by B. B. Hamel
But back before he was a teacher, Tommy was one of those old-school, hard-bitten journalists that seemed to be a part of the story more often than not. He grew up in Philly, just like me, and he seemed to know everyone. I read a few of his bigger pieces, including a profile about Mayor Goode and the MOVE bombing. He had the sort of pedigree and voice that I really admired, and as soon as I began taking his classes, I knew I wanted to be just like him.
“How’s Randy treating you?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said. “Not a lot of work these days.”
He grunted. “That damned internet.”
I laughed and shook my head. “No, I mean, just not much big news. I’m still making ends meet at that coffee shop.”
“Not a bad thing, you know,” he said. “Working hard is good for you.”
“Yeah, easy for you to say,” I said. “You get to show up for a class here or there and you’re golden.”
He snorted and shook his head, smiling and patting the paper.
“I put in my years of service,” he said. “I ever tell you about the time I nearly got shot covering those gangs up in—”
“Yes,” I said, cutting him off. “About twenty times.”
He gave me a look. “You gotta learn to respect your elders, kid.”
“I know. You tell me every time we meet.”
He laughed and stretched. I knew I got under his skin, but I think he liked it a little bit.
Tommy didn’t have any kids, as far as I knew. He had a wife a long time ago, but she passed away, and he’d been single as long as I’d known him. After I graduated, he got me a job writing for the Metro, and then helped me start freelancing for the Inquirer. While I wasn’t technically a staff writer yet, I thought all I needed was one decent story, and they’d give me a real, full-time position.
And then I’d be an actual journalist. Not just some part-time rag writer, filling in stories about bored housewives turned internet streaming entrepreneurs and middle school teachers that built playground replicas from toothpicks. I wanted to get out there in the street, hunt down leads, interview subjects.
I wanted to be as much a part of the story as a witness after the fact.
“All right, kid,” he said. “You called me out here. Said you got something to talk about.”
“Yeah.” I shifted a little on the bench and glanced over my shoulder. I wasn’t sure why I did it, but it felt like the thing to do.
“Spill,” he said. “I’ve got to teach in a half hour.”
“Do you know the name Vincent Leone?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Leone is familiar,” he said. “They’re that Italian mafia family, right?”
“Right,” I said. “Vincent is the only son of their Don.”
“Okay,” he said, giving me a frown. “So how do you know that?”
“Internet,” I said, waving that away. “Reddit mostly, but there are some Tumblrs and Facebook groups about them, and—”
“All right,” he said, holding up a hand. “Old as dirt and don’t know what half those words mean.”
I grinned at him. “You really are a cliché.”
“And you really are wasting my time, so get to the point.”
I sighed and glanced around one more time. “I met him last night,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Did you know?”
I nodded. “Friend of mine works for a catering company, and she told me that they were catering this, like, fancy thing at the top of the Comcast building. She said it was supposed to be really secret and impressive, and that she could bring me along if I wanted to make some extra cash.”
“So you went,” Tommy said.
“Of course,” I said. “I mean, it sounded exciting, and I thought there might be a story in there.”
“What was it like?” he asked.
And in that moment, as he leaned toward me a little bit more, I knew I had him.
I grinned and shrugged like it was no big thing.
“Oh, you know,” I said. “Bunch of rich old guys talking to each other about how big their bank accounts were. No big deal, really.”
He gave me a hard look. “So you brought me all the way out here for no big deal?” he asked.
“No, I mean, I just—”
“Here’s a tip, kid,” he said. “If you have a story, act like it’s a story. Don’t downplay or be modest, own it.”
I took a breath and nodded. “Right, okay,” I said. “So, well, I was there, and I was doing my thing, you know? Passing out food, collecting empty cups, that sort of thing. And as I’m doing a pass through the crowd, I noticed that Vince had left and—”
He interrupted me. “Vince?”
“Vincent,” I said. “Goes by Vince. You want to hear this or not?”
He gestured. “Go on.”
“So anyway, he went out onto this patio overlooking the city. I followed him out there, we talked a little bit, I turned on the charm, and he wants to meet with me.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Meet with you?”
I nodded. “For lunch. All I have to do is call.”
He grunted and shook his head. “Mona—”
“But wait,” I said. “Before you tell me it’s a bad idea, he knows I’m a journalist. I told him straight up, and said I might want to write about him.”
Tommy pursed his lips. “And he still wants to have lunch with you?”
“That’s what he said.”
He shook his head, a frown on his lips. “Mona, you can’t be serious.”
I felt my face flush as I stared at him. I didn’t expect that reaction, not at all. Oh, I figured he’d tell me to be careful, do that whole thing, but I thought he’d be impressed. I went out there and found a subject worth writing about.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Men like that are dangerous,” he said. “I know, the mafia doesn’t kill like they used to, they got a lot smarter these days. But those guys are still dangerous as hell. You don’t want to get attached to one, even if he does know you’re a journalist.”
