Sons and Princes (10 page)

12.

“Tell me about Labrutto?” Chris asked Nick Scarpa.

“He’s a bad guy,” Scarpa answered. “There’s a couple of things I have to do for him, then I’m quitting.”

“Is that why you’re willing to take me to his house unannounced?”

“That and for your old man.”

“What do you mean by
bad guy
? The porn movies?”

“The porn movies, the drugs. He’s got a sidekick that gives me the creeps. He keeps girls like slaves.”

“You mean in chains, locked up?”

“No, but the kid he’s got there now is doped up all the time. She’s his current porn star. I feel sorry for her. I’d like to get her out of there if I can.”

“How long have you been working for him.”

“Since I got out of the can, six months.”

Chris gazed out the passenger window. They were in Nick Scarpa’s Pontiac, Nick driving, his crooked fingers gripping the steering wheel at ten and two, crossing the Hudson River on the upper deck of the George Washington Bridge. The day was for the moment warm and sunny, the sky a dome of blue, the thunder clouds massing up river at the northern horizon only a distant threat.

“How long were you in.”

“In the last twenty-seven years, twenty-three.”

“For what?”

“Armed robbery. Two of them.”

“How old are you?”

“Fifty-two.”

“Are you done now?”

“Yeah, I’m rehabilitated.”

Nick Scarpa smiled when he said this, and, as he did, his face was transformed. A happy twinkle replaced the slightly confused look in his eyes, and his broad grin, revealing a full set of white but crooked teeth, softened the fierceness of his mashed nose and blurred the scar that ran along his jaw line from ear to chin. For a second, Chris could see the handsome teenager who lived in the tenement next to his on Carmine Street in the sixties, who occasionally walked over to the playground of Our Lady of Pompeii school to shoot baskets with him and his friends.

“Armed robbery’s a young man’s game, Nick.”

“I’m done,” Scarpa said. “The next time I go up, it’s for good. I got two grandkids I can’t do that to.”

“I appreciate what you’re doing.”

“It’s no big deal. Like I said, I’m quitting anyway.”

“Have you been to Barsonetti’s house other than the one time?”

“No. I think the albino usually makes those runs. He was sick or something the day I went.”

“Who’s the albino?”

“The sidekick. He lives in a cottage on the property.”

Nick had not asked Chris what his interest was in Jimmy Barsonetti, nor why exactly he wanted to talk to Labrutto. He had simply agreed to bring him along the next time he went to Labrutto’s house in Alpine, a small, mansion-dotted town situated on the cliffs on the Jersey side of the Hudson. That day turned out to be the day after his Sunday visit to Allison McRae’s apartment on Suffolk Street.

“Did you box in prison?”

“A little in the beginning. To let people know I could take care of myself.”

Nick, Chris knew, had won the Golden Gloves middleweight title at age seventeen. A wild man in the ring, when he turned pro two years later, he was already being compared to LaMotta and Basilio. Even now, Chris knew, glancing at Nick’s big-knuckled hands as they clenched the steering wheel, a blow from the ex-fighter-ex-con would do a lot of damage. A few, delivered in sequence and with the bitterness of a wasted life behind them, could easily be fatal.

“Have you killed anyone?” Chris asked.

“Sure, two people.”

“Who were they?”

“One was a Puerto Rican who came at me with a knife one night in the Bronx. I shot him in the heart. The other was a black guy who tried to rape me in Chino. I cracked his head against a sink. His two buddies had shivs. I got stabbed a few times, but they both ended up in the prison hospital.”

“What about Joe Black?” Chris asked.

“Joe Black?”

“Yes. Who did he kill?”

“People who deserved to be killed, mostly.”

“Like who?’

“Bad guys from other families, guys who tried to put the Boot out of business. He killed a guy once who raped two women over by the old West Street, by the docks.”

“Who told him to do that?”

“No one, he just did it.”

“How do you know this?”

“I talked to one of the guys he was with.”

“Jesus.”

“Joe Black was the toughest guy in the five boroughs,” Nick said, “but that wasn’t all there was to him. When your brother first came up to me, I thought it was thirty years ago, and I was looking at your old man.”

