's entire life story on Cat Tales. I'm not exactly the star of the class.

Until that Sunday. I log on to the Internet and call up iluvmycat.usa. I stare at the counter. Forty-seven.

Forty-six hits in one night!

Excitedly, I browse through my features. Cat Tales still stands at one with the message from the octogenarian. Nothing in Feline Friends Network. All the new action is in Meow Marketplace, where there are
twenty-three
new ads! Yeah, there are a lot of pet owners out there, but the ones on my site don't seem to be a very loyal group. They're either trying to get rid of their cats or looking for new ones.

I pull up the first ad:

I'm selling my third-favorite cat, Lady
Anne. She's a real winner, pure gold.
$200—SG.

I frown. I'm not expecting Shakespeare here, but who's going to buy an animal based on that? And why say she's only your third favorite? That sounds kind of cruel to me. It certainly wouldn't make me feel very good to find out I'm Mom's third-favorite kid.

I call up another:

Who wants to buy a real show cat for only 300 bucks? Dakota Glory is a little inky, but he can high-five you—MT.

Inky? Does that mean a black cat? I keep going:

If you're looking for a prime minister of a cat, you've come to the right place. Dynamico caught three mice last week. Only $100—AS.

A “prime minister” of a cat? I page down. They're all like that. And the names! What kind of an idiot names his cat Motherlode or Under the Rainbow? Sure, Mr. Mullinicks warned us that we'd probably run into a few weirdos online. But on iluvmycat.usa
everybody's
a weirdo!

I'm selling exactly two of my cats, Kensington and Scattered Showers. You've never seen such a couple of movie stars. They're number one! $200 for the pair—CC.

I don't want to be nitpicky, especially with something that's so bizarre to start with. But how can
two
cats be number one?

Alex thinks I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. “Compared to the dweebs pretending to own Ferraris out there, your cat owners are pretty normal,” he assures me in class on Monday. “You should spend a few hours on misterferraridriver.com. I've never seen such a bunch of nerds in my life. You can picture their mothers ironing the pocket protectors of their short-sleeved shirts. I'll bet most of them are nine.”

“At least you can explain yours,” I say. “My postings are surreal. You couldn't make them up if you tried.”

He looks me squarely in the eye. “Maybe
Kendra
can help you figure it out.”

That's Alex's new M.O. He deflects everything back to Kendra. Last week I remembered I left my old jockstrap from football in the Jaguars locker room. When I recruited Alex to check the lost-and-found box at the next practice, he sneered, “Why don't you ask
Kendra
to get it for you?”

Very subtle, my friend Alex.

I play dumb. “Kendra doesn't even own a cat.” But I can't hide anything from Alex; he's been my confidant since grade school. “Besides, she's kind of miffed at me. She invited me to have dinner with her folks, and obviously that can't happen, so she says I'm avoiding her family.”

“You
are
avoiding her family,” he points out.

“You got that right.”

Just the notion that there might be some trouble in paradise animates Alex. “You know, Vince, even if you can keep on dodging her parents, you're not out of the woods. I mean, how long before she happens to mention that she's dating a guy named Luca?”

I say nothing. It's not that I don't see his point. Sure, it would make the most sense to break up right now, before Kendra ever has a clue who my father is. But I can't do it. My family has cost me so much already—to the point where I can't even go on a date, or play on a stupid high-school football team. They won't cost me this.

Besides, I'm an addict. I'm hooked.

As the week goes on, the cat owners of America continue to visit www.iluvmycat.usa, not to do anything else on the site, but just to place ads on Meow Marketplace. Not one of these listings gets a single response, but the ads keep coming:

Want me to show you a real gem of a cat with four on the floor? Robert E.
Lee's the name, and he can be yours for 250 bucks—SK.

Again, nitpicky, but don't all cats technically have four on the floor?

If you're going to a toga party, Equilibrium is the perfect cat to take there. He's a real eight ball with a winning smile. Only $350—TC.

By Wednesday, I'm in third place in the class, trailing only cyberpharaoh and misterferraridriver. And the strange postings on my site have come to the attention of my fellow students.

“Hey, Vince,” calls Martin Antia. “I've got a cat to sell, too. He's no prime minister, but maybe he can lick himself at the toga party just for laughs.”

“Shut up,” I groan.

“Yeah, what's going on?” puts in Yuri, this Russian kid with a last name I won't attempt to reproduce. “You've got dozens of ads, but the rest of your site is empty.”

“If you've got some cousin dreaming it all up,” adds Fiona, “tell him he's got a real future in Hollywood.”

It doesn't take much to get Alex mobilized on my behalf when Fiona's the enemy. “Iluvmycat is a hundred-percent legit!” he snaps. “It's going to smoke your crummy site, that's for sure.”

“Take it easy,” I say soothingly. “If I had someone inventing that stuff, don't you think I'd get him to make it a little more believable? And to spread it around the site? The fact is I'm as mystified as you guys.”

I even raise the subject with Mr. Mullinicks. Not that I'm a crybaby, but the Internet can be a wild and woolly place, so it's probably a good idea for an expert to take a look at iluvmycat.usa.

He calls up my site on his desktop and browses through the ads, now more than a hundred. Finally, he says, “I don't know much about cat ownership.”

“Me neither,” I confess. “But I'm pretty sure this isn't it. Could it be some kind of Internet pattern, you know, something you've seen before?”

“Oh, I've seen it before,” he assures me.

“Really?”

He nods. “It's called ‘your problem.'”

“But—”

“It's definitely
your
problem, because if it was somebody else's, it wouldn't be on
your
Web site.”

“But I was kind of hoping—”

He cuts me off. “Vince, let me give you a little friendly advice. You're getting hits—that's all that matters. What do you care if they don't make any sense? The e-business economy isn't about sense; it's about traffic. Don't argue with success. A week ago your site was a wasteland.”

I make it sound as if the whole school is obsessed with iluvmycat.usa. The truth is, outside of New Media, no one else has a clue. It's a typical October. The weather cools down. Clothing gets less revealing, much to Alex's dismay. I initiate the annual discarding of notices home advising my parents about Open House. Freshman year, Mom volunteered for the refreshments committee and baked so many cookies that Dad had to arrange for a union truck to come from New Jersey to deliver them. But some wires got crossed on a job Uncle Puke and his crew had going in Staten Island. So when the tractor-trailer pulled up to the gym, it was full of hot digital watches from Taiwan. Actually, it worked out okay because the watches were a hit at school, and when the cops arrested Uncle Puke and searched his truck, they found nothing but oatmeal-raisin cookies.

Mom tried to get her refreshments back, but the truck was impounded in an FBI warehouse. “In this heat,” she lamented, “those cookies are totally out of commission by now. Such a shame to waste good food.”

She wasn't going to get away with it this time! I was positive she knew more than she let on.

“But, Mom,” I persisted. “What about the watches? Where did they come from?”

“Switzerland,” she replied without missing a beat. Very cool under fire. I think it rubs off on her from Dad.

Classes seem longer. Homework gets harder, or at least there's more of it. The Jaguars hold pep rallies nobody goes to. Colorful signs begin to decorate the blah cinder-block walls, promoting the popular kids for Homecoming King and Queen.

I almost drop dead. Outside the cafeteria, in the midst of a forest of posters about quarterbacks and cheerleaders, is a computer-generated message printed in huge letters on continuous paper:

VOTE VINCE L. & KENDRA B. FOR K & Q

I just stand there like an idiot, reading it over and over, my head bobbing back and forth, like a spectator at a tennis match. I swear that, as I try to make sense of this new development, the thought actually crosses my mind that they might be talking about two other kids with our names.