The Exterminator

by Peter McCurtin

  Dalton said no. “I’d hate to be you, Eastland. Your friend may be paralyzed but you aren’t even alive.”

  “Thanks for the tip,” Eastland said.

  At the door Dalton said, “I may be back with more questions. If you think of anything, call me day or night.” Dalton wrote the station number and his home number on a page from his notebook and handed it to Eastland.

  Eastland put it in his pajamas pocket without looking at it. “Try not to come when I’m sleeping,” he said.

  Eastland slept for nearly four hours. Then he took a cold shower and drank four cups of black coffee, thinking about Gino Pontivini all the time. There was no way to be sure about the cop, so he didn’t think about it. Pontivini came first because Michael and his family needed money.

  He tried to think about Pontivini in an impersonal way, yet in spite of himself he felt a strange excitement. What he was planning was a lot more dangerous than robbing a bank. For some reason banks hired old retired guys with flat feet who could hardly get their guns out of their holsters. Pontivini’s guards were the best and therefore the worst; and if he hadn’t actually seen the elderly hoodlum’s bodyguards, he had seen killers just like them.

  Of course he would have to kill Pontivini after he got the money. Pontivini was no Shecky Brill; he wouldn’t take the loss lying down. He would kill Pontivini because it was necessary. No, that wasn’t right: he’d be glad to kill the old man. Pontivini was murderous trash and it was time to get rid of him. Long past time. Because, in the end, there was no difference between Pontivini and the Ghouls. Who was to say what Smiley would have become if he had lived. So it made no difference, there was no difference.

  After he left the apartment he looked around to see if he was being followed. There was no one around who looked like a cop—but what did a cop look like these days? Some looked like Dalton and some looked like junkies. Usually you could spot an undercover cop by the way he overacted. They all thought they were Serpico.

  At the end of the block the wasteland started and ran away into the distance. After he crossed an area as big as three football fields he looked back. Still no one.

  That afternoon he began his surveillance of Gino Pontivini. By the end of the week he was ready to make his move.

  And still Dalton hadn’t returned.

  CHAPTER 8

  Gino Pontivini sat in the glassed-in terrace eating a late breakfast and reading the Sunday comics. He wore a silk bathrobe and slippers as soft as glove leather. Across the table from him sat a beautiful blond girl with a stupid face. Twenty years before she had been born in a mining town in central Pennsylvania and went by her real name, Judy Brinks, for most of her life. For two years, ever since coming to New York on the Greyhound, she had been Tracy Emerson, and it had come to the point where she even answered to it when called.

  Tracy knew better than to interrupt Ponti while he was reading the comics and the stock market reports. The comics came after the news from Wall Street. Tracy didn’t know that she was on her way out. At the moment she felt secure, or as secure as anyone could ever be with Ponti, and life was good, if somewhat boring. There were times when Ponti treated her all right, and there were times when he treated her like a dog. Ponti still fancied himself as a cocksman; they both knew he could hardly get it up anymore.

  The old man muttered angrily as he leafed through the comic section. Finally, he slammed the Daily News on the table. “Fifty cents for this shit,” he growled.

  “Don’t aggravate yourself, Ponti,” the blonde said. “I mean, why do you read them if they get on your nerves?”

  “You’re the one gets on my fucking nerves,” Pontivini said. “All the time you get on my fucking nerves.”

  “I’m sorry if I annoy you, Ponti. You know how much I love you.”

  “Jesus Christ! Will you shut the fucking up.”

  “Here comes your lawyer, Ponti.”

  The old hoodlum turned. “Asshole! You think I don’t know my own lawyer.”

  The lawyer was fairly young, short haired, conservatively dressed. He came from a good Philadelphia family that had some connection with one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence—and now he was a mouthpiece for one of the worst hoodlums in the country.

  The blonde smiled at him, but he was looking at his boss. “I just spoke to Washington …”

  Pontivini stopped him with a wave of his hand. Then he looked at the blonde who called herself Tracy. “Honey, why don’t you finish your breakfast by the pool. I’ll join you in a minute.”

