TWENTY-FIVE

The Grotto was standing room only. I had been here before on many such late spring nights when I was a kid. Back then, in ancient times, before shopping malls, iPhones, or texting, it was a place to meet friends or girls or to go on tentative first dates. A lot, maybe too much, about the world had changed to suit me, but there was something comforting in seeing the faces I saw there that night. Kids might dress differently than they did when I was young, but all the technology in the world couldn’t beat the awkwardness and hormone-fueled behavior out of them. Girls still whispered in each other’s ears and giggled. Boys still strutted about trying to get noticed.

I thought of Pam and ached, not because I missed her, but because I didn’t. I hadn’t really thought about her in days. Carmella had done that to me. That was her particular brand of magic, or her curse. She had done it to me the first time I saw her in the lobby of the Six-O precinct over twenty years ago. The immediacy of attraction wasn’t mutual. I think the first thing Carmella ever said to me was, “Yo, you got a problem?” Which was followed with some crack about her not needing some middle-aged guy stalking her. Not exactly the start of a beautiful friendship. I was married to Katy then, happily so, though the first hairline cracks between us were beginning to show.

Carmella was the classic bad drug, my bad drug: once she came back to town, she blotted out the rest of the picture and all I could see was her. My reaction to her was chemical, reflexive. Even though I was pissed off at her for withholding Alta’s personal effects from me and for skipping out without an explanation, I couldn’t wait to see her again. My anger heightened the electricity between us; it always had. It was potent, this dance we did, unhealthy, but powerful. I guess, it’s why Carmella left me to go to Toronto in the first place. And now my being sick brought it to a whole new level. How could Pam compete with that? Suddenly, I wasn’t quite as wistful about the kids on their first dates. I kept my eyes straight ahead and walked to the door at the Grotto marked “Employees Only.”

Nick Roussis was sitting at his desk, his back facing the door. He didn’t seem to be conscious of me standing behind him because something on the computer screen had his complete attention. Just about the time I opened my mouth to say something, he slammed his fist down on the keyboard, sending keys flying off in all directions.

“What did that computer ever do to you?”

“Oh, Moe, Jesus! You startled me,” Nick said, trying to compose himself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you come in. This,” he said, tossing the ruined keyboard in the trash,” is just about business. My suppliers are making me crazy. You own a business. You know how it is.”

Yes and no. I knew what it was like to have suppliers give me a hard time, but it never got me mad enough to take it out on the hardware. Then again, I’d never invested enough of myself in the wine business to lose it like that. I never cared about it like my brother Aaron cared about it, the way Nick cared about his restaurants.

“What, are the suppliers shorting you on your orders? Not giving you full value on your credits?” I asked.

“That should be the worst of it. Forget it. C’mon, the guy I want you to meet is—”

“Nicky, pick up line two,” a disembodied voice filled the room. “It’s your brother, Gus. He says it’s important.”

A angry look washed across Nick’s face, not dissimilar to the one he had after making short work of his keyboard. “Fuck!” He picked up the phone. “What?” He listened, his face hardening. Then he barked something out in Greek—a curse, no doubt. You don’t have to understand a language to understand its swear words. A long stream of Greek followed and it wasn’t love poetry either. Nick smacked his palm down on the corner of the desk. He listened for a couple of seconds and screamed into the phone before slamming it back into its cradle. I may not have been a keyboard smasher, but I certainly understood arguments between brothers.

“Not having a good night, huh?”

Nick was distracted. “What?”

“Having a bad night?”

“Yeah, let’s get outta here before the roof collapses. The guy I want you to talk to is waiting for us at a restaurant in Bay Ridge. C’mon out the back way. I’ll drive.”

We stepped through the near empty kitchen, out the rear door of the pizzeria, down the loading dock steps, and onto West 10th Street.

“My car’s over here.” He pressed a button on his key and the taillights on a gray BMW 525 winked at us.

“Nice ride,” I said, sliding into the front passenger seat.

“Gotta have some perks for all this fuckin’ aggravation, no?”

“You’ll get no argument from me, Nick.”

When Nick turned right onto 86th Street, neither he nor I had much of a stomach to look as we passed by the Grotto.

…

An old school Italian restaurant, D’Alto’s was an endangered species. Smelling of backyard red wine, garlic bread, Parmigiano cheese, and oregano, dimly lit with Chianti bottle candlestick holders covered in generations of melted wax, full of tables dressed in red and white checkered linens, the place reminded me very much of Cara Mia and a hundred other red sauce restaurants that had vanished from the Brooklyn landscape over the last decade. These kinds of places weren’t hip, weren’t Food Channel enough. Nothing that came out of the kitchen required a degree from the Culinary Institute of America. But I loved places like D’Alto’s because it smelled and tasted like my childhood, like eggplant and veal smothered in red sauce and covered in mozzarella cheese, like Brooklyn was supposed to taste.

An old man approached us with menus.

