City of Margins

by William Boyle

  “He’s harmless,” Antonina assures her.

  “I know you think he’s not trying to fuck you, but he’s definitely trying to fuck you. I should stop and call Chip.”

  “What’s Chip gonna do? Ralph’s a cop. Besides, he’s never acted like this before. Maybe something’s wrong.” Antonina looks back now, and Ralph’s eyes are fixated on her as he huffs up the steps.

  Antonina and Lizzie go through the turnstiles and up another flight of steps, coming out on the corner of Lafayette and East Houston.

  “We can just lose him,” Lizzie says. “He can’t keep up with us.”

  Antonina’s relieved that Lizzie hasn’t given up on her. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s run.”

  They take off up Lafayette, headed for Bleecker. It feels good to be running. Antonina looks back at Ralph again and sees him standing by a halal cart, hunched over, out of breath, waving to her.

  AVA BIFULCO

  Finding Don in the upstairs hallway had been the biggest shock of her life. Her first thought was that it had to be a prank. A big sword like that. His Hawaiian-print shirt. So much blood. It looked like a horror movie. But then she realized it was really real.

  Forget piecing it together, she told herself at once. Forget how it could’ve happened, who could’ve done it. No time for that now.

  She’d only had the ability to scramble back downstairs and call 911, her finger shaking as she pulled the numbers on the rotary phone. After giving the operator the address and telling him that Don had been stabbed somehow, she went back to him and kneeled there and said a Hail Mary.

  She looked all around, concerned that whoever had done it was still in the house.

  But the house was quiet. The sound of the door opening and closing had been the sound of someone getting away with this.

  The ambulance came from Victory Memorial. It took seven minutes. She knows because she was counting the seconds in her head, as she leaned there over Don, her hand on his shoulder, saying his name over and over, watching him struggle for breath.

  The EMS workers called to her when they came in. They brought a gurney up. They brought the other things they bring. They started doing the things they do as quickly as they could. They had to take the blade out when they realized how hard it’d be to move him with it in. It was left behind on the floor. An attempt was made to stop the bleeding. One of the workers, a man, seemed scared. The other one, a woman, was all business, her jaw clenched. Cops showed as they brought Don out.

  Ava’s in the ambulance with Don now. She’s sitting there while the EMS workers pump and pull and cut and do whatever else it is they need to do. She feels worthless. She’s got blood on her hands, blood on her white blouse.

  She closes her eyes and thinks about Don picking her up on the Belt. She can feel every fast turn the ambulance makes, every bump it hits. The sirens are drilling into her head. She thinks of her suitcase back there in Don’s living room. She thinks of Nick having to hang Don’s clothes on the line back at the house. She thinks of where she and Don might have gone if they’d actually made it to the airport. She can’t believe they’d figured on Italy without thinking through the fact that they needed passports.

  Whoever did this, it must’ve been revenge.

  Ava thinks of how Don said he’d just come into some dough on their walk. That was when Italy had come up. So, he met her, he liked her, maybe he knocked someone off so he could have money to impress her with a car and a trip to Italy, to San Francisco, to wherever. Maybe this is her fault. She hadn’t broken down in her piece-of-shit Nova on the Belt, Don would have kept on living his normal life, surviving in whatever way he’d known to survive before their lives came together.

  She opens her eyes to the sound of Don flatlining. The EMS workers are in panic mode, getting out the defibrillator.

  She’s often around dying people at Sea Crest, old-timers at the end of the line, some of them dying alone, some dying surrounded by family. She was with Anthony when he died. That was difficult in a much different way. That was part of her going away forever. And she was lucky to be with both of her parents when they went, holding their hands, telling them how much she loved them and how happy she was to have been their daughter.

  Don is a stranger but not a stranger. She finds it hard to reconcile the fact that there were only minutes, seconds really, between them being excited about traveling together and whatever happened to Don happening. Whoever did it must’ve been waiting there for him.

  She’s playing the scene back in her mind now. The room that he was partially in, that must’ve been his son’s. She’ll never have answers. She’ll be asked questions, and she won’t have answers. She’ll go back to her life. It’ll be like she never met Don.

