Wiseguys In Love (6 page)

They'd been sitting in the car outside of Solly's club on Mulberry Street for the past two hours. Michael's side of the front seat looked clean and neat. Tony's looked like an explosion in a junk-food factory.

“Jeez, how can you eat that stuff? You know what they put in it?”

“You gotta keep your stren'th up,” Tony'd mumbled through his eleventh Ring-Ding.

“So, what do you think he wants us to take care of?” Michael asked, trying to keep his voice steady.

“Ah, I dunno. Probably a little muscle. This is a big chance for you. He don't let just nobody make their bones,” Tony said in a voice filled with reverence.

Solly was Tony's idol. East Harlem was not known for producing many rocket scientists or statesmen; you were either a wiseguy, a priest, a cop, or a junkie. Looking at him now, Michael realized that if it hadn't been for Solly, Tony probably would've gone the junkie route. He wasn't schooled enough for the other two options.

Michael was a special case—he'd gotten out, gotten an education, he thought, then shuddered, embarrassed. Yeah, he was a special case all right. That's why he was sitting here now, he thought bitterly.

And, good, bad, or whatever, if it hadn't been for Tony, Michael wouldn't have survived in the neighborhood. That fact was part of the reason he was sitting here in all this trouble. His eyes slid over and he watched Tony crumple up another Ring-Ding wrapper. He could pinpoint when all this craziness with Tony and the Soltanos and himself had begun. The memory of a football game sixteen years before came into Michael's mind as if it were yesterday.

Tony had been a tackle on the East Harlem Boys Football team. He was already five foot nine and two hundred pounds then. He was great for the team. On the field with the rest of the normal-sized fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds, Tony looked kind of like Gulliver, playing for the Lilliputians. No one wanted to get near him.

Michael had been short and skinny for fifteen, but he'd been fast as a streak of lightning, short enough to be just below eye level for most players. Michael was almost never touched during a game. He was their ace wide end and safety.

Actually, they'd played very few games, mostly because no one wanted to play the East Harlem Boys Football team as a whole. Winning a game from the team could mean getting stabbed in the locker room, or worse, they'd go after your family. The team motto was “Lose the Game, Win the Fight.”

In addition to Tony, the team had been loaded with psychotics like Lead Pipe Raguso. Lead Pipe had played tackle and would tape a piece of pipe to his arm, under his uniform. Then he'd stand still on the field, waiting for some kid to start tearing toward him. He'd never move a muscle. He'd wait until they were two steps in front of him, just till he could see their eyes, and then he'd step aside, stick the arm out, and let the kid break his neck.

In 1975,
Time
magazine had done an article on organized crime, citing the ten most dangerous men in America. Michael recognized eight of them from the team.

It had been an ugly game, informally thrown together before the “real” one during the weekend. There were no referees; they were playing a league from the Bronx that was just as dangerous as they were.

They had been pounded in the last quarter, but they'd tied 8 to 8. They were in the final play; the sun was setting and the temperature had dropped. Michael remembered shivering in his uniform.

They'd broken huddle and gotten into formation for what they called their “tomato surprise” play.

“Hut one, hut two, pass!” Lead Pipe had passed the ball to Michael, who passed it back between his legs and then took off. Lead Pipe stuffed the ball under his shirt as Michael made a wide circle on the right side. Tony barreled ahead, making a clean, body-free path for Michael as everyone ran circles around the other team and made moves like they had the ball.

Lead Pipe circled around to the left, almost unnoticed, bent over and wobbling like he was hurt in order to conceal the ball. He was supposed to wait until Michael got right to the goal line and then toss it to Michael, who'd make the touchdown.

It would've worked, but the Bronx team's tackle, a kid nearly Tony's size, had caught sight of the bulge under Lead Pipe's shirt and took off after Michael. Lead Pipe tossed the ball before he realized the tackle was on to them, and Tony was way the hell on the other side of the field, leaving Michael with no protection.

