Larry and TJ came in together, stopped at the far end, and ordered. Bud lifted the hose from behind the bar and squirted soda into a couple of glasses. They crossed the room to sit at a red square Formica table, way at the back. Michael took his beer and followed.
“Look at this guy,” Larry said to TJ. “Beer for breakfast. My aunt’s dying of cancer and her son’s getting gassed every time I see him.”
“When you’re not here, I drink milk,” Michael said. “I see you, I lose the will to live.”
The front door opened and Paul came in followed by the sun, and by the time the door chopped off the outside light, he was cutting a path through the tables. Michael watched him move; fast, without hurrying; covering a lot of ground with deceptive speed. Paul sat down at the small table.
“Hey,” Michael said. “I forgot to ask, how was your date last Saturday?”
“Good. Nice girl, but not the one. The search continues,” Paul replied.
“Girl from work?” Larry asked.
“In a way. I met her when I took a customer to lunch. She was our waitress.”
Paul was a sales rep for Triple-T Trucking, a union carrier that operated in the New England and the metro New York-New Jersey area.
“Which customer?” Michael asked. He was a driver for Triple-T, jockeying trailers around, making local deliveries and pickups.
“The traffic manager from Schrafft’s Candy, he suggested this place, which, I found out too late, doesn’t take credit cards. I didn’t want to look like a chump, so when the check came, I pretended to go to the restroom, flagged down the waitress, said I didn’t have enough cash on me. I was short a buck for the bill and had no money for a tip. I told her if she lent me a dollar and waited for the tip, it would be a good one. I went back the next day, gave her a fifty, and asked her out for Saturday. She said she was working; I said after. I’d be in the area.”
Michael watched Larry and TJ do the quick nod, polite but impatient, waiting for Paul to get to the good part: their share of the robbery. Michael took a drink from his beer, brought the bottle down, and rapped the bottom against the tabletop a few times.
“Get it?” Michael said. Larry and TJ stopped nodding and looked over at him.
“Cash only,” Michael said. “No cards? That was our restaurant last Saturday night.”
Larry’s jaw fell like the trapdoor on a gallows. TJ shook his head.
“And you went back to pick up the girl?” Larry asked.
“Shhh. Turn it down,” Paul said. He leaned back against the booth in his bright white starched shirt. No matter how grimy the environment, somehow Paul remained spotless.
“Did you know?” TJ asked Michael.
“I just figured it out,” Michael said. “Anyway, how did we do?”
Paul shrugged. “Better than we’d do tonight, now that they’re going to start taking credit cards. That’s what they get for trying to shortchange the IRS.” He flashed a phony smile, followed by a real one; he was charmed by his own insincerity.
“My brother, the patriot,” Michael said.
“You get eighteen hundred each,” Paul said.
“You get twenty-four,” TJ said.
“That’s the deal. Twenty-five percent more,” Paul said.
“That’s thirty-three, isn’t it?” Michael asked.
“Okay,” Paul said. “Then you get seventy-five percent of what I get, which is twenty-five percent less. Whatever makes you feel better. Either way, it’s like five weeks take-home driving a truck.”
“What do we do next, boss?” Larry asked.
“Keep in mind,” TJ interrupted, “I’m gone. Mahla wants to move to Florida. She don’t like the snow.”
“What snow? It’s June,” Michael said.
“Fuck off, man. It gonna stay June?”
The front door opened and they watched a figure lurch into the shadows before TJ spoke again.
“No, I hear you,” Paul said to TJ. “Especially with the toy guns. But this new thing has no need for weapons, real or otherwise, which I knew you’d like. We’re going to liberate a truckload of cigarettes.” Paul smiled like a dust bowl Bible salesman, going face to face to share his look of joy and wonder.
“Cigarettes? From where?” Michael asked.
“One of the car loaders, Blue Ribbon Distributors.”
“What’s a car loader?” Larry asked.
“A warehouse with a railroad siding. It transfers freight between rail cars and trucks.”
“Can’t be from Triple-T. We don’t haul smokes, or booze either,” Michael said.
“We do now. My new boss, Guy Salezzi, is the nephew-in-law of Mr. T.T. Tortello, so I guess he can change the policy. They’re going to start using us on cigarette loads to the BPM warehouse in East Bridgewater next week. I’ve called on Tony Bentini in the Blue Ribbon traffic office for fourteen months and never got a sniff of the work. Why? Because company policy is we won’t take cigarettes, and he won’t give me any other loads unless we take them too. Nobody wants the smokes. But Salezzi went to Fordham with Bentini. So now we’re getting business because they’re pals. They’re going to give us one load, see if BPM is okay with us. If so, we’ll get more.”
Larry smiled at his older cousin. “You got some balls, man. You want to knuckle a load the first week?”
“We better act while we can, right? What if we lose the account?”
Michael said, “I guess we’re going to ignore the fact-”
“The rumor,” Paul cut in.
“-that Mr. T.T. Tortello is a member of the Gambino family.”
“Tortello started that rumor so no one would steal from him,” Paul said. “This is good for forty grand. Split evenly. We each put ten in our poke.” Paul leaned toward TJ. “Think: forty thousand bucks. A few like that and we quit. Become homeowners, family men, good citizens.”
“God bless America,” Michael said.
“I spent six months at the farm,” TJ said. “Watching corn and punkins come up out of the ground. I’m not going back. How long you think you can steal from your company before they start investigating and whatnot?”
“They’ll look at the Teamsters,” Paul said. “I’m management.”
They stared at Michael the Teamster. He snapped open his Zippo, touched the Winston to the flame, and inhaled. Then he smiled around the cigarette and clapped the lighter closed.
“Is Michael going to get this load?” TJ asked.
“No, they pick up at 3 p.m.,” Paul replied. “He starts at 6 a.m. He’s on OT at 3. They’d give the pickup to a straight time guy. We have fifty drivers that start at 8.”
“Good chance I’ll deliver it, though,” Michael said. “There’s only two of us at 6.”
Paul nodded. “BPM wants all loads backed in and ready to unload when their crew starts at 7 a.m. Which means the driver will come from the 6 start.” He looked at his brother. “If Rosie gives you the P &G or the Jordan Marsh load, you call the apartment, let the phone ring once, and hang up. If you get the right load, don’t call. Even Rosie might notice if you did. If you don’t get this one, we’ll have to hope you get the next, assuming there is a next.”
“And listen, Michael,” Larry warned, “lay off the booze! Someone might smell you.”
Paul turned to Michael and raised his eyebrows but didn’t look directly at him. “He makes a good point, Mikey. Work has to come first. By the way, go see Ma today, will you? Eat something, take a nap, and go see her.”
Michael pulled the GTO up behind the old man’s Rambler, across the street from the house, a small brown bungalow with a screened porch. A strip of sidewalk and a patch of grass separated the house from the street. If an eighteen-year-old kid who stood six feet tall tripped in the gutter and fell forward, his head would bounce off the bottom cement step. The morning after the night that Michael proved that, his father had thrown him out.
Paul leaned against the kitchen sink holding a glass of water, while their father sat in his chair at the same spot at the same table they’d had since Michael was a small boy.