Bone in the Throat (20 page)

"Maybe a little bit," said Al, raising his beer bottle in a mock toast, then taking a drink from it.

"I'm more than a little bit drunk," said Tommy.

"You got a girlfriend, Tommy?" asked Al.

"Kind of," said Tommy.

"Somebody from work?"

"Yeah. Somebody from work. You prolly know that already, right? Like you know where I eat my breakfast. From twistin' the chef's nuts. You prolly know all about it."

"Yeah," said Al with an apologetic smile. "I gotta admit, you're right about that. She's a pretty girl. What's her name again?"

"Cheryl. Her name's Cheryl," Tommy tried to sit up straight. "You know her name. Don't play with me. It's not nice."

"Sorry," said Al. "Just tryin' to establish rapport here. Next, I'm supposed to tell you about my wife or my family, you know, commiserate a little. I guess you don't want to hear about that."

"No, no," said Tommy eagerly, seemingly happy to change tack. "I'd like that. Tell me about your wife. Does she cook?"

"Sure she cooks," said Al.

"Yeah? What does she cook?" asked Tommy, slurring his words now. "What does she cook when it's like your birthday, special occasion, and she really wants to lay it on right for you? It's gotta be . . . there's gotta be one thing she makes for that, right? One thing she does real good. Something special. With my mom, it was veal saltimbocca. She'd go down to the store and bitch at the guy till she got the right piece of veal, fight over the price, then she'd come home and pound the shit outta that veal with this mallet she had . . . I guess it wasn't that good, to be honest. I seen a lot of veal saltimbocca since then. But I loved it. I still love it. Moms are like that. They get themselves a small repertoire of things they think they do real well and then they do it over and over."

"Roast beef," said Al.

"Roast beef?" said Tommy with a grin.

"Yeah. Roast beef with Yorkshire pudding," said Al. "First time she got that Yorkshire to rise up in the pan right, and stay up, she was so happy. Now she's a pro at it. Makes a sauce, a gravy, to go with it. Outtasight."

"Lumps?"

"What do you mean?"

"The gravy. It's gotta have lumps you eat gravy at home. No good without the lumps. It's like mashed potatoes, you gotta have the lumps or people think you're back there mixin' up Instant Potato Buds or something, some shit like that. Gotta have those lumps. So what does she make for dessert? After the roast beef?"

Al blushed slightly and shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

"C'mon, Al," Tommy persisted, "What does she make for dessert?"

"She makes Jell-O. With fruit in it," said Al.

Tommy laughed out loud. Al looked even more uncomfortable.

"The red stuff or the green stuff?" asked Tommy, still laughing, tears running down his cheeks.

"The red," grumbled Al.

"With what?" Tommy pressed on. "With what kind of fruit? Sliced bananas?"

"Fruit cocktail," said Al. "Del Monte can a fruit cocktail you gotta know. Laugh if you fuckin' want. I love it."

"I know what you mean," laughed Tommy, struggling to regain his composure. "I know what you mean. I love it, too."

Al called for the check. It arrived a few moments later in a leatherbound book on a silver tray. Al took out a credit card. The waiter took the card and returned.

"How much I give this frog-swallower for a tip?" asked Al.

"Straight twenty," said Tommy. "These guys live on tips."

"I thought you double the tax. Twenty percent of this check, I could put my kid through college," complained Al.

"Twenty percent. That's what I do. Restaurant people, they go out to eat, they leave twenty percent. . . unless the waiter's a screamin' fuckin' asshole."

Al signed the credit card slip after adding in 15 percent. He waited for the waiter to return with the carbon, then made a notation in a small spiral-bound book. He put the carbon in his wallet, shook his head, and exhaled loudly.

"You gonna have a problem justifying this on the old expense account, there, Al?" said Tommy, visibly enjoying himself. "This wasn't exactly lunch at the Sizzler."

"No problem, Tommy," snapped Al, "I got you down as 'A Potential High Level Source with a Unique Perspective on the Inner Workings of a Major Organized Crime Family' "

"That's kinda an exaggeration, isn't it?" said Tommy.

"We'll see," said Al. "I'm an optimist."

