“Lots of New Yorkers are wheelless. A car is more of a hassle—an expensive one—than a convenience in a city like this.”
“But that doesn’t answer the question: Do you own a car?”
“Yes.”
Abe was going to drive him out to La Guardia this afternoon. They’d switch tickets and then drive out. As a recent arrival—he’d say he’d just dropped someone off—he’d be under less scrutiny.
“Are you driving down to make arrangements for the wake tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Can I hitch a ride?”
How could he say no?
“Of course you can.”
Tom gave him a tight smile. “There. Wasn’t that easy?”
“But what about your wife—wives—and kids? Aren’t they coming?”
“Sure. I’ll hook up with them at the wake.”
Jack couldn’t see any way out of this. Even if Tom was his only living relative, an hour and a half cooped up with him in a car…
And then he had an awful thought. Gia and Vicky were planning on going—Gia was adamant about this—and that meant they’d be exposed to Tom.
“You should know that I’ll have a couple of other people along.”
Tom’s eyebrows rose. “Is that so? Who, pray tell?”
“A woman I know and her daughter.”
He grinned. “So, there’s a woman in Jack’s life. I can’t wait to meet her.” He snapped his fingers. “Hey! I’ve got an idea. Why don’t I buy you two dinner tonight?”
“We’ve already got plans.”
“Well, if they include dinner, I’m buying.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the hotel restaurant. “Right here.”
He’d planned on it being just Gia and Jack tonight, but couldn’t see a way out of this.
“Okay. But not here.”
“Why not? It’s excellent. I ate there last night and—”
“Sorry. We’ve got reservations at Lucille’s tonight.”
“So? Break them.”
“Can’t.”
Jack didn’t understand Tom’s wistful look as he glanced toward the entrance of Joe O’s.
“It’ll be so easy. I’ll just charge it to my room and—”
“Yeah, but the problem is I know the guy who’s playing Lucille’s tonight. He asked me to come down and listen, fill a couple of seats for him.”
Actually the singer, Jesse Roy Bighead DuBois, had told Jack he’d have a surprise for him if he showed. Wouldn’t say what, but he’d piqued Jack’s curiosity.
But with all that had happened, Jack had forgotten about Jesse and his gig. When Gia had reminded him this morning, telling him she’d call and cancel their reservation if he wanted, his first impulse had been to say yes. But when he considered his other options, sitting with Gia and listening to some blues while having dinner didn’t seem like a bad thing. After all, it was the blues.
Tom frowned. “Playing what?”
“He fronts a blues band. Of course if you don’t like blues—”
Hope-hope-hope.
“I’m a blues aficionado. Count me in.”
Jack repressed a sigh.
But then, maybe it wasn’t right to leave his only sib alone two nights in a row.
Or was it?
* * *
5
Jack sat at his computer in his apartment’s cluttered front room. The blank eyes of his Daddy Warbucks lamp watched as he scanned through the newyorktimes.com story about the call from Wrath of Allah. It included an audio file of the call. He clicked it and heard an accented voice.
“We are the Wrath of Allah, fedayeen in the war against the Crusader-Jewish alliance. We have struck and we will strike again, until all the enemies of God and helpers of Satan are cleansed from the face of Allah’s earth. This is but the beginning.”
He slumped in the chair. The gloating, cold-blooded, matter-of-fact threats, the hatred in the tone stayed with him after the clip. How do people get to that point? Didn’t they listen to themselves? If their god was so offended by western culture he could cleanse it from the face of the earth with a thought. Any self-respecting god would take offense at the notion that he needed a bunch of bearded crazies to defend him.
Jack listened twice more, then downloaded the file. He burned it onto a CD. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe he simply needed to listen to it now and then to confirm that it was real. Maybe he’d need it as fuel should the fire of his simmering rage ever burn too low.
* * *
6
Gia leaned against him. “I can’t believe I’m finally going to meet a member of your family.”
“He’s the only one left. And for all I know, he might not show.”
Jack and Gia comprised two of half a dozen people at the bar in Lucille’s Bar and Grill. Jack sipped a pint of Bass, Gia a club soda with a wedge of lime. He scanned the room. Beyond the barrier separating the bar from the rest of the space sat the stage and the front dining area. Beyond that lay a larger dining area two steps down toward the rear. Ceiling high and black, walls paneled in some sort of rich brown wood, carpet a half-abstract, half-surreal pattern of guitar shapes that had melted like Dali clocks.
The place looked deserted. It was early, of course, but Jack couldn’t help thinking that the La Guardia massacre had something to do with the low population density.