The Joe Black Chris remembered was old, his face a grim, expressionless mask, his once jet black hair turning grayer with each passing year. But there was another Joe Black: the young man in the photographs culled recently from the house in Bloomfield, standing in the sun next to his new car on Carmine Street, toweling himself off after emerging from the sea at Coney Island, holding his son Chris by the hand on the day of his First Communion. That Joe Black looked remarkably like Joseph, even to the hint of the I’ve-got-a-secret smile that Joseph seemed to have patented in his teens. The picture on the beach Chris had had to look twice at to make sure it was Joe Black and not Joseph.

“He was a good guy, Joe Black,” said Nick.

“He was?”

“When I did my first stickup, he hunted me down. I was holed up in a basement apartment in Brooklyn, out in Green Point. Joe Black comes in through the window one night. He’s got that look in his eyes. Very quiet, very scary, that was your old man. He wants me to turn myself in, do my time, come out to fight again. I was entitled to one free crime, he said, but no more. Antoinette was pregnant at the time. She was eighteen – she lost the kid – what kind of a man was I? he said. I bluffed him, then I ran. Of course, I was caught, but I thought I was a tough guy. I was nineteen. And here I am today.”

“How did you know him?”

“Your father?”

“Yes.”

“Back then, Carmine Street was more Italian than Little Italy. Everybody knew each other. Joe Black came to all my fights.”

“How old was he?”

“Twenty-nine, thirty.”

“What brought that on?”

“What?”

“That first stickup. You won the Golden Gloves. Everyone said you had a career.”

It was Nick’s turn to look out the window. They were heading north on the Palisades Interstate Parkway, a low volume, scenic road that runs along the edge of the famous cliffs that for twenty miles drop straight down in vertical columns to meet the Hudson River five hundred feet below.

“I threw my last fight. Did you know that?”

“No. I was just a kid, then you went away.”

“The Boot, did you ever meet him?”

“A couple of times. He was at my wedding.”

“He told me I’d never fight again. He mentioned how pretty my sister was. I took a dive. A week later, I pulled my first job. Six months later, I was in Attica, doing three-to-five.”

“Joe Black worked for the Boot.”

“That’s common knowledge. Are you saying I should be holding a grudge?”

“Why not? It was because he had muscle like Joe Black that Velardo was so feared. He might have sent him to cut your sister if you didn’t throw that fight.”

“Life is hard, Chris. I thought you figured that out by now.”

They had turned off the highway onto a leafy street that ascended into the hills, thick with tall and ancient evergreens, that gave Alpine its name. Glimpses of stone turrets, glass solariums, gated entries, long winding driveways and beautiful lawns and gardens were to be seen as they glided along, with an occasional full-blown mansion appearing and slipping quickly by, like the mirage of a giant ship at sea. At number 516 they were stopped by a thick wrought iron gate, ten feet high by twenty feet across, anchored by stone pillars topped with what looked to Chris like security cameras. Through the gate they saw, about a hundred feet away, a man walking toward them along the gravel driveway, moving in and out of the shafts of morning sunlight finding their way through the overhanging branches of the tall trees that lined the drive.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Nick. “Madison Square Garden has those Friday night fights. We’ll go Friday. We’ll have dinner. I’ll tell you what I know about your father. He wrote me when I was in Attica, my first bid. I still have the letters. I’ll bring them.”

Chris shook his head. It was unbelievable to him that Joe Black Massi had ever written a letter. The image of his father taking up pen and paper, with the thoughtfulness that that act implies, stopped Chris cold. For years, Chris had clung to the belief that his father was not quite human, not entirely like everyone else, who lived and breathed and made mistakes and felt all sorts of things, like anger, jealousy, hate, sadness, annoyance, all the things that human beings felt all the time. Did such a man write letters to a nineteen-year-old in prison? Did such a man avenge the rape of women who were strangers to him? Did such a man try to point out the road to redemption to a hard-headed young fighter turned armed robber?

Chris had built a wall around his heart after his car accident and the killing of Ed Dolan Sr., a wall that he would not let Joe Black breach while he was alive. Now that Joe was dead, here comes cockeyed Nick Scarpa trying to vaporize it with a word or two. There was nothing new age about Chris Massi. He did not believe that the dead communicated with the living. But he did believe that certain things were meant to be. He had never thought to look for sources of information concerning the reclusive and solitary Joe Black Massi. Why would he want to learn things that would cause him pain? But here the universe had handed him a primary source who had good things to say. Considering that he was about to follow in his father’s footsteps, it would certainly be worth hearing that those footsteps led occasionally down paths of righteousness and honor, qualities that at the moment Chris sorely needed to associate with the Massi name.

