Gangster (40 page)

    Angelo tapped me on the shoulder with the edge of his folded-up newspaper. Does this bother you? he asked, watching the last of the cars drive out.

    A little. I nodded, turning toward him in the dark interior, his face half-lit by the lights off the underbelly of the two empty planes. I know who those men are and I know what they're here to do.

    But you don't know who those men are. Angelo leaned forward, one hand on my elbow. And you don't know what they're here to do. Which means there's no reason for you to be scared.

    I stared back at Angelo, peering into the semidarkness, realizing that I had been brought to the hangar to be taught an important lesson. Of course, he could never just tell me directly, that was not his way. And I was never certain if what I surmised was the lesson he was trying to teach. Even now, I hope that I was wrong. Because after that night, what I thought was that regardless of how much Angelo loved me or how devoted we were to one another, he would not hesitate to have me killed if I posed the slightest threat to his domain. In all the lessons of the gangster life he would give me across the span of many years, this unspoken one would have the most lasting impact. And it was on that night that I also first wondered, during those long, quiet moments standing inside an empty hangar in a small Long Island airport, if I would ever be able to do the same to him. Was I filled with enough hate to order the murder of someone I cared about? Had I been touched enough by death to be rendered a cold witness to it? I honestly did not know. What I did know was that if I could not, to Angelo I would be a failure. In the real world, such failings are viewed as blessings.

    To a gangster, they are a curse.

    What happens now? I asked Angelo, my mouth dry, my neck and back cold with the sweat of a young man's terror.

    What's meant to happen, he said in a distant voice. He turned back toward the open rear door of his Cadillac and got in. I followed in his steps, shutting the door behind me. Nico slid the car into drive and slowly pulled out of the airport hangar. Outside, as a heavy rain enveloped us, I sat back, closed my eyes and tried to erase from my mind the horrors I imagined.

     *     *     *

THE OLD WOMAN gently eased the key into the door lock and slid it to her right. The thin wood door creaked open and she nudged past it, two plastic bags filled with milk, eggs, cheese, bacon and fresh parsley in her gnarled hands. Richie? the old woman shouted toward the back rooms of the quiet apartment. Richie, c'mon, wake up. I bought some breakfast. I'll make us a nice frittata and a pot of coffee. Let's go. Get out of that bed.

    The old woman rested her bags on the small kitchen table and walked toward the end of the railroad apartment where her only son, Richie, spent the bulk of his mornings, locked in his room, sleeping off another night of drink and dope. Anna Maria-Scarafino had no illusions about her son. She knew he dealt drugs and was in business with people who ended their day with murder. She was well aware that the crisp twenty-dollar bills he often stuffed inside the front pockets of her apron were wrenched from the pried-open hands of hardworking people. But she had long ago resigned herself to such a fate, soon after her husband, Gennaro, took off with the Irish widow with the shapely legs and the longshoreman's pension half a dozen years ago. Since those bleak days, other than her son Richie, no one else had come forward to help pull the family cart. And if the rent and grocery money he gave her came from someplace other than a weekly paycheck, she had learned to turn a blind, if not so innocent, eye to it.

    Anna Maria pulled a cigarette from out of her housedress, lit it and kept walking through the well-kept rooms. Richie, she shouted down the hall, exhaling a thick puff of smoke out her nose and mouth. What is it with you? Are you deaf, now?

    She turned a small corner and stood at the entrance to her son's room. She turned the handle on the door and tossed it open. Her eyes moved from the empty bloodstained bed up to the wall, the cigarette falling out of her mouth, her hands clasped hard against her lips, squelching both a scream and a violent urge to vomit. There was Richie Scarafino, her only son, born two weeks premature, hanging from his bedroom wall, four thick nails pounded into his hands and feet, thick clots of blood bubbling off his cold skin and running down the blue paint and onto the white sheets. The dark end of a twelve-inch butcher's knife poked out of the right side of his rib cage. His eyes were beaten shut and his head was hanging to one side. Anna Maria fell to her knees, bowed her head and cried over the mangled body of her boy, Richard Scarafino, a young man who wanted so very much to be a gangster. She stayed that way for the rest of the morning, her low, painful moans echoing off cold, uncaring walls now streaked with the stains of death.

