Bone in the Throat (5 page)

Nine

T
HE COUNT'S VILLA NOVA RESTAURANT
was everything Tommy hated in the world, all in one room. Bad food, bad music, and bad company. It was Embarrassment Central, made worse by the fact that he knew the Count, knew people that hung out there.

It was a big glass box with a bright green awning. The inside was all green carpeting and brass railings and mirrors. The restaurant was frequented by hordes of blue-haired tourists who chewed with their mouths open and left 10 percent tips, as well as a smattering of local wise guys from Sally's crew, enjoying the benefits of their investment. The place was always packed with groups of theater-goers who came over to Soho in their buses after some off-off-Broadway show; came over to see the Count, whom they remembered from that TV show, the comedy about the vampire who's really kind of a nice guy, looking after the cute kid, that little boy, what was his name?

The Count still got work. Whenever they shot a gangster movie of the week or a cop show in New York and they needed an authentic-looking Mediterranean-type wise guy, they'd call the Count. Any time you needed a somewhat lovable shylock, a huggable hit man to dress up a scene, somebody to say "dis and dat" and "youse guys" and "yeah, boss" like he meant it, the Count was your man.

God knows, thought Tommy, standing outside the front door, he certainly dresses the part. Twenty years playing exaggerated wise guys since his vampire show got canceled had spurred the Count to new heights of cartoonish wise-guy attire, a hideous overblown version of the people Tommy had been around, in one way or another, his whole life. Tonight, the Count wore a bright red sport coat, shirt open mid-chest, and gold chains. And of course, he had the watch, the pinky ring, the white patent leather shoes, the cheap, pleated slacks buckling under his gut.

Tommy looked up at the drawing on the awning of the Count's profile with his vampire cape drawn up around his ears. He sighed loudly and opened the front door. The Count, recognizing Tommy at once, came out from behind the cash register to greet him.

"Tommy, baby! How are ya? I ain't seen you in fuckin' ages," he said. "How's it hangin'?" He reached down to goose Tommy, but Tommy avoided the Count's wrinkled hand.

"How you doin', Sonny," said Tommy.

"Beautiful. I'm doin' beautiful . . . You see me on the tube last night? I was on that cop show,
Perps,
you see that?"

"No, I missed it. I was workin'," said Tommy.

"So, how's your mother," said the Count. "You son of a bitch, I never see you aroun' no more."

"She's good, she's good," said Tommy.

"Say I said hello for me, will ya? I been meaning to send her over somethin, some food or somethin'. Jesus, Tommy, it's been fuckin' years . . . What are you doin' over there? Sally said you the chef over there, is that right?"

"I'm the sous-chef," said Tommy, wincing.

"Well," said the Count, "Not for long, right, Tommy? One a these days you make your move, you'll be the one runnin' things, right?" He clapped Tommy on the shoulder and winked at him.

"So," said Tommy, eager to change the subject, "How's things, how's business?"

"You know," said the Count, "Usual bullshit. Your uncle's here, right over there inna corner table, with Skinny."

Tommy gulped. He hadn't known about Skinny.

"You gonna eat somethin', Tommy?" asked the Count.

"I don't know, I ate at work."

"Oooh!" blurted the Count, disappointed. "You should come over for dinner. I ain't seen you over here since we opened. You were here for the opening, right? You was here with that lady a yours, what was her name? Helen?"

"Ellen," said Tommy.

"Right, Ellen. Ellen. Beautiful girl. Where you hidin' her?"

"She went out to L.A.," said Tommy.

"Actress, right?" said the Count, nodding wisely. "All these broads are actresses, now. Well, plenty more where that came from, right?" He winked again.

"Yeah, well . . ."

"So, how you doin' next door? How's business? You doin' awright? Busy?"

"Pretty busy," said Tommy "You know how it is. Summer."

"I know, I know. At least we get the tourists. People remember the show. You know . . ."

"They keep me pretty busy."

"Still, you gotta make time for your friends. I see Sally alla fuckin' time. Still bouncin' aroun' with the same guys. You, I never see. I seen you goin' in and out next door, that's it."

"Gotta keep an eye on the store," said Tommy.