  “He’s gone,” the EMS woman says. “I’m sorry.”

  Ava gulps and nods, closes her eyes again. She rehearses a line she’s sure she’ll get to know by heart: “I didn’t know him that well. We just met yesterday.”

  MIKEY BALDINI

  Mikey knocks on Donna’s door. He’s got Donnie’s duffel bag in his hand. He paused on the way over to zip it shut but not before dumping Donnie’s clothes in a corner garbage can and looking to see just how much money there was inside. Not only is his old man’s debt with Big Time Tommy cleared, but Mikey has lucked into this starting-over money. He doesn’t know how much exactly, but it’s a lot. He can use it to split. He really hopes Donna will come with him. He’s got to go now. He’s got to talk fast. Trouble will likely be on his tail. There was a woman in the house with Donnie. Mikey’s worried she got a look at him on the way out. Leaving the machete doesn’t mean much, he hopes. He had on these batting gloves. He takes them off so Donna doesn’t see them and stuffs them in the bag. He feels alive, electric, redeemed.

  No answer. Where could she be? He looks up and sees a woman who must be Suzette Bonsignore staring down at him through dusty blinds. He doesn’t know what time it is. It’s still light, not even dusk. He knocks again.

  Sitting there in Gabe’s room, he hadn’t been sure he’d be able to go through with it. But something possessed him, made it possible. Donnie came right to him. He thought of his father on that bridge.

  If he and Donna leave now, maybe she’ll never know what he did to Donnie. That would be easiest.

  He doesn’t have to go back to his mother. She’ll be okay. It’ll take her a while to adjust, but she’ll realize he’s an adult and he deserves his own life, even if it’s not the one she’d choose for him. It’s better for her not to know where he is, anyway. Say the police figure out it was him. They press her, she’s got no answers. He hopes she feels gratitude that he cleared his old man’s debt. He hopes that Big Time Tommy comes around and tells her the whole story, what Donnie did and how he got revenge for them. Maybe she’ll understand him in a way she didn’t before. Maybe she’ll respect him. A few months, a year, when things have settled down and he’s sure he’s in the clear, he’ll send her a card checking in.

  Donna’s crying when she finally opens the door.

  “What is it?” Mikey says.

  “Nothing,” she says. “Are you okay?”

  He looks over his shoulder. “I’ve gotta go. I can’t tell you why, but I need to go now. Will you go with me?”

  “Come in.”

  He unzips the bag and shows her that there’s money inside.

  “Where’s that from?” she asks. She doesn’t recognize the bag itself, thank Christ.

  “It’s mine now. It’s ours. We can go anywhere.”

  She hesitates, looks back at her apartment, lingering on her turntable and records for a moment. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s just go. Let’s start over.”

  Inside, Mikey gets his backpack. He notices that her rug is gone. Donna packs a bag full of clothes and toiletries. She wants to take the turntable and some of her favorite records. She selects a bunch that she wants to bring and then grabs her car keys from a hook on the wall. They make one trip out to her car, a Mercury Lynx p
arked on the street under a sycamore tree, and load the trunk with the turntable, the speakers, a crate of records, and Donnie’s bag full of money.

  Back inside, they grab their bags and she takes one last look around.

  He kisses her. “You sure you don’t want anything else?” he asks.

  “Fuck it,” she says.

  They leave the apartment, closing the door behind them and not even bothering to lock it. She looks so cute in her gym shorts and T-shirt and flip-flops.

  He gets in on the passenger side of the Lynx and throws his pack in the back seat. He takes her bag and puts it next to his.

  She climbs in under the wheel and starts the car. The radio comes on. Some commercial. She puts a Van Morrison tape in. She looks at him and says, “North? South? West?”

  He shrugs. “West, I guess. All the way west.”

  EPILOGUE

  TWO WEEKS BEFORE CHRISTMAS | 1994

  NICK BIFULCO

  Ava’s been in the hospital for a week after slipping on some ice up near Genovese and breaking her hip when she hit the concrete. Nick sits across from her in her room on the third floor of Victory Memorial, as he has every day after school since she wound up here. A cheap get-well card from Father Borzumato is propped on her nightstand.

