Forced Out

by Stephen Frey

Nobody could confirm that Treviso had been behind the ghastly delivery. But when you asked him about it, he smiled in a way that he didn’t smile when you asked him about anything else. In a self-satisfied, wicked way that convinced you he knew a lot more about that severed head than he was letting on.

  Johnny knocked again. As hard as he could this time.

  “Who is it?”

  The hesitant, muffled voice was coming from someone who was standing well back from the door. So Treviso was worried that whoever was knocking might blow a couple of shotgun shells into the apartment. “Johnny Bondano.”

  “I never heard of no Johnny Bondano.”

  Which was crap. Just a ruse to try to throw whoever Treviso thought might really be knocking on his door off the scent. Johnny and Treviso had been together several times. The last time only a few weeks ago at a bar in Staten Island near where he’d killed the Capelletti guy. That was when he’d personally asked Treviso about killing the guy and sending the hacked-off head to the wife. When he’d seen for himself that strange smile skid across Treviso’s thin face. When he’d felt the eerie chill run up his spine for himself.

  He’d realized then that while most of the time Treviso was incapable of as much as setting a mousetrap, somewhere beneath the guy’s pasty, pale exterior lurked a psychopathic switch that could turn Timid Tony into a man the devil would call a friend.

  “It’s the Deuce, Tony.” Johnny tried to make his voice sound friendly—which wasn’t easy. “I just want to talk to you, I just want to have a conversation.” Marconi might get pissed if he found out about this meeting. He might not accept Johnny’s excuse that he was simply questioning Treviso in another attempt to pick up Kyle McLean’s trail. After all, if Treviso had any inkling of where McLean was, he would have tried to find McLean himself to get the hundred grand back. But Johnny couldn’t just throw out his code. He’d decided that at the cemetery yesterday as he’d run his fingers over Karen’s chiseled name. “Now open up. Nothing’s gonna happen.”

  The door cracked a sliver. “I don’t see nobody out there.”

  Johnny moved in front of the door and held his hands out to show Treviso he wasn’t holding a gun. He could see the chain inside extending taut across the narrow opening. But nothing else. “How about now?”

  The door shut quickly, then opened wide and Treviso stuck his head into the hallway. Like a frightened rabbit poking his head out of his hole. He checked in both directions, then beckoned for Johnny to come in. “How are you, Deuce, how are you? Jeez, I’m sorry about all that, but I gotta be careful, you know? You can never be too careful in this business.”

  Tony Treviso was a funny-looking guy. In his late twenties, he was an inch taller than Johnny but rail-skinny. Like he never ate. Or puked it all back up every time he did. He had thinning brown hair he wore slicked straight back without a part, a long nose, buckteeth, and a large black mole on his neck. He wore a food-stained tank-top T-shirt that was way too big and hung in sagging waves over his sunken chest like a flag on a windless day, exposing a patch of dark hair directly between his tiny pink nipples. And a pair of jeans that bunched together at his waist beneath an old black belt with a large silver buckle.

  “Yeah, sure. Everybody’s always gotta be careful in our business.” As they shook hands, Johnny felt perspiration on Treviso’s palm. “Samatta with you?” He knew what was wrong. “You okay?”

  “What? Oh, oooh.” Treviso held up his hand when Johnny nodded at it, then smiled nervously. “Well, it’s not like I get a visit from Deuce Bondano at seven-thirty in the morning every morning. Kinda made me wonder what was up. Kinda made me nervous,” Treviso admitted. “Know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Everybody greeted Johnny like this nowadays. Like he was the black plague and they couldn’t wait for him to get up on his horse and ride right out of town. Like they were ready to turn and sprint wildly the other way if he so much as reached into his jacket for his wallet. He didn’t have any friends anymore thanks to his reputation. Not any real friends anyway, no one he could confide in. He stuck his chin out. It was fine. He’d gotten used to working alone. And to living alone. It didn’t bother him anymore.

  Except after a few drinks. Then he started wishing he had someone to care about, someone to love. And if he had too many drinks, he’d start thinking about Karen. So he didn’t drink much anymore.

