“Thanks, Johnny.”
“Fugheddaboudit. Nice meeting you, kid.”
When they got back to the apartment, Nicky took the money out of his pocket. It was two twenty-dollar bills. He said, “Was he serious about me buying new clothes?”
“That guy's as serious as a heart attack,” Frankie said. “And he's right. We'll go down to Venati's tomorrow and get you something more comfortable.”
Nicky sat alone in his room that night, doodling and sketching his uncle and his uncle's goomba friends. He drew little portraits of Charlie Cement, and Sallie the Butcher, and Jimmy the Iceman, and Little Johnny Vegas.
Lying in bed, Nicky thought about Frankie and his friends—with “regular jobs.” What if they were like the guys in The Godfather? “Sallie the Butcher” and “Jimmy the Iceman” were like names for contract killers. Charlie Cement could be the guy who buried the people they killed—in the river, with cement shoes. Oscar the Undertaker? Well, duh.
And his uncle? Obviously, he might be the boss. He might be the biggest goomba of them all. Nicky imagined Frankie facing down a line of cops. “You talking to me? You talking to me? 'Cause I'm the only one here ….”
Then he fell asleep.
enati's was a men's clothing store. The owner greeted Frankie like he was family and shook Nicky's hand.
“I knew your father,” Venati said. “How come he don't come around here no more?”
“He had enough of mooks like you,” Frankie said. “How about fixing my nephew up with some new duds? He needs something that's not so Banana Republic.”
Venati picked out black jeans and black T-shirts, a pair of navy blue slacks and a light blue shirt with short sleeves and a little crown over the right pocket. Nicky thought it looked like a bowling shirt.
“Now he looks like a little goomba,” Frankie said. “Not bad, eh?”
“Not bad,” Nicky agreed.
They left Venati's side by side, one large goomba and one small goomba-in-training.
Back at the apartment, Grandma Tutti was rolling out dough. She said, “It's about time you're back. I need help with the macaroni. I'm making lasagna. Nicky, go wash your hands. You can cut.”
For the next hour Nicky helped his grandmother make the noodles. She rolled the dough into big sheets. Nicky carved out strips three inches wide and twelve inches long. Grandma Tutti hung these on a rack “to dry,” she said. By the time they were finished, strips of pale yellow noodles were hanging all over the apartment.
Around three o'clock Frankie came out of his room, carrying his gym bag and wearing black pants and a black leather jacket. He gave his mother a kiss and said, “See ya, Ma.”
“You'll see me when?” Grandma Tutti asked.
“I'll see you when I get back,” Frankie said. “You know how it is.”
“I don't know anything,” Grandma Tutti said. “You go out, you come back. It's a long time, it's a short time. How should I know when you're coming home?”
“Ma, if I knew, I'd tell you.”
“Your father was the same way. He'd say he was going down to the corner for a pack of cigarettes and I wouldn't see him until the next morning.”
“You shoulda made lasagna more often,” Frankie said.
“Out!” Grandma Tutti said. “Out, you idiot!”
After Frankie had gone, Grandma Tutti brushed flour from her hands and said, “Okay. I'm going to make coffee and tell you something. Go sit in the other room and wait for me.”
Nicky sat down in the room with the pictures of the Pope and Frank Sinatra and waited until his grandmother came down the hall with her coffee cup rattling in its saucer.
“Your mother called,” Tutti said, and sat down across from him. “She says hello and she loves you and they're having a good time on the boat.”
“It's actually a big ship, like a yacht.”
“It's a ship. It's a yacht. It's a boat. The point is— school. She wants you to go to summer school.”
“But that's for kids who are failing. I got straight As.”
“That's not the problem,” Grandma Tutti said. “It's your father. I didn't tell him Frankie was staying here. Now he knows, and he thinks that, because of what Frankie does for a living, and who he hangs around with, he wants you to go home and live with Horace. Or Charlton.”
“With Clarence?” Nicky was surprised. “But I like it here.”
Nicky's grandmother smiled. “I told your father that,” she said. “I told him you wouldn't be hanging around Frankie and his friends. I told him you were helping me. Then I told him you would go to summer school. In the end, he agreed.”