Lucille’s was a casual place and they were dressed accordingly: Gia in black slacks and a loose, sapphire blue velour turtleneck that picked up her eyes and hid what little tummy she had; Jack in khakis, a plaid shirt, and a dark brown leather flight jacket. A nondescript couple out for a drink and a meal.
He glanced at his watch: 7:45. Their reservation had been for seven thirty. Jesse went on at eight.
“We should be waiting for my dad instead of my brother.”
Gia took his hand and gave a gentle squeeze. “I wish that too.” Tears glistened on her lids. “God, I can’t believe…”
“Yeah. I know.” He looked around. Still no sign of Tom. “You know, if he doesn’t show by the time we finish these, maybe we should take off.”
“He’s your brother, Jack.”
Jack fiddled with the paper napkin that had come with the beer.
“Yeah, well, we never got along growing up and I don’t see us getting along any better as adults.”
“What did he do to get you so down on him?”
Jack thought of the first line of The Cask of Amontillado.
“If I may paraphrase Poe, ‘The thousand injuries of Tom I had borne as I best could…’“
“Oh come on now, aren’t we exaggerating just a little?”
He didn’t want to tell her that Tom was the most self-centered human being he had ever known. Jack imagined him being pissed on 9/11 because the fall of the World Trade towers had preempted his favorite Tuesday night TV shows.
Okay. A little harsh. Tom would have been as aghast as everyone else.
He hoped.
“He was ten years older and when he wasn’t ignoring me he was hassling me. A little example. I was maybe eleven and I loved pistachios. As I remember, they were all red back then. Anyway, I didn’t like to eat them one at a time. I liked a bunch at a time. So I’d shell a couple of dozen and then gobble them in one big bite. I remember it was summer, Tom was home from college, and I was sitting at the kitchen counter, doing the work of accumulating a pile of shelled nuts. Tom breezed along, grabbed them, shoved them into his face, and walked on. If he’d done it as a tease it would be one thing, but he acted as if he hadn’t the slightest doubt about his right to them or that anyone would refuse him anything—as if I’d been shelling them for him.”
“And what did you do?”
“Well, they were already in his mouth so I didn’t want them back, and he was twice my size so I couldn’t attack him. And I was too old to go whining to my folks. So I had to let it pass.”
“Since when do you let things pass?”
“I was a kid, so I did. Then he
did it again.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yeah. Uh-oh. I was insane. Once was bad enough. Twice was intolerable. I decided to put a stop to it.”
“Do I want to hear this?”
Jack smiled. “Of course you do. So I went to Mr. Canelli, this sweet old Italian guy up the street who had the town’s best lawn in his front yard and a big vegetable garden in the back. I asked him if I could buy a couple of his hottest—hottest peppers.”
Gia nodded. “I see where this is going.”
“Need I say more?”
“Well, did it work?”
“Oh, it worked. Mr. Canelli could eat hot peppers like candy, but he said he had one tepin plant that produced peppers so hot he could only use a tiny bit at a time. Two or three times hotter than the red habanero. He gave me some—half a dozen tiny red things. I crushed them and coated about twenty shelled pistachios with the juice.”
“Ouch.”
“Ouch to the hundredth power.” Jack laughed at the memory. “Tom came by, snatched them up, stuffed them into his mouth, and kept moving—for about five steps. Then it hit him.”
“Did he turn red?”
“Red? Ever see someone washing out his mouth with a garden hose—for half an hour? It was two days before his tongue was something he wanted in his mouth.”
Gia laughed. “Now I’ve got to meet him.”
Jack sobered. “I don’t know if you should. I’m still not sure we should even be here.”
She frowned. “Where else should we be? Home? Doing what?”
Good question. The options were to go home alone or hang around Gia’s house and be morose.
“Wallow?”
“You really want to do that?”
He shrugged. He didn’t know what he wanted. “I guess not, but being here seems somehow disrespectful… almost sacrilegious.”
Gia shook her head. “I didn’t know your father, but from what you’ve told me I can’t see him wanting you to do that.”
“You’re right. He wouldn’t.”
“And besides, you promised this fellow Jesse Bighead—”
“Jesse Roy—Jesse Roy Bighead DuBois.”
She made a face. “He doesn’t have hydrocephalus or anything like that, does he?”
“No. It’s a bluesman thing to have a tag with your name. ‘Blind’ seems to be the most popular: Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Willie McTell, Blind Blake, and the guy with the double whammy, Blind Lemon Jefferson. Then there’s Lightnin’ Hopkins, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Gatemouth Brown, T-Bone Walker, Pinetop Perkins—the list goes on and on.”
“But how do you wind up being called ‘Bighead’?”
