It occurred to me that we’d been talking about one thing when we were trying to say something else completely. We weren’t fighting about the mortgage. We were fighting about trying to stay alive inside. Rosemary was actually a few years older than my wife, but in some way, I was drawn to her because she was still fighting and hadn’t given up yet. But when I looked at Carla in her old tank top and her mother’s bouffant, I thought of a soldier raising the white flag. She was already starting to sink back down into herself.
“What about that casino guy, Donald Trump?” I said, thrusting a finger into the air like I was trying to win over a stadium full of doubters. “Or Dan Bishop.”
“Oh, don’t bring up Dan Bishop again.”
“Why not? He started off just like me, running numbers in the Inlet, and now he owns one of the biggest casinos in Vegas. Just last year he got the banks to loan him twenty million when he didn’t have the assets to cover it. It’s the exact same situation. He had to get people to make the leap and believe in him.”
“Yeah, but Anthony, he had a name. His name was worth something.”
“And one day my name will be worth something,” I blurted out.
We were both quiet a minute. I started jiggling my knee and pulling at the edge of the lace tablecloth. It wasn’t real lace, but some vinyl substitute she’d picked up at Caldor.
I caught a whiff of that cat smell that’s always haunted our house. The lady who used to own the place had one of her cats get run over by a car. The one that was left behind was so distraught he went around spraying the floors for a year. The smell permeated the wood, and there was no way to get it out. So now we had to live with the memory of a heartbroken cat for the rest of our lives.
“Anthony,” my wife said slowly. “What do you think would happen if you defaulted on this loan?”
“I’m not going to default.”
“But if you did,” she said a little louder. “We’d lose this house.”
“I just told you. There wouldn’t be any default.” Hell, if this thing worked out with the fight I’d clear five times what I owed them at least and finally be able to pay Teddy off.
“Anthony,” she said, using my own name to beat me over the head. “If we lose this house, where are we gonna live?”
“We’re not going to lose the house.”
“Where would your children live?”
“They’d live better than they ever did.”
It was like I was having to defend a dream against the daylight.
“We’d end up on welfare, like the coloreds your father’s always complaining about.”
“I would never let that happen,” I said, dropping my napkin and starting to stand up. “I would never allow that.”
“Yes, you would.” Her lips began to tremble.
“What kind of man do you think I am? What’re you doing married to me in the first place?”
“You’d sacrifice all of us for some idea you had.”
“And you want to keep me down. Because you’re afraid I’ll leave you behind if I start to get anywhere in my life.”
I saw her eyes get wide and then start to recede back into her head. It was like watching somebody get stabbed.
“I don’t know, Anthony,” she said in a voice like a little ship heading off into the fog. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t know you no more.”
That night I went to sleep on the couch. Carla was in the next room snoring. I couldn’t get comfortable. There were crickets outside and little Anthony kept calling me to get him a drink of water. Every time I got back to the couch, it seemed like it had gotten a little shorter and narrower. Finally I drifted off at about a quarter to one.
I don’t know how much later it was that I heard something stir. I looked up to see Carla staring down at me. It was still dark outside, except for the street light, and the leaves on the sycamore by the window cast a shadow over her face. With the light like that, she looked young again, the way she did when we went on those midnight swims.
“Anthony,” she said. Her voice felt soft and downy in my ear. “I don’t see why we gotta fight like this.”
“I don’t see why either,” I mumbled.
“This ain’t the way it was supposed to be,” she said. “It was supposed to be me and you against everybody, like we was the last gang in town.”
I started to wipe the crust of sleep off my eyes. She had her nightgown open. Her breast was floating just above my head. And for a second I forgot all of our problems. That breast was as young and perfect as the moon above the Boardwalk. I didn’t even mind the cross lying next to it. A little more of that feeling I used to have for her came back. I began to think about how it would be if we patched up our lives again.