Michael caught it, and then this huge guy appeared from nowhere. Michael held on to the ball for dear life as he wove and bobbed around the tackle, just out of reach. In a sudden sprint, the tackle charged him; Michael ducked and made it across the goal line.

He was just about to toss the ball up in the air to declare victory when the tackle broadsided him, knocking him down and all of the wind out of him.

“You fuckin' cheater!” The tackle kept screaming as he lay on top of him and punched him in the ribs like a machine, every blow worse and worse until the sharp, splintering pains of cracked ribs followed each blow.

The next thing that happened was just a fuzzy memory for Michael. He remembered Tony screaming, “Mikey, look out!” And suddenly the weight was pulled off of him and the blows stopped. He pulled his sore body up, wheezing, and stared frozenly at Tony.

He and the kid were wrestling for control of a razor. It was the rusty blade of a broken barber's tool, the kind the old men were shaved with in neighborhood shops. The edge had been honed shiny and the handle had been padded with a rag and some electrical tape to make it easier to hold.

Michael couldn't move. He ached, and with every breath the pains grabbed at his chest sharply. He looked around to see whether anyone saw what was going on. Across the street sat Ralphie and Solly's driver, chatting, oblivious.

Just as Michael tried to motion to them, Tony slammed the kid back with one big push, but the kid was like a cat. He bounced back to his feet, razor in hand, and began circling Tony.

“What are you doin' here?” Tony boomed out at the kid.

Suddenly, the kid lunged and got Tony, not deeply enough to cause serious damage but deeply enough to draw blood. Tony looked down at his chest, at the wide opening where the fabric had been cut and was now exposing his skin. Tony felt with his hand and stared, almost puzzled at the blood, as if it wasn't his but something someone had spilled on him.

“You cut me,” he said, amazed.

And then something had happened that Michael would never forget. He saw “the look.” Tony's eyes slightly crossed and his face scrunched up as if he was in pain, and Michael's blood went cold.

“You tried to cut up my cousin over a touchdown and you cut me—you don't fuckin' do that.”

Michael remembered the next couple of moments in that weird way you do when you are frozen with fear—in both slow motion and in the blink of an eye, all at the same time. He'd watched Tony grab the kid, spin him around effortlessly like a dance partner, and, holding one arm up behind his back, he'd grabbed the hand the razor was in and just as effortlessly pulled the blade up to the kid's neck and began to push it into the skin. Michael felt himself tense at the memory of the look on the kid's face: puzzlement and amazement and absolute terror, then a wince as the blade began to cut his skin.

Tony was just about to pull it across the kid's neck when finally other voices broke through the moment. Michael looked up to see Ralphie and the Soltanos' driver.

“Eh kid, this is a game,
capisce?
”

“He tried to kill my fuckin' cousin.…”

“Look, you gotta stop it,” Ralphie counseled.

“
Stunadze,
you gonna drop him here? In the middle of a playing field with all these witnesses?” the driver asked.

“I can't do nothin' else,” Tony answered matter-of-factly.

Michael watched Ralphie and the driver exchange odd glances and then look back in awe at Tony.

“Drop it or I'll shoot you,” the driver said just as matter-of-factly. “Why don't we go somewhere and talk?”

Maybe it was the threat of being shot, or maybe it wasn't, but they watched Tony take the blade away and push the kid down on the ground. The kid scampered off into the crowd that had gathered.

But no matter why Tony had chosen to drop it, the one thing that Michael and Ralphie and the driver knew was that Tony would've had no problem at all cutting the kid's throat and then going home to eat.

There was that look in his face: a steel-cold emptiness behind his eyes, a deadness that could not distinguish a human being from, say, a gnat. It was a frightening glitch in Tony's psyche.

Michael owed him his life from then on. Although Tony never said anything or asked for any favors back, he was owed, and Michael knew the day would come for the payback. But more importantly, it was at that moment, Michael believed, that he'd watched Tony get handpicked by the Soltanos.

Solly did appreciate Tony's strength. He was soon giving Tony jobs to make his bones in the business. Run a bag up to the Bronx, visit Mordy Soloman for payments—Tony did it without question.

