You'd Better Watch Out Page 2

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Is that Jojo showing off?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t let it bother you. Drink some of this with me.”

  “I’m not bothered.”

  “I won’t let him hurt you.”

  I stole a kiss from her, a peck on the lips that made Mr. Grisiola, the store owner, raise his eyebrows at me. He was a good man, someone who used to pay my father but never showed any anger towards me for it. He smiled as Angelina took hold of my hand but his gaze hardened and focused on the street as Jojo pulled up and parked out front.

  Jojo stepped in and cackled when he saw me with Angelina. He slid in beside his sister and sipped from her straw. He couldn’t sit still. His face was thin and ashen, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in three days. Angelina said, “You need to stop whatever you’re doing.”

  “What I’m doing is making money.”

  “You don’t look well and you smell like shit.”

  “You shouldn’t talk like that. Especially to me.” He said it with that giggle playing in the back of his throat but his eyes were black and practically swirling.

  He glanced my way and said, “I want you to take a ride with me.”

  I said, “Sure.”

  Angelina reached out and gripped my wrist. “He’s not going anywhere. We’re having a nice afternoon together and I don’t want you to ruin it, Jojo.”

  “I’m only here to help,” he said. “Help him pick up a little extra cash so he can pay for more dates like this, Angie. Wouldn’t that be nice for the two of you?”

  I had just turned twelve. I was beginning to notice changes within me. I had grown a few inches and put on some weight. There was a little peach fuzz coming in on my chin and upper lip.

  “It would,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Jojo let out another wild laugh. I got to my feet and he clapped me on the back and ushered me from the shop. Mr. Grisiola stared after me like he would never see me again.

  I got into the passenger side of the Mustang and Jojo jumped behind the wheel and peeled out. I knew that it would take him a little while to get around to whatever he had in mind. He was too high. He was still in a good mood. He drove around Brooklyn for a while and then skirted into Queens. He wagged the wheel and bounced the Mustang off a couple of parked cars. I reached for the seat belt but there wasn’t one. I held on tightly to the door handle and propped my feet against the sides of the wheel well. Jojo was starting to come down a little. He lit a joint and I knew we were almost there.

  He drove out east, talking anxiously the whole time. We took the Cross Island and headed to the north shore, where Jojo said he had a job for us. Some kind of a burglary. He drummed it up pretty good, saying it was a million-dollar mansion. He claimed I was the only one small enough to climb in through a window. He hadn’t even bothered to come up with a reliable, logical story. I was nearly as big as he was. That’s what the real trouble was. He’d noticed I was finally becoming a real rival.

  He drove up to 25A and continued east, where we watched the beautiful areas of Nassau County draping back towards the Long Island Sound. He lit another joint and the sweet smell of marijuana filled the car. He kept offering me a toke and I kept waving him off.

  As he maneuvered into the richer neighborhoods where the houses grew more separated against the steep hills, he began to twitch. Part of it was with the eagerness to stick his blade into me. Part of it was because he was thinking of Angelina and all the things he’d be able to do with me out of the way. He trembled like a cello string. His eyes practically rolled with hatred.

  He’d grown quiet. Every now and again he’d open his mouth and there’d be a distinct pop as his wet lips separated, but he still wouldn’t say anything.

  It was dark enough now that he could practically pick out any empty house and claim that was the one we were boosting. He couldn’t seem to settle on anything because he was enjoying being on the edge so much. We were starting to go around in circles. I wondered what Johnny Booze would think of this setup if only he was here to witness it.

  He had his knife in his jacket pocket and kept floating his hand over it like he was hoping the blade would leap into his fist.

  I eventually knew I would have to prompt him. I pointed to a dark home and said, “Is that the one?”

  “Right. Good eyes. That’s it,” Jojo said.

  He pulled over and threw the car into park, which is what I’d been waiting for. I opened the door like I was going to climb out. The dome light came on. I had to move fast. The street was dead, but you never knew who might look out a window or drive by. His reflection moved in the windshield, leering. That giggle broke from deep in his chest, such a quiet reminder of his madness. Jojo went for the blade. His mouth churned and I knew the name that was on it. He started to say it. “Ang—”

  I dove back in, reached over, yanked the car keys from the steering column, and drove them into his left eye.

  Jojo sucked air to shriek and I pinned him down in the driver’s seat, my hand over his mouth. What weight I had was muscle. I lay across him, pushing down and holding him in place. He continued screaming under my hand, his mouth inflating, the force of his muffled agony blown out against my palm. He’d gotten the knife out but the pain made him release it. He scratched at the door handle trying to get it open. With his other hand he was trying to pull the key out of his eye, which hadn’t exploded or run like jelly the way I’d been expecting. It looked like a boiled egg with a car key sticking out of it.

  I jammed my right forearm across his chin and turned his face away from me. The motion tore the key out of his eye and now there was blood and fluid and gelatin running down his face. He kept clutching for the door handle and finally got a grip on it. He looked at me in terror with his one good eye and I wondered exactly what it was that he saw. Did he understand that he’d never had a chance? Would he ever know that compared to the insanity of my father Jojo’s small madness barely registered? Nothing so far had even made my pulse speed up.

