“Yeah.”
“You know who I work for?”
I nod.
“So how come you’re so fucking stupid that you’re going to beat up and rob a childhood friend of Mr Lombard’s?”
I don’t bother saying anything. I had no idea about it. I just thought Arlosi was some fat fuck in the neighborhood who shot his mouth off too much. DiGrassi moves his face an inch or too closer and roars at me that he wants to know who the other two fucks were who were with me. I stare back at him, still with the quarter-inch grin on my lips. I’m not going to tell him shit.
He backs away and his two thugs go to work. Every time they knock me down, I get back up on my feet. I don’t show them shit. Nothing in my eyes, nothing in my expression. If this is the way it’s going to end, so be it. Fuck them is all I can think.
A loud booming noise echoes in the basement. DiGrassi has pulled out a bigass gun and has blown a hole in the wall. His two thugs back away from me, and he fires three more shots into the same wall, then comes forward pressing the red-hot gun muzzle against my cheek, burning me. “I’ve had it with your bullshit,” he yells, more spit flying into my face. “You give me those names now or I blow a fucking hole through your skull!”
I say nothing. I meet his stare, my own eyes dead. A snarl comes over his thick lips and he pulls the trigger.
Click.
The gun must’ve only had four bullets, and DiGrassi used them when he shot into the wall. He’s grinning at me now, his two wiseguys laughing softly.
“The fucking balls on this,” he tells his two wiseguys. “Not even a flinch.” He looks me over, his grin growing wider. “Didn’t piss his pants, and it don’t smell like he crapped them either.”
“A tough one,” one of the wiseguys says.
DiGrassi nods, then tells me that my two buddies gave me up. “Each of them, less than five minutes, I swear to God. Don’t worry, though, both those fuckers got worse beatings than you got.”
So I realize what this is all about. An initiation, to see what I’m made of. And I passed. Still, I ask him what the fuck he wants with me, my voice not quite right given how swollen my mouth and jaw is, and how pissed I am at Steve and Joey. DiGrassi puts a meaty arm around my shoulder, looks at me with something close to respect.
“Kid, you did good,” he says. “You showed real stones, and just as important, you ain’t a rat. We can use someone like you. I want you to call me in a week after you’ve gotten a chance to clean up and get those bumps and bruises healed up, and we’ll see if we can work something out.”
He digs into his pocket and gives me a piece of paper with a phone number on it. I nod, put the paper away. He’s appraising me, frowning slightly.
“March, what type of name is that?” he asks.
“My pop’s family name was Marcusi. He changed it to March.”
“Why the fuck’d he do that?”
I don’t know the answer so I don’t bother saying anything. DiGrassi’s giving me a harder look, his frown growing deeper.
“You ain’t full-blooded Italian, are you?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No, my mom’s family came over from Germany.”
“She at least Catholic?”
I again shake my head.
“Ah, fuck it,” he says. “I wish you were full-blooded, but we can still use someone like you. Give me a call.”
I tell him I will.
chapter 4
present
I took the commuter rail to South Station, and from there was going to have to catch a bus to Waltham. Nobody paid attention to me during the train ride, everyone locked into their own worlds. At least I could be thankful for that.
Once I got off at South Station I had an hour and a half to kill before my bus would be leaving, and I ended up walking down South Street to Beach Street, then on to Chinatown, figuring nobody would notice me there. First thing I did was buy some aspirin at a convenience store, hoping it would help with my headache. Next I found a hole-in-the-wall restaurant where for three dollars and fifty cents I had a plate of fried rice with pork and a pot of hot tea. Simply having ice in my water glass was a luxury that I’d forgotten about. I ate hunched over with my head bowed. There were only a handful of other people in the place. Anyone whose gaze wandered over to me would have only seen me as an old man wearing poorly fitting baggy clothes sitting alone at a cheap Chinatown restaurant.
When I was done eating, I took my fork with me to the men’s room, stood in its lone stall and made several additional holes in my belt so I could use it to hold my pants up better. After that I paid my bill, left the restaurant, and made my way through Chinatown to Washington Street. I was surprised at how cleaned up the area had gotten with the X-rated theatres and most of the porn shops gone. There were still a couple of strip clubs, but they looked high end, and I watched as a small group of businessmen in suits walked into one of them. I continued on until I came to a jewelry store that advertised Guaranteed Highest Prices Paid in their window. The only person inside was a slug of a man who looked almost melted to the stool he sat perched on. He was in his fifties, not much hair, and had more bulges and chins than I’d seen on anyone in years. As I approached him he looked at me with mild disinterest. I handed him my Rolex watch and wedding ring, and he made a show of examining the Rolex with a jeweler’s glass, then consulted a catalog even though he probably had the prices memorized.
“This genuine?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
“Yeah,” I said. “It was given to me as a gift in 1980.”
His earlier look of disinterest came back. “These Oyster quartz models, not a big demand. I might be able to give you three hundred…” He stopped as he caught the inscription on the back, Deepest gratitude, Salvatore Lombard. His eyes shot up at me and, as recognition hit him, the little color he had bled out, leaving his skin a sickly gray. “Eight hundred dollars,” he coughed out, his voice breaking into a hoarse whisper with his mouth not quite working right, almost as if he had palsy. I asked him how much for my wedding ring. He weighed the ring on a scale and told me he could give me two hundred dollars for it.
More as a joke than anything else I asked if he could guarantee that that would be the highest price paid, and he seized up for a moment, making me think he was about to have a heart attack, before nodding fervently. I told him in that case to pay me the thousand bucks.
While he counted out the money for me, his stare remained frozen at his hands as if he were afraid of accidentally looking up and catching sight of me.
“You’re the guy,” he said.
I ignored him. So far he had counted out four hundred dollars in fifty-dollar bills, painstakingly making sure none of the bills were stuck together. When he reached seven hundred dollars he asked again about me being the guy, the one they’ve been talking about in the news who used to be a hit man.
“Just pay me what you owe me.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, his tone hurt. “No reason to take that attitude.” He hesitated for a few seconds, added, “But I know you’re the guy.”
“What the fuck difference does it make to you?”
He seemed stuck trying to come up with an answer to that. Once he had the stack of fifties laid out on the countertop in front of me, I picked it up, counted it myself and fattened up my wallet with it. A thousand bucks wasn’t going to last long, but then again, I didn’t expect to last long myself either. I was halfway out the shop when the jeweler finally thought of something to say and asked me how it felt. I gave him a puzzled look and he added, “You know what I’m asking. After killing all those people, and then cutting a deal by ratting Salvatore Lombard. So how does it feel? You have any remorse?”
Several of his chins had jutted out in a kind of forced bravado, but I could see the tentativeness in his liquid eyes. I wasn’t even sure which he was asking me; whether I had remorse over being a rat or my murders. In any case, I didn’t bother answering him. I walked out the store and let the wind slam the glass door shut.