Paradise City

by Lorenzo Carcaterra

  “Enough to cover double what I owe,” Charlie said, starting to return to a normal breathing pattern, sensing that he at least had Rossi’s interest and maybe that much would be enough to alter his plans.

  “That’s not what I asked,” Rossi said. “I want to know how much is in the account, as of right now. Down to the last nickel.”

  “Six hundred and fifty thousand,” Charlie said. “As of last Friday, which is the last time I checked.”

  “Have you ever borrowed against it before?” Rossi asked.

  “Once,” Charlie said. “About two years ago. We were about a hundred grand behind in bills. I made good on it as soon as we sold most of our inventory.”

  “And why didn’t you use it to pay what you owed us?” Rossi asked. “If all you say is true, the money is just a phone call away. Then none of this would have been necessary. I’m sure your partner would have understood.”

  “I thought about it,” Charlie said. “And I almost made the call a week or so ago. But my loan from you was personal. It had nothing to do with our business. My partner looks up to me like an older brother, and I guess I didn’t want him to think I was just another gambling deadbeat in hock.”

  “He’s going to think you’re worse than that,” Rossi said. “He’s going to think you’re the lowest kind of thief there is, and if he has any sense at all he’ll wash his hands of you first chance he gets.”

  “I’ll pay him back,” Charlie said. “I’ll do whatever it takes but I’ll get the money.”

  “You’re going to have to pay back all that’s in there,” Rossi said. “And I don’t know if you’ll be up to that. And frankly, I don’t give a shit whether you are or not.”

  “I don’t need to give it all back,” Charlie said, taking a defensive mode. “I’m only taking out a little more than half, that covers double what I owe and makes it square between you and me.”

  “No,” Rossi said, shaking his head. “You’re going to make that call and you’re going to empty out that account and then make arrangements to have the money wired to a third party. From there, it’ll find its way to me.”

  “I don’t owe you that much,” Charlie said, raising his voice, steam coming out of his mouth. “And that would clean out the entire partnership, force us to shut the business. You just can’t do that.”

  “I’m not doing it,” Rossi said. “You are. You’ll call your banker and transfer the funds to a number you’ll be given. And you’ll do that as soon as we ask you to.”

  “And what happens after that?” Charlie asked, afraid that he already knew the answer to his question.

  “Then we go back to the original plan,” Rossi said, walking toward the rear of the freezer room. “Nothing’s changed. Other than the fact that my side of the table is now six hundred and fifty grand richer. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Charlie. Enjoy what’s left of your life.”

  “You’re a fuck!” Charlie shouted out at him. “A heartless, no-good fuck! That’s all you are. That’s all you’ll ever be.”

  Rossi turned and looked down the aisle at Charlie, struggling against the thick rope and reams of tape holding him in his chair. “It’s all I ever wanted to be,” he said to him.

  Rossi opened the freezer door and walked out into the humid New York air. He stepped up to a black sedan, where the two men were waiting by the rear of the car, one holding the back door open.

  “He needs to make a call,” Rossi said to the one at the door. “Once that’s cleared, he belongs to you.”

  “How do you want him?” the man asked.

  “Take the head, hands, and feet,” Rossi said in a manner as relaxed as if he were ordering a takeout lunch. “Get rid of those and then ship what’s left of him to his family. I don’t want it to be said that we don’t care about the people who do business with us.”

  11

  LO MANTO SLID INTO the passenger seat of Fabini’s four-door unmarked charcoal gray Chrysler sedan and snapped on his seat belt. He looked over at Jennifer, gave her a quick smile and a nod, and handed her a folded sheet of paper. She grabbed it, flipped it open, and gave a quick scan of what was written in pen across the top half. “What’s in the Bronx?” she asked, handing the paper back.

  “Come?” Lo Manto asked in Italian.

  “Do you speak any English at all?” she asked, turning over the engine and shifting the car into gear, easing into the congested midtown traffic flow. “Or should I just talk to myself these next few days?”

  “Sì, sì, English,” Lo Manto said, nodding, a wide grin spread across his face. “I speak, yes, very well. In Italia I study for four years and I go to many, many movies. Like born in America.”