“I asked him that once and he told me it was his mother’s doing. He’d been a big baby and whenever anyone would mention childbirth, his mother would go on about what an awful time she had passing his head.”
“Think I’m sorry I asked.”
“He may have got the ‘Bighead’ from his mother, but not the rest. She named him William Sutton, and he grew up as Willie Sutton.”
“Like the safecracker?” Gia shook her head. “That might be interesting, but Jesse Roy Bighead DuBois is definitely more picturesque.” She nudged Jack with her elbow. “Still not going to tell me how you know him?”
“Told you: I did a fix-it for him a few years back.”
It had been a simple fix, but Bighead had been impressed, and had never forgotten.
“Which tells me nothing. It’s not as if you’re a priest and he told you something in confession.”
“Yes, it is.”
Jack looked around again. Where the hell was Tom?
* * *
7
When will I learn to keep my big yap shut? Tom thought as he extracted himself from the cab. I should be back at Joe O’s, feasting on John L. Tyleski’s tab.
Instead he was going to get stuck with a three-meal bill in a midtown restaurant.
He slammed the cab door and looked around. Jack had given him a West 42nd Street address but nothing here looked like a restaurant. The Lion King… the biggest McDonald’s he’d ever seen with a huge, Broadway-style flashing marquee… Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum… all so different from what he remembered.
Back in his late teens and early twenties, this block had been lined with grindhouse theaters showing grade-Z sleaze.
Then he spotted it: a marquee with B. B. KING scrawled across the top in big red letters. The place looked like a converted movie theater. Probably—no, most likely—one of those grindhouses from the earlier days. Even had a ticket booth out front.
But Jack had said this was the place. Lucille’s—anyone who knew anything knew that B. B. King called his guitar Lucille—had to be inside.
If nothing else, the music should be good.
And he was dying to see what sort of floozy Jack had hooked up with. Maybe she had a friend…
Tom entered to the left of the ticket booth and found himself in a small souvenir shop. He asked the T-shirted girl behind the counter for the restaurant and followed her point down a wide circular staircase. He spotted “Lucille’s Grill” in red neon over a doorway and walked through. Before the receptionist could ask about a reservation, he spotted Jack and a blonde at the bar.
He pointed. “I’m with them.”
He approached from the rear. He couldn’t see the woman’s face, but he noticed that she dressed on the conservative side, and that her short blond hair did not appear to have originated in a bottle.
Surprise, surprise. Jack had latched onto a babe with a little class.
“Sorry, I’m late,” he said.
Jack and the woman turned. Jack’s expression remained neutral, but the woman smiled and Tom felt as if he’d run face first into an invisible wall.
That smile, those blue eyes, that face and the way her hair framed it and curved into feathery little wings… it seemed as if he’d stepped into some kind of cosmic shampoo commercial where everything dropped into slow motion as he approached her. He tingled, he flushed, he buzzed with an instantaneous chemical reaction.
A corny, old-hat question burned through his brain: Where have you been all my life?
He was blown away. Blown. A. Way.
Her lips moved. She was saying something. Had to come out of this, had to focus and hear that voice…
“… not believe this!”
“Believe what?” Jack said.
“How much you two look alike. My God, it’s incredible.”
Her voice… like liquid, like liquor, sending a gush of warmth into his belly.
Jack said, “Tom, this is Gia DiLauro. Gia, my brother, Tom. But you seem to have figured that out already.”
She extended her hand. Her skin was like silk, her touch a revelation. He sensed every nucleotide in his DNA drawing him toward her.
Gia… even her name was beautiful… soft, smooth, sensual…
Her azure eyes locked on his. “If Jack had told me he was an only child and you’d sat down at the other end of the bar, I’d have thought you were his long-lost brother.”
Okay. She wasn’t perfect. She obviously needed glasses. He and Jack looked nothing alike.
Jack shook his head. “You know, that’s the second time today we’ve heard that. I don’t get it. We couldn’t be more different.”
“When was the last time you saw yourselves side by side? Before the night’s over, go into the men’s room and look at yourselves in the mirror.”
Tom figured he’d pass on that.
* * *
8
They’d moved to their table, a half banquet in a rear corner with a good view of the stage. The backrests were done in alternating sections of black and white; their table sported pieces of blond and brown wood done up in an art deco-ish pattern.
Tom looked around. Only half the tables were occupied. His brother’s reservation had been redundant.
Canned music—nondescript blues—was playing too loud. Tom nursed his second vodka while they waited f
or their appetizers. He’d had a couple of pops at the hotel bar before coming over and so he could take it easy now. Didn’t want to get sloppy in front of this woman.
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