“Don’t think too long, Angelo. My bosses are impatient men. You’re not the only guy we’re trying to flip, and the first guy to the door gets the deal. In the meantime, we’re still working on that DNA. There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”
It’s a thirty-minute drive from my apartment to the Fortunato compound on the far east side. The property is encased by a black iron fence with a fleur-de-lis at the top of each post. Red brick pillars stand sentry at the entrance to the driveway. A matching brick drive snakes around to the rear of the house.
When I pulled up in my Buick LeSabre, Big Tommy’s widow was in the garden.
“Hi, Rosebella,” I said. “Picking yourself some daisies, I see.”
She stared blankly for a moment, struggling to caption the image in her mind’s eye. It didn’t come. “Yes, picking daisies,” she finally said. “I like daisies. Have you seen my Tommaso?”
Tommaso, of course, had been dead six years.
“I haven’t seen him lately, Rosebella.”
“I’m starting to worry. I can’t imagine where he’s gone.”
“If I see him, I’ll send him right over.”
She smiled. “I’d like that very much.”
She had the Alzheimer’s something terrible. For forty years I ate nearly every Sunday dinner at her home. Her husband and I were like brothers. Now I am nothing but a nameless character passing through the last chapter of her life — another sign that my best days with the family are behind me.
There were three guys, young like Little Tommy, sitting on the veranda. They were talking in hushed tones, most likely about me. They sniggered, and I overheard one of them say, “The fossil has arrived.” They were wearing Hawaiian shirts, hideous floral things that hid the snub-nosed .38s they had tucked in the waistbands of blue jeans, and penny loafers without socks. The blue jeans, by the way, had holes in them when they were bought. Explain that one to me, please. They looked like they were on vacation in Key West instead of working at the Fortunato compound. No respect.
Before I could get to the shade of the overhang, the tubby one, the one called Gummy, got up and walked inside. Gaetano and the Tipplehorn kid, the harelip who heads up the drug operation, continued to sit; they acknowledged my presence with the slightest of nods. Tipplehorn had a glassy look in his eyes. He was high on something. That’s one more thing that would never have flown when Big Tommy was in charge.
The drug game is a cancer on our society. That probably sounds odd coming from a guy who helped run Big Tommy’s whorehouses and who puts tunnels the size of shooting marbles through people’s brains, but that’s the way I feel. The gambling and prostitution game was just supply-and-demand economics. The mill rats all demanded a place to squander their paychecks or step out on the old lady. The drugs, they turn people’s brains to mush. But whether I like it or not isn’t important. It’s now the family business, and Little Tommy makes more money in six months than the old man made in five years. None of that is my concern. Little Tommy gives me a job and I do it. End of story.
Little Tommy walked out the back door and made a slight move of the head, indicating that he wanted me to follow him away from the crowd. We walked past his mother, who showed not the first sign that she recognized her only son, and stopped at the edge of the paver bricks. “You’re taking Gaetano with you tonight,” he said.
I could feel the heat building under the collar of my dress shirt. I hated that little punk. His name wasn’t even Gaetano. It was Harold or Harvey, or something like that. He began calling himself Gaetano to make himself sound more Italian. Give me a break. He was one of Little Tommy’s favorites and the one designated to someday take my place. That hadn’t been said, but I know what I know. He had gone with me on the last three jobs. The first two I made him wait in the car. The last one he got to watch. If it bothered him seeing a gangbanger named Lucius get his brains scrambled, he didn’t show it.
I took a few calming breaths; Little Tommy knew having a shadow didn’t sit well with me. I’d been a solo act ever since Carlo bought it. “You know I prefer to work alone,” I said.
“It’s not an option,” Little Tommy said. “Look, I don’t want this to come out the wrong way, but you’re not going to live forever, Uncle Ange. I need to have someone waiting in the wings who knows the ropes. You’re the best in the business, the absolute best, and I want him to learn from you. Besides, what’s this ‘I prefer to work alone’ stuff ? You worked with Carlo for years.”
“That was different. We were a team. I trusted Carlo. This one, Gaetano, he’s not ready for this. He’s careless.”
“I want him on this one.”
“I see what’s happening here, Tommy. You have me train the kid and when he’s ready I’m never going to get another phone call.”
“Uncle Ange, please, that’s not so.” He raised his right hand alongside his face. “My right hand to God, as long as you’re around, you’re my guy, my number one. I swear.”
There was no sense in arguing. “Who’s the mark?” I asked.
“Gaetano has all the information.” He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed once. “I want him getting involved. I need to know if he’s got the stomach for this.”
I nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”
The mark, I assumed, was another gangbanger. I had dropped four of them in the past two years for encroaching on the family’s traditional turf. For the most part the other crime families respect boundaries. That’s not the case with the gangbangers. Respect is just another word they can’t spell. They come into town with their loud music and gold jewelry and think they’re going to take over. There’s no talking to them. The only thing they understand is a bullet to the head.
Gaetano knew he would be going with me and was already cutting across the lot. “Hey, Pops, ready to rock?”
His disrespect scalded me to my marrow. If he had called me Pops in front of Big Tommy Fortunato, he would have eaten half his teeth. But those days are just a speck in the rearview of my dying LeSabre.
“I’ll drive,” he said. “I’m afraid that bucket of bolts of yours will never make it.”
I grabbed the handle on his garish yellow car. As I opened the door, I watched Little Tommy help his mother in from the garden. It was a tender moment that I didn’t think the boy was capable of. Uncle Ange, I thought. He called me Uncle Ange for the first time in years. I watched until they disappeared under the shade of the veranda.
“Pops, you coming?”
I slid into the passenger seat. “What kind of car is this, other than a mark for every cop between here and Altoona?” I asked.
He laughed. “You’re funny, Pops. It’s a Camaro. Sweet ride, huh? They call it the Bumblebee.”
“Yeah, sweet.”
He squealed the tires as he pulled onto the main road. I glared at him and he eased off the gas.
“You have to be discreet in this business,” I said. “We’re not like the gangbangers. They roll into town with those Jap cars all jacked up with the big wheels and the music blaring. They want everyone to see them. That’s not the way we operate. We work in the shadows. We get in, we get the job done, and we get out. If we do it right, nobody even knows we were there. Sometimes the poor son of a bitch we are going to see doesn’t even know. Get yourself a boring car, brown, gray, something that mixes in with every other car on the street. That way, if the cops ask somebody what they saw, they don’t remember the car. You drive this thing, they say, ‘Yeah, I remember a car, it looked like a big damn bumblebee.’” This made Gaetano smile. “I’m serious, boy.”
I leaned my seat back and inspected the dashboard. It looked like it belonged on a fighter jet. “Do you know where we’re going?” I asked.