“What?!”
“Did her mother ever tell you Vonni was—?”
“No,” he cut me off, face so tight I could see the skull beneath the skin. “Her mother never fucking told me Vonni was anything. Just what she was...doing, like. Sometimes. Where’d that come from?”
“The stab wounds,” I said. “So many of them. The...you know, the way she was...mutilated. You’re convinced that proves it was a message to you. But nothing I’ve come up with makes that work.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” I conceded. “There’s a bunch of other stuff, stuff I can’t make anything out of yet. Or, maybe, there’s nothing to make out of it. But when the cops find a guy hacked to pieces in his apartment, the first thing comes to their minds is, did he have a boyfriend? That kind of rage...”
“Yeah, sure. And so? How’s a sixteen-year-old girl going to have that kind of...thing in her life, and nobody knows about it?”
“I think that’s true, what you just said. And I also think, if she was...anything, it wouldn’t matter—her mother would have told me. She’d love that girl if she was a mass murderer.”
He stared at me, as if his eyes could decode my words. Said, “So why’d you ask me?”
“Sometimes, a kid will tell a stran— someone she’s not close with, things they wouldn’t tell their own mother, right?”
“I told you, I never spoke to her in my whole life. Not even on the phone,” he said. A vein throbbed in his temple.
“Hi, Gio,” said the dark-eyed girl with a Bronx accent, a lot of lipstick, even more mascara, and still more hair. She looked up at him from behind the receptionist’s desk.
“Hey, Angel. How’s my girl?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “How is she?”
“Don’t be like that, baby,” Giovanni said, taking her hand and kissing it.
“Oh, don’t play with me,” she said, pouting her lips. “You’ve got so many women, I’m surprised you can remember my name.”
“I’m going to surprise you good, one of these days,” he said, smiling.
“I wish!” the girl said. “I know he’s waiting for you. Wait, I’ll go back and tell them.”
I guess she could have used the phone on her desk. But then Giovanni wouldn’t have gotten such a good look at what he’d been passing up.
“Uncle T!” Giovanni crossed the room to where the remnants of a man sat in a wheelchair, his wasted frame propped into position with carefully wedged pillows. Giovanni bent to kiss the old man. “You look a hundred percent better than the last time.”
“Who’s your friend?” the man said, his voice sandpapery but clear.
“Uncle T, this is Nick. Nick, my Uncle T.”
“I’m honored,” I said, offering my hand.
“You Irish?” the man asked.
“Me? No. Why?”
“The Irish, they got that bullshit thing down perfect. Or maybe you seen too many movies, huh? You so ‘honored.’”
“I didn’t mean to insult you,” I said tightly. “Giovanni told me you were a very important, very special man. I didn’t think he brings just anyone here to see you; that’s all I meant.”
“Yeah?” he said, making no secret of studying my face. “But I don’t know you, right?”
“No. You don’t know me. And I don’t know anybody you know, either.” I looked over at Giovanni, said, “You want me to wait outside?”
“Stay right here,” he said. “Uncle T, he’s just looking out for me. Like he always does.”
“Sit down, sit down,” the man said, gesturing to a pair of pinkish side chairs. “Don’t pay no attention to my bad temper; it’s the fucking chemo—takes all of the sugar out of your blood.”
“But it’s working,” Giovanni said. “That’s the important thing.”
“It’s not working, Little G,” the man said, sad and loving, the way you tell a kid Christmas is going to be lean that year. “What it’s doing, it’s keeping the lupi back in the hills, that’s all. They’re just waiting for the right night. That’s when they come, you know. In the night.”
“Hey! You don’t know—”
“I know,” the old man said. He turned to me. “You think I care about who you know? Like your bloodlines? Where you come from? You know how I get my name? Little G, he give it to me. When he was a baby, he couldn’t say my name, ‘Carmine.’ What he says, he says ‘Tarmine.’ What kind of name is that? So we made it into ‘T,’ just for him.”
The old man shifted his head slightly, making sure he had my eyes.
