He was frantically having conversations with Vincent in his head, thinking, Pop, Pop, how did you do it? How did you dance on the edge with these guys for so long without becoming one of them? Where did you find that line?
He kept going back to when he was a kid. His father’s pie-plate-shaped face appeared slightly above his eye level. His crown of dark hair, cropped to less than half an inch on his head, his steady dark eyes, straight nose, rounded and spread out at the nostrils, and Santa Claus cheeks stared deadpan back at Michael.
“Your father’s a bookkeeper.” His mother’s voice floated past the two of them, and Michael again saw his father slowly nod up and down, keeping Michael’s eyes on him. And at the time, being a child, he didn’t question anything. But there had been a hint of something in his father’s eyes, something a nine-year-old couldn’t put his finger on.
Now he knew what had been in his father’s eyes. It had been embarrassment and shame. Maybe he hadn’t carried it on his sleeve each day, but at that moment, having to lie to his own son, it must have bubbled up in him, because Michael suddenly remembered that it was not long after that he was transferred to a school outside of the neighborhood.
And suddenly, Michael realized that he’d been kidding himself. Kidding himself that he wasn’t really a hoodlum, that his father was merely a bookkeeper, and that a college education had raised him above all this.
What was he doing here? What was he trying to prove? Chauffeuring Solly around was one thing—but this? Why had he done this?
His mind bounced to the last two days. He should have bowed out. He should have looked Solly straight in the eye and told him he didn’t mind the car rides but that was as far as he wanted to go. That he really didn’t want to make his bones. He was comfortable on the outside. He would’ve understood.
Yeah, right.
They’d been led into Solly’s office two days ago. Michael knew something was not right, because he was in there, the inner sanctum of Enrico Soltano’s power base.
“You done good, Mikey. I asked Tony and he thinks it’s time.”
“Time for what … padrino?”
Solly had laughed at that and punched him in the arm.
“Hey, just like in the fuckin’ movies, eh? From now on, you start making your bones.”
“How?” Michael swallowed when he should’ve walked.
“Eh, you don’t ask,” Solly warned, and then softened a bit, coddling him. “Just some small favors. You don’t worry about that; I’ll let you know when it’s time.”
That was enough for him. Michael began backing out of the room, when he felt Tony crushing his upper arm, his eyes popping out at him.
He stared at Tony’s face. It was the first time he’d seen Tony go pale, and Michael realized that his cousin, his big, dumb, stupid ox of a cousin, had manufactured this. It had been his idea. He had laid it on the line again for Michael, and now Michael was supposed to—No, he had to do the stand-up thing and lay it on the line for him.
What else could he do? He knew just enough about their business to make him dangerous enough for Tony to kill on the spot if he didn’t say yes. Plus, it would bring on that dumb gumbah Sicilian loss of respect crap for Tony, who would be dishonored. Would they throw him out over Michael? Was he that important? Probably not, but it would put Tony in a bad position.
And it wasn’t like Tony could pick and choose careers. It wasn’t like Tony could survive in the real world. Michael knew he was in way over his head. He knew he’d been in over his head for some time. Why had he done this in the first place?
He took a deep breath. “Whatever you say, Solly. It would be an honor.” Michael’s knees had almost buckled as he wobbled his way out of the club.
And two horrible days had passed, and then, two hours ago, it came: the favor.
It was Geddone. Oh Jesus! Someone he knew. The guy who shook his arm off at family gatherings. The guy whose office Tony and he had visited that morning.
Tony had almost had to carry him to the car as Michael grabbed at straws.
“But Giuseppe Geddone? Kill Giuseppe Geddone? He’s—he’s an accountant, for Christ’s sake. How dangerous could he be?”
“That ain’t the point. He’s a rat-bastard thief, been on the take from Solly. Jeez, Mikey, why you think we went up there this morning? Don’t you see nothing that goes on in fronta your face?”
No, he didn’t. He hadn’t seen anything that had gone on in front of his face, not for two years.
Tony had helped him into the front seat of the car and Michael had sat there shaking like a leaf.
It was penance. Penance. He knew that now. For screwing up law school. For betraying his father for a Long Island princess. Penance for his father’s death, which was his fault, too, because deep in his heart he knew that if he hadn’t died from the coronary, he’d have been killed off by Michael’s news.
Michael’s eyes focused back on the shivering woman next to him. He stared at the woman’s blond hair and felt the muscle of her upper arm twitch beneath his fingers, and somehow it came to rest in his head. No matter what kind of man his father had been, this was not the sort of man he’d been brought up to be. And after tonight, after this … and the bone-making task Solly had told him to do, he’d be drowned in this life forever.
* * *
Tony sneezed, and ran through the intersection at Fifty-ninth.
Fuckin’ Angela. Now where was he gonna find someone to date?
Tony’s stomach began to growl.
Meatballs. Maybe his mother was making her meatballs for him tonight.…
* * *
Lisa stared at the man holding the gun. She couldn’t stop shaking. She couldn’t stop crying.
She should have gone to Connecticut. Anywhere but Mrs. Morelli’s. What had she done? They were going to force her to get the appointment book, and then what? Were they going to leave her there? Just walk out to go shoot her boss?
