Mick Abruzzo

by Nancy Martin

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Use the money to pay off your debt. Otherwise, it won’t just be your bookie splitting your lip.”

  Frankie laughed, undaunted. “Yeah, sure.”

  “And if you come around me without calling first--from a safe phone--I’m going to break your legs and everything else.”

  “You and what army,” Frankie popped off, but he was grinning as he climbed down into the Jaguar and revved all twelve cylinders of the engine. He jammed the car into gear and peeled out, leaving rubber behind, all Grand Theft Auto.

  Mick shook his head. Little Frankie would always been a moron. If he got caught with a hot car, he’d go away for a year or two, maybe, but not long enough to teach him any lessons. Mick dropped his gloves into the trunk and quietly closed the lid.

  They had been fourteen when Pop told Little Frankie to take their old Labrador retriever outside to shoot him. Teddy the dog was an old, farting bag of useless fat Pop had said, and his time had come. Teddy had returned from the vet that day with a diagnosis of cancer. Rather than spend the money to have the vet put down the dog with an injection, Pop figured it was time Little Frankie learned a skill. So he gave Little Frankie a handgun and sent him out into the backyard.

  Pop had cuffed Mick upside the head and said, “Carry the damn dog out there for your brother. Then get a couple of shovels out of the garage. I don’t want that dog around when your mother gets home from ten o’clock Mass.”

  So Mick carried Teddy outside into the dark yard where they had thrown a Frisbee for the dog a thousand times. Teddy was hardly awake, and he drooled all over Mick’s arm. Mick put him down on the damp grass, and Teddy collapsed into a heap—his legs too weak to hold him up. Mick hunkered down and stroked his head, but Teddy hardly knew where he was.

  Little Frankie was a blubbering mess. He’d almost pitched a no-hitter in a Little League game earlier that week, and he’s strutted around the neighborhood like he’s won the Olympics, but shooting the dog—it made him bawl like a girl.

  Facing Pop, though—neither one of them was going to go back in the house to tell him Teddy was still alive.

  Little Frankie dropped the gun on the grass and ran off into the woods.

  Mick picked up the gun and put a bullet in Teddy’s head. Teddy never knew what hit him. Maybe he’d already died in the second before Mick pulled the trigger, who knew? It took a couple of hours to dig the hole under some trees at the back of the yard. Little Frankie came back and sat on the grass, watching, crying. Mick gave him the gun, and Frankie handed it over to Pop, who had shaken Frankie’s hand and given him a beer. Little Frankie took the beer with a smile that belied nothing of the truth.

  Bruno came around the corner and into the alley. “Boss?” His voice was quiet, but urgent.

  “What’s up?”

  “Something’s going on. I hear screaming.”

  Mick leaned into the still-running Toyota and turned off the engine. Automatically, he locked the car, and they headed down to Liz’s place. From two doors down, they could hear Liz—not screaming, but shouting. Mad and scared. And the light that shone from inside was bouncing off the walls.

  Mick said to Bruno, “You better stay out here. Unless it takes too long. I’m out of practice.”

  Bruno caught his arm. “You sure about going in there?”

  “Nope. But what choice do I have?”

  He went down the block, then up Liz’s steps two at a time and rang the bell. Softly, to nobody, “Come on, Liz.”

  He heard more shouting, then Liz yelled in a new tone that spiked his pulse. He should have stopped himself, but instinct took over. He threw his shoulder against the door. Which was stupid because any minute some neighbor was going to call the cops, but then the door buzzed and the lock gave way, and he pushed inside the townhouse.

  He went up the stairs in two leaps and scared the shit out of Sanchez who didn’t know what hit him before he went down. But right away he came up swinging—left-handed--and Mick hit him again, then a knee under his chin. All the fights in the yard came back to him, and muscle memory took over. Stay on your feet, was the mantra. Stay upright.

  But, damn, Sanchez had staying power. What happened next was long and messy. There wasn’t much noise except body blows and Sanchez’s labored breathing and the occasional gasped curse. And somebody making deep sounds like a hard-hitting tennis player on TV. Oh, yeah, it was him.

