by Norman Green
“What’s that?”
“Fuckin’ new guy. But every one of them came to Nam by himself, he fought his own war, and he went home alone. Far as the Army was concerned, we were six potatoes in an olive green sack. After I got back to the world, I never saw any of those guys again. Well, two of them are dead, but you get the idea.
“So anyway, for the first eight months, I’m in a rifle company. You go out on patrol, a sniper shoots at you, you gotta find him and shoot him. You schlep to this village, you schlep to that one, you set up an ambush, you go back to base. Once in a while a mine blows somebody up. I was bored shitless most of the time, scared shitless here and there, you know . . .
“So after about eight months, I’m on R and R, I run into this guy in Saigon. Enrique Ramirez. He works for the Company, the CIA. We go drinking together, right, I find out he grew up in East Harlem. We met one another here, okay, we wouldn’t even look at each other, but in Saigon we’re asshole buddies, because I know him, and he knows me. He tells me he can get me out of the mud, you know, get me reassigned. ‘Yeah, sure,’ I tell him, I’m thinking, the guy’s drunk, he ain’t gonna do dick. Guy surprised me, though. For the next four months, I’m like his pet snake. On paper, I was assigned to a motor pool, but the deal was, up until then I’m shooting at some guy up in a tree, now I get a picture first, and an address. Besides me and Ramirez, there were four of us that I knew about. Probably weren’t the only ones. Sometimes we worked together, sometimes we went solo.”
“Did you like it better than what you were doing at first?”
He shrugged. “Slept in a better bed.” He looked over at her.
“Sorry. I’ll give you a real answer. Picture you and me, we’re out for a walk in the woods. Or it could be you and anybody, right, just some person that you know. Okay? But your friend steps on a mine and it blows his foot off. Or maybe his leg. So they show me a picture of some guy, he’s with the ones that put the mine there. When I connected it up that way, I didn’t have much trouble pulling the trigger.
“So, anyhow, when I got back the first time, I had two years to go on my enlistment. I hit California again, I’m on leave, right, but I can’t go home. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’m telling you, I didn’t think I was gonna survive that first month. All kinds of crazy shit went through my head. Anyhow, I finally get orders for Germany, okay, I’m all ready to go, I get a visit from these three guys. One of them is Ramirez, but he doesn’t say anything. They’re all dressed in civvies. ‘We’re with the Defense Department,’ the guy says, ‘and we’re interested in you.’”
“Did they send you back to Viet Nam?”
“Twice, but not as a soldier. I was now a civilian contract employee.” He sighed. “Fly over, do the hit, fly home.”
“Is that what you did?”
“Shoot people? Occasionally, but not always. But see, Uncle Sam wanted to conduct his business the way my grandfather did, but these guys were from, like, Harvard and Princeton and they didn’t have the moves.”
“Why didn’t they just go to your grandfather? Or someone like him?”
“They could never trust a guy like him. He wouldn’t tell them shit, he’d just take their money, use them for his own purposes, and that would be the end of it. So they used guys like Ramirez and me.”
“So what other things did you do for them?”
“Well, for example, guy gets elected to something in the Philippines, I don’t remember if he was a senator or what. Anyhow, he’s yelling about closing Subic Bay, the big base over there. Wants to throw us out. Now that’s never gonna happen, okay, but who needs this nutbag running around agitating? The question is, how do you shut him up? What does he want?”
“So they send you over to find out.”
“Yeah, basically.”
“Then what? Do you just do it or do you write a report?”
“I was never any good at reports, they gave me a special dispensation on that. No, I would meet someone, usually Ramirez but not always, and I would tell them what I found.”
“What happened to the guy?”
“Ramirez? I told you what happened to him, he hung himself.”
“No, the guy in the Philippines.”
“Oh. He had a cousin, guy was a doctor, wanted to practice in this country.”
“That was it?”
“That and some money.”
