“That the Titan guy?”
Nathan was a Mahler aficionado and had been schooling the boy on classical music between baseball discussions and episodes of the Partridge Family.
“Yes,” he said, “the Titan guy. We’re doing Mahler’s First the night of the game in fact.”
Jack was reading the small print on the back of the ticket. “This is great,” he said. “I can’t wait to tell my dad.”
“Which you should do as soon as possible so he can make plans,” Nathan said. Then he reached out and took the tickets back. “In the meantime, finish eating so I can take you to camp. I’ll put these on your dresser in your room, okay?”
The boy was still staring at the tickets.
Nathan pointed to Jack’s cereal.
“Oh, right,” the boy said, then dipped his spoon back into his cereal bowl.
Nathan enjoyed the boy’s enthusiasm and was happy the kid would leave the house feeling good about something. His mother wasn’t a morning person, as she described it, and was often nasty when she took her son to camp. It was the reason Nathan often volunteered to take him instead.
The drive to Long Island was quick. Nathan was back a little before ten. He found his wife in the kitchen having her first cup of coffee.
“He could’ve cleaned his cereal bowl,” said Nancy, rather than good morning.
“We were in a rush,” Nathan said.
“He make it to camp on time?”
“Barely, but yes.”
Nathan joined her at the table. He smiled and received a frown in return.
“You have rehearsals today?” she asked.
“No, actually. I’ll play some in the basement a little later, but no rehearsals. I can pick up Jack if you want.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
Nathan had the day off and was thinking they might go to a movie while Jack was at camp. He asked her, but Nancy waved the suggestion off.
“I don’t have time for movies,” she said. “I’m going to the doctor’s at one, why I’m up so damn early.” She stopped to sip her coffee. “And I have a three o’clock appointment at the beautician. Maybe tomorrow if you’re free.”
“It’ll have to be early,” Nathan said. “I have rehearsal tomorrow afternoon.”
“Well, I can’t help that, can I?”
“No,” Nathan said. “I suppose not.”
Nancy got up from the table to rinse her cup out in the sink. She set it in the drain board afterward, then looked up at the clock on the wall above the kitchen doorway. “I have to shower and fix myself before I leave,” she said. “Please don’t play until I’m gone. In case the phone rings.”
“Right,” said Nathan obediently as his wife headed upstairs. He wondered where she really would spend the day and with whom. Their marriage had turned into a sham. He was sure she was seeing someone else and had been playing him for a fool since they were married.
Nancy had first introduced herself at her son’s school when Nathan and a few of his Philharmonic colleagues had played a benefit for the music department. She had been pretty and confident and he had been lonely. It was during the Philharmonic season they began dating. He’d been single until then and had saved enough to buy the house they now lived in.
After two-plus years of marriage Nathan was well aware that Nancy Kirsk-Albano had hooked a fish when he proposed to her almost three years ago. Except for his relationship with her son, it had been a mistake to have ever spoken to her.
Divorce was on his mind when the phone rang. He answered and the caller hung up.
* * * *
John woke up and found he was staring at his alarm clock. He’d forgotten to set it before falling to sleep. It was nine-fifteen. He had a few minutes to spare and closed his eyes again. He’d been dreaming, but couldn’t recall what, except he was sure that a woman dressed in white was Melinda.
He took a shower and dressed and was about to head down to the local deli for an egg sandwich and coffee when he thought to call his ex-wife and confirm his son’s schedule for the rest of the week. Little Jack was attending summer camp Monday through Friday. Some days the kid was home earlier than others. John hoped to spend some time with his son tonight.
The other thing John wanted to do today was find a way around Nick Santorra at the Brooklyn bar. The guy had become unbearable; between his loud mouth, his threats and last night’s phone call, it was only a matter of time before the punk pushed the wrong button and John lost control. The repercussions from hitting Santorra wouldn’t make his life any easier. Either he found a way to avoid dealing with the loudmouth or he found another weekend job.
