Bone in the Throat (8 page)

Fourteen

C
HARLIE WAGONS STOOD
on Spring Street, smoking a cigar out front of the Evergreen Sportsmen's Club. He wore a faded cotton bathrobe, worn at the elbows, a white T-shirt, and light blue boxer shorts. Bony, white, near-hairless legs stuck out from beneath the bathrobe, ending in brown stretch socks, held up by garters, and a battered pair of brown tasseled loafers. He peered through the smoke from his cigar at the figure of Danny Testa making his way toward the club.

The old men sitting on either side of the door smoked and drank coffee and sunned themselves in the remaining afternoon light. Danny nodded in greeting to them and then locked eyes with Charlie.

"Walk?" asked Danny.

Charlie stepped out onto the sidewalk, and the two men strolled side by side down Elizabeth Street. Danny held Charlie's elbow gently with one hand.

"Well? It's okay?" asked Charlie.

"Everything's good," said Danny. "You talk to the lawyers?"

"Yes," said Charlie. "There should be no problem now. They say it should be okay."

"That's good," said Danny.

"And the Wig—what's his state of mind?"

"You know. Same shit," said Danny. "He feels neglected."

"Yeah?"

"He says he thinks he should get straightened out for this last one.

"Never in a million fuckin' years," said Charlie. "Not in a trillion fuckin' years would I make that fuckin' jerk-off."

"Don't tell him that," laughed Danny.

"What did you tell him when he asked you?"

"I told him to be patient," said Danny.

"He's gonna have to be real patient 'cause I'd have to be dead inna fuckin' ground before that hand job gets moved up. And if you move him up after I'm gone, I'd come back from the fuckin' grave to haunt you." Charlie spat forcefully on the sidewalk. "Makes me wanna clam just thinkin'."

"You really have a hot nut for this guy," said Danny.

"You ever see him eat?" said Charlie.

"Yeah," said Danny with a smile. "I seen it."

"He's not our type of person. This is not our type of person. He's not what we want. We use him. Okay. We always used people like that. But he'll never be a friend of ours."

"You know we was in Greenhaven together," said Danny.

"I don't care if you was on the fuckin' moon with the guy. That fat son of a bitch. He's a fuckin' joke. A joke. He makes us all look bad. Last year at Jimmy Lang's wedding? Remember? I'm sittin' there next to Paul and Jerry Dap and them and I see him comin' from across the room. I want to crawrl under the fuckin' table and hide. Paul and Jerry and them are sittin' right there and their eyes are poppin' out of their fuckin heads lookin' at this guy. I gotta stand there in front of everybody and let this miserable piece of shit kiss me."

"He's a numb-nuts," said Danny. "But he earns."

"He earns 'cause I let him earn. I gave that to him. Out of respect for his sister. Out of respect for the brother-in-law. Wasn't for that, he'd be drivin' the fellows around still, pickin' up their fuckin' shirts at the cleaners."

"I gave him a little something extra for Tommy," said Danny.

"Oh, really? Okay, that's good. That's good. That was a surprise. But that's okay He's a good kid, Tommy. Not a fuckin' loudmouth like his uncle. You know the sister? An angel. You shoulda seen her. Hard to believe it's the same blood."

"So he should be patient," said Danny.

"Real patient," said Charlie. "Okay, he's makin' some money for us right now with the Count and with the other place, the other restaurant, a few other things. He's got some money out onna street for us. That doesn't mean I gotta love the guy."

"So we don't do nothin' for him?" said Danny.

"Maybe get him a new car or somethin', make him feel better. Talk to Benny D. Get him a fuckin' car, token of our appreciation. Maybe he'll drive it off a fuckin' cliff."

Fifteen

I
T WAS OPPRESSIVELY HOT
on the street, a hundred degrees and humid. Inside the basement kitchen, with the ovens on, the grill fired up, the broiler cranking away, and the steamtable and the dishwasher giving off clouds of moist, hot air, it was far worse.

Tommy's chef jacket was soaked through. It clung to his back and shoulders; chafed him under his collar. The bandanna he'd tied around his head didn't prevent the sweat from trickling into his eyes, clouding his vision. Leaning over the grill, he removed the last slices of fennel and eggplant and stepped over to the small hand sink in the corner. He took off his bandanna and the wet towel around his neck and ran them under cold water. He put them both in the small reach-in freezer. He slipped the charred, black skins off some red peppers, covered the peppers with olive oil while he waited. After a few minutes, he took the bandanna and the towel out of the freezer and put them back on.