“What if he didn’t go for it? What if he really believed in his heart that Subic Bay should be shut down? What if he really wanted to fight for that?”
“Then I would have to find some way to squeeze his nuts, but that almost never happened. The world is hell on true believers, that’s why there’s so few of them around.”
“So now you’re out. Ramirez is gone, and you don’t work for Defense anymore. Right? So now what?”
“Now I work at finding what happened to my brother. And I need to find a way to do something different with myself. All I’ve come up with so far is this carpenter thing . . .”
“I’m glad you want to be something else, Silvano.” Her voice was softer. “I want to be something else too. That’s why I go to school at night.” She glanced at her watch. “The real issue here, is this. It’s very very hard for a woman to find one of you assholes that’s all grown up. A real man, not just a guy. Do you get what I’m saying? Not a cowboy, not an astronaut, not a race car driver. A carpenter would be fine, if that’s what you want, just as long as you could manage to be a grownup. Someone who can tell the truth, and not run away. That’s the issue.”
He looked up at her, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “You’re asking a lot.”
“I know I am.”
“You got school tonight?”
“I didn’t mean you had to run.”
“I ain’t running. Are you?”
“Not yet,” she said.
He unfolded himself and stood up, and so did she. He was looking into her face. “What are you going to school for?”
“I’m going to be a nurse.”
“Ah,” he said, and he looked away. “Listen,” he said, not looking at her. “I know I’m behind the curve on a lot of this. But I’m working on it.”
“I know that, Silvano.”
He shook his head. “I can’t stay where I’m at,” he said. “I’ve gotta climb out, or I’m gonna fall back in.”
“All right,” she said, and she stepped up to him, put her arms on his shoulders. She squeezed, feeling the muscles in his upper arms. “Are you good enough, they won’t get you next time?”
He shook his head. “I was lucky today,” he said. “I’ve got to go talk to someone, see if there’s a way to settle this.”
She put her arms around him, pulled him in, filled herself with his animal smell, and then she kissed him, hard, hard enough to show him she meant it. She let him go and stood back. “You staying with Henry?”
“Tonight,” he said. “After that, I don’t know. I might be out of touch for a few days.”
“Be careful,” she said. “Don’t keep me in the dark.”
“All right,” he said. “I won’t.”
You must be nuts, she thought, after he was gone. Son of a South Brooklyn mobster, boxing, jail, Viet Nam, Japan, and that’s just what he’ll admit to. Jesus. You must be losing your mind.
“LET ME MAKE THE COFFEE. Your technique needs a little work.”
“Okay.” Silvano sat down and Henry went over to the sink.
“I was wondering about you,” Henry said, his back to Silvano. “I seen the cops outside, seen those dead fellas in the street. I wasn’t sure what to think. Figured they got you, or the cops did.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Glad to see you still walking around loose, got all your parts and so on.”
“I’m pretty happy about that myself.”
“Were they waiting for you here?”
“No. Car service joint down the street, I used them a few times. They were having a conversation with the guy that runs it, and he was not
enjoying the experience, when I came walking up the sidewalk. They didn’t recognize me, but he did. Didn’t mean to give me up, I don’t think, but he kept looking over at me, and you can guess the rest.”
“Yeah. Well, at least they don’t know you’re staying here.”
“No, but it’s not that much of a stretch. They know I’m holed up down here somewhere, and they’re gonna be looking. I can’t stay here anymore. Matter of fact, I should leave tonight.”
“No hurry.” Henry dismissed that thought with a wave of his hand. “Besides, where would you go?”
“I don’t know. Staying in Brooklyn is turning into a high-maintenance situation, but I’m not ready to leave just yet. Besides, I don’t like the idea that I’m letting some guy run me off.”
“No place like home, huh?”
“That’s not it. It’s this woman, Henry. Her name is Elia.” He shook his head. “She makes me feel like I’m back in high school, tripping over my own tongue. She really shook me up. I never met anyone like her before.”
