Some people’s families want them to be doctors. Others would like them to be lawyers. Mine wanted me to be a gangster. To my father, the greatest thing a man could be was a made guy in the mob. To be able to walk into any bar or restaurant and have other men fear and respect you, and even pick up your check. He’d worked hard all his life and wound up the underboss in a scrubby local Atlantic City crew. But he had greater aspirations for me. He thought I could become a capo or maybe even a consigliere with one of the major families.
He couldn’t understand that what I wanted more than anything was to be legitimate. I’d grown up around the Cosa Nostra, I’d lost my real father because of it, and I’d had enough. I didn’t want to spend every night of my life staringat the ceiling, wondering if a rival crew was going to have me whacked or if the cops were going to arrest me. I wanted what most people with some college education want: a bigger house, longer vacations, the love of my kids, and a shot at doing better. But my problem was that at the age of twenty-eight, with a wife and two children to support, I was struggling to make an honest living. I hadn’t had a decent contract for my concrete business in over a year, even though I was hustling around the clock. To my father, the way I lived was a disgrace. Only suckers worked nine-to-five.
“Listen,” he said. “If I could get you in with Teddy, you wouldn’t have any more worries in your life about providing.”
Teddy was my father’s boss. His capodecine.A three-hundred-pound engorged pig, who always wanted half of whatever you made. I remember him stealing pancakes off my plate when I was a kid.
“If I lived like you and worked for Teddy full-time, I wouldn’t make any real money anyway,” I said. “I wouldn’t even have a name.”
“What’re you talking about? I have a name.”
“Yeah? Ever have a car leased in your own name?”
“Why do I need that? I got four or five driver’s licenses.”
Across the table, Larry was sipping his beer and using the handkerchief from his breast pocket to wipe his mouth, oblivious to what was about to happen.
“Ever live in a house that didn’t have someone else’s name on the lease?” I asked my father.
“No,” he said. “And I never paid no taxes either. So what does that tell you?”
He turned to Larry and jerked his thumb at me. “You see, he thinks it’s beneath him to be part of a crew.”
“Well, Vin, the young generation d-doesn’t have the same priorities as we did.” Larry stroked the part of his face where a chin should have been. “The F-family doesn’t mean the same thing to them.”
“That’s because they don’t understand all the sacrifices we made.”
Larry shrugged as my father rubbed his nose with his forearm. “Look, V-vin. They’re never gonna t-t-take him anyway. So what’re you gonna do about it?”
“That’s right,” I said. “I can’t be made because I haven’t got Sicilian blood on both sides. Those are the rules.”
I was hoping that would derail the conversation, but my father was set on his plan.
“Every man wants his son to have a better life than the one he had,” he said gravely. “Maybe they could bend the rules for once.”
“Hey, don’t be so . . . officious with me.”
My father looked at me like I was giving him a migraine. “Officious?”
“V-vin.” Larry leaned over and grabbed my father’s elbow in a show of old-man camaraderie. “May-maybe it’s better like this. Look at my boy Nicky. If he could’ve stayed clean, like Anthony, maybe I wouldn’t have to be here tonight trying to straighten this out with you.”
My father grumbled. “And if Nicky woulda come in to talk about it himself, we could’ve had it out with him insteada you, Larry.”
“You know about this?” Larry turned to me as a potential ally. “My Nicky had a little m-m-misunderstanding about the union p-p-pension fund.”
“He was skimming an extra fifteen hundred a week,” said my father. He stared at me. “Haven’t you got something to tell Larry about that?”
“What?” I just looked at him.
“Don’t you wanna say something to Larry?”
“No.” I looked away. “What am I going to tell him?”
“That thing you said you were going to tell him.”
My father’s eyes were like two drill bits going through the side of my skull. I suddenly became aware of every breath being taken in the bar, the tick of the clock, and the catch in Tony Bennett’s throat as he sang “Cold, Cold Heart” on the radio.
“I haven’t got anything for Larry,” I said.
My father was still staring. He punched me lightly in the shoulder.
“You sure about that?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
I saw Larry’s eyes shifting around nervously. If he’d had any brains, he would’ve leaped up and run out of there.
I patted my pockets and stooped my shoulders as the blood began pounding in my ears. “I haven’t got anything for him.”
“Aghh.” My father waved his hand in disgust and started to get up from the table. “I’m gonna go take a piss.”
“Don’t fall in,” said Richie as Larry stood up to let Vin out.
My father walked around the circular chrome-topped bar and went through the brown door on the other side of the club marked “Mermen.” Most of the tension went out of the room with him. The pounding in my ears subsided and I let the music from the radio wash over me. Tony Bennett was hitting all the high notes. Larry was going to be all right, I thought.
He sat back down and reached across the table to tap my hand.
“He’s a real old hard-ass,” he said softly. “B-but he loves you. D-don’t ever forget that.”
“I know, Larry. But he doesn’t understand.”
“Sure, but in his heart, he only w-wants what’s best for you.”
That disco ball was slowly turning on the ceiling and a thousand little stars of light chased each other around the room. They reminded me of the gulls outside.
I was about to tell Larry that this would be a good time to leave. But right then my father came out of the bathroom with a .357 Magnum in his hand, just the way I thought he would. He walked around the bar and raised it slowly, leveling it at Larry from fifteen feet away. I got ready to hit the floor and cover my ears.
But then something unbelievable happened. Old Larry DiGregorio, who’d always had the reflexes of a Valium addict, whipped his hand inside his jacket and pulled out a snub-nosed .38. Before any of us could react, he fired off a round at my father and reality began to dissolve. The bang made Richie yelp like a schoolgirl finding a roach under her chair. My heart jumped up against my lungs. But my father only looked annoyed, like he just remembered he’d left hiskeys in the car. He fell to the floor in a heap as Tony Bennett finished his song. From somewhere far away, a foghorn sounded.
Larry turned to us slowly like a high school principal about to deliver a lecture. “You know, I want to believe neither of you boys had anything to do with this,” he said in the steadiest voice I’d ever heard him use.
My breath froze. Richie farted so loudly it sounded like he was blowing his nose in his pants. Larry began to sit down. He didn’t see my father rising up behind him like a movie creature back from the grave. With one hand, Vin grabbed the nearest bar stool and came rushing at him. And the next thing Larry knew, that bar stool was crashing down on his head.
All hell broke loose. The two of them hit the floor and started wrestling like a couple of old chimps under the banana tree. Spit was flying everywhere, chairs and tables were falling. They began rolling over each other back toward the bar, gasping for air. First my father was on top. Then Larry. A pair of bifocals fell out. Then a set of false teeth. Now a hearing aid. Something furry tumbled off Larry’s head and I realized it was his toupee. It was like they were shaking parts of each other loose. Glasses tumbled off the bar and shattered next to their faces. An ice pick rolled off after them. My father grabbed it and tried to jab it in Larry’s eye. Larry grabbed his hand and bit Vin’s ear. It felt like someone had taken all the nerve endings at the back of my head and twisted them into a tourniquet.