"You should eat here," said the Count. "I oughta be insulted."

"I haven't seen you over at my place either, Sonny. So don't bust my balls too bad. I been busy, you know how it is," said Tommy.

The Count smiled. "I never get outta this fuckin' place. I turn aroun' for a second, they robbin' me blind. I gotta be here every fuckin' minute. I gotta watch these fuckin' guys like a hawk. These fuckin' busboys, the dishwashers . . . Forget about. They smokin' shit in my walk-in, stealin' food with both hands. I caught one a the cooks, this guy is callin' Puerto Rico onna phone yesterday, he musta been on there half an hour talkin' to the whole family."

"Wacky world of food service, right?"

"Yeah," said the Count, his mind elsewhere. He remembered where he was. "Well, I better let you go. I see your uncle over there, givin me the evil eye. You shouldn't keep him waitin."

"He's just wondering where his food is."

"Nah. He got his food already," said the Count. "It's been great talkin' to ya, Tommy. I'll see ya later. Lemme know—you decide you want somethin' to eat, I'll send over a waiter."

Tommy walked over to Sally's table and sat down across from him on a green leather banquette. A bored waiter, looking wilted and unwashed in his dirty white dress shirt and black clip-on bow tie, appeared at his elbow. Tommy waved him away.

"You're not gonna eat, kid? Well, fuck you," said Sally. He was wearing a burgundy jogging suit, his hair shining under the bright track lighting. He leaned protectively over a huge oval plate of gummy-looking deep-fried calamari drowning in a lake of red sauce.

Sitting further down the banquette, next to Tommy, was a tall, cadaverously thin man in his forties with bad teeth. He wore a jacket and tie, and he had sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes and a protruding brow and cheek bones that gave his head a skull-like aspect.

"You remember Skinny," said Sally.

"Hi, Skin," said Tommy.

The thin man nodded back at him and returned to his plate of scampi. There was a little pile of shrimp tails in the ashtray next to his plate.

"Listen, Tommy," said Sally, serious all of a sudden, "We need your help on somethin."

"Sally, really—" Tommy started to protest.

Sally raised his palm, "No. Tommy . . . Just listen to me here," he said. "It's gotta be you. It's no big deal. Just a little favor."

"Maaan . . . " said Tommy, shaking his head. He noticed Skinny looking at him intently, one eyebrow raised.

"Don't shake your head," said Sally "Don't shake your head. Look at me. Look at me. It's a little favor. A little one. You just gotta stay a little late at the restaurant tomorrow night."

"My restaurant?" asked Tommy.

"What restaurant you think I'm fuckin' talkin' about?" said Sally. "Yeah, your restaurant. The one I fuckin' got you the job at. Your place. You gotta let us in."

"Who's us'?" asked Ibmmy, worried now.

"Just me and Skin and one other guy. We need a place to talk some business," said Sally.

"Why there? Why not over here? Someplace else?"

"We gotta talk about somethin' in private with a guy. Nothin' bad. Someplace everybody in the fuckin' world ain't gonna know my business. We'll be in, we'll be out. We just gotta talk to the guy a few minutes, show the guy a few things and then we leave. No muss, no fuss."

"This is bad, Sally."

"It's not bad. What's bad? What's fuckin' bad? We just need the place for a few minutes. You just gotta open the doors there."

"What about the porters? There's porters there all night," said Tommy.

"The porters are gonna be callin' in sick tomorrow," said Sally, matter-of-factly.

Startled, Tommy thought for a moment. Skinny was still staring at him. "So Harvey knows about this? This is okay with Harvey?"

"Tommy, Tommy. You don't hafta worry about what Harvey knows and what he don't know. He knows you're with me. You're not gonna be gettin in any trouble with that guy or anythin' like that. Just help us out here, this once, and after, you want, we can go back like it was before."

"I think this really sucks," said Tommy. "This really fuckin sucks."

Sally shrugged. "You gotta do it. That's it."

"I don't gotta do anything," protested Tommy. "I'm not with you guys like that. I got somethin' goin' for me over there, I don't wannit to get all fucked up."

"Sometimes you gotta do somethin'," said Sally.