13.

Before Chris could answer, his attention was drawn to the man in the driveway, who had reached the gate and was swinging it open. He could be seen clearly now: tall and thin, in his late twenties, platinum blonde hair swept back from his forehead and kept in place with some kind of gel, his complexion milky white – if he wasn’t albino, he was the closest thing to it – his eyes hidden by very dark sunglasses, his black slacks and black pullover shirt making him look even thinner than he probably really was: an eerie stick figure gesturing them to drive onto the property, which Nick did, and to stop, which Nick also did, once he was inside the gate.

“Who’s this?” the man said to Nick, nodding toward Chris as he leaned into the driver’s side window. “A friend of mine,” Nick answered.

“Does Guy know he’s with you?”

“No, but it’ll be okay.”

“Who is he?”

“Chris Massi. He used to be Junior Boy’s son-in-law.”

The albino stepped around to the back of the car and pulled his cell phone from the clip on his belt. As he dialed, he swung the heavy gate shut. Chris and Nick watched through the chrome-trimmed mirrors on the sides of the old Pontiac as he talked on the phone.

“I met Labrutto when I got out of Chino in 1987,” Nick said. “At the time, he was living in a rented bungalow in West L.A.”

“Was he doing porn then?”

“He was just starting.”

“Does Junior Boy know about his connection to Barsonetti?”

“I doubt it.”

“What’s that all about?”

“I think it’s something pretty nasty.”

“You mean nastier than the usual nasty?”

“Yes.”

“Like what?”

“The girl has said some wild things.”

“The one who’s stoned all the time?”

“Yeah, Stacey. You’ll probably meet her.”

Chris was about to ask another question when the albino reappeared at Nick’s window.

“Go ahead,” he said. “You know where to park.”

As the car rounded a curve in the driveway, they passed a small caretaker’s cottage with a black BMW sedan parked next to it. A quarter mile farther on, they came to the house, a low-slung, modernistic affair set on a small rise, with a gravel circular driveway in front, in the center of which was a metal sculpture, about ten feet high, painted red, that looked like a bird with a broken neck. At the front door, Guy Labrutto himself greeted them, and Chris immediately recognized him as the fat, swarthy man in the photograph he had taken from Allison McRae’s apartment the day before. He was wearing a freshly manicured goatee, and he was now dressed all in black, but it was clearly the same man in tropical wear with his hand on Allison’s hip on the beach in Mexico.

Nick introduced Chris. Labrutto, eying his surprise visitor but showing no sign of unease, led them into a sunken living room where a trio of oddly shaped chairs were set around a large glass coffee table. Labrutto, remaining standing, gestured toward the chairs and Chris and Nick sat. They were facing, about twenty feet across the room, a full glass wall through which they could see a woman, apparently naked, sunning herself – a cell phone resting on her stomach – on a lounge chair beside a kidney-shaped swimming pool, its surface a shimmering pale blue as it caught the late morning sun. The woman, who on closer inspection was actually wearing a string-like thong bikini, with no top, was Allison McRae.

“The son of the famous Joe Black Massi,” said Labrutto. “I hear you’ve had some trouble. Do you need work? I can use you.”

Chris was not insulted by these remarks. No serious Mafioso – no serious businessman for that matter – would be so impulsively condescending. It was obvious that Labrutto, a lowlife, was puffed up by what he believed was his new found stature in the world of organized crime. He did not know that he was being used and that it would take only one or two false moves for him to end up at the bottom of a lake in the Adirondacks. The people who would be happy to take his place making porn videos and giving half the profits to Anthony DiGiglio were legion. Even if he had felt some sting from Labrutto’s comment and question, Chris would not show it as he was not about to lose the opportunity to get to Barsonetti that the effete and beady-eyed film-maker presented.

“No,” he replied, his voice neutral. “I’d like you to introduce me to somebody.”

“Who would that be?”

Chris glanced at Nick. He did not want to implicate the ex-fighter any more than he already had. Jimmy Barsonetti would soon be dead, and people would be wondering how he had been reached.

