I tossed the phone on the table and took a hit of coffee. Hell of a way to start the day. A hangover, coffins, and cops. Fuck it. I appreciated Jimmy’s warnings from the night before but I had business to attend to; I had responsibilities. I needed to be in motion. There were people who needed to hear from me, to deal with me. I needed to take something, someone on, and better now that I was fired up. I dialed Virginia’s number.
It rang twice before someone answered. I couldn’t believe my stomach could hurt so bad so fast. “Silverdale and Green, attorneys-at-law,” a woman who wasn’t Virginia said. Attorneys? Had I called the right number?
“Virginia Ostertag, please,” I said. One moment, I was told, and I was switched over to Pachelbel’s Canon. Suddenly, I wasn’t so fired up anymore. It just wasn’t fair.
“This is Virginia,” she said.
“And where did you go to law school, Ms. Ostertag?” I asked.
“John?” She had a laugh in her voice, despite herself. She killed it quick. “I appreciate the return call.”
“You said it was important.”
“It is, but I know you’re dealing with a lot right now. How are you? It’s so awful, what happened. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m hanging in,” I said. “Julia’s doing okay, too. We’re dealing.”
“Good, I’m glad to hear that. Tell her I said hello.”
“I will,” I said. I had to stay focused. “So, you said you had something important to discuss. I’m all ears.”
“I can’t really talk right now,” she said. “I’ve got a lot of stuff here to wrap up, before . . . before we talk.”
No good, I thought. Deliver the ultimatum. We talk right now, or not at all. “Um, okay. So I should call you later? At home?” Nice. Nice reaction. Lay off the curve, I knew this. But there I was on my ass in the dirt.
“That’s no good,” she said. “My phone’s not working.”
“Sure it’s not,” I said. Here we go. I should just hang up right now. Don’t play it her way. “Why am I talking to you?” I asked, her or me, I didn’t know. “You wanted me to call, so I called, because you had something so fucking important to tell me that now you can’t tell me.” I paced the kitchen. “We quit this game, remember? You quit this game.”
“I’m not f-ing playing games,” she said, the professional sheen off her voice. “I’m in an office full of people.”
I could picture her glancing around the office. Good. At least I was getting a rise out of her, evening the count. “You don’t get to do this to me anymore, Virginia. Tell me what you want.”
“I’m not trying to do anything to you,” she said, whispering now. “I’m trying to extend you some courtesy, show you some respect. What I have to tell you is important, more than the kind of thing you discuss over the phone at work.”
There she was throwing the Uncle Charlie again. I saw the hook, but I flailed at it anyway. She just made me so tired and impatient so fast. “What do you want to do?”
“I’m about to duck out to lunch,” she said. “Can you meet me? How about the Four Corners, over by the Cargo? It’s close to the office.”
Defend the strike zone, I thought. Foul her off. “Can’t do it. I have plans.” She paused, wondering, I knew, what I could have planned that was more important than her big fucking news. “How about Club Forest, on Clove. It’s halfway between you and me.”
“What about the park?” she said. “Clove Lakes?”
Okay. She wanted to stay out of a bar. Fair enough. Booze in both of us might complicate things. “The park it is, then,” I said. “By the bridge. Five? Six?”
“Three,” she said. “I’m leaving early today. Lots of errands.”
“Three works. See you there,” I said, but she had already hung up.
I plopped down on the bench, drummed my fingers on the table. I got up from the table, walked over to the sink. I leaned over it, looking out the window into the backyard, grinding my teeth. Standing around, brooding about her, accomplished nothing. I badly needed something to do. Booze was out. Virginia expected me to show up a drunken wreck. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. But I needed a distraction. I picked up the phone and called work. Brian answered.
“Yo, Bri, it’s John.”
“Hey, man,” he said. “How’re you doing? We’ve been waiting to hear from you.”
“I’m hanging in,” I said. “I’ll be back by the weekend.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Brian said. “Take as much time as you need. You’re dealing with family. This is only a bar.”
“I appreciate that. I got a quick question. Theo been in at all?”
There was a long pause. “I ain’t exactly a role model,” Brian said, “but you really think pills are what you need right now?”
“It’s not about that,” I said. “I’ve just got a question for him.” It was true Theo sold pills. And it was true that I often bought them from him. But Theo also sold guns. “Have you seen him?”
“Not lately,” Brian said.
“He get picked up again?”
“If he has,” Brian said, “I haven’t heard about it. You’re making me nervous.”