  “Sure, Ponti,” Tracy said, once again deciding that the lawyer was cute. She knew the lawyer wanted to get into her pants but didn’t have the nerve.

  The hoodlum and the lawyer remained silent until she went out. “What’s the matter with you?” Pontivini rapsed. “I told you never talk about business when there’s strangers around, A guy like you could get another guy in trouble. Get me in trouble, sonny boy, and you’ll be sorry for it. Now what’s so important you have to fuck up my Sunday breakfast?”

  The lawyer stood his ground. “I talked to Washington and they’re worried. The price of beef is going up too fast in New York. Our friends in Washington feel a Congressional investigation is imminent.”

  “I already been through this shit. They took their best shot and they missed.”

  “Our friends think this one will be different, Mr. Pontivini. Why risk it, is what our friends think.”

  “These friends, what do they want from me?”

  “A four cent price drop for six months.”

  “Six months! You know how much that will cost me. What do I pay them down there for anyway? Can’t they do anything about it? You’re so smart, answer me that.”

  “They are doing something about it. They’re giving you a warning that could save us a lot of trouble and bad publicity. We can’t afford to be too greedy. It’s not like the old days.”

  “All right! All right! Work it out, but don’t give me any crap about the old days. You see this fucking thing.” The old man crumpled up the Sunday comic section. “At least in the old days you could understand the comics. Today all they have is cosmic ducks and star shit.”

  During the afternoon Pontivini was able to get it up after a lot of hard work on Tracy’s part and she sucked him off. That put him in a good mood—there were times when he couldn’t come after he got it up—and he wiped her mouth with her long silky blonde hair.

  “You been a bad little girl,” Pontivini said, lying back on his canopied Italianate bed. “And now you got to wash out your mouth with Scope. That was real nice, honey. I appreciate it. You want to go down to the pool or something like that it’s okay with me. Sometimes I wonder why you bother with an old bastard like me.”

  Tracy pouted. “It’s because I love you, Ponti.”

  Stupid cocksucker. You’d never find a decent Italian girl doing a thing like that not even with her husband. But she had given him a good blow job and he couldn’t really get mad at her. He was pleasantly tired and needed to nap for an hour or so. And as he did so often, Gino Pontivini thought of how far he had come in the world. Fifty years before, when he was a kid on Arthur Avenue, he’d been just a snot-nosed wop. It those days they threw around the word “wop” pretty freely.

  In the fifty years since then, he had risen from soldier to driver to bodyguard to old Vilfredo D’Urso, known to the cops and the robbers as “Willy the Fish” because he was so fond of seafood. Willy loved him like a son, so it was easy to kill him as a favor to Paddy Scalisi, who wanted his job. Pontivini had prospered until it was necessary to kill Paddy, too. After that his rise was rapid. Now he headed one of the biggest of the five crime families in New York, and he had his eye on territory only feebly controlled by Sal Odano (“Mr. O’Donahue”), who was well into his eighties. Just thinking about Sal made Pontivini feel young. Shit! He was twenty-five years younger than Sal, ten years younger than Ronald Reagan. Naturally, he couldn’t just grab off old Sal’s territory; to do
that was to risk a war with the other four families. He was sure that two of the New York dons would side with him. About the others he wasn’t so sure. It would take some careful negotiating and a lot of promises that he might or might not keep.

  His thoughts turned back to Tracy and he decided that she had been around too long. As a piece of ass she was all right; in the cocksucking department she was nothing to write home about. It was, he thought, time for a taste of fresh meat. She called herself a model and that was a laugh. The bitch couldn’t model her twat. From time to time, he considered remarrying but always decided against it, for there never would be another woman like his Rosa, who was so pure that the first night he had to fuck her with her nightgown on. In life, he had hated Rosa with a passion; now that she was safely dead, he would remember the good things about her.

