A Village Voice

by Brian Martin

  The door was opened before they got to it and Mike got a friendly greeting from the doorman. They went straight into the living room and two other guys got up and said hello to Mike. Mike introduced Brian and everyone said hello, friendly enough, so far so good. He didn’t know whether to sit down or not; he certainly felt like sitting and was making a move toward an empty chair when two more men came down the hall and into the room. Everyone stayed standing and he assumed from their attitudes that the older man was Al, the man who wanted to talk to him. He assumed that the other guy was his cousin, Tony; Brian had never met him, but he had seen him around the neighborhood when he was young.

  Mike said, “This is my cousin, Brian.”

  Al replied, “Yeah, come with me for a minute. There’s something I want to show you.”

  Al saw that Mike intended to come with them. He looked at his guys and then looked at Mike.

  “Mike, you stay here. It’s alright, I just need to show him something. We’ll be right back. Have a drink, everyone, sit down, relax.”

  The guys in the room went to sit down. Mike remained standing and looked at Brian.

  Brian told him it was fine and that he would be back in a minute. He didn’t know what the hell he was thinking. Al led the way, with Brian following him and Tony behind them. They walked down the hall and came to an open basement door. The stair light was on and Al beckoned Brian to follow him. Brian hesitated a little and he felt Tony’s hand on his shoulder and heard him say,

  “Watch your step.”

  They made their way down the steps to a large unfinished basement. It was poorly lit, just a bare bulb in the middle of the ceiling. There was a table in the middle of the room. There was something on the table covered by what looked like a bed sheet. Brian noticed that there was plastic on the floor and on the walls. Brian heard that little voice in his head, the Village voice say ‘goodbye.’ He hesitated on the last step and then felt the shove from Tony. He stumbled toward the table. Al had gone around to the other side and waved him closer.

  “Come here, I want you to see this.”

  Brian looked behind him. Tony was standing near the stairs with a gun in his hand.

  Before Brian had a chance to say anything, Al pulled back the sheet.

  It was a woman’s body; the face was badly bruised but he recognized it. It was Irresistible Dolores.

  “My brother, the idiot who thinks with his dick, got picked up by this gal and went to a hotel room with her. Before anything happens, she goes to the bathroom and comes out with a nine millimeter. By the grace of God, the fucking thing jams and he manages to get it away from her. After some not so gentle persuasion, she starts talking, trying to save herself. She’s giving up everyone she ever knew. She told us about you and your uncle.”

  Al went on to explain that if Jim was linked to Joey’s death, everyone would assume that he had been involved, that he had given the order. He could not have that coming back to him. He went on to say that Jim had worked for him for a long time and that it was out of respect for Jim that he was now explaining things to Brian.

  Brian was only half listening to the explanation. From the time he heard his voice say goodbye, Brian knew they were going to kill him. He thought about his wife and son. He thought about never getting to see his son grow up. He was intensely sad and angry, he hoped to God he would see them on the other side. He asked God to forgive him and to watch out for them. He felt hot tears well up in his eyes. Then he remembered a line from a play he had read years ago. Three brothers are in a dungeon awaiting execution. One of them starts to cry, another tells him to be brave. The third brother cries out, “What does it matter?”

  The brave brother replies, “When the end is all there is, then it matters.”

  He waited for Al to finish his explanation for having to have him killed. He assumed Tony would pull the trigger any second now.

  “Al,” Brian said.

  “On behalf of my uncle and my cousin (who he assumed was already dead or would be shortly) and myself I would like to say… Fuck you, fuck you very much.”

  Brian closed his eyes and asked forgiveness a last time. He heard a voice say ‘good man’ and then he heard a shot. He opened his eyes and heard two more shots. He saw Al take two hits to the chest and he saw someone walk over from the shadows, lean over him and fire again.

  The shooter said, “In the old days, he would have been left with a canary in his mouth. People knew how to deal with rat bastards who talk to the feds. Now they will cut him up in little pieces, and hide the pieces. Everyone is worried about this fucking forensic science, first it’s fucking electronic surveillance, now it’s fucking forensic science. It’s a fucking shame. And I don’t know what they were thinking sending this one (nodding toward Dolores), fucking outsourcing as if we didn’t have enough of our own people to do the work.”

  The shooter came out of his musings on the modern world and turned to Brian.

  “You’re alright, your uncle would have been proud of you. He was a good man, your uncle. I had a lot of respect for him. He was a man that could be relied on and I think you’re the same. Am I right?”

  Brian’s head was spinning and he was having trouble keeping his balance, but he assured the man that he was right.