"You have to do things over there, that's okay. You can't work it out with Harvey? You got somethin' going over there, fine, that's your business. That's you. This is me. I work over there. It's my fuckin' job," said Tommy.

"Well, tomorrow, I'm your fuckin' job," said Sally.

"This sucks," said Tommy. He noticed Skinny exchange glances with Sally.

"You're not gonna get in any trouble. You don't hafta do nothin'.

You just wait aroun' till two-thirty and you let us in the trapdoor. Then you go upstairs, get yourself a cuppa coffee, whatever. That's all you gotta do. Is that so fuckin' much to ask of somebody? Somebody who's family?" Sally shoved a hunk of bread into his calamari sauce and popped it in his mouth.

"It sucks."

"It's a favor," said Sally, still working his jaws on the bread.

"It's a big favor," said Tommy.

Skinny was shaking his head almost imperceptibly now.

"Tommy, what are you fuckin' bitchin' for?" said Sally. "You know you're gonna do it. You gonna have to do the right thing here, you know that, right? I reached out for you one time, Tommy. I got you that fuckin' job you got. You think that Jew dentist give you the job 'cause he likes you? You think he can't hire somebody outta the papers like that? Some French fag who wants the job? I didn't wanna bring it up, but there it is . . . You ain't gonna get in any trouble, that's what's eatin' you. I don't do this thing, it's me that gets in trouble. This is important. It's gotta be done tomorrow. I fuckin' helped you, helped your career, now you gotta help me out. Help out my career. This guy I gotta talk to is gonna be real helpful to my career, you unnerstan'? It's fuckin' that simple."

"Alright," said Tommy. "Alright."

Skinny still looked skeptical.

Sally looked pleased with himself. "Good!" he said. "Now, hows-about somethin' to eat? I'll order you somethin'. You don't gotta pay for it."

"Fuck you, Sally."

Ten

T
OMMY WALKED HOME
slowly, lost in thought. It's not like he hadn't done favors for Sally before, he mused. There'd been plenty of those, a few years back. He remembered Sally picking him up after school, driving out to a parking lot on the river. Sally had shown him a few cases of fireworks in the trunk of his car. It was the week before the Fourth of July, and all the kids in school were clammering for fireworks. Tommy had dealt them out of his locker, taking in over a hundred bucks his first day. After school, Tommy and his friends from the neighborhood sold them on the street, taking care of the carloads of kids from Jersey and Long Island who flocked in to Little Italy and Chinatown every year, looking for ashcans, cherry bombs, firecrackers, and niggerchasers.

"You sell these," Sally had said. "You keep twenny-fi' cents onna dollar for 'em. You can make yourself a nice chunk a' change." Sally had mussed his hair, told him what he could do with his newfound riches. "Now you can take some girls out, treat 'em right for a fuckin' change, show 'em a good time. They like that." And it was nice having a pocket full of money.

There were other favors. He'd get a call from Sally after school; he'd meet him in another parking lot, a social club, a neighborhood bar. He'd be hiding out from some threat, real or imagined, and Tommy would have to sneak around. One time he had to take a gun to somebody, an older guy who ran a parking lot. He'd run around town for Sally, delivering messages, sometimes money. One time, Tommy had to bring a message to a lawyer; another time, a bail bondsman. Once he had to go all the way out to the airport, to a motor lodge near the terminal, to hand a folded piece of paper to a frightened little man in a dark motel room. The man had not been comforted by the message, Tommy remembered.

Then, of course, there was the time he'd been busted with a whole crate of firecrackers. Two hours in a holding cell, with the cops razzing him, trying to frighten him, until his mother came to get him. His mother had not been at all judgmental; afterward, she'd never mentioned it. But Tommy had felt ashamed.

He remembered his father, dead long before Tommy was in high school; remembered him coming back from a stretch in the Federal penitentiary, pale and thin; dutifully heading over to the Evergreen Sportsmen's Club on Spring Street whenever the phone rang. Though Tommy's father continued to make his daily appearances at the Evergreen and in the bars, the after-hours clubs and gambling spots where the day's business was decided and delegated, though he continued to come home with the boxes of swag, the tax-free cigarettes, the perks of his profession, Tommy believed that his heart wasn't in it. His father started to refer to the bosses as the Cigars and seemed to take little pleasure in their company. He did what he was told. Until the end, he was suitably uncooperative whenever the cops came around asking questions. He faded away when somebody, one of his associates, got arrested, often returning with a small gift for Tommy.