Nicky said, “Okay. I guess. But what's the problem with Uncle Frankie and my dad, anyway?”
Tutti sighed and put down her coffee cup. “Your father was always jealous. Frankie was big and strong. He was good at sports. He was working with his father. Nicky stayed in his room and read books. Straight As he got—just like you. He thought his father was stupid. He thought his brother was stupid. He used to say, ‘You don't know anything!’—like he was Albert Einstein himself.”
“Wasn't his father proud of him, with the straight As?”
“Yes, and no,” Tutti said. “He was very proud, secretly. But he was also a little ashamed that his son was so educated and he was so ignorant. So they fought. Nicky went away to Princeton. And he never came home—not for a weekend, or a holiday, not Thanksgiving or Christmas. He wrote me letters. But he never came home once until his father died. He came home for the funeral. That's when he and your uncle Frankie fought. Nicky went back to Princeton and he and Frankie never made up.”
Nicky said, “Wow. That's a long time to be angry.” “That's why your father is upset that your uncle is around. And that's why you're going to summer school.”
“Okay,” Nicky said. “When does it start?” “School started yesterday,” Grandma Tutti said. “You start in the morning.”
The school was a wide two-story brick building, across the street from an enormous Catholic church with an asphalt playground next to it. Nicky arrived dressed in his Carrington school uniform of khaki slacks, white shirt and blue blazer. He followed his grandmother under an archway where I.S. 201 was carved in stone, down a hallway to a door that said “Attendance Office.”
A grim woman who wore her eyeglasses on a chain pointed toward the end of the long linoleum hallway and said, “First period is math with Mr. Frommer, in room 220. It started five minutes ago. You're late.”
Walking in late was awful. The students stared at him. The teacher stared at him. As he was sitting down, one of the boys he'd seen on the street that first day called out, “Hey! It's the rich kid!” All the other kids laughed, and Nicky blushed.
Nicky watched the clock and drew in his sketch pad while Mr. Frommer droned on about area and volume. When the teacher asked, “Does anyone here remember the formula for finding the area of a rectangle?” Nicky reflexively raised his hand. The teacher said, “Yes, Richie?”
Nicky lowered his hand and put his face on the desk. The teacher called on someone else.
At the break, Nicky wasn't hungry. The other kids went to the cafeteria. He went to the schoolyard.
A group of boys was playing a game that involved a small red ball, about the size of a baseball. Nicky watched for a few minutes. Then the game stopped, and Nicky realized that the boys were all staring at him.
One of them, a blond kid with a turned-up nose, said, “Hey! You're standing on our field.”
The kid next to him said, “So move.”
The kid next to him said, “Make him move, Conrad.”
Conrad dropped the ball, stepped forward and stuck his fists up.
Nicky gulped. This wasn't Carrington. This wasn't the grassy playing field of C-Prep. This was Brooklyn. So he stared at Conrad and said, “You talking to me?”
The kid said, “What?”
“Are you talking to me ?”
“Of course I'm talking to you, you fruitcake.”
<
br /> “'Cause I'm the only one here. Are you talking to—”
They were on him like that. The first kid pushed Nicky hard in the chest. A second kid swung his fist, and Nicky hit the ground and rolled. A kid was on his back, fists pummeling his shoulders. Then someone had him by his jacket collar and was lifting him up. Nicky closed his eyes and gritted his teeth against the punch he knew was coming.
Instead, a voice said, “Clear out, you brats—unless you want a piece of me.”
Nicky opened his eyes. The guy holding his collar was another one of the kids he'd seen on the street his first day, the one his grandmother had called Tommy. He put Nicky on his feet and said, “You okay, or what?”
Nicky rubbed the gravel off his face. “Yeah.”
“You sure ?” Tommy grinned. “Those guys were going to give you a real beating. But they'll lay off now. They're just bullies, and bullies won't fight if they're afraid. Especially Conrad.”
“Thanks for stepping in,” Nicky said.
“Fugheddaboudit. I'm Tommy Caporelli. Howya doon?”
“I'm Nicholas Borelli. Nicky Borelli.”