“Little G called me ‘Uncle,’” he said, “because he couldn’t call me ‘Pop,’ the way he always wanted to. You getting this?”
“I got it,” I promised.
He read my face for a full minute. Then he nodded.
I looked over to where Giovanni was sitting. His thumb was pressed against the wall, making a screw-driving motion.
“Anyplace you can smoke around here?” I asked.
“Outside,” the old man said. “They got a little patio thing. Ask the girl out front.”
I gave them a half-hour, most of it spent with Angel pumping me about whether Giovanni was married. Or, even if he was, did he ever...?
When I came back into the room, Giovanni was next to the wheelchair, whispering in the man’s ear. He saw me standing there, gave his uncle another kiss, got up to leave.
“Be careful,” the old man told him.
“Uncle T’s not what you think,” Giovanni said, on the drive back.
“How do you know what I think?”
Giovanni made a bent-nose gesture. “Right?”
“How would I know if a guy’s made?”
“Made? Forget that. Uncle T, he was never in our thing. He was a craftsman, you know what that means? A shoemaker. Not some fucking flunky, puts on soles and heels, like in Grand Central. I mean, he could make shoes, starting from scratch. Custom. He had a little shop on Broome Street. Everybody with coin went there.”
I didn’t say anything; sometimes, that’s the only way to keep the tap open.
“He’s old now. And his mind...from the chemo, it’s not like what it was. Sometimes, he’s sharp. Like today. Other times...
“But what he said. To you, I mean. That was the truth. My father, he was nothing. Nothing to me, nothing to nobody. He went Upstate when I was just a little kid. You believe the movies, you think—what?—the ‘boys’ come around, make sure my mother’s got everything she needs? That’s not the way it happens. My father, he was what they call an around-guy. Only he was never around, you staying with me?”
“Yeah.”
“Anyway, my mother never takes me up to see him. What’s the point? I’m just a little kid; I don’t even know him. And my mother, she’s got to earn a living now.
“Uncle T, I got to know him ’cause he hired my mother to work the front of his store. The neighborhood, this I find out later, they always thought he had something going with her. But that was never it, no matter what they said.”
Giovanni took a deep breath. Let it out, said, “Finally, my old man catches a shank in Greenhaven, so he never comes home.”
“How old were you then?”
“Four, five, I don’t remember. See, I never thought he was coming home. He wasn’t like a real person to me.” He zipped down his window, lit a cigarette. “My mother, all she ever really told me was, A nigger killed your father. Like it was worse than if a white guy had done him. She said it over and over. Like so I’d never forget.”
“Your mother and T got together?”
“Never! It wasn’t her he wanted, it was me,” Giovanni said. He looked over at me, then flushed scarlet at what he thought I was thinking. “Not for...Uncle T, he couldn’t have kids. I didn’t know why. Something happened, back home. Roma, I mean, not here.
“He was real up-front with me. From the very beginning, soon as I could understand. He always wanted a son, he said. A fine son, like I w
as. He couldn’t be my father. He didn’t feel that way about my mother, and it would be...dirty, like, to take up with a woman he didn’t care about just to have a son.”
“That’s stand-up,” I said, bowing my head slightly to show respect.
“Oh, let me tell you, Burke. Uncle T, he was a hell of a lot harder than those goombahs sitting around in the sun on Mulberry Street, smoking their Parodis and sipping their anisette.
“One time, the summer when I turned thirteen, I never forget it, I slugged it out with Fat Vinny,” he said, nodding to himself, as if to confirm the memory. “It was right around the corner from Uncle T’s shop. He heard the yelling. It wasn’t just the other kids, the old guys always gathered around when there was a fight; they fucking loved it. And he ran out. Fat Vinny was the biggest of all the kids in our grade, but he was a stone punk weasel coward motherfucker. What happened was, he pulled up Marcella’s skirt. She was the same age as me, but she went to Catholic school. You know those stupid uniforms they had to wear? He pulled up her skirt, right in the street. Big joke, letting everyone see her underpants.
