Burning Down

by Venero Armanno

  ‘At our house. With my mother. Do you want me to drive you?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You won’t.’ Diego felt his chest heaving. ‘Roberto, this man … the worst kind of liar. Do not lift a finger to help him.’

  ‘Papi, what the hell’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Carmelo—I told you to get out.’

  ‘Your dad thinks I’ll tell you things he doesn’t want you to hear.’

  ‘Joder—por qué no te callas?’

  ‘Papi!’

  Diego saw the way Carmelo now turned to him.

  ‘What the fuck are you saying?’

  ‘I’m telling you to shut up. Do you understand? What about your secrets? Why don’t we discuss those?’

  ‘I’m not discussing anything. I just want to go home.’

  Diego watched his son come toward him, suspicion replacing the utter incomprehension in his face.

  ‘What’s the big secret, Papi?’

  ‘And you be quiet.’

  ‘What don’t you want Mr Smoke to tell me?’

  ‘“Mr Smoke”—such respect to a bum.’

  ‘Is it true you’ve tried to sell the bistro?’

  ‘That’s my word.’

  ‘What if I ring Javier in the morning? Speak to him and his father? Will they tell me they didn’t want to buy our bistro for the peanuts you offered? Or will they say they never heard such a thing?’

  ‘You want to accuse your father of a lie—you, still a baby?’

  ‘But Papi! Every time you’ve tried something, all your steps to get us out of this hole, you’ve met a brick wall …’

  ‘If you had eyes you could see this economy for what it is, and how this country doesn’t even know—’

  ‘Shut up!’ Roberto shouted into his face.

  Diego felt himself too shocked to react. And Roberto’s eyes stared into him as if seeing his father for the first time.

  ‘Is that what Mr Smoke knows and won’t tell me? That it’s all lies?’

  Diego faltered. He wanted to get away from that stare. He wanted to reach for the solace of the Cava—and the better solace of time to think.

  ‘Tell me, Papi!’

  He tried to drink. The glass wouldn’t find his lips.

  ‘What do you think … what do you think you’re accusing me of?’

  His son’s eyes searched his face.

  Carmelo moved closer, and for a moment Diego thought he would intervene, step between him and his boy and defuse the situation. He almost hoped he would. Instead, Carmelo spoke to him in a quiet voice, as if he had all the understanding, dignity and grace in the world. In that moment Diego felt himself hate this man who was no old friend at all, but an enemy.

  ‘Diego, just listen. It’s time for you to tell your son where things are really up to.’

  Diego clamped his jaws shut. He stood from his chair.

  ‘Bobby … most of what you just said. Maybe it’s true. But there’s one more thing. Come on, Diego.’

  Nothing. Ever.

  ‘Your father, he took an extra—’

  ‘Qué cabrón! Just look at you!’ He shoved Carmelo Fumo two-handed in the chest, the words bursting out. ‘A clown covered in blood and bruises, just the way I left you in the ring. Making accusations when you’ve been dead so long you don’t remember what it’s like to have a life in here.’ Diego slapped his own chest, over his heart. ‘Some of us never let our insides turn to stone. We dealt with our lives.’

  ‘Playing the horses with other people’s money is your answer? That’s what makes you feel so good?’

  ‘I have him, my boy, my family and business. This restaurant attracts friends and visitors every time it opens. You, with nothing, what can you understand about me?’

  ‘I understand enough. You gamble with Junior but it’s got nothing to do with making money. You want to see how far you can go. You want the rush of walking on a ledge and if it goes bad you make sure someone’s there to cover you. It’s how you always were.’

  ‘At my age you think I should apologise for the small excitements still available?’

  ‘Not to me, but to him, yeah.’

  ‘Why would I?’

  ‘Because he’s a good son. I never knew how good until tonight. Trying to cover for you. Trying to keep your good name for you.’

  ‘Papi, what else have you done?’

  ‘No questions!’ Diego turned on his boy. ‘Do you forget? Everything you’ve had from me?’