“I know that,” Tommy said. “Frankie Borelli's nephew. What are you dressed for, your first communion? This is I.S. 201. We don't doll up for school here.”
Tommy was wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt. He looked at his watch and said, “We still got time to get a Coke. Come on.”
Nicky followed Tommy out the front gate and down the block to a little grocery store. Tommy led him to the candy aisle, where he draped an arm over Nicky's shoulder. He looked at the candy bars and took a long time deciding what he wanted. Finally he said, “Why don't you go and get a Coke?”
The man behind the cash register said, “One Coke? One dollar.”
Tommy joined him at the counter. Nicky reached into his pocket and took out a dollar. He said, “You're not getting anything?”
“Nah. Let's blow.”
Halfway back to the school gate, Tommy said, “Okay, stop.” He stuck his hands into the pockets of Nicky's blazer and pulled out a Snickers bar, a Mars bar, a box of Milk Duds and a packet of Life Savers.
“You get first pick,” he said.
Nicky said, “You stole all that?”
“You stole all that,” Tommy said. “So whatta you want?”
“I'll take the Life Savers.”
“Figures. Sissy.” Tommy shoved the other candy into his pockets and said, “I'll see you after school.”
Nicky was stunned. Tommy was a thief! Was he also a goomba? He'd ask Uncle Frankie about that when he got home.
Uncle Frankie didn't come home. But that night, while they were eating dinner, Nicky said, “I met a kid from the block, at school. Tommy Caporelli.”
“He's a live one,” Grandma Tutti said. “A good boy, but wild. Don't you let him get you into any trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Who knows what kind of trouble, with boys like that? Just you watch your step and remember who you are.”
“Who am I?”
“You're a Borelli. You're the son of Nicholas Borelli, the son of Arturo Borelli. Now help me with the dishes.”
After dinner, Nicky watched goomba scenes from Frankie's DVD collection. One thing he noticed about the people in the movies: there were a lot of them. In
The Godfather, or Goodfellas, or Analyze This, or The Sopranos, no one was ever alone. If there was one goomba, there was a crowd of goombas.
Not for Nicky. He was mostly alone. He didn't see Tommy at school the next day. He sat in class, daydreaming and drawing faces in his sketch pad.
Especially in math. There was a dark-haired girl who sat by the blackboard. She was the prettiest girl Nicky had ever seen. While the teacher talked about equilateral and isosceles triangles, Nicky sketched her face from different angles. Whenever a student near him would raise a hand to answer a question, Nicky would close his sketch pad and pretend to be studying his textbook.
First period went by too quickly. Second period dragged.
The next day, Grandma Tutti sent Nicky to the bakery for fresh bread. He went around the corner, past the Bath Avenue Social Club. The door was ajar. Nicky peeked in. Eddie was making sandwiches behind the counter. Sallie the Butcher was playing cards with two men Nicky didn't recognize. He looked up, saw Nicky through the doorway and said, “Hey, Borelli! Come inhere!”
Nicky went through the doorway. Sallie the Butcher stood up and said, “Guys, this is Nicky Borelli's boy— Frankie's nephew. What's going on?”
“I'm going to the bakery, for my grandmother.”
“You're a good grandson. What's she cooking?”
“Something with clams.”
“Linguini in clam sauce!” Sallie said. “Lucky kid! She cooks like an angel, your grandmother. I grew up on her ravioli.”
“She's pretty good,” Nicky said. “But she cooks too much. When Uncle Frankie's not around, we don't eat even half of it.”
“Frankie's been working a lot, huh?”
“Yeah. All week.”
“He's a hard worker, that Frankie.”
“What about the other guys?” Nicky said. “Charlie, and Bobby, and all. Are they working, too?”
“Everybody except me. I go to work when everybody else is done.” Sallie winked at the other two cardplayers. “I do my best work at night. Bada boom!”
That sealed it. Nicky was more certain than ever that his uncle and his crew were on some job. Maybe a big heist. Maybe armored cars. Or a bank. It must be a big job. All the men Nicky had met the first day in the social club must be on the job, too. And when they were done, Sallie the Butcher did his cutting.