  “That’s good for me to know,” Jennifer said as she gunned the engine and ran a red light as she passed Fifth Avenue.

  “Do you parle Italiano?” Lo Manto asked. “Fabini, yes? You are Italian, no?”

  “I’m New York Italian,” Jennifer said, not bothering to hide the frustration she felt over her new assignment. “That means I eat the food, but I don’t speak the lingo.”

  “Is true of so many Italians in America,” Lo Manto said, folding his hands behind his head and checking out Fabini. “They say they are Italian, but they don’t learn to speak. It’s such a peccato to not speak such beautiful words. Especially if the one speaking them is also beautiful.”

  Fabini shot Lo Manto a quick look and chuckled. “You can’t be for serious,” she said. “Not unless cops have a whole different way of talking back in your country.”

  “I am molto serious,” he said. “It is what I believe in my heart to be true. In Italia we look for beauty in all things. Even in the police.”

  “Sounds great,” Fabini said. “I guess we look at things a little bit different over here. We look for the bad first and sort of turn our backs on the good. That’s true of most in this city. And it’s even truer if you happen to be a cop.”

  “You like what you do?” Lo Manto asked.

  “Most days I love it,” Fabini said, wincing as her front end nose-dived into a crater-size pothole on the Bruckner Boulevard entrance ramp. “Even if I have to spend hours doing paperwork or cool my heels sitting outside a courtroom waiting to give testimony. It’s all part of the same package.”

  “But today, you don’t love,” Lo Manto said. “Taking me to the Bronx. Making sure I don’t get lost.”

  “It’s not personal and I’m not looking for you to take it that way,” Fabini said. “I would have hated this assignment no matter who it was I ended up sitting next to. I thought I was past working details like this, that I’d done enough as a cop to not be the precinct driver. But since you’re there and I’m here and we are going to the Bronx, it looks like I was as wrong as could be.”

  “Maybe it’s for a good reason your captain put you with me, no?” Lo Manto asked. “He thinks that if I help you and if you help me, together we are a good team. He’s a smart man and smart men always have plans.”

  “Listen, I’m sure back in Naples, you’re a pretty decent cop,” Jennifer said, resigned to her situation. “I don’t think the captain would treat you with the respect he does if you weren’t. But you’re not here to bust anybody and you’re not looking to make a big score, so our entire partnership is based on me not getting lost behind the wheel and on not having you disappear outside the car. Clean as that.”

  “If you are so unhappy, I can ask for another cop,” Lo Manto said. “The captain is a friend. He will make the change if I ask.”

  “That’d go over real well,” Jennifer said in a sarcastic tone. “Then I get switched from driving you to working the sun shift in traffic. Your friend doesn’t care for cops who ask out of assignments and he makes sure he gets his point across when they do.”

  “Then we make it work,” Lo Manto said. “We learn from our time together. I teach what I know and watch and look how you do your job. That is maybe what the captain wants for us. If true, then, next time, with the next cop off a pl
ane, you no have to drive.”

  “What’s in the Bronx?” Jennifer asked, circling onto White Plains Road, driving under the shadows of the elevated subway tracks.

  “A man I know,” Lo Manto said, sitting up, his body language shifting from relaxed to a higher gear. “I think he has the answers to my questions. It would be nice to come out of his place with more than a pancia filled with coffee.”

  “You used to live around here, no?” Jennifer asked.

  “Yes,” Lo Manto said. “When I was a boy, this was my quartiere. How you say in English?”

  “Neighborhood,” Jennifer said, catching Lo Manto’s look. “I took three years of Italian in high school. Some of the lessons stayed with me.”

  “Can stop next to that small store?” Lo Manto asked. “The one with the giornali in the front.”

  “Which one we going into?” she asked, easing the unmarked to a stop in front of a fire hydrant, its locked lid dripping water out of the sides. “The candy store or the bar next to it?”

  “I go into the bar,” Lo Manto said, opening the passenger car door, one foot fast on the pavement. “But you are free to go into any other store you like.”

