The kid, they call him Little Tommy, he doesn’t want to listen to anything I have to say. He gets a burr to take someone out, and he wants it done yesterday. I try to tell him that these things take time, that you need to be careful, but like I said, he doesn’t want to hear any of that. “Just get it done,” he says.
Before he died, his dad, Tommaso “Big Tommy” Fortunato, asked me to look after his only son. I promised I would. It’s been six years since the old man stroked out, and I’m an afterthought in the family these days. I don’t get invited to dinner. No one asks how I’m doing. I thought I’d be a mentor to Little Tommy, but that’s not how he wants it. When I think of it, the only reason he hasn’t already shoved me out the door is I know all the family secrets. I know where the bodies are buried — literally.
Every morning I walk down to the diner to get breakfast and read the newspaper. Sometimes in the afternoon I’ll go over to the nursing home and visit Jimmy Nicolosi, who used to run the gambling operation for Big Tommy. Nickels, we called him. We spend some time talking about the old days. I do a lot of the talking, because Nickels doesn’t even know who I am most of the time. I take my dinner at Cardone’s and spend my evenings in front of the television in an old third-floor walkup.
I was a loyal soldier. Now, after decades of undying loyalty to the family, Little Tommy treats me like a leper. He used to sit on my lap and call me Uncle Ange. Now he hardly ever calls to see how I am doing.
But he called tonight.
He said, “I need you to do something for me.”
The kid only calls when he needs something. I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t interested, but I remembered my promise to his old man. “Sure,” I said. “When?”
“Tonight.”
Of course, no time to prepare. “I’ll be right over,” I said.
I pulled a black suit out of the closet and took a brush to my shoes. Dress like you have some respect for yourself and your job — Carlo taught me that. I always took pride in my work, and I’ve done a lot of different jobs for the family, but my specialty is elimination. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve taken out in my five decades of service to the Fortunato family. In all candor, I’ve lost track. It’s not the kind of thing you log in a journal. I sometimes feel like an old man trying to recall his many sexual conquests. The faces start to blur after a while. I was there, I remember the hit, but did I do the deed or did Carlo? Who knows? But I know my body count is easily north of eighty. It’s all I have done my entire adult life. And I believe every son of a bitch I killed is rotting in hell. I may be headed there too, but I’ll worry about eternity later. In the meantime, it’s no secret that I am on the outside looking in, now that Little Tommy is head of the Fortunato family.
A month ago I stopped by the diner for a coffee and a doughnut. I was sitting at the counter when a guy smelling of Aqua Velva sat down next to me. He wore a nice suit, polished shoes, boring necktie. I didn’t know who he was, but I knew what he was the minute he sat down. There were fifteen empty seats at the counter, but he sat right next to me. As he was reading the newspaper, sipping his coffee, he whispered, “Hasn’t been the same around the ranch since the old man died, has it?”
I didn’t say nothin’. After a minute he slid a business card under my coffee saucer and said, “We’d like to talk to you.”
I put my fingertips on the card, pushed it back under his newspaper, and said, “Christ Almighty, are you trying to get me killed?”
He kept drinking his coffee. After a couple of minutes he dropped three dollars on the counter and pushed the card back under my saucer. “We’ll make it worth your while, Angelo,” he said, and left.
His name was Braddock, Special Agent Lawrence G. Braddock of the Pittsburgh field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I put the card in my jacket pocket. I didn’t call him, but a week later he called me at my apartment. I said, “My number’s unlisted. How’d you get it?”
He snorted. “You’re kidding, right? I’m with the FBI. I can get any number I want.”
On the outskirts of Aliquippa there is an abandoned brick factory where my father worked himself into an early grave. Behind it, nearly smothered by the encroaching brush, is a cobblestone wharf that extends into the Ohio River. That’s where I met him. We were at the water’s edge, tiny waves lapping in the shoals, the smell of oil and mud heavy in the air.
“In the old days,” I said, “when this factory was humming, they used to bring barge loads of clay to this wharf, and my dad and a few of the other grunts would start shoveling. They’d unload the whole damn barge by hand.”
“Honest work,” Braddock said.
“Fool’s work,” I said. “He’d come home so stoved up and tired he could barely walk. He couldn’t even go out in the yard and toss around the baseball. He died at fifty-seven, his body completely shot.”
“Is that why you got in with the Fortunatos, so you didn’t have to unload barges?”
“What do you think, Sherlock?”
He looked out over the river, picked up a flat stone, and skipped it across the dark water. “We want to make you an offer, Angelo.”
I said nothing.
“In exchange for your help in our investigation of Little Tommy Fortunato, we’re prepared to give you complete immunity and put you in the witness protection program.”
“Are you miked up?” I asked.
This time Braddock said nothing. Of course he was.
“Why would I want immunity?” I asked. “You’re implying that I’ve done something wrong. I’ve never been arrested, not once.”
“They’re making a lot of advances in DNA research. Sooner or later someone is going to make a link to you and one of the corpses that you and Carlo left all over the tri-state. All it takes is a little blood, maybe some saliva or a hair follicle. You didn’t cap all those guys without leaving some kind of evidence behind.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Besides, you’d have to have my DNA to compare it to.”
Braddock smirked. “We’re the FBI, Angelo, remember? Do you seriously think we don’t have your DNA?”
I gotta admit, that made my ass pucker.
“We want to take down Little Tommy,” Braddock said. “He’s a bad guy, Angelo, a real bad guy. In the old days, when Big Tommy was in charge, you guys were just running the illegal gambling and the whorehouses. No one cared. But Little Tommy’s bringing heroin, meth, and cocaine into the area in truckloads. We can’t have that. We want him off the street, and you’re the key. We know you’re on your way out of the organization. It’s a win-win.”
“You get Little Tommy, but what do I get?”
“Along with revenge on the guy that ran you out?”
I nodded.
“You get a new identity, a nice little place in the sun. I heard your lungs aren’t so good. The dry air in Arizona or New Mexico would be good for you. And we’ll get you a very generous stipend. You’ll be able to buy yourself a new Buick.”
I turned and started up the wharf. “I’ll think about it,” I said. When Big Tommy was around, I would never have considered such disloyalty.