by J. L. Abramo
I remember waking up the next morning and being thrown onto a gurney.
I remember being wheeled into the Operating Room with Maggie’s hand clutched tightly in mine.
I remember Doogie Levine MD smiling down at me just before I went under.
Then it was 1986 again and I heard my father’s Galaxy start up in the driveway below my bedroom window.
I could hear the Ford pulling out of the driveway taking my father and brother to Shea.
Just as I heard the Galaxy back out onto West 10th Street, my legs suddenly came back to life.
I jumped out of bed, ran down the stairs and rushed out the front door onto the stoop.
I could see the Ford crossing Avenue S.
I could run pretty fast but I knew I’d never catch them before Dad turned onto 86th Street toward the Belt Parkway.
I was almost back into the house when I heard someone call my name from a few doors down. I turned toward the voice to find Bobby Leone yelling for me.
“Johnny.”
“Hey, Bobby.”
“Get over here.”
“What’s up?”
“Hurry.”
I walked over to where Bobby was pounding on Nicky Ventura’s door.
Ventura was up in his window saying he couldn’t come down and Bobby was saying if Nicky didn’t come down he was going to get the crap beat out of him.
And I was wishing I had stayed inside.
“They stole Tony’s bike,” Bobby said.
“Who?”
“Three seniors from Lafayette grabbed it on Kings Highway. We’re going up there and we’re going to get it back.”
“High school seniors? Jesus, Bobby, they’ll be twice our size.”
“Goddammit, Ventura, get the fuck down here,” he yelled up at the window.
“I don’t know if we want to tangle with high school kids, Bobby,” I said.
“What do you mean you don’t know? What if it was your fucking bike?”
I didn’t have a bike.
“Nicky, I’m getting really pissed,” he yelled again.
And he was.
“Where’s Tony?” I asked.
“Stop asking a million fucking questions and get a stick or something because when I drag that asshole Nicky down here we’re going to Kings Highway.”
“I don’t want to go, Bobby. It’s Tony’s bike, so where’s Tony? And you’re too riled up, you need to calm down.”
And then he walked down the steps from Nicky’s front door and hit me between the legs with the baseball bat he was holding.
The swing was more Ben Hogan than Mickey Mantle.
And then, in the dream, he said, “You’re going to die for this, Frankie.”
But Frankie was my brother’s name.
I held myself where Bobby had hit me with the bat.
Then I felt myself getting aroused down there.
I opened my eyes and found my wife with her hand down there.
“Look who is back and rearing to go,” she said.
“I guess the operation went okay,” I said.
“Sure feels like it.”
“Do you think I should try to get out of this bed?”
“What’s the rush?” Maggie said, and she climbed into the bed beside me.
I must have fallen asleep again.
My father walked into my room.
“How was the game, Dad?” I said, “I was looking for you and Frankie on the TV.”
“Come downstairs. Your mother and I need to speak with you.”
“What is it?”
“Just come down, son.”
I followed him down the stairs into the living room. My mother was sitting on the sofa. Her eyes were red. My father sat beside her and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. I rushed over to Dad’s vacant TV chair, wanting to grab it before Frankie came in. Come to think of it, where was Frankie?
“Where’s Frankie?” I asked.
Dad and Frankie had stopped into the A&P on Stillwell Avenue on their way home from the ballgame. My father always carried his service revolver, even when off duty.
When they came to the checkout, a young neighborhood kid was pointing a gun at the cashier as she filled a paper sack with money from the register. Dad drew his weapon and told the boy to give it up before it was too late, and then it was too late. The kid pointed the gun toward my father and my brother and the gun went off.
“Frankie was killed, John,” my father said.
“Was it Bobby Leone?” I asked, shaking.
“No, of course not,” he said. “It was a boy from the high school. A squad car picked him up on Kings Highway.”
“It’s my fault,” I said.
I should have gone to that game.
I should have gone with Bobby to Kings Highway.
I should have left Dad’s chair empty for Frankie.
I woke up and found Sam sitting beside the hospital bed.
“We got the guy who shot you.”
“What was his beef?”
“He thought you were someone else. He was gunning for someone named Frankie Johnson who walks a dog exactly like yours in the same park and who happened to be sleeping with the shooter’s wife.”
“You’re going to die for this, Frankie.”
“Huh?”
“That’s what I heard, before the gunshot. I thought he was calling my name, I thought I knew the voice. I was hearing something else. How’d you find him?”
“He killed Johnson this morning. I heard the surgery went okay.”
“Yeah, want to see me get up and walk?”
“I was hoping you’d do that little tap dance you do.”
“Is Maggie around?”
“Saw her on my way in. She’s gone to fetch the kids. She looked somewhat disheveled. You guys didn’t decide to do some catching up here in the hospital bed?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Don’t tell her that.”
A week later we had just finished dinner when I asked my father if he would take a walk with me around the block.
What I wanted was a stroll down memory lane.
Maggie said she’d have the coffee and dessert ready when we got back.
