Having decided all this, Frankie then concluded that there would be no real harm in going by Meagan’s Bar and having a couple of drinks, and maybe letting Tim McCarthy see that he was walking around with a couple, three, hundred-dollar bills snuggled up in his wallet. Not to mention letting Tim see that he was walking around not giving a tiny fuck that detectives were asking questions about him.
And who knows, there just might be some bored wife in there looking for a little action from some real man. Tim, and if not Tim, then ol’ diarrhea mouth himself, Sonny Boyle, were talking about him to people, telling people not to let it get around, but that cops was asking about Frankie Foley. Tim and Sonny would be passing that word around, that was for damn sure, you could bet on it.
Women like dangerous men. Frankie had read that someplace. He thought it was probably true.
Frankie got home from Wanamaker’s warehouse a couple of minutes after six. He grabbed a quick shower, put on the two-tone jacket and a clean sports shirt, told his mother he’d catch supper some other place, he had business to do, and walked into Meagan’s Bar at ten minutes to seven.
He really would have liked to have had a couple of shooters, maybe a jigger glass of Seagram’s-7 dropped into a draft Ortleib’s, but he thought better of it and ordered just the beer.
Not that he was afraid of running off at the mouth or something, but rather that there maybe just might be some bored wife in there looking for a little action-you never could tell, he thought maybe he was on a roll-and if that happened, he didn’t want to be half shitfaced and ruin the opportunity.
He paid for the Ortleib’s with one of the three hundred-dollar bills he’d put in his wallet, told Tim to have a little something with him, and when Tim made him his change, just left it there on the bar, like he didn’t give a shit about it, there was more where that come from.
He was just about finished with the Ortleib’s, and looking for Tim to order another, when somebody yelled at Tim:
“Hey, Tim, we need a couple of drinks down here. And give Frankie another of whatever he’s having.”
At the end of the bar, where it right-angled to the wall by the door, were two guys. Guineas, they looked like, wearing shirts and ties and suits. That was strange, you didn’t see guineas that often in Meagan’s. The guineas had their bars and the Irish had theirs.
But these guys had apparently been in here before. They knew Tim’s name, and Tim called back, “Johnnie Walker, right?” which meant he knew them well enough to remember what they drank.
“Johnnie Black, if you got it,” one of the guineas called back. “And, what the hell, give Frankie one, too.”
What the hell is this all about? Frankie wondered. What the hell, a couple of guineas playing big shot. They’re always doing that kind of shit. Something in their blood, maybe.
Tim served the drinks, first to the guineas, and then carried another Ortleib’s and the bottle of Johnnie Walker and a shot glass to where Frankie sat.
“You want a chaser with that, or what?” Tim asked as he filled the shot glass with scotch.
“The beer’s fine,” Frankie said.
He raised the shot glass to his lips and took a sip and looked at the guineas and waved his hand.
One of the guineas came down the bar.
“How are you, Frankie?” he said, putting out his hand. “The scotch all right? I didn’t think to ask did you like scotch.”
“Fine. Thanks. Do I know you?”
“I dunno. Do you? My name is Joey Fatalgio.”
“Don’t think I’ve had the pleasure,” Frankie said.
They shook hands.
“I know who you are, of course,” Joey Fatalgio said, and winked.
What the fuck is with the wink? This guy don’t look like no fag.
“I come in here every once in a while,” Frankie said.
“And maybe I seen you at the Inferno,” Fatalgio said. “Me and my brother-Dominic-that’s him down there, we go in there from time to time.”
“Yeah, maybe I seen you in the Inferno,” Frankie said. “I hang out there sometimes. And I’m thinking of going to work there.”
“Hey, Dominic!” Joey Fatalgio called to his brother. “Bring your glass down here and say hello to Frankie Foley.”
Dominic hoisted himself off his stool and made his way down the bar.
“Frankie, Dominic,” Joey made the introductions, “Dominic, Frankie.”
