With her baby-doll Tulsa drawl and then Jackie speaking in his dialect-a tribe that used to live in the Bronx-like he was suffering, and he probably was, trying to make himself understood, get her to realize the importance of this dinner. “I got a talk to the guy.”
“You talk to him on the phone all the time.”
“Face to face. I got a tell him this across a table. It’s how he wants to do it, fine, it’s how we do it.”
“But I can’t go in there.”
“I got what you need, help you out,” Jackie said.
Now he was pouring her a tequila and lime juice, chilled, from the limo’s bar next to the little TV set.
DeLeon Johnson was catching all this from the front seat, sitting eyes-front behind the wheel; like listening to a radio skit. He’d shift his eyes to the mirror, see shapes, movement; but Jackie’d had him put up the glass separating front from rear, for privacy, and DeLeon was getting headlight in his eyes to make it worse, harder to see anything. The black Cadillac stretch limo was parked on Fairmount Avenue, on the north side, across the street from La Dolce Vita, “Authentic Italian Cuisine” blinking in red neon, making the girl sick. They were supposed to meet Frank the Ching in there for dinner and the girl was fighting it every way she knew.
DeLeon had pushed the button to raise the glass partition, then brought it down a couple inches while they were talking so he could hear the skit. It was anybody else, Jackie would want him to listen, be a witness; didn’t matter if he got dumped on or made to look a fool by some Eye-tie. (Jackie would call them “guinea fucks” and one time DeLeon said, “Excuse me, my granddaddy was Italian,” and had to listen to Jackie explain he meant these wise-guy schmucks, not your real Eyetalians.) But Jackie didn’t want a witness when he was talking to LaDonna, who had these hysterical seizures and little Jackie didn’t know shit how to bring her down.
She said, “You go in. What do you need me for? I’ll wait here.”
DeLeon grinned at the mirror. Tell him, girl.
He’d be at the house talking to LaDonna, giving her advice how to maintain cool-that is, the ability to respect yourself while taking a minimum of shit-and Jackie would come bust in the room like he meant to catch them making it. The fool. There were all kinds of times and places DeLeon knew he could take LaDonna up in the sky; but it would be a glide, it would be to say, yeah, I ride this one-time beauty queen runner-up. It would be a score, was all. It wouldn’t be anything like some little bitty Puerto Rican chicks he knew could take him up laughing all the way and do loop-the-loops, man, get him light-headed with the pleasure of their being there. He wished he was back in Puerto Rico instead of here listening to Jackie saying, no, he didn’t need her, he wanted her at the table because the Ching would behave himself. “Not stick a fork through my hand he doesn’t like what I’m telling him.”
“It’s going to happen,” LaDonna said. “I know it is.”
“That’s in the movies they do that. The Godfather.”
“It’s in the paper, it’s on TV. I see it.”
“That’s in South Philly. Come on, it’s after eight. Christ, twenty after.”
“Why can’t I get you to understand?” LaDonna said. “That fella works for Tommy, he’s the only one of you is the least bit sympathetic. I tell him I can’t eat with those people, he says, ‘I don’t blame you, I couldn’t either.’ “
DeLeon raised his eyes to the mirror as Jackie said, “What guy works for Tommy?”
“The one, you know, with the beard. He’s nice.”
DeLeon heard Jackie say, “Jesus Christ, you talked to him?” Then Jackie was rapping on the glass partition. “Go in and tell Ching we’re gonna be a couple minutes-I got a phone call. Buy him a drink.” DeLeon got out of the car hearing Jackie say to LaDonna, “Okay, when’d you talk to the guy?”
Ricky Catalina had decided, first, he couldn’t use any of his own people. A family deal, it was best to get outside help, scummers with no personal interest, muscle you hired by the pound.
Late afternoon he cruised Boystown till he ran into a couple of heavyweight bikers. They were in Snake Alley selling homemade killer weed, parsley flakes sprinkled with PCP, telling a gay couple in jogging suits and headbands how the dust would stretch their minds, their bodies, grow actual fucking wings on them, man. The scummers were dressed sleeveless now that it was fifty degrees out, showing their muscle, their tattoos, their chapter insignia, Hagar the Horrible from the funnies. Ricky got them aside in a bar, gave them the deal with sleepy eyes and they said yeah right away. Anything crazy or destructive, they said, yeah, babe.
One of the pair, called Bad Isham, had been burned when his lab blew up, out in the Barrens; one side of his face was shiny scar tissue and he was missing an ear. The other scummer, Weldon Arden Webster, was known for making explosive devices. He said to Ricky, “You have a diversion, I could blow you a car out front a the place.”
Ricky said, “Yeah, but I don’t want the guy I want to run out-he hears any kind a big explosion.”
Weldon said, “Shit, you want it done right, I wire the guy’s car.”
“I want to do it,” Ricky said.
“Yeah, give you a remote control box.”
“I want him to see me do it. It’s the kind a deal this is, it’s between me and him.”
Weldon said, “You people got queer notions how you have to settle things.”
Bad Isham said, “The guy ain’t the only one gonna see you, Ricky. Lemme think on it.”
The trouble with getting scummers to help, they sat with their big shoulders hunched over the table making muscles jump in their arms, drinking their schnapps and beer chasers, and pretty soon the deal was their idea, how it should be done. Ricky had to give one, then the other, his sleepy eyes. You through? You through?
“That place, all they get now are tourists,” Ricky said, “the way their prices are. Except in the bar there, guys still hang out in the bar; they lay some heavy sport bets. Weldon gets in a fight with some guy, anybody. Make some noise, bust a few bottles. The help comes out from the restaurant part, see what’s going on. Reno, the guy’s driver comes out. You know Reno?… Okay, you belt Reno, be sure. I walk up to the guy”-Ricky wouldn’t say his name-“I come in that entrance from the parking lot, cap him and walk back out. The car’s over on the side street. Isham, you pick up a car. You drive, that’s all.” Wasn’t that simple enough, even for a couple of spazzed-out bikers?
Bad Isham said, “Other way around. Weldon drives, I bust up the bar.”
Weldon said, “Bullshit!”
Ricky finished his glass of red while they argued who was meaner, dirtier, who’d stomped more civilians, hit more cops, got brought up more on charges. Ricky listened, wondering what made scummers the way they were. All that muscle shit. They could come at him with their tire irons, their chains, their big bare arms, he’d say, you guys crazy? And blow holes in them. There was no way to understand people like this. If they asked him to judge which of them was scummier it would be a tie. So he said, “Hey.” He said, “Hey! Goddamn it!” When they looked at him he was settled back. “We leave the car on the side street. You guys want to fight so bad, both a you go in there, fight each other.”
At eight P.M. they were sitting in the bar at La Dolce Vita, schnapps and beers in front of them. They’d start out swinging like a movie fight, coldcock some guy close by and start a free-for-all if they could. But when Weldon turned and threw his beer in Bad Isham’s scarred face it surprised Isham. It seemed a pussy way to get things going. So he faked a backhand fist and came under it with a body punch that sent Weldon and the civilian next to him off their stools. Isham lunged off his, sweeping the bar of bottles and glasses…