by Justin Scott
The doctor glanced at his watch. He was young, and he managed to look sour and bored simultaneously. “If you look back a few years you might see flashes of strange behavior started then.”
Memories slammed into her. Little lapses, apparently unimportant in the daily rush of events—lost in Manhattan, one time; failing to recognize a bodyguard, another.
“Can I get him out on this?”
“I’m not the warden. But it’s an easy thing to fake.”
“He’s not faking.”
“I’m not a judge either, miss. Or a parole board.”
He was enjoying her agony. She collected her strength, putting her thoughts in simple order. She spoke to this monster as if he were a child. “You’re a doctor—and under these circumstances, my father’s only doctor. My family has influence. What can my family do for you in return for taking excellent care of my father?”
The young man laughed. “How about getting me on the staff of a real hospital?”
“The day my father comes home on a medical.”
“Are you kidding? You should see my record.”
“I don’t care if you carry AIDS. Take care of him and I’ll put you in the best hospital in the country.”
She left the prison, stunned and grieving for her father. Only after her plane had been airborne for hours and they were heading down the Hudson River at eight hundred feet altitude was she able to admit that whatever happened next, from now on she could count only on herself.
When she saw the city spires beginning to thrust through the murk, she tapped the pilot’s shoulder. “Westport.”
“Connecticut?”
“Yeah. And I want to call Brooklyn.”
She found her Uncle Frank haranguing his “boys.” He greeted her with a big, surprised smile, then resumed his pep talk, gesticulating with a baseball bat and strutting like a rooster with a round belly and a balding head.
“I know they’re big,” he bellowed, “so you gotta hit hard. Back each other up. And please, please, please think before you throw!”
He thrust the bat into their circle. Nine young men with “Frank’s Excavating” emblazoned on their uniforms piled hands on it and gave a throaty cheer. Frank sat beside her as they found their mitts and trotted onto the field in the fading light of a Westport evening.
“They’re going to kill us,” he confided. “You picked a hell of a day to come. Stubby’s is romping the league.”
Stubby’s Bar and Grill’s leadoff batters, full-bellied mustachioed men, each bigger than the next, were warming up. Fifty or sixty people watched from the low bleachers, while on the sidelines Greenman’s Olds and The Car Store teams rehashed their game just ended. Lights came on, turning the brown infield mocha and the grass emerald; the air was warm and heavy.
Gloomily Uncle Frank watched his pitcher lob slowball warmup pitches. “Move back!” he yelled at his shortstop and motioned his outfielders to move farther out. He huddled with his line coaches, then returned to the first row of the bleachers, which served as his dugout.
“Beer?”
He pulled two from the cooler at his feet and popped the tops.
“What brings you to the country?”
“Softball?”
He eyed her shrewdly. “Oh yeah? What’s wrong? Have you seen your father?”
“Play ball!” The umpire stepped behind the catcher. Stubby himself addressed the plate, cast a condescending eye on Frank’s pitcher’s first effort, and fouled it over the left field line, through the dense weeping willows that bordered the field, and across four lanes of Route One. Frank’s pitcher threw four balls in a row, and Stubby walked.
“Is it your father? Hey, hey, sweetie, what’s wrong?” She was crying and he put his arm around her. “What’s the matter, sweetie?”
“He’s sick. He got stabbed. Not badly, but it seemed to set him off... . It might be Alzheimer’s disease.”
“They letting him out for it?” Frank asked coolly.
Frank was her mother’s eldest brother. He hated the rackets and had violently opposed the marriage of Helen’s parents; he hadn’t spoken to her father in thirty-five years.
“They said he’s faking. I’ll get lawyers on it. He acts like he’s eighty-five or something. He can’t protect himself.”
They sat awhile in silence, watching Stubby’s runners circle the bases. Finally Uncle Frank sighed. “Is there anything I can do?”
Helen shook her head. “I just had to tell you.”
“How’s your mother taking it?”
