Son of the Mob (9 page)

Then, from behind: “Who are Vince L. and Kendra B.?”

I wheel to face the sophomore girl. “Nobody!” I exclaim, pulling the poster off the wall.

Talk about a worst-case scenario. Homecoming is a big deal at our school. The king and queen are practically local celebrities. They get interviewed in the paper, and their smiling mugs are displayed in every bagel shop and dry cleaner in town. Keeping Kendra and me secret—forget about it. And not just from Agent Bite-Me. From Tommy and Dad, too.

I mean, Kendra and I have no chance of winning, but still! This is like juggling nitro. Who would do such a thing?

I corner Kendra in front of her locker at the next class change. “Look at this!” I spit, dropping our sign at her feet.

She bends down and unfurls the crumpled computer paper. Her face lights up.

I stare at her in horror. “You did this!”

“No, I didn't!”

But there's no stopping Sherlock Holmes when he's cracking a case. “You're mad because I won't have dinner with your parents, so you want to get us voted Homecoming King and Queen because then we'll have to go public.”

“You're on drugs,” she accuses me. “I've never seen this poster before now, but that's not even the weird part. The real killer is that ‘going public' is something we have to decide to do, like we're secret agents blowing our cover. We're just dating, Vince. Millions of kids do it. What's the big whoop?”

“It's too soon,” I say stubbornly.

“You're ashamed of me!”

“No—” I start to protest.

“Of our relationship, then.”

“That's not it.”

She's steamed. “Well, then you're just plain lazy. You don't want to admit you've got a girlfriend because I'm not worth a little explaining.”

That stings, and it isn't just because Kendra's so mad at me. Lazy—it's dangerously close to Dad's motivation speech. Pick a college—ahem,
university
—pick a career, get off your butt and
do
something. I remember Ray's words: “Enjoy it. It's never going to be this new again.” Oh, sure. First girlfriend. First relationship. First knock-down drag-out fight.

Yeah, I know couples argue all the time. But that's never happened with Kendra and me. I want to stop it—just say we're more important and find some secluded corner and—

No. Part of me is too upset, and the upset part is on autopilot. I crumple up the sign and slam-dunk it in a trash can. “I better not find out this was you.”

“Yeah, I trust you too,” she snaps back at me, and we storm off in different directions.

Later, in her basement, we make up, and everything feels so perfect. But even an addict has lucid moments, and here's mine: There are two different relationships: the short-term us and the long-term us. When the time horizon is, let's say, three hours or less, we're unstoppable. But expand that from hours to months and it all starts to fray. Kendra doesn't know where we're going, and, worse, I know exactly where we're going.

The long-term us has always been doomed.

Maybe I'm being overly fatalistic because, while all this is happening, the clock is ticking on Jimmy Rat. I place dozens of calls each day to Return to Sender, but nobody answers except late at night. And then I only reach a lady bartender with a gravelly voice who refuses to take a message. I see that Jimmy brings out in his employees the same kind of loyalty and respect that he gets from Tommy and Dad.

“Listen, I only work here,” she assures me again and again. “You got something to say to Jimmy, you tell him yourself.”

It's so hard to find good help these days.

I finally get through on Friday afternoon.

“Hey, Vince. What's up?”

“What's up?” I echo. “The time's up, that's what's up! Today's the day you have to pay that money to my dad!”

“Don't get excited,” he says. “Everything's under control. You'll have your money on Monday.”

“Monday?!”
I blow my stack. “The deal was today!”

“Vince,” he clucks, “I used to get angry like that till I went into therapy. You wanna cry and moan about what's not going to happen, or you wanna focus on what we really can do?”

“I did you a favor”—I'm seething—“and you hung me out to dry!”

“It's only a weekend,” he says airily. “Who works weekends anymore? Can you honestly tell me your old man works weekends?”

“That's not the point—” I begin, but we get disconnected again. And when I call back, I get a busy signal.

That
idiot.
He knows better than anyone what Uncle Shank might do to him. How can he play games with something like this?

I keep telling myself it's not my fault. I've been trying to
help
the guy. If it wasn't for me, he would have been screwed a week ago. Dad's right. He's a total flake. I wash my hands of the whole rotten business.

But the image of Uncle Shank's pruning shears keeps haunting me. I see that shiny wet metal under our outdoor tap, and I don't care whose fault it is.

I drive to Long Beach—to the Silver Slipper, Ray's hangout.

He's unsympathetic. “You want to stay away from the business. Everybody respects that. But you can't be in for some things and out for others. Take my advice—let Jimmy worry about Jimmy. These things have a habit of working themselves out.”