  I grabbed the knife, snapped it open, and plunged the switchblade in under his left ear.

  Jojo died almost instantly. A thick wad of black blood shot against the driver’s-side window and that was all. He convulsed for a moment, rocking against the leather seats, and then sighed into my face and went limp.

  I climbed out the passenger side, slammed the door, went around to the driver’s seat and shoved him over. I got behind the wheel, grabbed the keys and wiped them clean on his shirt. I stuck the key in and started the car. I’d never driven before. I was still five years away from getting a permit.

  I threw the Mustang into drive and got a feel for the brakes and the gas. We jerked and stuttered up the block and I’d gone about a mile before I realized I didn’t have the headlights on. I snapped them on and practiced more around the neighborhood. I wasn’t completely sure I knew my way back home to Brooklyn.

  I knew we were close to the Sound. The first step was getting rid of Jojo’s body. It didn’t need to be hidden forever. Jojo had sealed his own doom by being a complete prick. No one was going to care that he was dead.

  I kept driving back roads heading in what I hoped was a northern direction. I was gaining a little more confidence but barely went above 30 mph. Some cars came up behind me and honked and passed. I was figuring things out.

  Jojo had shit himself and the smell was getting bad. I rolled down the window and had to hang my head outside and take deep breaths. Beneath his awful stench I thought I could smell water. I turned the next corner and saw a little sandy road. I followed it and came to the shore of the Sound.

  It was a small empty beach and I decided that was good enough. The tide would rise in the morning and either take Jojo’s corpse out or not. I didn’t care much. I found a chamois cloth and a couple of rags in the trunk and used them to clean out the car. When I was done I tossed them on the sand.

  I stared across t
he water at the lights of Connecticut and the world seemed wide with possibility. I was full of a strange sort of grace. I felt exempt from my own worst actions. What I’d done was in the name of self-defense but that wasn’t why I felt absolved.

  After an hour I was driving comfortably at 60 mph along the Long Island Expressway to the Cross Island to the Belt. It was two in the morning when I pulled up and parked in Jojo’s spot. No one had taken it. No one would have dared.

  There, I thought, I’ve done it. I’ve crossed the line that will take me one step closer to murdering my father.

  ~ * ~

  Three days later Jojo’s body washed back up. By then Mr. Grisiola had told the neighborhood that I’d been the last one seen with him alive. Everyone knew what I’d done even if they had trouble believing it. Most of them were probably grateful. A few gave me the evil eye. Angelina seemed conflicted but never said anything to me. Her parents seemed a little relieved and there was actually some lively conversation around the dinner table for once. The cops came around and asked questions but everyone knew better than to talk out of turn.

  Forensics went through the Mustang and found trace evidence but nothing to tie me or anyone else directly to Jojo’s murder. They impounded the car. I waited for Johnny Booze to put the touch to me but he didn’t. That was fine. I knew he would eventually.

  It took four years.

  When I was sixteen Johnny’s SUV Benz pulled up alongside of me one afternoon while I was walking home from school. I turned and waited and stared at my reflection in the tinted windows until the back one slid down a few inches and Johnny told me to go around the other side and get in.

  I climbed in back and sat across from Johnny Booze while he swirled a glass full of Glenlivet on ice. He was a flash dresser and kept his cuffs shot like he was bringing the Rat Pack look back. He was a handsome man who wasn’t aging very gracefully. I could smell the exfoliants, vegetable facial creams, and fruity shampoo beneath his cologne. He gave me a smile that showed a lot of teeth and no humor. The Benz took off down the street.

  Johnny sipped his drink, looked me up and down, and said, “You’ve got your old man’s eyes.”

  I nodded.

  “You ever visit him?”

  “No.”

  “How about your mother’s grave?”

  “No.”

  “She was a good woman.”

  I said nothing.

  He kept his gaze focused on my face like he was expecting to be able to read something in my expression. I wondered what he was after and how I could give it to him so we could move along.

  “That thing with Jojo, you handled it well.”

  I said nothing.

  “And you were only a kid. And you never got a taste for it. Some guys, they do something like that, they can’t ever stop.”

  I said nothing.

  A little gleam bled out of the corner of his eye. He cocked his head, hit me with the knowing grin. “You don’t have a taste for it, do you?”

  “No.”

  “You making it with that little Angelina Mara?”

  “None of your business, Johnny.”

  It got him chuckling. Then he quit and gave me a hard look, drank some whiskey, shook his head, and let out another chuckle. “That’s good. You don’t answer questions like that, not even if I’m the one asking. Talking about private affairs like that is disrespectful to your girl.”

  I said nothing and did nothing. I thought back to Johnny Booze putting me in that house with Jojo on purpose, just to see what I’d do. He’d been waiting for this moment as much as I’d been.

  “You work after school at the soda shop? Grisiola’s place?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Well you’re not any more. It’s time to make some real money. Come by the Fifth Amendment tomorrow, four o’clock, right?”

  “Okay.”

  That’s how it went down. He didn’t ask if I wanted a job, just told me to show up the next day at his bar.

