Joe steps forward and shakes my hand as he speaks, his naturally high-pitched voice knocked down an octave from a lifetime of bourbon and cigarettes. “Good work on Macky. How’d you do him?”
I say nothing, instead casting a fish-eyed stare at the man seated ramrod straight at the conference table, a half-full flute of beer before him. Two open boxes of pizza from The Original North End Pizzeria are on the table.
“Oh,” Joe says to me. “You haven’t met my new COO, have you?”
“COO?” I say.
“Chief of operations, Babe. I’m Ricardo Donsky,” the man says, barely lifting his butt off his seat as he offers me his hand across the table. The name Ricardo throws me off because Donsky appears of Slavic descent, so blonde and pale you might peg him as an albino if he did not have eyes as blue as arctic ice—cool eyes that you just know could become fierce at the drop of a dime. Late thirties to maybe fortyish, he is long and muscled and dressed casually, but well, in faded designer jeans with a white-on-white linen shirt, the tail out, and dark-blue silk blazer. He has an erect military bearing, his hair cut in a high and tight crew cut razored clean on the sides. His features are not diminished by a pocked scar below the corner of his left eye that could have been courtesy of shrapnel or a bullet fragment, and there are women who would say it makes him appear ruggedly handsome. Your average wiseguy would take one look at Donsky and figure him for the kind they would belly up next to at a bar and engage in conversation; your above-average wiseguy—i.e., me—would approach him with caution, if at all.
Still standing, Joe says to me, “So you gonna tell us how you did Macky or not?”
I describe in summary form how I did Macky.
Both men like this, glancing at each other and shaking their heads in bemusement.
Joe says, “He handle it like a man?” and pats my shoulder as he moves with distinct purpose to the wet bar behind the table.
“It was not the type of death anyone would handle gracefully.”
Donsky sips from his glass of beer, says, “More important to me, Babe, is how your son handled it.” Donsky’s voice is baritone and Brooklyn-accented, nasal, without a single r sound enunciated in the entire sentence. Word is he and Fecarotta are lifelong friends, and Fecarotta just got here from New Jersey as part of a package deal.
I say, “I decided against involving my son in the hit. I left for West Covina without him.”
Donsky frowns into his glass as if a fly is floating on the surface of his beer.
Joe stops dead in his tracks on the way to the bar, a perplexed expression further creasing his considerably wrinkled brow. “Why the hell did you do that?”
I shrug as if my decision was a casual one. “We met this morning at my house and I did not like his vibes,” I say, looking at Donsky to say as an aside, “That meeting was our first in over nine years.”
Joe smoothes his trim mustache, rubs his jaw.
I sit in the empty chair directly across from his and Donsky’s.
Nobody says shit, and you could bite a chunk out of the silence that fills this room. To pass the time I gaze out the big window just behind Donsky to check out the Yagura Tower, a pagoda on stilts that marks the main entrance to the Japan Village mall down the street. I help myself to a slice of meaty pizza pie from the box on the table before me. “I have not had Original North End in almost a decade,” I say to the room. “The best in town.”
“Michael picked it up for us,” Joe says, resuming his trek to the full bar to my left. He grabs a bottle of Miller High Life from the low fridge, says, “Here,” and shoves it to me over my shoulder. He hands me a chilled beer mug and pours bourbon over rocks in a beveled glass tumbler for himself, walks to his chair and stands there so he can look down at me, a view of me he rarely enjoys. After taking a sip, he says, “Macky refused to see you yesterday without Leo there. In fact, didn’t he demand that Leo be there with you?”
Having filled my mug, I wash down my first bite of pizza with the beer. “Yeah, yesterday he did. Today he said the same thing but I talked my way in.” I shrug. “Chalk it up to my irresistible guinea charm.”