For a split second, she thought about it: being there to see Mr. Henry Foster Morgan grovel in front of them.
Oh she hated him, really hated him …
The man coughed and she snapped back. She couldn’t believe this was happening. Okay, so she’d joked about pushing him out a window in the bar last week, but it was a joke. And besides, could she actually take pleasure in the knowledge that these men were going to kill him?
Well …
He coughed again, and she looked into his eyes. He seemed upset by all this. His eyes weren’t like the other one’s. They focused. The car hit a pothole and they bounced up and down on the seat. The gun slammed into her chin and she gave a yelp.
“Ow, you’re hurting me,” she said, holding her chin with her free hand.
“Hey, Tony, slow down, huh?”
“Mikey, we gotta lot to do tonight, you know? Solly’s counting on us.”
It didn’t seem fair. What had she done to bring this on? She’d just tried to get through life like everybody else. And now here she was, with a gun at her head.
A gun …
As a day in September up near her family’s lodge came into her mind, she felt her body freeze rigid. How old had she been? Fourteen? Was that right? Her grandpa had gotten her up right before dawn. The house had remained quiet, with not a stir from their sleeping family. She remembered the sound the door had made when he’d clicked it closed and how the boards on the porch had creaked and clacked from their weight as they’d walked across it.
He’d brought along two rifles from the locked cabinet in his study. It had been cold and gray, right before the first snowfall, and that burning smell was in the air.
She remembered the long, brownish grass and the whistle from her brown corduroys as she walked behind him. She’d zippered her sleeveless down vest. She’d worn a red plaid chamois shirt underneath. They got to a place out by the lake and climbed into a dingy.
She watched him, his gray beard, and his arms and shoulders, still powerful for a man in his seventies, row, dipping the
oars into the water soundlessly. She watched the water drip off the ends when he held them perfectly perpendicular to the water and let the dingy glide over the glassy lake.
They rowed down a ways, near where the reeds were, and the water became shallow. They came to a stop and he threw out a small anchor to keep them there.
He loaded the guns and gave one to her silently, flashing a smile. Out of his pocket came a small wooden whistle.
“Now, you’re going to see how it’s done,” he said, and winked at her.
The whistle gave off a duck noise. He blew twice, very fast. They both looked up into the sky. It was quiet and peaceful.
They sat very still for about twenty minutes. He blew again and suddenly she heard the flap of feathers, and an answer.
She looked up and saw them. There were three of them, a mother, a father, and a little one.
Up on his feet, shaking the boat back and forth, he aimed before she knew what had happened.
CRA-A-A-CK.
Oh God, she watched the little one’s body snap back from the force and begin to fall. She could still see a wing moving as it shot toward earth and she heard the splash where it had hit.
Most of the neck was blown away and its dark brown feathers dripped bloodred.
* * *
The car jolted to a halt and her eyes, terrified, looked out at her office building. She watched Tony turn his head around and stare at her.
“Okay, you don’t give us no trouble.”
She shook her head as the image of the duck hovered in her mind.
THREE
“Just have to get something for Mr. Foster Morgan,” she yelled loudly at the security guard.
He hadn’t even looked up from his paper. Her heart sank. That was going to have been her escape.
Tony pushed her into the elevator and they rode up to the office. Only the emergency lights were on. The air conditioning had been shut off as well, and a stuffiness had begun to set in. She dropped the keys, trying to get them into the lock. Tony grimaced at her and pulled the gun out for her to see.
The other man, the one Tony called Michael, hovered behind Tony. Tony pushed the door open and shoved her inside with so much force that she tripped and fell against the receptionist’s desk. Lisa stared down at the phone. It was just an inch away from her hand.
“Okay, where’s the book?” Tony said, pulling her away from the desk.
Michael stepped in between them.
“Let me take care of this,” he said, and turned to her. “Show us the office.”
She looked into his eyes and nodded. She was giving up. They had her here. It was hopeless. She was going to give them the book, then they were going to shoot her boss.
This was not going to look good on a resume—and if they shot him, she’d have to face writing one. What could she say? Under Skills—she could see it now—“typing, filing, provided boss’s schedule to hit man for successful mob hit … knows some WordPerfect 5.1.” And this was provided she lived long enough to ever write one again.
She led Michael down the hall. It was hot and airless. They walked past the secretarial pool, which smelled of old coffee, past the art department, which smelled of melting wax. It was from the machine they used to stick copy to the cardboard layout boards, which Henry Foster Morgan never liked and now, thanks to her, would never again have the opportunity to dislike. She began to walk quickly, in rhythm with her thumping heart, and Michael slipped his arm around hers, but gently.
She looked up at him and he kept his eyes focused straight ahead. Behind her, she could hear Tony’s heavy steps.
Michael kept his arm around her loosely as thoughts went racing through his mind. Sure, they were going to get the book, then what?
He knew what. He knew what Tony’s first reaction—only reaction—would be.
Whack her.
It was the only solution. Aw Christ! He couldn’t do that. Look at her.
“Where’re you from?” he asked quietly.