“She doesn’t know. I’ve got enough on my hands without her going crazy. I’m not going to tell her. Don’t you.”
“You two still fighting?”
“You know how it is.”
“Yeah.” Uncle Frank dried her eyes with his handkerchief. Then he teased her knee, making her squirm. “Like mother, like daughter.”
“She’s your sister.”
“Sweetie. When are you going to get out?”
“What out?” Helen asked coldly, on guard now and her tears forgotten. “I’m not in.”
“This is Uncle Frank, so don’t tell me you’re not in. Those lunkhead brothers of yours couldn’t empty a can of tomatoes with instructions on it. If your father’s really sick, it’s all going to fall on you.”
“Restaurants don’t run themselves, Uncle Frank.”
“I’m not talking about the joints,” he snapped fiercely. “And I’m not talking about the bus company I’m talking about—” He glanced at the crowded bleachers and lowered his voice. “You know what I’m talking about. Get out. Get out while you can.” His eyes glistened as he took her hands. She pulled away, but he seized them again, hard, and tugged her around to face him. “You’re not even my kid, but you’re my favorite kid. You know? Since you was this high. You was my little girl.”
For as long as she could remember, she had come up here with her mother. In Uncle Frank’s house—much more than in her own home, where her father often disappeared unpredict-ably—she felt treasured. Her uncle adored her as only a man with no daughters could love a niece. Here she felt safe. Even though he was leaning on her, she was glad she had come tonight.
“I’ve seen this coming,” he said. “You’re getting sucked into it worse every day. And your goddamned father has allowed it.”
“My brothers need me.”
“Screw your brothers!”
“I have a duty. What is the saying?” She whispered in Sicilian, ‘“A wife is one thing. A sister something more.’”
“Don’t give me that peasant crap. Get out of it! Make a life for yourself. Be some kind of real person. Like you almost did when you went to college.”
“I didn’t fit in there.”
“I know it was hard. What do you think I gave you the car for?”
She smiled; her parents had refused to let her live in a dorm the first semester, and had her driven every day from Canarsie to Bronxville and home again at night. When Uncle Frank found out, he gave her a red Fiat Spider.
“I needed wheels.”
“You had wheels, driven by a gorilla. I gave you your own car to make you feel like one of the regular kids. You almost did it before they dragged you back.”
“They sent him to jail. I had to come home. Mama was—”
“Your mother—who I love—was as bad as him. She should of told you never to come home. Go to school. Be a person.”
“That’s the past.”
“It’s not too late. Do it!”
Helen tried to meet his eye. He was no fool and he knew her well enough to suspect that it wasn’t only for her brothers and mother that she served her father. That perhaps she was tempted by the power that masqueraded as responsibility—and even relished it.
She pretended to watch the game and Uncle Frank pretended to change the subject. “Hey, what do you think of my pitcher? Nice-looking guy?”
“He’s gorgeous.” She had noticed him before the game began; he was tall and dark with thick black hair, sleep
y eyes, and a body to dream upon. Which raised the problem she had faced since her father went to jail—if she dated a guy who wasn’t connected she had to hide her true life, and if he was connected he would try to steal her business.
“Thirty years old, divorced. She was a bimbo. A guy that good-looking gets bimbos when he’s too young to know better. He got the kid, a beautiful child you could die for.”
Helen indulged herself with a long look. He was absolutely beautiful, an Adonis compared to the beer-bellies fielding. He pursed his lips slightly each time he wound up, a nice movement, like a probing kiss. Uncle Frank nudged her, grinned slyly, and apparently changed the subject again. “Did I tell you? Your cousin is finally going to be a dentist.”
“How long has he been in college?”
“Longer than Enrico Fermi.”
“Congratulations.”
“Congratulations? Now I got no kid to take the business. ... But this guy pitching? I send him out to dig a septic, I know he’s going to bring the machine back in one piece. I’m thinking maybe I should make him a partner.”
“Who takes care of his little kid?”
