He’d known for a few years where Alejandro was living, but he never had the stones to go and see him. Didn’t really have them now, either. He considered writing a letter letting him know some people might come around asking about his old man, and people were looking out for him, but it probably would have inspired even more contempt in the boy. Ramón didn’t know his son as an adult, but if he was anything like his father, he would have preferred hearing these things in person. There was more honor in it. At least that’s what he told himself.
Of course, there wasn’t much honor in sitting out here like some eighties movie cop watching his son come and go like a suspect in a drug ring. It was unlikely Alejandro would even let him into the house. Would probably slam the door right in his face as soon as he recognized who was knocking. But Ramón couldn’t leave with a clear head and heart until he spoke with his son, man to man.
Alejandro gave the school bus one last wave before heading back inside his little brick house. Ramón took the final swig of his cold coffee and got out of the car. He zipped his windbreaker against the autumn morning chill, taking a few deep breaths before crossing the street. He walked up the short path that cut through the postage stamp lawn and climbed a porch with just enough room for the little lighthouse statue sitting on it. Lighthouses were a symbol of welcome, of shelter. Ironic, given the visitor.
He rang the doorbell, feeling himself shrink in his clothes, twisting his hat in his sweaty hands as footsteps approached from inside. It wasn’t much different from how he felt standing on the Ballas porch a few days ago, only now he was actually more nervous.
You shouldn’t have come here, old man.
Too late to back down now.
The door opened, and Ramón stood face to face with his grown son for the first time in fifteen years. Back then, he’d been an angry boy, molded into a man far too soon. That’s what happens when a kid buries his mother before he’s old enough to grow a mustache. Now Alejandro was taller than him, with a full goatee. He was a good looking boy who only had a hint of his father’s looks in the shape of his eyes, and the hardness creeping into them as recognition filtered in.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. At least he didn’t slam the door shut without a word. Ramón had been expecting it.
“Hello, son.”
Ramón looked at the clenched jaw, the tightened fists, and knew Alejandro was no less angry now than he was on that night fifteen years ago when the paramedics took Maria away in a body bag. The boy had every right to his anger, then and now.
“May I come in?” Ramón asked.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
He’d been anticipating that, but he couldn’t let it end there. Grab your cajones, old man.
“Look, it won’t take long. After I leave, you won’t ever have to see me again.”
Alejandro watched him for a minute, trying to read him. After a big sigh, he opened the door the rest of the way and stood aside to let him in.
The place was definitely small, but bigger than it looked on the outside. Bright and airy. Cheerful. Pictures of the family hung from the yellow walls, his granddaughter at various stages of life—from bald infant to snaggle-toothed grade-schooler. The little girl’s mother was a slightly more heavyset version of Maria. A happy and smiling family. Ramón once had similar pictures of his own family, but looks were often deceiving.
“Nice place,” he said.
“How did you find it?”
“I know a guy.”
“Ah.”
A long and distended pause followed, the two men standing with their arms folded, looking everywhere but at each other. Ramón decided it was he who should break the silence. “I’m out. Out of the life. For good.”
“Is that right?”
“Yep. I got square with my debts and I’m a free man now.”
“Uh-huh.” Alejandro walked into the kitchen, where he poured himself a cup of coffee. He didn’t offer Ramón any.
“I’m heading out of town now. Actually, I’m heading out of the country. I wanted to come by and see you before I left.”
“Okay. You’re seeing me. Is that it?”
This was going nowhere, just as he’d anticipated. Nevertheless, his impatience stirred. The boy didn’t have to be so cold. It was disrespectful.
You didn’t have to come here, old man. You know he hates you. You did it to yourself.
“Listen, son . . . I was hoping—”
“Is my family in danger with you being here?”
There it was. The pebble in the shoe. Ramón supposed he should have felt proud of how quick his boy was, but right now he just felt small. He looked back down at his shoes, because it was easier than looking him in the eyes. Coward. “I would never want to put you in danger.”
Alejandro put down the coffee cup and took a deep breath. “That doesn’t answer my question, but then again I guess it does.” His terrible calm was more disheartening than any angry outburst would have been. It meant he’d long accepted his old man was a piece of shit.
He looked at a picture of the little girl stuck to the fridge with alphabet magnets. She was on a swing set, pink dress, black pigtails flying. He could almost hear her laughter and realized it had been years since he’d heard the sound of ringing innocence. “What’s her name?”
“Who?”
“You know who. My granddaughter.”
Alejandro’s jaw tightened. “Ella. Her name is Ella.”
“I’m sorry. About all this. Look, you asked if you needed to worry, and no. You don’t.” He pulled out Jonny Spank’s pawn shop business card and set it on the counter. “But if anyone comes around asking about me and you feel unsafe, call this number.”
Alejandro picked up the card, looked at it, and pocketed it. “Who would come by? What sort of trouble are you in?”
“Can’t think of a time in my life when I wasn’t in some sort of trouble, son. Your mother, she knew all about that.”