  It was late afternoon when Pontivini got up, used an aerosol can to spray himself with lilac scent, and dressed. There were shadows in the room and he turned on the lights, frosted bulbs in clusters on the walls. He didn’t like the dark and didn’t know why. Sunday night was steak night at the Old Homestead at Ninth Avenue and 14th Street. It was a long drive from Riverdale, but it was worth it. The Old Homestead was the best steakhouse in New York or any other city; truly, you could cut a Homestead steak with a spoon. He went there every Sunday night, winter and summer; it was the high point of his week. A blow job was just a blow job, but a steak was a steak. A thick, tender steak and a bottle of good red wine—what more could a man ask for?

  “Fucking right,” Gino Pontivini said, smiling into the mirror while he knotted his tie. After giving his iron gray hair a few more licks with the brush he went downstairs.

  Bobby and Dave, his bodyguards, were out front with the Doberman. So was Tracy. Dave was wearing a dog training apron and a wire mask. In his right hand he held a gun. His neck was protected by a leather collar and his right arm was covered by a quilted shield. Tracy’s eyes were wide with excitement as she looked at the vicious attack dog.

  Pontivini thought: I’ll bet she’s wondering what it’s like to fuck a dog.

  “Hi Ponti,” she called out. “Have a nice nap?”

  “Very enjoyable, honey. Nice of you to ask. You all set for a big steak dinner?”

  Tracy rubbed her stomach. “Yummy!” she said.

  At the front of the house, red-bricked walks ran between the lawns and the flower gardens. A custom-built Cadillac, much longer than a factory model, glittered in the rays of the dying sun. The sweet smell of flowers came from the garden; with no other houses in sight, they might have been deep in the country.

  “Let’s have a workout,” Pontivini said. “This time get the fucker really mad.”

  Dave was very much afraid of the Doberman, but he did as he was told. He pointed the pistol at the dog and yelled. The dog leaped at him, sinking its teeth into the quilted shield on his arm. The force of the onslaught knocked Dave to the ground and the dog went straight for his neck. Dave screamed as the dog’s huge fangs began to rip the collar that protected his neck. Pontivini’s eyes jumped to Tracy and the bitch had her legs pressed together like she was going to come.

  “Jesus, boss,” Bobby said. “Call it off.”

  Smiling at the dog’s performance, Pontivini took a gold-plated whistle and blew into it. No sound came from the whistle, but the dog stopped biting and backed away. Dave got up, brushing dirt from his clothes, and took off the wire mask. His face was white.

  Pontivini said, “Well, what do you think, boys?”

  “That fucking thing is crazy,” Dave said.

  “Pretty good,” Bobby said. “But what happens if the guy doesn’t have a gun?”

  “Then he goes straight for the throat. One way or another, the guy gets his throat torn out.”

  Tracy edged her way around the dog until she was standing beside Pontivini. “But what happens if he attacks you, Ponti?”

  “Dog won’t attack me,” Pontivini said. “He’ll attack you if I tell him to. You want to see what it’s like?”

  Tracy’s face tightened in sudden fear. “Please Ponti, don’t even make a joke about that.” Unaware that she was doing it, Tracy’s hand went up and touched her throat.

  The old hoodlum smiled. “Right where you’re touching, that’s the place he’d go for.”

  Dave was looking at the dog and Pontivini said, “What’s wrong? You seem a little quiet tonight. The dog bother you? Believe me, you were in no danger. You didn’t use to mind working out with the dog. So what’s bothering you now?”

  “I don’t know, boss. Ever since you had the vet fix him so he can’t bark, he scares me. I mean he can sneak up on you anytime.”

  “That’s the point, kid. You think an attack dog should wear a bell around his neck? A dog barks then the burglar knows he’s there and takes off. Even before I had the bark taken out of him, this dog was the best Colonel Kiley ever trained. You could buy a car, what I paid for this dog. He was perfect before. Now he’s more perfect. And think about this: the neighbors can’t complain about any noise.”

  “But he never did bark, boss.”

  Pontivini smiled at the dumbhead who wouldn’t recognize a joke if you showed it to him in Vista Vision. “Tell the truth, kid. I wasn’t thinking too hard about the neighbors.”