  Diego wanted to rein himself in, to speak like the man he knew himself to be. The patriarch everyone admired and loved. Yet anger screamed in his head, his hands jittering out of control.

  ‘And everything that one day you will have. I’ve protected it. Can’t you see? For you and your mother and for the family you’ll make. With Sistine—the girl this man won’t let you marry. You trust him? You take this liar’s word? He offered us his money only for his own benefit. To buy you away from his daughter. But … but with me everything we have stays safe. You keep your future. And this is where it comes from.’

  Diego raised his hands, and though they shook he held them out to his boy—palms, fists, knuckles.

  ‘I’ve had to fight. Every step. For any piece of good I could take. So that you will never have to.’ Diego turned his head to Carmelo, who with a grimace now collected the fat backpack. ‘See the way he takes his blood money and goes back on his word?’

  ‘Stay with him, Bobby,’ Carmelo said. ‘The sort of help he needs, I can’t give. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Wait, Mr Smoke. The extra thing?’

  Diego saw the muscle in Carmelo’s jaw tighten. He’d fill the world with lies and try to make everyone hate Diego Domingo.

  Because he’s jealous of everything I’ve got. Because he knows I’m the better man. His own daughter hates him. What more does anyone need to know?

  Diego felt his son looking at him in a way a son should never look at a father.

  The stupid airconditioning must have switched itself off. He was perspiring into his suit. These hands, he held them hard behind his back, restraining them. The walls felt close.

  ‘I lost again, at Flemington, Robertino. It was a small mistake. Some considerable sum, true, but only to add to the rest. Come on, smile. You know your papi will always make things better.’

  Behind Robertino, the tinkle of that bell, and the bistro’s front door starting to swing shut.

  Diego heard his own voice cry, ‘Carmelino, please.’

  But he was gone, and Diego looked into his boy’s face once more, always so sweet, yet now somehow ugly, disclosing the fact that he was no longer present either.

  …

  Diego’s cry followed Charlie into the street, too much like the whimper of a dying animal. He wouldn’t let himself hear it, not in the welcome quiet of the Valley so late at night. He left the Premier parked where it was, at a drunken angle. Mike and Denny could collect it. If they didn’t the city council could tow it away in the morning. Charlie Smoke didn’t care one way or the other.

  He tried to walk a straight line, a man hauling a weary body and far too much illegal cash. The bistro receded, yet the further he went the clearer things became—he’d managed to resolve absolutely nothing. If anything, things were even more of a mess than before. And the worst part of it was the way Sistine was still involved.

  At least he was capable of walking. And there was something else. That mighty crack across his left shoulder had loosened or split the horrible wadding that glued up his movement. The shoulder still hurt, but not as bad as before. He lifted his left arm, remembering the careful way Holly had tested it for him, a lifetime ago now. His arm had a little more range and the shoulder joint didn’t cry out.

  Extraordinary, but not enough of a miracle to make him want to thank Junior’s men. He trudg
ed on. The road was empty, every business was shut, and few lights illuminated the way.

  There might have been a minor miracle in his shoulder, but he felt as if he carried a greater weight than this backpack or his own aching bones. The weight came from the inside, as if he possessed rocks instead of organs. There was the hospital wanting to give him more tests for his heart; Peter Banks was back once again; and there was Holly standing drunk and all tangled up inside. Add a physical beating; add the way he’d caused a dutiful son to lose faith in his own father. All to what end? Whose life was one degree better for these turns?

  The street, stretching ahead in the darkness, seemed to go on forever. He saw the world as if through the wrong end of a telescope. Gesù, to drop down here on some corner like a drunk. Then, in front of St John’s Cathedral—had he really got this far?—a passing taxi slowed. The driver accepted the fare, no matter how bad his passenger looked, and the journey continued in silence.