He plugged the phone back in and it rang before he picked up the receiver. It was a local builder he had worked construction for in the past. Two of his men had left the builder in the lurch for union work in the city. He offered John ten dollars an hour off the books for the rest of the week. John accepted, then wondered if maybe his luck was changing.
He needed to get to Bay Ridge as soon as possible and forgot about calling Nancy. He made it to the construction site, a row of attached homes a few blocks from Shore Road, within half an hour. He spent the bulk of the day putting up sheetrock with a guy from New Jersey who had relocated to his brother’s couch in Brooklyn because of the flooding earlier in the month that had devastated the town of Bound Brook in New Jersey.
The guy’s hard luck story reminded John things could be worse.
A few hours passed and it felt good doing physical work again. He saw the homes would still need taping and kitchen cabinet installation and hoped the builder would keep him on. He guessed the job would take at least another few weeks.
His muscles were sore when he finished for the day. He was also voraciously hungry. Except for a buttered roll during a short mid-afternoon break, John hadn’t eaten all day. He drove to Coney Island and parked around the corner from Nathan’s Famous where he had two frankfurters and French fries.
Afterward, he took a long stroll on the boardwalk and was enjoying the ocean breeze until he remembered he was supposed to stop at the bar in Williamsburg. John cursed himself under his breath when he also remembered his ex-wife and son and the call he hadn’t made to them.
He did an about-face and headed back to his car. He’d have to be calm when he dealt with Nick Santorra later. John still didn’t know what it was about, his being summoned to the bar.
He inhaled the ocean air before pulling into the light traffic on Surf Avenue. As he drove past Astroland and then the Aquarium on his right, John remembered Santorra’s warning the night before.
“Just make sure you show.”
John figured he’d have to hear it again when he got there, Santorra getting all full of himself and showing off in front of the other guys at the bar. He didn’t understand it, why guys like Eddie Vento kept morons like Santorra around. He wasn’t half as tough as he acted and couldn’t be very helpful to guys who lived off their reputations. Sooner or later a guy like Santorra would have to deliver on one of his threats and John doubted the big mouth could get it done.
He turned on the radio and listened to the song about something going round in circles. It was sung in question form, asking if something would fly high like a bird up in the sky. It was a catchy tune for a little while, then it became annoying and John changed to an AM all-news station, Ten-Ten WINS.
He turned up the volume when he heard the announcer say, “...a mob rubout in Queens.”
A few minutes later John learned it was a story about his weekend predecessor in the porn film distribution business. The body of Tommy DeLuca had been found in a Queens dumpster two days ago missing both hands.
“DeLuca was believed to be an associate of the Vignieri crime family with ties to pornography,” the reporter said. “Tonight police are offering a reward to anyone with information....”
John turned the radio off.
* * * *
She had parked on 102nd Street off the corner of Jamaica Avenue a few
minutes before three o’clock. At four o’clock Nancy called home to tell Nathan she’d been delayed and wouldn’t be home until late. At five o’clock she called Louis’s apartment to see if she had missed him outside the apartment building. At five-thirty and again at five-forty-five Nancy tried his apartment buzzer, but no one answered.
At six o’clock she walked around the corner to a pizza parlor on Jamaica Avenue and bought a slice and a soda. She had been having menstrual cramps since she left the house and hadn’t eaten anything all day. Nancy had hoped to see Louis again before the bleeding started.
It had been two days since she heard from him and now she was afraid he might’ve fallen for the young one he’d been chasing lately. Holly her name was, a twenty-something blonde with small tits, a perky ass and long legs. Miss Kansas or Missouri or Arkansas, wherever the hell she was from. Nancy had seen her one time when she had followed Louis to Jones Beach earlier in the summer. The blonde had worn short cutoffs over a bright pink bikini that showed off her long legs. Nancy had been furious at the sight of Louis holding her hand.