And he talked about it, right out in the open. So the other two cardplayers must be part of the gang, too.
Nicky felt light-headed and strange. And a little scared. This was so not Carrington.
The old man who smelled funny was sitting on the front stoop—smoking a cigarette, but not sleeping— when Nicky came back. He grabbed Nicky's ankle in his bony hand and said, “Nicholas Borelli the Second! I am Vincente Moretti. Why did the chicken cross the road?”
Nicky said, “I don't know.”
“To get the Chinese newspaper.”
“I don't get it.”
“Me neither,” Mr. Moretti said. “I get the New York Times!”
Nicky smiled and said, “Now I get it.”
Mr. Moretti tapped the ash off his cigarette and said, “Please tell your sainted grandmother that I am available for dinner this evening.”
“Sure, Mr. Moretti. I'll tell her.”
Upstairs, Nicky said, “That drunk guy on the stoop says he's available for dinner tonight.”
“He can come to dinner—at my funeral,” Grandma Tutti said. “Go wash up and we'll eat without him.”
That night, after dinner, alone in his room, Nicky drew a comic strip of Frankie and his gang at work. They were in a sewer line, digging their way into a bank. Then they were in the bank, wiring explosives to the vault. They were in the vault, surrounded by money. But here came the cop cars! Frankie and his men took a stand in the alley behind the bank. The getaway car was coming! Bullets were flying!
There was a knock at the door. Nicky shoved his sketch pad under the bed.
“Good night, Nicky,” his grandmother called to him. “I'll see you in the morning.”
icky had eaten his breakfast and was getting ready for school when Frankie came home.
He looked horrible. He needed a shave. His eyes were bloodshot. His clothes looked like he had slept in them. But when he saw Nicky, he lit up. He said, “Nicky Deuce in the house! C'mere, kid!” He pulled Nicky to his chest and gave him a big hug.
He smelled like he'd slept in his clothes, too. He let Nicky go, set down his gym bag with a clunk and said, “Come here, Ma. You give me a hug, too.”
“Go wash first,” Grandma Tutti said. “I know what you're like when you've been working.”
“Some welcome home,” Frankie said
. “But I smell something good. What is that, Ma?”
“Pasta e fagioli, for later. Plus some fish.”
“Pasta fazool!” Frankie said. “And fish! Tonight we'll eat like kings.”
“Take a bath, Your Highness,” Grandma Tutti said. “And you, get to school before you're late.”
Nicky didn't see Tommy until math class, when his new friend came shuffling through the door, late, sat down behind Nicky and whispered, “Hey, hot dog. What'd I miss?”
Nicky smiled. “Not much.”
“That's enough out of you, Caporelli,” Frommer said. “Keep it down.”
The lesson was all about measuring triangles. That was old news for Nicky. He opened his sketch pad and started drawing.
Frommer said, “To find the length of the longest side of a right triangle, we use the formula A squared plus B squared equals what, Mr. Caporelli?”
Tommy looked perplexed. He and Frommer stared at each other. Frommer turned back to the board. Nicky coughed the answer into his hand, loudly enough to be heard: “C squared!”
Frommer turned around and said, “Caporelli! You surprise me! A squared plus B squared always equals C squared, where C is the longest leg of a right triangle. Now, to find the area of a triangle …”
While Frommer wrote on the board, Nicky sketched him, transforming the teacher into a mad scientist with white hair and long fingernails.
Nicky was still drawing when Frommer turned and said, “Borelli? Problem five.”
Nicky's textbook was inside his desk. Frommer was staring. The other students were staring. Nicky panicked. He felt like Sonny Corleone, in The Godfather, when he gets gunned down at the tollbooth.
“Borelli? That is your name, isn't it?”
Nicky said, “You talking to me?”
“Is your name Borelli or not?”
“Yeah. You got a problem with that?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Fugheddaboudit.”
“Okay, smarty-pants—up! To the principal's office!”
It wasn't so bad. The principal was an elderly woman who reminded him of Grandma Tutti. She said, “If you're Nicholas Borelli, I think I knew your father. Wasn't he a student here in the seventies?”
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