The chef wasn't hot at all, though he was sweating. He was cold; his teeth were chattering. He stood directly in front of the broiler, arms crossed tightly across his chest, hugging his shoulders. He rocked back and forth on his feet, like a sailor in rough seas. It felt like the marrow in his legs was going to explode, like it was swelling up inside the bones. Any second, he thought, there would be a bang and a long hissing sound, the bones would crack, and it would all come rushing out. Maybe that would relieve the pressure. Anything would be better than this.

Tommy looked over at his suffering chef, huddled and trembling in front of the broiler. The chef's nose was running, of course; his eyes were tearing, and he had just come off a twenty-minute sneezing jag that had the whole damn floor staff asking if he had a cold. Watching the chef's discomfort, he thought about hell and wondered how much worse it could be.

The chef was around less and less these days. Tommy officially picked up an additional shift for which he was paid, and another shift and a half worth of extra work and overtime for which he was not. The chef was just not holding it together, and the only person left in the place who seemed not to know about his heroin addiction was Harvey. The chef was hitting Harvey for an advance every week, usually only a day or two after payday. And this, when he was taking home what, six, seven hundred dollars a week? Tommy had noticed that he'd begun to turn in dummied-up receipts at the bar for items never purchased. He'd even been adding on ghost shifts to the schedule.

"You're gonna be scheduled for an extra prep shift," the chef had told him, "only you're not gonna work it. We split the difference." Naturally, Tommy had gone along with it. He felt bad for the chef; he was dissolving into his constituent parts, for Chrissakes. People on the floor were talking about it, shaking their heads when the chef walked by, smiling knowingly when the chef was on the nod. Not too cool.

Why the chef was trying to do without today, Tommy didn't know. He did this every once in a while. He'd come in junk-sick, trying to make it through the shift, knocking back Sea Breezes and Daiquiris and beer after beer, unable to work. He could only wield a knife for a few minutes at a time. He'd wander around the restaurant, his clipboard under his arm, like the Flying Dutchman. He thought the clipboard made it look like he was doing something important, something supervisory, conceptualizing, he sometimes said. He couldn't really even do that. He could only drink and suffer.

Tommy saw the chef step back from the broiler. He turned and gave Tommy a familiar look. He'd had enough.

"Cover me, alright?" he said to Tommy. "I gotta get a few things at the store. Back in a few minutes."

The chef slipped quietly out of the kitchen. Tommy was relieved. At least, when he got back, he'd be able to do some work. It was a heavy prep day. Ricky had scorched a five-gallon batch of soupe de poisson. Tommy had to put a whole new batch on the fire. Ricky had just started piping seafood mousse into the vol-au-vents; he was no help. Mel was shaving a big block of semisweet chocolate in the walk-in; he'd be lucky if he got through the shift without cutting his own hand off. Little Mohammed was hip-deep in salad greens, singing quietly in Arabic.

"I hate these fucking potatoes," said Tommy, when the chef had returned.

"What's the matter with them?" asked the chef.

"They stick to the fucking pan!" said Tommy. He scraped some burnt slices of potato into the trash with a spatula from a black, pressed steel pan.

"They love them," said the chef. "And they love them at three-fifty a pop."

"They eat enough a the damn things," said Tommy. He laid some more slices in a clean, freshly buttered pan and arranged them carefully in overlapping concentric circles. He drizzled clarified butter over them and sprinkled them with kosher salt. He opened the oven door and had to reach around a foil-topped hotel pan of duck confit to pull out another two pans of potato, burning his wrist on the shelf in the process. He put two more pans of potato in the oven and kicked the door closed with his foot.

"You know how much a potato costs us?" said the chef, his wine reductions for the beurres giving off blue flame in front of him. "Like ten bucks a bushel. You do the math. It's a moneymaker."

The chef was feeling better. He put a cassette in the machine and hopped around his station to Stevie Ray Vaughan, cutting confetti vegetables in time to the music.

"How many orders of pommes you got?" he asked Tommy.

"Twenty-five," answered Tommy.

"What's veg?"

"Grilled asparagus."

"Cool. Where's the new Mel?"