“You wrote about gangsters back in the day,” I pointed out. “You did it all the time, actually. What made you so different?”
“I wasn’t twenty-three,” he said. “I was older than you. And I was a—”
“You were a man?” I asked, eyes narrowed.
He sighed. “No, you idiot. I was a full-time reporter with years of experience.”
“It’s just lunch,” I said. “I mean, it can’t hurt, right?”
“It can hurt,” he said. “It can hurt a lot.”
I stared at him and felt my pulse racing. I didn’t expect this, not at all.
I finally had a real scoop. Well, maybe not a scoop, but at least an angle into the life of an interesting figure. I could write a profile about Vince, change all the names around, obfuscate some details, but still, I could write something real. People love the mafia, and they want to know what the mob’s really doing in these modern times.
And yet Tommy’s talking to me like I can’t handle it.
“This is good,” I said. “Randy’s never going to take me on full-time, not with papers struggling the way they are.”
“Fucking internet,” Tommy said.
“Fucking internet,” I agreed. “So the only way to get my foot in the door is to prove that I’m smart, talented, and can take some real risks.”
“This isn’t the kind of risk you want to take,” Tommy said. “These mafia guys, they’ll use you, chew you up, spit you out. They don’t give a damn about anything but themselves.”
“Probably right,” I said. “But I still have to do it.”
He looked at me for a long, tense moment, before he sighed and hung his head.
“Damn it,” he said. “You’re really going to call him, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, and only just realized it was true. I hadn’t made up my mind yet, or at least I was telling myself that I had to talk to Tommy first.
But now I knew I
was really going through with it.
“Fine,” he said. “But please, keep me in the loop. Keep me updated. If you disappear for a few days, I’m calling the fucking cops, you hear me?”
“Tommy, if I disappear for a few days, you tell the cops to search every inch of the Schuylkill River for my body.”
He sighed and rolled his eyes.
“You think you’re joking,” he said, “but you have no clue how many bodies are down there already.”
“Then I’ll have good company.” I leaned over and hugged him and kissed his cheek. “Tell Randy I’ve got a good story coming, okay?”
He shrugged me off with a grunt and a grumble. “You show me some copy, then I’ll talk to Randy for you, all right?”
“That’s a deal.” I held out my hand.
He took it and stared into my eyes.
“Be careful,” he said. “I’m serious, Mona. Mafia guys are no joke.”
“I’ll be careful,” I said.
He held my hand tight then let it go. He got to his feet with a grunt and pushed the paper back under his arm. He shoved his hands in his pockets and gave me a flat look.
“I want to see some copy by this weekend,” he said. “You hear me?”
“I’ll get on it,” I said.
He nodded and turned away without another word. He stalked off and I watched him disappear into a mob of teenage boys on skateboards laughing about something, half of them fiddling with their phones.
I turned and faced forward again before taking a small, plain white card and my cell phone from my back pocket. I held them next to each other and stared at the number printed in plain, simple black.
I typed it into the phone app and hit the call button.
The phone rang as another pack of teenage boys came skating past, or maybe it was the same pack with new additions, I couldn’t tell. I watched two small kids, maybe six or seven, throw a ball back and forth as their parents sat on benches a few feet away. I smiled a little to myself, tried to picture what it would be like to have a family in the city, tried to picture having a family at all, and fell short.
Nothing came to me. The phone kept ringing.
After a few seconds, I thought it would go to voicemail. I started to compose the message I’d leave in my head, trying to make it clever but still breezy, just really breezy and clever and cute, and maybe a little flirtatious, just enough to get him interested, so breezy and clever and cute and flirtatious, but still professional, when all of a sudden the phone clicked and a voice came through.
“What?”
I didn’t expect him to answer. I sat in silence for half a beat and stared down at the gray paved path, at a line of rocks next to my shoes.
“Hello?” he asked and sounded annoyed. “Who is this and how do you have this number?”
“Hi, yes, uh, hi, it’s me, it’s, uh, it’s Mona,” I said and I wanted to kick myself in the face. “The waitress from last night.”
That wasn’t breezy, or cute, or anything but stupid.
There was a short pause.
“Mona,” he said, and his tone changed. He sounded interested all of a sudden, and his voice dropped in pitch, sounded velvet and baritone. “I wondered when you’d call.”
“Hi,” I said again. “I guess I’m calling now.”
He laughed. “I’m glad you did. I was just wondering what I was going to do for lunch.”
“That’s perfect, because I was wondering the same thing,” I said. “How about we solve this mystery together?”
“If I didn’t know any better,” he said, “I’d guess that you were flirting with me.”
I laughed. “Not even a little. I have some professional standards.”
He chuckled and I pictured him sitting at a long, gleaming wooden table with a whiskey in one hand and a cigar in the other. I decided to make him shirtless in my fantasy, because why not.
Mobster or whatever, he was a handsome man.
“That’s right,” he said. “You’re a journalist. Just looking for a good scoop.”