  I ran errands, mopped the floors, served a little beer, and helped with the after-hours poker games. Wise guys from other mob crews would come down and join in. There was always an air of heavy tension. Nobody completely trusted anybody else, not even the capos and their own men. Bad blood between the syndicates of different cities went back ten, twenty, fifty years. Johnny kept things happy with good food, liquor, and hookers. He thought he was getting me laid for the first time by telling me to go upstairs with a chubby whore with an overbite and fake DD’s.

  Angelina and I had been making love pretty steadily for about a year at that point. Her parents must’ve known but, as with everything else, they stayed the course of active non-interest. They were planning to retire to Florida as soon as they hit senior citizen status. I was glad that they had an exit strategy and hoped they’d eventually learn to enjoy life. I didn’t see it happening, but I thought anything was possible.

  A couple of months later Johnny formally introduced me to the bagman who had raped my mother. His name, I knew, was Vincent Ventimiglia. Vinny Venti had moved up in Johnny Booze’s organization after my father went away. He became a soldier, hard muscle, a low-level hitter. He was one of those wise guys who’d been in the life for so long that he felt inured, safe, protected. I remembered him in bed with my mother.

  He recognized my name but not my face. It had been five years since I’d seen him on the Christmas day when he’d beaten my mother shortly before my old man had murdered her. I was six foot and went two hundred of thickening muscle. I had taken on some of his gestures and personality traits as well. I didn’t smile. I tended to squint. My hands were usually fists held down at my sides or in my pockets. My gaze constantly shifted. I kept an eye on everyone. I didn’t say much.

  Johnny said to me, “We want you to make some runs with us. Think you can do that?”I’d been waiting for Johnny to move me up into a key position. He hadn’t stuck me in that house with Jojo just to watch me serve beer. He had an eye for talent and recognized that I could be a benefit to him.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “You ride with Vinny. He’ll teach you the ropes. You do what he says. He’s the boss. He tells you to break someone’s thumb, you break it. He tells you to fuck a nun, that nun gets fucked. Understood?”

  Like my father I also tended to pause for a moment before answering a question. “Yes.”

  “Be ready. You’ll get a call this week.”

  The call came the next day. Vinny said he would pick me up later that night. He told me to “be ready for anything.” I still had the two C-notes he’d given me the Christmas morning he’d fucked my mother. I kept them folded up in my wallet. It wasn’t just emergency money. I liked to run my thumb and forefinger over the cash and remind myself just how cheap life and dignity actually were.

  I was out on the front step when Vinny drove up. Angelina was just inside the screen door. I’d told her exactly what was happening and she said, “Be careful.” I told her I would be and walked down to Vinny’s car. He eyed me for a while, grinning. I didn’t grin back. He threw it into drive and we rushed through the streets heading out of Brooklyn towards Long Island.

  He didn’t explain much, not that I expected it. He said we were going to pay someone a visit. He didn’t mention a name. He tried to imply that we were only going to rough the guy up, but Vinny’s voice had taken on an edge that I knew could only mean murder. I knew the sound of it well.

  “You didn’t bring a gun, did you?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Good. Don’t ever bring your own gun along. If we need one, I’ll give you one.”

  “I don’t have a gun,” I told him.

  So our first run was a hit. It was chancy of Johnny to send me out to ice someone so soon but he’d gotten where he was by winning people over. I thought he was trying to win me over right now by offering up Vinny as a kind of sacrifice.

  As Vinny Venti drove I casually glanced over at him, staring at the side of his face. His throat was sti
ll covered with thick veins. I remembered him grunting as he fucked my mother and calling her a fucking bitch with every thrust. I still wondered who he had hated so much. He caught me looking at him and said, “What?”

  “Who’s the mark?” I asked.

  “You don’t ask questions. I tell you what you need to know when you need to know it, right?”

  “Right.”

  Since he’d made his point, and I’d acquiesced, Vinny went on to explain to me what we were doing.

  The mark’s name was Stan Tripp. He was one of Johnny’s cohorts who’d done good business for years. Stan ran real estate scams, fraudulent claims of beautiful lots in Florida, cheap condos on the Keys. He bilked a lot of senior citizens out of their golden years fund, and when the feds finally came down on him he turned rat in about five minutes. He’d been wearing a wire for about a month. Everyone apparently knew it. They’d been feeding him some false information to divert a RICO case and let things settle down.

  No one talked to Stan Tripp anymore so the feds were bound to haul him in again and send him up. Johnny knew that Stan hadn’t told the feds everything, holding back certain facts so he could have some leverage down the line. Johnny didn’t want that to happen, so it was time to send Stan to that great spacious residential property in the sky.

  Stan lived out in Suffolk County. When we drove past the exit where I’d dumped Jojo’s body on the north shore I had a strange sense of déjà vu. I wondered what Vinny had done to get on Johnny’s bad side. I wondered why Johnny decided to offer him up to me in this way, on the night when we first had to do a real ice job. It didn’t make much sense. I looked at things from different angles, imagining one scenario after another. It really wasn’t all that hard to think like Johnny Booze. You imagined that you were completely bored with the world and the only pleasure you had left was toying with people’s lives and turning those games to your own greatest benefit.