"He's still in the walk-in. He's shaving the chocolate for the tone."

"Christ. . . You'd better send out a search party, see if he's still alive in there," said the chef. "Probably tripped over his dick and broke his fuckin neck."

"Leave him alone," suggested Tommy. "At least he's not in the way.

Tommy opened the oven again and removed the duck confit. He peeled off the foil and gently removed a duck leg from the rendered fat. The skin on the legs had just begun to break away from the knuckle.

"Perfect," said the chef, smiling, "Smells good, too. Gimme some a that. I think we better do a little quality control here. I think I can actually eat."

The chef picked a piece off the board and popped it in his mouth. "That's really good," he said. Tommy nibbled at the few shreds of meat left on the bone. Ricky, finished with the mousse, came over and grabbed a piece for himself.

"You save the extra skin for cracklins?" asked the chef.

Tommy pointed to a small metal crock. "All fried and ready to go," he said.

Service began. The waitrons set up their iced watercress, sprigs of fresh thyme and rosemary, butter curls, and chopped parsley. Mel returned from the walk-in, wearing a Band-Aid over one knuckle. But there were no orders right away. After a short while there was an order for two soups and a half order of pasta; then nothing.

After a few more minutes, the chef beckoned Tommy back to the office. "Let's go over the specials for tomorrow," he said, grinning.

Seated behind the desk, the chef put his grimy workboots up on a stack of magazines and took out his cigarette pack. He reached into the space between the cellophane and the pack and removed a glassine bag of dope. He got a cut-down piece of a plastic straw out of his desk, stuck it in the bag, and snorted most of the contents. He held out what was left to Tommy, the straw sticking out of the bag.

"You want a poke at this? You can kill it."

Tommy thought about it for a moment. "No, thanks," he said. "I'm trying to be good."

The chef replaced the bag in his cigarette pack, nodding his head in approval. He pursed his lips and said, "You know, I got myself on a waiting list for a methadone program."

Surprised, Tommy said, "Oh, yeah? That's great."

"I went in and signed up the other day. But I gotta wait till a spot opens. I don't know when that's gonna be."

"At least you're on the list, right?"

"Yeah . . . " sighed the chef. "That's something . . . " He rubbed his face with both hands. "I gotta get off this shit, that's for sure. It's taking away all my money, all my time. You know, I forgot to call in the fish order the other night? I had to run leftover stuff... I lucked out, we were dead or I never would of had enough. Can you see me eighty-sixing fish? The shit is fucking my whole life up."

"When do you think you're gonna start?" asked Tommy. "How long you have to wait?"

"I don't know, I don't know. They said they'll call me . . . when there's a space. They're gonna call me."

"You gonna make it? You can hang in till there's a space?"

The chef shrugged. "Don't have much choice . . ." He looked up at Tommy and lowered his voice. "You know, I can hardly even get a hard-on anymore?"

Shocked by this confession, Tommy didn't know what to say.

The chef continued, undaunted. "At first . . . at first. . . it's good for sex . . . but later . . . you know . . . " The chef shook his head, sadly. "You know, I was gonna ask Cheryl out the other night. . . Stupid, right? I got all dressed up in clean jeans, put on a clean shirt. Even managed to save a few bucks I didn't spend on dope. I come all the way over from my place at the end of her shift, I was gonna go in, she's getting off, ask her out to the Crow or someplace . . . You know what happened?"

Tommy looked at the chef intently.

"I stood there. I just stood there out front a the restaurant. Afraid to come in . . . I mean, what if something happened? I go home with her or something, get her in the sack, my prick's just hanging there like a fuckin noodle . . ."

"So, what happened?" asked Tommy, quickly.

"I went home. Never even came in," sighed the chef. "A glorious and triumphant end to a glorious fuckin' day. Went home and watched
Dobie Gillis
and shot up." He shook his head and crinkled up his eyes, disgusted with himself. "Can you believe that?"

Sixteen

T
HE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY
for the Southern District of New York, Raymond Sullivan, pushed his half-eaten plate of corned beef and cabbage away and wiped a thin mustache of beer foam off his upper lip with a napkin. Al, sitting opposite him in the darkened bar, stubbed out a Marlboro and looked around in vain for a waitress.

"You didn't eat," said Sullivan.

"I try not to eat anything comes out of a steamtable," said Al. "You know how long that shit sits there?"