  “Yeah, sure,” Johnny muttered again, touching his shirt and the two of hearts in the pocket. He heard a baby wailing somewhere in the back of the sparsely furnished apartment as he followed Treviso into the cramped kitchen. “You mind me coming here or something?”

  “Of course not. Hey, mio casa, tuo casa.” Treviso gestured toward a small round table beneath a window with dirty panes. The day’s first rays were doing their best to fight their way through the grime. “Sit down. Please. Let’s talk.”

  It was amazing how people feared him these days. Treviso was scared for his life right now despite the resident evil buried inside his soul. Johnny could see it plainly in the thin man’s expression. And the beads of sweat lining Treviso’s hairline were growing larger by the second. Pretty soon a couple of them were going to cascade down his forehead over his narrow eyebrows like tiny waterfalls and embarrass the hell out of him if he didn’t do something quick.

  “How about some coffee, Deuce?” Treviso asked. He picked up a paper napkin from a plastic holder in the middle of the table and wiped the perspiration away. “Or some water? Anything?”

  “Nah.”

  A young woman balancing a toddler on her hip walked through the doorway on the other side of the kitchen, over by the refrigerator. If she was Treviso’s wife, she was prettier than Johnny had expected. Much prettier. A prize, for Christ’s sake. The goddamn trophy wife of a Fortune 500 executive. Not the wife of some two-bit Queens hustler. She was petite and exotic with beautiful olive skin and stark, jet-black hair that fell to her bare shoulders. The toddler had a clump of her hair in his cute, tiny fist and he was looking at it inquisitively as he babbled incoherent syllables.

  Johnny caught the young woman’s gaze for a moment, looked away, then quickly looked back again. “I’m fine,” he said, his throat suddenly as dry as a perfect martini.

  “Deuce, this is my wife, Karen.”

  Karen. Somehow he’d known that was going to be her name even before Treviso said it. God sure played some nasty jokes on his flock every once in a while, and this morning it was his turn to be the wool in the crosshairs. Karen. Jesus. Why couldn’t it have been anything but Karen?

  “Karen, this is Johnny Bondano. But we all call him Deuce. He’s a business associate of mine.”

  She held out her hand. “Hi, Johnny.”

  For some reason he liked that she called him Johnny, not Deuce. Reluctantly, he took her slim fingers in his, summoning up his courage to gaze into those big brown eyes again. They were surrounded by long, curved lashes, and inside those lashes he saw the same intense curiosity he knew was in his eyes. Sometimes it happened this way. Sometimes two people were attracted to each other right off the bat and there was nothing either of them could do about it. Something nature had predestined, and that was that.

  “It’s nice to meet you.”

  Her soft voice was mesmerizing and her beautiful eyes expressive. “Nice to meet you, too.”

  “Why do they call you Deuce?” she asked, seeming to hold on to his fingers a moment longer than she should have.

  “He carries a two of hearts in his pocket all the time,” Treviso explained.

  “Why?”

  “Don’t bother asking, honey,” Treviso cautioned, easing into one of the kitchen chairs. “He won’t answer. He’s never told anyone. And I doubt today’s gonna be the day he breaks his silence.”

  Johnny’s shoulders sagged slightly, glad Treviso had laid out the ground rules. Even if the explanation had been laced with sarcasm. He hadn’t wanted to seem rude.

  “Maybe he’ll tell me,” she said, fina
lly letting go.

  Johnny’s jaw clenched involuntarily, and he touched the card in his shirt pocket again. He didn’t want to disappoint her, but he couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t break the bond. “Sorry.”

  “Maybe someday.”

  Johnny glanced at the toddler, then back at Karen, gazing into those mahogany eyes once more. She was talking to him through them; he could feel it. “Maybe.”

  “I doubt it,” Treviso said loudly. “Johnny doesn’t get this far out into Brooklyn very often. Do you, Deuce?”

  It was a warning, plain and simple. Don’t ever come near my wife when I’m not around. And it irritated Johnny. Treviso was in no position to threaten, even if it did have to do with his wife. “You never know,” he said evenly. It was a stupid thing to say. There was no reason to get Treviso suspicious, but he couldn’t help himself. The machismo had popped up out of nowhere, and he’d been unable to control it.