I guess even after what I’d done and said about leaving her behind, she still wanted to be with me. I reached up to touch her breast, just to let her know I still cared, but then her eyes caught the street light coming through the drapes and my fingers froze. Those eyes reminded me of the type of motel rooms where guys go alone to blow their brains out. I didn’t want to go there with her. I knew right then that if I stayed with Carla, I’d never get out of this place.
“Hey,” I murmured. “Maybe another time. Maybe we can talk in the morning.”
I turned away, so I wouldn’t have to see her looking disappointed. She must’ve stood there another minute or two watching me, because that’s how long it was before I heard her trudging back to the bedroom.
I opened my eyes one more time and saw the bright red casino sign way beyond the boarded-up house across the street, burning the words TAKE A CHANCE against the dark sky.
I didn’t hear from Carla the rest of the night. And of all the awful things I’ve done since then, turning her away like that may be one of the three or four I regret the most.
15
“LAW AND ORDER, VIN,” Teddy Marino was saying. “We gotta have it. Gotta have it.”
“I absolutely agree,” said Vincent Russo.
“It’s like taking care of a car or your body. Once you let one thing go, the whole package is in trouble. You got problems with your ignition, eventually it’s going to get in your engine. Something goes wrong with your stomach, it’ll end up in your heart. Right? This is how things break down.”
“Of course,” said Vin. “A hundred percent.”
“Here,” said Teddy. “Take part of this thing. I don’t wanna eat it all myself. I’m turning into a fat pig.”
He handed Vin half his twelve-inch-long salami and Swiss sub sandwich with lettuce, tomatoes, and peppers.
They were sitting in a booth at the White House sub shop on the corner of Arctic and Mississippi Avenues. The tourists at the next table all wore Baltimore Orioles baseball caps. Celebrities like Jerry Lewis and Susan Sarandon smiled down from photos on the walls. The line of people waiting for sandwiches went out the front door. Others sat hunched over their food at the counter, like auto workers on an assembly line.
“Where are we going?” said Teddy, taking a bite out of the half sandwich he’d kept. “By my count we got problems at three of the unions now.”
He ticked them off with his fingers. “We got that punk from New York trying to horn in on Ralph Sasso and the hotel workers. Number two, I got Paulie Raymond not returning my calls at the construction union. I told you, you can never trust a cop no matter how much jewelry he wears. And number three, I hear from the roofers’ that your boy still hasn’t come by to pick up the envelope.”
“He hasn’t?” Vin put down his half of the sandwich.
“This is how we break down.” Teddy reached across and took the sandwich back. “We let things get out of control. That’s why we have to bring back law and order. Just the other night, we had a card game robbed at the Ocean Club. Would that have happened last year?”
Vin stared at him vacantly.
“I don’t know either,” Teddy said. “But if I find out that fucking kid Nicky had anything to do with it, I’ll strangle him with my
bare hands. I tell you, Vin, we should’ve whacked that kid and his father at the same time.”
Vin stared down at his empty plate a moment and scratched at his wild tangle of gray hair.
“Jeez, Ted,” he said, tearing paper from the edge of the plate and putting it in his mouth. “I didn’t know that about Anthony not picking up the envelope. I’m gonna have to have a talk with the kid about it.”
“Never mind,” said Ted, finishing the first half of his sandwich. “I gave the job to Richie. He’s gonna handle it from now on. Your boy doesn’t want it, he don’t have to have it.”
Vin tried to hide his disappointment as he tore another strip off his plate and began chewing it.
“None of these new kids we have is any good,” said Teddy. “They’re all junkies and bums. They don’t understand this thing of ours. We’ve gotta install discipline in our soldiers again. Especially with this indictment coming up, we don’t want anybody else turning rat on us. This is gonna be a Cosa Nostra ’til the day I die. Be it an hour from now or a hundred years from now. We’re gonna have unity and harmony even if it kills us.”