  Finally Bruno came up the stairs, his suit still perfect.

  Sanchez saw Bruno and froze, so Mick clipped Sanchez across the face again, and he wobbled. Liz pushed herself off the wall where she’d been hanging back. She grabbed the nearest weapon—a lamp. She swung the lamp and hit Sanchez over the head. His lights went out, and he went down onto the rug with a sound like a dying bull.

  She raised the lamp again.

  “Liz,” Mick said, out of breath, “don’t kill him.”

  She was wearing exercise pants and a bra, no shirt. Her neck was red like Sanchez had torn her shirt off. Her hair was a mess. She had the lamp ready to wallop Sanchez again. Her pregnant belly made her look incongruously female, but her eyes were fierce--like a mother tiger’s.

  Mick grabbed her raised arm. “Don’t hit him,” he said, thinking of head wounds. “We’ll have a mess to clean up, and I hate that.”

  She knew he was kidding and made a sound like a laugh, but wasn’t.

  She teetered over to the sofa and sat down, suddenly limp as a rag doll. The lamp slipped from her grasp and landed at her feet with a thunk, the light crazily flashing again over the opposite wall. The room was finally, weirdly silent.

  Mick stepped over Sanchez and took Liz’s chin in his hand. He tilted her face and decided she had slathered on a lot more eye makeup than usual. To hide a shiner. Her eye socket was swollen.

  With a jerk of her head, she pulled out of his grasp. “I could have handled Damian. You just made things worse.”

  “Then let’s get you out of here.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I can make you leave,” he said.

  She glared back at him. “You could try.”

  Forcing her out of her place was going to get bad, and Mick wasn’t up for fighting with her. He could handle himself with Sanchez, but Liz fought dirty.

  “Boss?” Bruno said.

  Liz gave him a look, and Bruno looked back, but they both recognized their acquaintance was limited to the next few minutes. She kicked at Sanchez on the floor. “Take him instead.”

  Mick glanced around, trying to come up with a plan on the spur of the moment. “Okay, you have any liquor?”

  She didn’t question his request, just pointed. They found a bottle in a cabinet, and it was an easy matter to pour some Maker’s Mark down Sanchez’s throat. They sat him up, and he groaned, but his head flopped around, so he wasn’t really conscious. Bruno hoisted Sanchez to his feet. In his embrace, Sanchez made a believable drunk. Bruno humped him down the steps.

  Alone with Liz, Mick coaxed her one more time, “C’mon, Liz.”

  She shook her head. “I’m staying.”

  “As soon as he’s able, Sanchez will talk. Your boyfriend isn’t going to be happy about this.”

  She remained stubborn. “Damian knows he was in the wrong here. I’ll be okay.”

  “Your boyfriend--”

  She couldn’t stop herself from gingerly touching her swollen eye. “You don’t understand. He loses his temper sometimes, but he could do a lot worse to you. Get out of here before he makes a surprise visit.”

  “Here’s another phone.” Mick held it out flat on his palm like he was offering food to a dangerous animal. “I want you to text me every day. Tell me you’re safe.”

  “I’ll be safe.”

  “Do it anyway.” He added, “For old time’s sake.”

  She took the phone. “I’ll text.”

  “If you want me to come get you, I can be here in an hour or two. If you need help faster than that, call the c
ops.”

  “Not likely,” she said. But she kept the phone.

  There wasn’t much else Mick could do without rolling her up in a carpet and dragging her out of her own home. So he went down the stairs and closed the door behind and helped Bruno walk Sanchez down the street to the Toyota. To anyone watching, they made a pretty good imitation of helping a buddy who’d had too much to drink.

  They dropped Sanchez at the emergency room. Mick stayed with the car. Bruno did the talking and gave a false name. Then he politely said he needed to take a piss and walked out, leaving Sanchez in the good hands of the medical staff.

  Mick left Bruno at his apartment with thanks and the promise of a bonus.

  “You did good, boss.” Bruno lingered at the passenger door, leaning into the car. “You’ve still got all the right moves.”

  “If you’d come in a minute later,” Mick replied, “I’d have been in big trouble.”