“We’re with him,” Nick said, pointing at a man seated at a table in the darkest corner of the restaurant. “Bring us three glasses of red to start, okay?”

The old man nodded yes. In a place like D’Alto’s, the wine list was very short: red or white. Period. Sometimes, it wasn’t even that extensive. Mostly, it was just red and then it was homemade either in someone’s basement or backyard. You drank it from water glasses and if it wasn’t fit to drink straight, you squeezed in some lemon and threw in a couple of ice cubes to cut it.

When we got to the dark table, the lone figure fairly popped up out of his seat. Except for some acne scars, he was a good-looking guy, maybe six-three, two hundred and sixty pounds, early thirties, with a huge upper body, a real prison build. Lots of empty time to fill up with push-ups and pull-ups and free weights. He had a head of neatly kept black hair, dark brown eyes, and a strong chin. He had a confused nose that couldn’t decide which way to go, but it added a nice bit of character to him.

“Joey Fortuna, this is Moe Prager, the guy I want you to talk to,” Nick said. “Moe, Joey Fortuna.”

We shook hands. Fortuna’s handshake and prison tats on his arms reinforced my guess about his workout routine.

“Joey here was once a firefighter, one of New York’s Bravest,” Nick continued.

“No wine for me,” Fortuna said, waving his glass away when the old man delivered the red wine and a basket of crusty bread. “Just some sparkling water and lime.”

I snickered. Nicky did too and told the old man to leave the third glass on the table, that he’d drink it.

“What’s so funny?” Joey wanted to know.

“Should you tell him, Moe, or should I?”

“Be my guest, Nicky.”

“Kid, in a place like D’Alto’s, you’re gonna get tap water with lemon. These old Guineas don’t know from sparkling water.”

The kid tried to laugh with us, but it sounded hollow. He was on edge. Whether that was because he didn’t like getting ragged on or because of what he’d been brought here to talk about, I couldn’t say. What was obvious was that he wasn’t having himself a grand old time.

Nick and I sampled the red wine. Definitely homemade, but not bad, no ice or lemon required. I put down my glass.

“You said Joey was a firefighter or didn’t I hear that right?” I asked.

“No, Moe, that’s right. Past tense,” Nick said.

Joey spoke up, “I got caught—”

“—selling steroids, right?” I finished his sentence.

“Fuck, man, how’d’ya know?”

“Acne scars, prison build, tats. You still juicing?”

“No way,” he lied. “I swore that shit off. I’m on parole. If they ever heard I was—”

“Calm down, kid. Calm down,” Nick said, patting Joey’s huge shoulder. “No one here’s interested in that kind of thing. No one wants anybody to get jammed up. Just tell Moe what you told me.”

The kid opened his mouth just as the old man came back to take our order. Nick did the honors.

“Cold antipasto plate, eggplant parm, veal parm, a big dish of ziti with red sauce. And him,” he said, pointing at Joey, “he’ll have two grilled chicken breasts with a salad. Oil and vinegar on the side. That okay with you, kid?”

“Lean protein and leafy greens. Just what I was gonna order.”

The old man shook his head in silent disgust. Grilled! No breading! No red sauce! Sacrilege! He was still shaking his head as he walked away.

“Okay, kid, tell the man,” Nick cued Fortuna. “Tell Moe what you’ve been doin’ to make ends meet.”

Fortuna bowed his head and muttered, “Collections.” Then louder, “I been doing collections.”

“Not traditional collections, I take it. You’ve been working for someone who puts money on the street,” I said.

“That’s right. I sorta convince guys that are slow payers to speed up their delivery, if you know what I mean.”

Nick spoke for both of us. “Yeah, kid, we know. We were cops once.”

“Who you muscling for, Joey?” I asked.

The kid went green and Nick came to his rescue.

“Moe, let’s just say he works for friends of mine and leave it at that, okay?”

“Fine. Business must be booming in this shitty economy,” I said. “People are desperate to get loans wherever they can, but then when they have to pay the principal back with the vig on top … You must be doing a lot of convincing these days.”

“Fuck, yeah. Busy all the time. I’m making out pretty good.”

“This is all very interesting, but what’s this got to do with—”

“He’s coming to that, Moe. Relax. Go ahead, Joey, tell him.”

“A few months ago, a guy comes to me that I used to work with in a firehouse in the Bronx. He says he heard I was looking to pick up extra cash since I got out of the joint. Sure, I says. Why would I turn down extra cash, right? So he says he got a friend that wants to talk to me about a job, but when I ask him what kinda job, he don’t answer. All he says is that it ain’t about collections and I should talk with this other guy and he’ll fill me in. He gives me a phone number for this other guy and—” Joey stopped abruptly, nodding toward the waiter headed our way.

“Cold antipasto platter,” said the old man as he laid the dish at the center of the table. “Enjoy.”

Nick forked some Genoa salami, provolone cheese, and a roasted pepper, ripped off a hunk of bread and made a little folded sandwich. He washed it down with wine and finally noticed Fortuna’s silence. “You like a jukebox, kid, or what? I gotta put a quarter in you every time I wanna get sound out? Tell the fuckin’ story already or we’ll still be here when they open up tomorrow morning.”