  “I’m not supposed to leave you alone,” Jennifer said. “I don’t like them, but those are my orders. And I’m going to follow them.”

  “What if I say please to you?” Lo Manto asked, tilting his head at Jennifer and giving her a casual smile. “The man I’m going to see doesn’t like the police very much.”

  “I’ll stay clear of you,” Jennifer said. “I won’t step on any of your action, let you two go over old times, play cards, drink coffee, watch a few hours of Italian television. Stay there as long as you want. You’ll get no pressure from me. But just know that when you walk into that bar, I’ll be the one that’s behind you.”

  Lo Manto stepped out of the car and waited as Jennifer killed the engine, jammed an NYPD parking voucher on the dashboard, and walked away from the wheel. “Italian women, American women,” he said as much to himself as he did to her. “There is no difference.”

  “There is with this one,” she said, leading the way toward the dark glass and door of the corner bar.

  “What?”

  “I carry a weapon,” she said.

  Lo Manto walked into the room, wood floors shiny and waxed, sideboard lights on dim, the bar long and polished. There were three men in well-tailored suits sitting on swivel stools, hunched over shot glasses, their cigarettes left smoldering in thick ashtrays. Behind the wood, a bartender in a crisp clean white shirt and knotted red tie was filling the front freezer with warm, long-necked beer bottles. There were six small tables at one end of the bar area, each covered with a white linen tablecloth, silverware, and lit candles. From the middle of the room, Lo Manto could see the lights of the main dining room to his left, the sounds of a Sinatra song filtering down. He caught the bartender’s eye and nodded. “Eduardo,” Lo Manto said to him.

  “In the back,” the bartender said in a soft voice. “Ti aspetta.”

  “Do you like espresso?” Lo Manto asked Jennifer. She was standing next to him, her jacket open, her gun and shield covered by the front flaps, her eyes taking in the space and the occupants.

  “You have any idea whose bar this is?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Lo Manto said to her, his voice now rougher, an angrier tone to it. “Everyone does.”

  “You gonna be good in here?” she asked, speaking in low tones. “You screw up with this crowd, you’re a ten-minute ride away from the back of a cement mixer.”

  “You sit at the bar,” Lo Manto said. “Enjoy your espresso, maybe even have a dolce to go with it, and listen to the music. It will relax you.”

  “I can’t let you walk into trouble,” Jennifer said. “What part of that can’t you seem to work out?”

  “Eduardo is expecting me,” Lo Manto said, his eyes roving from Jennifer to the three suits at the bar. “He would find it an insult if I brought a stranger with me. Ti prego, please wait for me here.”

  Jennifer looked at Lo Manto and then toward the back of the bar. She took a deep breath and slowly nodded her head. “I’ll go your way,” she said. “But if I even smell a whiff of trouble, I’m coming in. You capice what I’m bringing across?”

  “Un espresso per la signorina, per cortesia,” Lo Manto said to the bartender, walking away from Jennifer and heading toward the back room. “Al bar.”

  “I’d rather have American coffee,” Jennifer said, pulling back a stool and sitting down, her back to Lo Manto.

  “When in Rome, Signorina, do as the Romans,” the bartender said. “And when in my bar, drink it the way it’s served.”

  “I was always told you were the kind who liked to work alone,” Eduardo Gaspaldi said. “Now here you come dancing into my place with a partner. And a woman, to top it off. One of us must be getting old and he’s not sitting at my end of the table.”

  “Who she is doesn’t play into what we need to talk about,” Lo Manto said. “As far as you’re concerned, she’s a customer, killing some time, drinking a cup of your fresh coffee. Your business is with me.”

  “And what business would that be?” Eduardo asked, pushing aside an espresso cup and reaching for a half-empty pack of Lord’s cigarettes.

  “My niece went missing about a week ago,” Lo Manto said. “You probably heard about it before I did. I came back to help find her and figured my best bet would be to come see you.”

  “This is a big neighborhood, Lo Manto,” Eduardo said, striking a match to his cigarette. “Kids come and go all the time, for all sorts of reasons. It’s not up to me to keep track. I run a restaurant. Not a school.”