  “You liked it, though,” Bruno said with a grin.

  Yeah, he had.

  He swung by the supermarket and bought some food with his pocket change. At the self-checkout, he recognized his adrenaline hadn’t stopped pumping yet. It was a familiar high. He’d taken pleasure in boosting the Jag. And whomping on Sanchez—well, he shouldn’t be feeling happy about that either, but despite the ache already building in his right hand, it had felt good. He could pretend he’d hurt his hand working on a car. The pain in his ribs—that might be a starting bruise that would be harder to explain. He kept a bag of frozen peas on his knuckles while he drove.

  He made a detour on his way home, and stopped at Saint Domenic’s to ask for forgiveness.

  Thing was, now that Sanchez had seen his face, it wasn’t going to take long for things to fall apart. Enrique Garza was going to come looking for his petty cash. It was bad business to let thieves make off with any money at all, as Mick knew well, and only encouraged others to take advantage. Garza would know that, too.

  Mick went home to cook dinner for Nora. And to think about what was coming.

  Things had heated up for Nora, though, which distracted Mick from his plan. She was deep into helping some friends and coping with problems at work, and her crazy sisters had been around. One nutty sister chose that particular week to dump the problem of her infant son into Nora’s lap. Nora tried to help—which was against Mick’s better judgment. They exchanged some testy words, in fact. If she couldn’t have kids of her own, he thought it was cruel to taunt her with baby issues that were out of her control. Nora could handle a lot, though. She had a steely strength under her willowy gentleness. And although she operated in a totally different world from Mick’s, she coped into her fair share of tough times, too.

  The next day they were down to digging through pockets for enough money for her to get to work. She made a joke of it, but it wasn’t funny. After she left, he found himself pacing around before heading off to work—angry and frustrated and feeling guilty as hell for not having enough money for train fare. He had started packing up his laptop to take to the pawn shop when Little Frankie called.

  “Hey, bro. I got some cash for you.”

  “I told you not to call.”

  “Chill. I’m using the last pay phone in existence.”

  Mick didn’t like the falsely cheery tone of Frankie’s voice. It set his teeth on edge, but also roused his suspicions. “Did you pay Nicky, like I told you?”

  “Yeah, sure. It seemed a little generous to me, but--”

  “You didn’t stiff him?”

  “No, no, I did just like you said. Everything worked out great. I paid off my guy, I’m in the clear. I gotta hand it to you, Mick, you were smooth. You’re still the best,” Frankie said. Then, “Your share came out to two hundred.”

  Of course Frankie was lying. He had expected to find nearly half a million in the trunk of the Jag, and if they were splitting the money fifty-fifty, the share he was offering was definitely short. But Mick hadn’t decided to take it, no matter how much it came to. Screwing the drug dealer felt good—especially because he beat up his girlfriend. Taking the dirty money—well, it would help their financial problems, but explaining to Nora where it came from wasn’t something Mick looked forward to. She wasn’t going to see it the way he did.

  “You still there?” Frankie asked when Mick let a long silence stretch.

  “Yeah, I’m here.” He wanted to hang up, but he heard himself saying, “Do you have anybody on your tail? Is there anybody you don’t know hanging around?”

  “Nah. We got away clean. I’ll come see you.”

  “No. Not at the farm,” Mick said, sure he didn’t want Frankie setting foot on Nora’s property. He’d lead Garza right to them.

  “You don’t want me to meet your redhead? You afraid if she gets a look at me, it’s all over for you, bro?”

  “She’s out tonight,” Mick said without thinking, his mind on where he could meet Frankie without drawing attention.

  “Then I’ll pay a visit,” Frankie said. “There’s stuff I should tell you about. See you soon.”

  “No,” Mick said again, but his brother had hung up.

  If Frankie had “stuff” to discuss, chances were it wasn’t good.

  About an hour and a half later, Frankie turned up at the front door.

  “Holy shit,” he said, strolling into the house with a gym bag in one hand. “What is this place? Some kind of movie set? It’s a mansion!”

  “It’s a house,” Mick snapped, closing the creaky front door while Frankie toured the entry hall with the air of a crackerjack burglar casing the joint.