But Vin wasn’t listening. He was staring at the back of someone’s head over by the cash register, some twenty feet away. The head was covered with thick black hair. A small gold earring winked from one earlobe. But without even seeing the face, Vin knew it was someone familiar. The feeling burned across the room, like someone had lit a fuse on the floor. Then the head turned and Vin saw Larry DiGregorio’s chinless face. He felt his head get light as his heart went still. Larry, back from the dead. It took a moment to register that it was actually his son Nicky. They were identical, except Nicky had long dark hair flowing over his collar and more natural color in his face.
He rose off the stool and walked right over to the booth where Vin and Teddy were sitting.
“Happy Father’s Day, you fat piece of shit.” He slid into the booth and faced Teddy.
Teddy’s face got tight and shiny. “Is it, is it, ah, Father’s Day?”
Nicky gave Jerry Lewis’s picture a surly look. “No, asshole, that was two weeks ago, but that ain’t the point. Every Father’s Day, Larry took me here for a sub. It was our tradition with each other. This is the first year I wasn’t with him.”
“Hey, Nicky, we’re all sorry about what happened.” Vin, who was sitting beside him, put a furry hand over the sapphire ring on Nicky’s left pinky.
“Yeah,” said Teddy, putting down his sandwich slowly. “Larry was a good man. You get the flowers I sent over for the funeral?”
Nicky stared across the table at him. “I know you did it, Ted.”
“Did what?”
“I know you had Larry killed.”
Both Vin and Teddy reached for napkins out of the steel dispenser at the same time.
“Oh now Nick, you don’t have call to go around saying things like that,” said Vin, wiping his mouth. “Larry was a friend of ours. We wouldn’t let nothing happen to him.”
“Oh yeah?” Nick’s head slowly rotated to the side, like a department store security camera picking up a shoplifter. “Maybe you were the one that did it, Vin. It’s your style, ain’t it. Putting an ice pick in him, like an animal.”
Vin took his eyes away, as though the conversation no longer interested him. “You don’t have any evidence to say that, Nick. You oughta watch it. You could get sued by somebody.”
“That right? I don’t have any evidence?” Nicky leaned over and put his broad face down by Vin’s. Even sitting down, he towered over the older man. “Then how come when I went by the union the other day, they told me it was your son Anthony who was going to pick up the envelope from now on?”
“Hey, I don’t have to take this.” Teddy started to rise.
“Just hold the fuck on.” Nicky leaned back and dropped his hands under the table. “Right now I’m holding a Glock machine pistol on both of you. So which one of you bastards wants to get his balls blown off first?”
All the blood drained from Teddy’s face. Vin went on chewing his plate.
“Whooa, Nicky.” Teddy’s features began to smear. “We don’t know anything about this. If you got a problem with Anthony, why don’t you take it up with him?”
Vin squinted over at him for clarification. “We’re not saying Anthony had anything to do with what happened to your father,” he said quickly, pulling on his fingers.
“Well, that’s not for us to say, Vin,” Teddy interrupted. “If it’s a problem between the young kids, it’s not for us to settle it.”
Nick DiGregorio hit the table with his free hand and the napkin dispenser rattled.
“I don’t care who, what, or where,” he said. “But someone’s gonna fuckin’ pay.”
Hey, come on, don’t be like that,” said Vin, urging Teddy with his eyes to help him calm the young man. “We’re all friends here, Nick.”
“Fuck friends.”
Nick DiGregorio grabbed the cup of soda out of Teddy’s hand and poured it out on his lap. Then he stood up quickly, tucked the gun back in his waistband, and left the place, like a storm cloud heading out to sea.
“Aw, look what he did here!” Teddy tried to stand in his seat but the table got in the way.
Vin gave him a hard look. “Why’d you have to do that?”
“Do what?”
“Tell him my Anthony whacked his father.”
“Well he did, didn’t he?”
Vin scratched his head. “Yeah, but you didn’t have to tell him that.”
“Why not?” Teddy shivered. “If Anthony pulled the trigger on his old man, why shouldn’t he have to deal with the consequences?”