“Yeah, and she paid the biggest price for it. We both did. You weren’t there when I found her. You were out. Probably in a basement somewhere trying to win back the rent and grocery money you lost. Too drunk to know when to bluff and when to fold and come home to your family.”
Ramón swallowed a lump in the back of this throat. The night Maria died, he’d been in the storeroom of Gemini Hardware, where a guy named Tommy Bean ran a regular Let it Ride game. He left three grand in the hole and came home to find Maria brandishing an eviction notice in his face. The landlord had finally had enough late rent. She was so angry, and it only made him even more so. He was drunk and had a headache and his debts were reaching dangerous proportions. The last thing he needed to hear was her high-pitched harping.
“You want closure? I’ll give it to you. Anything you want to know, anything you want me to say, I’m here.” Even now, you’re lying, old man. You really think you came here to tell him the truth?
Alejandro grunted. “Closure? You’re a stranger to me. I got nothing to close on. I just take care of my family instead of gambling their lives away. It’s easier than I thought it would be. I mean, the way you handled it, I was sure it would be the hardest thing in the world, having a wife and raising a kid. For years I avoided it because of that, but Kate turned me around. I figured out it’s not so much work being a good man after all. You just weren’t up for the task. Or maybe you gotta be born a certain way.”
Of course, it was more than that. There were a plethora of reasons why he abandoned his post as a father and husband, why he started visiting those backroom card tables again, why he eventually started running his own ragtag betting operation, running up enough debt that he eventually became Victor Cassini’s bitch. They were reasons that only made sense inside his head, though. They would sound hollow and silly spoken aloud to someone who spent more than half his life hating him, who had turned his father into the best representation of who not to be. But nothing Alejandro said was wrong, either. Ramón hadn’t been up to the
task of family man. That had been Madre’s wish, not his. He had another calling, one he was still trying to answer after so many mistakes and diversions from the path.
This would be his last pit stop.
“You’re right,” Ramón said. “What more can I say?”
He could feel Alejandro’s eyes drilling into him, daring him to say more or perhaps break down crying and beg for his forgiveness, but Ramón would never go there. Couldn’t after everything he’d seen and done. He would not only have to cry for his dead wife and alienated son, but for every girl he’d sent into the Ballas house. He’d have to weep for all the people he’d hurt and killed before then, and for all the times he’d looked the other way when someone else did the dirty work. There weren’t enough tears or contrition in the world for all that. There was only the road, the ocean, and its hunger for bad memories.
Alejandro looked away. “That’s okay. I don’t need you to say any more than that. Really, I just want you out of here. Every second I have to look at you is another second I have to relive seeing my mother’s dead face when I opened that closet door, or when I had to read the note she left me begging me to forgive her. But fuck you both. She could have taken me and left. I begged her, but she refused. I used to think it was her Catholic bullshit, or because she was scared, but eventually I figured out it was because she didn’t want to leave your money, at least when it came in. Because when you hit, you really hit and she was just as hooked on that as you. That closet she hung herself in, with all its pretty dresses and expensive shoes she bought with your dirty money . . .”
“Son, please.”
“Both of you were selfish and greedy assholes, as far as I’m concerned. Maybe you think there’s more of her in me than you because I ain’t a thug like you. Well, I can promise you that isn’t the case. Maybe you broke her down. Maybe drove her half nuts. Hell, maybe you actually killed her yourself and covered it up. Either way, she was weak. As far as I’m concerned, I’m better off without either of you in my life.”
Ramón’s heart felt like lead. Any inkling of hope that the intervening years had somehow softened his son was snuffed under the weight of the boy’s savage acceptance of his parents’ failures.
He put his hat back on with hands that felt numb. “Like I said, if you have any trouble, that card I gave you—”
“Tell you what, if I have any trouble, I’ll call the cops. That’s what normal people do when bad guys come around messing in normal people’s lives.”
“Son, if you’re half as smart as I think, you ought to know better than that. The cops are bought and paid for. They won’t be your friends. Not with this.” He suddenly felt like he was talking an emotionally distraught person off the ledge of a building. “If you want to keep your family safe, keep that number handy.”
“I know how to keep my family safe. Now get out.” He pointed toward the door. “Go.”
Ramón wanted to press the importance of Jonny Spank’s business card further, but by the set of Alejandro’s jaw, he could tell it was pointless. Spank’s boys would keep an eye out whether Alejandro wanted them to or not. He was almost out the door when Alejandro called out, “I hope it was worth it.”
Ramón turned around. “What?”
“Whatever it is you did to piss them off and put whatever is left of your family in danger.”
“It’s never worth it, son. That was never the point.”
***
He sat behind the wheel of the Riviera, trembling. For the next few minutes, the adrenaline from the encounter, no longer repressed, raced through his body, making him feel like he was either going to throw up or crawl out of his skin like a junkie in withdrawal. Then his throwaway phone, which he’d left on the passenger seat, rang. Only one person had the number. He picked it up.