“I see,” said Labrutto, noting Chris’ glance. “Why don’t I get us something to drink? Nick has to run some errands. Then we can talk. What would you like?”

“Water would be fine.”

“Come with me, Nick,” said Labrutto

While Labrutto and Scarpa were out of the room, Allison pulled her long blonde hair back into a pony tail, rose from her lounge, and, her back to the glass wall, slowly stepped into a pair of form-fitting midriff jeans. Then, turning sideways, her slender body in profile, she slipped into sandals and pulled on a pink half tee shirt with puffy sleeves and silver sequins sprinkled across the front. Chris watched, a captive audience of one, as she crossed the pool’s concrete apron and entered the room through its sliding glass door. Inside, she seemed startled to see him, then, regaining her composure, putting a bright smile on her face as if it were a prop or makeup, she approached him with her right hand extended.

“You must be a friend of Guy’s,” she said. “I didn’t know he was having company. I’m Stacey.”

Chris rose to introduce himself and, while shaking Allison’s hand, he took the opportunity to look directly into her once pretty blue eyes, which had a hard bright sheen to them, to feel the clamminess of her palm, and to note the fresh track marks on the inside of her left forearm .

“Do I know you?” Chris asked. “Your last name is...?”

“It’s Electra, but that’s a stage name.”

“I see. And your real name?”

“Oh, that’s long forgotten.”

“Do you know a woman named Danielle Dimicco?”

“Danielle Dimicco?”

“Yes. She wants you to call her.”

The confusion in Allison’s eyes, emerging briefly from her drug-induced miasma, was all Chris needed for an answer. Something else appeared for a half second in those glazed-over eyes, something that may have been fear or panic or just junkie paranoia. Chris was pondering this flash of emotion when her fake smile returned and it was his turn to be confused. But then he saw she was looking over his shoulder at Labrutto, who had reappeared, followed by Nick carrying a tray containing a bottle of designer water and a glass filled with ice, which he placed on the coffee table.

“I see you’ve met Stacey,” Labrutto said.

“Yes.”

“She and Nick are just about to go out.”

“Oh,” Allison said, “I thought Mickey...” “I need Mickey here,” Labrutto said. Then, to Nick, he said, “The work on my car is done. Run Stacey down to the Mercedes dealer on Route 9. Follow her back here.”

“Let me get my purse,” Allison said, and then she gave Chris a short wave and said, “Nice meeting you,” before heading off into the interior of the house.

“Nick won’t be long,” Labrutto said to Chris. “I’ll meet Stacey outside,” Nick said, as he nodded to Chris and headed toward the front door. Labrutto watched Nick go and then excused himself to “make a quick call.” When he returned a few minutes later, he and Chris took seats facing each other across the glass coffee table. Chris said nothing. Labrutto shifted his considerable weight in his chair, crossing one leg over the other, arranging his flowing silk shirt over his basketball-sized belly and smoothing out his beautifully tailored black slacks as he did.

“So,” said Labrutto. “Who do you want to meet?”

“Jimmy Barsonetti,” Chris replied.

“Jimmy Barsonetti? Are you crazy?”

“No, I’m serious.”

“I can’t help you. I never met the man.”

“I heard you guys hung out together in California. I must have heard wrong.”

“You did. Like I said, I don’t know him.”

“That’s too bad. Do you know anybody who can vouch for me?”

“I might. What would you want to talk to him about?”

“A business proposition.”

“What kind of a business proposition?”

“It involves two million dollars in untraceable cash.”

“To be stolen?”

“When you mention it, he’ll know what I’m talking about.”

“I told you, I don’t know him.”

“You never know,” Chris said, “you might meet him in the next day or two.”

The eyes are the window to the soul, but Labrutto, a drug dealer, a pornographer, an abuser of women, did not have one as far as Chris could see. Instead, a series of calculations appeared to be taking place in the stocky little producer’s head, a spinning of wheels and symbols that he was fairly certain would come up
yes
.

“I would have to go to a lot of trouble,” Labrutto said, finally, “to get an audience with Barsonetti.”

“I could pay you for your trouble,” Chris said. “How much would you want?”

“A hundred grand.”

“I’ll give you fifty when the meeting is set up and fifty when it’s finished.”

Labrutto nodded and stroked his goatee.