In the neighborhood, his father was a respected man. Tommy's school friends were deferential. Their own fathers spoke warmly, even enviously, of whatever position Tommy's father enjoyed in the criminal hierarchy; but Tommy had serious doubts. To him, his father was a tired old man, ruined by jail. He said as much.

On those rare occasions when his father took him out of the city, to Coney, to the Jersey shore, he smiled again. He'd carry Tommy on his shoulders and charge into the surf, saying, "Watch out! Here comes a big one," laughing when the waves knocked them off their feet.

How his mother felt about his father's business, Tommy had no idea. She enjoyed it when his friends came over because they loved to eat, and Tommy's mother liked anybody who liked her cooking.

When his father disappeared, Tommy's mother went on with her life, cooking for the procession of wise guys and half-wise guys who marched in and out of her kitchen. She sat back in her easy chair, stoically smoking her Parliaments and watching her soaps on the TV. She cooked lasagna and manicotti and osso bucco for her guests, seemingly oblivious to the increasingly frequent overtures his father's old friends made to Tommy to come into the business. Her brother, Sally, was the most persistent of all. His father had been missing not even a week and Sally had begun his long courtship of Tommy. . .

This was the man who supported his mother, Tommy reminded himself. Who'd supported him through high school, who'd got him his first job in a restaurant, got him the job he had now. Who put a fifty-dollar bill in his stocking every Christmas, brought carloads of frozen shrimp to his house, and African lobster tails, wheels of Parmesan, Parma hams, boxes of steaks, and Tommy's first television set. His first bicycle, (Tommy's father had been in prison when he took off the training wheels), his first baseball glove, sneakers—Tommy had asked him for a pair and Sally had shown up with twelve pairs of Adidas, in twelve different colors, still in the box.

And of course, Sally had introduced him around. To big, loud men who surrounded themselves with other big men, quieter ones, who always lurked within reach. Sally would beam with pride as they'd muss Tommy's hair, pinch his cheeks, slip twenty-dollar bills in his pockets.

He was not completely comfortable with all this. His neighborhood friends, were, of course, delighted to be running back and forth, picking up shirts from the dry cleaners for the local hoods. They'd wash their cars, court their daughters, go to their barbecues, and they'd brag about it later in the school yard. Tommy was not so pleased with himself. He wanted to see himself as a hero, and running around doing errands for Sally didn't seem like something any hero of his would ever do.

Then he met Diane. She lived in the Village, off Washington Square Park, in a high-rise building with a doorman. Her father was some kind of college professor at NYU, and her mother, a well-respected gynecologist. Diane arrived at school each morning in a beat-up Checker Marathon, jet black, her mother, an elegantly dressed woman in her forties, at the wheel.

Diane looked different. She listened to different music. She dressed like a boy, wore her hair straight and unteased, and favored ripped Levi's and black leather motorcycle jackets. When she made love, it was with a genuine enthusiasm that Tommy found startling and delightful. In her room off Washington Square, lined with posters of the Clash, the Sex Pistols, and the Ramones, she'd take Tommy's prick in her mouth with a good-humored nonchalance that Tommy found intoxicating. Even the neighborhood bad girls, the ones his friends referred to as
putannas,
had sex with a mechanical precision, a solemnity, that Tommy found oppressive by comparison.

With her parents sitting right in the next room watching television, Diane and he would make love, rutting like a pair of musk oxen, right there on the bedroom floor. Sometimes he'd even spend the night; her parents didn't mind. Once, at the breakfast table, Diane's mother had sat down next to him, served him his coffee, Diane still in the shower. She'd said to Tommy, "Better she does it at home."

Diane smoked pot in the house, to Tommy's amazement. Her father would even join them for a hit, reminiscing about the sixties, how he'd tried to levitate the Pentagon with a few thousand other stoned Yippies.