“Because he’s not expecting to get that kinda call from Nicky. We’re leavin’ him out there by himself.”
Teddy gingerly moved out of the booth. “Hey, Vin, it’s his problem now. He should take care of Nicky the way he took care of his father. If he got rid of the tree he can get rid of the branch.”
Vin shook his head and examined the greasy skim on the tabletop. “It’s not right. We’re leaving him exposed.”
Teddy wasn’t listening. He was too busy plucking at the dampened front of his pants. “Aw, I can’t believe this,” he said, looking for something he could use to wipe himself. “Total lack of respect. It demeans all of us.”
Vin threw a couple of balled-up napkins at him. “Clean it up yourself.”
16
AS WE PULLED OUT of Rafferty’s parking lot, the redI-Roc behind me flashed its high-beams in my rearview mirror. I should’ve recognized it as a danger signal.
“How’s the fight?” Rosemary asked as she settled in on the passenger side and fixed her seat belt.
“Which one? My whole life’s a fight.”
“You know.” She crossed her legs under the glove compartment. “The one you were telling me about.”
“Oh.”
It’d been so long since Carla was interested in what I was doing that the question caught me off guard.
I ignored the way the I-Roc followed us out of the parking lot. “I was just over at the Doubloon the other day, talking to some people.”
I mentioned the name of Sam Wolkowitz’s company and Rosemary nodded as if she was impressed. After the last fight I’d had with Carla, it was a relief not having to explain everything.
“You know I was making fun of you the other night,” she said. “But then I thought—when was the last time you ran into anybody with any goals around here? My ex-husband Bingo, he was a degenerate gambler—actually he was just a degenerate, he’d show up at the party already wearing the lampshade. Anyway, he’d gamble on anything. He would bet on the sun coming up in the west if he could get the right odds. He never understood how you have to work toward something.”
Listening to her was like hearing someone speak my language for the first time. I turned the corner onto Atlantic Avenue and a casino billboard practically screamed from ontop of one of the buildings: DREAMS COME TRUE AT OUR SLOTS. The I-Roc was still
on our tail.
“You mind if I turn on the radio?” Rosemary asked.
I flipped on an oldies station for her. I was in the mood for one of those old doo-wop songs from the fifties, with the singer’s voice rising out of his throat and climbing to the top of the night to light my way. Instead, I got a forlorn lady with an orchestra. I started to change the station.
“Leave that,” said Rosemary. “It’s Billie Holiday.”
I’d heard the name before, but I’d never really paid attention. Billie Holiday didn’t sound happy. We pulled up at a red light. All she had left was a bare ruined choir of a voice that made me think of empty bottles and old roses. Every time she’d reach for a high note, her voice would start to crack and she’d move away from it the way a girl would move down the bar from a guy who’d broken her heart too often.
Still you could tell she’d once been a great singer, same as you could tell Atlantic City was once a great town. There were little hints everywhere if you knew where to look. Over on the corner of Missouri Avenue, a sign said this was where the 500 Club used to be. Where Dean Martin met Jerry Lewis, where Frank Sinatra, the Chairman of the Board himself, would drop by unannounced and riff the night away with Sammy Davis Jr. or the Pete Miller Orchestra or whoever else was around. Now there was just a parking lot. Back a few blocks, there were vacant, rubble-strewn lots where grand old hotels like the Traymore and the Shellburn once stood.
Up closer to Texas Avenue, where I lived, Jack Cashard’s Steakhouse was a cinder with a name on it, and the dance hall next door hadn’t survived the fire either. In the old days, when all the celebrities and businesspeople came down here, a kid could make forty, fifty dollars a night just parking Cadillacs and Lincoln Town Cars around back. Now all you had was Pick-a-Flick video across the street and dozens of pawn shops with neon WE BUY GOLD signs out front.
“You’ve changed,” Billie Holiday sang in that broken bell of a voice she had. “That sparkle in your eyes is gone/Your smile is just a careless yawn/You’re breaking my heart/You’ve changed.”
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