The day after spotting them on the beach, Nancy had confronted Louis over the phone. When she asked him where he’d been the day before, Louis had lied about working.
“Really?” she had said.
“Yeah, Nan, I was working. What business is it of yours, anyway? You’re married again.”
It was something she sometimes regretted, but something she planned to change as soon as she was entitled to half of Nathan’s assets. In the meantime, she had to live with Louis having girlfriends, even ones in their early twenties.
She had been crazy for him since they first met at a beach party the night the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the New York Yankees on a ninth-inning home run by the guy with the Polish name. She remembered because Louis had bet the Yankees and couldn’t stop cursing about the guy who hit the home run, Mazooski, or something like it, his name was. She had eventually calmed Louis down with a blow job that took her nearly an hour he’d been so distracted by the bet he’d lost.
They started dating the next day and she hadn’t been able to get over him since. Her mother had called Louis poison and was probably right, but Nancy couldn’t stop herself from needing him. She knew there was no security in a relationship with Louis, emotional or financial, and had been clever enough to seek the latter from someone else. She had seized the opportunity by marrying Nathan Ackerman.
Another half hour passed before Nancy began to seethe. It had been more than three hours and she felt like a fool.
There was a bar on the corner she knew Louis sometimes frequented. She decided to wait for him there. She’d give him one more hour before she left and might even flirt a little with the bartender if he wasn’t a skank, or maybe with somebody else, so that word would get back to Louis about how his ex-wife was still a looker and why didn’t he tell them about her before.
It was seven-fifteen when Nancy stepped inside the bar. She spotted a pair of toothless wonders, a sixty-year-old lush wearing enough makeup to pass for a clown, and a couple of barely legal young men at the bar. The bartender wasn’t bad, a tall, thin, dark-haired guy with blue eyes, so she sat away from the losers and ordered a vodka tonic.
“Louis coming in tonight?” she asked when he set the drink down in front of her.
“Louis the window-cleaner?”
Nancy nodded.
“You a friend of his?”
“Sort of.”
“He didn’t say,” the bartender said. He turned toward the two younger guys at the opposite end of the bar. “Jimmy due in tonight?”
Both young ones shook their heads.
“Who’s Jimmy?” Nancy asked.
“Jimmy’s a shylock.”
“Louis’s?”
The bartender shrugged.
Nancy remembered how Louis had implied the phone calls at his apartment might’ve been from loan sharks. There was that one time when they were still married and he had come home all bloody and bruised and lied about getting jumped. She later learned a pair of goons some loan shark had sent did the damage because he owed five thousand dollars they didn’t have. She had gone to the bank the next day for a loan to pay down half his debt before they broke his legs. Apparently he still hadn’t grown up or stopped gambling and was as irresponsible as ever. On the other hand, he would need help and that had always been a guarantee that he’d come back to her.
“Anything I can do for you?” the bartender asked.
He was smiling then and Nancy could see that he too was missing teeth. She sipped some more of her drink, set down a dollar tip, and said, “Thanks, no. Just tell him Nan was here.”
Chapter 8
“There a good reason I shouldn’t have you tuned up?” Eddie Vento said.
John did his best not to avoid direct eye contact. “The guy’s been riding me,” he said. “He wouldn’t stop.”
“The guy is around somebody,” Vento said. “Me.”
Twenty minutes ago Nick Santorra had started in on John as soon as he’d stepped inside the bar upstairs. John still wasn’t sure how long it had taken before it was too much, but then it had happened and now here he was sitting before a wiseguy answering for the single punch he’d thrown.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Mr. Vento,” he said. “I apologize.”
Vento didn’t say anything. He lit a cigar instead.
What had happened was Santorra spotted John and turned to the rest of the guys sitting around the bar and said loud enough so they could all hear him, “And here he is, the late great Johnny Porno, the man too busy to show respect. The one who put all our lives on hold because he’s got better things to do. Or maybe he thinks we’re all a bunch of schmucks.”