Al retrieved an ancient Burburry trenchcoat from the coat-room, remembering to discreetly button up his pants again. They stepped out onto the sidewalk, and Al gestured toward the red Alfa, parked across the street.

"Lemme give you a lift," said Al. "There's some things I want to show you in the car."

Wobbly on his feet, Tommy agreed. Once inside the Alfa, Al reached under the driver's seat and removed a manila envelope. The words
CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR DISSEM
were stamped in red ink on the side.

"I just want to show you a few pictures," said Al. "You don't have to say anything. Just look at the pictures. Like Show and Tell. I'll show and I'll tell. Won't hurt a bit.

"This here's your uncle, Sally Wig," said Al, holding up a grainy black-and-white surveillance photo. "That's Charles Iannello, or Charlie Wagons, as we've come to know and love him, standing next to him there. I understand he knew your father. You must have seen him around. I love the bathrobe, don't you? Pretends to be nuts. Looks like he's kinda pissed off in this picture, doesn't it? Maybe he's mad at the Wig. There's not a lot of love there, I understand."

He held up another picture, "Here's another . . . Sally Wig and friend, out taking the air. The friend, I think maybe you've seen this gentleman around, too. A Mr. Gaetano "Skinny" di Milito. Not a very nice man, from what I can tell. You know he dragged a box cutter across his teacher's face a couple a' times in shop class a few years back. Course, he was a juvenile, back then. Nine months in Spofford for Skinny. A hundred sixty-eight stitches for teacher. I guess Skinny musta got frustrated tryin' to make a wallet or something."

He showed Tommy another picture, this one in color. It was a close-up of the teacher's face, a polaroid, taken in the hospital. The face was swollen and purple, bits of suture visible around the wounds; patches of oozing gauze covered the worst parts.

He held up another. "Oh, here's one. This is some of Sally's work. Some that we know about, that is. This guy was insensitive enough to take Sally's parking space. Foolishly thought he could park some where just 'cause it said Public Parking on the sign. Wrong . . . Sally was kind enough to show him the error of his ways. Broke his collarbone and both elbows with an axe handle. He looks kinda like a lobster in those casts, doesn't he?"

Tommy turned his head away. "I don't wanna see this shit," he said.

"Just a few more," said Al. "Here's a couple of new ones. You might be interested to know this happened just the other night in Brooklyn. Maybe you've seen these two gentlemen around the Dreadnaught. They were regular customers of yours, apparently. They musta been customers, right, 'cause they were sure in and out of there a lot in the past few weeks. It's hard to recognize them now, though." He held up a crime scene photo of the two men in the Brioni suits. They were lying in the street, two heaps of dark, wet rags on fields of black blood.

"We still don't know what they used on this guy," said Al, showing Tommy a close-up of a man's head, teeth showing through exploded gums, a half-empty skull.

"Looks like they used a fuckin howitzer . . . They're still sponging bits a this one out of his car. Found a right incisor stuck into a telephone pole, fifteen feet away, if you can believe that."

"You wanna make me throw up in your nice car?" said Tommy. "Keep it up . . . I don't like this. I dont know why you want to do this to me. Enough, alright? . . . Enough."

"We don't know for sure your uncle did this," said Al. "I'm not making any allegations, here . . . Not now, anyway . . . I'm just tellin' you, man to man—we have reason to believe your Uncle Sally was angry at these two men. We
know
he was angry. Let's just say, we think he had a compelling reason. We know that . . . So, what we think has happened, is that one day, Sally gets angry. The next day, they turn up like this."

It was another close-up. A dead man's face, white and wet, a tire track running diagonally across broken cheekbones. "Whoever done this is a terrible driver You know if Sally's got his license?"

"Alright!" shouted Tommy angrily. He reached for the door. "Stop it, or I'm getting outta the fuckin' car. I'll take a cab."

Al dangled a last picture in front of his face. It was an old mug shot of Freddy Manso. Instead of the corpulent alcohol-ravaged face Tommy had seen at the Dreadnaught, the face in the photo was of a young man, smooth-complected, almost feminine, with dark eyes, carefully combed ducktail, and a hint of baby fat around the cheeks and jaw. Freddy looked defiantly at the camera, holding up his name and number with a casual tilt of the head. But there was a softness, even fear, in the face, too . . . Tommy turned away and looked out the window.