“Just looking for an interesting subject,” I said.
“If we have lunch, it’s off the record,” he said. “And there may never be a record at all.”
“I won’t come armed, I promise,” I said. “So long as you don’t.”
“Oh, sweetheart, I always come armed.”
I could hear the smile in his voice and I rolled my eyes toward the branches up above me.
“Clever,” I said.
“Where are you right now?” he asked. “I’ll send a car to get you.”
“Where are we going?”
“Little spot I like. Belgian Cafe. You know it?”
“Sure,” I said. “I haven’t been in a while.”
“Good. Text me your address.” He hung up the phone without another word.
I shook my head and typed a quick text. Clark Park, across from the health center.
I hit send and felt butterflies flutter through my chest.
Maybe I was making a mistake. Tommy’s words came back through my mind, drifting through my brain.
Men like Vince were dangerous. I was getting myself into a dangerous situation, all because I wanted to get some job.
All for a story.
I took a deep breath to steady myself. That was the whole point. I’d put myself in a risky situation, into a really minor risk, all for the story. That’s how I’d prove myself, how I’d prove that I’m a real journalist.
My phone buzzed a second later.
See you in ten. Look for a black SUV.
I took a deep breath and stood. I might be making a mistake, but at least I was trying something.
I walked across the park and hurried toward the spot where he’d pick me up.
3
Vince
I got a table outside of Belgian Cafe, the only table in the shade beneath the awning. The table had just enough room for two, a little black metal thing with two uncomfortable metal chairs. The cafe was in a residential neighborhood, and brick-fronted houses with dark gray stoops sprouted up on either side of us. The intersection was quiet, and people walked past, some of them in a hurry, some of them at a leisurely stroll.
The cafe was empty though, just the way I liked it. I stood when I saw the familiar car pull up to the curb and park a few feet away. Dino was driving, one of my father’s personal soldiers, and the back door opened.
Mona climbed out. She wore tight light blue jeans and a short-sleeve shirt, cut low enough to show just a hint of her chest. Her hair was up, though some of it escaped. She pushed it from her eyes and smiled at me.
“Hey,” she said. “Are you still wearing the same suit from last night?”
I laughed and looked down at myself. “No, this is a different one,” I said. “And you know, I was hoping you’d show up in your caterer’s outfit.”
She grinned. “What, you think I looked so good in that?”
“Pretty much.”
She tilted her head. “I can go home and change.”
“No, you know what, you’re okay.” I gestured at Dino and he nodded then pulled out. “Come on, sit down.”
I took a seat again and she sat across from me. She hung her little black purse over the back of her chair and leaned forward on her elbows.
“So what’s a mobster doing coming to a little hipster cafe like this?” she asked.
I laughed and shook my head. “First of all, you can’t just say that shit out loud,” I said. “And second, this isn’t a hipster place. It’s a legitimate Belgian-style cafe. And the food’s good.”
She rolled her eyes and laughed. I grinned at her and ran a hand through my dark hair. I had to admit, she did have a point. The Belgian Cafe was a corner bar, dark on the inside, lots of wood and pint glasses, with a little dining area to the right. The outside was simple, with a big red banner up at the top that scrolled around the corner of the building, and a big old-fashioned style wooden door with black handles. Everything about it
screamed old world, but it was all facade, since it was built only a few years ago.
“All right,” she said. “I won’t judge. Since you haven’t been in the city for a while. Do you live in New York full-time now?”
I leaned forward. “Are you going to interrogate me this whole time?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Although I’m not sure how we’re supposed to talk if I can’t ask you questions.”
I laughed and gestured. “Fair enough,” I said.
“So, New York.”
“Been there a while,” I said. “I’ve been establishing some businesses there for my family.”
“Happy to be back here?”
I shook my head. “Not really, if I’m honest.”
“Oh, what a typical New Yorker thing to say.”
I ran a finger along the metal table, tracing the circular patterns.
“I like Philly,” I said. “But it’s just not my home anymore.”
“You grew up here, right?”
“Born and raised.” I tilted my head. “You read my Wikipedia entry, huh?”
“Didn’t know you had one,” she said, her tone innocent.
I laughed and let my eyes linger on her chest and lips. Goddamn, she was a pretty girl, but she was smart. I could see her weighing me already, that little disarming smile on her lips, and I knew she was filing away all my answers for when she needed them again.
The waitress came with menus. I asked for a beer and Mona just wanted water. I crossed my legs and tilted my head at her once the waitress was gone. I didn’t bother with the menu, but she looked at it with tight lips and a frown.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I never know what to order,” she said. “I mean, these places, not everything can be good, right?”
I shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”
“I mean, some of the ingredients won’t be fresh, and maybe the chef just isn’t that good at a certain dish.”
“You could always ask the waitress.”
She waved that way. “She’ll just tell me to get whatever they’re trying to sell off,” she said.
I snorted. “That’s cynical.”