"They put it up fresh every day he says," said Sullivan.

"Sits there under those light bulbs, people hockin' and sneezin on it. Shit grows under there. Like a petri dish."

"It's not that bad. You exaggerate."

"What I wanna know is—who do I have to fuck to get a beer around here?"

"Here she comes," said Sullivan, indicating a ruddy-faced blond woman with big hips headed their way.

"All done with that?" she asked Sullivan. "Can I get anything for anybody else? Some dessert? Coffee?"

"I'll have another Bass," said Al, curtly.

"Anything for you, sir?" she asked Sullivan.

"Same for me," he said.

After she had returned with their drinks, emptied the ashtray, and left with their empties, Sullivan leaned forward, elbows on the table, and inquired in a hushed voice, "So what's happened?"

"What happened," said Al, "is a couple of our local geniuses supposed to be watching the restaurant go chasing Tommy Pagano halfway across town to some shooting gallery on the Lower East Side. They leave their post, they follow him over there in the surveillance van and then they collar him when he comes out. Oh, they called in first, spoke to some pimply-assed AUSA and told him they got Tommy Pagano comin' outta there and he's gonna be dirty. Problem is—it ain't Tommy Pagano, it's somebody named Michael Ricard. He's the chef down there."

"They didn't get some ID?"

"By this time, they had such a collective hard-on they didn't bother to look."

"How did they—"

"Detective Rizzo says he left the photos home that day. He says he was sure it was Tommy, he just got mixed up."

"Son of a bitch," said Sullivan.

"They were pretty pissed off when they found out. They must have been 'cause they scared the shit out of him. By the time I got down there the guy was ready to deal his own mother."

"So he's agreed to work with us. Is that necessarily a bad thing?" asked Sullivan.

"It's a colossal fuck-up," said Al. "What's this guy gonna tell us we don't already know? What's he gonna tell us we're not hearing from the other guy? I got one fuckin' flake on the payroll already I gotta worry about. I need some junkie dirt-bag?"

"So why didn't we just throw him back?"

"We have to keep him. We couldn't have him running around talking about how two detectives just happened to see him coming out of the restaurant and decided to follow him across town. He's been around, this guy. He's not stupid."

"So why didn't they just say they saw him coming out of the building. They just happened to be there."

"That's what they said they said, the detectives. But who knows? They were starting in on the pitch right after they got him in the van. They called him Tommy for Christ's sake. There's no way they get the toothpaste back in the tube. We have to keep him now," said Al.

Sullivan winced. Al took a long drink of ale.

"Anyway, I talked to him. Why not? I can always use a new friend, right? Right away he wants to give us Harvey. Harvey cheats on his taxes, he says. Harvey's got something sinister going with Sally Wig. Harvey meets with strange men in suits. Yawn."

"So he didn't tell us anything useful?"

"Well, he says he's good friends with young Tommy. He says they're close. Says Tommy's a good kid, doesn't even like his uncle, says he's embarrassed by him."

"I don't blame him," said Sullivan. "Anything else?"

"One point of casual interest," said Al. "Seems they got two kinds of dinner checks at the Dreadnaught—You got your white ones and you got your off-white ones. End of the night, Harvey throws all the off-white ones in the garbage."

"So your dentist friend is skimming," said Sullivan.

Al shrugged. "Personally, I don't give a shit. He's a restaurateur, right? If he didn't steal it would look suspicious."

"So like it or not, since this chef fell in our lap, we have to keep him," said Sullivan.

"He's ours now. For better or worse," said Al.

"What a mess."

"I tried to make the best of a bad situation," said Al. "I told him, he's such good pals with Tommy he can get next to him for us. I reminded him of the thousand and one delights of a detox out at Riker's. We had a nice talk. I told him to go back there and concentrate on Tommy. I said I don't care if you have to suck his dick for him but get close to him."

"What does Tommy get us?"

"Maybe we can trade up." Al paused, leaned forward, and low ered his voice. "I had a very interesting talk about Tommy with Harvey. I looked at some pictures they got the other night. This is where we come to fuck-up number two. Last week, you remember, we got some pictures of Skinny di Milito dropping by the restaurant service entrance at two-thirty in the morning. Half an hour later, Sally comes by with a Mr. Freddy Manso. So, I ask Harvey about that and he tells me the night before, Sally calls him up and tells him he should give the porters the night off. He wants a little privacy, he says, to talk to somebody. So there's nobody else there but Sally and Skinny and Freddy. And who lets them in the door? Tommy."