     *     *     *

I STOOD NEXT to Pudge, both of us gripping the railing on the top deck of the Circle Line cruiser taking us down the Hudson River. I stared out at New Jersey, the spray of the salt water cooling my face. Around us, young couples held hands and older ones sat on wooden benches under warm blankets wrapped around their legs.

    I like being out on the water, Pudge said.

    I'll always remember that boat you rented for me and some of my friends last summer, I said, leaning closer to him. You told us all we were going to catch a hundred lobsters each.

    I lied. But at least we had some laughs.

    We don't do much of that anymore.

    What did you think a war was going to be like, Gabe? Pudge asked.

    I don't know what I expected. I shrugged. I didn't think so many people would have to die.

    And it bothers you?

    I didn't answer, except to ask another question. Doesn't any of it bother you?

    No, Pudge said. Not now when I'm old and not when I was young and starting out. I always knew it was a part of what I had to be. And I was okay with it.

    I used to love being a part of it all, I said, choking back the urge to cry. Now, I'm more scared than anything else.

    You love the power, Pudge said. What you don't love is what you have to do to keep that power. He hesitated, not wanting to say the wrong thing. Angelo thinks you can be one of us. And he'll do everything to make that happen.

    But you don't think that?

    Don't get me wrong, Pudge said. You got the head for it and the respect for it. But you're too nice. And there's no room in our life for anybody nice.

    What happens if Angelo comes to think the same thing?

    That's when it'll get rough, Pudge acknowledged.

    And you'll go along with whatever he decides to do? I asked.

    I don't pick anybody over Angelo, little man. Not even you. Pudge's eyes were hard now and strangely distant. For the first time, he scared me. That'll be your war to win, he whispered. Or lose.

     *     *     *

PUDGE PARKED HIS car under the highway overpass and walked toward the dark, abandoned pier. Overhead, the passing cars rattled the road foundation, for decades now in desperate need of repair. He walked up to the pier entrance, stopped, looking to his left and right for any sign of activity. The combination of a full moon and the reflected lights that came down off the cars rushing out of the city cast the outside of the pier in a hazy glow. The old battered doors were shuttered and the moorings were rusty and loose. In its younger days, this very same pier was clogged with ocean liners and cargo haulers, bringing in thousands of dollars each week in swag earnings for Angelo and Pudge. The money they had earned working off the piers had given each of them the capital to expand into other business ventures. Pudge walked forward and shook his head, saddened to see yet another remnant of his youth reduced to rubble.

    The Mercedes came at him at a high speed from his left. The headlights were off, the tires squealing on the cobblestones. The shadowed silhouettes of four men sitting inside the car were all that Pudge could make out. He faced the oncoming car, his back to the splintered wood of the pier's front doors, his hands resting flat against the side of his legs, the fingers of each gripped around a cocked gun. Pudge took a deep breath and waited, the car now close enough for him to see the driver's face. He relaxed his body and then threw himself to the ground, rolling to his right, coming up on his knees, facing the right side of the car, his arms held out, the two guns up and firing bullets into the tinted windows. He saw the driver's head slump against the wheel as the Mercedes crashed into the pier door, its front end bursting through the weathered old wood.

    Pudge kept walking toward the car, firing bullets with each step. When one gun emptied he tossed it into the river behind him, reached into the back of his trousers for a third and pumped six fresh bullets into the interior. He stopped when he reached the rear door of the car, looked down with experienced calm at the four dead men scattered inside like broken dolls. He put his guns back inside his jacket, turned around and it was then that Pudge Nichols, a gangster his entire life, knew he had made a fatal mistake.

    That wasn't too bad for an old white man, Little Ricky Carson said, standing there in his standard long rider coat. Three men were behind him as backup.

    Pudge turned to look back at the four bodies in the smoldering Mercedes. Is that how you treat your crew? he asked Put them in the middle of a setup situation?