  The last seventeen months with Ava have been tough. She’s become paranoid about getting sick, won’t talk about anything other than not wanting to die. It all started with Donnie getting killed. It was either a random act of violence or maybe somebody paying him back for something. The police never figured it out. Either way, it shook Ava, made her older, made her want to live afraid.

  Nick is in his school clothes. He’s sitting on an uncomfortable green chair, the Daily News open in his lap, watching Ava try to eat the slop they serve her.

  She’s disgusted, rightfully so. She looks old and small in her gown. Her face is drawn in. The surgery on her hip had gone well, but it’s a struggle for her to move even slightly.

  “You’ve gotta try to eat,” Nick says.

  “You try to eat this shit,” Ava says.

  “You want me to get you something across the street? Minestrone?”

  “Forget it.”

  Nick holds up the paper to the article he’d been reading. It’s about Phil Puzzo. “Did you see this?”

  “Did I see it?” Ava says. “Where am I gonna see it? This is me all day, laying here like a lump. What is it?”

  Nick reads, fuming: “‘Native son Philip Puzzo is back in the old neighborhood tonight with his new book, The Bad Samaritan. It’s about ex-cop Donnie Parascandolo’s descent from one of New York’s Finest to low-level mob thug. Parascandolo was a man who lost his son to suicide and went badly off the rails, winding up gutted in what many assume was a gangland killing, though there’s some speculation that his ex-wife was involved since she went missing the day of the murder. Along the way, Puzzo paints a portrait of a conflicted man still capable of kindness and sincerity. It’s a slim, complicated piece of work, as is its subject, but Puzzo is up to the task, painting Parascandolo’s fall against the backdrop of a Brooklyn at odds with itself. A powerful reading experience. Highly recommended. Puzzo will be signing books in the St. Mary’s auditorium tonight at 6 p.m.’ Jesus Christ, Ava. You talked to him for this?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember if you talked to Phil Puzzo about Donnie Parascandolo?”

  “It was a favor to Nina. He came to Sea Crest one day after work. We sat out on the boardwalk.”

  “Was Alice with him?”

  “No, she wasn’t.”

  The day that Alice left with Phil Puzzo was the end of Nick’s life in a way. She was enamored of Phil, and Phil—old and successful enough to be charmingly relentless in winning her over—said he loved her within a month, said he wanted to marry her within two. She said yes. She stopped teaching at Our Lady of the Narrows before the new year started. She moved into Phil’s Boerum Hill brownstone. Nick had seen her only a handful of times since, mostly in those last months at school, and she wouldn’t give him the time of day, which was crushing. His calls went unanswered. And, of course, he’d given up on his script idea before even starting it.

  It didn’t seem to bother Alice that Phil had stolen his idea. Nick wasn’t sure about the book business, but Phil must’ve written The Bad Samaritan pretty quickly for it to be coming out already. Nick hasn’t read the book yet, but he assumes that Phil’s research was light, that he mostly made stuff up about Donnie. He’ll get his copy tonight at St. Mary’s. He’ll do more than that.

  The paper is from yesterday. He’s known about the book for several weeks. He’s had plenty of time to get amply upset about it. What he didn’t know until the article was that Phil had the balls to come do an event in the neighborhood. That was unheard of. There weren’t any bookstores. So, the bright idea—whoever’s it was, probably some publicist—was to have Phil read and sign books in the auditorium of his grade school. Some of his childhood teachers, decrepit nuns, mostly the same ones who taught Nick and Ava, would be there to cheer him on. Nick figures that Alice will be there. Or maybe she’ll have the smarts to stay away.

  Nick’s brain is churning. He’s going to go, that’s certain. He’s going to stand in line and get Phil to sign his book, and he’ll greet Alice warmly if she’s there.

