Rampage

by Justin Scott

  “I want dessert,” Chris said.

  “Chris, Tony, please. Here, I got this.” He snapped the check off the table, crumpled it in his hand. “You just take care of the tip.”

  Chris repeated his request in the firm but polite voice he employed on the job, and he was quite suddenly not a twenty-one-year-old kid to be shooed out of a restaurant. “I want dessert. My father ate here.Tony and I come two and three times a week. This is our place. You can’t kick us out for some rackets guy.”

  Joe went white. “Get him what he wants.”

  The waiter ran for the pastry trolley and rolled it swiftly to their table, silver serving pieces ringing against the platters. Chris stared at the dark cakes, the cannoli flecked with red and green citron, the striped Napoleons. A single crumb would choke him. “Forget it. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Too late,” Tony muttered. Cirillo’s party was staring as Don Richard got up and walked toward them. He picked up a chair in his wiry, brown-spotted hands, set it between Chris and Tony, and sat down. He looked straight at Chris with eyes like coal. “They told me you been bothering the girl.”

  Tony said, “We did not bother the girl.”

  Don Richard ignored him. “Now you’re bothering me,” he said to Chris.

  “Do you know who I am?” Chris asked, controlling the impulse to hit him only because he was so small and old enough to be his grandfather.

  “No. I want you behave in this restaurant or leave.”

  Behave? You tell us to behave? Your people—”

  “I didn’t come here to talk. I came here to ask you nicely to stop bothering a family party.”

  “Your people—”

  Don Richard cut him off with a savage gesture. “Outside!”

  Chris surged to his feet. “Let’s go.”

  “I’ll catch up,” said Tony. He headed quickly for the men’s room.

  The Cirillo leader paused at his own table.“Excuse me a minute.”

  Chris kept going, the girl’s level stare a hard diamond light in the center of the red haze boiling across everything he saw. He pushed through the foyer and onto the dark street, and turned to face Cirillo as he came out the door. “Your people—”

  “Kid, I don’t know what your problem is, but I’m telling you nice to leave us alone.”

  “You tell me to behave? Your hoods killed my father.”

  “What?” The little old man propped his spotted hands on his skinny hips and looked up innocently at Chris. “What are you talking about? Who’s your father?”

  “Mike Taglione.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Joey Rendini killed him.”

  “Who?”

  “He works for you and did it on your orders.”

  “Sonny, the last guy I killed was before you were born. I ain’t in that business no more.”

  “Now you pay people—”

  “Hey! I been nice. You’re attackin’ me. Fuck you.” Cirillo pointed a finger toward the street. Two strong-arm men came swiftly from a car. “He’s not allowed back in the restaurant.”

  Cirillo turned on his heel and went inside.

  “Get out of here, kid,” one of the men said.

  Chris had ceased to think. It never occurred to him that the scotch had gone to his head, that Tony had disappeared, or that even one on one either of these men was formidable. They were as tall as he, heavy in the belly, and eight or ten years older; the restaurant neon flickering red and green highlighted thin lines of scar tissue which creased their brows and spelled heavyweight hopeful.

  “Fuck you.” He started back to the restaurant.

  The two men glanced up and down deserted Woodhaven Boulevard, calculated the distance to the nearest pedestrians, and moved swiftly in concert. One stepped lightly behind him. The other tossed a sharp jab at his face. Enraged, Chris blocked it, feinted with his left, and threw a hard right cross, the first combination Mike had ever taught him.

  The strong-arm hit the sidewalk with a surprised grunt, shook his head, and bounced back to his feet like a rubber ball. “Good hands, kid.”

  His partner rabbit-punched Chris in the back of the neck and sunk a fist into his kidney. The pain staggered him. They pinned his arms behind him and shoved him around the corner where thick trees darkened the streetlights. A tall, rangy man stepped out of the car, flexing his hands, and sauntered after them.

  “We can handle it,” said one of the men holding Chris, and his partner cautioned deferentially, “It’s okay, Mikey. Maybe you better go back to the car.”