  “Okay then, go upstairs and get your cousin, both of you leave the city tonight and don’t come back, not for a very long time. Understood?”

  Brian told him that he understood and he thanked him. The man said that, in a way, Brian had actually helped him out and made things easier. The man saw Brian hesitate at the bottom of the stairs and he said not to worry, the guys upstairs were with him. Brian thanked him again and the man said,

  “Don’t mention it,” and smiled at his little joke.

  Brian took the stairs two at a time. He couldn’t wait to get away from the horrible scene in the basement and although he had just saved his life, he wanted to get away from that guy, whoever he was. He had the craziest eyes of anyone he had ever met.

  His cousin gave him a long hug when he got back upstairs and they left right away. Brian did not tell Mike what had happened in the basement, but he told him that they had to leave the city right away, probably for good. Mike said that they had held him upstairs at gun point while all the while telling him that they would be okay and to just sit tight. When Mike heard the shots, he figured that it was all over for him. Mike had said a prayer and he promised God that if he got out, he would leave the city and this life behind forever, so he was ready to go and not come back without another thought.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Charlotte, North Carolina, 2000

  Brian’s cousin was good to his word. Mike moved to Florida, got married to a local girl and was managing an Irish bar in Tampa. He and his wife were expecting a baby. He and Brian talk on the phone a few times a year and Mike seemed very happy, with no regrets about leaving the city. Brian took a week off after his dad passed. Everyone put it down to grief, which it was, and trauma. He kept hugging his wife and son and telling them how much he loved them. After a while, he got back into the old routines and things settled down for what he hoped would be the last time. He got a lot of nightmares at first. He would jump up in bed suddenly and shake for a time. He didn’t know why he got nightmares this time more than the first time; who knows with these things. Anyway, he put it down to the effects of sleep apnea, the thing where you stop breathing for a few seconds. As it turned out, he had that too and the effects were very similar. He started to sleep in another room so his wife could get some rest, and over time the dreams become less frequent. He concentrated on trying to be a good husband, father, brother, person. Although he knew it would never be enough. He saw the way Jesus looked at him when they went to Mass and no, he had not been to Confession. He was sad about what happened, but there is a difference between being sad and being sorry and he didn’t want to add being a hypocrite to his other sins.

  Years later, when his son was about twelve, Brian was sitting in
the study reading and his son was doing his homework. His son had grown up a real ginger, a poster child for Ireland. His dad would have got such a kick out of him. Anyway, he was just dozing off when his son says,

  “Dad, why don’t you ever talk about when you lived in New York? Why don’t we ever go to visit there?”

  He was a bit surprised, Liam had never mentioned anything like this before. He knew that his son was in touch ‘online’ with some of his cousins and he began to wonder.

  Brian raised an eyebrow and in order to buy some time he replied,

  “What do you mean, what are you talking about?”

  “Well, cousin Gavin says that we had real gangsters in the family and that you and Cousin Mike can’t go back to the city because of trouble with the Mob.”

  Good Lord, here was this little ginger boy from the pleasant leafy suburbs of Charlotte asking him about Mob troubles. That little brat Gavin and his big yap, what the hell was his father thinking? No, not him, it must have been his wife, she never liked him or his family.

  “Well, son, first off, I can assure you that Gavin does not know what he is talking about. Secondly, trips to New York are expensive, your mom and I have been there. We don’t get much vacation and we both work hard so we like to go places where we would all have a good time.”

  “So, you are saying that Gavin is a big fat liar and that he is making all this stuff up?”

  “I never said your cousin Gavin was big and fat, you just said, that not me.” Brian tried to get him off topic one last time, but he wasn’t giving up.

  “But, Dad?”

  “Tell you what, someday when you are lot older maybe we will go up to New York together, okay? In the meantime, since you are so interested in history, hand me that history book and let’s see how ready you are for the test.”

  Brian smiled again as he thought of his father. He wasn’t sure about the trip to New York. He was certain that all that had happened was best left in the past. He didn’t want his son to have any part of it. He would be the last of the black Irish indeed. Maybe someday though, he would write it all down for himself. It might be, what do they call it, cathartic? Then he heard his Village voice laughing, ‘cathartic, bullshit’ and he went back to quizzing his son. You can take the boy out of the village, but the village never really leaves the boy, am I right? One thing he knew for sure was that as long as he had breath in his body, he would care for his son and encourage his growth and development. He would do his best to raise him in a safe and loving environment. That should take care of the nurture side of things. As to nature, his DNA, it seemed too soon to tell and maybe it was not important anyway, he thought. Maybe his son would be like his mother’s people, although Noreen always said that the boy was like his father. God help us all.