“Don’t worry about it. You see him,” I said, “tell him I’m looking for him. Give him this number. It’s important. Keep me on the schedule. I’ll be in on Friday.”
Brian started in again with words of caution. I hung up on him and took the car down to the deli.
Vito glanced over at me when I walked in then dropped his eyes to the cash register. Fluorescent lights flickering overhead, I walked the aisles checking for other customers. There were only two, both in the back at the deli. Vito’s father, Big Sal Costanza, sliced pastrami behind the counter, a bloodstained apron over his belly, an unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth. Johnny Mathis played on a radio beside him. Big Sal sang along. Squatting, Angela stocked Cokes into the coolers. If she recognized me, she didn’t give it away. The Costanzas: one not so big but happy familyworking away the last few hours of a quiet Tuesday morning. Me? I felt like a bomb.
I poured steaming hot coffee into a foam cup. As I sugared and stirred it, I watched Vito’s head turn back and forth between the back of the store and the front door, begging with his eyes for a customer. I walked over to the counter.
“How ya doin’, Vito?” I put a twenty down.
“Fine,” he said, not looking at me. “A buck fifty. For the coffee.”
“Throw in a Daily News.” I leaned forward on the counter. I laid down another twenty and shoved the forty toward him. “You talk to your father?”
He stared at the money, but he didn’t reach for it. His hands didn’t move from his sides. “No. Haven’t had a chance,” he said. “Two and a quarter.”
“Throw in two packs of Camel Filters.” Two more twenties went down. “You heard him talking about it? Anything at all that might help me out?” I put down the last twenty I had with me. “You remember who worked that day?”
“Look,” he finally said, “the cops told me not to talk about it to anyone. I don’t want any trouble with them.” He looked down at the money, pinched his forefinger and thumb at his lips. “I can’t afford it. Feel me?”
“I feel you.” I took the top off my coffee and sipped it. It was so hot I gagged. My eyes watered. I crushed the plastic top in my fist. I tried to smile at Vito. “But what the cops don’t know can’t hurt either of us. Right?”
“Sorry,” Vito said, snatching up a twenty and ringing me up in a hurry. “I can’t help.”
“Correction,” I said, leaning close to him, speaking quietly. “You won’t help. There’s a difference.” My palms had started to sweat. I wiped them dry on my jeans. I picked up the rest of the money. He hadn’t gotten me my cigarettes. I looked around the store. There was no one in sight. “Can I have my fucking smokes at least? Can you do that for me?”
“Yeah, sure. Anything to make you happy.” He was talking like a smart-ass now, but his hand shook as he reached over his
head for the cigarettes.
I lunged at him, grabbing Vito’s arm and yanking him hard against the counter. Hot coffee splashed all over both of us. I snatched his throat in my other hand. Gagging, Vito grabbed my wrist with one hand. His other hand darted under the counter, searching for the bat or pipe or whatever weapon he kept there. I pulled him closer to me.
“I fucking told you I’d be back,” I said. “But you did nothing for me. You useless piece of shit. Where’s your sense of civic responsibility?”
Vito’s answer couldn’t make it through my fingers at his throat. Both our heads snapped around when a tiny lady in a black coat screamed, her hands flapping in the air, her fresh cold cuts at her feet. I released my hold on Vito. He grabbed a baseball bat from under the counter and held it out in front of him, shaking it at me. Angela appeared at the end of the soda aisle as Big Sal came rumbling up the aisle. “What? What? What?” he shouted.
“Pop!” Vito yelled. “This is the psycho I was telling you about. The one all crazy about the dead guy.”
Big Sal looked at me. The panic disappeared from his face. Sadness replaced it. “Junior, I had a feeling my son was talking about you the other day,” he said. “Put the bat down, Vito.”
Vito shook the bat at his father, then back at me, then at his father again. “Pop, this guy is dangerous.”
Big Sal frowned at his son. “Dangerous? I known this kid since he was a little nothing.” He looked back at me. “Upset maybe, but dangerous? I don’t think so. Right?”
I nodded, looking helplessly at the spilled coffee then back at Big Sal.
“Let me finish up something in the back,” Big Sal said. “Vito, clean up that coffee. Junior, you wait right there for me. Don’t do nothin’, don’t say nothin’, just wait.” He looked at his daughter. “Angie, sweetheart, you keep an eye on these two knuckleheads and make sure they do what I told ’em.”
Everybody did what Big Sal told them. None of us said a word.