  “Shut up!” The man they called Mikey stepped closer, fingering a gold coke spoon, which was fashioned in the form of a miniature sawed-off shotgun. Chris couldn’t see his face in the shadows, but the soft profile of blow-dried hair and the slicklooking leather jacket might have belonged to a rich young Italian-American bachelor cruising the discos at—one of the new young entrepreneurs who had perhaps expanded the family grocery store or restaurant into a high-profit fast-food joint. Chris’s eyes locked, however, on the finely tooled spoon dangling from a gold chain. Mikey. Crazy Mikey? Don Richard Cirillo’s enforcer son.

  A bony fist, studded with rings, flickered out of the night and smashed his mouth. Chris levered himself against the men holding him and kicked back. Mikey dodged most of it and attacked like a whirlwind, punching and kicking. Chris tried to protect his balls with his legs and braced his work-hardened stomach muscles to absorb the body punches; Mikey changed tactics, and all the heavy work in the world wasn’t worth a damn against the flurry of hard jabs that tore Chris’s cheek, blackened his eyes, and cut his lips.

  Dizzy with pain, he sensed Mikey pause, planting his feet, and knew he was winding up to hurl a deliberate roundhouse to break his nose. It flew from the shadows like a stone. Chris managed to slip it partially, but it still tore a furrow along his cheek and banged his ear. Mikey kicked him in the stomach. The air whooshed out of his lungs and he hung helplessly between the two men holding him. Mikey fished a set of chrome knuckles from his pocket, swiftly removed his rings, and worked the knuckles onto his fist.

  “Chris!” Tony yelled from the street.

  “Get away!”

  Tony skidded around the corner, launched himself, and hit Mikey airborne, dragging him down in a cursing tangle. They both got up and Tony swung wildly. Mikey doubled him over with a punch in the stomach and whirled on Chris, who was kicking in another futile effort to break the hold the other men had on his arms. A police siren screamed suddenly, drawing close. Light flashed on the knuckles. Cold metal tore into his face. The three men smashed him to the sidewalk, and ran.

  Chris crawled toward Tony. When he saw the streetlight through the trees he was vaguely aware that Tony was turning him onto his back. Then there were red lights and cops and Tony was announcing calmly, “I’m Tony Taglione. I called Captain Taggart.”

  On the way home from the hospital in the car, Eamon said, “The trouble with you is you’re arrogant.”

  “He killed my father,” Chris slurred through battered lips. It had taken ten stiches to close a cut on his mouth and three on the rim of his eye. He ached everywhere and the teeth on the left side of his mouth felt loose.

  “Let the law do its job—no buts!” Eamon retorted angrily. “I don’t care who he is, or who you think he is, he’s got the same rights as anybody else. The only person allowed to disturb his dinner is a police officer with a warrant.”

  “But no cops are doing that. Cirillo’s free.”

  “You want to pull a Death Wish?” Tony interrupted scornfully. “Bronson blows away the Mafia boss? Bullshit. The Mafia’s a system. It’s not one guy. The law’s a system for that job.”

  “The one punching me was called Mikey. Isn’t that Cirillo’s son? The one they call Crazy Mikey? Eamon, I couldn’t see much of his face, but he had a little coke spoon like a gun. Remember? Show me pictures.”

  “Go to bed,” said Eamon. “Sleep it off.”

  “I’m not d
runk!”

  “Then you’ve got no excuse.”

  He vowed never again to blunder into a fight he couldn’t win.

  Ten weeks later they tested him.

  The Teamsters’ shop steward who spoke for Joey Rendini asked for a private meeting. Chris knew, despite Uncle Eamon’s assurances to the contrary, that the Cirillos were about to end their self-imposed period of respect for the dead. He sat at his desk trying to control the expression on his face while the shop steward spelled it out.

  “We got a problem with the ready-mix drivers, Chris.”

  “How bad?”

  “There’s wildcat talk.”