“Jonny?”
“I’m out, man. We don’t know each other.”
Ramón’s stomach clenched. “Say what?”
“Look, I know you got troubles and everything, but you didn’t tell me they was troubles with a capital C. I just had one of my boys come in here with a busted face after one of Cassini’s musclemen knocked him around a little, asking questions about you. I can’t get involved in that. I’m a businessman and I hate those fuckin’ mooks, but I ain’t no martyr.”
Ramón pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. A headache was coming on. A well-earned headache. “What did he tell them?”
“He didn’t tell them shit, ’cause he don’t know shit. But I can’t promise I won’t when they come in here next. You paid me good money, but you didn’t pay me enough to go up against these guys. They own everybody.”
“Tell me somebody they don’t own. Someone who can still help me.”
“Shit man, I don’t know!” There was a crash in the background and Jonny let out a stern “goddamn motherfuck” under his breath.
“You do know. Don’t jerk me around. I paid you, now give me something I can fucking use, man.”
Jonny let out a big sigh. “All right, all right. Fuck. There’s a new up and comer in Atlantic City. Some Jew named Benny Rosen. He’s a crazy fucker. Real thorn in Vic Cassini’s side right now, from the way I hear it. He’s been buying up all the properties that flopped after the market crash, and word has it he’s trying to start his own little empire down there. Owns a casino called the Blue Diamond. He’ll probably be fish food before too long, but he has balls.”
“AC? There’s nothing but a bunch of small time pimps and loan sharks down there. You sure about this?”
“Like I told you, he’s nuts. And definitely not OG. Nobody here wants to waste much time with the clam diggers these days, but Rosen’s dad was a Congressman back in the eighties, and he’s got some old money to play with. Word has it he walked into a Commission meeting and threw a million bucks on the table. Basically bought himself a seat.”
Ramón couldn’t believe he’d never heard of this guy before. “You know him? Ever met him?”
“Yeah, I met him once. Don’t know what’s so special about him. If you ask me, he’s just a little nerd who watched Scarface one too many times as a kid, but he ain’t stupid neither. He’s probably your best bet if you want to see somebody who ain’t afraid to deal behind Cassini’s back. I bet he could get you out of the country and he’d do it for free just to spite Vic. Crazy fuck.”
Hanging out any longer on the east coast sounded like a recipe for disaster, but he didn’t have much choice at the moment. He had to go where the connections were. “All right. Thanks, Jonny.”
“No problem. Look . . . I’ll throw them off your scent at least. Tell them you was already heading out El Paso way.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“And don’t worry about your kid. I’ll keep some eyes on the situation there just because I ain’t a fuckin’ prick. Now burn your phone after you hang up. That’s what I’ll be doing. We never talked”
“You got it.”
Ramón stared at the cheap little flip phone for a minute before breaking it apart and tossing it out the window. Then he started the Buick and pointed it in the direction of Atlantic City. He didn’t look at the little brick house as he passed it.
Chapter 9
Madam Makes an Ally
The driver pulled up in front of the Blue Diamond Hotel and Casino, and the Madam looked down to see her white-knuckled hands gripping her purse like it was going to fly away. She’d stowed another pistol away in it and didn’t intend on leaving anything to chance. It was the first time she’d been in a car since her ordeal, and she supposed she was still a little nervous. The driver wasn’t affiliated with her family. He was one of Benny Rosen’s men. On the phone last night, when she told him her driver was no longer on the payroll and she wasn’t able to drive herself due to her injuries, he insisted on sending someone.
Don’t you worry about a thing. Clayton is a good man. She’d have to see about that. One of her most trusted people had just ruined her, so she wasn’t willing
to put much faith in any hired hands at the moment.
Clayton, a quiet spoken black man who looked to be in his thirties, got out of the car and opened her door. She stepped out, handing him a folded fifty-dollar bill. “I shouldn’t be more than an hour. Be down here waiting when I step out of those doors, and there will be another fifty in it for you.”
“Yes, Madam. Don’t you worry. Mr. Rosen told me you were my most important client.”
“Smart man. You can go now.” She waved him off.
“Yes, Madam.” He gave her a little bow and walked back to the car, his spine as straight as a yardstick. Maybe he was okay, after all. If everything worked out as she hoped, she might have to hire him from under Rosen’s likely large nose.
She took a deep breath of the sea air mixed with the Jersey pollution and grimaced. Still an armpit, this place. Four blocks of artificial fantasy land surrounded by an eternity of ghetto and petty crime. Even the fantasyland wasn’t much of a fantasy, unless being surrounded by hot dog vendors, idiot tourists, and drug addicts was your sort of gravy. Aside from some minor loaning operations a few blocks from the resorts, the Cassinis didn’t have much business here. Dante made some investments years ago, but they never took off.
“AC is a lot like a woman’s purse,” he’d once told her during one of their many chess games in the boathouse. “Anything you put into it falls to the bottom, never to be found again.”
Strings Page 13