“His mother. Real Italian. Good family. But it would be nicer if he was my family. ”
“Sure. Who gives their business to stranieri?”
“Lemme introduce you.”
“What? Frank—”
“He’s a husband for an Italian girl. Strong when he should be, but a pussycat inside. What do you say?”
“He’s in Westport. My business is in Brooklyn.”
“You make a clean break. You sell the joints. You sell the buses. You leave your brothers the other stuff. You move up here, buy new businesses, and live in my house till you see if you like this guy.”
The funny thing was how easy he made it sound. “What about my mother?”
“Connecticut’s not Hong Kong, you know. It’s an hour’s drive, you can visit. Besides, you make bambinos with that fella and your mother’ll be here like a rocket.”
“Frank, what are we talking about? I don’t even know this guy.”
“I’ll introduce you. You don’t like him, I know others. Nice people—straight.”
“Like you.”
“Fucking A straight. I want to see the stars at night I look out the window; there’s the sky, not a bunch of security lights. I hear a noise in the backyard and the cops come. It’s a raccoon. I got a stranger at the door, he’s waving a brush, not a gun. It’s the real world. You pay your taxes. You do a little better than your parents did. You have some fun.”
“What’s fun? I have fun.”
“Yeah? Tell me about it. If you take a guy like my pitcher to bed and it feels like something special, you don’t worry about him being busted selling dope.”
She gave him a smile, teasing. “All this bed, you make it sound tempting.”
“What do you think I moved my family for?”
“You’re in another world.”
“It’s a better world. See my boys playing? They graduated high school. They married their girlfriends.”
“Just like Canarsie. So?”
“But you can’t do that in Canarsie. Everybody knows you’re on the wrong side. Here you can start new.” He nodded the length of the low bleachers at the people watching Stubby’s massacre his team. “See their parents. Look at those girls, younger than you, with pretty babies.”
He jumped up. “Hey! Nice out. Watch the first baseman when he comes in.”
Stubby’s team took the field and Frank’s Excavating trotted to bat. The first baseman kissed a pretty girl and scooped their two-year-old into his arms.
“See? This is what real people do, Helen. They have fun, they work hard. They don’t kill, they don’t hurt, they don’t push dope.”
A blond all-American sort of guy with the name “Brace” stitched on his uniform greeted the couple, took the giggling child, and held him overhead. “How’s the bambino?”
“Hear that? They even talk Italian. Let me introduce you.”
“Uncle Frank, what are you doing to me?”
It was make-believe. At home she was bogged down in a seemingly endless war with the other families, while the Strikeforce prowled the edges, picking off the weak and growing stronger everyday. But here, tonight, with the air so soft and warm and the colors perfect, anything seemed possible. She looked again and wet her lips.
“Okay. Introduce me.”
Uncle Frank motioned his pitcher over and gave him some unnecessary advice. Dark eyes flickered toward hers, filled with humor, maybe knowing passion. Helen smiled back.
Uncle Frank, transparent as a windshield, abruptly took notice. “Hey, Rudy. Ever meet my niece, Helen?”
Rudy cocked his head, obviously comfortable with women who enjoyed his looks, and just as obviously enjoying hers. “Hi.”
“How you doing?”
Rudy shook his head at the scoreboard where the umpire was arranging double digits. “We’re not always this bad. You up from the city?”
As if she needed confirmation that this was not a sudden impulse on Uncle Frank’s part. “Canarsie. Are you always the pitcher?”
“The other guy ran the backhoe over his foot.”
“How’d he do that?”
Rudy glanced at Uncle Frank, winked at Helen. “I don’t know if your uncle wants to hear this again.”
“Tell her,” Frank grouched, then wandered off to confer with his leadoff batter. Rudy sat beside her and leaned close. “Your uncle sends him to dig a pool at a big rich house down by the water. The homeowner’s daughter comes out sunbathing. He lifts the pods and starts moving the machine a little closer to the deck. She ‘forgets’ she loosened her top and starts to sit up. He forgets he’s still in gear. She goes ‘Oooh,’ grabs her top, misses by three inches, and he creams his foot.”