  Finally home, Charlie stumbled inside, stripped out of dirty clothes stained with blood, and took a long shower. Feeling marginally better in fresh clothes, he dug around the kitchen. There was food but no wine. Meanwhile, his body had begun to stiffen. His legs wanted to give out. In the living room he stared at the backpack.

  That voice: ‘Carmelino, please.’

  Diego was not even a friend, still a liar and cheat, and the one who’d helped rob him of his dignity both inside the ring and out.

  Or did I do it to myself?

  He didn’t have any pills left to numb the pain but he remembered something. Back about two years Mr and Mrs Tran had made a small ceremony of presenting him with a gift of thanks, for helping them both find work. They’d had multiple pots of Mrs Tran’s fragrant cooking, a bottle of rice wine fermented by Mr Tran, and an extra something. It was in a bottom drawer, a bottle of whisky: maybe a good one, maybe not, he didn’t care. There was ice in the freezer.

  The first sip tore into his organs like acid, then, three drinks later it bestowed warmth like a magic spell. He stayed in his armchair like that, drinking without savouring, drunk at dawn. Even then he couldn’t sleep, his thoughts turning to Junior or, more accurately, to Mike and Denny. The new problem became clear even as his mind clouded over. They knew he had a backpack stuffed with cash; they’d been smart enough to suspect there was more. How long before they tracked him down?

  They might do it on their own initiative or Junior himself might send them. In the world of these people money was everything. The only thing Charlie had managed to achieve was to reveal he had plenty of it.

  A vision returned. It was a vision repeated day by day, year by year—the shadow in Charlie’s mind since Old Terry died, always taking the shape of the nameless men who’d come find him. Well, they weren’t shadows any more. Now he knew their names and their faces, and they knew his.

  He squinted at the sunrise. A new day. A new day to curse to hell. His chin rested on his chest, then his head nodded up and he saw a new picture. A car was out front. His guts squirmed. Someone drifted dreamlike through the wire gate.

  He felt the glass taken from his hands and a voice too far away: ‘Not this, Charlie.’

  Then a touch. ‘Come on, what have you done to yourself?’

  ‘Nothing … never … nothing good …’

  Charlie Smoke, in arms that held him, finally slept.

  …

  They said a boxer will lose his speed first, and Diego Domingo knew it was so, but they also said a good fighter’s power might stay with him for years past his prime, even decades. Diego wanted that to be true as well, but the power he meant was that of the mind, his thoughts remaining sharp as crystal for as long as God might keep him on His good earth.

  Yet his tremors had come on the heels of Diego’s sixtieth birthday, and with them the process of forgetting, of wondering where he was up to when he looked through papers and invoices, of placing bets he forgot and losing money he was sure could never have slipped through his fingers. The loss of vitality and virility—for Diego these were the twin opponents he needed to slip and counter for as long as he was able, which he’d done by following the one thing still capable of making his blood race.

  And look where that had got him. Maybe Carmelo hadn’t been very far wrong. Gambling had become Diego’s new middleweight bout even as he knew it was a sucker bet always favouring the house. The things to remember then, amongst never-ending failures, were those rare moments of victory. No fighter enters a ring without expecting a black eye and a bloodied mouth, and no gambler lays bets without anticipating losses. These were the very things to give each win its special piquancy—the piquancy that added zest to a life gone flat. But what’s left to win when your two hands let you down and your own son has come to pity you?

  Everything I tried and all the clever steps I took … echar agua al mar … all just throwing water at the sea.

  Diego left his desk. He went to stand in front of his favourite photograph. There he was with a radiant Miranda, heading off to a ball. Two-year-old Robertino was in Diego’s arms, not looking at the camera in the way the photographer had wanted but instead gazing at his father’s face with one chubby hand reaching for his chin. A look so close to adoration, and Diego and Miranda not simply smiling but caught mid-laugh. An extraordinary shot not quite meant, as with all of life’s best moments.

  He lifted the frame from the wall and there was his composite safe, both burglar and fire proof. Its metal door shone dully. Diego rolled the combination, three attempts, because he wasn’t quite hitting that last number correctly.