"Okay, Tommy, here's how it is," said Al. He put the pictures back in the manila envelope and put the envelope back under his seat. "Here's how it is . . . No bullshit, alright? I'm gonna drop you off downtown . . . You go home and think about things for a few days. You think hard for a day or two or three, and then we'll have another talk. It's time to shit or get off the pot . . . I had a nice lunch with you today. I enjoyed it. I think you're a nice kid. I had fun. But I don't want to be lookin' at a picture of you lookin' like that one of these days . . . You talked to Michael. You know what the score is . . . Things are gonna be getting pretty bad for the people around you in the next few weeks. People you know are gonna start getting subpoenas. They're gonna have to go to a grand jury where other people are gonna be asking them questions. And some of these people, the people that are getting asked the questions . . . they're gonna start worrying about who else but them knows the answers to those questions.

"We have reason,
good
reason, to believe that your uncle, Sally, is gonna be worried about you. About something that happened to this man, Freddy Manso. I
know
you've met Freddy . . . Sally is gonna be worried. His friend Skinny is gonna be worried. Their friends are gonna be worried. And me and the people in my office are gonna be givin them a lot to worry about. I think they're gonna start worrying about you.

"When we start asking these people about what happened to Freddy Manso in front of a grand jury, what do you think is gonna be runnin' through their minds? What do you think Skinny's gonna be thinking about when he's up there on the stand, committing all kindsa perjury? They're gonna be thinkin' about Tommy Pagano. I think they're gonna be sayin' to each other, 'Hey, is Tommy gonna stand up when they haul his ass up here, give him limited-use immunity, direct him to testify?'

"You know what, Tommy? I think they're gonna say, 'Hey, Tommy's got this cookin' thing he's got goin'. He's got a girlfriend . . . Maybe, maybe we don't know what's in Tommy's mind Sure, sure . . . Sally's your uncle, he's blood and all that. . . But you know what? I seen a lotta guys get clipped over the fuckin' years, Tommy . . . Blood doesn't seem to count for all that much anymore . . . You know what I'm talkin' 'bout? It happens . . . " Al let it all hang in the air a few seconds.

"You're talkin' about my fuckin' uncle," said Tommy. "He practically raised me . . . He's my mother's brother . . . You want me to rat on somebody I known my whole life."

"You
are
a sentimental drunk," said Al. "I just don't see Sally and Skinny and that crew as sentimentalists. Sally, Skinny, Danny, Charlie, and them, they don't strike me as the trusting type. They strike you that way? I see them more as the type a guys who like to be
sure
about a thing."

Tommy said nothing, he sat there in his seat, arms crossed in front of him.

"So, don't rat," said Al. "Fine . . . I'm not saying you have to do anything, right this second. But the grand jury's another thing. Go home and think about things . . . When you've thought about things a while and you think maybe you're in need of a friend, give me a call. Here's a card, you call this number anytime, day or night, and you don't have to give your name. You just tell the guy who answers your name is Aaron and you wanna talk to Al. He'll connect you . . .

Tommy took the card.

"No matter how bad it is, Tommy, we can make it right together. No matter how bad . . . I just want you to know I'm there when you want a way out. You've got a friend if you need one."

Tommy began to retch. He quickly opened the door, leaned out over the street, and threw up. Al slid over. He patted him gently on the back. "That's alright..." he said. "That's good . . . You'll feel better."

Thirty-Five

T
HERE WAS YELLING
in Harvey's office. Downstairs, in the kitchen, Tommy and the chef cleaned squid and listened. Tommy stripped the skin off the squid, then removed the head and entrails, tiny undigested fish spilling out from the squids' hollow centers. He tore off the fins at the tail and removed the translucent, quill-like spines. The chef pinched each severed head, squeezing out the little balls of cartilage; cut away the tentacles from the eyes. Black squid ink squirted on his apron and ran off the cutting board, collected in pools on the stainless steel work table. He took the cleaned bodies and cut them into rings. When the pile of rings built up, he swept them off the cutting board into a bucket of water at his feet.

"What's goin on up there?" asked Tommy.

"They just fired Barry," said the chef.

Tommy put a squid down and wiped his hands on his apron. "No shit," he said. "What did he do? What happened?"