  Tracy giggled. “Why should you, Ponti? You don’t have any neighbors. Oh Ponti, can’t we go, I’m so hungry.”

  “We’ll go when I’m ready, honey. But you’re in luck. It so happens I’m ready.”

  The big car went down into Manhattan. Bobby drove. A long stretch of the West Side Highway was closed for repairs and Bobby took the F.D.R. Drive when they got into Manhattan. As they passed the glittering high rises on the East Side, Tracy wished she could live in one of those glamorous buildings, filled with rich millionaires and famous celebrities, instead of up in the dinky old Bronx. Tracy loved East 57th Street more than any street in New York. All those art galleries and Paris designers and stuff. If she lived in the East 60’s, say, she wouldn’t have to be driven everywhere by Bobby. A few times she had tried to sit up front with Bobby, who wasn’t at all bad looking if a little bulky, so she could maybe feel him up and maybe get him interested enough to risk a quickie. She knew he was interested as well as scared. Because even after they got out of the car after he made her sit in the back, he still had a hard-on.

  It would be heaven to live in Manhattan, Tracy thought.

  Pontivini had been watching her all the way below 96th Street. “Don’t start that shit again,” he said. “You want to live in Manhattan, you get your ass out of my house.”

  “Oh no, Ponti. I’d never do that. It’s just that the Bronx isn’t, you know, very exciting.”

  “I make a good living from the Bronx. So do you.”

  “I didn’t mean to complain, Ponti.”

  “Of course you didn’t, sweetheart. Pucker up and give Ponti a kiss, that’s a good kid.”

  “Oh I do love you, Ponti,” Tracy said.

  The cocksucker still smells of Scope, the old man thought. I got to look around for something with a little more class.

  Bobby took the car off the East Side Drive at the 14th Street exit and went west. In a few minutes they were being bowed into the best table in the Old Homestead.

  The management of the famous steakhouse would not have dissolved in tears if Gino Pontivini had taken his patronage elsewhere. However, he spent a lot of money there and tipped well, and therefore had the same rights as any other citizen. The people who ran the Old Homesteaders weren’t the least bit afraid of him, for they numbered among their patrons powerful political figures. Mayor Koch dined there and so did Governor Carey and Police Commissioner McGuire.

  Gino Pontivini knew all this and gloried in it—he was a celebrity, too.

  “Nice to see you,” the maitre d’ said when they were seated. He handed menus around. “Would you like the usual appetizer?”

  “Fine,” Pontivini said.

  The maitre d’ went away
and Pontivini said, “Before I start on a new meal I think I better get rid of the one I had last night. In other words, I have to take a shit.”

  Tracy giggled. “You’re terrible, Ponti.”

  Bobby stayed with Tracy while Dave went to the men’s room with the old man. Pontivini waited while Dave went inside to check the place out. He had done this many times before. First he looked in the stalls and they were empty. There was a door to one side of a big plastic container for used paper towels. Locked for many years, the door was sealed with repeated coats of paint. Dave checked it anyway. Before he went out he checked the window and found that the catch was in place.

  Dave nodded and the old man went in. Gino Pontivini was proud of the regularity of his bowel movements. Other Mob guys his age were all fucked up with constipation, ulcers, high-blood pressure—all kinds of shit. But not him. The way to stay healthy was to let other people do the worrying. The way to stay healthy was to stay tough. And not just tough—absolutely ruthless. There were, after all, only two kinds of people in the world: winners and losers and no in-betweens. In his book, nice guys didn’t just finish last—they got fucked.

  Dropping his pants, Gino Pontivini thought: How sweet it is.

  The top of the used towel container rose up and Eastland stepped out without making a sound. Silently, he flexed his cramped muscles and listened to the muted sounds coming from the restaurant. In the stall the old mobster was humming. Eastland moved forward on rubber-soled boots. The old man’s humming went on.

  Standing to one side of the lavatory stall, Eastland took a hypdermic needle from his pocket and depressed the plunger until a squirt of liquid came from the tip. The old man was pulling up his pants. The toilet flushed. He was ready.