by James Dargan
“So, what am I gonna do with the cocksucker?” Parrino said.
“I dunno, boss.”
“He was my best friend, Ray, for twenty-five goddamn years.”
“I know, boss, you don’t have to tell me.”
Todaro was at a place he didn’t like being at: giving his unending support to his boss when his boss’s boss was the man that really mattered.
“You think he deserves it?”
“Deserves what?”
“Don’t give me that shit.”
“Whacking him, you think we should whack him?”
“Yeah, kill the prick real good... You got nothing planned tonight?” Parrino then suggested.
“Whatcha mean?”
“You fancy hanging out for a while?”
“Hanging out?” Todaro asked as he was opening the car window. He threw out the wet newspaper. “In this weather?”
“You wanna come with me or what?”
Todaro knew what the question implied. He wouldn’t be going back to his wife or goomah that night. In fact, Parrino had a ‘job’ that he wanted to do himself, meeting up with a man called Farber Bowfinger. If the name seemed a far-fetched one, that was because it was: Farber Bowfinger was an English man - real name Charles Kemp – who worked for a brokerage firm on Wall Street. Bowfinger’s passion was thoroughbred racehorses. He had good connections in the racing world, was reportedly close friends with Frank E. Childs, the trainer of the Kentucky Derby winner Tommy Lee and other powerful men in the racing world on both sides of the pond.
“For what?”
“I gotta meeting with this fella about a racehorse that maybe I gotta interest in buying.”
Todaro was a sucker for the racetrack, blowing sometimes a grand on a horse. If it had big teeth and hooves, Todaro was interested.
“Where you meeting him?”
“The 92 Club in the East Village.”
“I aiyn’t going to the East fucking Village at this time of night!”
“Why not?”
“It’s full of cocksuckers and Beatniks.”
“C’mon, it’ll be fun... Chicks are a plenty there.”
“Chicks aiyn’t what I need, boss, and you know it...”
Todaro had no choice: his capo had spoken.
It took them over an hour to drive to Manhattan due to the weather.
*****
The 92 Club had only been open a year yet had already started attracting the right kind of clients: Wall Street bankers, artists, movie stars and even politicians. The music was first rate, too:
“And who are you?” the man at the door asked the two mobsters who had jumped to the front of the line.
If you wanted to get in without an invitation, tonight was not the night to do it: jazz musician Charlie Mingus was in town. Parrino whispered sweetly something in the man’s ear while slipping a hundred-dollar bill into his unsuspecting hand.
They were in the club, even if they weren’t suitably dressed.
Bowfinger, a chubby man with thinning, blonde hair and wearing intellectual thick-rimmed glasses, was seated at the back of the smoky club at a table. With him were two other men. The first, James Ellington, also a broker, the other, Patrick Cleary, as slim as Bowfinger was fat, and a thoroughbred racehorse breeder from the Emerald Isle now based in Kentucky.
Parrino scanned the club, searching for Bowfinger.
“There he is,” Parrino said to Todaro.
“Gentlemen,” Bowfinger said, standing up, surprised – he had only expected Parrino.
“Nice to see you, Farber,” Parrino said to Bowfinger. The two mobsters got comfortable, ordered drinks and joined the conversation Bowfinger, Ellington and Cleary had been in, namely their scam: For years Cleary had bred winners in all the big British and Irish races from his stables in County Kildare, Ireland. And made money too. But it had never been enough. That was when – on a vacation to Cancun, Mexico – Bowfinger ran into the white-skinned, red-haired Celt on the beach, sunbathing. The two became friends.
Bowfinger gave Parrino and Todaro the rub as to what he had in mind.
“So, this Childs motherfucker, he’s agreed to it?” Todaro asked.
“Yes, of course,” Bowfinger replied with confidence.
