“Really?” she had said.
“Yeah, Nan, I was working. What business is it of yours, anyway? You’re married again.”
It was something she sometimes regretted, but something she planned to change as soon as she was entitled to half of Nathan’s assets. In the meantime, she had to live with Louis having girlfriends, even ones in their early twenties.
She had been crazy for him since they first met at a beach party the night the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the New York Yankees on a ninth-inning home run by the guy with the Polish name. She remembered because Louis had bet the Yankees and couldn’t stop cursing about the guy who hit the home run, Mazooski, or something like it, his name was. She had eventually calmed Louis down with a blow job that took her nearly an hour he’d been so distracted by the bet he’d lost.
They started dating the next day and she hadn’t been able to get over him since. Her mother had called Louis poison and was probably right, but Nancy couldn’t stop herself from needing him. She knew there was no security in a relationship with Louis, emotional or financial, and had been clever enough to seek the latter from someone else. She had seized the opportunity by marrying Nathan Ackerman.
Another half hour passed before Nancy began to seethe. It had been more than three hours and she felt like a fool.
There was a bar on the corner she knew Louis sometimes frequented. She decided to wait for him there. She’d give him one more hour before she left and might even flirt a little with the bartender if he wasn’t a skank, or maybe with somebody else, so that word would get back to Louis about how his ex-wife was still a looker and why didn’t he tell them about her before.
It was seven-fifteen when Nancy stepped inside the bar. She spotted a pair of toothless wonders, a sixty-year-old lush wearing enough makeup to pass for a clown, and a couple of barely legal young men at the bar. The bartender wasn’t bad, a tall, thin, dark-haired guy with blue eyes, so she sat away from the losers and ordered a vodka tonic.
“Louis coming in tonight?” she asked when he set the drink down in front of her.
“Louis the window-cleaner?”
Nancy nodded.
“You a friend of his?”
“Sort of.”
“He didn’t say,” the bartender said. He turned toward the two younger guys at the opposite end of the bar. “Jimmy due in tonight?”
Both young ones shook their heads.
“Who’s Jimmy?” Nancy asked.
“Jimmy’s a shylock.”
“Louis’s?”
The bartender shrugged.
Nancy remembered how Louis had implied the phone calls at his apartment might’ve been from loan sharks. There was that one time when they were still married and he had come home all bloody and bruised and lied about getting jumped. She later learned a pair of goons some loan shark had sent did the damage because he owed five thousand dollars they didn’t have. She had gone to the bank the next day for a loan to pay down half his debt before they broke his legs. Apparently he still hadn’t grown up or stopped gambling and was as irresponsible as ever. On the other hand, he would need help and that had always been a guarantee that he’d come back to her.
“Anything I can do for you?” the bartender asked.
He was smiling then and Nancy could see that he too was missing teeth. She sipped some more of her drink, set down a dollar tip, and said, “Thanks, no. Just tell him Nan was here.”
Chapter 8
“There a good reason I shouldn’t have you tuned up?” Eddie Vento said.
John did his best not to avoid direct eye contact. “The guy’s been riding me,” he said. “He wouldn’t stop.”
“The guy is around somebody,” Vento said. “Me.”
Twenty minutes ago Nick Santorra had started in on John as soon as he’d stepped inside the bar upstairs. John still wasn’t sure how long it had taken before it was too much, but then it had happened and now here he was sitting before a wiseguy answering for the single punch he’d thrown.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Mr. Vento,” he said. “I apologize.”
Vento didn’t say anything. He lit a cigar instead.
What had happened was Santorra spotted John and turned to the rest of the guys sitting around the bar and said loud enough so they could all hear him, “And here he is, the late great Johnny Porno, the man too busy to show respect. The one who put all our lives on hold because he’s got better things to do. Or maybe he thinks we’re all a bunch of schmucks.”
“I was working,” John had said. “I told you I hadda work.”
“See what I mean?” Santorra said. “Fuck all of us and tough shit, too.”
“I’m here now.”
“Hear that, fellas? He’s here now.”
John was clenching his teeth trying to compose himself.
“You have some pair of balls,” Santorra went on. “Who fuckin’ cares you had to work? Not me.”
John had remained silent.
“He agrees,” Santorra said. “Johnny Porno’s got balls.”
“My name is Albano. John Albano. And I told you I hadda work.”
“Your name is whatever the fuck I call you, jerkoff.”
John had felt the muscles in his face tense.
Then Santorra said, “He had to work and bada-boom, bada-bing, fuck all of us.”
Santorra’s last crack with the dopey sound effect was what had pushed John over the edge, the bada-boom, bada-bing.
“Just you,” he’d told Santorra.
“Excuse me?”
“Fuck you,” John said. “Just you.”
Santorra had swallowed hard. His fear showed as he continued acting tougher than he was. He’d put himself in a bad position; either he put up or looked bad. What he did was turn to the other guys in the bar, but they were all waiting to see what happened next, too.
Santorra took a deep breath, wheeled on John and poked him in the chest. “Oh, yeah?” he said. “Fuck you, wiseass.”
John took the poke, but had left the trace of a smirk on his face, enough so to show he was way more amused than he was scared. He had already placed the punch in his mind, a quick right cross he’d try to place on the tip of Santorra’s jaw.
“Think you’re funny?” Santorra said in response to the smirk. He was insulted then and was forced to poke John a second time. First he said, “Take that smirk and go fuck your mother’s cunt.”
It was then John decked him.
There was a slight commotion immediately after. John was shoved against the wall by a few guys and when they let him go he could see Santorra was still splayed out on the floor, eyes closed. Then Eddie Vento came up from his basement office to see what had happened. John was brought downstairs to explain himself, except there wasn’t much he could say.
Santorra had been pushing his buttons since they first met and tonight he’d pushed one too many. It had been tough enough taking his verbal abuse; there was no way he’d let Santorra get physical.
Now Eddie Vento reminded him of mob protocol. “You know there has to be a consequence, right? I can’t let a connected guy get banged around like that.”
John figured it was best he kept his mouth shut.
“You’re from Canarsie, right?” Vento asked.
“It’s where I grew up.”
“I’m surprised you were never scooped up by one of the crews there. Very mobbed-up, Canarsie is. I have a friend has a strong crew operates out of a bar on Flatlands Avenue, next to a funeral parlor there. I got a guy around me lives there, too. Tough Irish kid lives near the market on Foster Avenue. Name’s Tommy Burns. Know him?”
John shook his head. “No,” he said.
“Scrappy little mick,” Vento said. “And a tough cocksucker, push comes to shove. He’s stuck doing freelance cause he’s not Italian, but you, on the other hand, you are one of us.”