  Frankie looked up at the chandelier and the huge staircase that seemed to lean in several directions at once. He took an inventory of the old rug on the floor, the silver doodads that decorated the table, a gloomy old painting on one wall and a crusty mirror on the other. “It’s kind of a wreck, isn’t it?”

  Mick noticed Frankie was wearing a shiny new wrist watch and a leather coat fresh off the store hanger.

  Choosing to ignore Frankie’s comment about the house, Mick leaned against the front door while his brother cased the joint. “So what’s the bad news?”

  Frankie forgot about the house. He turned around with a grin and handed over his gym bag. “No bad news. Just cash. Go ahead and count it.”

  Mick tossed the bag on the stairs. “You didn’t come all the way out here to hand over the money. What’s up?”

  “Nothing major. Just--”

  “The Broder kid. Is he okay?”

  “Is that who painted the cameras? Yeah, he’s fine--”

  “Don’t spread his name anywhere.”

  “Give me some credit, bro. You’re not the only one who listened when Pop’s crew hung out in the den.”

  Mick wasn’t deflected. “So what went wrong?”

  Frankie gave up trying to pretend something hadn’t gone south. “It’s Nicky Severino. Somebody took a shot at him today. Right in front of his garage. He’s alive, but--”

  The next thing Mick knew, Frankie was on the floor. The red haze of rage filled the air so thick he couldn’t breathe. He could hear himself cursing, but it was like he watched himself from far away. And Frankie stayed on the floor, curled up in a ball to protect his guts.

  “You idiot. You stupid—How bad is it? How bad is Nicky?”

  “It’s not too bad,” Frankie cried from behind his forearms. “Honest, Mick, he’s going to live. They got him in the back, in his legs. But we’re pretty sure he’s--”

  “Pretty sure?” Mick echoed, shouting. “Where is he? What hospital? Get up, you moron, so I can deck you again.”

  “Take it easy, take it easy. Nicky knew what he was getting into with this. And you paid him the ten grand, so--”

  “That won’t pay for a set of crutches,” Mick snapped.

  “We’ll make it right,” Frankie promised.

  “What did you do? Lead them right to his door?”

  “It wasn’t me, I swear. He did it himself. Somebody must h
ave tailed him—he said he towed a car from a traffic jam, and somebody must have--”

  Mick paced. Nicky’s health wasn’t the only bad news. A gunshot would bring police around, and that was never good. “The cops are going to be all over this. And they’re the least of our worries.”

  “Whaddaya mean?”

  There was no use explaining to Frankie about Enrique Garza. But the Camden dealer had clearly made them already and was going to come for his money sooner or later. Probably sooner.

  Just to make sure Frankie didn’t get himself killed, Mick reluctantly decided his brother should spend the night where Mick could keep an eye on him—at Blackbird Farm. Nora wasn’t going to like having Frankie under her roof, but there was no other choice.

  Worst timing ever? It was the same night Nora’s sister dropped off her infant son for them to babysit. Nora agreed to do it, against Mick’s vote, but there wasn’t anything they could do, really, but take the kid for a few hours. It was a chaotic night and they didn’t sleep well, but Mick figured they could hash out everything in the morning.

  Wednesday morning, though, Jim Kuzik, Mick’s parole officer, called. At first Mick figured the cops were on their way and Kuzik was just giving him a courtesy heads-up, but instead Kuzik summoned him into New Hope. Probably for one of the spot drug tests that was required for his parole. Bring your basketball sneakers, Kuzik said, which sounded like a euphemism for something more sinister. Mick figured there was some new test he’d have to take. Even with Garza on his horizon, Mick had no choice but to obey the order.

  Letting Frankie spend the night at the farm had turned out okay. He stayed on the couch in the living room and slept like he had a clear conscience. Keeping him away from Nora was important, but making sure he was safe from Garza was even more crucial, so Mick made a call to find somebody trustworthy to watch Frankie until he could get away from the parole appointment. Mick kissed a wary Nora good-bye, and she said she’d have the baby gone in time for Mick to take her out for lunch. The kid looked awfully settled into her arms, though.