Freeman E. Childs was the owner of The Childs Stud Farm, near Lexington, Kentucky, and a close friend of Patrick Cleary, his stud stable manager. The two had come up with a great way to make money, namely to mate their thoroughbred champion stallions in their charge with the mares of unsuspecting clients. The thing that made it so beautiful was the fact they weren’t even using the semen from the champion horses, but other horse in the stable, dime a dozen, average used-to-runs. Because Childs was a trusted member of the racing community, nobody had ever checked him out. Parrino’s part in all this was that Bowfinger owed him a lot of money and the mobster wanted it back – two-hundred grand in gambling debts. He had told Parrino about the scam in the hope Parrino would somehow forget the ‘debt’ for introducing him to the money-making racket or at least give him a lot more time to pay it back.
The thing was, you see, Parrino was just like every other wise guy in America: everything he had done, was doing or would do in his life was done primarily out of self-interest. When the Englishman had served his purpose, he would either be whacked or sucked dry of any discernible assets.
“And you think it’s profitable?” Parrino asked Bowfinger.
“Guaranteed,” the Irishman replied, smiling.
“Who the fuck asked you to speak?” Todaro snapped.
“Yer fella there is rather feckin’ hot-headed, is he not?” Cleary said, addressing the group.
Business discussed, Parrino and Todaro left the club and went to a nearby Italian restaurant, Gavino’s.
*****
The restaurant was emptying, as it was after eleven.
“You been here before?” Todaro asked Parrino.
“Once.”
“What can you recommend?”
“The sea bass and steaks are great.”
They ordered their starters and a bottle of the best house wine, a ’52 Barolo red.
“I’m gonna take a leak,” Todaro said, rising.
Parrino put a cigarette in his mouth, lit it and leant his head back, closed his eyes and exhaled. It was only when he opened them that he got a shock.
“Take a look over there?” Parrino said to Todaro when he had returned from the restroom.
“What am I supposed to be fucking looking at?”
“Over there.”
“Where?”
“On the far table.” Todaro turned his head again and gazed over carefully. “That table there.”
“Yeah. Whatcha see?”
“Look closely.”
“Shit, no... is that Dimissio’s brother Paulie ‘Pecker’ Dimissio?”
“It certainly fucking is,” Parrino said with a smile, anticipating the night ahead.
Paolo ‘Paulie’ the ‘Pecker’ Dimissio was a family man with four kids. He lived in the Belmont neighbourhood of the Bronx after transplanting there with his wife, who hailed from the borough. Paulie Dimissio had trodden a different path to his brother’s. Although the Dimissios – like ninety percent of families of Italian ancestry in New York – had struggled financially, they had managed to send Paulie to college where he had studied civil engineering. He was now a respected property developer, having a growing portfolio in the upper Bronx and Yonkers.
Dimissio was in Davino’s with clients, a young professional couple, who lived in the East Village and were interested in buying a place in the apartment complex his company, Mercer Brothers, had built in Riverdale. The deal could be closed tonight, leaving Dimissio with a hefty bonus. One which would take his family on a two-week vacation to Acapulco.
“So, any further questions?” Dimissio asked the couple.
On the table was the contract: he wanted it signed, sealed and delivered, especially now after he had spent a king’s ransom on the dinn
er.
“Yes, I’ve got one,” the woman, Dana Roth, said as she picked up the contract again.
Like her husband, Max Roth, she wanted to be sure, even though she was from a family of Jewish wealth. The Italian surname had initially caused them distrust, but Dimissio’s pedantic manner, self-deprecation and affable nature had won them over.
“And what’s that?” Dimissio asked with impatience in his voice – he had barely seen his kids in a week trying to rubber stamp the deal.
“How you doing, Paulie?” Dimissio turned his head. “How you doing, pal?”
“Sorry?” Dimissio asked the man standing at their table.
“Don’t know me?”
The Roths had been caught off guard.
“Am I disturbing you?” Max Roth asked Dimissio rhetorically just as his wife got up to go.
“No, please don’t go, Dana... Who are you, sir?” Dimissio then asked the man.