  Then he had it and was looking at the police-issue .38. If he didn’t keep it hidden Robertino would probably shoot his own fingers off. Where was the boy today? Most likely with Sistine. He hadn’t been in for lunch service and was nowhere to be found for dinner. It might be some time before he came back. The events of the previous night had resulted in something Diego now understood. He’d fallen in his boy’s eyes; from hero to fool.

  Diego took the pistol. Two slugs in its chambers when one would be enough.

  Outside his office the bistro was busy, with its chatter and clatter and Spanish music playing. The door was locked. Diego breathed shallow and fast, like a dog panting. He moved back to his desk and eased himself into his chair, always so comfortable, now the place for last thoughts.

  Look at Robertino’s .38, so compact in these hands. Dios y los santos lo han decidido. God and the saints have decided it. His hands continued to shake, refusing to give him respite enough for one last moment of dignity. As the black muzzle trembled against his right temple Diego made sure to keep his eyes on that much-loved photograph on the distant wall. He didn’t look at radiant Miranda or adoring Robertino, only at himself—a younger man who’d earned himself the nickname ‘The Danger’ and who’d once collected championship belts. Two of those belts had been paid off by Old Terry’s money and now, he suspected, a third. Old Terry had known Diego would never be invited past these shores, and so Diego Domingo had never been given the chance at a true world championship; his love of easy roads had kept him a local hero only.

  And the easier road continued to call. Diego applied gentle pressure to the trigger. He refused to close his eyes; he wanted to see what was coming.

  What came was the shrieking of his telephone.

  To answer or shoot?

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mi amor, you have a visitor.’

  ‘I’m very busy,’ he told his wife. ‘Who is it?’

  Diego kept the gun in his hand. A visitor? It might be Mike; it could be Denny. The visitor wouldn’t be Junior. Or he might have sent a new man to deal with Diego, and this one would kill.

  Yet when Miranda told him who it was he wavered.

  ‘All right,’ he heard himself say, then slid open the desk drawer and put the gun away. He checked his appearance. The portrait of his family was back in its place, th
e empty safe hidden. Diego unlocked his door.

  Before he could return to his chair the man entered, a familiar backpack over one shoulder.

  ‘You know what, Diego? It keeps me awake wondering how an old fool like you thinks he’s going to get himself out of trouble.’

  ‘I didn’t expect to see you again.’

  ‘That was the idea.’

  ‘Last night, harsh words spoken between such old friends.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You look terrible, Carmelo. Conscience wouldn’t let you sleep?’

  ‘In a way. Thing is, I can’t stop thinking about you and your troubles.’

  ‘So selfless, Carmelino, or still worried for Sistine?’

  ‘Just give me your hands.’

  ‘What?’

  Carmelo Fumo put out his own hands. Diego took them—and he spoke first.

  ‘So you feel it, Carmelino.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘It’s more persistent these days.’

  ‘Drives you crazy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then maybe you’ll take some advice.’

  Diego withdrew his hands. He wanted three fingers of brandy in one of the Irish-lace crystal tumblers on his sideboard but forced himself to wait.

  ‘Diego, the truth is we’re not just getting on, we’re well past getting on. Things go wrong with us and that’s just the way it is. I had to find a doctor for my shoulder. Then a specialist, then the hospital and all the tests they wanted.’

  ‘Nothing too serious I hope?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Carmelo shook his head. ‘What I’m saying is you’ve got to do the same. Your family needs you. Especially your boy. But you’re acting like everything’s always going to stay the same. You’ve got the shakes and I doubt you’ve had a date right in a year.’

  ‘Maybe some of what you say is true,’ Diego spoke, ‘but nothing you mention is useful.’

  ‘If you were your old self, would you have let a mess like this develop? Your head’s screwed up. Junior’s playing with you. Maybe a doctor’ll have something that can set you straight.’

  ‘This brings you here?’