Charlie wanted to come along but Annie, in all her teenage wisdom, sensed that I needed to be alone with Dad and she corralled her little brother at the front door, bribing him to stay with the promise of a chocolate éclair.
“Dad,” I said, as we moved away from the house.
It was good to be walking.
“Yes, son?”
“The day Frankie died, the day of the World Series game.”
“Yes.”
“The kid who shot Frankie, he was one of the kids who stole Tony Baretta’s bike earlier that day,” I said. “Bobby Leone wanted me and Nicky Ventura to go with him to find them.”
“And do what, get yourselves shot?”
I guess not.
We were quiet during the rest of the walk, but it was good just to be at his side.
When we returned to the house, the pastries and the espresso were laid out as promised. Annie, I should say Anne, gave me a quick peck on the cheek and said she was meeting her friends at the Kent movie theater on Coney Island Avenue.
“How are you getting there?” I asked.
“Connie’s mom.”
“Don’t let me find out differently.”
“Okay, I won’t let you find out,” she said, and ran out laughing.
I had to laugh also.
Maggie had a legal brief to complete, so she apologized and moved to her study.
My father and my son busied themselves with dessert.
“Dad,” Charlie said.
“Yes.”
“Remember when I was little and I got lost at the camp place?”
How could I forget?
“Yes, son.”
“How come when you found me you called me Frankie?”
“Did I?”
“Yeah. You said, Thank God, Fran
kie, I thought I would never see you again.”
“I guess it was my special way of telling you how glad I was to find you, son.”
“Oh, okay,” he said.
“He reminds me a lot of Frank, Jr.,” said my father, reaching for a pastry.
“Grandpa, the éclair is mine,” Charlie said. Then he looked over at me and added, “But I’ll share it with you.”
I left them to it and took the dog for a walk in the park.
ROSES FOR UNCLE SAL
I was lying in my bed on the houseboat in the middle of a terrific dream in which I was sitting in a poker game at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City with three kings and a pair of aces in my hand and twelve grand on the table when the sound of my name jolted me from my fantasy with the subtlety of a punch in the stomach.
“Nick.”
My eyes popped open and I found John Sullivan standing over me.
“Are you trying to stop my heart?”
“I need your help.”
John Sullivan coming to me for help was the perfect example of the idiom—the shoe is on the other foot.
It was serious.
“Get the coffee going. I need to throw cold water on my face and get into my clothes. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
“It’s Annie,” he said when I joined him at the table in the kitchen area.
Annie was his fourteen-year-old daughter.
“Jesus, John, is she all right?”
“She was grabbed by two men on her way home from theater rehearsal last night. Christ. I’ve told her a million fucking times to either walk in a group or call for me or Maggie to come pick her up.”
“Was she hurt?”
“Annie is a tough cookie. She said they didn’t touch her, but she was terrified.”
“What happened?”
“She was blindfolded and put in the back seat of a car with one man, the other drove. She was assured she would not come to any harm as long as her father did the right thing next Wednesday. She was dropped off in front of our house. When she pulled off the blindfold she saw the car race away. Big dark blue sedan, maybe a Lincoln or Chrysler, she couldn’t make the license plate. Damn it, Nick. They fucking knew where she lived and where she goes to school.”
“What’s next Wednesday?”
“Next Wednesday is the day when my sworn testimony in court could possibly put Vincent Salerno away for a very long time.”
Vincent Salerno had been indicted by a grand jury six months earlier on a charge of first degree voluntary manslaughter. The trial was set to begin in Kings County Criminal Court with opening statements on Monday.
Salerno had grown up around organized crime. His father had been an attorney for the Colletti family before Dominic Colletti and his two sons were assassinated in Brooklyn.
Vincent had never been invited to join the inner circle. He was generally unpopular with crime bosses due to his recklessness and his blatant disrespect for tradition. When his father passed away, leaving him a substantial inheritance, Vincent invested in pornography—importing hard core sex films from Europe for distribution in the states.
Salerno increased his wealth if not his popularity.
Salerno had been twice accused of distributing films featuring underage girls. In each case, there was not enough evidence to prove prior knowledge and the District Attorney decided not to seek criminal indictment. Instead, Salerno was required to pay modest fines and ordered to pull the movies out of circulation.
No one doubted Salerno was aware of the offense, and he became even more disfavored by the family-oriented Italian-American criminal community because of their strong rules regarding crimes against children.
Vincent Salerno was about to be tried for fatally beating his fiancée, Monica Ricci. She had been twenty-five years old at the time.
A close friend of the victim would testify that Monica had talked about breaking off the engagement with Salerno. Ricci had expressed her growing concern about Salerno’s violent temper.
A number of witnesses would describe a loud argument between Salerno and Ricci at a restaurant in Bay Ridge on the evening of her death. The same witnesses would testify that the couple left the restaurant together. A neighbor would testify to seeing Monica and Salerno arriving at her apartment building together. Another neighbor would testify to hearing what she described as a yelling match coming from the vicinity of Ricci’s apartment. Fifteen minutes later the same neighbor heard someone running past her door. She looked out of her window and saw a man climb into a large, black, late model automobile and speed away. She called 9-1-1.