Parrino had no time for games. He wanted easy revenge.
“We’ll be in contact tomorrow,” Max Roth said to Dimissio, his hand to his ear, making a telephone with his hand.
“They’ve gone,” said Parrino. Dimissio stood up, confronting the man who had interrupted the biggest deal of his career. “You got something to say?”
“Who the fuck are you?” Dimissio said, not recognizing who he was talking to.
“You don’t recognize me?” Parrino asked.
Dimissio stared at him for a second.
“I know the face but, sorry, I can’t quite place it.”
“Paul Parrino – your brother’s friend.”
“Oh, yeah,” Dimissio said, realizing any friends of his brother were not-to-be-trusted wise guys. “How you doing, Paulie?”
“Not bad. Keeping busy. Now sit down.” Dimissio sat down. “And them people, business?”
“Yeah.”
“I heard you was into property or something?”
“Yeah, I am,” Dimissio answered curtly.
Parrino didn’t like Dimissio and he now didn’t like his brother, either.
“So, can I getcha something to drink?” Parrino asked.
“Nah, it’s fine – I was just about to go.”
Parrino called Todaro over.
“I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, Ray Todaro,” Parrino said as Dimissio attempted to stand up. Parrino placed his hand on his shoulder and pushed him down gently. The gesture was polite but Dimissio knew Parrino’s hidden agenda. “Don’t go, let’s have a little drink.” Dario Davino – son of Armando Davino, the owner of the restaurant – looked on. “What the fuck are you looking at?” Parrino said to Davino.
The maître d’ and bartender disappeared but was soon called to the table by Parrino.
“What can I getcha, gentlemen?” Davino asked them.
“Bring us a bottle of Scotch,” Parrino ordered.
“We have none in stock.”
“What?”
“We got half a bottle of Jameson’s left.”
“Bring that, then,” Todaro said. “and three glasses.”
Davino rushed off while the three started a conversation about the good-old days in Brooklyn.
“So, where you living now?” Parrino asked Dimissio.
“Belmont.”
“The Bronx?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Dimissio answered, stirring uneasily in his chair.
“You moved up in the world?”
“I guess you could say that, yeah.”
“What are the Italians like in the Bronx?” Todaro then asked as Davino placed the bottle and three glasses on the table.
“I guess they’re kinda like the Italians in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island,” Dimissio answered sarcastically.
Dimissio glanced at his watch.
“Why you clockwatching?” Todaro said as he nudged Dimissio.
“I need to go home guys.”
“Not before we’ve had a few drinks.” Parrino opened the bottle and began pouring the whiskey into the glasses. “So, he then said, “whatcha think about your brother living in Arizona?”
“Whatcha want me to say about it?”
“Ever visited him out there?”
“Me and Frankie aiyn’t talking.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Well we got the time to hear it...”
*****
At 3.14 a.m, the three men left Gavino’s. They had drunk the bar dry.
“My car’s parked over on the next block,” Dimissio said as he fumbled in his coat pocket for his keys.
“Nah, don’t worry abou’ it!” Parrino said, waving his hands, “we’ll give you a ride... Where you say you live again?”
“Belmont.”
Paulie Dimissio never made it home that night. His body washed up three days later on the banks of the Hudson River, on the Jersey side.
REVENGE
Randall knew his protests with the Dallas Police Department were going to be hard in effort before he even picked up the telephone.
After putting the receiver down forty minutes later to the Dallas Police Chief, Jesse Curry, Randall turned to his newest and only confederate, Detective Jack Lyson:
“Well there you go,” Randall said with a sigh.
“Looks like we’re on our own.”
“Hasn’t it always been that way?”
“So whatcha wanna do?” Lyson asked, sitting on the couch in Randall’s living room, smoking one of his Cuban special cigars.
Randall went to the window. Outside the sky looked like it always did: a clear and unpolluted azure, with specks of cirrus clouds here and there.
“Something I should have started doing a long time ago.”
“And what’s that?”