“Michigan,” she answered in a shaky, thin voice.
All right, he had to do Giuseppe Geddone. He had to stop his stomach from doing these somersaults every time he thought about Geddone. He was honor-bound. But he was not honor-bound to have this extra blood on his hands.
He had to come up with some reasoning Tony would go for between now and the time Michigan here got out the appointment book.
* * *
Henry awoke at 7:30, hung over as sin. He stared at the clock radio next to his bed, simply because that was the only place his eyes seemed able to focus. The clock hands were little papiermaché faces of Andy Warhol being dunked in liquid.
He sat up and his head spun around. It was not fair. It was his job to do this to his body. He waited for the room to stop its annoying dance. When it finally did, he slowly got up off the bed and began to slip on the mountain of laundry in his bedroom. Where was that dumb bitch he’d hired to take care of things like this? he thought as his landing was cushioned by a pile of designer jackets.
That’s right. He’d fired her. She annoyed him no end, snooping around in his drawers, out of his drawers, and never in the right drawers. He struggled back up to his feet and made a run to the bathroom.
Once he’d thrown up, he’d feel better. Vomit was nature’s way of making you ready for the next round.
When he finally pulled himself up from the toilet, he was ready to bathe.
Showers made him feel almost human. God, how he needed a vacation. All right, so he’d taken one in July. They just didn’t understand the extent to which he gave for his career.
He shuffled out into his living room and walked over to a purple and lime green credenza his interior designer had insisted he must have.
His apartment was a Memphis nightmare.
The credenza tilted at a rushy angle. It always looked to Henry as if it were caught in a fierce wind that was smearing it across the wall. He rummaged through all the drawers. Nothing.
On the amoeba-shaped coffee table, he saw the packet, lying next to a mirror and straw.
A sniff or two later and he was ready to pull it together.
There was a flurry of invites for this evening, all of which he’d accepted, half of which he’d never go near, job or no job. It helped keep the paparazzi off balance. There was a thing at the Palladium for dying children, or something equally wrenching, a party at the Met for a blood disease. A cancer dinner was at the Plaza. Jesus! It looked like a subscription to the disease-of-the-month club. He sifted through them all. Which disease would be the best?
AIDS. That was the one. That would attract the most of his set. AIDS, or starving children in Africa were always good.
Really, who died of just plain cancer anymore?
Okay, the AIDS cocktail party, which was already going on. He could get in and out of that by ten. Drop by for a bite to eat at some dismal little campaign fund-raiser he was supposed to attend. He’d never voted in his life. He wasn’t even registered. Why should he care who was in office? His family was rich.
He did another line and stared for the longest time at a zigzagged chair that absolutely looked too dangerous to sit on. This room had actually been featured in Architectural Digest. He could not recall the name of the designer who’d done this, but if he ever did remember …
* * *
“C’mon on, C’mon. I ain’t got all night.” Tony was standing over her as she tried key after key in Henry’s lower desk drawer.
Michael was standing at the door, looking out, just to make sure they weren’t interrupted by janitors or a night cleaning woman. That was all he needed to turn this entire night into one big bloodbath.
“I’m going as fast as I can!” she snapped at him.
Tony glanced over at Michael, who shrugged. Tony was just turning his head back when the clock radio on the desk snapped on, blasting the room with noise.
Tony shot it.
It flew off the desk as Lisa gave a yelp. Michael glared at him and bent down
to pick it up. He’d gotten it clean. It was stopped at quarter to eight. Jeez, they were behind schedule with all this craziness. He heard the desk drawer click open and he dropped the clock into the wastepaper basket, then thought better of it and picked it up, shoving it into the pocket of his raincoat.
She shakily handed the book to Tony, who opened it and began tearing through the pages.
“What the hell is this here?” Tony asked, staring down at the date.
“What?” Michael asked, taking the book from him. There were twenty entries.
“I can’t go running all around lookin’ for this fruitcake!” Tony began to complain.
“He goes to all these places each night?” Michael interrupted.
“No. It’s for accounting. And to keep the press off his back. He usually picks a couple and goes there.”
“Mikey, whadda we gonna do? We gotta go, you know, for Solly,” Tony said, motioning with his gun, which was something Michael wished he wouldn’t do.
He looked down at Lisa.
“You have any idea which ones he’d go to?”
She shook her head automatically.
Michael looked up at Tony. “I don’t know. He’s got four cocktail parties he’s supposed to be at right now—”
“Oh, he won’t be there,” she offered, then shut her mouth so fast, she could hear her teeth knock together as Michael looked down at her.
“Why not?”
She shook her head, and he shook her by the arms.
“Because he never goes anywhere before eight-thirty,” she blurted out. Michael looked at Tony.
“Okay, so where is he now?”
“Home,” she whispered.
Michael straightened up as Tony came over.
“Okay, let’s go,” he said, picking her off the chair.
“Wait, wait,” Michael said, and motioned him over to the corner of the office.
Tony dropped her back down onto the chair as if he was dropping a package and walked over to Michael. Michael exhaled.
“Whadda you doing?” Michael began.
Wiseguys In Love Page 7