Michael nodded his head slowly. He was stunned they knew about that.
“And we also hear you guys have a pretty good little business up here,” the big man continued.
Michael shrugged his shoulders, neither denying nor confirming it.
“Here’s the deal Mike,” he said, planting an intimidating foot on the couch between Michael’s legs, making him flinch with the sudden threat to his dick. “The boss man likes you, and he actually admires your sense of entrepreneurship.”
Michael couldn’t stop a smile from lifting the corners of his mouth.
“Hah, you like that word, en-tre-pren-eur-ship,” he repeated, pronouncing each syllable slowly, bobbing his head from side to side with each one. “Let me continue. Because he likes you, and you two are in business together, he sent us here to collect his share,” the man smiled slowly. “And to remind you of your business relationship. You do remember Antoine, don’t you?” he asked dangerously.
“Yes, I remember Antoine,” Michael answered, his voice level.
“Good, I knew you were a smart man,” he smiled sickeningly at Michael.
“How much?” Michael asked evenly.
“Well, he would have gotten 60k for the kilo, so that should do it,” the big man answered him as he stroked his chin.
Michael sat waiting for more, waiting for him to mention the two kilos. When it didn’t come, he had to make sure he understood him correctly.
“So I have to give you 60k for one kilo?”
“Yes, cash, right now,” he answered Michael as the huge foot still resting between Michael’s legs slipped on the edge of the couch. Michael flinched, sliding back further on the couch.
“Fuck,” Michael feigned frustration, when the exclamation actually meant he couldn’t believe his good luck. They thought there was only one kilo, not the actual two! He couldn’t believe it.
Michael pointed to the big guy’s foot, “I need to get up.”
“Yes you do. Then we have to leave you with a reminder of who the boss man is. He likes you, so he asked us not kill you. Consider yourself lucky,” he told him. Then giving it a second thought he added, “Or maybe not,” and he did that head bopping thing again from side to side.
Michael inwardly cringed. He knew a severe ass kicking was coming. He would gladly take it to finish this whole mess. He’d take it for everyone, because the last thing he wanted was for anyone else to suffer. He didn’t crumble into a hysterical ball, pissing and shitting himself in fear. Years as a boxer helped him condition his mind in order to face an opponent, along with any other battle, and whatever they brought with them.
“It’s not here, I took it to someone in the building. I know I’m asking a lot, but please don’t come with me, this person has no idea what I left them with, and I don’t want to do anything to hurt them,” Michael looked at each man levelly, showing no defiance at all, only sincerity.
“We have a list of all the tenants in the building Michael, and quite frankly, I believe you. I’m feeling generous today. Go and get the money, you’ve got max fifteen minutes from the minute the door closes to get back here. One minute longer, we’re blasting every fucking door in this place, understand?” he asked him as he lowered his foot to the floor.
“Understood,” Michael said calmly as he stood and walked out the door.
Mrs. Murphy wasn’t surprised to see Michael when he showed up at her door for the second time. She gave him the privacy he needed as he walked to her closet and got whatever he needed from his bag.
Michael wasn’t taking the whole bag downstairs, there was no way in hell. He knew that if he did, they would take everything. He’d put his ass out there too many times to lose it all. He made it back to his apartment with three minutes to spare.
“60k,” Michael confirmed as he handed them the fat stacks of money.
“Good boy. See, we knew we liked you. Now for the not so fun part, but we gotta do it. My partner found the radio from the bedroom. We’re gonna play some music like if we were having a party, so no one gets curious from the noise. I don’t think you’re a pussy and gonna scream, so we should be ok, right Mike?” he smiled broadly at him as he began to crack his knuckles.
“No, I’ve never been a screamer,” Michael stated, preparing himself for the inevitable.
“Good,” he said as the first punch landed on Michael’s ribs.
Michael immediately fell to his knees as stabbing pain shot through his entire body, sucking the air from him. He knew that punch had cracked a couple of ribs.
Michael didn’t raise a hand to fight back because he was certain that would only make it worse. His face flew from side to side as the punches kept coming, each one landing with a sickening thud. The music muffled the moans and grunts and flesh pounding flesh. Blood and saliva spewed from his face and mouth as the mutilation continued. He didn’t know at what point he couldn’t see anymore, his eyes now bloodied over and swollen shut. Both of them beat him until delirium sent him into a sweet trance induced by the excruciating pain.
When Michael’s crumpled body lay in a battered and bloodied heap on the floor, the two men finally stopped.
Mr. Smooth Talker crouched low and brought his face close to Michael’s ear.
“I thought you’d like to know, we know about your friend in college and his little meeting this morning…,”
Michael moaned, unable to speak, but wanting to shout, ‘Please leave him alone!’
“Don’t worry,” the goon continued, “none of you will be getting any more visits. That meeting was actually how we found you. Our connections in the police department reach pretty far, Michael my man. You shouldn’t see anybody else, unless you do something stupid again.” He stood and wiped his hands off on the towel his partner offered him. “See you around.”
Michael struggled to maintain some semblance of coherence. He listened to the footfalls of the two men as they walked towards the door because he couldn’t see through his swollen eyes. When he heard the thud of the door behind them, the lights turned off in his mind as everything went black.