Randall knew what was right now – even if he hadn’t always believed it himself: that Devereux’s attitude had been the correct one, that treating scum with disrespect got you everywhere. As a young cop back in Bayside City, he had often criticized his partner for his attitude to the job and underhanded tactics with the criminal elements in the city. This had been the case when the two men worked together in Tucson as private detectives in the first few years, too. But gradually, Randall changed. It was only now, though – almost a quarter of a century since he had left the East Coast, having gone through witnessing his best friend’s death at the hands of a felon and his wife’s demise at the hands of the big C – that the realization people of Quatrocchi’s ilk would never change sank in.
“Let’s kill the motherfucker.” Randall turned around, smiled at Lyson, then added: “Are you in?”
Lyson wasn’t – but what else was he going to say to spoil the moment?
“Are you sure that’s what you wanna do?” Lyson asked.
“I’ve never be surer of anything in my life...”
Once Lyson had left, Randall gathered his thoughts: what he had proposed his friend had been selfish. Lyson had young children, a life ahead of him, old age and retirement. And only then death.
Randall picked up the telephone again:
“Hello, sweetheart.”
“Hello, Dad.”
“How are you?”
He was on the line to his eldest daughter, Melissa, who was living in Los Angeles with her husband, a lawyer.
“Not too bad,” Melissa said awkwardly as a baby crying gave the conversation background noise.
“Is that Justin?”
“Yes.”
Melissa’s relationship with her father had become strained since her mother’s death, much like the relationship with Eve, his youngest studying at Baylor University, in Waco, Texas.
“I love you.” It came out. He didn’t know how. He hadn’t said those words for a decade or more. “Did you hear me?” Randall asked after the ten seconds of silence became too much.
“I’ve got... to... go... Daddy,” Melissa said, choking up, “Justin’s hungry.”
Justin Walter Ganz was the nine-month-old grandson Randall had never s
een. The Randall family feud had started when Monica got sick. Randall thought the oncologists’ proposal to use the drug Methotrexate to kill the tumour in her right breast (which was a metastasis of the original Melanoma skin cancer diagnosis) was the wrong way to go. He thought it was an unknown quantity, not worth the risk. His daughters, on the other hand, had a more progressive opinion on the treatment their mother should have got. In the end, and after countless arguments – many in front of Monica, who was often bedridden, weak and despondent – Randall told his eldest daughter to mind her own business and the final decision was his to make. He told them Monica was his wife and nothing was going to make him change his mind. Melissa and Eve begged their mother to reconsider, but her mind had been swayed by her husband.
Randall hadn’t seen either daughter since Monica’s funeral.
“I’d like to come and see you,” Randall said just as Melissa put down the telephone. “Are you there, are you there?” Randall asked, panic-stricken now.
He slammed down the receiver.
The ex-cop poured himself a straight vodka and went out on the veranda, where he sat down in his usual spot.
Ten minutes later Joan with her poodle walked past.
“Afternoon, Joan,” Randall said, his hand – holding his drink – raised in the air.
“Good afternoon, Phil... Where’s your Coca Cola?”
“I thought I’d change it to a water for a change. Off around the block, I see?”
“Yes, as usual,” Joan with her poodle answered with a snigger.
“Well, have a good one.”
Soon after that Mr and Mrs Tressle made an appearance.
“And how are you today, folks?” Randall asked his neighbours – he had already emptied his glass twice since Joan with her poodle had disappeared.
“Fine,” Mr Tressle said.
The Tressles had been married fifty years, arriving in the town when it had barely 10,000 inhabitants.
“We missed you yesterday – did you go somewhere?” Mrs Tressle asked.
“Phoenix.”
“On business?”
Mrs Tressle was nosy by anyone’s standards.
“Stop, dear,” Mr Tressle said to his wife as he pulled her away. Mr Tressle knew Randall was a quiet man who valued his privacy – he believed such questions were inappropriate. “Sorry about my wife, Phil.”