Weekends, Tommy and Diane would sneak into nightclubs; she'd lend him books and insist that he read them . . . Tommy, too frightened of falling out of favor, read them carefully, afraid he might be quizzed. They'd go to the movies in small art houses, and over dinner with her parents, they'd talk about them.

She took Tommy to get his ear pierced at a jewelry store on Seventh Avenue that advertised piercing "With or Without Pain." She bought him an earring, a little sterling silver skull to match her own.

Diane was amused by Tommy's friends from the neighborhood; the young wannabe gangsters in his classes, his childhood pals. And of course, her disdain for their hair, their clothes, their narrow priorities, made Tommy feel even more uncomfortable. When Tommy's best friend, Richie Gianelli, showed up at school one day, newly enriched by his night's work as a lookout in a robbery, she snickered at the chunky digital watch, the brown, suit-cut leather jacket with the wide lapels, that so impressed Tommy's other friends.

Upon seeing Sally one day in the street, she had whispered a quote from a late-night TV commercial in Tommy's ear, "It looks like hair is actually growing out of the scalp," before breaking into peals of laughter. None of Tommys other friends ever laughed at Sally. "That's my uncle," Tommy had confessed, his ears burning.

When school let out for the holidays, Diane went away with her family, to places like Cape Cod, Aruba, Taos . . . She'd return with a suntan, a new favorite band to go see, stories to tell about people and places unlike any Tommy knew of.

By the time he graduated from high school and Diane had disappeared from his life forever, gone off to Boston and college, Tommy had, in his heart at least, turned away from Sally's world and the ambitions of his old friends. He'd cringe when Sally would raise his voice in a restaurant, bossing around his waiter. He began to hate the bluff, uncaring style with which Sally and his friends swaggered through life, oblivious to all the new pleasures that Tommy now knew of. His ears would burn with embarrassment when Sally would offer him free tickets to see Neil Diamond at the Garden, a new V-neck sweater, Ferrari sunglasses, a fat signet ring.

And when somebody Tommy knew would disappear—when, suddenly, somebody Tommy had seen around his whole life went missing only to reappear as a grainy newspaper photograph of a zippered body bag or a sprawled figure on the floor of a restaurant, shirt pulled up over a naked belly, spattered with blood and clam sauce—it didn't seem romantic at all. The life didn't even seem dangerous anymore. Dangerous, Tommy now believed, meant dangerous to the social order, not sitting there in Umberto's waiting for one of your friends to shoot you. The Sex Pistols were dangerous. Sally and his gangster friends were . . . well. . . kind of irrelevant.

T
OMMY STOPPED
in the Lion's Head for a drink. He stared down at his vodka. He reminded himself that Sally had got him his first restaurant job out in Sheepshead Bay, and when that passed, another one at a large French place in midtown. Sally had an in there through the union. Tommy heard later that a Puerto Rican cook had been fired to make room for him. And finally, the Dreadnaught . . . His first sous-chef's job. A few well-timed words in Harvey's ear, and Tommy was a sous-chef. Sally didn't think much of Tommy's new life in the restaurant business, but he had helped him out anyway. The least he could do was return the favor.

Tommy drained his drink and ordered another. Somebody put Lou Reed on the jukebox. The chef, Tommy knew, loved Lou Reed. Tommy liked the chef. He was impressed by him. Sure, he was a junkie. He fucked up. He forgot to order things. He showed up late or sometimes not at all. He leaned on Tommy to cover for him in a way no other chef had done. But Tommy enjoyed working with him. He was a very talented guy, and smart, and Tommy had learned a lot from him. He'd studied cooking in Paris. He'd worked in places Tommy had still only heard about. He was a good guy, a friend. Tommy wanted to stay with him. He wanted to stay at the Dreadnaught, make nice food, get famous maybe.

But this goddamn favor of Sally's. It threatened to pull him back to places he never wanted to return to. Threatened to contaminate him, remind him of all the things in his life he didn't want to look back at right now. But he owed. A lifetime as a beneficiary of Sally's rolling flea market, his precious job, his mother, his—he hated the word—his family. He'd just have to do what Sally wanted.