After exchanging glances with Joe, Donsky says, “I’m disappointed. I wanted to see what Leo was made of. See, the collection crap he’s been doing for us has just been an audition. Now we need him to step it up to serious work, work only a cop can do. See, I have old friends in the sheriff’s department who came here from New York about five years ago, so we’re covered there.” He winks at me. “Especially if you ever need anything handled in any of the local jails. But our payroll’s short on LAPD cops, detectives in particular. That’s why we need Leo to step up to the plate for us.”
“Gentlemen,” I say, showing them my palm, “if you are looking for a headhunter to recruit my son on your behalf, you are talking to the wrong man. Me and him are not getting along. As proof of this fact, consider I offered him a gorgeous Asian whore if he would spend the afternoon with me today at Dodger Stadium and he turned me down.”
“Jesus Christ,” Joe says after taking a deep drink, “Leo must hate your fuckin’ guts. I’d spend the afternoon with the director of the FBI for a piece of gorgeous Asian tail.”
“This I believe you would do,” Donsky says, grinning. “I’ve never met anybody who likes oriental pussy more than you. You still bangin’ that tight little Cambodian Michael told me about?”
Joe smiles, nods. “Seein’ her again this evening, as a matter of fact.”
“Again? Damn, she’s proved herself valuable in more ways than one.”
“She has indeed,” Joe says with a wink.
Locker-room talk dominates Joe’s conversations these days. His wife of many years died over five years ago, and the sexual peccadilloes he has developed since then would make a porn star blush. Now he is making some crude point about his latest young Cambodian whore, and I interrupt. “Joe,” I say, “you called me down here because you said something had come up, implying you needed to talk to me about business. If said business was about my son, I cannot help you and we have nothing else to talk about.”
Donsky says, “Can you at least talk to him for us?”
“Anything else, Joe?” I say.
“Yeah,” Joe says, sighing as he sits between me and Donsky in a cushy leather chair against the wall, “there are other things.” A man who has never given a damn about drawing attention to the fact he is short, he scoots all the way back in the big chair and his feet barely brush the carpet when he crosses his legs at the ankles. Joe takes a deck of Marlboro reds from his breast pocket, bumps one out and leans forward to offer me a smoke.
I accept it.
He lights me up, lights one for himself, and leans back, snapping the lighter shut.
The smoke burns my throat and slams my brain, making me light-headed.
Donsky and Joe exchange glances again, with Joe taking another sip of bourbon. A twist of his neck, a straightening of his tie, and Joe says to me, “There’s some cleanup you might have to do on this Macky thing.”
“Not tonight, I hope.”
“No, tomorrow—maybe. A couple messy issues have surfaced, maybe three. We just talked to Tarasov before you got here, and he agreed to clean up one of the aisles tonight. The mess in aisle three at the moment is Levitch.”
He is referring to “Al” Levitch, birth name unknown to me, Macky’s androgynous and otherwise psychotic niece.
“Levitch, Jesus, she is mental.”
“Yeah, she’s hit the fuckin’ ceiling over Macky’s disappearance.”
“No surprise there.”
“No, no surprise, at least not to me. Viktor likes her for some reason, and thought he’d be able to turn her to our side. But I just talked to him and he said she wouldn’t listen to the cover story we cooked up.”
“The Cambodian thing?”
“Yeah,” Joe says, “the Cambodian thing.”
Like any effective lie, the cover story Joe and Viktor are circulating among Macky’s old crew
has a kernel of truth to it: About a month ago, Macky started snuggling up to a Cambodian cartel when its local representative suggested to him that he take them on as a partner in his retail heroin trade, one that took Macky years to cultivate and spreads from LA throughout the Inland Empire. The Cambodian cartel has a direct supply line from the poppy fields of Southeast Asia to LA, no middlemen, and the move would allow Macky to undercut all the competition. This would upset the delicate balance of power shared by the Baja and Sinaloa cartels, the major wholesalers in California that have established profitable relations with retailers like Joe, Viktor, and Macky. Macky was actually in the process of working out a deal with the Cambodians, but a believable scenario is that he would change his mind and the Cambodians would retaliate by whacking him, or that the fuckers would simply double-cross him. Aside from general cover, Joe and Viktor plan to use this story to enlist the few soldiers of Macky’s who remain so they will fight in this imminent war against the Cambodians.