“Sounds promising.”
“Yeah, you ain’t kidding. But the deal is, I can’t hang around here if these guys are gonna be taking potshots at me every five minutes.”
“I can see how that would get on your nerves. How did all of this get started?”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Silvano said, and he told him the story. “I was seventeen . . .”
HENRY GOT UP and refilled his coffee cup. He came back to the table, sat down, looked at Silvano. “It’s a private vendetta, then.”
“Yeah. It’s between me and my cousin.”
“There’s the obvious solution. Kill him before he kills you.”
Silvano looked down at the table. “Everybody’s got the right to self-defense, I suppose. I could justify it if I tried hard enough, but it don’t feel right, Henry. It ain’t who I’m trying to be.”
Henry looked relieved. “Well. Some other way, then. What have you got to work with?”
“I don’t know that I got anything to work with.”
“Not true. You got to think logically, here. First of all, the guy’s a criminal, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So find out what he’s doing. You must know a lot of his associates from back when you were a kid, there’s bound to be a few that don’t like him. If you can turn up enough on him to get the authorities interested, maybe he’ll be too busy to worry about you, even if he doesn’t go to jail. It isn’t a long-term solution, but it might buy you some time.”
“I suppose.”
“Another thing you might try is going over his head.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the mob does have a hierarchy. Doesn’t he have someone he answers to?”
“Yeah. He works for a guy named Antonio Malatesta.”
“You know him?”
“Yeah, him and my old man were friends when I was a kid.”
“You could try talking to him. Maybe there’s something he could do for you.”
Silvano was shaking his head. “Even if we were old buddies, Henry, Little Dom is Antonio’s guy. Little Dom puts money in Antonio’s pocket. Guy like Antonio is always gonna do what’s best for his own wallet. Unless I found some kind of leverage to use on him, or something to make him think Little Dom is getting ready to roll over on him, he would give me up in a second.”
“Hmmm. I know a guy, writes for the Post. Maybe we could get him to do a story, you know, ‘War hero haunted by the guys who didn’t go,’ something like that. If we could generate enough bad publicity, maybe they’d leave you alone.”
Silvano shrugged. “You could ask the guy, but I personally don’t see it. There weren’t any war heroes in Viet Nam. With what most people think about the war these days, they’d probably have a hard time deciding who was the villain of the piece, me or Little Dom. Probably figure we deserved each other.”
“Well. That just leaves you with the first option, then. Dig up something on Little Dom and give it to the cops. Turn up the heat on him. Or . . .”
“Or what?”
“Pack it in. Whisper sweet nothings in your lady’s ear, take her away with you. Gotta be some other place where the two of you could live.”
“I thought of that. Maybe I’m being stubborn, but I don’t like the way that feels either.”
“Feel better than getting shot.”
“You got that right. But I still didn’t find anything about my brother, Henry. I don’t know much about him that I didn’t know to begin with.”
Henry scratched his chin. “Don’t know that I agree with that. You know where he lived, you know the places he worked, you know some of the people he was running with.”
“I suppose, but what’s that worth? All I have is this gut feeling that the O’Brians, down at Black and White, got some kind of a game running, but I can’t believe either one of them would kill anyone. And if that’s true, whatever it is they’re doing is none of my business.”
“Didn’t Noonie work at a bunch of other places?”
“Yeah. He helped out the hotel porters, and he did something for the grocery store up the street from Black and White. I checked out both places, and I don’t know what the hell they could have to do with anything. Black and White was more likely, I thought, because they’re all about money, and money makes the world go round. I thought Nunzio might have seen something or someone that he wasn’t supposed to see, maybe one of the guys from the old neighborhood. He never could keep his mouth shut. It’s the only reason I could think of for someone to kill him, but it’s beginning to feel like a dead end.”
“Maybe you’re giving up on it too soon. I would think a place like Black and White would be a magnet for a guy like Little Dom.”
