by Keith Nixon
It wasn’t more than a few minutes later before Sal was pounding on the door. When Jimmy didn’t respond, Sal kicked his way in. Sal was big, six two or three, 280. Hairy as hell. He reminded Jimmy of an ape. Sal was greeted by a slug in his chest that slowed him down. He looked surprised as hell. “What the fuck?” He gurgled through a ruined lung. The next shot hit him just above the nose, finishing him. Yanking down Sal’s slacks, Jimmy made two quick slices with the knife.
Casually tossing the package into a grease stained paper bag that previously contained a forgettable fast food burger, Jimmy grabbed the bag, his gun, knife and an overcoat and headed out. His dingy little apartment was just two blocks from Amarsi. It was colder than hell and has begun to snow, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Maybe he didn’t care. It is a short walk and when he arrives at the front door; he pulls the gun and walks in. Two goomba’s sit at a table playing dominos and sipping cappuccinos. The girl working the counter is the only other person he sees. She’s a cute young thing but he wastes her before Pinelli’s bodyguards even look up from their game. Takes them out with two shots apiece. Pulls a fresh clip out of his overcoat and snaps it into place.
He walks through the door into the back room. Pinelli is behind a desk sound asleep, snoring loudly with his mouth open. A thin line of slobber drips down his chin. He looks like a fuckin’ pig Jimmy thinks.
Then he goes back forty years, back to when they were school boys at St. Cecilia’s in Hoboken. It was a warm late spring day and at lunch, they were choosing sides for a baseball game. Jimmy was good, had a live fastball. Ray was never much of an athlete – he was more of a trouble maker, always starting some kind of a beef. He wasn’t tough enough to back his shit up, always writing checks with his mouth his ass couldn’t cash the other boys said. He relied on two older guys that he paid to protect him.
It was Jimmy’s turn to pick and Ray and a fat kid named Tubby Albini were the only boys left. With Jimmy pitching, his team would win even if all the guys in the field wore blindfolds.
“I’ll take Tubby I guess,” Jimmy said.
“Fuck you, you fucking douche,” Ray said, and a nickname was born.
When Ray came up to bat, there were two out in the third. Jimmy didn’t appreciate the lack of respect the little shit had shown him. Ray was so far from the plate he would have needed a shovel to hit the ball. That didn’t stop Jimmy from throwing a fastball that was three feet inside. It caught Ray just below the ear. Sounded like a ripe melon that got dropped from a rooftop. The next day, Sal and Donnie caught Jimmy on the way home from school. Donnie threw him on the ground and Sal stomped on Jimmy’s elbow. The crack sounded like Mantle hitting one out of Yankee Stadium. That was the end of his fastball. It was also the first of many ass kicking’s Jimmy the Douche would receive from Sal, all of them at Ray Pinelli’s urging.
***
Kevin Hannity was a detective in Hoboken. And, he was as crooked as a television preacher. And meaner than any gangbanger in Newark. He was collecting protection money from a bunch of the grease balls in town that he considered the lowest of the low. That’s how he could afford the house in Montclair and his second wife who could spend money like he had a goddamn printing press. He had heard the rumors that there was an open contract on him but he figured none of the dagos had the balls to try him.
It had been a month since he collected from Pinelli. Today he was going to double the rate. And if the bastard gave him any static, he would shoot one of his goons in a kneecap; give them a taste of their own medicine. He was getting pissed circling the neighborhood in the Crown Vic because he couldn’t find a parking spot within five blocks of the dump that bastard Pinelli called a restaurant. Sure the fuck wasn’t going to walk in this snow. He laughed to himself thinking he should tack on an extra charge for not calling the health department who, he was sure, would close the greasy little dive down.
