The Power of the Dog

by Don Winslow

  “Haven’t you ever worn a tie before?” O-Bop asks. His voice is high, nervous.

  “Sure I have,” says Callan, “at my First Communion.”

  “Shit.” O-Bop comes over and starts to tie the tie for him. Then says, “Turn around, I can’t tie it backwards like this.”

  “Your hands are shaking.”

  “Fuck yes, they’re shaking.”

  They got to go to this sitdown naked. No hardware of any kind. No one carries a gun around the boss except the boss’s people. Which is going to make it even easier to take them out.

  Not that they intend to go out unaccompanied. They got Bobby Remington and Fat Tim Healey and another kid from the neighborhood, Billy Bohun, going to cruise in a car outside the restaurant.

  O-Bop’s instructions are very clear.

  “Anyone other than us comes out the front door,” he tells them, “kill them.”

  And another precaution: Beth and her girlfriend Moira are going to be having lunch in the public part of the restaurant. Beth and Moira are also going to be having a .22 and a .44 in their respective handbags, just in case things go sick and the boys have a chance to get out of the back room.

  As O-Bop says, “If I’m going to hell, it’s going to be on a crowded bus.”

  They take a subway to Queens because O-Bop says he doesn’t want to come out of a happy, successful meeting and get into his car and have it go boom.

  “Italians don’t do bombs,” Peaches tries to tell him. “That’s Irish shit.”

  O-Bop reminds him he’s Irish and takes the subway. They get off in Bensonhurst, and him and Callan are walking down the street toward the restaurant and turn the corner and O-Bop says, “Oh, fucking shit.”

  “What, oh, fucking shit? What?”

  There’s four or five wise guys standing out front of the restaurant. Callan’s like, So what, there are always four or five wise guys standing out front of wise-guy restaurants—it’s what they do.

  “That’s Sal Scachi,” O-Bop says.

  Big, thick guy, early forties, with Sinatra-blue eyes and silver hair, which is razor-cut short for a goombah. He looks like a wise guy, Callan thinks, but then again he don’t look like a wise guy. And he’s wearing these real square black shoes, which are polished so they shine like black marble.

  This is a serious fucking guy, Callan thinks.

  “What’s his story?” he asks O-Bop.

  “He’s a fucking colonel in the Green Berets,” O-Bop says.

  “You’re shittin’ me.”

  “I shit you not,” O-Bop says. “Tons of medals from 'Nam, and he’s a made guy. If they decide to take us off the count, it’s Scachi who’ll do the subtraction.”

  Now Scachi turns and sees them coming. Steps away from his group, walks up to O-Bop and Callan, smiles and says, “Gentlemen, welcome to the first or last day of the rest of your lives. No offense, but I have to make sure you’re not carrying sidearms.”

  Callan nods and lifts his arms. Scachi pats him down with a few smooth moves, all the way to his ankles, then does the same with O-Bop. “Good,” he says. “Now shall we go get some lunch?”

  He takes them into the back room of the restaurant. Callan’s seen it before, in about forty-eight freaking mob movies. Murals on the walls depict happy scenes from sunny Sicily. There’s a long table with a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth. Wineglasses, espresso cups, little pats of butter sitting on iced plates.

  Bottles of red, bottles of white.

  Even though they’re exactly on time, there’s guys already there. Peaches nervously introduces them to Johnny Boy Cozzo and Demonte and a couple of others. Then the door opens and two hitters come in, chests like butcher’s blocks, and then Calabrese comes in.

  Callan gets a glance in at Johnny Boy, who has a smile on his face that’s dangerously close to a smirk. But they all do that Sicilian hugging and kissing shit and then Calabrese sits down at the head of the table and Peaches makes the necessary introductions.

  Callan doesn’t like it that Peaches looks scared.

  Peaches gets their names out, then Calabrese holds up a hand and says, “First we eat, then business.”

  Even Callan has to admit that the food is out of this world. It’s the best meal Callan’s had in his whole life. It starts with a big antipasto with provolone and prosciutto and sweet red peppers. Thin rolls of ham and tiny little tomatoes that Callan’s never seen before.

  Waiters are coming in and out like they’re nuns waiting on the Pope.

  They finish the appetizer and the pasta course comes in. Nothing fancy, just small bowls of spaghetti in a red sauce. Then there’s a chicken piccata—thin slices of chicken breast in white wine, lemon and capers and then a baked fish. Then there’s another salad, then dessert—a sweet white cake soaked with anisette.

  All this and the wines coming in and out, and by the time the waiters set the espressos down Callan’s about half in the bag. He watches Calabrese take a long sip from an espresso cup. Then the boss says, “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you.”

  One motherfuck of an essay question.

  Part of Callan wants to scream, You shouldn’t kill us because Jimmy Piccone stole a hundred grand from you and we can prove it! but he keeps his mouth shut, trying to think of a different answer.