  Chris picked up a pencil and slowly drew a circle around the date on his calendar. It was four and a half months since his father had been murdered. He had been waiting for this, wondering how long they would wait—and how he would react.

  4

  CHAPTER

  Their timing was no mystery. His building was precisely at the level, sixteen stories, when he had to start pouring the concrete decks to stiffen the steel frame. Without that “diaphragm” to hold it together, the structure would wobble and rack as he built higher.

  Concrete was his own product, and yet he was powerless to supply it if the Mafia made his drivers walk. He shoved his hands under the desk to hide them. He was learning to control his face, almost without effort, but he couldn’t stop his fingers from curling into fists. He wanted to break the shop steward’s arms. Then he heard his own voice coolly expanding his options, declining to fight when he couldn’t win.

  Since the fight at Abatelli’s, he was constantly surprised by the cold-bloodedness of his rage. It still surged wildly out of his heart, like the jagged bolts of an electrical storm, but he was developing somewhere in his mind a sort of transformer, which channeled his anger into usable energy and protected him from its deadly backflash.

  “Why don’t you work up a list of your men’s demands?” he asked calmly, maintaining the charade of labor relations. “Then see what your needs are.” The bribe. “And I’ll talk to my people.” A warning not to make it too expensive. “I’ll get back to you.” A second warning—that he might not pay. And then, buzzing Sylvia on the intercom, a blunt threat. “Sylvia, call Riley. Tell him to bring in that truck of cable we got in Long Island City.”

  This was to let the shop steward know that if worst came to worst, Chris could keep working by guying the steel frame with cable and turnbuckles until he got concrete. His ironworkers could continue to erect steel, and he could even prepare the decks to pour when the strike was over. Not that he wanted to; cabling cost a ton in time and labor and was only a temporary expedient. But it served to remind the shop steward that they were all in this together. He dismissed him with a curt “Get back to me,” and sagged behind his desk, physically ill.

  You pay to play. He knew now, he thought bleakly, why his father had lost his cool with Rendini; he had been simply unable to stand paying bribes anymore. Grease, sensible investment, and incentive were all bullshit words to pretend it didn’t tear a man to pieces to be forced to give away his work for nothing.

  He was still shaking that afternoon as he drove Tony to Kennedy Airport to go back to school after an uncomfortable Thanksgiving break. “I swear, if Rendini had come himself, I would have killed him.”

  “Tell ’em to go fuck themselves.”

  “That might work in Harvard, kiddo. But I have to deal with these people.”

  “That’s the same mistake Pop made.”

  “I gotta follow my gut. And my gut is stuff I learned from Pop.”

  “You’re perpetuating the system that killed him,” Tony replied coldly.

  “And you’re getting high and mighty about a scene you don’t understand and have never worked in. This isn’t hopping around atop the building with a spud wrench. I’m talking about keeping the job alive.”

  “Maybe distance gives me a clearer eye. Maybe the reasons for the excuses don’t show up at long range. Maybe you’re too close to it to understand what you’re doing to the rest of us.”

  “Doing to the rest of who?”

  “The whole city. The country. Democracy is fragile. You undermine it with your payoffs and bribes.”

  “I’m talking about business.”

  “Business? Look at the water.” They were driving on the Belt Parkway, skirting the lower bay of New York. A tug plowed seaward and a few rusty freighters stood at anchor. Otherwise, the broad blue bay looked as empty as the sea.

  “What about it?”

  “Where’d the ships go?”

  “What ships?”

  “Remember when we were kids Pop would drive us around the docks, show us the ships? The harbor was full of ships. Remember the Erie Basin, the Atlantic Basin, the whole West Side? They’re all gone. The mob’s longshoremen’s unions wrecked the shipping business. The best harbor in the world is empty. How would you like to see that happen to construction?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m saying, if you don’t like moral reasons for honesty and responsibility, look at the practical. Responsibility works better.”

  “I’m taking reponsibility. I’m trying to save Pop’s company.”

  “Parading around in a fancy suit? You’re just picking up where Pop left off. Compromise.”

  “Are you blaming Pop for what happened?”