Vincent Salerno drove a year-old black Cadillac.
A few hours later a pair of detectives arrived at Salerno’s house in Carroll Gardens. He greeted them in a bathrobe and appeared to have just showered. They informed him of Monica Ricci’s death. He demonstrated surprise. He did not invite them inside and answered their questions through the partially opened front door. He was asked to recount his evening, asked when he last saw Ricci. He said they had gone out for dinner, had a “bit of a disagreement,” he drove her home, walked her to her door, left immediately without going into her apartment and came directly home. One of the detectives later reported he had noticed what “may have been blood” on the outside doorknob of the front entrance and on the floor near the threshold. The detectives asked if they could take a look inside and were told by Salerno they would need a search warrant. When investigators returned the following morning with warrants for both the house and Salerno’s Cadillac they found no damning evidence, although one of the forensic detectives reported a faint smell of ammonia in the vehicle.
Although the bulk of the evidence against Salerno was circumstantial or based on hearsay it was enough to persuade the grand jury to send the case to trial after taking Detective John Sullivan’s testimony into account.
When Sullivan arrived at the scene, Monica Ricci was being placed into an ambulance. She was alive, barely. One of the medical attendants told John the girl would likely not survive. John hopped into the back of the ambulance hoping she would be able to speak. En route to the hospital she named Vincent Salerno as her assailant.
She was rushed into the emergency room, furiously worked on for twenty minutes and died.
The prosecution would argue that Monica Ricci knew she was dying when she made her statement to Detective Sullivan in the ambulance.
The name Vincent Salerno had been her last words.
Under Rule 804(2) of the Federal Rules of Evidence a “dying declaration” might, at the discretion of the presiding judge, be determined an exception to the hearsay rule, be admitted into evidence, and presented to a jury.
“What are you thinking, John?”
“If we can track down the men who messed with my little girl and encourage them to testify they were acting on behalf of Vincent Salerno it would, on top of my own testimony, tip the scales in favor of the prosecution and should be enough to convince a jury. If we can’t find them my family is in jeopardy and I may be forced to do something that goes against everything I believe in.”
“Commit perjury.”
“Yes. We have less than a week. I need your help. If Salerno suspects we are hunting for his muscle, he might resort to something worse than threats. And I can’t use the department. If the situation was known, and I recanted my earlier sworn affidavit, it would be patently obvious. I would be finished and Salerno probably walks.”
“How about your partner?”
“I could trust Sam, but I won’t ask him to risk his own career and reputation unless there is absolutely no other choice. It’s you and me, Nick, and I need to take a back seat. You need to find out who in Salerno’s circle, family, friends or ‘business’ associates, would have been willing to deliver the message. You need to be careful who you talk to—Vincent Salerno cannot know anyone is looking. You need to watch your back. And you need to move quickly.”
“I’ll do the best I can, John.”
“That’s al
l I ask, Nick,” Sullivan said. And he left me to it.
I knew a number of cats on the street who could possibly have ideas about who Salerno might employ to deliver his warning to Sullivan, but not many who I could depend on for discretion.
John had done a very thorough job of summarizing what needed to be done, but the words that spoke loudest to me were watch your back.
There was one person I knew who, if he was willing to help, would keep my interest in Salerno under wraps.
That was if he was willing to grant me audience in the first place.
I called the number I had and spoke with a guy who I guessed was an appointment secretary and who sounded like Rocky Balboa.
A few hours later I received the callback. Ferdinand “The Fist” Pugno would see me at Il Toscano Ristorante on 235th Street and 42nd Avenue in Queens at one.
I had met with Pugno at his restaurant in Douglaston once before. On that occasion it was in a small private dining room in back. When I arrived at one I found him sitting at a table near the front window. I joined him at his table.
A big thug who I assumed was the Stallone impersonator watched us very closely from the bar.
“Can I offer you lunch?” Pugno asked.
“No, thank you.”
“Coffee?”
“Sure.”
He waved a waiter over to the table.
The waiter wore black tuxedo pants, with a stark white shirt and black tie. The light reflecting off his spotless black patent leather shoes was blinding. He was at least sixty years old and had likely worked in the place forty years.
“Riccardo. Tenere il pranzo. Due caffé per favore.”
He waited for Riccardo to bring the coffee and retreat.
“So?” he said, as he loaded his cup with sugar.
I explained how I hoped he could help me.
“Vincent Salerno is a maggot. The man has no family, no friends, and his business associates are worms. The only way he could get any help to do his dirty work is to pay for it.”
“Do you have any ideas about who could be so employed, a pair of men who work as a team?”
“There are more than a few candidates. You may do better talking with my son Carmine. He knows Brooklyn much better than I do, and it could have saved you a trip out here.”