“How the hell are you, Frankie?” Dominic said. “A pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Frankie said.
“Frankie was just telling me he’s thinking of going to work at the Inferno,” Joey said.
“Going to work? The way I heard it, he already did the job at the Inferno,” Dominic said, and he winked at Frankie.
Frankie felt a little nervous.
There were guineas on the cops. Are these two cops?
“Shut the fuck up, for Christ’s sake, Dominic,” Joey Fatalgio said. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?” He turned to Frankie. “You should excuse him, Frankie. Sometimes he gets stupid.”
“Fuck you, Joey,” Dominic said.
“There are places you talk about certain things, asshole,” Joey said, “and places you don’t, and this is one of the places you don’t. Right, Frankie?”
“Right,” Frankie agreed.
“No offense, Frankie,” Dominic said.
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” Frankie said.
“He don’t mean no harm, but sometimes he’s stupid,” Joey said.
“Fuck you, Joey, who do you think you are, Einstein or somebody?”
“Where do you guys work?” Frankie said, both to change the subject-Dominic looked like he was getting pissed at the way his brother was talking to him-and to see what they would say. He didn’t think they were cops, but you never really could tell.
“We’re drivers,” Joey said.
“Truck drivers?”
“I’m a people driver,” Joey said. “Asshole here is a stiff driver.”
“Huh?”
Joey reached in his wallet and produced a business card, and gave it to Frankie. It was for some company called Classic Livery, Inc., with an address in South Philly, and “Joseph T. Fatalgio, Jr.” printed on the bottom.
“What’s a livery?” Frankie asked.
“It goes back to horses,” Joey explained. “Remember in the cowboy movies where Roy Rogers would park his horse in the livery stables?”
“Yeah,” Frankie said, remembering. “I do.”
“I think it used to mean ‘horses for hire’ or something like that,” Dominic said. “Now it means limousines.”
“Limousines?”
“Yeah. Limousines. Mostly for funerals, but if you want a limousine to get married in, we got white ones. We even got a white Rolls-Royce.”
“No shit?”
“Costs a fucking fortune, but you’d be surprised how often it gets rented,” Dominic went on.
“Most of our business is funeral homes,” Joey said. “Only the bride, usually, gets a limousine ride for a wedding. But if you don’t get to follow the casket to the cemetery in a limousine for a funeral, people will think you’re the family black sheep.”
“I guess that’s so,” Frankie agreed, and then started to hand the Classic Livery business card back to Joey.
Joey held up his hand to stop him.
“Keep it,” he said. “You may need a limousine someday.”
“Yeah,” Dominic said. “And they’ll probably give you a professional discount.”
Joey laughed in delight.
“I told you shut up, asshole,” he said.
“A professional discount for what?” Frankie asked, overwhelmed by curiosity.
“Shit, you know what for. Increasing business,” Dominic said.
Joey laughed.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Frankie said.
“Right,” Joey said, and laughed, and winked.
“Yeah, r
ight,” Dominic said.
“Actually, Frankie, that’s sort of the reason we’re here.”
“What is?” Frankie asked.
“What you don’t know we’re talking about,” Joey said softly, moving so close to Frankie that Frankie could smell his cologne. “Frankie, there’s a fellow we know wants to talk to you.”
“Talk to me about what?”
Joey winked at Frankie.
“I don’t know,” Joey said. “But what I do know about this fellow is that he admires a job well done.”
“He’s done a job or two himself,” Dominic said. “If you know what I mean.”
“He already told you he don’t know what you’re talking about, asshole,” Joey said.
“Right,” Dominic said.
“What this fellow we know wants to talk to you about, Frankie,” Joey said, “is a job.”
“What kind of a job?”
“Let’s say a job where you could make in an hour about ten times what you make in a month pushing furniture around the Wanamaker’s warehouse.”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s say this fellow we know has a sort of professional admiration for the way you did your last job, and we both know I’m not talking about throwing furniture on the back of some truck.”