    I hope I stay as tough as you, when I turn old, Little Ricky said, his hands in the deep pockets of his coat.

    I wouldn't waste money betting on it, Pudge told him.

    And then Pudge swung the Mercedes door open and dove inside, landing on top of the two dead bodies in the backseat. He searched frantically through the insides of their coat pockets, found two guns, turned on his side and started firing. Little Ricky reeled from the line of fire, diving against the pier door, an alley cat scurrying from his late-night prey. The three gunmen pulled semiautomatics from inside their long coats and, with legs apart and arms braced, started firing a steady stream of bullets inside the dark Mercedes. Pudge braced one of the dead men up and used him as a shield, firing wildly in the direction of the three men. He felt the heat of the bullets whiz past him, several cracking the car windows behind him and a few lodging in the thick leather upholstery. He dropped one empty gun and reached into the pocket of the dead man next to him for a fresh weapon. Wrapping one hand around a .44 bulldog, he turned away from the three gunmen, trying to open the door on the other side of the car. As he lifted the handle, he felt a piercing burn in his shoulder and was sent crashing forward, landing facedown on the dirty street. He leaned against the rear tire, blood rushing out of the wound and down his back, and checked the gun in his hand as a wave of bullets popped holes into the Mercedes exterior. Pudge used his feet to lift himself up, turned and fired three quick volleys, hitting one of the gunmen square in the chest, then shifted his attention to the second gunman. He aimed the large gun, the pain in his shoulder sinking down into his back, and put pressure on the trigger. He squeezed off one round, catching the shooter just below the jaw. Pudge watched him fall, then turned to the third gunmen, who was walking toward him now in a bent position, moving his gun from left to right, looking to get off a final shot. Pudge closed his eyes and knew he was one bullet away from making it a battle between himself and Little Ricky Carson. One bullet away from walking clear of a trap he should have been smart enough not to get caught in. Pudge had been around enough of these last moments to know that they would have little to do with skill. It was now all about luck and how much of it he had left.

    As Pudge Nichols felt the cold barrel of the gun lodge against the base of his neck, he knew that his long streak had come to an end.

    Fun's over, old man, Little Ricky Carson said.

     *     *     *

THE SUN CAME in through the cracked wooden slats, highlighting the grease and the rummy shacks huddled in corners of the pier. A long line of pigeons draped the upper planks, sitting perched and cooing. Angelo Vestieri stood in the center of the empty port of entry, dirty river water splashing onto his new shoes and wetting the edge of his cuffs. He looked down at Pudge Nichols's body, bound and tied to a thick wooden board. I stood offin a corner, leaning against a shaky wall, my head resting against the wet wood, my hands covering my face, trying not to let Angelo hear me cry.

    Nico, let me have a knife, Angelo said. He bent down and ran a hand across his friend's face, staring at him, his eyes hard but moist, his hands shaking in the filthy shadows of the abandoned dock. He slowly moved his fingers down each of Pudge's many wounds, some of which had already been gnawed at by the water rats that patrolled the piers. Pudge had been shot several times, but it was the blade of a knife that had ultimately killed him.

    Nico came up behind Angelo and handed him the knife, then walked back into the shadows, leaving the two men their final moments together. Angelo clicked open the switchblade and cut the thick cord away from Pudge's body. He worked his way from chest to feet and, when he was done, closed the blade and tossed the knife into the murky waves. He gently shoved his arms under Pudge's body, lifted him to his chest, rose to his feet and began his slow walk out. I followed him, Nico in step alongside me. I had never seen a dead body before, let alone that of someone I loved, but I was numb to any reaction other than sorrow.

    I touched the top of Pudge's head, cold and wet from the long night floating in the hull of a port he had once brought to life. I wanted so much to tell him that I would miss him more than I could even imagine. I never needed a brother or a sister or a mother as long as Pudge was around. He always made it his business to be everything to me that Angelo could never be. Now that was all gone.

    We'll stop at the bar first, Angelo said. Get Pudge some clean clothes. Then, we'll go up to Ida's farm and bury him the right way.