  “Give us some privacy, will you, sweetie?” Treviso lit up a Camel no-filter he’d pulled from a half-full pack lying on the table beside the napkin holder. “We gotta talk business.”

  Karen moved to the refrigerator, leaned down, and pulled a jar of baby food off the shelf above the fruit drawer, then headed out the same doorway she’d come through. When she was far enough down the hallway that Treviso couldn’t see her, she hesitated and looked back over her shoulder, locking eyes with Johnny for several seconds.

  Johnny stared back, admiring the outline of her slim frame beneath the thin material of the strapless sundress. Unable to pry his gaze from her until she moved off when the baby started crying.

  “Karen’s a pretty girl, huh, Deuce?”

  Johnny’s eyes snapped to Treviso’s. “Yeah, sure. Real pretty.” Had Treviso known he was staring at her? Had Treviso picked up on the implication that he might drop in on Karen when she was here alone? “You know.” He tried to say it like he wasn’t really thinking about it. Like he was saying what anyone would say.

  “A lot of people can’t believe it when they see her, Deuce. They tell me I married way over my head.” Treviso took a long drag off the cigarette, then tapped it on a glass ashtray sitting on the windowsill. “I say it’s the other way around. I say she married way over her head. Her whole family’s on welfare, for Christ’s sake. She’s living the dream now.”

  Johnny’s eyes flickered around the cramped kitchen. “Yeah, the dream. Put out the cigarette, Tony. I don’t like the smoke, especially this early in the morning.” He really didn’t like cigarette smoke, but he’d said it for another reason, too. Making Treviso put out the cigarette was a quick way of asserting dominance. “Now.”

  “What? Oh, sure.”

  Johnny waited until Treviso had tamped the burning end down into the ashtray before speaking. “Tell me about that thing that happened outside Marconi’s house a couple of years ago.” A thin column of white smoke rose toward the ceiling from the still-smoldering cigarette.

  “What thing?”

  “You know what thing.” Johnny studied Treviso’s face carefully, searching for the truth. “When his grandson was killed.”

  “Oh, that thing.”

  “Yeah, yeah. That thing. Tell me about it.”

  “What do you wanna know?”

  “What happened?” It was obvious Treviso was stalling. Clearly he didn’t want to talk about this, and he was trying like hell to figure out how not to. Marconi had told Johnny not to make any judgments, but that was impossible. He had to know what really happened. “Exactly what happened.”

  Tony leaned back and put his hands behind his head. “There’s not much to tell, Deuce. A guy I loaned a lot of money to was way behind on his schedule. He lived close to there, close to Marconi’s place in Queens. I was meeting Marconi to talk to him about something else anyway, so I told the guy to meet me there. I wanted to talk to him before I went in to see Marconi. Kill two birds with one stone while I was all the way up there in Queens.”

  “Kyle McLean, right? That was the guy’s name?”

  Treviso gazed at Johnny for a few moments, like now he was searching. Like his antennae had suddenly sprung up. “Yeah, I think that was his name. Why you so interested, Deuce?”

  “Tell me about this McLean guy.”

  “What’s there to tell?”

  Johnny took a deep breath. He wasn’t a man blessed with a reservoir of patience. “Look, pal, you know I only work for one man in the family. I’m here as a personal favor to him. This isn’t a family council deal. Now I want answers, I want your cooperation. I’d hate to tell Mr. Marconi that you wouldn’t give me that.” Johnny leaned back, exposing the butt end of his favorite pistol sticking out of the shoulder holster. He saw Treviso’s eyes flicker down to the gun, watched them linger there for a few moments. “Come on, Tony. Stop fucking around.”

  Treviso nodded solemnly. “Yeah, okay.” His voice was barely audible. “But can you at least tell me why you’re here first? What Marconi wants to know?”

  “Look, here’s the…uh, here’s the—” Johnny did a subtle double take as he stuttered. Karen was standing in the hallway outside the kitchen again, where Treviso couldn’t see her. She was gazing straight at him with those incredible eyes, sending a message to him without actually saying a word. God, she was beautiful.

  “What’s the problem, Deuce?” Treviso wanted to know. “You all right? Hey! Deuce!”