"He didn't do anything," said the chef. "This new guy, Victor, is in. Barry's out."

"Who the fuck is Victor?" asked Tommy, lighting a cigarette with wet hands.

"I don't know," said the chef, still concentrating on the squid. "I've never seen the guy before."

"Where does he come from," asked Tommy. "Where has he worked?"

The chef, annoyed, turned from the squid. "He was introduced to me as a manager slash consultant. . . That's pretty much all I know. He knows the Count. He talks about the Count's place like he built the place."

"Young guy? Not too tall? Hairy chest?" asked Tommy. "Is that Victor?"

"Yeah," said the chef. "You know him?"

"I think so . . . He's got dark hair, slicked back?"

"That's the guy," said the chef.

"I know him," said Tommy. "He works for my fuckin' uncle."

"Maybe we should discuss this in the war room," said the chef.

The chef stepped into his office for a moment, reaching all the way back in the center drawer of his desk for a joint. Turning to Tommy, he said, "Hydroponic . . . from California. Saving it for a special occasion."

A few moments later, they stood in the walk-in, surrounded by cooling buckets of chicken stock, fish fumet, demiglace, and soup. The chef lit the joint, took a hit, and passed it to Tommy.

"So, I take it this does not portend well, this Victor guy?"

Tommy shook his head, slowly exhaling smoke. He took another hit and passed the glowing joint back to the chef. "No . . . This is bad. This is really bad. I know the guy. He went to my high school. I think he got expelled."

"So is he an asshole or what?" asked the chef.

"He's worse than an asshole," said Tommy. "He's half a wise guy . . . He's half an asshole . . . He's a fuckin' half-wit. When he's not makin' pizza over at Frank's, he runs errands for my uncle and those people. He's a fuckin' moron . . . He doesn't scratch his own nuts, my uncle doesn't tell him first."

"He didn't say anything about pizza. He talks like he's in the restaurant business," said the chef.

"He is in the restaurant business," said Tommy. "He's the guy who comes to your restaurant and collects the money you owe for bein' in the restaurant business. He's a flunky, a bottom feeder . . . He works for Sally—what else do you wanna know about the fuckin' guy?"

"So, what does this mean?" said the chef. "Are we workin' for your uncle now? Is that what this is? 'Cause Harvey was all hyped up about a new menu this morning . . . Am I gonna be serving baked ziti and veal parms here a week from now?"

Tommy ran his fingers through his hair and sat down on a bushel of spinach. He reached for the joint, took a long hit and let it out. A thought struck him, he sat bolt upright. "What's the squid for?" he asked, an exaggerated look of abject terror on his face. "Tell me we're makin' Portugee squid stew . . ."

"Harvey wants me to run fried calamari for an app tonight," said the chef.

"Red sauce?" asked Tommy.

"He said any way I wanna try it," said the chef. "It's like an experiment."

"It's only a matter of time," said Tommy. "Next comes the red sauce. You seen the shit they serve next door? That's what they want . . . That's what they want us to serve."

The chef smirked. "So, I fucking humor him. Big fuckin' deal. Listen, Tommy . . . the days are gone when I'm gonna burst a fuckin' blood vessel over principle. Long gone . . . Harvey tells me he wants fuckin' zeppoli on the fuckin' menu, I'll say, 'Sure Boss, why not? . . . Let's give it a try' Then I tell the waitrons not to sell it. I'll tell them, every time some bonehead orders it, they should look up at the ceiling and roll their eyes and sigh a lot—Are you sure you wouldn't prefer the fritures?' "

"It's not like that," explained Tommy. "You're not dealing with Harvey, some late night he gets gassed up on coke and wants to try something and then he forgets about it . . . He didn't get up, ram some coke up his nose, and read about the wonders of calamari in
Cuisine
while he had his morning dump. That's what I'm tryin' to tell you . . . Victor told him he wants calamari . . . Victor wants what Sally tells him to want. . . You understand? . . . You see? It's Sally. Sally loves that shit."

Tommy got up and paced back and forth in the crowded walk-in. "It's over, man . . . Fucking fried calamari . . . Have you had that shit they got next door? Have you ever tried it? Have you seen that shit?!"