***
Vince Soldate was in the back seat of a Town Car. Lenny ‘The Lip’ Pasquini and Carmine Filletto were up front with Carmine doing the driving. Traffic in Brooklyn was at a standstill because of the storm. Soldate was tempted to whack Lenny because the son of a bitch was living up to his name and wouldn’t quit talking. He wanted to get to Hoboken and back before to late because his wife Angela was making Spaghetti like she did every Monday night. He wanted to drink a little vino and watch Monday Night Football. But he had this business to take care of in Jersey. Giovanni Gonnella had been the boss in Hoboken but he was an old man and got weak. With the blessing of the other families, Soldate took him out. Now, his brother in law, Archie Costello, a made guy who lived in Hoboken, was about to be installed as the new boss. Archie didn’t want any independents operating in town and Pinelli was the biggest of those. They were going to pick up Archie and two of his boys and have a chat that could get unfriendly in a hurry if Pinelli didn’t agree to an early retirement.
***
Donnie had found Ralph Catalano; he was waiting with a packed suitcase for a bus to the city. He said to him, “Let’s make this easy, you come up with more than half of the six G’s and we’re still friends. You don’t and you might have to find a new line of work.” Donnie opened his coat and flashed not a gun but a hatchet. “Understand what I’m saying?” Apparently Ralph did because he drove Donnie to his mother’s house and came out with five thousand. Donnie took the cash and explained to Ralph that he had a week to come up the rest or he would be back with the hatchet and asked Ralph how much he thought a couple of fingers were worth. Now Donnie was headed back to Amarsi figuring his collecting skills would please his boss.
***
After all these years, Jimmy could still see the scar where his pitch had drilled Pinelli. He watched Ray sleep for another minute.
“Hey you cocksucker, wake up.”
Ray Pinelli did, with a start. Reached onto his desk for his glasses, real large framed ones like the old time wise guys wore. Dean Martin’s they used to call them. Putting them on, he saw Jimmy ‘The Douche’ holding a gun in one hand and a grease stained White Castle bag in the other.
“You’re fucking nuts Scalzinni,” he said.
“No,” said Jimmy, tossing the bag on the desk, “Sal’s.”
Ray gave him a puzzled look, then looked in the bag. He retched a little and tossed the bag across the room.
“Jesus Christ, you lost your fuckin’ mind?”
Jimmy pointed the gun at Ray’s face. Ray tried to stay somewhat calm. What the fuck, he thinks, this madman delivers Sal’s fuckin’ package to me and he’s holding a gun on me. He tries to think his way through the situation.
“Let’s talk about this Jimmy. You got balls, I can see that.” He laughs and says, “Sal don’t. What if I forgive your debt, put you in Sal’s job?”
Jimmy says, “Let me think about it.”
He continues to hold the gun on Ray, who starts to sweat.
Then, just seconds later says, “Nah, fehgetaboutit.”
He shoots Ray in the face.
Seconds later, the door bursts open. It’s Soldate, Costello, the whole goddamn crew. They see Pinelli dead, a hole leaking crimson in his forehead. They don’t know what to think, what to do. They didn’t expect this. Jimmy does though: he knows Soldate is the boss of this mob, he shoots him right between the eyes. As the others start reaching under overcoats for heat, Jimmy picks them off one by one. Lenny ‘The Lip’ is the only one to draw a gun and as he stumbles over bodies trying to make it to the door, gets a couple of wild shots off in the process. He is reaching for the handle when Jimmy shoots him in the back.
Kevin Hannity is half a block west of the restaurant when he hears the shots. He slows down and waits. No one comes out.
Donnie is coming from the other direction. He hears them too. He has heard the rumors about a hostile takeover of Pinelli’s business holdings. He considers the five grand severance pay. He turns and goes back the way he came, brushing snow off his shoulders as he goes.
Jimmy is busy with the
knife when he hears Hannity come through the front door. The detective isn’t sure what to make of the scene. The carnage and gun smoke in the little restaurant sure as hell wasn’t what he expected. He sees Jimmy raise his gun and just like that he is close to death, twitching on the dirty floor .After hanging the closed sign on the front door, Jimmy continues his grisly savagery. Amarsi is known for its Pizza, when he is done Jimmy arranges genitalia on a trio of pies. Puts them in the brick oven, opens a Moretti, waits for them to cook. He finishes the beer and puts the pizzas in go boxes.