  Then he hears Peaches say, “They’re good boys, Paul.”

  Calabrese smiles. “But you're not a good boy, Jimmy. If you were a good boy, I’d be having lunch with Matt Sheehan today.”

  He turns and looks at O-Bop and Callan.

  “I’m still waiting for your answer.”

  So is Callan. He’s trying to think whether he’s going to hear one, or whether he should try to bust through the two slabs of meat guarding the door, make it into the dining room to grab the guns from Beth and come back in blasting.

  But even if I make it out and make it back, Callan thinks, O-Bop will be dead by then. Yeah, but I can send him out on his crowded bus.

  He tries to slide to the edge of his chair without anyone noticing. Inch to the edge of his seat and get his legs under him so he can burst off that chair. Maybe go straight for Calabrese and get a hold around his neck and back out the door . . .

  And go where? he thinks. The freaking moon? Where can we go that the Cimino Family can’t find us?

  Fuck it, he thinks. Go for the guns, go out like men.

  Across the table, Sal Scachi shakes his head at him. It’s an almost imperceptible gesture, but it’s there, telling him that if he keeps moving, he’s dead.

  Callan doesn’t move.

  All this thinking seems to take about an hour, but it actually takes only a few seconds in the, shall we say, tense atmosphere of the room, and Callan is actually surprised when he hears O-Bop’s thin voice pipe up with, “You shouldn’t kill us because . . .”

  Because, uhhhhhhhhh . . .

  “. . . because we can do more for you than Sheehan ever could,” Callan says. “We can deliver you a piece of the Javits Center, teamsters’ local, construction local. Not a chunk of concrete moves or goes in you don’t own a piece of. You get ten percent of every shylock dollar we move on the street, and we take care of all of this for you. You don’t have to lift a finger or get involved.”

  Callan watches Calabrese consider this.

  And take his sweet freaking time about it.

  Which starts to piss Callan off. Like he’s almost hoping Calabrese says Fuck you guys so they can cut this diplomatic crap and just get down to it.

  But instead, Big Paulie says, “There are some conditions and some rules. First, we’ll take thirty—not ten—percent of your book. Second, we’ll take fifty percent of any monies arising from union and construction activities, and thirty percent of any monies emanating from any other activities. In exchange, I offer you my friendship and protection.

  “While you cannot become members of the family because you are not Sicilian, you can become associates. You will work under the supervision of Jimmy Peaches. I will hold
him personally responsible for your activities. If you have a need, you go to Jimmy. If you have a problem, you go to Jimmy. This Wild West nonsense must stop. Our business functions best in an atmosphere of quietude. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Mr. Calabrese.”

  Calabrese nods. “From time to time I might have need of your assistance. I will communicate that to Jimmy, who will communicate it to you. My expectation is that, in return for the friendship and protection I afford you, you will not turn your faces when I reach out to you. If your enemies are to be my enemies, then mine must be yours.”

  “Yes, Mr. Calabrese.”

  Callan wonders if this is when they kiss his ring.

  “One last thing,” Calabrese says. “Attend to your business. Make money. Prosper. Do what you need to do, except—no drugs. This was the rule that Carlo handed down, and it is still the rule now. It’s too dangerous. I do not intend to spend my old age in prison, so the rule is absolute: You deal, you die.”

  Calabrese gets up from his chair. Everyone else gets up from theirs.

  Callan’s standing there when Calabrese gives a brief good-bye and the two slabs open the door for him.

  And Callan is like, What is wrong with this picture?

  He says, “Stevie, the man is leaving.”

  O-Bop looks at him like, Good.

  “Stevie, the man is headed out the door.”

  Everything stops. Peaches is appalled by this faux pas, and he says as graciously as he can, “The don always leaves first.”

  “Is there a problem?” Scachi asks.

  “There is,” Callan says. “There is a problem.”

  O-Bop turns absolutely white. Peaches has his jaw clenched so tight it’s going to take an Allen wrench to loosen it. Demonte’s looking at them like he’s watching something on a National Geographic special. Johnny Boy just thinks it’s kind of funny.

  Scachi doesn’t. He snaps, “What’s the problem?”

  Callan gulps and says, “The problem is, we got people out in the street we told to kill the first person comes out the door, if it’s not us.”

  A tense moment.

  Calabrese’s two guards have their hands on their guns. So does Scachi, except his .45 service revolver is pointed squarely at Callan’s head.

  Calabrese is looking at Callan and O-Bop, shaking his head.

  Jimmy Peaches is trying to remember the exact wording of the Act of Contrition.

  Then Calabrese laughs.

  Laughs so hard he has to pull a white handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and dab his eyes. That doesn’t even do it—he has to sit back down. Finishes laughing and looks at Scachi and says, “What are you standing there for? Shoot 'em.”

  Then, just as quickly, he says, “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. You two boys, thinking I was going to walk out that door and World War Three was going to start. Aww, that’s funny.”