  “You’re a pimp,” Lo Manto said. He pulled out the chair across from Eduardo and sat down, his elbows on the edge of the table, body leaning forward. “That’s what you were when I left here and that’s what you stayed. Back then at least you were using pros. Then, just like every other pool scraper, you got greedy. Started going after them young, banked on there being more profit in it.”

  “You’re hot shit in Naples,” Eduardo said, blowing a line of smoke toward the ceiling fan above his head. “But you’re nothing here. You can’t even make a citizen’s arrest because you’re not a fuckin’ citizen.”

  Lo Manto moved like a coiled bobcat. He was off his chair and by Eduardo’s side in a blur, a switchblade in his right hand, sharp edge jammed inside the stunned pimp’s ear, his other arm wrapped around his throat. Eduardo’s cigarette was still clenched between his teeth. “I’m invisible in this country,” Lo Manto said. “Which means I can do whatever the hell I want. Especially to a scum floater like you. No cop, on the pad or off, is even going to miss lunch if they hear you’re lying facedown in a back alley dumpster.”

  “I don’t know anything,” Eduardo said, his voice reduced to a stilted squeak. “If I did, I’d pass it on.”

  “The blade on my knife is thin,” Lo Manto said. “And I’m not that far from your eardrum. So make sure the next words you say mean something to me.”

  “Not even you would be that fuckin’ crazy,” Eduardo said, spitting the lit cigarette to the floor.

  Lo Manto pulled the blade out of Eduardo’s ear and then with a quick flick sliced a small piece off his lobe. He reached a hand up and covered the pimp’s mouth, holding him in place, checking to make sure no one from the other room heard the commotion. “I just wanted to make sure it was sharp enough,” he whispered into the man’s ear, blood flowing down the side of Eduardo’s neck and onto Lo Manto’s jacket. “Talk to me, while you can still hear. And if you yell for your men, I’ll move from your ear to your throat before they’re off their stools.”

  “Word is she got into somebody’s car,” Eduardo said. “Not here, but somewhere in the city.”

  “Whose car?”

  “Not one of the regular crew guys,” Eduardo said. “More than not, an out-of-town hire brought in for the day.”

  “And he took her where?” Lo Manto
asked, tightening his grip around Eduardo’s throat, the ear and neck now coated in blood.

  “Out of the city,” Eduardo said. “Westchester, someplace like that. Not where the cops would think to look for her.”

  “She alive?” Lo Manto asked.

  “Whatta you think, we print our own fuckin’ newspaper?” Eduardo asked. “They don’t tell me everything that goes on and I make it a habit not to ask a lot of questions.”

  “You won’t need to ask any questions if you can’t hear,” Lo Manto said, scraping the knife against the side of Eduardo’s ear.

  “Killing her ain’t part of the plan,” Eduardo said. “That much I do know.”

  “What is part of the plan?” Lo Manto asked.

  “Killing you,” Eduardo said.

  Jennifer slammed the car into drive and hit the gas, pulling out of the spot, swerving to avoid an oncoming gypsy cab. “I trusted you,” she said to Lo Manto, her face red as a clay court, her hands squeezing the steering wheel. “I bought into your third-tier guinea sweet-talk bullshit routine and look what happens!”

  “Nothing happened,” Lo Manto said, wiping at the blood on his jacket with a cloth napkin he took from the bar. “My friend had an accident. He cut himself while we were talking.”

  “Cut himself with what?” Jennifer screamed. “What’s he do, stir his coffee with a meat cleaver?”

  “He’s going to be good,” Lo Manto said, looking to calm her down and get her to bring him to his next stop. “He said so himself. You heard, no?”

  “You got something going on,” Jennifer said. “And it’s all well and good you want to get to it on your own. But, as long as you need me to drive Miss Daisy around town, it’d be better for both of us if you fill me in.”

  “Have you had lunch yet?” Lo Manto asked, tossing the blood-soaked napkin onto the backseat.

  “No, but I had coffee,” she said, turning right on a red light. “Four tiny cups of that Italian heart-grabber while I was sitting at the bar like a good little girl, waiting while you were doing a Sweeney Todd on the owner.”