John didn’t like where this was heading.
“Something you should think about before you go tagging one of our own like you did upstairs tonight,” Vento said. “But, truth be told, the way you took that cop Hastings out, that was a beautiful thing we’re still enjoying around here.”
John was never more uncomfortable. He did his best not to show it.
“You didn’t know he was a cop, did you? The night you decked him, I mean.”
“Not until he showed his badge,” John said.
“I love it,” Vento said.
“And I had no idea the woman was his wife,” John said. “That was an honest mistake.”
It had been. His car had overheated and John had gone in the bar to make a telephone call. The woman had smiled at him, he had smiled back and then she waved him over when he was finished with his call. He sat at the stool alongside her, a young-looking thirty-year-old with long red hair, green eyes and pale skin. He bought her a drink and was in the process of getting her telephone number when some guy started yelling from across the room. The guy was flashing a badge and was claiming she was his wife. The woman hadn’t worn a wedding ring, nor had she mentioned she was there with her husband.
Then when John had tried to walk away, there was no way to avoid what had happened next. The guy had shoved him two or three times before taking a wild swing. John had ducked the punch and hit the guy in self-defense.
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me about that,” Vento said. “She’s not wiseguy pussy, she’s free trade. Was his problem, not yours.”
John cringed at the way Vento described the cop’s wife.
“Was that knockout made me offer you the job,” Vento added. “It was also a way to protect you, putting you on my payroll. And it’s a good thing you’re under my umbrella now, pal. That cop is a last of the Mohican hard-ons. He wanted a piece of you, my friend. We showed a few friendlies the tape we had, I should show it the six o’clock news, it was so good. They’re the ones helped back Hastings down. His buddies convinced him it wasn’t worth his pension doing something stupid like shooting you in the back of the head, but the real reason they backed him down was because we had that tape. Clear as day what he did before you dropped him. Waving the badge around, the shoves he gave you. The swing he took before you nailed him. Was a beautiful stroke of luck on our part we’d just installed the camera because he was shaking down a couple a my bartenders every time he needed money for the junk he was shoving up his nose. Imagine? We gotta install our own crime prevention equipment to avoid the leeches on the police force.”
John was glad he hadn’t known the details behind what had happened that night. He figured he’d been lucky to get out of there without being arrested.
Vento explained how a detective on his payroll had been helpful in cutting the deal whereby the wiseguy refrained from using the tape and Hastings was transferred to another precinct with the understanding he steer clear of the Williamsburg bar and anybody associated with it.
“Like I said,” Vento continued, “that was a beautiful thing, what you did to that cop. It’s legend in here now.”
“I tried to avoid it,” John said.
“But he wouldn’t let you,” Vento said. “What happened upstairs, I understand.”
John was suddenly hopeful of escaping grief for knocking out Nick Santorra.
“I see you around, but only in passing,” Vento said. “How come you don’t hang around the bar?”
“It’s not for me,” John said. “I have child-support payments and a job driving for a local car service. Things are too tight for me to hang around bars.”
“Fair enough,” Vento said. “And don’t take offense my asking what the fuck you’re doing driving car service? You’re around here, you can do better than that.”
John explained how a fistfight with a union shop steward more than a year ago had cost him his job and how he’d just picked up a private job today and that was why he was so late coming to the bar.
Vento sighed when John finished talking. “You have to excuse the mope you hit,” the wiseguy said. “He’s got a fire under his ass since he’s driving for me. He’s my wife’s first cousin, a real moron, but he’s my responsibility now and I can’t let guys take a swing at him like you did tonight, not without they pay a penalty. Looks bad to the other guys, I do that.”
John understood it was a possible way out, but that it would probably cost him money he couldn’t afford to give away.
“I can see you’re a hard working guy and you’re obviously good with your hands,” Vento continued. “I can always use guys are good with their hands. You don’t have to drive cars you don’t like it.”
“It’s not that I enjoy it,” John said.
Vento didn’t hear him. He said, “Of course there is a downside to swinging at somebody every time they piss you off.”
“I can apologize to Nick you want.”
“Huh?” Vento said. He looked confused a moment, then waved off the offer. “That’d only make things worse. He’ll be embarrassed you apologize. It’ll be better you put something in his pocket. Through me, though. Give me, say, I don’t know, fifty bucks? I’ll see he gets it and that’ll be that.”
John felt his stomach churning. He’d just worked half a day putting up sheetrock so he could put fifty bucks in Nick Santorra’s pocket. It was worse than catching a beating, he thought.
“We got you working with the fuck film, right?” Vento said.
“Yeah,” John said. “But I’m not sure how much longer. This construction thing, I might have to work weekends there.”
Vento didn’t hear him again. “We might have another one soon,” he said. He grabbed a folder off his desk and opened it. He pulled two stills of a thin naked woman being escorted by six people in robes. “This thing started on the West Coast is a big hit now. Behind the Green Door. The broad they use is a hot item. Ivory Snow girl or some shit, what they claim. She’s better-looking than the one did the movie we’re hustling now, except she gets boned by some jungle bunny. Anyway, we’ll be looking to move it here on the East Coast soon enough.”
John barely glanced at the pictures before setting them back down.
“How many stops you making now?” Vento asked.
“Seven.”
“You can handle more?”
“I guess.”
“How about double? The extra stops, you can get to them before you’re regular route. Be finished before noon.”
“Mr. Vento, I was thinking—”
“And you’d double your end. Plus expenses—tank of gas and a meal. Least another twenty.”
John imagined the hundred twenty dollars and kept his mouth shut.
Vento said, “It works out, I can get you a union job. We got people there, I’m sure you know that. A friend of ours runs construction in Manhattan. If not there, we can put you in the fish market or over the docks in Brooklyn. Things work out here, I can see to it you’re working steady again. Do the right thing by me, it’ll be a no-show. Then you can really earn.”
“That’s very generous,” John said. “Can I think on it?”
“Absolutely,” Vento said. “So long’s you show respect and don’t think on it too long. I don’t like making an offer to somebody, they disrespect it by ignoring me.”
“I’ll let you know,” John said.
“It’s only right.”
“I understand.”
“Good then,” Vento said. He stood up behind his desk and shook John’s hand. Then he reached down and grabbed a poster of some kind and held it open for John. “Nick tell you what you were coming here to pick up today?”
John’s eyes narrowed when he saw it was a poster of a woman in a nurse outfit. He squinted trying to see the signature in the bottom right-hand corner.