When the body is overloaded with unbearable pain and suffering, a certain phenomenon occurs, something akin to the body shooting itself up with its own self-made pain-reliever, it’s very own hallucinogenic, it’s self-infusing opium if you will. As Michael laid on the floor for 24 hours, his body put itself in survival mode, keeping him knocked out to allow it some time to heal, as dreams flitted through his mind. Sometimes he was sitting under a tree with Natalie amid a field of wild flowers, her laughter floating away from them in the breeze, as the sound of it soothed him. He was filled with the feelings he had with her in the beginning, how life was limitless, that he could be anything he wanted to be, and that nothing in the past mattered. Other times he was the eight year-old boy coming home with $60 from a day’s worth of work shining shoes, the best day he’d ever had. In his dream, his mother showered him with love and devotion, and covered his happy little face with dozens of tiny kisses. He was so happy in this world of daydreams, he never wanted to wake up. Then the picture shifted and he remembered the day his son was born, and how he felt when he first saw him. The magnitude of love that swelled inside him almost made him cry. But his favorite one, the dream that gripped his heart and made him choke with the intensity of emotion that flooded him, was the one in which he’d made love to Natalie for the first time. In this dream, he worshipped her without reservation, adored her with no inhibition, and loved her the way he wanted to, yearned to, the way his heart demanded he do. The memory of her scent enveloped him, and soothed him.
***
Present day…18 months after Greensboro…
It was 11:00 p.m. and Michael was finishing a presentation he had to make tomorrow. He’d been on edge and restless all day. Images of Natalie had floated through his mind throughout the day. It didn’t matter where he was, or what he was doing, she was like a specter that hovered nearby, haunting him.
He missed her.
A lot.
/> I just wanted to let you know, I’m thinking about you. He typed out the text without even realizing he was doing it.
His phone chimed.
You are? What are you thinking about?
He could see her face, that half-smile of hers when she was unguarded. She never looked more beautiful than she did at that moment.
How you smell, I never forgot it. Your eyes, your face…
I’ve been thinking about you too.
Tell me what you were thinking.
There was a long pause. He knew she was afraid to open up to him, afraid of being vulnerable.
I see your face often, he messaged her. My favorite times are when you looked so relaxed, so comfortable, and happy. I think of it often.
That’s exactly what I think of when I think about you and your laugh, you have such a great laugh.
I miss you Natalie…
That means a lot to me, Michael.
That hurt, but he understood. She couldn’t tell him she missed him, he hadn’t earned it yet. But he would.
When am I going to see you again?
I don’t know Michael, things go up and down with my dad.
I could come down there.
It’s not a good time.
I understand, but I’m not giving up.
Good
***
1985…
When consciousness began to dawn on him again, the reality of what had happened to him, of what his life had come to, took him to the other end of the spectrum of his dreams, filling him with utter despair. He’d finally managed to pull himself up to go to the kitchen. He was desperate for something to drink because he was so dehydrated, he couldn’t even utter a sound. He drank so much water, he threw up.
He shuffled to the bedroom and stayed there for another two days, only getting up to get water and use the bathroom.
On the fourth day, coherent thought began to return to him, along with the crushing pain that had come with his ragged breathing from his cracked ribs. This wasn’t his first time, he knew what to do. He needed a shower so badly, he could smell his own foul stench. The pulverized remains of his face that stared back at him in the mirror made him cringe. At least his eyes were open. Well, they had slits now he could see through. Once he’d washed off the dried blood from his body, he was better able to assess the extent of his damages.
He wasn’t as bad as he was afraid he was going to be, the guys knew what they were doing. They’d left him in a lot of pain, but with no permanent damage. He was grateful for that much. The bruising’s were already starting to heal, they were turning into a pukish green color, and he figured he had another week of hiding out looking like Frankenstein. He’d lost a lot weight while he was bed ridden. And he realized he had an appetite.
A light knock at his door pulled his attention away from analyzing himself.
“Michael,” came Mrs. Murphy’s soft voice.
It was music to his swollen ears.
“Mrs. Murphy, I’m not feeling well,” the raspy sound of his own voice startled even him.
“Open the door young man, or I’ll call the police to break it down. I’ve been coming down here for three days, worried sick about you.”
She was a beautiful, stubborn old woman, and he loved her for it.
Michael opened the door a crack and peeked out. The aroma of the food from the plate she was holding hit his nose before he saw it, and his mouth began to water.
“Hrrmpphhh, just as I suspected. Open the damn door Michael, and let me have a look at you.”
Michael was a little taken aback by her feisty insistence, “Mrs. Murphy!” he chuckled, as he opened the door for her to come in.
She shuffled her short little body in the apartment in her orthopedic shoes. “Close the door, sit down, and eat that plate of food. I’m going back to my apartment to make some poultice for those eyes and the rest of your face. If you don’t do exactly as I tell you, I’ll give you a few more of those myself. Understand young man?”
“Yes ma’am, understood,” he said as he winced, smiling at this tough old lady.