“Who is this guy?”
“He’s like you, Frankie, he likes to sort of maintain a low profile, you know what I mean. Have a sort of public job, and then have another job, like a part-time job, every once in a while, a job that not a hell of a lot of other people can do, you know what I mean.”
“Why does he want to talk to me?” Frankie asked.
“Sometimes, what I understand, with his full-time job, he can handle a part-time job, too, when one comes along. But sometimes, you know what I mean, more than one part-time job comes along. Actually, in this case, what I understand is that there’s three, four part-time jobs come along, and this fellow can’t handle all of them himself. I mean, you’d have to keep your mouth shut-you can keep your mouth shut, can’t you, Frankie?”
“Like a fucking clam,” Frankie said.
“I figured you could, a fellow in the part-time job business like you would have to keep his mouth shut. What I’m saying here, Frankie, is that you would be like a subcontractor. I mean, you come to some financial understanding with this fellow, you do the job, and the whole thing would be between you two. I mean, the people who hired him for the particular part-time job I think this fellow has in mind wouldn’t ever find out that this fellow subcontracted it. They might not like that. I mean, they pay this fellow the kind of money they pay, they expect him to do the job himself, not subcontract it. But what they don’t know can’t hurt them, right?”
“Right,” Frankie said.
“So maybe you would be willing to talk to this fellow, Frankie?” Dominic asked. “I mean, he’d appreciate it. And if you can’t come to some sort of mutually satisfactory arrangement, then you walk away, right? No hard feelings. You’d lose nothing, and it might be in your mutual interest to get to know this fellow. You never know what will happen next week.”
“What the hell,” Frankie said. “Why not?”
Frankie had never seen so many Cadillacs in one place in his life as there were lined up in the garage of Classic Livery, Inc.
He thought there must be maybe a hundred of them, most of them black limousines. There were also a dozen Cadillac hearses, and that many or more flower cars. Plus a whole line of regular Cadillacs and Lincolns, and he saw the white Rolls-Royce Dominic had told him they had.
The floor of the garage was all wet. Frankie decided that they washed the limousines every day, and had probably just finished washing the cars that had been used.
He had never really thought about where the limousines at weddings and funerals had come from, but now he could understand that it must be a pretty good business to be in.
I wonder what they charge for a limousine at a funeral. Probably at least a hundred dollars. And they could probably use the same limousine for more than one funeral in a day. Maybe even more than two. Say a funeral at nine o’clock, and another at eleven, and then at say half past one, and one at say four o’clock.
That’s four hundred bucks a day per limousine!
Jesus Christ, somebody around here must be getting rich, even if they had to pay whatever the fuck it costs, thirty thousand bucks or whatever for a limousine. Four hundred bucks a day times five days is two fucking grand a fucking week! After fifteen weeks, you got your money for the limousine back, and all you have to do after that is pay the driver and the gas. How long will a limousine last? Two, three years at least…
Joey Fatalgio stopped the regular Cadillac he had parked around the corner from Meagan’s Bar, and pointed out the window.
“Through that door, Frankie, the one what says ‘No Admittance.’ You’ll understand that this fellow wants to talk to you alone.”
“Yeah, sure,” Frankie said.
“I’ll go park this and get a cup of coffee or something, and when you’re finished, I’ll take you back to Meagan’s. OK?”
“Fine,” Frankie said.
He got out of the car and walked to the door and knocked on it.
“Come in!” a voice said.
Frankie opened the door.
A large, olive-skinned man in a really classy suit was inside, leaning up against what looked like the garage manager’s desk.
He looked at Frankie, looked good, up and down, for a good fifteen seconds.
“No names, right?” he said. “You’re Mr. Smith and I’m Mr. Jones, right?”
“Right, Mr. Jones,” Frankie said.
Jones, my ass. This is Paulo Cassandro. I seen his picture in the papers just a couple of days ago. The cops arrested him for running some big-time whore ring, and bribing some fucking cop captain.