Big Sal had known me since I was a little kid, since my father used to walk me down to his store so I could rifle through comic books and packs of baseball cards while he shot the shit with Big Sal and his brothers. It was the highlight of my weekend, hanging around the corner store with big, smoking, swearing, laughing men. Sal would always pat me on the head when I jumped in the conversation. My father would put his hands on my shoulders and redirect me back to the comic books. It seemed like a fine time, and I felt lucky to be part of it.
God, I hadn’t thought about that in years. Those trips to the store had ended twenty years ago, long before my father took up with Fontana. Both of Sal’s older brothers were dead.
To my surprise, there was still a black wire rack full of comics at the end of the counter. I could see my younger self straining to reach the top, could hear the squeak of the rack as I turned it while trying to eavesdrop on my father and the Costanza brothers. I remembered staring at the packs of baseball cards, trying to guess which one hid the Dave Kingman card I coveted, terrified of making the wrong choice. I remembered the brothers’ sudden silences when my father snapped at me to make up my goddamn mind already.
It was always either-or with my father. No matter how hard I argued, or bargained, he would never buy me both comics and cards, though each cost less than a dollar. As I watched Vito, muttering to Angela as he cleaned up and she rang up the terrified old lady, I recalled my father talking about life lessons, about being forced to make hard choices. I never learned that lesson. I insisted on what I wanted, forgetting or ignoring that I’d never gotten it in the past.
Usually, I left Sal’s store empty-handed and impossibly frustrated, unable to make up my mind. My father would drag me home by the arm, alternately laughing and swearing at me, promising to never bring me back, though the next weekend, he always did and I was always glad for it.
Finally, during one walk home he made his threat and I surprised both of us by telling him that would be fine with me. I told him that one day I would have my own money and I would get things for myself. I fully expected to get belted. But he didn’t hit me. He just squeezed my shoulder hard enough to hurt, and told me I was finally learning something. I had no idea what he meant.
Big Sal made his way back up front. He poured two cups of coffee, dropped ice cubes into each one to cool them off. “Let’s go outside,” he said. I followed him through the door and around the side of the building. Sal lit his cigar stub before he spoke.
“Normally, I wouldn’t let someone behave like that in my store,” he said. “Never mind toward my children.” He puffed. “It’s not something I’ll overlook again.”
“I understand.”
He looked at me through his cigar smoke.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to offend or disrespect you. I was just trying to—”
“I know what you were trying to do,” he said. “I know it was your father that got killed out there. I feel for you, kid. I really do. I knew the man for over twenty years. It happened in front of my store. How do you think that makes me feel? And I know what it looks like, with the way he died. That shit has never, ever gone on in my store.”
I just stared at him. He’d tell me that whether it was true or not.
“This vendetta shit won’t work,” Big Sal said. “I can tell from the state of you that it’s not making you feel any better.”
“I’m not after some vendetta,” I said. “And I don’t care how I look. I’ve got everything under control. I’m not the problem. Nobody’ll tell me a damn thing about what happened. That’s the problem with this situation.”
“You blame ’em?” Sal said. “The way you been acting?”
“I refuse to accept this, Sal,” I said. “It was broad fucking daylight.”
“This is New York City,” Sal said. “You know how much shit happens in broad daylight that no one has an explanation for? Where’s your head, kid? Why should you be special?”
“Because it was my father.” The words were out before I realized how foolish they sounded.
“I know, I know,” Sal said. “I feel for you. I do.”
“So what do I do?” I asked. “Shit happens? That’s what you’re telling me?”
“I know it ain’t that simple,” Sal said. “Gimme some credit.”
“If it was you that got shot like that,” I said, “what would you want Vito to do? Just let it go? Or would you want some kind of justice?”
“Justice? Junior, you’re smarter than this. What’s justice got to do with real life? I know how your father treated you. I tried talking to him about it all the time but he wouldn’t listen. Where’s the justice in that?” He plucked his cigar from his mouth, picked some tobacco off his lip. “Listen, who was that pretty Irish girl you used to bring around here in high school? Meagan?”
“Molly,” I said.
Sal clapped his hands. “Molly. Right. Molly Francis. She was a looker. Listen, you think Molly doesn’t want justice for her brother? You think she’s ever gonna get it? You think she doesn’t wonder, that we all don’t wonder, how that coulda happened?”
“How should I know?” I said.
“You asked me what I’d want Vito to do,” Sal said. “It’s hard to even think about; I wouldn’t wish the hurt you’re feeling on my worst enemy. But I’d want Vito to do what a man is supposed to do. I’d want him to take care of his family.”
“You think Julia doesn’t want to know who did this?”
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