“Huh?” John said. He gave up on the matches and headed back toward the stoop. “Give me a light.”
Elias handed him his lit cigarette. John lit his cigarette and returned the one he borrowed.
“You work late, eh?” the old man said.
John knew Elias was fishing. “Something like that.”
“Something like what?” he said. “You work late or you don’t.”
“I had an interview, sort of.”
“Sort of. What is sort of?”
The old man wasn’t going to let go. John said, “I had an interview to take on more weekend work. That okay with you?”
“For Mafia?”
“Distributing the film.”
“Working for Mafia.”
“I do it for the money,” said John, frustrated for having to go through it again. “I need the work, Alex. I know you don’t like to hear that, but I don’t have a choice right now.”
“Bullshit. Man is free, always has choice. You do this because you are young and stupid, not because of money. Money you can get somewhere else.”
John took a long drag on his cigarette.
“And don’t call me Alex, I told you.” The old man tapped his chest. “I am Zorba.”
“You’re senile is what I’m starting to think.”
Elias waved John off.
“Anyway, I’m not in the mood for an argument now,” John said. “I’m tired and I need to get some sleep.”
“Stay with Mafia friends and they put you to sleep.”
“Right,” John said. “Good night.” He took a step to his right onto the stoop.
Elias grabbed his foot. “Don’t run away from me, idiot. Stay two minutes. Listen.”
John stepped back down off the stoop.
“Two things,” Elias said.
“What?”
“First, you can get money somewhere else.”
“Driving car service? No thanks. I hate it.”
“What they are doing for you, these Mafioso? What, they are making you rich? You want to be one of them now?”
There was no avoiding the old man’s directness. John leaned against the railing on the stoop.
“So?” the old man said.
“They’re giving me extra work,” John said. “Doubling my route. They can get me back in the union. I can do that, I wouldn’t have to do this other shit.”
“Really? They do all this favors for you because why, you’re handsome man? You have big one?”
“I get back in the union, I’m not gonna need the weekend work. That’s all I’m saying.”
The old man pointed a finger. “They give you something, it’s not for nothing. What’s the matter with you?”
John was thinking back to his conversation with Eddie Vento and the way the man had laid it out. Between the extra stops he was getting and the union pull Vento had dangled like a carrot on a stick, he was seeing some light at the end of what had been a long and dark financial tunnel. Although he’d be expected to hang around the bar and get more involved, if the wiseguy could get him reinstated in the carpenters’ union, John would have a lot more of his life back, not to mention the extra money he’d have for a change.
On the other hand, the old man was right, Vento was a wiseguy and John knew better than to get involved with “those people,” what his father used to call them.
“What was the other thing?” he asked Elias.
“Your mother has brother was killed by Mafia, no? He wants to be like them and they kill him. You told me this already, why your mother is upset now, what you’re doing.”
It was something he’d wished he hadn’t shared with the old man. John’s uncle, his mother’s only brother, was involved with a local mob crew when he quit high school. After putting his family through some tough times with a series of arrests, Paolo Zampino disappeared two weeks before the start of a trial for armed robbery. Six months later his body was found in the trunk of a car. Elias had brought the story up more than a few times since John took the weekend job.
“Yeah,” John said. “It’s true.”
“And your mother, her family, they were crushed by this, no? The loss of a son and a brother to those animals.”
John looked straight ahead.
Elias wagged a finger. “The people you are working for are no fucking good. They use you and when they don’t need you, they throw you away like garbage. Get away from them and stay away. I tell you for your own good.”
John knew the old man was right, except his immediate economic situation precluded him from taking the advice.
“I’ll quit as soon as I can,” he said. “I promise.”
“You don’t hear what I say.”
“I did,” said John as he stood up. “I just can’t do it now. Not yet.”
He left the old man and headed inside. He was halfway up the first flight of stairs when the building went dark.
“God damn it,” he said. He put his hands out to protect himself, gave it a few seconds, then gave up and carefully walked back down the stairs and outside onto the stoop.
“No lights?” Elias said.
“Yeah. I can’t sleep like this again.”
“Go sleep in car.”
“Huh?”
“You don’t have girlfriend, go sleep in car.”
“I’m not sleeping in my car.”
“Then go to Momma. You can take me. I can cook breakfast in the morning.”
John stepped off the stoop and was headed for the curb. He turned to point a finger at Elias. “Not funny,” he said.
The old man stood up. “What? What’s wrong with that?”
John ignored him and continued back-stepping across the street. The sound of screeching tires broke the silence. He turned in time to see a red sports car racing across the near corner. John was forced to leap out of the way as the car veered toward him before pulling away at the last moment.
He dove to the ground and rolled against his car. When he got up the sports car was turning off Rockaway Parkway at the far end of the block. He thought of giving chase but knew it was pointless. The Buick would need half a minute to warm up and was no match for a sports car.
Elias was off the stoop and standing near the curb. “Who was that?” he said.
“Some asshole,” John said. “Probably some kid playing with his father’s car.”
“Don’t go looking for him, eh?” Elias said. “Go to Momma’s and get some sleep instead.”
John started the Buick’s engine. He gave it a few seconds to warm up before stepping on the brake, then slipping the transmission into gear.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he told Elias, then pulled away.
He drove half a block at normal speed before he fed the engine gas and sped to the corner to make the right turn in pursuit of the car that had nearly run him over.
Chapter 9
“Need a hanky?” Detective Sean Kelly asked Eddie Vento’s girlfriend.
Bridget Malone had just snorted one too many lines of cocaine and was bleeding from her nose. She hadn’t seen Kelly until after she’d wiped her face with the back of her right hand and spotted her arm with blood.
“Shit,” she said. “God damn it.”
“Here,” Kelly said. He handed her his handkerchief. “Use this.” She continued wiping her nose with her hand and smeared some across her face. “Hold on a second,” he told her, then guided her head back while he applied the handkerchief to her nose. “Hold it like this. Pinch it a little and tilt your head back. Sit down a second, it’ll stop.”
He led her to the fender of a car parked at the curb. “Sit,” he said.
Bridget spoke through the napkin. “I don’t know how this happened,” she said. “It just started bleeding.”
Kelly knew she was full of shit. He’d been following her since she left the apartment above her boyfriend’s bar. First she’d taken a bus to Prospect Park and made a drug connection. Then she’d gone to a bar on Seventh Avenue and sat drinking with a few people closer to her own age. She’d done at least one line in the ladies’ room because Kelly had been having a beer at the bar and could see her eyes when she came out.