But the thing that put him in was taking a fall for one of Solly's cousins during a fur heist in Brooklyn.

It had been a walk-through case. The doors to the warehouse had been left unlocked; all they had to do was load the truck. They had just gotten there, hadn't even opened the truck, when Solly's cousin, a real putz, began playing with his gun and hit the alarm box. A patrol car must have been right around the corner, because they were there in what seemed like two seconds.

As everyone scattered, Tony grabbed the guy's gun and yelled at him to run. Tony was left there alone.

And that was when Tony really made his biggest impression on Solly. They couldn't make the robbery charge stick, so they found something else. The unlicensed gun Tony was carrying carried with it a mandatory one-year sentence.

And Tony did the stand-up thing and kept his mouth shut, and did a year at Rikers.

Michael looked at his face, with his weird, off-kilter nose. And that, Michael thought in awe, was the only thing Tony had to show for the whole year—a broken nose, from a guard the first week inside.

Other than that, Tony talked about Rikers the way Michael talked about working in the college cafeteria. Yeah, it was a sewer, and you had to be careful of certain people, and the hours sucked, but if you stuck around long enough, you might learn something.

Tony was “made” by the time he was nineteen. And in his mind, he owed it all to Solly.

He liked driving Solly around. He didn't mind straightening out people for Solly; it came naturally to Tony. In return, Tony now had respect. He earned a good living, had nice clothes, drove a nice car.

So whatever Solly wanted must be right, right?

And that was when the whole mess began.

Michael stared out the window at the little churchyard across from Solly's place. The sun was out, but it was raining. It had to be around five. He stretched his legs out in front of him. Yeah, Solly was good for Tony.

Michael had no idea why he was here.

No, he knew why. It was because two years ago, three things had happened that changed his entire life.

First, he'd screwed up at law school.

The picture of a third-year midterm being waved around a small office materialized in front of his eyes.

“Mr. Bonello, I don't know what you take us for, but this is inexcusable.”

“Professor Birnbaum, I really don't know what you mean. That paper is my work—”

He'd tossed it on the desk contemptuously and picked up another blue-covered exam booklet and threw it in front of him. Michael kept his eyes on it.

“Go ahead. Open it up. Read a passage. Almost any passage.”

Michael had taken up the booklet and opened it. He pretended to read a page.

“Yes?”

“It's word-for-word in most places. Do you know whose exam this is?”

Michael shook his head.

“It's the work of the woman sitting directly to your left. How do you account for this?”

“Coincidence?”

It wasn't. But it was the only thing he could think of. Of course the work was the same. Jessica had begged him—in bed, out of bed. She'd worn him down one way or another until he finally gave in just to keep her quiet. What would be the harm?

He just hadn't thought it through. And he never, ever expected her to copy word-for-word. Shit, no one was that stupid. He stared up at Professor Birnbaum. She'd been called in an hour earlier, and, judging by the tone of his voice, it had hardly been in defense of him.

He was brought up to a reviewing board to bounce him out of NYU Law so fast, he didn't know what hit him. What it came down to was her word against his, and Jessica Fine's word was taken as true and Michael Bonello's was taken as lying.

Jessica turned out to be a real piece of work. He called her apartment and left crazed, pleading messages with a roommate who seemed to be under the impression that he had copied from Jessica. When that didn't work, he resolved to track her down.

The last time he saw her was a fall afternoon, late. The sun had turned the trees across the street in Washington Square Park a golden red. And Michael sat shivering in the shadow of the NYU law library. He pulled his jacket around him tightly as a cold wind blew against him and watched the peaceful sights of young mothers pushing infants in strollers, being escorted home by dancing older children, excitedly telling them of their day in school.

A woman with familiar dark hair passed quickly, and Michael jumped off the ledge and grabbed Jessica by the arm.

“What!” she began, and her face went pale as she looked at him. He was rumpled and unshaven.

“You gotta tell them the truth,” he said hoarsely.

He watched her face turn from a scared pale to a stony-cold statue's face.