I say to Joe, “The story sounded solid to me.”
“The rest of Macky’s muscle will probably buy it, but Levitch won’t. Last night Macky told her you and Leo were meeting him at the warehouse this morning. She thinks she’s put two and two together.”
I eye him over the rim of my mug. “This makes me uncomfortable.”
“Don’t worry. She won’t be around long enough to cause any problems. Tarasov said she doesn’t suspect his role in this. She still trusts him and today, tonight at the latest, he’ll get her in position for his guys to take care of her.”
“All right,” I say, “Levitch is accounted for. I will address whatever problems remain for the usual fee.”
Joe sips his drink and pauses to swallow and form his words. “The thing is,” he says, “all this shit about paying you a fee for this, a fee for that, is a pain in the ass.” He leans back to study me. “Me and Donsky here are gonna make one more run at you. Why don’t you reconsider and stick with us full-time?” He leans forward, excited, his eyes glassy and faraway. “I’ve been down awhile, I know, but I’m comin’ back. Donsky’s been a big help, talking me into merging with Tarasov and takin’ out Macky. You take Tarasov’s muscle and his suppliers and add ’em to Macky’s territory, we’re gonna kick the Cambodians back overseas along with everyone else. I’m gonna rule this town again, Babe. Just like in the seventies and eighties, you hear? I’m gonna rule again. Join me, join us. You can play a key role.”
Joe’s speech has revved up Donsky, and he is practically bouncing up and down in his seat like he has a case of diarrhea. He talks fast in that r-less Brooklyn accent of his: “The Feds wounded Joe’s organization bad when you were away, Babe. They still didn’t hit him as hard as the other families in the US, which are as good as fuckin’ dead now. Since Joe brought me on board, we’ve caught up with the Feds’ technology and learned how to counter their surveillance tactics.” He looks around the room, waving his hand grandly. “The walls of this room, for instance, are lined with jamming devices and totally bug-proof. Same thing with our houses, and when we go out in public—to eat, for instance—we carry briefcases with jammers in them. And we all use disposable cellphones, never one loaded with more than fifty minutes airtime. The biggest reason we’re set for a comeback is that federal law enforcement dollars are allocated cyclically, depending on the direction the political winds blow. Right now federal dollars are focused on counterterrorism and border patrol, and it takes bigger bucks than they got budgeted to come after us. Bottom line is we’re at the lowest ebb of federal intervention into organized crime that we’ve seen in goddamn decades. The state and locals have always been easy to buy off, so now’s the time to strike, man, now. But we need more men to strike effectively. Tarasov’s guys will help, as will the few guys from Macky’s crew who’ll be left after we purge the loyalists.” He smiles like an insurance salesman poised to go for the close. “Bottom line is we need you, Babe. Let us make you an offer you can’t refuse.”
I ignore Donsky, address Joe. “Joe, my mind is made up. I appreciate the financial opportunity you gave me to pad my nest egg by taking out Macky.” Not that he had any choice, shit; I am the only one who could get close enough to the hump to take him out. “And if the money is good enough, I will keep my promise to clean up whatever collateral mess results from the hit. But that is it. We have talked about it, Joe, and my decision is final. I am retiring after the Macky mess is cleaned up.” Now I look him in the eye and pause for maximum effect, ready to trump his ass with my ace in the hole: “Eight years of prison have earned me that right.”