  He waves them toward the door.

  “This time,” he says.

  They go out the door and it shuts behind them. From the restaurant’s dining room they can still hear them in there laughing. They walk past Beth and her friend Moira, out onto the street.

  No sign of Bobby Remington and fat Tim Healey.

  Just a bunch of black Lincolns from corner to corner.

  Mob guys standing around them.

  “Jesus Christ,” O-Bop says. “They couldn’t get a parking spot.”

  Later, an apologetic Bobby will tell them that he just drove around and around until some of the mob guys stopped the car and told them to get the fuck out of there. So they did.

  But that will be later.

  Right now, O-Bop stands out on the street and looks up at the blue sky and says, “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  “No, Stevie, what does it mean?”

  “It means,” O-Bop says, throwing his arm around Callan, “we’re the kings of the West Side.”

  Kings of the West Side.

  That’s the good news.

  The bad news is what Jimmy Peaches has done with the hundred grand he now has free and clear from the last will and testament of Matty Sheehan. What he’s done is he’s bought dope with it.

  Not the usual heroin from the usual Turkey-to-Sicily connection. Not from the Marseilles connection. Not even from the new Laotian connection that Santo Trafficante set up. No—if he buys from any of those sources, Calabrese hears about it about fifteen seconds later, and about a week after that Jimmy Peaches’ bloated body shocks tourists on the Circle Line.

  No, he has to find a new source.

  Mexico.

  Chapter Three

  California Girls

  I wish they all could be California girls.

  —Brian Wilson, “California Girls”

  La Jolla, California, 1981

  Nora Hayden’s fourteen the first time one of her dad’s friends hits on her.

  He’s driving her home from baby-sitting his boy brat and all of a sudden he takes her hand and sets it on his bulge. She’s going to take it off except she’s fascinated by the look on his face.

  And how it makes her feel.

  Powerful.

  So she keeps her hand there. Doesn’t move it around or anything, but it seems to be enough and she can hear his rough breathing and see his eyes get all intense and funny and she wants to laugh except she doesn’t want to, you know, break the spell.

  Next time he does it he keeps his own hand on top of hers and moves it around in circles. She can feel him grow under her palm. Feels him twitch. His face looks ridiculous.

  Time after that he pulls the car over and asks her to take it out.

  And she, like, hates this guy, right?

  He utterly grosses her out, but she does it the way he shows her, but it feels like she’s the boss, not him. Like she can jerk him and jerk him, just by stopping and then starting again.

  “It’s not a penis,” she’ll tell her friend Elizabeth. “It’s a leash.”

  “No, it’s the whole puppy,” Elizabeth says. “You pet it, stroke it, kiss it, give it a warm place to sleep and it’ll go fetch things for you.”

  She’s fourteen and looks seventeen. Her mom sees it, but what can she do? Nora’s splitting time between her mom’s and her dad’s and never has the term joint custody had quite such piquant meaning. Because every time she goes to her dad’s place, that what he’s doing—a joint.

  Dad’s like some sort of white Rastafarian without the dreadlocks or the religious convictions. Dad couldn’t find Ethiopia on a map of Ethiopia; he just likes his herb. That part of it, he totally gets.

  Mom’s over all that, and it’s the big reason they divorced. She outgrew her hippie phase with a vengeance, like hippie to yuppie, zero to sixty in five seconds flat. He’s stuck in the Birkenstocks like they’re clamped onto his feet, but she’s moving on.

  In fact, she gets a real good job in Atlanta and wants Nora to go with her, but Nora is like, Nah, unless you can show me where the beach is in Atlanta I’m not going. Eventually it comes down to a judge asking Nora which parent she’d like to live with and she almost says, “Neither,” but what she actually says is, “My dad,” so by the time she’s fifteen she’s going to Atlanta for major holidays and one month in the summer.

  Which is just bearable if, like, she has enough good weed.

  The kids at school call her “Nora the Whora,” but she doesn’t care and neither, really, do they. It’s not really so much a term of contempt as it is an acknowledgment of reality. What do you say about a classmate who gets picked up from school in Porsches, Mercedeses and limos, none of which belong to her parents?

  Nora is stoned one afternoon, filling out some stupid questionnaire for the guidance counselor, and under “After School Activities” she puts down “Blow Jobs.” Before she erases it, she shows the form to her friend Elizabeth and they both laugh.

  And don’t be pulling that limo into the drive-thru at Mickey D's, either. Ditto Burger King, Taco Bell and Jack in the Box. Nora has the
face and the body to command Las Brisas, the Inn at Laguna, El Adobe.

  You want Nora, you provide her with good food, good wine, good dope.

  Jerry the Doof always has good coke.

  He wants her to go to Cabo with him.

  Of course he does. He’s a forty-four-year-old coke dealer with more memories than possibilities; she’s sixteen with a body like springtime. Why shouldn’t he want to take her for a dirty weekend in Mexico?