“What’s to stop me,” he said, “from going to Junior Boy with this. I assume you know he and I are in business together?”

“Nothing,” Chris answered, “except he’d wonder why I came to you to get to Barsonetti.”

“Why would I bring Barsonetti into it?”

“You could lie to him, but I think he knows me better than he knows you.”

Labrutto’s eyes narrowed at this suggestion that he had no credibility with Junior Boy. “You know it would be on Barson’s terms completely,” he said. “You’d be searched. You’d be isolated.”

“I don’t want to kill the guy. I want to make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

“You could end up like your old man.”

Chris had smiled wryly when he used the famous line from
The Godfather
, but now his face went blank as he took a breath and stared quietly into Labrutto’s eyes. He had no choice but to let this insult to his dead father pass.

“One last thing,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“I can’t get the money without some help. If I were to die, I’ve left a trail that leads right to you and Jimmy Barson.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him that.”

“Good. I want him to know who he’s dealing with.”

“How can I reach you?”

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Then we’re done,” Labrutto said. “You can wait for Nick here. I have some work to do.”

When the porn producer went off, Chris poured himself some water and took a long drink. There had been no need for Labrutto to insult Joe Black, except as a show of power, which was absurdly unnecessary. Placing his halffull glass gently on the glass table, he assessed his feelings. He was angry, not so much at the reference to his father’s degrading death, but at the fact that an idiot like Labrutto could feel so free to make it.

Shaking his head, he turned his thoughts to Barsonetti, who, Chris was certain, would not be able to resist the temptation of Richie the Boot’s legendary two million dollars. In his mind, stealing it from Joe Black’s son and killing him in the process – for no doubt that’s what he would want to do – would have a beauty and symmetry that would eventually lull him – somehow, somewhere along the line – into letting down his guard. Like the music that charms the snake.

Glancing around the room, Chris decided he had had enough of Labrutto and his pretentious house. He rose to leave, and as he did, he spotted Allison’s cell phone on a small table next to the sliding glass doors. He walked over to it and picked it up. Reflexively, he turned it on and pushed the redial button. After three rings, a female voice – a voice he thought he vaguely recognized – said, “Leave a message, I’ll call you back.” He clicked the phone to off and put it back down on the table. Then he let himself out and headed down the long driveway toward the massive front gate, where he would meet Nick for the ride back to the city.

As he was approaching the caretaker’s cottage, thunder boomed and boomed again and the storm clouds, accumulating all morning over the river valley, released their torrents. The small overhang above the cottage’s front door provided no protection against the driving wind and rain, and so Chris, knocking first, entered and was immediately in a sparsely furnished room that was half kitchen and half office. The BMW was missing, so he did not expect anyone to be in the cottage, but he called out anyway and received no answer. Outside, the storm was increasing in intensity, and the sky had turned almost black.

The back screen door, torn open by the wind, was swinging violently on its hinges. Chris crossed the room, pulled it shut and set the eye-hook. On his way back, on the kitchen table, he saw several porn magazines – anal teens, men on men, girls on beasts – in that vein. One of them was opened to the classified section where an ad in the lower part of the page was highlighted in yellow. It read:
Will pay top $$ for home videos. Box 2194, NY 10001
. Next to the magazines was a stack of DVDs, about six in all, each tightly wrapped in cellophane, each neatly labeled, “Candy Meets Ron.” He picked one of them up. As he was idly turning it over, the front door swung open, and Mickey, the gatekeeper, entered the cottage, pointing a nickel-plated, nine millimeter Beretta at Chris.

“Put that down,” Mickey said, his voice surprisingly deep for all his thinness, easily heard above the howling wind, which was battering the one-room cottage, and knocking tree branches down along the driveway.

“Take it easy,” Chris said, glancing at the pistol, then meeting Mickey’s pale brown eyes for a second, a brief second, before they started rolling around in their sockets and then darting around the room, looking, it seemed, for additional signs of Chris’s intrusion. “I just came in out of the rain.”

With his free hand, Mickey took a cell phone out of his jacket pocket, flipped it open, pushed one button and held it to his ear. His hair was plastered to his head from the rain, which, with his opaque eyes below brows now knitted in concentration, made him look scrawny and a bit stunned, like a newly hatched bird. Drops of water were running from his temple down his jaw line, and there was a gash on his forehead, oozing blood.