  But he’s going to bring the gun he bought earlier in the year. He’d gotten the gun for suicide purposes in a fit of February despair. It was sold to him out of the trunk of a car in an alley next to Spanky’s Lounge by a neighborhood kid named Ray Boy Calabrese who sometimes worked for Mr. Natale. Ray Boy went to Our Lady of the Narrows, but Nick hadn’t taught him, only knew him by reputation. Ray Boy didn’t even blink when he sold Nick the gun, didn’t recognize him from the halls. Not long after their meeting in the alley, Ray Boy got locked up for chasing poor Duncan D’Innocenzio—who Nick had taught in two classes—out into traffic on the Belt right near the spot where Ava had broken down in the Nova and Donnie had stopped to help.

  Nick hadn’t had the guts to eat a bullet like he hadn’t had the guts to start his script.

  But he’s going to use the gun. This is why he got it. This is what it was intended for. After getting Phil Puzzo to scrawl a dedication in the front of the book, he’s going to take out the gun and blow the thieving fucker’s head clean off. Who’s going to stop him, the nuns?

  He looks at the clock. Four thirty. He’s got just enough time to go home to pick up the gun and get changed. He wants to look sharp in case Alice is there.

  “Where’s your head?” Ava says.

  “I’m thinking,” Nick says.

  She thumbs at something on her jawline. “Will you feel this? Do you feel a lump here? Do people get tumors in this spot?”

  “You’re in a hospital. Ask a doctor.”

  “These doctors. One worse than the next. I can’t get straight answers.”

  “You’re not dying. You don’t have a tumor. You’re going to live to ninety-five.”

  “God forbid I live that long.”

  “Well, what do you want? When do you want to die?”

  “Give me until eighty-five. That sounds good.”

  “Okay, you’ve got until eighty-five.” Nick stands, folding the newspaper under his arm, and walks over to the bed, kissing Ava on the cheek.

  “That’s it?” Ava says. “You’re leaving already?”

  “I’ve got plans tonight.”

  “A date?”

  Nick nods.

  “With who?” Ava asks.

  “You don’t know her. Woman from school.”

  “Italian?”

  “Sure.”

  Ava looks satisfied. “Did you talk to anyone about when I’m getting out of here?”

  “They’ll move you to rehab tomorrow or the next day. Probably Sea Crest.”

  “I don’t need rehab. And I’m not going there. Anywhere but there.”

  “I know you think you don’t need it.”
Nick kisses her again, this time on the brow, and then he leaves the room.

  He walks down the hallway and waits for the elevator. He thinks about the article. He’s heard the speculation about Donnie’s ex-wife, Donna, being involved in Donnie’s death. He’s also heard the speculation about Mikey Baldini and his mother, Rosemarie, being involved. It is peculiar that Donna, Mikey, and Rosemarie all went missing the day Donnie was killed, but none of it adds up to anything of value. Just two empty houses and an empty apartment, lots of stuff left behind. Nick figures that Big Time Tommy Ficalora has answers, but nobody’s getting them from him, not even Phil Puzzo, who claims to be so tight with the mob.

  Outside, he finds that the Nova has been ticketed because he parked too close to a hydrant. He should feel lucky it wasn’t towed. That’d screw up his whole plan.

  He drives home on the streets, foregoing the Belt, figuring there will be too much traffic this time of day. The ice from the week before is mostly gone, though it’s still cold and damp, and the sidewalks are sloppy. People are walking around in hulking coats and heavy wool hats. Christmas lights are up on Eighty-Sixth Street, shining bright. He sees red and green reflected in the grimy blacktop.

  He parks right in front of his house, lucky to get such a good spot, and goes straight to his room. He changes into the nicest thing he owns, a suit he bought at a JCPenney for his friend Nino’s wedding. Nino teaches history. Nick went to the wedding with Alice. She’d picked out the suit.

  He combs his hair and puts on cologne.

  He gets the gun from the bottom drawer of his dresser. It’s wrapped up in a blue handkerchief. He doesn’t even know what kind of gun it is, but he knows it’s loaded. He puts the gun in the pocket of his jacket.

  He walks to St. Mary’s, thinking the cold will do him good. It’s not that long a walk, especially moving fast, and he shows up just as the church bells signal six o’clock.

  A few people are standing outside the front doors of the school. He smiles at them and walks in.