Helen laughed. “Is that true?”
“Oh, yeah. See, everybody sits in their own house here and Hubby or Daddy goes to work, and in comes this guy with no shirt on a machine. Happens all the time.”
“Where’s your cast?”
Rudy grinned. “I’m too old for kid stuff.”
“Rudy! Rudy!”
“You’re up.”
“Excuse me. Gotta get a hit. Hey, we’re going out for pizza after. Wanta come?”
She looked at him, liked his arms, liked his eyes, and thought, What the hell. She could stay the night at Uncle Frank’s if it got late and run the country streets in the morning. “Sure.”
“Later.”
He hefted his bat and swaggered to the plate. The umpire called the first ball a strike and she booed with the crowd. Uncle Frank returned to the bleachers, his face troubled.
“He’s really nice.”
“I told you.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Don’t look now, but your hood brother is here.”
“What? Where?”
“He’s in a van, over there.”
Her stomach clutched. Eddie here without warning meant there’d been more trouble.
“I gotta go.”
“Get rid of him. We’re going for pizza after the game.”
I can’t... I m sorry.
“Get out. Get out.” Frank grabbed her hand. Helen pulled away and hurried toward the driveway.
Eddie’s van was black with smoked-glass windows, a little beat up, and consequently as ordinary as the thousands of vans that plied the outer boroughs and suburbs. Even the beefed-up tires to support its bombproofing looked like last winter’s snow tires. She spotted a second van Uncle Frank hadn’t noticed, and, parked at a distance, a car with three guys who looked like federal agents.
Behind her she heard Rudy connect with the sharp crack of a solid base hit. The little crowd cheered and she wanted to turn around and see how he did. But Pauly, her brother’s bodyguard, seemed very nervous; he gunned the engine and popped open a door for her. She got in and they started to roll.
Her brother, Eddie “the Cop” Rizzolo, was a s
trapping man in his thirties with fine jet hair and an open, sensual face swelled by food and wine. Physically he looked like a bigger, younger version of their father, but he had neither the shrewd intelligence nor the ambition that made Eddie Senior a leader—had made him a leader, she reminded herself. Those days were gone.
Eddie’s ordinary-looking van was luxuriously appointed, with leather seats, a bar, a TV, and a partition between the passenger compartment and the driver. He put down his Johnnie Walker Black, pulled her close with a kiss on the cheek, and turned up the sound on the Cable News.
“Just in time for the bullshit. President’s Commission on Organized Crime.”
“What’s wrong? Why’d you come up here?”
“Catch this first.”
“What happened?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute. Look at this.”
She and her brothers had already concluded that the Commission’s witnesses were way out of it; they described the past while the Federal Organized Crime Strikeforce was breaking down doors in the present. The camera panned the men and women at the periwinkle-blue tables while the chairman closed the hearing and thanked them for their work. They looked like they thought they should look, serious—all but a smiling blond guy in front who seemed familiar.
She tapped the screen with a red nail. “Who’s that?”
“Taggart. The builder.”
“Taglione’s brother?”
“That’s him. You musta seen him at the trial.”
She said nothing, but she had seen him long before her father’s trial. In fact, he’d never been at the trial. The camera cut back to the chairman, who scheduled the next hearing in Atlantic City. Eddie laughed, flipping it off. “So next month they’ll get laid and play craps.”
“Hey, you’re white as a ghost. Are you okay?”
Eddie raised the hand he’d been hiding. It was pillowed to his elbow in an enormous gauze bandage.
“Oh, my God! Eddie.”
“Fucking Cirillos sent some blacks to hit one of our numbers on Knickerbocker. Too bad for me I was there. Blew my fingers off. Two of’em.”
She stared at the bandage, her stomach churning.
“No big deal. I’m checking out who did it.”
“That’s why there’s Feds in the car behind us.”