"Chill out," said the chef. "I'm sure it's fucking awful. But, I . . . we got bigger problems . . . So, we start looking for work. We still gotta hang here till we find something else. There's no rush, right? I mean, are we gonna get canned? I need the money right now . . . Is this guy gonna get us fired?"

Tommy stopped pacing and considered matters. "I don't think so. I mean I know what they'd like to do, what they usually do. They'd like to shit-can the whole lot of us, the whole kitchen, and hire a buncha Mexicans or Chinamen to work for cheap, get a couple a illegals in here to slop out the overcooked pasta, bread the frozen veal cutlets, ladle a little red sauce over . . . They need a chef, they get some moke from the neighborhood in, some guy too stupid to steal cars . . . That's what they'd like to do." Tommy sat down again and lit a cigarette. "But, I think we got a little while. Sally won't wanna piss me off too much right now, I don't think. They won't fire me. And they won't fire you 'cause we're friends. They're just gonna make workin' here such a miserable fuckin' experience that everybody's gonna quit. That's what's gonna happen."

The chef dropped the roach into the drain beneath the duckboards. He sat down on a box of oysters. "Shit," he said, "I really need the money."

"Shit, I need the money too," said Tommy. "But what really gets me . . . what really chaps my ass is the food . . . I like the food here. I like cookin' this food . . . I don't wanna be slopping some shit out, some fucking mung like they got next door. We make nice fuckin' food here . . . I feel good at the end of the day. I don't want to slink outta here at the end of the day, wondering who's gonna get diarrhea . . . I hate that. I'd rather choke to death on my own fuckin' puke than make that kinda food anymore. I'd rather suck fuckin' turkey necks in hell than make that shit, work for those people . . .

"And wait'll you see the friends. Wait'll you see Sally's friends show up. Hangin' at the bar, drinkin' for free, feelin' up the waitresses. Every inbred motherfucker with a tracksuit an' a gold chain gonna be hangin' out here like at the Count's . . . Why don't they just shoot me in the head—put me outta my fuckin' misery . . ."

The chef looked alarmed. He struggled to put a good face on things. "I worked places before . . . You know, mob places. The food was okay. They weren't hangin' around all the time. You'd see them once in a while, but nobody got in the way—"

"Those places were makin' money. Some place pullin' down ten, fifteen million bucks a year feeding tourists is different. We're not even makin' our nut here. The place has been fuckin' dyin' for months . . . Harvey's gotta be into Sally for some serious bucks if they come in and tell him to start runnin' squid tonight. It's different. The big places, that's a long-term relationship there. Everybody's makin' money, everybody's happy. Here, nobody's makin' money—and I guess he ain't makin' it fast enough, he sends Victor over here."

"You sure this is the same guy? You haven't even seen him yet. Maybe you should wait and see if it's the same guy before you start freakin' out," said the chef.

Tommy stood up again and took off his apron. "I'll go up to the bar, see if I can get a peek. You want anything?"

"Yeah, sure, bring me a Heineken," said the chef.

Tommy walked back through the kitchen and up the stairs. He passed Harvey's office. It was quiet inside. He crossed the empty dining room and walked up to the bar. He slid back the door on the beer cooler and reached in for two Heinekens. He looked over at the men sitting at a table in the empty cocktail area in the front of the restaurant. Sitting in front of the fish tank, a single dead fish floating belly-up behind his head,
was
Harvey. He was sweating, nodding his head enthusiastically. The tabletop was covered with menus from other restaurants, a binder, a pile of invoices. Next to Harvey sat Victor. He saw Tommy at the bar, and he moved his head slightly in recognition, a smirk on his face. Tommy clenched his teeth and closed the cooler door. He half-turned to head back to the kitchen, beer bottles in hand, when he caught a good look at the third man at the table. Sitting against the wall, his face partially obscured by a flower arrangement, was the Count.

"Well," said the chef, when Tommy returned to the walk-in, "how'd your reconnaissance mission go?" He took a beer from Tommy, opening it with the end of a slotted serving spoon. "Is it him?"

Tommy nodded. He opened his own beer the same way. He made sure the heavy walk-in door was closed. "I've decided," he said. "I'm gonna drop a dime on my uncle." He laughed bitterly. "I'm gonna rat my uncle out over a plate of fuckin' squid."