  13

  JACK PULLED THE covers over his head to shield his eyes from the blinding light suddenly streaming into his bedroom. It was as if the sun were right outside the house. “What the hell’s going on?” he grumbled.

  “Time to get up, Daddy,” Cheryl announced cheerfully, moving to the room’s other window. “It’s after seven-thirty, and it’s a beautiful day. The calendar in the kitchen says you’ve got to be at work by eight. We both need to get going,” she said as she raised the blind.

  He sneaked a peek from beneath the covers, and he was instantly sorry he had. Now it was like two suns shining directly on him. He groaned. His head was killing him. He’d stayed at the Dugout last night until closing—until two in the morning—trying to get information about the kid out of the bartender. The guy hadn’t said much, and when it was obvious he wasn’t going to say any more and that he was getting suspicious, Jack turned his attention to a scotch bottle. Regaling the bartender with his Yankee glory days as he drank.

  He cursed under his breath, realizing how pathetic he must have sounded going on and on about how he’d personally discovered some of the team’s big names. It was true, but there was no need to brag about it.

  God, he hated how alcohol did that to him. How it made him feel like he could spout off about himself to people he didn’t even know and that they were actually interested. He was like that more and more the older he got, too. Like he was some flea-bitten old lion who still needed to hear himself roar every once in a while to convince himself he was still worth something. And people let him do it only because they felt sorry for him—or they wanted a good tip.

  “I’m gonna call in sick today,” he muttered, pulling the covers down slowly, squinting to let his eyes grow accustomed to the brightness. About the only thing happening for him at the store today was getting fired. He could face the music, all right; he had no problem with that. But he didn’t want to do it with a migraine. He might go off on Ned, the store manager, and that wouldn’t be pretty. No; he’d go in tomorrow to get the bad news. Besides, he was going to try for a new job today anyway. The hell with bagging groceries. “My throat’s sore. I’m coming down with something.”

  “You’re hung over, Daddy. That’s all. You never get sick. You never missed a day in thirty-four years with the Yankees. Now get up. Come on.”

  “Please don’t do this to me,” he begged.

  Cheryl sat down on the edge of the bed. “Where’d you go last night?”

  “I told you. I met some guys at the store last week. We all went out to—”

  “You didn’t go out to di
nner with anybody last night, Daddy. Don’t lie to me.”

  She knew him so well. “Okay, I went back out to the stadium to watch the kid,” he admitted.

  “I knew it,” she said triumphantly “Why didn’t you just tell me that was where you were going?”

  “I didn’t want your boyfriend tagging along. I didn’t want to have to act all fake and play that stupid pitch speed game with him again.” He reached for a glass of water on the nightstand. Cheryl must have brought it in because he couldn’t remember getting it. Of course, he couldn’t remember a whole lot about last night after leaving the bar. “Speaking of my favorite person, is he still here?” Bobby’s SUV had been parked in front of the house when he got home. At least he remembered that much. He chuckled, remembering something else, too. Old habits died hard.

  “No; he’s gone.”

  “How late did he stay?”

  Cheryl set her jaw defiantly. “All night. He left about a half hour ago.”

  Jack rose up on one elbow. “I don’t remember giving you permission for him to stay over.”

  “I don’t remember needing permission.”

  “Yeah, well, I make the rules around here,” Jack grumbled. “You want to live under my roof, you abide by them.”

  “You may have made most of the down payment by selling your rings, Daddy, but I’ve paid most of the mortgage since we moved in.”

  “Still.”

  “And besides, who says I really want to live under the same roof with you anyway?” she snapped.

  “Fine, then leave.”

  “Fine, maybe I will.”

  They gazed at each other intently for a few moments, neither one blinking.

  Finally, Jack put the glass down on the nightstand and eased off his elbow until he was flat on his back, staring at the ceiling. “Christ.” There was no way he was winning this argument, and they both knew it. “Next thing I know Bobby’ll be moving in.”

  “So, how did the kid play last night?” Cheryl asked, starting to stand up, her voice still on edge.

  “Not very well.” Jack hesitated, appreciating the fact that she wasn’t lingering on her small victory. “I tried to talk to him after the game, but the conversation only lasted about three minutes. It was weird.”