“I was working,” John had said. “I told you I hadda work.”
“See what I mean?” Santorra said. “Fuck all of us and tough shit, too.”
“I’m here now.”
“Hear that, fellas? He’s here now.”
John was clenching his teeth trying to compose himself.
“You have some pair of balls,” Santorra went on. “Who fuckin’ cares you had to work? Not me.”
John had remained silent.
“He agrees,” Santorra said. “Johnny Porno’s got balls.”
“My name is Albano. John Albano. And I told you I hadda work.”
“Your name is whatever the fuck I call you, jerkoff.”
John had felt the muscles in his face tense.
Then Santorra said, “He had to work and bada-boom, bada-bing, fuck all of us.”
Santorra’s last crack with the dopey sound effect was what had pushed John over the edge, the bada-boom, bada-bing.
“Just you,” he’d told Santorra.
“Excuse me?”
“Fuck you,” John said. “Just you.”
Santorra had swallowed hard. His fear showed as he continued acting tougher than he was. He’d put himself in a bad position; either he put up or looked bad. What he did was turn to the other guys in the bar, but they were all waiting to see what happened next, too.
Santorra took a deep breath, wheeled on John and poked him in the chest. “Oh, yeah?” he said. “Fuck you, wiseass.”
John took the poke, but had left the trace of a smirk on his face, enough so to show he was way more amused than he was scared. He had already placed the punch in his mind, a quick right cross he’d try to place on the tip of Santorra’s jaw.
“Think you’re funny?” Santorra said in response to the smirk. He was insulted then and was forced to poke John a second time. First he said, “Take that smirk and go fuck your mother’s cunt.”
It was then John decked him.
There was a slight commotion immediately after. John was shoved against the wall by a few guys and when they let him go he could see Santorra was still splayed out on the floor, eyes closed. Then Eddie Vento came up from his basement office to see what had happened. John was brought downstairs to explain himself, except there
wasn’t much he could say.
Santorra had been pushing his buttons since they first met and tonight he’d pushed one too many. It had been tough enough taking his verbal abuse; there was no way he’d let Santorra get physical.
Now Eddie Vento reminded him of mob protocol. “You know there has to be a consequence, right? I can’t let a connected guy get banged around like that.”
John figured it was best he kept his mouth shut.
“You’re from Canarsie, right?” Vento asked.
“It’s where I grew up.”
“I’m surprised you were never scooped up by one of the crews there. Very mobbed-up, Canarsie is. I have a friend has a strong crew operates out of a bar on Flatlands Avenue, next to a funeral parlor there. I got a guy around me lives there, too. Tough Irish kid lives near the market on Foster Avenue. Name’s Tommy Burns. Know him?”
John shook his head. “No,” he said.
“Scrappy little mick,” Vento said. “And a tough cocksucker, push comes to shove. He’s stuck doing freelance cause he’s not Italian, but you, on the other hand, you are one of us.”
John didn’t like where this was heading.
“Something you should think about before you go tagging one of our own like you did upstairs tonight,” Vento said. “But, truth be told, the way you took that cop Hastings out, that was a beautiful thing we’re still enjoying around here.”
John was never more uncomfortable. He did his best not to show it.
“You didn’t know he was a cop, did you? The night you decked him, I mean.”
“Not until he showed his badge,” John said.
“I love it,” Vento said.
“And I had no idea the woman was his wife,” John said. “That was an honest mistake.”
It had been. His car had overheated and John had gone in the bar to make a telephone call. The woman had smiled at him, he had smiled back and then she waved him over when he was finished with his call. He sat at the stool alongside her, a young-looking thirty-year-old with long red hair, green eyes and pale skin. He bought her a drink and was in the process of getting her telephone number when some guy started yelling from across the room. The guy was flashing a badge and was claiming she was his wife. The woman hadn’t worn a wedding ring, nor had she mentioned she was there with her husband.
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