"So where's the fuck-up?" asked Sullivan.

"Problem is they got pictures of everybody going in but they missed them coming out," said Al.

"This is a fuckin' nightmare. Son of a bitch. What are they, fucking sleeping out there?"

Al shrugged. "That's why I wanted Bureau guys watching the place. So we got Sally and Skinny and Freddy and Tommy getting together in the middle of the night, and they don't want anybody watching," said Al.

"I remember Skinny. We know him. A real piece of work," said Sullivan. "But what does it mean? So Sally has a party with his nephew and a couple of friends. Sally's Supper Club. Big deal."

"What makes it interesting is Freddy Manso. Freddy's not even in Sally's crew. What's Sally doing with Freddy? He's with Philly Black over the fish market. And from what I hear nobody's too fond of him over there. He's a gofer, a nobody, a wannabe. He's not a made guy. What makes the uninteresting Freddy Manso so interesting is that nobody seems to have seen him lately—and even more significant, nobody's looking."

"Ah," said Sullivan, settling into his chair. "So we think Freddy's gone. Never to return. Rest in pieces. Is that it?"

"That would be my guess," said Al. "Of course my guess would be a lot better, we had some pictures, see who came out of there."

"You know there's talk of a grand jury hearing testimony on con trol of the fish market," said Sullivan. "I'm not saying there is one. Just that there might be."

"Uh-huh," said Al skeptically. "So maybe somebody started to wonder about Freddy."

"Could be, could be," said Sullivan. "So now we have to play catch-up. Dig ourselves out of the shit. I'm gonna be hearing it from some people about Freddy, I can tell you that for sure. We don't know for sure anything about who, when, or how anybody left the restaurant. Is that right?"

"That's right," said Al.

"So Tommy has to be the one if we're talking about adding a homicide."

"I wouldn't want to count on it," said Al.

"But it's worth taking a run at him."

"The way things are, yeah, sure," said Al. "That's the prevailing wisdom anyway."

"Have you been listening to the tapes we're getting?" asked Sullivan.

"Yeah," said Al, glumly.

"We've got two extensions on the Title Threes for Sally's apartment already. I'm on my second on the pay phone outside the Evergreen and I don't think the judge is going to go for another," said Sullivan.

"The pay phone is giving us nothing," said Al. "A bunch of old men making bets. Bitching about their losses. We get a lot of'Did you see the guy?' 'The guy down there?' 'No, the guy from the other place,' that sort of thing. They're careful."

"And Sally's place?"

"Sally doesn't own a telephone. That's a nonstarter over there. You read the transcripts from the room bug? You should for a laugh. Hour after hour of Sally watching cartoons. He likes
The Jetsons
you know. Sally watching Met games. Sally farting. He does a lot of that, especially when he's alone. Sally arguing with his bimbo, asking her if she thinks he looks fat. She says he looks 'husky.' "

"Maybe we should tickle the wire a little bit," suggested Sullivan.

"You can tickle the wire all you want. Sally doesn't entertain at his place. Just the odd bimbo now and again. He has any of the fellas over, it's only for a minute, they don't talk much. You can listen all you want, all you're gonna find out is Sally's got bad gas and a crush on Judy Jetson."

"So it's got to be Tommy," said Sullivan.

"I guess. A real criminal mastermind all of a sudden, our Tommy," said Al.

"Ask your CI what he thinks Tommy's doing. What's Tommy doing in a place with a bunch of known LCN associates? Follow up on this. Tell the other one, the chef, to keep us apprised of young Mr. Pagano's activities. I want to know what the fuck is going on before this whole thing falls apart."

"What about the Brooklyn end?" asked Al. "Harvey's into them for twenty long."

"I don't know what to do about that," said Sullivan. "I was thinking that's something we can tickle Sally with at some point in the future. I don't know. If this murder thing pans out I may just give the Brooklyn DA a lay-up."

"You don't want to do anything there, right now?"

"I don't want to go down that road at this precise moment. Later. We might want to piss somebody off at some point. The Brooklyn thing might do that."

"Okay," said Al.

"Let's see what happens with Tommy. Tommy interests me."