Silvano was shaking his head. “For Domenic, the problem with a place like Black and White is that there’s too many eyes watching. You’ve got to worry about the Banking Commission, the FBI, and even the stinking IRS. When a place like that gets robbed, ninety-nine times out of a hundred it’s an inside job.”
“What if they didn’t want to rob the place? What if they wanted to use it to launder money?”
“Same problem, too many eyes watching. You had a hundred grand you needed to wash, why would you bother with a place where everybody’s going to be looking up your ass with a microscope? Much easier to buy a grocery store. You do that, right, nobody cares how many felony convictions you got, no one cares where you got the money to invest in the place, hell, you could put it in your dead grandmother’s name for all anybody cares.”
“How does that wash your hundred grand?”
“Lots of ways. If your suppliers are crooked enough, you can pay them with cash, off the books, and when you sell the merchandise, it shows up as a profit. You give Uncle Sam his cut, everybody’s happy. Or you can cash checks from the people in the neighborhood. Give them your dollars, you wind up with nice clean paper.”
“I thought they went to one of those check-cashing storefronts.”
“Sometimes they do, but those guys get a percentage to cash your check. Lots of poor people don’t have a bank account, they live from week to week. You was that broke, would you walk a few extra blocks to cash your check with some guy who’d give you face value, save you a few bucks?”
“Yeah, I guess I would.” Henry scratched his head. “You know, I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I would bet that whatever happened to your brother started out at Black and White. Those goobers from the FBI still camped out, down across the street from there?”
“You hear about them?”
“The whole neighborhood was talking about them. The thing is, they might all look like they’re from Kansas or someplace, but they’re not stupid. Something had to catch their eye. I say, where there’s smoke there’s fire. I don’t know that I’d give up on the place yet.”
“Maybe you’re right. Listen, I should get outa here while it’s still dark, Henry, I gotta find another place to crash for the next few days.�
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“Relax. I own a building over on Clinton, there’s a garage attached, got a couple of rooms over top of it. Nobody’s been in there for a long time. We’ll get you over there tomorrow morning.”
“Henry, I don’t know what I’d do without you. I didn’t know you owned another building.”
“Some things it don’t pay to advertise.”
Silvano was silent for a minute. “Henry,” he said, after a minute, “you suppose there’s a rabbit here, in all this?”
Henry didn’t turn around. “Could be,” he said. “Rabbit sign all over it.”
Silvano remembered, then, something else he had to do. “You got a flashlight I can borrow?”
HE TRIED TO THINK of a good reason not to do it. He’d already done his time going down into holes in the ground. In his experience, going into dark tunnels was a bad deal for everyone concerned. Yeah, he thought, but you gotta go look. He clicked the flashlight, just to check it, for what must have been the fiftieth time.
It was the same bar, the stinking hole where he’d seen Joseph O’Brian visit the basement. The place was actually pretty busy at night. Not much light escaped through the painted windows, but plenty of noise did, and there was a fair amount of traffic in and out. He waited for a lull, crossed over, and flowed down the cellar stairs.
He waited inside the cellar door, as before. The noise from upstairs drowned out the compressors, and he was not sure he’d be able to hear if someone were to come down the stairs. Move your ass, he told himself. The quicker you get down there, the quicker you can get back out.
The stairway to the subbasement was right where Special Ed had told him it would be, and it was no wonder he’d missed it the first time, a dark hole in a dark corner of a dark hole. Jesus. He looked once more at the door to the outside, then made his way down the stairs. The walls of the basement had been made out of concrete cinderblock, but as he went down the second set of stairs he felt like he was going back in time. The walls and the steps were made out of roughly squared blocks of stone. How much of this city lies buried, he wondered, how many old secrets are layered over by our more recent efforts. At the foot of the stairs he shone his light down at the stone floor. The room was partitioned off into what appeared to be labyrinthine passageways, but whoever used this space walked the same way every time, and it was easy enough to follow the pathway worn through the dust.