He takes the keys to Soldate’s Lincoln, puts the pizzas in the back seat , finds a station playing Sinatra and drives through the tunnel and heads for the Brooklyn home of Fing Ritero, head of the families that run all of New York and New Jersey. There’s a gate in front of the drive. Two gorillas in dark suits, overcoats and gloves approach the car. Jimmy slides down the window.
“Pizza delivery for Mr. Ritero,” he says. The two goons look at one another and shrug, then take the still warm pies from the back seat.
That is how Jimmy ‘The Douche’ became Jimmy ‘The Butcher’ and still runs the rackets in Hoboken.
WEEKEND DAD
Ryan Bracha
I throw another couple of notches on the volume as that lovely twang of the guitar on Lonely Boy rolls in and Dan Auerbach tears it to shreds. You can’t not love The Black Keys. Honestly, I don’t know that they’ve ever recorded a bad track, at least, not in my opinion. My thumbs tap tap tap along with the drum beat and I’m feeling really good just now.
Give it another few minutes though, and my mood’ll probably be sour as fuck, when she comes clomping out. Arms folded, hair scraped back into some greasy pony tail like the bitch ran out of money and thought lard might be a decent alternative to conditioner. She’ll be chewing down on her cherry menthol Airwaves, not that it’ll freshen the shit that’ll spew from her mouth. Right when the boy’s in earshot too. Honestly, if it weren’t frowned upon nowadays I’d have a good mind to swing a fist right into her foul mouth. Mandy. The cunt. I don’t know what I ever saw in her, I really don’t. We weren’t seeing each other for long, but it was long enough for my jizz and her eggs to make the boy. We used to share a flat down Bank End. I say share, but it was my flat, that I managed to wangle out of the council when I came out of the nick. I first saw her round my new local, knocking about with some of her scraggy mates. They’d buy a drink between them, and then mine sweep the shit out of everybody else’s drinks. If you went to the pisser and didn’t take your pint with you, then you were fucked, you might as well head to the bar on the way back from shaking hands with the fella downstairs, because there was no chance it’d be still then when you got back. I got wise to it quite early on in the game, and took a weird amusement from watching them at work. I’d be at the gambler, with my pint on that little cup–holder you get down at waist height, and some of her mates would come over, trying to talk me up, proffer shit advice on how to play the thing, and you could see dirty little hands come snaking up between the bodies, trying to pilfer your pint. They got away with it a couple of times. After that I just sat it on the roof of the gambler, and they left me alone. It was a couple of months in to my frequenting the place that she finally came over with motives beyond having away with my booze. She said she’d seen me about the estate, asked where I lived, asked did I want to buy her dinner some time? I asked her if I didn’t would she just take it anyway and share it with her mates? She laughed at that one, and I had to smile. She was fit, no question. From the cute tanned gut that peeked out from above the sexy pink velour tracksuit bottoms. You know the ones? The kind that properly just stick to a lovely arse. Well, from that, up past her perky tits, and the long brown hair extensions that didn’t look fake at all. She was fit. I said yeah, I’d take her out.
After that she basically stayed at mine every night for about three months. We’d do a bit of coke, drink a bit of booze, and just go at it for hours. I’d play her decent music, and she’d take the piss ‘cause you couldn’t rave to it. I told her it was for listening to, not raving to. I told her that’s what I wanted out of music. Something that could take me off to another level. She’d laughed at that, and said Dane Bowers’ best stuff was with Victoria Beckham, not when he was in Another Level. I think that was probably when the death knell sounded on our relationship. Victoria Beckham never did anything of worth, and I won’t be told otherwise. I don’t know what a Dane Bowers is. So after that the spark kinda left us. She’d still show up and we’d do coke and fuck for a bit, but it got so I’d be just going through the motions. I think she could sense it too, because it all got a bit awkward between us afterwards and all that. It used to be that we could go for hours, then it got so we’d fuck once and then lay there in silence. She’d ask if I was okay, I’d say yeah. Conversation over.