“Thank you for coming to see me, Mr. Smith,” Cassandro said.
“Don’t mention it, Mr. Jones.”
“Look, you’ll understand, Mr. Smith, that what you hear about something isn’t always what really happened,” Cassandro said. “I mean, I understand that you would be reluctant to talk about a job. But on the other hand, for one thing, nobody’s going to hear a thing that’s said in here but you and me, and from what I hear we’re in the same line of business, and for another, you’ll understand that, with what I’ve got riding on this, I have to be damned sure I’m not dealing with no amateur.”
“I know what you mean, Mr. Jones,” Frankie said.
“You want to check me, or the room, for a wire, I’ll understand, Mr. Smith. I’ll take no offense.”
Jesus Christ, I didn’t even think about some sonofabitch recording this!
“No need to do that,” Frankie said, feeling quite sophisticated about it. “I trust you.”
“That’s good. I appreciate that trust. In our line of work, trust is important. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah.”
“So tell me about the job you did on Atchison and Marcuzzi.”
And Frankie Foley did, in great detail. From time to time, Mr. Cassandro asked a question to clarify a point, but most of the time during Frankie’s recitation he just nodded his head in what Frankie chose to think was professional approval.
“In other words, you think it was a good, clean job, with no problems?”
“Yeah, I’d say that, Mr. Jones.”
“You wouldn’t take offense if I pointed out a couple of things to you? A couple of mistakes I think you made?”
“Not at all,” Frankie said.
“Well, the first mistake you made, you fucking slimeball, was thinking you’re a tough guy,” Paulo Cassandro said.
He pushed himself off the desk and walked to the door and opened it.
Joey and Dominic Fatalgio came into the office.
“Break the fingers on his left hand,” Paulo Cassandro ordered.
“What?” Frankie asked.
Joey wrapped his arms around Frankie, pinning his arms to h
is sides. Dominic pulled the fingers of Joey’s left hand back. Frankie screamed, and then a moment later screamed much louder as the joints and knuckles were either separated from their joints or the finger bones broken or both.
“Oh, please, Mr. Cassandro,” Frankie howled. “For Christ’s sake!”
“That was another mistake,” Paulo said, and punched Frankie in the face while holding a heavy cast-metal stapler in his hand.
“You never seen me in your life, you understand that, asshole?” Mr. Cassandro said.
Frankie now had his left hand under his right arm. When he opened his mouth to reply, he spit out two teeth. His whole arm seemed to be on fire. He wondered if he was going to faint.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“One of the mistakes you made, you pasty-faced Irish cocksucker, was going around saying untrue things, letting people think, telling people, that you were working for some Italian mob. For one thing, there is no mob, and if there was, there wouldn’t be no stupid fucking Irish shit-asses in it. The Italians in Philadelphia are law-abiding businessmen like me. You insulted me. Worse, you insulted my mother and my father when you started spreading bullshit like that around. You understand that, you fucking Mick?”
Frankie nodded his head to indicate that he was willing to grant the point Mr. Cassandro had just made.
Mr. Cassandro struck Mr. Foley again with the heavy cast-metal stapler, this time higher on the face, so that the skin above Mr. Foley’s eye was cut open, and he could no longer see out of his left eye.
“Say ‘Yes, sir,’ you fucking Mick scumbag!”
“Yes, sir,” Mr. Foley said.
Mr. Cassandro, with surprising grace of movement, then kicked Mr. Foley in the genital area.
Mr. Foley fell to the floor screaming faintly, but in obvious agony.
Mr. Cassandro watched him contemptuously for a full minute.
“Stop whining, you Irish motherfucker,” he said conversationally, “and stand up, or I’ll really give you something to cry about.”
With some difficulty, Mr. Foley regained his feet. He had great difficulty becoming erect, because of the pain in his groin, and because his entire right side now seemed to be shuddering with pain.
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