  “Pop fed the Mafia just like you are. Bribe money is power. People like you and Pop give the Mafia its power. They grow on guys like you and Pop.”

  “I’m going to knock your fucking head off if you don’t stop talking about Pop that way.”

  “Why don’t you stop the car and try it?” Tony shot back. “But it won’t change the issue. If you pay those bastards, you’re going to cross a line and you can never come back. They’ll own you forever. And you and I are going to end up on opposite sides.”

  “We’re family.”

  “Don’t pull that shit on me. Family’s the same excuse Pop used! Got himself killed, didn’t he? Left us—”

  Tony slammed his hand against the door, and for a second Chris saw beyond his own anger to the grief Tony was finally allowing to well up. “Can’t you see,” he continued with a trembling mouth, “that the one thing that makes this country safe to live in is that citizens are more important than families?”

  “Including brothers?”

  “Especially brothers. People with every opportunity like you and me, we have a responsibility to make things better, not worse.”

  “What is it with you? You only see things your way. Who the hell appointed you judge of better and worse?”

  “It’s not an appointment,” Tony said coldly. “The job’s there for the asking.”

  “Maybe the job ought to have tougher requirements. Compassion, maybe. A little understanding of ordinary people.”

  “Ordinary people have the same responsibility as the rest of us. Truth, honesty, no compromise.”

  “How’d you get so hard-assed?”

  “Watching you suck up to the people who killed my father.”

  Chris swung hard, a backhand blow heavy with rage. Tony snapped his head away, fast, but Chris’s high school ring tore across his cheekbone. When Chris saw the blood on his face he froze, squeezing the wheel, despising himself.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, begging forgiveness, burning to kill Rendini. And Rendini’s bosses and their bosses. Right up to Don Richard. Make them lose what he had lost.

  “You’re bleeding...it hurt?”

  “Just get me to my plane.” Tony found a tissue in the glove compartment and pressed it to the cut.

  “I’m sorry I hit you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You shouldn’t have said that.”

  “You got a problem with the truth?”

  Chris drove slowly the last mile and a half, past the color-coded parking lots. He remarked upon a Boeing 747 crossing an overpass they drove under, but Tony was silent. Chris passed
the last lot and drove straight to the departure door.

  “Aren’t you going to park?”

  “You got any more to say, write me a letter.”

  Tony looked hurt, but it quickly turned to anger. “Let’s get something straight. I’m going into public service. You’re going to be a problem for me if you’re illegal.”

  “I won’t be any more problem than Pop was.”

  Tony shoved his way out of the car and through the terminal doors. Chris watched his form fade into the mass of shadows rushing beyond the glass. He ran into the terminal and found Tony on the check-in line. “Hey, we’re all we got left.... I want to hug you goodbye.”

  Tony forced a smile. “Hands off, you dirty guinea. You want the women on the plane to think I’m gay?”

  Chris embraced him, surprised how small Tony felt. “Get good marks.”

  “And you straighten out your act.”

  “Maybe I’ll change my name.”

  “That’ll fool everybody but you and me.”

  Chris backed away. “See you at Christmas?”

  He waited for some sign that the two of them were more important than an argument about payoffs, but all Tony gave him was a high-beam stare and a remote “Sure. Christmas.”

  Hurt and mad, lonely and sick with remorse, Chris stopped at the churchyard. He sat beside the thin grass covering the new plot and stroked the turf on his mother’s grave. He wondered if the aching he felt for his father would subside the way it had when she had died. But no one had killed her; there had been no one to blame but God and disease, no target for rage.

  “Pop, what should I do?”

  Stupid question. Pop had always said, “Pay the bastards if you got no choice.”

  When the shop steward reached for the banded, used twenties, Chris clamped his hand on his wrist. “Pass the word—no pigs. I’ll follow the rules, if you guys do. But if you take too much, or threaten me or my brother, you’ll kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

  “Hey, Chris, I think—”

  “Tell your people what I said. They already killed my father. I got nothing to lose.”