“Marcella was crying like she had a stake in her heart. I ran up and clocked him a beaut, right in the eye. Fat Vinny knows he can’t throw with me, so he keeps rushing, trying to get me on the ground. I know what he’ll do then, so I keep slashing at him. But I’m getting tired.
“All of a sudden, there’s a guy holding me. Holding me back, I mean. And the same with Vinny. A man comes across the street. Slow, like he’s a fucking king, you know? Who’s this? Fat Vinny’s father! And he’s a goddamned capo! I didn’t know any of that before....
“He asks, What happened? And Vinny tells him I sucker-punched him with a brick in my hand!” Giovanni said, as outraged at the injustice as if it were yesterday. “I wanted to tell my side, but Marcella had run home. I didn’t blame her, she was so humiliated by what that fat fuck did. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to tell this guy, Go ask Marcella, she’ll tell you. So I just say, Yeah, I clocked Vinny. I hate the fat piece of shit, I say, but it was a fair one—I didn’t hit him with nothing but my hands.
“That’s when Uncle T runs up, all out of breath. I remember he was wearing his apron, still had an awl in his hand—from working on the shoes. He says to Fat Vinny’s father, ‘I’m Giovanni’s uncle, what is all this?’ And that fat fuck Vinny tells his lies again. But this time, I know someone’s going to listen to me, so I tell Uncle T what really happened.
“We’re all standing there, like frozen. The capo looks at T. He says, ‘You know who I am?’ And I remember, I swear, I can see it as clear as through this windshield right now, Uncle T, he says, ‘I know who you are.’ But the way he says it, Burke. Like, I know it’s Wednesday. A fact, that’s all it was.
“The capo says, ‘He needs a good beating.’ Meaning me. Uncle T grabs me by the neck—his hands, they were like the leather he worked with—tells me to come with him.
“And that was it. I never got that beating. Uncle T makes me tell the whole story. When I finish, you know what he says, my uncle? He says, ‘Giovanni, you were a real man, protecting that girl. I’m proud of you.’”
Tears came down Giovanni’s cheeks, but his voice stayed steely, and his hands on the wheel never moved.
“That’s the kind of man he was, Burke. You understand?”
“I wish he’d been my uncle,” I said, every word a separate truth.
Giovanni pulled into the side-street lot where I’d left my car. He turned off the ignition, looked at me.
“You’re wondering why I brought you up there, right?”
“He’s your polygraph,” I said. “And you wanted his read on me.” When he didn’t say anything, I went on: “I don’t care why you did it, Giovanni. I meant what I told him. It was an honor to meet him. I just didn’t know how much of an honor it was when I said it.”
“After that, Fat Vinny went away,” Giovanni said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “He never came back to school in the neighborhood. I don’t know where his father put him, but the next time anyone saw him, you wouldn’t recognize him. He was, I don’t know, seventeen, eighteen years old. Not an ounce of fat on him; he was buffed out like Schwarzenegger.”
“Did he make a move on you?”
“No. He pretended like he didn’t even know me. He was already working for his father then. Going places. But he was still a punk in his heart. He changed his body. He even changed his name. But he was still the same fuck who did that to Marcella. That’s what I wanted to tell T.”
“I don’t—”
“Fat Vinny,” Giovanni said, dropping his voice so I’d listen close, “when he changed his name, he told everyone to call him Colto.”
I got into the Plymouth, started it up. Just as I was ready to pull away, I saw Giovanni walking toward me. I rolled down the window, waited.
Giovanni leaned in, close. “My Uncle T, he loves me,” he said. “I’m his son. His only child. Anything I ever did, it would be all right with him.”
“I know.”
“No, listen to me. This isn’t about Colto. Things like that, I tell my Uncle T all the time. But...the other thing, I never could have told him, Burke. Not when it first happened. Not now.
“I trust my Uncle T with my life. He’d never say anything, no matter what anybody did to him. It’s not for me I don’t tell him; it’s for him. It would...it would hurt him to know. Hurt him deep in his heart. I could never do that to him.”
