It was nearly four o’clock in the morning when Angela awoke to use the bathroom and saw the dining room light was still on. She saw Nick was still working and said, “How long you gonna do this? It’s four o’clock in the morning.”
“As long as it takes,” Nick said. “You could’ve helped me, you know.”
“With that filth? You better get if off the table before the kids wake up.”
“You could help me do that at least.”
“No thank you, I gotta get up in the morning. I don’t have the luxury of sleeping until noon.”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “Or getting off your ass once you’re awake.”
Angela flipped him the bird.
Nick considered telling her to go fuck her mother’s cunt, the words were right there on the tip of his tongue, but then he thought about the lecture he’d gotten from Eddie Vento and kept his mouth shut.
Chapter 5
John was up early when a fuse blew. Without air conditioning the apartment had turned into a sweatbox.
He showered with cold water while a pot of coffee brewed on the stove. He dressed quickly and left the apartment twenty minutes later, his shirt sweat-stained before he was in his car. Rather than waste the morning, he showed up to work early and was lucky when a call for an airport run turned up. John’s good fortune continued at the airport, where he caught a return fare into Manhattan he didn’t have to report.
He worked steady the rest of the morning into the early afternoon and was able to stop at an insurance office to make the payment on his life insurance policy. He mailed the rest of the bills he’d written checks for and was thinking he might not have to ask for an advance to pay the backed-up child support when the afternoon fares dried up in spite of a few rain showers. Then he had to shell out close to five dollars to fill his gas tank and by three o’clock he was down to thirteen dollars. He owed his ex-wife seventy.
He had another run to LaGuardia for a pickup at four followed by a JFK run at five-thirty. He was still short his child support when it was time to check out for the day at seven o’clock, but John decided he’d pay just one week of what he owed and then catch up on Thursday. He made the trip to Queens after cashing out with just over fifty dollars in his wallet.
He didn’t see his son when his ex-wife opened the front door.
“Jack around?” he asked.
Nancy put her right hand out, palm up. John had already counted out thirty-five dollars. He placed the cash in her palm. Nancy scowled at the sight of single dollar bills.
“What’s this shit?” she said.
“One week. It’s all I have.”
Nancy rolled her eyes. “And the singles?”
“Tips, Nan. It’s what I get when I’m driving.”
“What happened to the fives?”
“You complain about those, too.”
“They’re easier to work with than singles.”
“There’s a ten and a five in there.”
She rolled her eyes. “When are you gonna get a real job?”
“You mean like yours?”
“Fuck you.”
“No thanks.”
“You wish.”
“Never.”
“Asshole.”
John took a deep breath. “Jack around or not?”
“He had a sleepover,” Nancy said. “If you really gave a shit, you’d already know that.”
“I forgot,” John said. “I’ll be back Thursday with the rest of the money. You have anything planned for then?”
“There’s a bazaar in Valley Stream next week you could take him to. Maybe he could spend the night with you for a change.”
“That so you can bang your current husband for a change?”
Nancy swung at him with her hand holding the cash. John blocked the smack and the money rained all over the front stoop.
“You fuck-face bastard,” she said.
“Nice,” John said. “Very classy.”
“Go fuck yourself, you loser. Go get in your piece-of-shit car and get lost.”
“I guess Nathan isn’t home,” John said. “You got Louis hiding in there under the kitchen table?”
John knew she’d had an affair with her first husband while John was still married to her. He assumed Louis was still in her life.
Nancy was picking the cash up off the lawn and stoop. John didn’t help her.
“You’re just jealous because he’s twice the man you are,” she said. “And he’s twice as big where it counts.”
She was leaning off the last step on the stoop. He warned her to be careful, but she lost her balance and fell. He couldn’t help laughing. Nancy’s face turned red.
“I hate you, you cocksucker!”
John motioned toward the street. “A little louder,” he said. “They didn’t hear you up the block.”
“Fuck you!” she screamed.
John held his right hand to his right ear. “What’s that?”
“I hate you!”
John spotted one of the single-dollar bills she had missed and pointed to it. “You missed one.”
“Go drive your taxi, John. And bring me the money you owe, you deadbeat fuck. He’s your son, too.”
It had been funny until she called him a deadbeat. It was something he wasn’t proud of, the fact he was behind making child support payments. It wasn’t the first time and he doubted it would be the last unless things changed soon. She was also right about his job. He hadn’t had a real one for more than a year now. The extra work he picked up here and there wasn’t cutting it. The weekend gig running a porn movie back and forth from Brooklyn to Long Island and making collections for the idiots behind it was as demeaning as it was lousy pay. The only benefit so far had been it was unreported income. At least he wasn’t paying taxes on it.
He returned to his car feeling down. Nancy wasn’t a genius but she could be mean. She had scored a blow calling him a deadbeat. He was also upset about forgetting the sleepover. His son had told him and John had forgot. He doubted Nancy would even mention to his son that he’d stopped to see him.
He started the engine and was about to pull away when he heard Nancy call to him. He glanced to his right and there she was with a big smile on her face as she gave him the finger from the top of the stoop.
The woman was comical, he thought.
Louis knew the steady diet of five-dollar bills John Albano had been paying his ex-wife for child support was dirty money that had something to do with the recently banned porno movie Deep Throat. The other thing he knew was if the money was dirty, robbing it couldn’t be reported.
Although there was the mob to consider, Louis understood how they operated. Once the money was missing, Albano would be the one held responsible. The connected guys Louis dealt with, between gambling and borrowing money, were all consistent when it came to cash. None of them were interested in stories about why you didn’t have it when you were supposed to.
The plan was to catch Albano on a Sunday night before he delivered his weekend receipts to the Williamsburg bar. Louis had clocked him three consecutive Sundays. Except for his last three stops, the collection route had been the same. Concerned that he might take an alternative route to stop and see his kid, Louis had grilled Nancy about it the day before. It would help if he could insure her second ex-husband didn’t deviate from his routine. Louis had a few ideas about how to rob John Albano, but it would be a lot easier if he had some help.
Holly had been cool to his original plan, but Louis knew he could always depend on Nancy. His ex-wife was shrewd, though, so he would have to do more than promise her a cut of the take. Nancy had already grown bored with her third husband and was still very much in love with Louis. She had only married the geeky musician because of his money. There might even be a small score in her divorce, since the guy she’d married owned the house they lived in now.