“Awright,” Joey said, shaking his head with frustration, “but I’m comin’ in to back you up. Just in case.”
“Sure, Joey. You can carry the laundry.”
Aldo laughed, and Joey laughed with him.
*
Jack had arrived at Tram’s with a couple of dirty shirts at about 3:30. Dressed in jeans, an Army fatigue jacket, and a baseball cap pulled low on his forehead, he now sat in one of the three chairs and read the Post while Tram ran the shirts through the machine. It was a tiny hole in the wall shop that probably cost the little man most of his good leg in rent. A one man operation except for some after school counter help which Tram always sent on an errand when a pick up or delivery was due.
Jack watched the customers, a motley group of mostly lower middle class downtowners, flow in and out. Aldo D’Amico and his bodyguard were instantly identifiable by their expensive top coats when they arrived at 4:00 on the button. Aldo’s was dark gray with a black felt collar, a style Jack hadn’t seen since the Beatles’ heyday. He was mid forties with a winter tan and wavy blow dried hair receding on both sides. Jack knew he had to be Aldo because the other guy was a side of beef and was carrying a wad of dirty laundry.
Jack noticed the second guy giving him a close inspection. He might as well have had BODYGUARD stenciled on his back. Jack glanced up, gave the two of them a disinterested up and down, then went back to the sports page.
“Got something for me, gook?” Aldo said, grinning like a shark as he slapped the knuckles of his right fist into his left palm.
Jack sighed. He knew the type. Most tough guys he knew wouldn’t hesitate to hurt somebody, even ice them if necessary, but to them it was like driving a car through downtown traffic in the rain: You didn’t particularly like it but you did it because you had to get someplace; and if you had the means, you preferred to have somebody else do it for you.
Not this Aldo. Jack could tell that mixing it up was some kind of fix for him.
Maybe that could be turned around. Jack didn’t have a real plan here. His car was parked outside. He intended to pick up Aldo and follow him around, follow him home if he could. He’d do that for a couple of days. Eventually, he’d get an idea of how to stick him. Then he’d have to find a way to work that idea to Tram’s benefit. This was going to be long, drawn out, and touchy.
At the counter, Tram sullenly placed a brown paper wrapped bundle on the counter. The bodyguard picked it up and plopped the dirty laundry down in its place. Tram ignored it.
“Please, Mr. Aldo,” he said. “Will not do this any more.”
“Boy, you’re one stupid gook, y’know that?” He turned to his bodyguard. “Joey, take the customer for a walk while I discuss business with our Vietnamese friend here.”
Jack felt a tap on his shoulder and looked up from his paper into Joey’s surprisingly mild eyes.
“C’mon. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”
“I got shirts coming,” Jack said.
“They’ll wait. My friend wants a little private talk with the owner.”
Jack wasn’t sure how to play this. He wasn’t prepared for any rough and tumble here, but he didn’t want to leave Tram to Aldo’s tender mercies again.
“Then let him talk in the back. I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
Joey grabbed him under the arm and pulled him out of the chair. “Yeah. You are.”
Jack came out of the chair quickly and knocked Joe’s arm away.
“Hands off, man!”
He decided that the only way to get out of this scene on his terms was to pull a psycho number. He looked at Joey’s beefy frame and heavy overcoat and knew attacking his body would be a waste of time. That left his face.
“Just stay away!” Jack shouted. “I don’t like people touching me. Makes me mad! Real mad!”
Joey dropped the brown paper bundle onto a chair. “All right. Enough of this shit.” He stepped in close, gripped Jack’s shoulders, and tried to turn him around.
Jack reached up between Joey’s arms, grabbed his ears, and yanked the bodyguard’s head forward. As he lowered his head and butted, he had a fleeting glimpse of the sick look on Joey’s startled face. He hadn’t been expecting anything like this, but he knew what was coming.
When Jack heard Joey’s nose crunch against the top of his skull, he pushed him away and kicked him hard in the balls. Joey dropped to his knees and groaned. His bloody face was slack with pain and nausea.
Jack next leapt on Aldo who was gaping at him with a stunned expression.
“You want some of me, too?” he shouted.
Aldo’s overcoat was unbuttoned and he was leaner than Joe. Jack went for the breadbasket: right left combination jabs to the solar plexus, then a knee to the face when he doubled over. Aldo went down in a heap.
But it wasn’t over. Joey was reaching a hand into his overcoat pocket. Jack jumped on him and wrestled a short barreled Cobra .357 revolver away from him.
“A gun? You pulled a fucking gun on me, man?” He slammed the barrel and trigger guard across the side of Joey’s head. “Shit that makes me mad!”
Then he spun and pointed the pistol at the tip of Aldo’s swelling nose.
“You!” he screamed. “You started this! You didn’t want me to get my shirts! Well, you can have them! They’re old anyway! I’ll take yours! All of them!”
He grabbed the bundle of dirty shirts from the counter and then went for the brown paper package on the chair.
“Jesus, no!” Aldo said. “No! You don’t know what–”
Jack leapt on him and began pistol whipping him, screaming, “Don’t tell me what I don’t know!”
As Aldo covered his head with his arms, Jack glanced at Tram motioned him over. Tram got the idea. He came out from behind the counter and shoved Jack away, but not before Jack had managed to open Aldo’s scalp in a couple of places.
“You get out!” Tram cried. “Get out or I call police!”
“Yeah, I’ll get out, but not before I put a couple of holes in this rich pig here!”
Tram stood between him and Aldo. “No! You go! You cause enough trouble!”
Jack made a disgusted noise and ran out with both bundles. Outside he found an empty Mercedes 350 SEL idling at the curb by a fire hydrant. Why not?
As he gunned the heavy car toward Canal Street, he wondered at his screaming psycho performance. Pretty convincing. And easy, too. He’d hardly stretched at all to take the part and really get into in.
That bothered him a little.
*
“Fifty thousand in small bills,” Abe said after he’d finished counting the money that had been wrapped inside the dirty laundry. He had it spread out in neat piles on a crate in the basement of his store. “If I were you, I shouldn’t complain. Not so bad for an afternoon’s work.”
“Yeah. But it’s the ten keys of cocaine and the thirty of Cambodian brown.” The wrapped package had housed some of the heroin. The cocaine and the rest of the heroin had been in a duffel bag in the trunk. “What am I going to do with that?”
“There’s a storm drain outside. Next time it rains...”
Jack thought about that. The heroin would definitely go down the drain. Any alligators or crocs living down in the sewers would be stoned for life. But the cocaine...that might come in handy in the future, just like the bogus twenties had come in handy against Cirlot.
Cirlot. Something about him was perking in the back of Jack’s mind.
“I’ve always wanted a Mercedes,” Abe said.
“What for? You haven’t been further east than Queens and further west than Columbus Avenue in a quarter century.”