On the drive back, I wondered which of Giovanni’s two secrets he believed would have hurt the old man the most. And if he wasn’t disrespecting his uncle’s love, by believing that proud old man would have given a damn about either one.
“You think there’s a key, don’t you, honey?”
“I know there’s one,” I told Michelle. “And I know I’m right next to it. But when I reach out...”
“You know how to do it, baby. You have to let it come to you.”
“Sure,” I said, not hopefully.
Michelle walked across the room, perched herself on the broad, padded arm of an easy chair, crossed her spectacular legs.
“Tell Little Sister,” she said. “Just tell me until you get stuck.”
“The tapes, the ones Vonni had...”
“Yes...?”
“They were real. I mean, as far as we can tell, those things happened. I spoke to those people—not an actor in the bunch. The pit-bull guy, that’s what he does, I saw it for myself. The underground fights, same thing. And Max says the jump-in was real, too, remember?”
“I remember.”
“That sorority stuff, Cyn didn’t recognize any of the players. And she even said it looked like someone stuck a camera through a keyhole, but...”
“But what, honey? It was only the one camera, like you said before. Maybe whoever made the tapes was a fly on the wall.”
“No, girl. He paid to be around at least a couple of the others, remember?”
“You’re thinking he didn’t pay everybody, right? Not all the people on those tapes? And that’s the way in?”
“I don’t know. But that’s not the...Damn! Michelle, you remember that Puerto Rican Day Parade riot a few years ago? When all those girls were getting grabbed and groped? Assholes ripping their tops off, spraying them with those water cannons?”
“I remember that very well. Probably no one would ever even have been arrested for it except...Oh, Burke! That’s right! The cops made the cases from the videotapes.”
“Yeah. Amazing how many good citizens bothered to tape it, instead of trying to stop it, huh? What a shock. And how often every station in town ran some footage of it. But the thing is...remember what Cyn and Rejji told us? About shilling?”
“You don’t think it was a setup, that whole thing? Just so someone could tape it?”
“The parade? No. But I think I know what the difference is now.”
“The difference between what and what?” she asked, impatient despite herself.
“T
hat thing at the parade, it just...happened, I think. A few punks get out of hand, and the mob goes right with it. Even sheep can kick you to death when they stampede.
“Okay, now take the dogfights. That was no accident. If you were tipped, you knew it would be at a certain time and a certain place. It was a planned event.”
“And the thing at the parade wasn’t. So...?”
“So what about the jump-in tape? And when they sprayed those swastikas?”
“Those had to be planned, too. You don’t just suddenly—”
“Planned, sure. But not announced. You had to be a...member, I guess, to even know when it was going down, much less be right there on the scene.”
“Freaks film themselves,” Michelle said, her voice a cold reminder of our childhoods. “You know that as well as me. They take trophies, so they have what they...do, captured forever. And for Nazi graffiti, it’s perfect. No matter how quick someone repaints the church, on the tape the crap they sprayed is always there. You think the scumbags who knocked down the World Trade Center and killed all those people don’t get their rocks off watching the videotapes, over and over?”
“That’s right. They tape everything, right up to rape and murder. One of those tapes was a rape, it looked like—that girl with the hood over her head, she must have been drugged or drunk. But people tape themselves for fun, too, right? Just for their own private use.”
“Like Pamela and Tommy Lee?”
“I don’t know why they made those tapes, girl. Do you?”
“There’s that,” she conceded.
“Anyway, just because we found them all in one place doesn’t mean the same person made them, I know. But that tape of Vonni? Where she was running? It’s not right.”
“I don’t get you. Because it’s a fake, like Cyn said?”
“Not only that. It’s just a snip. Like a sample, or something. All the rest are...stories. Not that they have a beginning and an end, but you can always tell what’s going on. What you’re supposed to be seeing. Except for Vonni’s. It’s a mystery, what she’s running from. And it’s the only mystery in the whole stack.”
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