“And he'll be all right?”

He shrugs. “That's up to Jimmy. He knew what he was getting into when he took that money.”

I figure I'd better just spell it out. “Can you guarantee that nothing's going to happen to his fingers?”

And he can't. I see it in his face. At that moment, I realize that I have to save Jimmy even if he can't save himself. But how?

The answer is simple. Six hundred bucks is how. Yeah, we've got money—
Dad's.
I get an allowance, but I've been blowing most of that on going out with Kendra. Practically zero in the bank and whatever's in my pocket—about twenty bucks and—what's this?

It's my emergency credit card, the one from Banco Commerciale de Tijuana. I could use it to get a six-hundred-dollar cash advance and pay what Jimmy owes Dad. Then, when Jimmy gives me the money on Monday, I'll head straight to the bank and make a payment on the account. It'll be back in there long before whoever's credit card it really is gets his next bill. By then it will look like a bank error: six hundred came out on Friday, and on Monday when the mistake was noticed, the six hundred was redeposited.

The teller gives me a funny look when he sees my Mexican credit card, but that isn't half of what I get from Dad when I hand over the six hundred that night. He's planing a chair leg, and he leans into it so hard that the thing snaps right in the clamp.

“From Jimmy Rat?”

“I told you he'd come through,” I reply stubbornly.

I escape upstairs to the cover of the FBI listening devices before he can ask me any more questions.

 

CHAPTER TWELVE

I
'M AMAZED AT HOW
well Kendra and I still get along when there's no talking. Movies quickly become our number-two leisure-time activity. The only drawback is that, after a couple of hours, the theater lights will come up and I'll see the hurt and disappointment that's in her eyes almost all the time now, or at least, all the time she's hanging around me. Probably nobody else would even notice it. But like a single minor chord in a symphony, it can change everything.

I don't mind it so much when she's mad at me. But the idea that I'm letting her down is more than I can bear.

Yet, on the surface, it's a pretty good weekend. I see Kendra both days, and the subject of dinner with her parents never comes up.

That's why I'm totally caught off guard when I walk into school on Monday and find myself facing a giant poster that reads:

VOTE VINCE AND KENDRA FOR ROYAL COUPLE

Just as before, the letters are computer-generated. But this time the message has been broken into three lines, so it takes up the whole wall, from the top of the lockers clear up to the ceiling.

Again, the shock wears off and leaves only the mad. We've been through this already. How could she do it
again
?

I tear it down, but I can't reach the highest strip. So it still says
VOTE VINCE
. Eighteen hundred kids are entering the school while I stretch, jump, and try to scramble up the wall. Even
I
know that the sign couldn't possibly have garnered as much unwanted attention as I'm now giving it. A bunch of basketball players are watching me leap, and laughing their heads off. Any one of them could rip it down without so much as standing on tiptoe. Thanks a lot.

Mercifully, a somewhat friendly face, Alex, shows up. Actually, he's in a great mood. Alex's agreeability rises and falls in direct proportion to the degree of strife between Kendra and me. He gets on all fours, and I stand on his back and tear down the top piece. This earns us applause from the basketball players and a few other “fans.”

“Thanks,” I tell Alex. I really do appreciate his help. The guy is so image conscious. I mean, he lives in constant fear that he might do something to appear uncool in front of girls. He'll probably have nightmares for weeks about going down on his hands and knees in front of half the school.

“Vince, what are you going to do about this?” He indicates the crumpled sign in my hands.

I shake my head. “She swears it isn't her. I want to believe her except—who else could it be? Not that many people even know we're going out.”

“Well, you'd better brace yourself,” he warns me. “This isn't the only one. They're all over the school. I tore down a couple of smaller ones near my locker.”

I sigh. “If I throw this in Kendra's face, guilty or innocent, that's going to be the end.”

“If you guys get elected Homecoming King and Queen, that's going to be the end too,” Alex points out.

I'm in despair. “It makes no sense, but I can't give her up, Alex. I don't know if it's having a girlfriend or her in particular. I realize it has to end sooner or later, but I have to hang on to it as long as I can.”

I look at him as we walk to class. Because I know the guy so well, I can see that his teeth are clenched, which is something he only does when he's really upset. I understand instantly and feel bad. It was my little speech back there. I should have seen that all Alex would take out of it is that I'm happy, and he's missing out.

I make it through to lunch, only having to tear down one more poster. Now comes the hard part: keeping my big mouth shut when I see Kendra in the cafeteria.