After Mrs. Murphy doctored Michael up, and once his face was presentable enough to go out in public, Michael packed up whatever he could carry comfortably on the Greyhound bus and headed back to Brooklyn.
He had a lot of time to think while he was alone healing. He blamed himself for putting his friends here in danger, afraid of what could happen to them. But the greatest tragedy that wrenched at his heart was the loss of what he and Natalie could have had together, if he hadn’t ruined everything so badly.
He knew she was much better off without him, he had nothing to offer. He now was on the radar for the police and black gang, and he was an accomplice to a robbery. He had absolutely nothing to give her except heart ache.
He felt he had no choice. He had to cut ties with everyone, to keep them safe. Michael couldn’t trust what the goon had said, promising that there wouldn’t be any more visits. He’d made his decision, he would disappear. He would miss Vinnie, but his heart broke for Natalie.
Yes, she was much better off without him.
Sadness and depression consumed him as he stared out the window at the land speeding by outside the bus window, the weight of it crushing his chest.
It was too late.
Michael knew if the Harlem goons hadn’t shown up, he would have fought for Natalie, made her forgive him somehow. He would have spent every day trying to prove to her, and himself, that he wasn’t the man life had created.
And that made him feel guilty as well. He was well aware of what growing up without a father had done to him, that pain had never gone away. Thoughts of why his father couldn’t love him, and how he’d abandoned Michael and the family, had left such a deep scar inside him, it still hurt.
That day on the Greyhound bus back to Brooklyn, Michael died inside, a long and excruciating death.
***
It was late August and no one had heard from either Paul or Michael. Johnny hadn’t seen them either, but he had left too, after graduating from college. There wasn’t a trace of any of them. It was like they hadn’t even existed.
Except for the pictures Natalie had taken at the dance contest those many months ago in Albany. She looked at them again and again, almost wearing them thin at the corners. Her heartache was so deep, it felt like it had cut her in two, but the wound refused to heal. She cried every day for so long, it became a normal part of her life.
Joey had moved to Florida and was doing some stripping, still wanting to ride that high, until he’d joined the Navy. Vinnie graduated from high school, and he met a girl, an Italian from Little Italy in Manhattan. She was a friend of one of the mafia families that had a summer house down the road from Natalie and Vinnie. He was completely in love with her and they were talking about Vinnie moving to the city and how she was going to help him find a job. They were making plans to start a new life.
Natalie was genuinely happy for him, that the rest of his life was about to begin and that he didn’t have any collateral damage like she had from the hurricane of The Rooster Club. But more specifically, Michael.
Vinnie and Natalie never talked about Michael. She thought Vinnie had some idea of how much she was hurting. He wanted it to all go away, and that maybe if he acted like they didn’t exist, it wouldn’t hurt so bad. Natalie thought Vinnie felt betrayed, and abandoned. They were friends, he and Michael had gotten close, and he just took off without a word, leaving a big, gaping, festering hole behind.
Some people are like that, they just leave, with no sense of loyalty, no concern for anyone else, no thought about the pain their actions would inflict on others.
But deep in Natalie’s heart, she couldn’t believe that Michael could just forget about her, that he could cast her aside like an old pair of shoes that were worn and no longer fashionable. She refused to believe it, she couldn’t believe it, and that’s what kept her waking up to another day.
***
Mich
ael had tried to do the right thing, he’d tried so hard. He’d kept under the radar, having no contacts that would lead the gang to him, and keeping a very low profile so as not to cause any attention. After a year, he couldn’t take it anymore, and he called Natalie. The number had been disconnected. He called information and there were no listings for any of them. No Vinnie, no Sylvia, no Mama. His Natalie had disappeared. Life had turned to grey, dismal and dreary, with no signs of hope. So he left and moved to Queens.
He was back in Brooklyn often, visiting his son. He had the money he’d put together from being upstate. He’d planned on being smart about it and was looking for an opportunity to invest in that would set him up for the rest of his life. He wasn’t going to waste all the torment he’d gone through.
Every once in a while he’d see someone who reminded him of Natalie, hear someone laugh like her, think he’d catch a glimpse of her walking down the sidewalk, and his world would stop. The guilt he carried for everything that he’d put her through was more than he could take. So he tried to blot her from his mind completely.
Michael and his crew had gone their separate ways as they continued on their journey through life. After he and Paul had sold all of the second kilo, that’s when their partnership had ended. Michael went his way, and Paul started hanging out with a different crowd.
Michael met a woman one night at The Lemon Tree. He thought maybe he could love her, not like Natalie, no one would ever be Natalie, and so he eventually asked her to marry him.
Life goes on…
14 CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1987…
“Natalie,” Mr. Stein’s gravelly voice came through the intercom on her desk-phone. She jumped a mile off her chair because her mind was engrossed somewhere else. “Could you come in here a moment please?”
“Certainly, I’ll be right there,” she said cheerfully. “I bet he wants to dictate a stupid letter. I never said that I could take dictation, so they can’t blame me for taking forever,” she mumbled under her breath as she grabbed a notebook and pen before meeting the President of Vici Luggage, Mr. Ted Stein, a self-made millionaire.
The Rooster Club Page 23