He pouts, and a pout is the biggest challenge he can mount to my statement. My last eight-year hitch was for a manslaughter beef that should have been a life sentence, or worse, for murder one. It was over a contract Joe gave me for the life of one Martin Brewer. Brewer was a gay legislative aide to the California state senator who chaired the Select Committee on Organized Crime, and was extorting the good senator with the fact Joe had enlisted him on his payroll. I would have skated scot-free but for one alleged witness, a real flamer who Brewer jilted the week before I wasted him. The flamer claimed to have seen me talking to Brewer in the parking lot of a gay bar on the night in question (no comment—none, mind you, none—on how I allegedly lured Brewer to the honeymoon suite of the Chateau Marmont Hotel later that night), then followed us to the hotel parking lot and watched us walk in a side door together. Brewer’s shrill boyfriend was not the most reliable witness and his identification of me was shaky, but it was fairly indisputable that Brewer windmilled onto the parking lot pavement twenty-two minutes later. My dream-team lawyers advised me that the case was purely circumstantial, and gave me a better than even-money shot at walking. Being the gunners they were bred to be, they wanted me to roll the dice. I went along at first, but balked on the courthouse steps. I mean, hell, though the wit blew the photo lineup, he picked me out of the live one. We had the usual so-called alibi cooked up and ready to serve, but the jury could well have disbelieved it and punched me a ticket for the stainless steel ride at the Q. The plea deal my dream team struck was, literally, much easier to live with: eight years, no parole.
Said plea deal would have been immensely better—probably reduced to probation—if I had acquiesced to the prosecutors’ demand to squeal on Joe as the contractor of Brewer’s murder.
As a matter of principle, this I would not do.
Joe knows this.
Joe broods like a spoiled child while he sips bourbon, then clears his throat as if to release the words that have stuck there. “Okay, all right,” he says, “give me a quote on takin’ out two guys, both more or less at the same time….”
Babe
Leo called almost two hours ago and told me about his run-in with Levitch. I had just polished off a Kobe burger at Medusa Lounge, a club in Silver Lake on Beverly Boulevard. An exotic place, the Medusa’s interior is modeled after a medieval castle, elaborately constructed with arched ceilings, fat stone pillars, and stone flooring, wrought-iron chandeliers bathing the place in low light. Like so many other personal landmarks I have frequented since gaining my freedom, the Medusa sparks memories of better times and occupies a special place in my heart—a place so special it took me a week to finally make my way here.
Leo was at Hollywood Park when he called, no doubt losing the money I gave him earlier. I strolled the club while talking to him on my cell, admiring the Medusa’s over-the-top décor: gargoyles crouched on columns, stuffed owls, statues of cherubs that displayed their little limp dicks, an oversized chandelier above the bar—all old movie props personally selected by Billy Wilder’s set designer, the man who opened the joint in the mid-’50s. The place opened then as the Lowenbrau Keller, and Lowenbrau Keller was still its name when I met Lorraine here in 1980 and proposed marriage to her here a month later. At that time it was the kind of place where you expected to fall for a lusty broad in a little red dress with raven hair and luscious tits who seduces you in a Marlboro-and-martini voice, and
it still is.
Though early evening when Leo called, the lights were low and jazz music recorded by Nicholas Cole oozed from the overhead speaker, a smooth song backed up by soft xylophone chords. Soft xylophone chords always calm me, even when having a terse conversation with my emotionally callous son.
“You need to drop off the money you owe me at my house,” he said, “as soon as possible. There’s somebody I know who wants you dead.”
A track announcer practically drowned out Leo’s voice while making a call to the post, so I waited a beat or two. “Many people have foolishly announced their intent to effect my demise over the years. Who is the latest fool to do so?”
“This psychotic lesbian named Levitch,” he said. He gave me a quick summary of what went down at the Venetian, emphasizing that Macky had told her we were stopping by this morning and she and a punk named Latzo spotted my car in the warehouse parking lot. “She’s Macky’s niece and accused you of killing him. She came at me with a knife and I had to neutralize her.”
“Tuning up a woman, Jesus. Did I not teach you better than that?”
He said nothing.
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