I'm almost at my locker when I'm aware of someone's presence right behind me, and I suddenly feel the cold steel of a barrel thrust against the small of my back. I can't even begin to explain the thoughts that race through my head.

Ever since I was old enough to understand what my father does for a living, it has always been in the back of my mind that I could be a target one day. Somebody could want to get to Anthony Luca enough to attack his kid. I mean, the vending-machine business isn't
The Godfather.
There aren't wars; nobody goes to the mattresses; the uncles don't take turns crouched on our roof with rifles. But still, it's a tough line of work, and Dad makes enemies. In the wake of the Calabrese murder, Mom, Mira, and I went on a sudden, unplanned three-week tour of Norway. Tommy stayed, but Dad didn't let him buy a candy bar without a couple of the uncles driving him to the store.

My brother never got tired of messing with my head after that. He was always pointing out the assassin hiding in the bushes, the sniper in the window across the street, the kidnappers in that parked car over there. It just ratcheted up my paranoia level. Oh, I outgrew it. Or, at least, I repressed it. But now, standing in the hall with a gun against my spine, I realize that I've been waiting for this moment for half my life.

And then a menacing voice at my ear hisses, “Keep walking or your guts are gonna decorate that bulletin board!”

I wheel. “Are you out of your mind?”

Jimmy Rat stands there, laughing his stupid head off. The “gun” in his hand is a miniature flashlight key chain.

“Hey, Vince, you should see your face! I really had you going!”

“You had me ‘going' in my pants!” I hiss. “If I dropped dead of shock, you'd have a lot more to explain to my dad than six hundred lousy bucks.”

He beams at me. “That's why I'm here, kid. There's a little surprise waiting in your locker. I slipped it in through the vent.”

The money! I'm so relieved I almost forgive him. Now I can pay off the credit card and put this whole nightmare behind me.

I head for my locker. “Hey, Jimmy, how'd you find out which one is mine?”

“I turned on a little of the old charm with the secretaries,” he explains. “Told them I was your older brother.”

“Yeah, right,” I snort. “From Dad's first marriage during World War Two.” I reach for the combination lock.

“Hey,” says Jimmy. “That's not your locker.”

“Sure it is,” I reply. “678.”

“No, it's 687!”

Can you believe it? Dumb
and
dyslexic. All rolled up into one unlovable, rodentlike package.

“Jimmy, you gave the money to the wrong guy!”

“Calm down, Vince,” he tells me. “If your stress level is this high now, think what it'll be like when you get to be my age.”

We move down the row to 687.

“Okay,” I say. “This is Jolie's locker. I know her. When she comes, let me do all the talking. And pray she isn't absent today.”

He gives me a superior smile, puts his ear up to the lock, and starts manipulating the dial.

I freak. “You can't break into a locker! This is a public school!”

“Where do you think I learned this?” he retorts. “Okay, when I count three, cough.”

“But—”

“One…two…”

I manufacture a spasm, and, in that instant, Jimmy smacks the lock to pieces with his multipurpose flashlight key chain. The door swings open, and out falls a notebook, a makeup compact, and a grubby envelope marked
VINSE
. I guess in his school, where they teach you how to crack a locker, the instructional time is taken away from spelling class.

It's funny. I don't run, but I can't ever remember exiting school that fast.

Short, squat Jimmy matches me stride for stride. “Hey, Vince, don't you got no class to be going to?”

“I'm on lunch.” Kendra, she's in the cafeteria, waiting for me. But this is more important. “I've got to run this money over to the bank. I borrowed to save your butt, Jimmy. You're welcome.”

He's genuinely concerned. “Gee, you shouldn't have done that. You can get into a lot of trouble going into debt.”

I roll my eyes. “What makes you say that?”

He misses the sarcasm. “I got this friend, Ed. Owns a real classy coffeehouse. You know, where those college pinheads pay four bucks to drink a cup of java that's half milk and sit on your great-grandmother's old velvet sofa. He makes money, but he's got a weakness for the ladies. And pretty soon he's in for a major chunk of change to some very heavy people. I'm not mentioning any names, but we both know who's the heaviest around here.”

“Dad,” I say, almost to myself.

“Correct. And Ed's not feeling too good these days on account of your uncle No-Nose slamming that door on his head during their last meeting on the subject. Not that I blame your old man. Ed's stiffing him for almost a grand.”

I stop him. “Listen, Jimmy. My father and his people do a lot of things I don't agree with. But it's out of my hands. I'm not in the business, and I'm never going to be. It was crazy for me even to get involved in your situation, and that's never going to happen again. It's not that I'm unsympathetic; it's just the way it has to be, okay?”