By the sour expression on Joey’s face, it was evident he didn’t appreciate Nick’s sarcasm or his ordering him around, but my guess was that Joey wasn’t here out of the goodness of his heart and he was either doing someone a favor or being paid handsomely—maybe by Nick, maybe not—to be here and tell me his story.

“So I called the guy and he says he’s asked around about me and that he heard I could be trusted because I didn’t give up the names of the guys I was dealing ’roids with and I did the full bid inside instead of rolling over on my partners. So he asks me if I’d be interested in picking up some extra ’scarole for a job. I asked how much and for what. Before he tells me, he asks if I get squeamish about hurtin’ women. I told him I didn’t get off on it or nothin’, but if a bitch borrowed money and didn’t pay back on time, she got treated like the rest of ’em. Their fingers and arms break jus’ like everybody else’s.”

“Is this going somewhere?” I asked, sipping on the wine.

“Let the man talk and you’ll see,” Nick chided.

“The guy says he’ll pay me five large to t’row a scare into this bitch, that I can hurt her all I want and that if she died, he wouldn’t shed no tears over it. He said just to make sure it was slow and that it hurt. I told him I wasn’t gonna kill nobody and that if I was, five large wasn’t large enough. He said ten was the best he could do, but that if he had some more time, he might be able to come up with another five. I said that I still wasn’t interested in killin’ nobody, especially a woman, but that five grand would buy him a lot of hurt. He said he’d send me half the money and information about where I could find the woman.”

With a sense of where this was going, I speeded up the process. “He sent you the money?”

“Twenty-five hundred in used twenties and this,” he said, sliding a folded piece of paper across the table to me.

Tucked inside the paper was a grainy newspaper headshot of Alta Conseco. Alta’s address and phone numbers were printed on the paper. Even knowing what was coming, I felt my eyes get big when I saw the photo.

“Did you kill her?”

“No, man. What are you, fuckin’ crazy? You think I’d come in here and tell you this shit if I—”

“Calm down, Joey,” I said. “I’m not stupid and I don’t think you are either, but I had to ask. So, what happened after you got this package?”

“I recognized the bitch. I mean, the guy even sent me a newspaper picture, right? I read the papers and I listen to the news. No way I was gettin’ mixed up in this shit. It’s one thing to put some hurt on some loser nobody ever heard of. It’s somethin’ else to do somebody who’s got reporters following them around. I kept callin’ that number until the guy answered. I told him I wasn’t interested and asked him where I should send the money back to.”

“What happened when you told him you weren’t interested?”

“Man, he went like freakin’ batshit on me. Cursin’ at me in Spanish, callin’ me faggot and cunt and—”

I interrupted him. “Spanish?”

“Yeah, you learn those curse words pretty fast inside. He told me he’d kill me if I ever said a word to anybody and he sounded like he meant it. What a fuckin’ temper on that guy. He went off, man. He gave me a PO box to send the money to, but I told him I was keepin’ the paper to make sure he stayed away from me. I’m tellin’ you, he was crazy, that guy.”

“You never got his name?”

“Are you kiddin’ me? That was the whole point of workin’ over the phone.”

“Did he have an accent?”

“Only when he was screamin’ at me and cursin’.”

“But this friend of yours,” I said, “the one you used to work with in the Bronx, he knows the—”

Joey shot out of his chair. “I’m not goin’ there. Forget it. If I didn’t give up no names or roll over on anybody to save myself jail time, I ain’t gonna give you no names. The only reason I’m here now is because my boss told me I had to talk to Nicky, but that’s it. I told you what I had to tell you. What you do with it ain’t none of my business.” He grabbed the paper and newspaper photo and shoved them in his pocket.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. Let me ask you a few more questions and then we’re done.”

Joey sat, but looked ready to bolt at any time.

“The guy you used to work with in the Bronx, the one who hooked you up, I don’t want to know his name, but he doesn’t work in the Bronx anymore, does he? He works in Queens, right?”

Joey didn’t run, but kept silent. That was answer enough for me.

“And this unnamed guy, he’s Puerto Rican, right?”

That did it. Joey stood up and bent over the table, looming right above me. “Look, I was here because I was told to talk to Nicky, but I don’t know you and I don’t like you. You jam me up with any of this and I’ll do to you what that guy wanted me to do to the bitch. You hear me, old man?” He reached for my collar, then stopped. I guess he didn’t like how my .38 felt against his ribs.

“I may be old, but my finger still works pretty good. All the steroids and HGH in the world won’t do you much good from point-blank range, asshole, so step back and get the fuck outta here. I don’t give a shit about you, but I owe Nicky, so you’re safe.”

He didn’t need to be told twice and was gone. I ate very little of the meal, good as it was, nor did I hear much of the background music over the sound of Jorge Delgado singing to me from the grave.