My whole life’s dilemma was squeezed into those couple of seconds. Every fiber in my body was screaming Go, get out of there, drive a million miles away. But I knew I had to stay. Vin was more than the man who married my mother. He was my father, my protector, my sword and shield against the rest of the world.
“GIVITBACK! GIVITBACK GIVITBACK!” It was impossible to tell which of them was screaming.
I saw Richie sitting in the booth like a beached whale. My old man was on the floor making this horrible “ACK-ACK-ACK” strangling noise. He needed me. But they both had guns, which could go off any second. I forced myself to takea step forward, but then two sharp pops stopped me in my tracks ten feet away and I heard a thwop sound like a knife going into a pumpkin.
Peggy Lee sang “Is That All There Is?” on the radio.
Someone groaned. An ice cube cracked. In the revolving disco ball lights, I could see the outline of an arm going limp. There was another muffled pop, pop from the gun and then both of them got very still.
For a minute, I got scared that they both might be dead. That headache turned into a blinding whiteout pain right over my eyes. How could I explain what we were doing here? What would we do with their bodies? And what would I do without my father? Up until that moment, I hadn’t realized I loved him almost as much as he loved me.
There was another groan and then slowly Vin began to disentangle his arms and legs from the pileup on the floor. He stood up and looked from me to Richie and then back to me again.
“Goddamn it,” he said. “When I ask if you got something to tell him, you’re supposed to jump up and strangle that cocksucker.”
“I didn’t bring the rope,” I said numbly. I was still in shock about what had just happened.
“Ha?”
“I said, I forgot the rope. I guess it’s still in the trunk.” That was a lie. I hadn’t wanted anything to do with killing Larry and my father knew it.
He cursed under his breath and started to wipe the prints off his gun with his shirttail.
“You all right?” I asked.
“Yeah, he just nicked me.” My father checked the shoulder of his shirt where the bullet passed through. He seemed more concerned about the rip in the material than the scab forming on his skin.
I breathed a sigh of relief and went over to take a closer look at Larry. He was lying very still with four bullet holes in his chest and the ice pick through his kidney. His wig was off, leaving his pale bare scalp exposed. He was covered with blood and half his blazer was stuck under his back. I keptthinking he would’ve wanted it closed with the brass buttons showing.
The stench was so overwhelming it was like a cloud coming off him.
Looking back, I think I’d never felt so confused. I’d known my father had killed people, but I’d never actually seen it before. His violence sickened me. It didn’t just turn my stomach; it split my mind open. How could the same man who walked me through the schoolyard do this to another person?
But at the same time, I was secretly excited. There was something incredibly powerful about watching him just take a life. He and Larry had been locked in a mortal struggle and now he was going to walk away and Larry wasn’t. It changed me—seeing that—but I didn’t know how much at that moment. Almost immediately, I went back to being horrified and ashamed.
My father came over and nudged Larry with his foot. “You were supposed to do this, you know, not me,” he told me in a raspy voice, pocketing the .38 that had been lying at Larry’s side. “We were waiting so long he would’ve left if I hadn’t of shot him.”
“He almost left anyhow,” said Richie Amato with a smaller smirk.
“You shut up!” my father snarled at him. “You never got outa the fucking booth either.”
He picked up Larry’s beer, which had been sitting on the table the whole time, and finished it in one gulp. The ultimate macho fuck-you. Kill your enemies. Take their women. And if there are no women around, drink their beer.
What could I do? Call the police? This was my father. Besides, it was gradually beginning to dawn on me that by just standing here I was an accomplice to felony murder. I couldn’t say anything to anybody without implicating myself.
“Ah, shit.” My father started to wipe some bloody mess off his forearm with a cocktail napkin. His shirt was rank with sweat and his breathing sounded like rats running through a wind tunnel. “Well, now I got a problem.”
He took another deep breath and heaved his shoulders. Asingle green vein pulsed above his left temple. His body was still radiating all the hate it took to rise up and kill Larry.
“What’s up?”
He looked down at Larry and shook his head. “He wasn’t supposed to get shot and stabbed like that. Teddy wanted him strangled and he wanted you to do it. It was part of the plan for having you take over the union envelope.”
“So don’t look at me,” I said sharply. “I didn’t want anything to do with this. I only came tonight because I thought there was a chance we might be able to work this out peacefully ...”
But even as I was saying this I found I couldn’t stop staring at Larry’s corpse. It was terrible what had happened, but somehow I found myself adjusting to the circumstances. Larry was dead. There wasn’t a thing I could do for him.
“Well, lookit,” said my old man, pulling the ice pick out of Larry’s side. “Maybe there’s something we can do.”
‘Like what?”
He bit his lower lip. “Maybe you could just throw a rope around his neck and say you did it and I gave you a hand toward the end.”
“He’s still got all them holes in him,” said Richie, suddenly turning into a forensics expert. “They’re gonna look at ’em and say that’s what killed him, not any rope.”
My father carefully surveyed Larry’s face. “Well then we gotta figure out how we can get the tongue to come out and the eyes to bulge.”
I straightened my tie and cleared my throat. It’s amazing how quickly things can go back to seeming normal. The disco ball on the ceiling was still spinning, the music on the radio was still playing, the beers were still on ice behind the bar, waiting to be sold for three dollars a pop. The only thing different about the place was Larry lying there dead on the carpet.
“Look,” I said, “forget about saying who did what to who. What are we going to do about him lying here?”
“Hey.” My father shot me an irritated look. “I’m just trying to get you some credit with Teddy.”
“Well forget it,” I cut him off. “You tell a lie, it’ll come back to haunt you every time.”
This was the last thing I needed. I was already implicated in a murder. Now Vin wanted to put the weapon in my hand. I just wanted to get out of there, have a drink, and take some time to sort things out.
My father was glaring at me again. “You know, you fuckin’ kids kill me,” he said, turning from me to Richie. “Will one of you go get a plastic mat so I can roll up this sonovabitch?”
Richie went springing off to a back room, all gung-ho since there wasn’t any danger now. I was still looking at Larry. Just a couple of minutes ago, he’d been asking me how my business was doing.
“Officious,” said my father, taking him by the ankles and starting to drag him away. “That the word you used before?”