He puts an arm around my shoulders. “Don't worry about Ed. He's got options. He's got a great-aunt, ninety-three years old, over at St. Luke's on life support. Stands to inherit, like, thirty G's when she passes, which is maybe going to be soon.”

I frown. “You mean because her condition is deteriorating, right?”

He shrugs. “You know how it is. She's been in a coma for months, and the doctors say she's never going to wake up. She's like a carrot, practically. But life support, that's just electricity, you see my point? I mean, people trip on wires all the time. Plugs get pulled out of the wall. It happens.”

That's how I end up in a dark coffee bar in Soho, drinking a four-dollar cup of java that's half milk, sitting on my great-grandmother's velvet sofa, talking to Kendra on my cell phone.

“I'm in New York. I had to ditch the afternoon. Something came up.”

“Are you okay, Vince? This doesn't have anything to do with all those posters about us, does it?”

“No. Just tear them down if you see any, okay? This is—it's nothing. What's new at school?”

“Jolie Fusco's locker got broken into, but she doesn't think anything was stolen.”

Well, only six hundred bucks, but that was mine. “I can't really talk now. I'll call you when I get home.”

I can almost see her reporter's face on the other end of the line. “Just tell me what it's all about, Vince. Maybe I can help.”

“I'm fine. Talk to you later. Bye.”

But I'm far from fine. For the second time, I'm deliberately interfering in my father's business, against my clearly stated sole purpose in life: to stay away from all that.

It's crazy.
I'm
crazy. Things like Jimmy's fingers, Ed's great-aunt—I'm sure they happen all the time. But I never knew about them before. Oh, how I wish I didn't know about them now! Things used to be so much easier. Sure, I figured Dad did some bad stuff, but it was all nonspecific. Nobody had a face or a name or a ninety-three-year-old great-aunt on life support.

Suddenly, I'm horrified at who I am and the kind of activities that finance the roof over my head, the clothes on my back, and the food I eat. Maybe that's why I'm here. Certainly it can't be for the financial well-being of the silk suit sitting in front of me.

Ed Mishkin is everything Jimmy Rat isn't: tall, good-looking, suave, with a triple-digit haircut and store-bought teeth. If it wasn't for the 360-degree bruise from the number Uncle No-Nose did on him, he could pass for a congressman. But he and Jimmy both have the same smile, an oily grin that oozes the words “Can I interest you in a used car?”

“I really appreciate your help, Vince,” he says with the kind of sincerity that could get a guy elected.

“I don't need your thanks,” I mutter darkly. “I just want your aunt to die of natural causes. Let's finish this. You're short nine-fifty. I've got six hundred.”

“I'm flat busted, Vince. I can come up with maybe a C.”

I turn to Jimmy. “You've got to lend Ed two hundred and fifty bucks to get him past this.”

Jimmy is appalled. “I just paid
you
! Plus my own vig comes up again soon.”

I get mad. “I don't know why you two can't seem to budget. It's not brain surgery; it's fifth-grade math! But whatever the reason, the least you can do is help the other guy out. Then, a couple of weeks later, when
you're
the one in trouble, you've got help coming. There's double the chance that, at any given time, one of you guys will have a few extra bucks lying around.”

And at that moment, I join a small and select group of people. I am now one of the very few to extract money—voluntarily—from Jimmy Rat. And I don't even need a hedge clipper to do it.

He digs a hand in his pocket and comes up with some crumpled bills. “I better get this back.”

“The first six hundred pays my credit card,” I tell them firmly.

Ed counts the money. “Hey, wait a minute. This is only a hundred and fifty. I'm still a hundred short.”

I've had it. I walk up to the cash register, pop the till, and count out five twenties.

When I get home, Dad's out, and Tommy's hogging my computer.

“You've got five more minutes,” I call from the bottom of the stairs. “I need to check my Web site.”

Mom appears from the kitchen. “Thank goodness you're home. When your father gets back, we can sit down to dinner.”

“Hello to you, too,” I say sarcastically. “Come on, Mom. Surely a few thoughts pass through your head that aren't about food.”

“Well,” she deadpans back. “We could talk about what's keeping my seventeen-year-old son so busy night and day—and does she have a name.”

Touché.
“What's for dinner?” I mumble.

Come to think of it, I understand perfectly why her life seems to revolve around meals. Most of the time, the world spins out of her control, and God knows what her menfolk are up to. Dinner is that one shining moment where Captain Mom takes over the helm, and the good ship
Luca
goes where she steers it.