About the time I was thinking of ending it, she dropped a stick on my lap. You know? Like a pregnancy testing stick? Well, I didn’t know what I was looking for, but she told me I was gonna be a daddy. I kicked off, going on about how she was trying to trap me. We’d known each other two fucking minutes and she’s trying to trap me with a baby. Of course, I told her she was getting rid, she said like fuck she was. I told her she could get the fuck out of my flat and my life. She said not fucking likely. I was stuck with her, and the kiddy for the rest of my days now. I moved out of the flat and shacked up with my mate Dennis for bit, tried to get my head round it. When the boy came along, I have to admit it changed me. I mean, it changed me for the better. That old cliché about seeing their little hands grabbing hold of your finger. It melts your fucking heart. Although me and Mandy were never gonna be anywhere near friends anymore, I made myself a promise on the day he was born, that the boy would want for nothing. That was thirteen years ago, to the day.
There’s a knock at the window of my car. It’s the boy. He’s wearing some tank top woolly vest that her mum’s obviously made and forced him to wear. It’s fucking horrendous, I can tell you that much. I climb out of the car, and head round to the pavement to throw my arms around him, pull him in close, before I pull away and offer him a big smile.
“Alright kiddo?” I say, ruffling the thick mop of mousey brown hair on his head, he gets his thick hair from me, “happy birthday.”
“Thanks, dad,” he mumbles, self–consciously tugging at the bottom hem of that disgrace he’s got wrapped around him. I’m about to ask him how it’s been so far, but she comes storming out of the house. I could’ve won myself a fiver. She looks like she’s been swimming in chip fat, the scruffy cunt.
“Where’s my maintenance?” she demands. Hello to you too, Mandy. I reach into my pocket and throw her the envelope. She gets sixty quid a week, and I just know it’s going up her nose, so I make sure the boy gets an extra fifty on the sly from me. It goes into a bank account I set up for him, and he can take it whenever he wants. I pay his dinner money at school too, because he told me she spends what I give her for it on herself, and makes him take dry old butties on bread you could choke a duck on. I don’t mind. It keeps the peace, and I can afford it. One day she’ll come unstuck and some cunt will kill her, then I’ll get the boy to myself. Until then, though, this is how it’s got to be, and I’ll make sure he’s got everything he needs.
“Make sure he’s back by nine, I’m getting us a pizza in for his birthday,” she scowls, as the boy drops himself into the passenger side and starts flicking about on the phone I got for him. It’s my old Xperia, but you know phones now, they’re all the same, just a little bit quicker, or bigger, or the camera can make out each individual pube when you’re taking pictures of your cock to send to a bird, instead of just a pixelated bush sitting on top of a worm.
“Well, you sure know how to treat a kid, Mand,” I chuckle.
“Wind your neck in or you’ll be takin’ him nowhere, you prick,” she hisses, and I offer a satisfied smile for having wound her up a little bit.
“You try and stop me, Mand, you won’t know what f
uckin’ hit you,” I say quietly through my teeth with a smile. The boy’s a million miles away though.
“You what?” she gasps, but it’s all she can say because I’m back in the car and I’m waving at her sour face, across the boy’s mug as he looks down at his phone.
The whole exchange didn’t take too long, and I’m thankful because Gold on the Ceiling comes buzzing into my ear from the speakers and my mood soars again after that cunt threatened to derail it, like I knew she would. My fingers tap at the wheel and I look across to the boy.
“Get anythin’ good for your birthday then, kiddo?”
He sniffs and shrugs. Says nothing and carries on looking down at his phone. Teenagers nowadays.
“Your mum get you owt?”
“No,” he mumbles, in that bollocks–about–to–drop tone he’s got.
“No? Nowt at all?”
“She’s getting’ us a pizza later,” he says. I can hear the resignation in his voice, like he didn’t expect anything more of the bitch, and he should be thankful that he’s even getting that. My fingers tense up around the wheel and Patrick Carney’s drums are fading away behind the sound of my fucking piss boiling. I struggle not to let anything show in my face, because she’s still his mum, and he doesn’t need me compounding the ill–feeling he might have towards the cunt already.
“Oh, right,” I say, “so what do you want to do with your old man for your birthday, eh? Anything you want it’s yours.”
“Pictures?” he says, looking up hopefully to me, “the new Tom Cruise one is supposed to be good?”